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PD OTHER NA JJRE... SKETCHES
OLIN ALFRED CURTIS

I

THE LIBRARY

OF
THE UNIVERSITY

OF CALIFORNIA

PRESENTED BY

PROF. CHARLES A. KOFOID AND
MRS. PRUDENCE W. KOFOID

BY THE SAME AUTHOR

THE CHRISTIAN FAITH

THE MOUNTAINS

And Other Nature Sketches

By
OLIN ALFRED CURTIS

THE ABINGDON PRESS
NEW YORK CINCINNATI

;i

Copyright, 1920, by
IDA GORHAM CURTIS

THIS EDITION

IS LIMITED TO

ONE THOUSAND COPIES,

OF WHICH THIS IS

U7

CONTENTS

CHAPTER PAGE

FOREWORD 7

I. THE MOUNTAINS. A SERIES OF
STUDIES:

THE MASS OF THE MOUNTAINS ..... 11

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THE BEAUTY OF THE MOUNTAINS ... 18

THE UPLIFT OF THE MOUNTAINS ____ 26

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THE MYSTIC TONIC OF THE MOUN-
TAINS ........................ 33

II. IN THE MOUNTAINS WITH THE HERMIT

THRUSH ...................... 43

III. THE FLIGHT OF BIRDS. LITTLE

GLIMPSES OF A LARGE MATTER. 61

IV. A PASSING WORD ABOUT TREES ____ 77
V. IN AN OLD OLIVE GROVE ........... 89

VI. TREETOPS IN WINTER ............. 113

VII. JOHN ............................ 123

VIII. THE ILLUMINATION OF AN OLD FARM 139

FOREWORD

publication of this collection of

jL "Nature Sketches," as their author
called them, is in response to the many
requests which came to him in the last
few years of his life.

While the field study of birds and of
the trees that were characteristic of any
locality, was a recreation full of pleasure
for him, back of all and above all, he felt
the appeal of the mountains. The moun-
tains satisfied him ; they rested him.

More than twenty times he visited
the "White Hills" of New Hampshire;
sometimes returning to the scene of a
former stay, often going to a new point
from which to study them. He went
among them, he went around them and
to the tops of many of them. Other
mountain regions claimed him from time
to time ; but this was his "mountain home."

This love of his for mountains was
7

8 FOREWORD

known to all who knew him. Never a
summer passed without letters from stu-
dents, and other friends in vacation lands,
whose thoughts had turned to him when
they saw "his" mountains.

The friends who tramped with him
along country roads and through moun-
tain paths have long remembered those
days, for a walk with him could never
be commonplace. It might more easily
be an event.

The world of literature too was always
hovering near him and from its store he
often brought some beautiful expression
fitting the scene before him.

It was from such days of freedom, and
association with Nature in her many
forms — whether rugged mountain or
peaceful valley — that he came away re-
newed in body and spirit.

"The quiet of the fields and woods
Sank deep into his soul."

IDA GORHAM CURTIS.
Leonia, New Jersey.

I

THE MOUNTAINS

A SERIES OF STUDIES

Jf irst

THE MASS OF THE MOUN-
TAINS

IN any serious study of the mountains,
the feature first to be noted is their
mass. This word "mass," though, has
mere availability, it is not adequate. I
looked through an entire book, Professor
TyndalTs Glaciers of the Alps, in search
for an adequate and suitable word, but I
found none. It is allowable, therefore,
to charge the word "mass" with a larger
meaning.

By the mass of the mountains I mean,
not their bare bulk, but their powerful
bulk. An approach to the full meaning
is inherent, I think, in the colloquialism:
"It is a mighty big thing." The moun-
tain-mass is both big and mighty.
11

12 THE MOUNTAINS

Just here, however, a fine touch of dis-
crimination is necessary. The mass of the
mountains does not evince dynamic
quality, the mountain-power is not sensi-
bly active. We do not expect the moun-
tains to move, we simply expect them not
to be moved. As a New England farmer
said: "Those old fellows stay put." And
the mountains stay in place, not as any
unmolested bulk might stay in place, but
as a great force stays in place when
smaller powers are storming against it.

Of course, as a matter of scientific fact,
the mountains are yielding and chang-
ing all the time. "Every mountain is be-
ing pulled down in the very process of its
elevation." But as phenomena appealing
to our senses, as cosmic poetry appealing
to our imagination, and as spiritual sym-
bol appealing to our inner craving for
something abiding, the mountains, in
some way, create for us the impression of
potent immovability.

In Jefferson Highlands, New Hamp-

THE MASS 13

shire, there is a mountain pasture where
one can easily get, in vision, the whole
mass of the majestic sweep of the Presi-
dential Range. No other spot is there,
not in the Tyrol, not even in Switzerland,
where I have felt such a pressure of pure
unmodified mountain-mass. The huge,
looming bulk swells out and up, in such
impressive cohesion, in such bulwark
domination, that the very foundations of
the world seem to be in sight. In this
pasture, looking at that stupendous ram-
part, no man could call the mountains
(actually said) "Vast, undigested heaps
of stone."

Under Niagara Falls I was stimulated
into a violent curiosity, and I wanted con-
stantly to ask interesting questions of my
guide; but here, before this mighty mass,
I had no wish to speak, indeed, no wish
for anything whatever. I was smitten
into the silent rapture of an overwhelm-
ing awe.

It is this power-mass which makes it

14 THE MOUNTAINS

possible for the mountains to symbolize,
for men, eternal stability. They look like
something everlasting. Our natural and
instant feeling is: "Only the Almighty
Creator Himself can move them!" And
precisely this feeling is, I judge, the
poetic origin of the sublime passage in
the book of Habakkuk, where the prophet
declares :

"He stood, and measured the earth ;
He beheld, and drove asunder the nations ;
And the eternal mountains were scattered ;
The everlasting hills did bow ;
His goings were as of old.

THE QUIET OF THE MOUNTAINS
This feature is an outcome of the first,
but, for the sake of emphasis, it is here
considered separately.

Several times, in my experience on the
mountains, there has been a complete
superficial quiet. I did not hear a rock
slip or a fissure open wider or a cloud rend
in the wind or a startled bird rustle in the
underbrush. Once, in fact, it was so un-

THE MASS 15

naturally silent that my ear could detect
not even "the slender clarion of the un-
seen midge."

And, as to visible movement, there was
just one exception to an apparently mo-
tionless surface of things, and that one
exception was the "Arctic butterfly"
(czneis semidea), as, half -crawling, half-
flying, it worked its tortuous passage over
the bowlders, "like a two-inch fleck of
gray-brown lichen that has suddenly be-
come a spirit."

But this superficial quiet is not peculiar
to the mountains, and, save in the moun-
tain-woods, is not, I would say, often ex-
perienced on the mountains. On the con-
trary, the quiet which I have in mind is
peculiar to the mountains, for it is noth-
ing less than the intrinsic stillness of the
basal mass. I am wont to call it the quiet
of the fundament.

In this connection there stands out
in memory one mountain, "the sentinel
of Franconia Notch" — rugged old La-

16 THE MOUNTAINS

fayette! How many times I have eagerly
watched a storm gather and at last strike
him in mad fury — the wind now more
than a gale; the trees bending and break-
ing; the rain slanting into interminable
sheets of pelting lead; the lightning plow-
ing zigzag furrows of fire; the thunder
crashing and booming with crag-tossed
echoes like heavy gun-fire; the entire
mountain-surface in titanic conflict. But
not by an infinitesimal fraction of a point
did old Lafayette move out of place.
"The underbasing does not tremble"
His massive fundament, his real moun-
tain selfhood (so to speak), was as undis-
turbed as the soul of an apostle in hours
of trouble. Had he been a person, with
gift of rational speech, doubtless he would
have said something like this: "We are
annoyed on every side, yet not distressed."
This basal quiet of the mountains in
large measure it is which makes them such
agents of human healing. As one of
large experience has said: "Every great

THE MASS 17

mountain is a febrifuge." Not in this
study can we take up the full psychology
of the matter; it is worth while to say,
though, that, to a responsive spirit, the
mountains supply a needed symbol of re-
pose. In all the turmoil of the world, in
all the deadly struggle for existence, in
all the noise of the machinery of our civili-
zation, in all the welter of animal passion,
they have what Professor Van Dyke
happily terms "their aloofness" Thus,
for weary men, the mountains may be-
come, sometimes do become, precious
places of peace, Nature's finest material
tokens of that "peace of God which
passeth all understanding."

THE BEAUTY OF THE MOUN-
TAINS

IN considering the beauty of the moun-
tains we should always begin with
form. Structural form in a mountain has
the kind of importance which architec-
tural form has in a cathedral. Indeed, a
study of the famous cathedrals, architec-
turally, would be an excellent prepara-
tion for the study of mountains.

Probably, in common estimate, the
most beautiful mountainshape is the pyra-
midal (Mount Garfield), where, from one
summit-point, the mass falls away sharply
on all sides. In Sweetser's "Guide" there
is a humorous reference to a mountain-
native who, when questioned as to the

18

THE BEAUTY 19

beauty of the mountains in his region,
answered: "Wai, yes, but if I'd had the
sortin' of these hills I'd made 'em a little
pedkeder"

Once I myself had this naive prefer-
ence for the mountain-pyramid, but now
I discover a peculiar beauty in those
along flowing lines which are the artistic
outcome of ages of abrasion. For in-
stance, take Mount Kinsman. What an
exquisite skyline ("in cadence swinging
like an ocean swell"), and especially is it
exquisite over against a dark stretch of
nimbus cloud! Here we have just the
combination of massive base and out-
reaching lines and solemn color which, in
this Franconia region, appealed to the
sensitive, introspective genius of our most
original writer in the realm of creative
fancy — Nathaniel Hawthorne.

Mountain-form, though, is only the be-
ginning of mountain-beauty. Thomas
Starr King (called "the American Bus-
kin," although, at times, he is more nearly

20 THE MOUNTAINS

akin to De Saussure), in The White
Hills, says, "It is not so much the forms,
in their dimensions, proportions, and ar-
rangements, which produce the effect of
beauty and sublimity, as the quality, va-
riety, and harmony of the color which
overlay and imbue them."

And, if I may dare to rely upon my
own mountain-experience, I must add
that, in mountain-scenery, the most effec-
tive thing, beauty alone being considered,
is the ever-shifting pattern of the color-
scheme.

From one point, in the Bernese Ober-
land, often I have seen four ranges of
mountains and foothills, and every range
with a dominant color — green, brown,
blue, white. And still, in every case, not
excepting even the last, the dominating
color was subject to color-invasions, sud-
den or gradual; or to delicate color-shad-
ings; or to minute color-lineations ; or to
splendid color-illuminations. Thus there
was in action a sort of huge mountain-

THE BEAUTY 21

kaleidoscope which continually was chang-
ing the mosaic of its pattern.

When carefully investigated, this in-
stability of color-scheme is found to be a
matter of exceedingly complicated causa-
tion. The changes are brought about, or
influenced anyway, by such things even
as the angularity of the rocks, the texture
of the bark of trees, the drifting and
transformations of clouds, the depth to
which the light at a given time can pene-
trate a chasm, and also by the size and
contour and rock-structure of the moun-
tain itself. Of course the one supreme
color-magician is the sun, and yet moon
and stars are the agents in some of the
most romantic enchantments of mountain-
beauty.

There are ranges, like the Great Smoky
Mountains, which have been reported,
now and again, as having a fixed color-
scheme ; but, after a patient test, convinc-
ingly it appears that such a scheme does
not exist. The reports are due, doubtless,

22 THE MOUNTAINS

to the extreme moderation of the shifts in
color-combination.

While form and color are the items
which the mountains contribute to beauty,
these items, it should be noted, often com-
bine into a larger beauty by reason of the
setting in which the peak or range is
placed. In this mountain-frame there
are many potent features. First, there
is the overarching sky, which always is
doing some gloriously beautiful thing to
a mountain. Then there are settings
where meadow, or forest, or lake, or river,
or river-valley plays an important part.
Then there are settings where winding
roads and picturesque villages seem to
enhance the mountain-beauty. Then there
is the combination-frame, where many
things artistically interact, as, for ex-
ample, when we view Mount Pisgah from
Asheville, or the White Mountains from
Sugar Hill. This last view has a com-
bined total of mountain-beauty which, in
a period of more than twenty years, has

THE BEAUTY 23

never lost for me an atom of its unique
charm.

The beautiful mountain-pictures which
remain clearly in memory are too many
for description in this study, but, among
them, there is one which was so entranc-
ingly beautiful that I am unwilling to
pass it by. I will try to paint the scene
precisely as it comes to me now after six
years.

It was early in June, and I was at Gun-
ten, on the eastern side of the Lake of
Thun, which is, according to Leslie Ste-
phen, "the loveliest of all conceivable
lakes." I had chosen a position where
there was the widest possible view of that
matchless group of peaks which is named
the Bliimlisalp. It was a few minutes
before sunset, and I was alone, watching
the spreading silver of the light as it
played in soft, chasing witchery over the
vast fields of snow.

