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THE CLERK OF THE WOODS

THE CLERK
OF THE WOODS

BY

BRADFORD TORREY

' News of birds and blossoming."

BOSTON AND NEW YORK

HOUGHTON, MIFFLIN AND COMPANY

fcbe fliucrsibe prc03, Cambribjjf
1903

COPYRIGHT 1903 BY BRADFORD TORREY
ALL RIGHTS RESERVED

Published September, fgoj

PREFATORY NOTE

THE chapters of this book were written
week by week for simultaneous publication
in the " Evening Transcript " of Boston and
the " Mail and Express " of New York, and
were intended to be a kind of weekly chron-
icle of the course of events out-of-doors, as
witnessed by a natural-historical observer.
The title of the volume is the running title
under which the articles were printed in the
"Evening Transcript." It was chosen as
expressive of the modest purpose of the
writer, whose business was not to be witty
or wise, but simply to " keep the records."

CONTENTS

PAoie

A SHORT MONTH 1

A FULL MIGRATION 9

A FAVORITE ROUND