Suddenly, just out of my line of vision,
the sun dropped behind the curved edge

24 THE MOUNTAINS

of one of the "horns," and there was a
suggestion of darkness. It was not ex-
actly twilight; it was, rather, an allusive
warning that twilight might be expected
very soon. This suggestion of darkness
lasted, I would say, less than twenty
seconds, and then the highest peak in the
group turned to gold. As I remember
the color, it was not yellow, not orange,
not even "old gold," it was lustrous like
a gold coin just from the mint. Almost
instantly this shining gold spread out-
ward and downward until it entirely cov-
ered four peaks. To me, gazing there in
a kind of apocalyptic mood, it was an
Alpine reminder of Saint John's "four
horns of the golden altar which is before
God."

But, before my eyes were adjusted to
the splendor, the gold turned into a pink
as delicate and rich and brilliant as is the
pink of a perfect Killarney rose. This
color remained hardly at all before it
deepened into a shade which was almost

THE BEAUTY 25

carmine, only it was translucent, as much
so as is a roseate coal of burning drift-
wood.

This stage of the "afterglow" lasted
long enough for me to call the people in
the pension^ say eight or ten minutes, then
the color slowly faded into a blushing
pearl; then, more slowly, into a ghostly,
vaporous white, which became fainter and
fainter until utterly lost in the gloaming.

Now the village-lights of Spiez, across
the lake, began to appear over against
the vague, mysterious night-masses of the
mountains.

THE UPLIFT OF THE MOUN-
TAINS

EVERETT HALE, as

the anecdote is told, was in Chicago,
walking along the lake-front with a West-
ern friend. The great lake was "working
up a storm," and, as the waves came rac-
ing in, the friend confidently said, "Quite
the same thing to you as your ocean at
home, isn't it, Doctor?"

"No, not at all," was the instant
answer; "it is not big enough."

"But," insisted the Westerner, "practi-
cally it must be about the same, for you
do not see the Michigan shore."

"True," replied Dr. Hale, "I do not
see the other shore, but I know and feel
that it is just over there!"

26

THE UPLIFT 27

The supreme characteristic of the
ocean, at least in its higher range of influ-
ence, is that it is "big enough." For it is
this spaciousness (in continuous exten-
sion) which enables the ocean to become
for men a usable sign of measureless dis-
tance. In the terse saying of Julius H.
Ward, "It calls forth the feeling of end-
less reach."

Right here we come upon what, to
some students of nature anyway, is the
chief difference (aesthetic difference) be-
tween the sea and the mountains. It lies
in the direction of the reach. In the one
case the reach is out over the earth ; in the
other case the reach is up into the sky.
Suitably we might call one the terrestrial
outreach; the other the celestial uplift.

Do we appreciate the value of an up-
ward direction in space? Do we under-
stand "the philosophy of the steeple"?
The gist of the matter can be brought out
and made emphatic, perhaps, in this way;
imagine a large, wild prairie, level-lined,

28 THE MOUNTAINS

no trees, not even a cottonwood, and no
visible boundary save the horizon. Think
of this landscape, monotonously flat, until
its flatness becomes a mental burden.
Now imagine, suddenly, in the center of
this flat prairie, a tree or two of the tower-
ing kind, say Blue Spruces, having an
upthrust of from eighty to one hundred
feet. ... Is the contrast in landscape-
quality not apparent? Is there not a new
and more poetic appeal to our sensibility?
And has not this appeal even a spiritual
tendency? Do the tree-steeples not entice
us to look and think and feel, up and
away from the low-lying tangle of grass
and prairie weeds?

The trees, as Wordsworth, with his
usual finality, says, "connect the land-
scape with the quiet of the sky"

Not yet, though, have we captured the
full mountain-peculiarity. The uplift of
the mountains is much more than a steeple-
upthrust. We must add mass. The
mountain-mass is lifted up into the sky.

THE UPLIFT 29

And the result is a most stupendous
thing, namely, the looming of the moun-
tains.

At this point it is a relief to quote from
John C. Van Dyke. In his recent book
on The Mountain (Scribners, April,
1916), he says: "Moreover, there is still
another quality that comes with the
mighty uplift — the quality of looming in
the peak. At times the whole peak seems
to ride the blue sky, and comes looming
forward and upward above us."

THE JUNGFRATJ

For years I had, and in large measure,
valued the uplift of the mountains, but
its profound meaning, the astounding
spiritual poetry of it all, was not revealed
to me until, one fortunate day, I saw the
Jung f ran, after a long rain, emerge.

John Ruskin, in Modern Painters, says,
"It would be very grand if one ever saw
a great mountain peak breaking through
the domed shoulders of a true cumulus;

30 THE MOUNTAINS

but this I have never seen." Neither have
I, exactly, for the cumulus was not pres-
ent ; but what I did see was the queenliest
of all the Swiss mountains breaking
through a huge mass of mist. And this
mass of mist was not merely huge, it was
extremely beautiful as well — in its own
fashion, it was as beautiful as any cumu-
lus cloud could possibly be. Beginning
at the edge of the lake itself, the lower
part of the mass, more than half of it, was
grayish blue with diagonal, ragged bands
of mottled green. This lower part, this
mist-base, if I may so consider it, ex-
tended upward narrowly, and, with a
serrated border, was joined to a pearl-
gray mass, which seemed to hold lurking
shadows. Out of this pearly-gray mass
there emerged, slowly and weirdly, the
pure white summit of the Jungfrau.

In some secret play of nature's magic
this slow and silent emergence of the peak
from the mass of clinging mist seemed to
accentuate the upthrust, and also dramat-

THE UPLIFT 31

ically to magnify the looming of the moun-
tain. For the eye the Jungfrau now filled
the sky; for the imagination verily she
occupied universal space!

It is this uplift of the mountains, or, in
precise detail, it is the upthrust and loom-
ing together, as related to the ever-chang-
ing sky, which creates the so-called "mys-
tery of the mountains." Like all the larger
poetic conceptions, this "mystery" is eva-
sive, not easily defined in terms of practi-
cal speech. But something more or less
helpful can be said. As I understand the
nature-poets, they believe that the moun-
tains, especially the loftier and more rug-
ged peaks, do sometimes give to perfectly
responsive souls a richly open and sensi-
tive mood. And to such souls, in such a
mood, the splendid summits, now lifted
into space-dominion, are intimating sym-
bols of spiritual verities away beyond their
powerful bulk.

The real worth of this poetic phase
of transcendental philosophy I may find,

32 THE MOUNTAINS

in another connection, a chance to esti-
mate; here my only purpose is to present
the matter. I should, however, present it
fairly, and I want to present it generously.
Allow me, therefore, to finish this study
by trying to gather up the belief in a
sympathetic paraphrase:

There is a supernature. There is a
realm beyond all material things. At the
cosmic edge of this realm stand the
mighty mountains. They are sentinels.
More than that, they are heralds incog-
nito. And they have a message. At
propitious times — perhaps when the
upper spaces are blue and billowing with
cumulus clouds; perhaps when the peaks
are loyal in purple of infinite depth ; per-
haps when they turn into the lavender
pinnacles of a city of dreams; perhaps
when they become solemn and sublime
under the cold stars — at propitious times
these mighty heralds speak to those hav-
ing ears to hear, saying: "This way, Be-
loved, to a finer world!"

Jf ourtij

THE MYSTIC TONIC OF THE
MOUNTAINS

READING recently a tribal history
of the Navajo Indians, "the Ameri-
can Bedouins," I discovered that their reli-
gious beliefs are curiously entangled with
mountains.

According to Navajo tradition, "the
First-Man and First-Woman" were com-
pelled, by reason of a deluge in their "un-
derworld," to come to "our upper-world."
As their only way to climb up was
through "a hollow reed," they could carry
as baggage only the one most precious
thing, and this one most precious thing
was, they quickly decided, a measure of
earth from the loved mountains of their
old home. As soon as "our upper-world"
was safely reached, the measure of earth

34 THE MOUNTAINS

was used to form some new mountains,
for memorial markings of "Navajo-
Land" ; and around one of these memorial
mountains, the central one, the Navajos
began their existence as a tribe.

Naturally, therefore, the mountains in
"Navajo-Land" play an important part
in the tribal life; and, as naturally, they
are regarded as peculiarly sacred. There
are "mountain hymns" which, in a solemn
ritual service, are chanted, with the eyes
either closed or fixed in an ecstatic stare.
A thrilling scene even to-day it is, when,
after an all-night ceremony, the entire
assembly, at the first sign of morning, be-
gins to chant with weird intonation a
hymn to the sacred mountains.

To these Navajo Indians the singing
of these mountain hymns is more than a
ritualistic form, for they deem it an exer-
cise spiritually potent as to character and
destiny. To show this, I will quote a
short passage from the tribal history:
"When a man sings of the mountain, then,

THE MYSTIC TONIC 35

through the singing, his spirit goes to the
holy place, beyond the mountain, and he
himself becomes, like the mountain, pure
and holy, living eternally, forever
blessed."

A NAVAJO MOUNTAIN CHANT

As a matter of unusual interest, I will
give, both in the original and in a transla-
tion by Natalie Curtis, one of these
Navajo mountain chants:

DBICHL BITIN MOUNTAIN HYMN

Piki yo-ye! Thither go I!

Dsichl-nantal, Chief of all Mountains,

Piki yo-ye. Thither go I,

Sa-a naral, Living forever,

Piki yo-ye, Thither go I,

Bike hozhoni. Blessings bestowing,

Piki yo-ye. Thither go I,

Tsoya shich ni-la. Calling me "Son my Son."

Piki yo-ye! Thither go I!

In this Navajo instance there is first
apparent that myth-tendency which we
so constantly find when we examine natu-
ral religious phenomena; but, under the
myth, and coloring the myth, there is, as

36 THE MOUNTAINS

I catch the deeper spirit of the fantastic
story, an intense mountain-regard, a real
heart-bearing toward the mountains.
These Navajos love the mountains and
idealize the mountains and respond to all
the intimations of the mountains. In-
deed, the response of these Indians is not
essentially unlike the transcendental re-
sponse made by our modern mountain-
interpreters to the mountains in "their
mystery." This point could be proven,
I think, by wide-range quotation and
searching analysis, taking as material,
such prose as Ward's chapter on "The
Glory of Mount Washington," and such
poetry as the Chamouni "Hymn" by
Samuel Taylor Coleridge.

Now an important question springs up,
namely, "What is the true meaning of all
this mountain-enthusiasm?"

My own answer, after long considera-
tion of the question and longer experience
with the mountains, can be stated briefly
in this way: Men have, beyond their per-

THE MYSTIC TONIC 37

sonal life, what for convenience we may
call their cosmic life. Many interesting
phases of this life have been discovered,
and exploited too, by the modern students
of the subconscious; but the cosmic life
is vaster than the present surmise of any
psychologist. One thing, however, is
clear enough — in this cosmic life men are
subject to currents of influence which are
much more subtle than are any mental
effects. The whole matter is bound up,
I am convinced, in the fundamental
fashion in which the Bible uses the term
"heart." This peculiar influence, pro-
founder than the intellectual process, may
be fittingly regarded as a mystic stress
having force only with man's individual
center, or "the heart."

To illustrate: The first time I ever
heard one of Sebastian Bach's great
fugues, I did not comprehend its musical
significance, did not understand its spirit-
ual intention, could not tell in any degree
what the composer was trying to do. I

38 THE MOUNTAINS

was like the ranchman who said, at a
Theodore Thomas symphony concert,
"This is a big place, but I don't just know
the name of it." But the mighty fugue
did not require mental comprehension on
my part. It penetrated and invigorated
the very center of manhood. I was quite
another man, and for hours afterward my
work, even the monotonous drudgery of
my work, was done easily and rejoicingly.

The mountains are the mighty Bach-
fugues of nature. Far beyond their
scientific import, they reach men and re-
fresh men and comfort men and enlarge
men and ennoble men. And so I dare to
insist that there is such a thing as "the
mystic tonic of the mountains."

This mystic tonic is effective ultimately
at several points:

1. SENSIBILITY

Here imagination is reanimated. The
old deadness disappears, the old ennui
disappears, the old conventional pose dis-

THE MYSTIC TONIC 39

appears, the old superiority to natural
emotion disappears. Life once more is
fresh and vital and immense.

No man can long fellowship with the
mountains and not become at heart a child
again, with a world of wonder all about
him, and shy beauties at every turn like
Trailing Arbutus in the mountain-woods.

2. MORAL LIFE

At once, it should be strongly affirmed,
against a certain trend more or less notice-
able in mountain-literature, that the
mountains do not create, do not even tend
to create, moral concern. But when a
man is moral centrally, when he really
means righteously, then the mountains
may gradually adorn his moral life with
finer integrities and larger simplicities of
conduct.

Mountain-people are, as I have usually
found them, truthful, frank, and courage-
ous; and never are they artificial. They

40 THE MOUNTAINS

have what one of the more robust of
modern poets calls "the primal sanities."

3. RELIGIOUS LIFE

Several times, in these studies, it has
been practically important to take a con-
nected thing and treat it with a solitary
emphasis. And now again it is wise to
use this somewhat arbitary method. Still,
while the religious appeal of the moun-
tains is connected with a number of moun-
tain-features and effects, the largest,
perhaps the culminating force of the
appeal is that powerful influence which
I have named "the mystic tonic of the
mountains."

As with the moral life, so a word of
caution is needful here. Rigidly speak-
ing, there is no "religious message of the
mountains." Not even in the slightest
measure can they rightly take the place
of the New Testament, for they supply
no redemptional message whatsoever. As

THE MYSTIC TONIC 41

to the Old Testament, the situation is
only a little better. The mountains, like
any other part of the natural world, do
furnish the material for a theistic infer-
ence ; but they do not supply any commu-
nication from a personal God to sinful
men under the moral law. This much,
however, we may grant: To one who
already believes in a personal Creator,
as the psalmist believed in Jehovah, the
mountains, like the heavens, "declare the
glory of God."

Further: The mountains do not create
religious faith, or even alone establish
such a faith. John Ruskin tells us that
the mountains "purify faith." Allowable
possibly; but I prefer to say that the
mountains invigorate faith. They make
faith more glowingly vital and more com-
manding in consciousness. On the sum-
mits of great mountains, filled with their
penetrating spirit, it is easier to actualize
religious things — easier to lay hold of the
unseen, easier to pray triumphantly, easier

42 THE MOUNTAINS

to feel certain of God's providence, easier
to hate "the garish day," easier to be
humble and thankful and generous, easier
to be a Christian optimist.

Already I have said that the moun-
tains are symbols of repose — they are
much more than that, for they help us
fully to use the symbols, and thus possibly
to get that quick sense of our Lord's pres-
ence which quiets the anxious soul into a
blessed, thrice-blessed trust.

"Cradled and rocked by wind and cloud,
Safe pillowed on the summit proud,
Steadied by that encircling arm
Which holds the universe from harm,
I knew the Lord my soul would keep,
Among his mountain-tops asleep."

II

IN THE MOUNTAINS WITH
THE HERMIT THRUSH

II

IN THE MOUNTAINS WITH
THE HERMIT THRUSH

THAT the hermit thrush has not been
awarded the supremacy among the
singers of the bird-world is probably due
to the difficulty usually found in hearing
the bird's complete song. I say complete
song; for it is easy enough, on a July
evening, to walk out a half mile from a
mountain hotel, in northern New Eng-
land, and, while discussing the last game
of golf, catch certain insistent, far-com-
ing fragments of the song. Such frag-
ments are worth a long journey, but to
hear these is not to hear the whole song
in its astonishing variety of delicate and
intricate cadence. For this utter hearing
of the song one needs to be near enough
to separate definitely every phrase, yes,
even to seize surely every vibrating note

45

46 THE MOUNTAINS

of every phrase. Inasmuch as this thrush,
unlike our wood thrush in New Jersey, is
extremely shy, has a gift for securing pri-
vacy and has also the weird arts of a ven-
triloquist, it is ofttimes a laborious matter
to locate him, and then closely to approach
him, and then to keep him unaware of
your presence. A snap of a twig, a clumsy
shifting of position, or a moment's labored
breathing, and there is a sudden silence, a
silence so emptying that it verily ' 'leaves
a hole in the woods." Perfectly to hear a
hermit thrush I have worked harder than
ever I did to climb a mountain. I have
crawled through long tangles of under-
brush, or patches of wild raspberry
bushes, until I was dripping like a larch
in the rain ; then I have lain on the ground
as flat as an Indian "when he listens to
hear the grasses grow" — all this effort to
hear a dozen complete phrases woven to-
gether in the bird's peculiar manner. But
what does a man care for sweat and
scratches and wet garments and aching

THE HERMIT THRUSH 47

back if only he can hear a supreme song
just as God made it?

Admitting that my testimony is not
very significant (for I am neither a natu-
ralist nor a musician), yet I want to give
it, because I want to help those who are
trying to make our supreme American
songster more widely known. All enthu-
siastic testimony attracts attention to the
bird. Many of the most famous bird
singers I have heard, my list including the
wood thrush, the European nightingale,
the veery, and that splendid but most
unappreciated bird, the Western lark;
but the hermit thrush alone reaches my
deeper manhood and influences me pro-
foundly. In trying to describe the effect
upon me of the hermit's song I hardly
know what to say. Perhaps, though, the
ultimate effect may be suggested in this
way: If Schumann's "Traumerei" could
hold fast its dreamy reminiscence and still
take on hope, say such a glowing hope as
so often appears in some of Bach's mighty

48 THE MOUNTAINS

Fugues, the combination would, I think,
affect me precisely as does the finished
song of the hermit thrush. I become like
a man sitting in the gloaming, reminis-
cently dreaming, and yet feeling a rich
hope that the dawn will at last break over
the tops of the mountains!

To reenf orce my testimony, I will quote
from Schuyler Mathews. In his Field
Book of Wild Birds and Their Music,
first published in 1904, he furnishes musi-
cal notations made by himself, excepting
those of the nightingale, which are tran-
scriptions from Lescuyer and Athanasius
Kircher. Based upon these exact nota-
tions, the author makes various comments,
many of them both striking and illuminat-
ing. From these I will quote some of the
most important portions :

The song of the hermit thrush is the grand
climax of all bird music; it is unquestionably
so far removed from all the rest of the wild-
wood singer's accomplishment that vaunted
comparisons are invidious and wholly out of

THE HERMIT THRUSH 49

place. Still, it is necessary to show the nature
of this superb songster's preeminence, and that
can only be done by comparing his style with
that of other birds. ... In the vales of Tus-
cany, Italy, one of the best places in Europe
to hear the nightingale sing (possibly excepting
the banks of the Volga, in Russia), there is am-
ple opportunity to listen to the exquisite trills
and solemn overtones of that famous bird, but
an experienced ear will not discover in the song
anything like the melody of the hermit thrush.
. . . There is nothing the wood thrush can
do which will compare with a performance like
this. I am sorry to disagree with the opinions
of several writers on ornithology who find cer-
tain restrictions in the hermit's song, and think
the notes are not remarkable for variety or
volume, but it seems to me the magnitude of
this thrush's melodic ability, not to speak of
his brilliant execution, is beyond the concep-
tion of any one until he devotes at least three
or four seasons to a studied analysis of the
music. Some of the notes possess sufficient
volume to be distinctly heard at a distance of
a quarter of a mile, yet unless one is within
thirty feet, or less, of the singer, it is impos-
sible to catch the tout-ensemble of the song,
or to gauge the extent of its melodic variety.

50 THE MOUNTAINS

There is an immense contrast in the dynamics
of the song; it ranges from pp to ff; there is
nothing of this kind which characterizes the
wood thrush's music. Also, there is a remark-
able, mysterious overtone, purely harmonic
and ventriloquistic in quality, which at times
dominates the cadenza of the song and holds
the listener in rapt surprise! . . . Yes, the
tones are silver — burnished silver, and sweeter
far than those of any instrument created by
the hand of man!

During the first six weeks of my vaca-
tion (exactly stated, all of July and the
first ten days of August) I had a most
noteworthy experience with the hermit
thrush. In the summer of 1907 I did
what I could to become acquainted with
the songster, going out in several direc-
tions from Littleton, New Hampshire,
and my success was sufficient to create in
me a determination to know more thor-
oughly this "bird of genius." Possibly
this determination has been kept in force
by an abiding ambition, which I have, to
master and appreciate everything pecu-

THE HERMIT THRUSH 51

liarly American. In any case, there was
chosen for our vacation this summer the
very fastness of the hermit's territory
(Franconia, New Hampshire), and our
reward came steadily and generously for
forty-one days. Once I found his nest;
many times I saw him, five times with the
distance and light so favorable that the
rufous or reddish brown of his tail was
very noticeable; every day excepting two
(wet and cold), I heard him sing; one
hundred and fifty times, perhaps; in ten
different woods; as early as four o'clock
in the morning and as late as eight at
night. The details of this entire experi-
ence are too many for this article; but I
can write somewhat closely concerning
one thrush — for convenience let us call
him Dulcet. This remarkable singer I
first heard early in July (the sixth, I
think), and I remember every stage of
that exciting chase, exceedingly dubious
until at last the bird flew into a clearing
where I saw him distinctly, only eight or

52 THE MOUNTAINS

ten feet away, sitting on the dead branch
of a young maple.

This clearing itself is so beautiful and
fitting as to merit a brief description. It
was made years enough ago so that there
are no stumps. The ground is now cov-
ered with a maze of ferns (at least six
kinds), meadow-sweet, steeple-bush, and
goldenrod. Here and there, half buried
among the larger ferns, are bowlders, just
as nature dropped them ages ago in some
tremendous glacial movement. On three
sides the clearing is bounded by forest,
with all sorts of trees from the tremulous
poplar to the lordly spruce. Beyond the
forest, to the north, is the hill which the
natives have well named "Break-Neck
Hill"; and over the western shoulder of
this hill there is visible what I surmise
to be a portion of Dalton Mountain.
Toward the south, where the clearing is
not forest bounded, one notices the rise
which is finally to become "Sugar Hill"
— as picturesque a spot as there is on

THE HERMIT THRUSH 53

earth, my soul has more than once
affirmed. Over this rise, and somewhat
to the west, Mount Kinsman begins to
reach and reach toward Franconia Notch ;
but Mount Cannon completes the task
with his mighty bulwark and the "Great
Stone Face," which seems expectantly to
await some great event in the coming
centuries! Could a poet conceive of a
more fitting place in which to hear the
song of the hermit thrush?

Sitting on a bowlder in this clearing, I
have heard as many as five hermit thrushes
all singing at the same time; and it was
quite a common experience to hear a duet,
in the early evening, the two birds answer-
ing each other from the opposite edges of
the woods, their song sounding out over
the clearing like a cathedral antiphon.
With such an opportunity for comparison
as this clearing afforded, it soon became
evident that every hermit sings a song of
individual peculiarity. Indeed, the differ-
ences are as marked as are the features

54 THE MOUNTAINS

which the birds have in common. And it
also became evident that Dulcet 's voice
was the richest, the most flexible, the most
powerful, and the most confident. And
he acted as if he were conscious of his
superiority ; for he would often violate the
modest habit of the hermit thrush, gradu-
ally making his way from limb to limb,
until he had reached the very top of the
tallest tree; and in this lofty place he
would dominate the entire clearing with
entrancing melody for a long time. On
one memorable occasion, indeed, he sang
in this manner for about three quarters
of an hour. The precise facts are these:
For some time he had been singing, say
thirty feet from the ground, when it oc-
curred to me to time his song. After I
looked at my watch, he sang twelve
minutes without moving; then he flew
(between two phrases of his song) cer-
tainly as much as twenty feet higher, and
lighted on a dead branch which projected
out over the clearing; here, from this

THE HERMIT THRUSH 55

highest place, he sang without a break
for twenty-six minutes, moving twice,
and then only to turn around.

Looking over my notes I find that I
heard Dulcet twenty-two times, and as
much as six solid hours in all. Thus I
had a chance to make a careful study of
his song. In his song there are three basal
phrases. First, there is a shrill phrase,
where the bird steadily climbs until his
voice goes to pieces "somewhere around
G sharp, twenty octaves higher than the
limit of the piano!" At first, this shrill
phrase is amusing, but as one comes to
relate it to the total song he perceives that
a valuable element of great contrast is
contributed. Second, there is a veery
phrase. This reminds one of the veery's
wild song, for it sounds like a ringing
voice blown windingly down through a
silver tube. Third, there is a contralto
phrase. This phrase is given by Dulcet
in an exceedingly peculiar manner, and I
cannot furnish even a suggestion of what

56 THE MOUNTAINS

it is like. Again and again after this con-
tralto phrase I have exclaimed, "There
can be no sweeter sound this side of
heaven." Nor is this all, for every phrase
is given by Dulcet with two, and infre-
quently with three modifications; and yet
all these phrases are wrought into one
harmonious song-structure. And there is
still one important feature to be noted,
and this feature is true in a measure of
every hermit thrush. The first note of
every phrase is held, not an instant, but
the ghost of an instant, and this sugges-
tion of a pause wonderfully quiets the
strong tide of the song and makes the
total effect meditative.

Several times I made an exact record
of Dulcet's song, to find out whether there
was any law as to the order of singing the
phrases. Here is a part of one of the
records, S standing for the shrill phrase,
V for the veery phrase, and C for the
contralto phrase, to be read always from
S downward:

THE HERMIT THRUSH 57

(1— SSSSSSSSS
(Z—VCVVVCV V
(3—0 C C C V C C
(4— C C V V

V

After much study I decided that there
was no law discoverable; the order of the
phrases always seemed to depend upon
the whim of the bird. But this does not,
even in the smallest way, indicate any
action beyond the automatic. The whims
of animal life are all associational.

The last time I heard Dulcet (or any
hermit thrush) was on the tenth day of
August. For weeks the bird world had
been gradually becoming quiet. First,
the bobolinks suddenly stopped the tink-
ling outpouring of their haphazard
ecstasy; then, on the tenth day of July,
well on toward eight o'clock at night, the
last song of the veery came weirdly swell-
ing out of the nearest woods. This final
veery song seemed to be a selah-signal
to the whole chorus, and one by one the
singers obeyed. How well I remember

58 THE MOUNTAINS

when we first missed, in the early morn-
ing, the martial whistle of the white-
throated sparrow I Then there were days
when, on a long tramp, I did not hear
a warbler, not even a redstart, or a Mary-
land yellow-throat; and I would return
home pleased even to find a red-eyed vireo
preaching his repetitious sermon high up
in a rock maple. Worst of all, toward
the end of July, there were unmistakable
signs that the hermit thrush was begin-
ning to think of the Gulf of Mexico ; for
he would make long pauses, or fly long
distances between fragments of song, or
leave phrase after phrase unfinished, or
omit his late afternoon song altogether.

Fully realizing the dubiousness of the
situation, yet I decided to make a serious
effort to hear Dulcet once more. So Mon-
day evening (as I have said, it was August
10) I went to the clearing. I sat on the
same old bowlder, waiting until it was so
dark I could not see my notebook. Not a
sound came from the three woods, except-

THE HERMIT THRUSH 59

ing the explosive barking of a red squirrel
and the plaintive cry of the wood pewee.
It became so lonely that I would have
paid cash down for the merry, inquisitive
chatter of one chick-a-dee. I was just
ready to give up and start for home, when
I caught coming from the depths of the
woods a contralto phrase — certainly it was
Dulcet 's voice! This one phrase seemed
to open his habit, for he flew to the edge
of the woods below me and sang several
phrases; then he flew to the tree nearest
me, a large silver birch, and there, almost
directly above my head, he sang, with a
pause now and then, for more than a
quarter of an hour. At the end of the
song he flew to the ground and kept run-
ning among the ferns, repeating that
peculiar chuck which one ornithologist
has named the "call of migration." In
the dark I followed this call as well as I
could through the tangle, until I heard
it sound as if the thrush had stopped be-
hind a large brushheap. Here I made

60 THE MOUNTAINS

an experiment. As quietly as possible
I made my way to the opposite side of the
brush-heap. Several moments of abso-
lute silence followed. I could not hear
even the small rustle of the ferns in the
night air. Suddenly the moon, almost
full, which had just risen over Mount
Cannon, poured a flood of silver light into
the clearing, revealing Dulcet on a dead
branch which reached out of the snarl
over toward me. I could almost touch
him. He was, apparently, as much aston-
ished as I was, for he looked me straight
in the face a moment or two, and then
rapidly repeated his call five times —
chuck ! chuck ! chuck ! chuck ! chuck ! This
emphatic speech concluded, he flew into
the woods. I remained for a time without
moving, feeling something I will not try
to describe; then I looked out through the
opening, across the fields, and there stood
the mountains majestic in the moonlight,
and I thought, "I am very glad that they
do not migrate."

Ill

THE FLIGHT OF BIRDS

LITTLE GLIMPSES OF A LARGE
MATTER

Ill

THE FLIGHT OF BIRDS

LITTLE GLIMPSES OF A LARGE
MATTER

MY interest in the flight of birds be-
gan, years ago, while I was read-
ing a remarkable book, The Reign of
Law, by the Duke of Argyll. This book,
published in 1866, has a chapter which
contains a scientific discussion of the ma-
chinery of flight. One example used in
this discussion is the swift, "a creature,"
as the author says, "whose wonderful and
unceasing evolutions seem part of the
happiness of summer, and of serene and
lofty skies."

In this accidental manner the swift was
fixed in my range of interest, but I never
actually saw a swift until my home came

64 THE MOUNTAINS

to be in "Drew Forest." There, in that
veritable bird-refuge, were swifts by the
hundred. At times, on the early edge of
a fair summer night, when the wood
thrushes were fluting their antiphonal
vespers, the sky above the campus trees
was thronged with these amazing birds,
in their prodigious aerial performance —
now gliding, with wings crescent-curved;
now moving in daring slants, at constantly
changing angles; now describing long-
sweeping and up-rising curves; now com-
bining, perhaps a score together, in an
intricate pattern of criss-cross weaving;
and now dashing at one another, and miss-
ing collision and general smash-up by no
visible margin whatever.

DISPOSITION

Birds have a group disposition just as
surely as men have a group temperament.
There is as much temperamental differ-
ence between a bobolink and a bronzed

THE FLIGHT OF BIRDS 65

grackle as there is between an Irishman
and a Norwegian.

This bird disposition is manifested in
things as far apart as call notes are from
nest building, and not the least interesting
of these things is the style of flight. Keep-
ing within my own limited experience I
can say, not that all birds express tem-
perament in flying, but that some birds
do so.

For example, take the red-headed
woodpecker, "a blaze of white, steel-blue
and scarlet." In disposition this bird is,
as one naturalist has said, "distinctly
bourgeois." Turn one of Matthew
Arnold's "Philistines" into a bird and
you would have precisely this efficient
woodpecker. In any weather his practi-
cal motto is, " Business as usual/' No hour
is well spent which does not see an acorn
saved and hammered into its hole, snugly.
And this businesslike disposition is per-
fectly expressed in the Red-Head's flight.
There are heavy movements and clumsy

66 THE MOUNTAINS

flappings of the wide wings, and yet how
strong and competent the flying is ! True,
there is undulation, but its lines are not
beautiful, and there is no real waste of
either time or energy. In its own awk-
ward fashion the woodpecker's flight is
as direct and powerful as is the swift,
flashing flight of the sharp-shinned hawk.
In contrast with this bourgeoisie, let
us place that black and gold sprite of the
extreme tree tops, that sunny optimist
of the wide expanse, our American
goldfinch. Perhaps you yourself have
chanced to hear his blithe per-chico-o-ree,
and quickly looked toward the sky and
strained your eyes to follow his ecstatic
flight? How careless as to goal, as to
time, as to expenditure of force! And
what undulations, what entirely different
undulations now, what rhythmic waves of
joyous motion, what a charming tonic of
hilarity ! The flight of an American gold-
finch is the full expression of a happy
nature.

THE FLIGHT OF BIRDS 67

GRACE

If by grace we narrowly mean that
aesthetic charm which is revealed by light-
ness, suppleness, and ease, then (not for-
getting the herring gull, and not forget-
ting the square-rigged ship under full
sail) the most graceful moving object in
existence is, I would affirm, a flying barn
swallow.

I am remembering this very minute a
certain old barn in New Hampshire. It
has no color, excepting the stain from
rain and snow. From dawn till dark the
big doors are wide open, like the arms of
mercy, and darting in and out are swal-
lows— in the sunlight mere streaks of blue
— rich, warm, glinting, purplish blue, with
confused minor touches of white, salmon,
and chestnut.

And the flight! What poet-naturalist
ever did or could describe flying barn
swallows? But even a small attempt is
alluring. They skim, flying low over pas-
ture and pond ; then flying higher over the

68 THE MOUNTAINS

orchard, deftly avoiding the tops of the
trees. They turn, suddenly, in any pos-
sible direction — up, down, right, left — and
all of it is done as lightly, as airily, as
thistle-down catches a whisper of the
breeze. They swoop, and, like mischiev-
ous torments, just graze some living thing,
say a dog or a cat, but, before the dog
can snap or the cat can spring, the swal-
low is half way to Anywhere. They dally,
actually dally with the wind — rise with
the wind, ride upon the wind, toss about
with the wind — then, in sudden challenge,
they face the wind and master it, shooting
along as straight and unhindered as an
arrow speeding toward the mark.

And if you are only fortunate enough
to see barn swallows feeding their young
on the wing! — parent and chick close to-
gether, mounting higher and higher, little
breast often against larger breast, short
tail sometimes covered by forked-tail,
heads almost touching, and every motion
seeming to belong to the wide, splendid

THE FLIGHT OF BIRDS 69

sky — if you are only fortunate enough to
see all this, you will, for once, behold
aesthetic grace incarnate.

DIGNITY

I once saw an eagle in flight. As the
distance was great and the light decep-
tive, the markings were indeterminate,
but it was either a bald eagle or a golden
eagle. Most noticeable was the spread of
the wings, reminding one of Shakespeare's
"full wing'd eagle" in Cymbeline. Tak-
ing the wings alone, they expressed simply
power. It was, doubtless, this power
which the Negro preacher had in mind
when he prayed for his hero, Gilbert
Haven (dialect partly dropped) : "Bless
our Bishop! May he go through this
world like a pigeon on de wings ob de
eagle!"

In an eagle's flight, though, there is
more than an exhibition of power. This
eagle I saw was flying from one range of
mountains to another range. It chanced

70 THE MOUNTAINS

also that he was flying from a bright space
of sky toward a space which was already
dark with the gathering night. This
combination of things seemed to charge
the bird's manner with a quality akin to
solemnity. He was very quiet, as if bent
on serious business, and this quiet was
emphasized by the fact that a cohort of
noisy, fussy little birds was constantly
trying to hinder him. But not even once
did the eagle deign to notice these insig-
nificant creatures. With a kind of rhyth-
mic gravity he moved on above the tur-
moil of their petty attack. I say moved,
but his body was so firmly poised, away
up there among the clouds, and his wing-
strokes were so very, very slow, that he
appeared to get on without movement.
His progress I measured by calculation
rather than by simple eyesight.

It was a great mountain scene, but the
flying eagle filled it, dominated it with
peculiar dignity — I would name it austere
dignity in deliberate action.

THE FLIGHT OF BIRDS 71

ROMANCE

The migration of birds is full, not only
of mystery, but also of a picturesque
strangeness which amounts to romance.
In the romance there are several fasci-
nating features, but the feature which
moves me the most profoundly is the
migratory journey itself, taken as a total
with both its long distance and its con-
tinuous peril.

One May morning, in "Drew Forest,"
I heard a high-pitched bird-call, not quite
a whistle. It sounded like the whisper
note of the cedar waxwing, only raised to
a higher power. Quietly I maneuvered
nearer and soon I heard much more — a
series of sibilant notes — tsitj tsit, tsit, tsit,
tsit, tsit — six of them, "cobweb thin and
glassy clear," hesitatingly given, first
crescendo and then diminuendo. Search-
ing eagerly, I noticed a slight flurry in
the thick foliage, and then, just behind a
twist of leaves, I glimpsed a bobbing mite
of a bird, five to six inches long. In a

72 THE MOUNTAINS

few minutes he flew into an old, dying
hemlock, where he was plainly visible.
His crown was black; his cheeks, white;
his wings, with greenish edges and white
bars; and his back, gray streaked with
black. The markings were so clear that
I easily placed the bird — it was a black-
poll warbler. With the quick recognition
a thrill of happy amazement went all
through me. For this wee creature, with
his funny little attempt at song, was
known to me, long since, as a most daring
traveler. As a matter of fact, he was
stopping for breakfast in our "Drew
Forest" on a most perilous journey, by
land and by sea — a journey which began
in South America and might end only in
Alaska!

This statement is so extraordinary that
I would better confirm it by scientific
authority. W. W. Cooke (United States
Biological Survey) says: "The shortest
journey that any blackpoll performs is
thirty -five hundred miles, while those that

THE FLIGHT OF BIRDS 73

nest in Alaska have seven thousand miles
to travel to their probable winter home in
Brazil."

CONTRAST

"The Buzzard sails on,

And comes and is gone,
Stately and still,
Like a ship at sea."

In this fragment of Southern poetry
there are noted four qualities which the
turkey buzzard shows when on the wing:

(1) Sailing. He sails through the air
as truly as a ship sails over the water.

(2) Instantaneousness. He "comes and
is gone." Indeed, his appearance and
disappearance are so instantaneous as to
suggest the preter-natural. (3) Stateli-
ness. Phases there are of the circular
flying which are even majestic. (4) Still-
ness. Not quite the word, but the bird
has what the artists call "repose in action."

But there is another, and a most sig-
nificant quality too, which the poet has

74 THE MOUNTAINS

not caught. Buzzards "move up the
sky," with upturned wings, in beautiful
spirals of flight, these spirals becoming
ever smaller, until the bird is but a small
ink-stain on the zenith.

Here are surprising qualities, surely,
but the turkey buzzard's peculiar appeal
to the imagination lies, not in these quali-
ties as separate items of flight, but in the
total beauty of the flight as it appears in
utter contrast with the ungainly form and
bearing of the bird when not on the wing.
In this buzzard contrast we have exactly
the aesthetic principle which was creative
of such wonderful effects in the oratory
of Abraham Lincoln and in the conversa-
tion of Madame de Stael. Awkward bulk
over against transcendent expression!

To A TURKEY BUZZARD IN FLORIDA

O somber bird of name and deed unblessed !
Above the sand, I saw thee rise, and sail
Aloft, with upturned wings, in spiral flight,
Until the merest blur against the blue —
That blue ineffable which hints of Italy.

THE FLIGHT OF BIRDS 75

And thou didst teach me more than one is

taught

By mockingbird, or plaintive pine-woods spar-
row,

Or any singer of the famous choir
Which fills the golden frame of Florida.
For thou didst say to me, in occult speech,
That any soul, with any unblessed task,
Can find a way to rise above the sand
And Spanish Bayonet, and reach the sky,
And fellowship, at will, with things celestial.

IV

A PASSING WORD ABOUT
TREES

IV

A PASSING WORD ABOUT
TREES

To a tree that has grown as God willed, we
come without a theory, and with no botanical
predilections, enjoying it simply and thank-
fully.— James Russell Lowell.

THE first time I ever saw "Drew
Forest," Doctor Upham, my gra-
cious host, suddenly said, "Do you want
to see the finest thing we have here?" Not
waiting for an answer, he started in the
direction of Cornell Library. This direc-
tion led me vaguely to expect to see a rare
book, or an old manuscript, or a historic
portrait. But, before we came to the
library, the Doctor stopped, backed away
from the path, and, with a quick flourish
of his right hand and entire arm, as if try-

79

80 THE MOUNTAINS

ing to sweep the whole campus into the
spot in front of him, exclaimed heartily:
"There it is! That beech! Is there any-
where on earth any living thing more
beautiful?"

TREE-INDIVIDUALITY

To me, though, the most striking thing
about that noble beech, or about any nota-
ble tree, is not its beauty as a feature of
the natural world, but, rather, its large
quantity of individuality. In fact, I mean
more than bare individuality, I mean indi-
viduality expressing type. Truly re-
markable trees not only have an itemnic
individuality, they not only hold their
own as organic, significant, impressive
items in the vast confusion of nature, but
they gather up into most particular stress
all the characteristics of the tree groups
to which they belong. Just now I am re-
membering with keen delight a mighty
oak which I found, perhaps two miles out
from the city of Dresden. It was a red

TREES 81

oak, at least one hundred and fifty feet
high, and every part of the tree in gener-
ous correspondence. Looking at that
giant of the forest, I seemed to behold all
the oaks on earth, and all the oaks which
ever existed, summed up with finality in
one commanding oak-individuality. It
reminds me of an amusing saying con-
cerning our great Civil War minister at
the Court of Saint James, "Charles
Francis Adams was not one man, he was
the whole Adams family in one man!"

This tree-individuality is, strangely
enough, the one thing which many of our
poets do not seem to be able to capture.
They describe a tree in becoming and sure
appreciation of its general features and
associations, and, sometimes, with a quick
sense of its accidental aspect; but they
altogether miss the fundamental pecu-
liarity of the type wonderfully and fasci-
natingly manifest in individuality. Sidney
Lanier, in "Under the Cedarcroft Chest-
nut," writes in this manner:

82 THE MOUNTAINS

"Trim set in ancient sward, his manful bole
Upbore his frontage largely toward the sky."

As I sit at my desk I catch glimpses, now
and then, of several kinds of trees, and
trees as far apart in family, genus and
species as the American elm is from the
scarlet maple; and yet Lanier's lines
would in description answer well enough
for every individual tree of the several
kinds.

In a whim of inclination, I once read,
at a single sitting, a large number of
poems about trees, and, to my surprise,
I found that in one poem only had the
poet seized any real tree-type-individu-
ality. This lone exception was the poem
by Wordsworth called "Yew Trees," con-
taining a description so extraordinary as
to warrant emphatic consideration in this
connection :

"There is a yew-tree, pride of Lorton Vale,
Which to this day stands single, in the midst
of its own darkness.

TREES 83

But worthier still of note
Are those fraternal Four of Borrowdale,
Joined in one solemn and capacious grove;
Huge trunks! — and each particular trunk a

growth

Of intertwisted fibers serpentine
Up-coiling, and inveterately convolved —
Nor uninformed with Phantasy, and looks
That threaten the profane ; — a pillared shade,
Upon whose grassless floor of red-brown hue,
By sheddings from the pining umbrage tinged
Perennially — beneath whose sable roof
Of boughs as if for festal purpose decked
With unrejoicing berries — ghostly shapes
May meet at noontide." . . .

In this remarkable poem, Wordsworth
has captured utterly the type expressed
in tree-individuality ; and he has done even
more — he has saturated his description
with the weird, solemn inner quality of
the type. Who save William Words-
worth could have used the phrases "unre-
joicing berries" and "in the midst of its
own darkness"?

84 THE MOUNTAINS

TKEE-FRIENDLINESS

Another tree-quality is what one enthu-
siast has termed " their friendliness toward
men." In any case, due probably to the
combination of practical, aesthetic, and
mystic features, trees, especially large and
towering trees, make a powerful appeal
to man's nature. They easily fit into his
many moods. They influence him sub-
tilely. They sometimes inspire him. They
sometimes quiet his stormy heart. Only
indirectly do they reach his moral per-
sonality, but they do have complete access
to his total impersonal individuality. To
a sensitive soul, a perfect tree is, in effect,
much like a perfect symphony.

Beyond all this too there is between
trees and certain men an indescribable
reciprocity. There is an intricate cosmic
entanglement. Thus certain men care for
trees as instinctively as John Ruskin cared
for the mountains. Plato was fond of
great trees, and under them would walk
and sit and meditate for hours. Xerxes

TREES 85

held up his army that he might enjoy an
Oriental plane tree, a tree probably more
than a thousand years old. And it is re-
corded, "He had its form wrought upon
a medal of gold to help him to remember
it the rest of his life." Tolstoy, returning
home and discovering that one of his
special trees had been cut down, ex-
claimed: "It is nothing short of murder!"
In one place in Walden, Henry David
Thoreau says, "Instead of calling on some
scholar, I paid many a visit to particular
trees." Indeed, it is clear enough that
there are men who come to regard par-
ticular trees in about the same affectional
way that they regard their particular
friends. John Muir, our famous West-
ern naturalist, speaks of loving trees and
living with them in profound intimacy.
Referring to Muir's tree-experience, one
sympathetic writer says, "Tree-friend-
ships are very precious things."

An instance of this tree-friendship even
more notable than that of John Muir I

86 THE MOUNTAINS

found while reading Tschudi's Life of
Elizabeth of Austria. Here is a free but
essential translation of the significant pas-
sage. In a rare moment of self -revelation
Elizabeth says: "In Godollo I have a tree
that is my best friend. As I reach Go-
dollo, and just before I come away, I go
to see this old tree. For some minutes we
look at each other in silence. The old tree
seems to know all there is inside my soul.
And I dare to trust him with everything
which has taken place in my life while
we have been separated."

To understand this extremely pathetic
passage, we need to remember that this
most beautiful and most gifted and most
sensitive woman was abnormally placed,
in a salacious and artificial court, where
she was in perpetual revolt. Also that,
like the poet Heine, she was possessed by
the demon of originality, and was, there-
fore, ready and eager to interpret the
whole universe in a fashion all her own.
Also that she was under the crushing

TREES 87

weight of an unspeakable sorrow, and
could get no help from the complicated
and ingenious religiosity of the Roman
Catholic Church, in which she had been
brought up. To her, in this dreadful
time, God, and even her Saviour, were
"as dim as darkness itself." It is not
beyond the truth to say that religiously
considered she was utterly friendless and
utterly alone.

Some years ago, at a period of my life
when Wordsworth's poetry was to me
almost such a tonic as it was to John
Stuart Mill, I tried to appreciate and
gather up into full poetic expression this
intense tree-experience of Elizabeth of
Austria. I wrote a little poem (later
published in The Independent), in which
I aimed to reproduce the delicate, mystic
note of the lyric, "I wandered lonely as a
cloud." Whether I achieved any small
meed of success, I will leave to the de-
cision of those, and only those, who still,
in these garish days, care for the simple

88 THE MOUNTAINS

sincerity and "homely humanity" of Wil-
liam Wordsworth.

THE FRIENDSHIP or A TREE

There came a time when men were far,
And Christ himself I could not see,

Then, like the creatures of the air,
I found the friendship of a tree.

He stood there silent in his joy,
He did not try to speak to me,

And yet I knew, without a word,
I had the friendship of a tree.

And now I meet him day by day ;

In rain and wind I watch his glee;
My restless sorrow builds a nest

In mystic friendship with a tree.

V
IN AN OLD OLIVE GROVE

IN AN OLD OLIVE GROVE

We must wander often and rest long in these
ancient olive groves in order to become ac-
quainted with the charms that are peculiar to
the tree. The venerable trunks which have
bestowed food and fuel upon generation after
generation should be viewed in the diffused sun-
light, with glimpses here and there of the deep
Midland Sea. — Professor Fliickiger.

IN any country or historic region it is
interesting to discover its physical
emblem, that is, the outward sign which
may fittingly be allowed to stand for the
locality's peculiarity. Surely, a man is
lacking in more than one quality if, in
"brave little Holland," he can see without
emotion a windmill at its tremendous task.
In Liguria a worthy physical emblem
is furnished by the olive tree. It is the

91

92 THE MOUNTAINS

olive which maintains the supreme place in
the scene, and which has the most compre-
hensive and the most practical relation to
the actual life of the people. There are
several kinds of olive oil which are used
as food, and there are cheaper kinds which
are used in many important industries;
then the wood is used in making not only
furniture, but also all sorts of artistic
objects; then the branches and roots are
used for fuel. In spite of the incoming
of American petroleum, the olive tree
would, some believe, more than hold its
own if only it were jealously protected;
but the Italian authorities, foolish beyond
measure, allow the sneaking hunters to
shoot, literally by the thousand, the song
birds which are the natural guardians of
the tree.

In October the fruit of the olive begins
to ripen, turning first from green to plum
purple, and then becoming almost black,
but with a rich bloom. By December the
harvest is on, and it continues for several

AN OLIVE GROVE 93

months. Perhaps not so appealing as the
grape-gathering along the Rhine, still
the olive harvest makes a picture never to
be forgotten. The peasant women
(almost always with children helping or
playing about) bending busily under the
sunlit trees, or working their cautious
way down the narrow and rocky paths,
the bulging bags of fruit poised precisely
upon their erect heads. Pretty touches
are unconsciously added to the picture by
bits of bright color in the dress, or by
those quick Italian movements which are
as graceful as long branches swaying in
the breeze.

In good years the fruit is not allowed
to drop dead ripe into the grass, but mats
and cloths are widely spread beneath the
branches, and the trees are lashed with
poles which are as pliable as fishing rods.
Wandering about in an olive grove, one
often hears this lashing, with its continued
rattling against the bark, followed by the
soft hail of the dropping fruit; and, possi-

94 THE MOUNTAINS

bly, there may come to the ear now and
again the sharp crack of a breaking bougli
when the peasant's stroke has been fierce
or clumsy, or when the beating has been
several times repeated. At such a mo-
ment one is apt to remember the kindly
wise words in the book of Deuteronomy:
"When thou beatest thine olive tree thou
shalt not go over the boughs again: it
shall be for the stranger, for the father-
less, and for the widow."

This very fruitful harvest, however,
takes place only once in three years; ac-
cording to one authority, only once in five
years on the average in a long series of
years. It would seem that in the time of
Horace the crop was much more reliable,
for he says, "There, the gray olive, year
by year, yields its unfailing fruitage."
Of course my knowledge of the matter is
extremely superficial, but I have the sur-
mise, if not the certainty, that the present
unprofitable condition of olive culture in
Liguria is due (beyond the slaughter of

AN OLIVE GROVE 95

the insect-destroying birds) to the meager
manner in which the trees are cared for.
Without assistance the olive tree will
exist; but without assistance, and much
assistance, it will not repeatedly load its
branches with fruit. Like several of our
finest pippins, the olive demands generous
nourishment and tenderest care. Its case
comes thoroughly under the saying,
"Much love, much service."

In a certain botanical treatise we read
that "the olive is a useful tree, but devoid
of beauty." How any student of the
natural world could hold such an opinion
passeth understanding. Readily we admit
that the olive has not the ethereal beauty
of the white birch, neither has it the
balanced tangle in tracery of the beech,
nor the exquisite uplift which has been
called "the skywardness of the elm," nor
the Gothic dignity of the spruce, nor the
noble slenderness of the tallest palms,
which in Oriental speech are "like the
proud daughters of kings"; but the olive

96 THE MOUNTAINS

has one thing far beyond any of these
trees — a profound mystery of glorified
color. The olive leaf is thus described:
shape, long and narrow, resembling the
leaf of a willow; color, on the upper sur-
face, dark and somewhat glossy green;
on the under surface, dull silver gray.
This description, though, does not convey
even the smallest suggestion of what
takes place when these leaves are com-
bined in mass. A wonder takes place.
Baring- Gould tries to express this won-
der by comparing the effect to "smoke
rising from a lowly cottage." The word
"smoke" is excellent, but it does not do
enough, and the word "rising" is entirely
wrong. In "Aurora Leigh" Mrs. Brown-
ing captures almost the right phrase when
she says, "The mystic floating gray of
olive trees." Let us bring her line yet
nearer to the wonder, by daring to borrow
Bar ing- Gould's excellent word. The re-
sult is: "The mystic floating smoke of
olive trees." Even now the wonder is not

AN OLIVE GROVE 97

utterly in our grasp, for we have not in
any degree expressed the witchery of the
light in its ceaseless play throughout the
mass of shape and color. I have watched
an olive grove both in the moonlight and
in the sunlight, and in every instance there
was a transformation which was the most
subtle work of color-glorification that I
have ever seen in nature. Even among
the poets it is probable that only one has
ever lived who could convincingly express
the evasive glory.

Under simple obligation to a wonderful
experience, I should say one thing more.
Two days ago I saw an olive grove, cover-
ing many acres, shining under a Riviera
sun, with all the millions of leaves quiver-
ing and turning and lifting and dropping
in a very strong wind. In effect it was
like nothing so much as the weird passage
in Grieg's music where the kings of the
mountains are represented at their somber
and tumultuous sport. The scene was
almost too much to bear. I wanted to lay

98 THE MOUNTAINS

hold of that botanist and drag him to the
place and say to him, "Is that 'devoid of
beauty'?"

The peculiar appeal of the olive tree
does not depend, however, so much upon
its beauty as upon its individuality. Every
individual tree has the most marked pe-
culiarity, with which you can become ac-
quainted almost as thoroughly as with the
features of a man's face. What is more,
this individuality does not come merely
from size and native form, as is the case,
say, with the gaunt skeleton of a fig tree.
No. The individuality of an olive is
largely produced by its strange manner
of growth. This strange way of growing
I will indicate as closely as can be made
suitable for a popular description:

1. A young olive tree usually has a
single trunk, which, at a relatively short
but varying distance from the ground,
divides into two or more primary
branches.

2. Both the trunk and the primary

AN OLIVE GROVE 99

branches often twist about in the most
puzzling circuits and at the most queer
angles, no two contortions being in the
least alike. Recently I discovered a trunk
so twisted that at a distance it looked, for
all the world, like a huge boaconstrictor
winding about a perfectly straight bole.

3. When the tree has attained a con-
siderable age it is almost certain to begin
to decay on the inside. This decay so
weakens the fiber of the tree that the
powerful roots, pushing out in opposite
directions, for nourishment in the poor
soil, actually pull the trunk until it splits.
Thus are formed two segments, each one
more or less decayed. After years of fur-
ther decay, one or both of these segments
may be split again by the tugging roots.

4. Now comes the well-nigh incredible
story of the bark. Naturally we would
expect that all this decaying and splitting
would finally kill the tree. Not so at all.
The bark grows around every segment,
either completely or sufficiently to insure

100 THE MOUNTAINS

the circulation of the sap, and so keeps the
rent tree alive. The result is that the
original tree becomes two or more trees
quite separate, excepting at the roots.

5. More wonderful yet, this tree-group
is not only fruitful, but even so vital that
the roots send out sprouts (twice I have
found as many as six), and these sprouts
in turn grow into trees belonging to the
one tree-system.

6. In this astonishing way, one olive
tree, instead of paying its expected tribute
to death, overcomes decay and becomes
an organic olive community as it were,
not merely existing on, but living on, posi-
tively flourishing for centuries. Indeed,
in the older groves to the north of Bordi-
ghera, it is nothing unusual to find a de-
cayed and split tree which is as much as
three hundred years old ; and in Beaulieu
there is one patriarch which, according to
both naturalist and historian, is a thou-
sand years old.

If I have succeeded in making clear this

AN OLIVE GROVE 101

strange manner of growth, anyone should
be able to understand why I have placed
so much emphasis upon this growth as
related to the olive tree's individuality.
But I am hoping that still more has been
accomplished — I am hoping that I have
made possible the realization of the pro-
foundest element in the appeal of the
olive. This vital endurance through cen-
turies of struggle; this gaining new life
and reenforcement at the very beginning
of death ; this lifting up, over all the scars
of rending and over all the marks of de-
cay, a shining crown of leaves and fruit—
this compelling evidence that a long, long
conflict has ended in victory, moves the
heart mightily. And still a further senti-
ment is aroused. The victory is not bare
victory. Our feeling is not such as we
have when looking, for instance, at
Turner's "Old Temeraire"— the battered
warship, after the last battle and the final
victory, being towed toward the sunset
and a quiet haven, thing of triumph, but

102 THE MOUNTAINS

now useless and pathetic. No, no, no.
The old olive tree stands there under the
sky, harvest-producing, harvest-crested,
harvest-promising, a splendid hint of end-
less vitality — death swallowed up in ever-
lasting life!

At this point I need help. Take the
finest old apple orchard you ever saw and
carry it to the shore of the sea; then hold
it back from the edge of the water far
enough to allow a narrow town to crawl
in between, then lift up the grove about
eight hundred feet, then build for it an
amphitheater of hills and mountains, then
bathe it with an atmosphere of most bril-
liant translucence, then arch it over with
a sky often as delicately blue as a robin's
egg, then tone down the almost over-
powering situation by the ringing of
church bells, by the calling of a shepherd
among his sheep, by the cracking of a
driver's whip, by the shrill voice of a
street vender, by the pell-mell happiness
of children just out of school and by the

AN OLIVE GROVE 103

unending hammer strokes of a man break-
ing stone somewhere in the road below —
do all this, and you can begin to realize
what my old olive grove is in fact and in
sentiment.

Bordighera is half framed by hills, and
on every one of these hills there is an olive
grove; but this one grove (I call it the
"Saracen Grove") is the most attractive.
In several ways it can be reached, but
usually I prefer a path which passes
through a fringe of pine trees, fully as
aromatic as are our balsam firs in the
White Mountains. The largest of these
pines is the stone pine (pinus pinea)9 but
popularly named the "umbrella pine,"
because, as a certain humorist said, "It
looks as much like an umbrella opened as
the cypress looks like an umbrella closed"
Without doubt it is this stone pine to
which Wordsworth refers in the Italian
sonnet, where he describes the tree in one
poetic, etching stroke as — "like a cloud —
a slender stem the tie that bound it to

104 THE MOUNTAINS

its native earth — poised high." And
later in the sonnet Wordsworth declares
that this one pine tree, in its cloudlike
beauty and suggestions, "supplanted the
whole majesty of Rome."

In the midst of this old olive grove rises
a massive tower, which several of the
guide books affirm to be Roman in origin.
However this may be, it was used as a
watch tower when Saracen pirates
harassed the Ligurian coast after the
main Saracen army had been nearly
annihilated by Charles Martel at Poitiers.
One reason why I most enjoy this par-
ticular grove is that the trees are so
planted, terrace above terrace, as to afford
many open spaces which fill with sunshine
and so modify the chill and somberness
which often belong to an olive grove. Be-
sides, through these open spaces one can
catch marvelous glimpses in every direc-
tion. To the east you can see the old town
of Bordighera, sitting like a fortress on
its rugged hill — above the wave-eaten and

AN OLIVE GROVE 105

sharply jutting rocks of the cape, above
the tiny oratory built, according to tradi-
tion, over the cave where Saint Ampeglio
kindled his fire and taught the peasants
how to till the soil — and above the dis-
mantled and picturesque fort where once
was fought a half -humorous and half-
pathetic battle between Bordighera and
Great Britain. Off toward France, you
can follow the shore line of the Maritime
Alps, one of the mountains pleasantly
reminding us of the outline and coloring
of our own Mount Lafayette. To the
northwest there is a view which no less
an artist than Charles Gamier, the French
architect, considered, from its panoramic
character, "one of the finest in the world."
The panorama is of a long, narrow valley
filled with flowers and plants, the multi-
tudinous tints all chastened into harmony
by a wide border of olive groves which
extend for miles along the sides of the
hills. The scene is accentuated by cypress
trees which here and there thrust their

106 THE MOUNTAINS

sharp single points up into the sky. In
this panoramic reach toward the higher
Alps, there stand out, shining brightly
under the glorious sun, three "rock vil-
lages"— Borghetto, so low down that it
is almost in the basin of the valley ; Valle-
bona, somewhat higher, with its slender
church spire; and yet higher, on the very
crest of a hill, Sasso, like a mediaeval castle
in solid appearance; and yet, as Gamier
says, "seeming to float above the treetops
in an ocean of verdure." Then, to the
south, lying at your very feet is the new
town of Bordighera, called "Borgo Ma-
rina," its hotels and villas half buried
in gardens almost tropical; and beyond
the town everywhere — toward Gibraltar,
toward Genoa, out past Corsica and Sar-
dinia toward Africa — everywhere the in-
describable Mediterranean. I say "inde-
scribable," and I mean it, but I will dare
to quote Giovanni Ruffini's words in Doc-
tor Antonio. "In front lay the immensity
of sea, smooth as glass, and rich with all

AN OLIVE GROVE 107

the hues of a dove's neck, the bright green,
the dark purple, the soft ultramarine, the
deep blue of a blade of burnished steel,
there glancing in the sun like diamonds,
here rippling into a lacelike net of snowy
foam."

There is yet another reason why this
"Saracen Grove" is most attractive. It
is so placed above the Mediterranean, and
not too far above it as to command a long
stretch of the irregular and mountainous
coast line, and so make possible and fasci-
nating what I will call the imaginative
localization of history. As a man rests
there under the ancient olive trees, he is
sure to call up the great past in empire,
or in art, or in literature; then he looks
along the coast until he fixes upon a rela-
tive point ; then he thinks: "Just over there
they landed," or "Just over there he was
born," or "Just over there it all took
place." In this way you picture the past,
reproduce person and scene, and fling
your heart hotly out into the vast region

108 THE MOUNTAINS

of history. And there may come tran-
scendent moments when the vastness of
your historic reach seems to be augmented
by the vastness of the sea, especially so
when the blue space of water is enlarged
as the horizon line is pushed back and
back into vagueness by the sun-beaten
track of molten silver. In such an ex-
perience the centuries drop away like
falling waves, you feel a suggestion of the
Infinite, and you know exactly what the
poet meant by the expression, "The press
of immensity's caress."

Of all these dramatic localizations,
there is one picture which appears again
and again. Indeed, I have never visited
my old grove without seeing this particu-
lar picture. Southeast toward Spezia I
fix the locality. The definite point is a
hill a little behind and over the bay. On
this hill there is a monastery — that of
Santa Croce. At the outer gate of the
monastery stands a dust-begrimed trav-
eler. I can make out his thin, angular

AN OLIVE GROVE 109

face, a veritable composite of the faces of
Savonarola and John Wesley. A monk
comes to the gate and speaks to the
stranger: "What would you?" The
stranger "answers not, but looks at the
wall intently." The monk speaks more
kindly: "Friend, what would you?"
Breaking out of his abstraction, the trav-
eler gazes into the monk's eyes and utters
one word — "PEACE."

This is Dante, the exile from Florence,
trying to find some spot where he may
be allowed to rest. Held fast by the
pathetic figure, I follow the exile, step
by step, along this Ligurian shore, the
entire distance from Lerici to Turbia.
The Aurelian way of the Romans has
long since crumbled, and the Corniche
road has not yet been made ; and so Dante
must use the mule path, narrow, rocky,
and tortuous. This path I can just dis-
cern as it winds up and over the shoulder
of Monte Nero. Now a form rises above
the huge ledge, and the exile is silhouetted

110 THE MOUNTAINS

sharply against the sky. He stops, turns
partly around, and looks toward Spezia
and Florence. Then he becomes aware
of the complex beauty of the immediate
scene. In spite of his weariness, in spite
of his loneliness, in spite of his spiritual
agony, he is the poet now with every sense
alert. Nothing escapes him. He notes
the gathering lift of the waves before they
strike the rocks, the rhythmic groaning
of the bare-legged fishermen as they haul
their boat through the swishing surf, the
hawk sailing high and then hovering over
his prey, the young men loudly singing
at their work, higher up on the mountain
side, the black-eyed girl leading a goat
over the ledge, the nameless yellow
flowers here and there, bravely growing
in the scanty soil, the shifting of the light
as a cloud passes over the mountain. Last
of all he makes a careful calculation as to
the precise angle of his ascent, and stores
the fact away in his memory for compara-
tive use in his immortal poem :

AN OLIVE GROVE 111

. . . "Meanwhile we had arrived

Far as the mountain foot, and there the rock

Found of so steep ascent that nimblest steps

To climb it had been vain. The most remote,

Most wild, untrodden path, in all the tract

'Twixt Lerici and Turbia were to this

A ladder easy and of access free."

VI
TREETOPS IN WINTER

VI
TREETOPS IN WINTER

WHILE reading Emerson recently
I came across a happy surprise.
Years before, I had, in some careless way,
received the impression that Emerson,
like many of the poets, was ahle to per-
ceive only the severe side of winter, as
when in "The Titmouse," for instance,
he says:

"The frost king ties my fumbling feet,
Sings in my ears, my hands are stones,
Curdles the blood to the marble bones,
Tugs at the heart-strings, numbs the sense,
And hems in life with narrowing fence."

Surely, in any thought about Emerson,
I could not forget that well-nigh perfect
"Greek fragment" (as James Russell
Lowell called it), "The Snow-Storm";

115

116 THE MOUNTAINS

but that poem, with the "farmer's sighs"
and the "sled and traveler stopped" and
the "courier's feet delayed" and "all
friends shut out," can hardly be considered
inspiriting, even if the housemates do sit—

"Around the radiant fireplace, inclosed
In a tumultuous privacy of storm."

But in the third chapter of Nature,
Emerson writes in a very different vein.
He says : "I please myself with the graces
of the winter scenery, and believe that we
are as much touched by it as by the genial
influences of summer." It was, I confess,
a relief to discover this appreciation of
that side of winter which is as inspiriting
as it is beautiful ; for Emerson I deem one
of the truest and most authoritative inter-
preters of the natural world, and I could
never be altogether certain that my own
extreme fondness for the winter scene
might not be either the whimsey of a
nature-tyro or a "survival" of my New
England origin.

TREETOPS IN WINTER 117

Not now, however, will I undertake a
full defense of wild, splendid old winter,
although Lowell's "Good Word for Win-
ter" is enough to convince any full-
blooded man that such a defense could
be made. I wish merely to call attention
to one of the "graces of the winter
scenery," namely, treetops. Even in sum-
mer, treetops are (save in the horse-chest-
nut and other trees of lush beauty) the
most beautiful tree parts; but, in our
climate at least, it is in winter that the
treetop reveals its most compelling charm.
The reasons for this fact are two. (Per-
haps there is a third reason. ) In the first
place, the climactic significance of the top
fully appears only in relation to the whole
structure of the tree, and with deciduous
trees anyway, the entire wonder of the
structure is apparent only in winter. In
summer, the foliage more or less hides
the fine architectural lines, precisely as
epicurean flesh is sure to conceal the fine
structural lines of a man's face. Further,

118 THE MOUNTAINS

I have lately observed that some of our
evergreens more strikingly exhibit their
structure in winter, especially when there
is snow on the ground; but I am not yet
prepared to enforce and utilize the point.
The second reason is that in winter the
branches and twigs, now bare and clean-
cut, stand out sharply against the sky in
all their thrust, and crisscross, and minute
tracery. As a man said of the spire of
Antwerp cathedral, "It looks like Mechlin
lace flung into the air." Few things in
the wide world, indeed, are more deli-
cately beautiful than a long sky-line of
lacelike treetops; the entire line in high
relief against the sky; and the sky itself
having that soft, pervasive, ineffable win-
ter color which I will try to suggest by
calling it a bluish, winter-gray pearl.
Then, to complete the scene, there should
be (and is likely to be) a small cloud or
two sailing high enough to give perfect
accent to the immeasurable heavenly alti-
tude. It is a time to drop all your prob-

TREETOPS IN WINTER 119

lems and passively yield to the mighty
uplift. Look, gaze up over the treetops
until your soul is transported into the
boundless spaces. Stay there, rest there,
until filled with awe and mayhap you feel
as small and as insignificant as Immanuel
Kant felt when trying to apprehend the
glory of the night-sky. There is only one
way easily and wholesomely to come back
to earth, and that way is indicated in the
103d psalm: "For as the heaven is high
above the earth, so great is his mercy
toward them that fear him."

Another beautiful winter scene is made
by treetops (elms or very tall oaks I pre-
fer in this case) in a snowstorm — not a
furious storm, "announced by all the
trumpets of the sky," but a silent, long-
gathering storm. Accidentally some one
looks out of the window and exclaims:
Why! it is snowing!" The flakes are
barely getting to the ground though.
They linger and float and dally like irre-
sponsible children on an errand. But wait

120 THE MOUNTAINS

an hour, yes, wait two hours — the scene
has become a swift, riotous, multitudinous
pell-mell. Now look at the tops of those
elms! Notice how the numberless white
sprites crazily confuse the network of out-
lines; notice the chaste flecking of the
rough bark; notice how the color of the
bark seems to get richer in tint, and how
the tint tries to hold its own through all
the whirl of the flurry; notice the com-
plicated pattern of motion — its intricacy,
its oddity, and its vitality; notice the
throbbing play of the light in and through
the upper branches; notice how sky and
treetops gradually come together — how
they weirdly blend just as they do in the
gloaming. ... It is night now; the
ragged remnants of the storm are drift-
ing, "like shattered rigging from a fight
at sea" ; moon and stars are forcing their
faces through in splendor; the treetops
look weary and ghostly. . . . Let us wait
until the scene is motionless. ... A still
winter midnight after a long storm! The

TREETOPS IN WINTER

words we need are those of Robert Brown-
ing in "Paracelsus," where Festus says:

"Best ope the casement: see,
The night, late strewn with clouds and flying

stars,

Is blank and motionless : how peaceful sleep
The treetops altogether!"

Our last scene is in that paradise of
trees, "Drew Forest." The entire picture
is beyond my courage ; but here is a frag-
ment : A group of white birches, and snow-
besprinkled spruces standing over against
the eastern sky. It is a December morn-
ing, perhaps ten minutes before sunrise.
From where I stand, I now and then
catch, through the treetops to the north-
east, kindling patches on the distant, low-
lying hills. Squarely in the east are long,
streaming pennants of color — none regu-
lar, none gorgeous — just dull reds alter-
nating with blues so dark that they barely
escape being somber. The tops of the
birches are the first to respond to the
dawn, and very soon their plumes, droop-

122 THE MOUNTAINS

ing and gently swaying, shine like threads
of silver filigree. But only for a few mo-
ments are the birches central in the scene,
for the tops of the spruces now become
aware of the rising sun. All their sharp
points and variant angles are suddenly
burnished, and over the dark green
branches, powdered as with damp marble
dust, there is a shimmer of gold beryl
which seems to light up the erect dignity
of the spruces with unmistakable glad-
ness. You begin to appreciate those
exultant words in Isaiah: "All the trees
of the field shall clap their hands." For
these transformed spruces appear to be
ready to do any joyous thing!

I break away from the small group and
look over the whole sweep of the forest,
and everywhere it is morning in the tree-
tops.

VII
JOHN

VII
JOHN

A FEW days ago death came to an
old Negro — "John" — who for many
years had worked on the grounds of Drew
Seminary. Since his death, to relieve the
emptiness of the scene, I have been recon-
sidering my previous partial estimate ; and
this morning I surprised myself with the
conclusion that, of all the humble people
I have known, this obscure Negro had the
most pristine and almost the most inter-
esting individuality. The material should
be treated by an interpreter of human
nature having a particular gift for under-
standing and portraying inarticulate and
unlabeled manhood; such an interpreter
as Turgenieff, or Bret Harte, or the
author of immortal "Marse Chan." But,
as no such interpreter is available, I will

125

126 THE MOUNTAINS

do what I can to hold back an extraordi-
nary character from the inequity of tem-
poral oblivion.

The outward thing which appealed to
me when I first met John, twelve years
and more ago, was the directness of his
face. I do not mean facial sincerity, that
expression of moral genuineness which
ennobled the face of John Jasper. Neither
do I mean that expression of personal
frankness which was no small part of the
fascination of Booker T. Washington's
face, one of the three most powerful faces
of modern times. I mean no moral or
personal thing whatsoever, but merely
that immediateness, or nakedness if you
will, with which nature sometimes reveals
an unmitigated reality. For example,
note the sheer bareness of a crag when
the whole mass, with every jut and fissure,
stands exposed without even a softening
shadow. John's face was like that. It
gave out directly, nakedly, all the mean-
ing he had.

JOHN 127

As he neared the end, a look of weary
waiting, such as may be seen in the eyes
of a tired ox, appeared in John's face, and
remained there for days at a time. This
peculiar look, together with his broken
form and dragging movement, empha-
sized the mien of old age. How old he
really was I do not know; I could not
accept any of the flying statements ; but,
whatever his actual age, he certainly was,
at the last, the oldest-looking man I ever
saw. His aspect instantly brought to
mind Faber's pathetic "Old Laborer";
or, even more fittingly, that stanza which
in the Negro song describes the debility
of old age with a touching realism worthy
of Paul Laurence Dunbar :

"His fingers were long like the cane in the

brake,

His eyes were bad for to see,
He had no teeth for to eat the corn cake,
So he had to let the corn cake be."

And yet it was precisely this decrepi-
tude which furnished an effective back-

128 THE MOUNTAINS

ground for John's bearing of innate dig-
nity. One of our American essayists,
probably Emerson, refers wonderingly to
the exquisite dignity with which a well-
bred woman crosses a muddy street. In
much more awkward situations, I have
watched John carry his twisted wreck of
a body with the instinctive dignity which
belongs to a king. Indeed, it has flashed
through my mind that there might be
lingering in John's veins an inherited
trace of the blood of a chieftain who cen-
turies ago ruled an African tribe. The
most singular thing, though, pertaining
to this bearing of dignity was that it was
a visible conquest over many ungainly
physical features. What Abraham Lin-
coln did in a large way John did in a much
smaller way, namely, he penetrated and
dominated his entire body with a su-
premely independent spirit. John was
reputed to be "queer" or "cranky," and
it is not surprising, for he was as rigidly
independent as is a red oak in a hailstorm.

JOHN 129

Sometimes his opinions were slenderly re-
lated to fact, but never were they bor-
rowed. A notion his very own he had of
every teacher, every student, and every
important thing that touched his daily
life. Extremely noticeable was this inde-
pendence when he accepted money, or a
gift of any sort. Once, in Germany, I
gave a mark to a prosperous tailor, and
he smiled and bowed and gesticulated
until I was almost prone to think that
unwittingly I had saved his life. No touch
of such servility was in John's nature. He
was quick to manifest gratitude; but he
had a manner of closing the whole trans-
action by looking up and away over the
treetops, as if he had an understanding
with the sky, that only accidentally was he
a recipient.

John was not a typical servant. Not
that he was unfaithful (he was the full
opposite of that), but he required an
ample margin of liberty. He could not be
driven; he hated to be urged, and no die-

130 THE MOUNTAINS

tator could fruitfully manage him. Fur-
thermore, he had an intense pride in his
province, and seriously objected to the
surrender of any of his traditional rights.
One fall he was so late in beginning to
clip the hedge that I engaged another
Negro to help at my end, innocently sup-
posing that John would be delighted with
the arrangement. I was soon disabused,
for he dropped his shears and excitedly
exclaimed: "I kin do it all without him,
or he kin do it all without me?* If, how-
ever, the margin of liberty was duly
granted, John would charge his work with
devotion and delight. Again and again
I have discovered him working far beyond
the agreement and far beyond the need,
and this too even in wild weather. In this
respect he was worthy of comradeship
with Adam Bede himself, who said: "I
hate to see a man's arms drop down as
if he was shot, before the clock's fairly
struck, just as if he'd never a bit o' pride
and delight in's work. The very grind-

JOHN 131

stone 'ull go on turning a bit after you
loose it."

Two of John's traits are of exceptional
interest to every painstaking student of
the naivete of unsophisticated human na-
ture.

1. In addressing any person whom he*
revered John was indirect, sometimes even
speaking as if the person addressed were
not present, and the speaker's aim were
to find out something concerning the
absent person. Not like this: "Doctor,
were you satisfied with what I did?" but
roundabout something like this: "What
did the Doctor say? Was he satisfied with
what I did?"

2. To all forces and living things in
nature, John was wont to ascribe gender,
and to do this under an exact scheme of
gradation. For example, a shrub (al-
though as beautiful as a Japanese quince
aflame with bloom) he regarded as only
"it"; but a wind was "he" and a tree was
"she" In this connection I recall a quaint

132 THE MOUNTAINS

instance. A valuable hemlock seemed to
be slowly dying, and I asked John for his
opinion. He said: "I have watched that
tree ever sence 'way back when Dr.
Crooks lived here; and off and on she's
acted just so ondecided. It's 'bout time
she made up her mind what she's goin'
to do."

Quaintness in John was deeper than the
whimsical turn of speech, it was part and
parcel of his very conception of things.
He saw everything in odd relation or odd
proportion. Usually the quaintness alone
was sufficient to empty his mood, but when
quaintness was not enough, he would burst
into a gust of delicious humor. Here is
an instance which fortunately I have
saved, but it must not be thought that
in this, or in any other instance, I have
entirely succeeded in preserving the dia-
lect in every peculiarity of phrase and
pronunciation. To do that would be a
task almost beyond George W. Cable
himself. In the "Old Mansion," while

JOHN 133

hanging a picture, I suddenly fell from
the top of the step ladder, bringing down
with me both ladder and picture in one
general crash. At this, John began to
laugh immoderately. Somewhat rasped,
I snapped out: "And what is there to
laugh at so?"

Half choking, John replied, " 'Twas
chiefly exciting when the Doctor did not
stay up there as long as he intended/'

In considering John's character from
the standpoint of moral demand, two ex-
tremes should be avoided. On the one
side, we should not assert or intimate that
he satisfied, or even approximately met,
the requirements of righteousness. Al-
ways it does harm so to glorify a few
splendid items of conduct as to obscure
the rigid fact that God's law demands a
total, and never is content with a frag-
ment. And it does as much harm to ob-
scure Christian requirement; to say, for
example, that a man is "practically a
Christian" when he has never repented

134 THE MOUNTAINS

of his sins or accepted Christ as his
Saviour. Furthermore, John was obsti-
nate in spiritual things. Real Christian
effort was made in his behalf, but he stub-
bornly avoided every opportunity to find
the living way.

On the other hand, we should not as-
sume that we ourselves understand abso-
lutely a man's hidden life in its profound-
est relation to the Holy Spirit. Now and
then there may be abnormal cases which
cannot be tested by our typical, finite
standards. Moreover, as Christian men
we should be ready to appreciate any dis-
coverable atom of manifest loyalty to a
moral ideal. A bit of gold dust is not
enough, surely, to make a coin of the
realm, but it is gold dust, and not the saw-
dust of a buttonwood tree. I will not say
that John Nicholls is a John Wesley be-
cause, as a sheriff, he saved from a lawless
mob a Negro in his custody; but I will
say, and I ought to say, that the sheriff
is a brave man. If anyone wishes to find

JOHN 135

a Scripture basis for this attitude, he can
find it in the tenth verse of the second
chapter of Saint Paul's Epistle to the Ro-
mans.

John, in addition to the faithfulness
already noted, had two traits which
morally are pure gold. The first of these
was his quick regard for equity. Not
justice; it was several degrees finer than
isolated justice. For example this: Be-
fore going away on my vacation on one
occasion, I offered John the opportunity
to earn some extra money by splitting up
several hardwood logs. On my return I
found the logs untouched and asked John
why he had not done the work. His

answer was: "I wanted the money,

'lowed he had charge of that woodshed,
and I feared I'd no fair privilege to take
his job."

The other moral trait was generosity
in burden-bearing, a trait which may in-
volve unselfishness itself. For example
this: Four men, including John, were

136 THE MOUNTAINS

laboring to carry a piano upstairs. At
one point the way was circuitous and it
seemed impossible to go further. Out of
breath, and out of patience, the regular
piano movers gave up and were about to
begin to work their way back to the first
floor, when John, already half crushed
against the wall, shouted out in his high-
keyed voice: "We kin do it, if you but
'low the heft to come more right down

on me."

One more quality there is which I must
notice, but shrink from trying to place or
estimate. It is better simply to state the
fact, and allow everyone to think of it as
he will. We tried to get John to attend
Dr. Upham's funeral, or at least to go
into the chapel after the funeral and look
at the body, lying in state, guarded by
the students who loved their teacher-
friend. John would not go; but he did
go to the extreme limit of the seminary
grounds, and there, bareheaded, his old
rake in his hands, he stood silently, like

JOHN 137

a soldier at attention, as the procession
passed through the front gateway and
down the village street. Of all the tributes
to Dr. Upham, this one of John's seemed
to me to be the most beautiful. The next
day I asked him why he would not go
into the chapel. Very slowly and timidly
he said: "I did not want to see Dr. Up-
ham look like that, I want always to re-
member him as I used to see him going
about."

In closing this character-sketch I wish
to pass beyond my own estimate, and to
quote the words of a man who for many
years was close to John in daily associa-
tion, a man of large charity and yet never
inclined to weaken either a Christian doc-
trine or a Christian demand. After John's
death, this man said: "This morning I
have been thinking of John. He did not
know much about the Lord, but I believe
that he did live up to his light."

VIII

THE ILLUMINATION OF AN
OLD FARM

VIII

THE ILLUMINATION OF AN
OLD FARM

NOT long ago, out there somewhere
in the vast upper spaces of mys-
tery, our Lord welcomed into his peaceful
presence a man whom he was ready to
glorify. Here on the earth this man was
called James B. Doolittle; but the name
was a misnomer, for in any kingdom of
equity he surely would have been named
Do-much.

"A CONSPIRACY OF FRIENDSHIP"
When, as a boy, I first met this man,
he was a farmer, living a few miles from
one of the most beautiful of our mid-
Western villages, Delavan, Wisconsin.
Rudyard Kipling is, as far as I now re-
call the writers, the only one who has

141

142 THE MOUNTAINS

grasped and perfectly expressed a boy's
elusive nature, and it is folly for me to
try. This much, though, I need to say:
although only about twelve years old, at
once I understood this farmer, at once I
pierced the clumsy disguise and discovered
the real Bayard. Yet more strange, per-
haps, he instantly seemed peculiarly to
care for me. And thus, there and then,
began a "swift conspiracy of friendship"
between a man and a boy.

As an outcome of this friendship, the
"old Doolittle farm" became to me a kind
of home extraordinary. To this home,
at every twist and turn of things, I man-
aged to hasten, staying for days, or weeks,
or even months at a time. In the farm-
house, Mrs. Doolittle (who soon joined
our conspiracy) gave me, "for my very
own," a room and allowed me to carry
out all my whims in arrangement. As I
write, this room comes out clear-cut in
memory: the low angle-broken ceiling;
the cramped, rattling windows; the oak-

AN OLD FARM 143

stained and heavily varnished furniture,
"bought in Milwaukee"; the rag rugs,
oval in shape, and somewhat humpy in
places where the turns had been too
quickly made; and on the wall, over-
whelming the "family portraits," and
commanding the whole room, a monster
worsted watch pocket, having an intense
grass-green background, and fronted with
roses, puffed out like inflated cheeks, and
as richly flaming as the body of a scarlet
tanager.

In this room I kept some of my books ;
in this room I studied, in this room I
dreamed a lad's dreams; in this room I
"threatened to do something in the
world"; yes, and later, in this little room
I prepared (surely the word needs italics)
my first sermon.

A CHAPTER IN DEMOCRACY

This old farm I want, if I can muster
the gifts, so to illuminate as to make ap-
parent some of its fine characteristics.

144 THE MOUNTAINS

The task merits the genius of John Mil-
lington Synge.

"He loves the open air, the reinless run

Of wind and star ; he loves the flying clouds ;
He goes companioned of the kindly sun,
Erect, with head unbowed."

This stanza from "The Westerner," a
noble poem by Edward Wilbur Mason,
I quote because it exactly reminds me of
the spirit of "Doolittle Farm." You felt
there the independent simplicity of a
strong life in close and sensitive relations
with the primary cosmic forces. In my
bias of imagination, it often seemed to me
that the horses on the farm and all the
cattle even, showed an independent indi-
viduality quite unusual with such crea-
tures. In any case, they all were so
treated as to bring out the best innate
qualities. Then, as is the fact with many
a Western farm, the general bearing of
the place was aggressive. A bit of con-
trast here may help to make plain my
meaning. A typical New England farm

AN OLD FARM 145

is protective and defensive. The whole
combination has the air of a fortification.
The house is joined to the woodshed and
the woodshed is joined to the barn. And
so the farmer can do his "chores" and
much other work snugly protected from
cold and storm. By changing one line
he could adopt the classic song:

"Then come the wild weather,

Come sleet or come snow,
We're safe under cover,
However it blow."

But the Westerner is not so protected.
He must take more chances with nature,
and so he may gain more pliability and
daring, and possibly, develop the capacity
to deal with things on a larger scale and
with originality.

In those priceless Journals, now slowly
coming from the Riverside Press, Emer-
son refers to a Western hotel where, on
the wall of the dining room, there was this
notice: "No Gentleman Permitted to Sit
at the Table Without His Coat." Of

146 THE MOUNTAINS

course, one quickly feels the deliriously
unconscious humor of this notice, and the
humor is even richer over against the
Brahmanic dignity of "the Concord seer."
Just imagine Ralph Waldo Emerson
walking into that dining room and read-
ing that notice ! But what I fail to under-
stand is that there is any essential differ-
ence between this country-shirt-sleeve
comfort and all those tolerated sorts of
negligee which, on any hot summer day,
one can find at the Polo Grounds, or in
a Wall Street office, or even in many a
metropolitan restaurant. But to use the
Irish privilege and "drop the dispute be-
fore it begins," I will content myself by
declaring that nothing finer have I ever
seen than a coatless dinner, in harvest
time, with James Doolittle at the loaded
table and all his "farm hands" about him.
No skill of mine is sufficient fully to re-
veal the open hospitality, the half-con-
cealed courtesy, the quick generosity, the
spontaneous heartiness, the human funda-

AN OLD FARM 147

mentalness of it all. It was a complete
chapter in intrinsic democracy. The man-
ners were democratic, the conversation
was democratic, the very "soul of the
feast" was democratic. Never was it in
any way apparent that one man owned
the farm and the other men worked for
wages. James Doolittle was simply the
perfect host and these sunburned fellows
were ravenously hungry. "Billy, your
plate begins to look empty again/' After
all the years the words are still charged
with comradeship !

Thinking of harvest time there comes
to my mind another scene. "Hands"
were "short," and I was trying to help
out by driving a team. Unfortunately,
we went too near a nest of bumblebees.
They stung the horses and came at me.
I lost control, the machine struck a stump
and canted over, the driver was flung
sprawling. James Doolittle was on hand,
as he was ever on hand, and his laughter
sounded out louder than the whistle of

148 THE MOUNTAINS

the meadowlarks. He had no lofty notion
of college education, and, in his own quiet,
kindly manner, he rather enjoyed any
harmless evidence of my practical ineffi-
ciency, but in this one instance his enjoy-
ment was almost rollicking, for the situ-
ation appealed to all his latent sense of
humor. Indeed, the scene, especially the
ensemble j was extremely comical (after-
ward he described it with gusto) , the bees
so very small and so furiously triumphant,
the big mower so instantly and so queerly
upcanted, the horses so wildly plunging,
and the terrified driver thrusting a dirt-
flecked face up out of the tangle of crum-
pled grass.

PURE RELIGION

The religious life of "Doolittle Farm"
was rooted in moral integrity. With the
utmost emphasis it should be said that the
place was morally sound even in little
things. Visiting the farm again and
again, for more than twenty years, I

AN OLD FARM 149

never heard a false word spoken. And
I never discovered any sly schemes to
render small deceptions inevitable to some
one. Life on that old farm was as frankly
open to all concerned as a great prairie
is open to all the winds. Nor was there
any "trick within the law," such as is some-
times used in country trading. James
Doolittle was not a David Harum. He
was not "all-fired keen at a bargain." Not
easily could he be fooled himself, but he
had no ambition, in a tussle of wits, to
win by cheating the other man.

In Wisconsin I once saw a patch of
delicate columbines growing on the sheer
face of a ragged cliff. James Doolittle
and that Wisconsin cliff are in my mind
together, for his rugged character was
adorned by the most delicately beautiful
thing belonging to the religious life, that
is, reverence. On his farm no cheap tri-
fling with sacred things was countenanced.
He did not make Christ an easy com-
modity for pious phrases either. Our

150 THE MOUNTAINS

Lord he followed in confidence without
undue familiarity.

The patch of columbines on the cliff
was most beautiful at family prayers.
James Doolittle's reading of the Bible
was peculiarly redolent of reverence. No
artificial emphasis, no dramatic declama-
tion, no "religious tone" — just a real man
with his natural voice paying to God an
eager tribute of quiet reverence. And
when the prayer came — so direct, so
homely, so believing, so evidently sincere
— we felt as if the old farm itself had sud-
denly taken on the bright shining of trans-
lation.

"Compared with this, how poor Religion's pride,

In all the pomp of method, and of art,
When men display to congregations wide
Devotion's ev'ry grace, except the heart !"

This reverent religious life, which began
in moral integrity, culminated at last in
Christian courage. I am now come to a
place where my heart will not allow me
to furnish the exact details. Enough to

AN OLD FARM 151

say that when the dreadful test came,
James Doolittle did not flinch. His
Saviour he trusted absolutely. Hearing
that the old farm had been sold, and that
he was living alone in a small cottage in
the village, I went to see him, dreading,
I must confess, to meet the man after all
the sad changes. But, save on the sur-
face, he had not changed. Always a man
of few words, he very soon said: "I want
to show you my garden." At the sight
of that garden I was simply overcome.
Nowhere, except in Holland, had I ever
beheld such a wonder of patient, loving
economy. Every foot of space behind the
house had been put to use. Not only was
there every feasible kind of vegetable,
but also there were flowers and flowers.
In fact, all the dear old farm flowers were
there, repeated as by magic— marigolds,
border pinks, bachelors' buttons, sweet
William, hollyhocks, and even sunflowers
blazing against the shed. As I did not
speak, he looked at me curiously and said :

152 THE MOUNTAINS

"What is the matter with you?" I could
only answer: "I did not expect to find
anything like this." Then his eyes filled,
not with tears, but with light, and very
quietly he said, "I will not let my little
yard grow up to weeds just because I no
longer have the old farm."

His words later yielded a sermon in
me, and I preached it from this text:
"Strengthen the things which remain that
are ready to die."

"LC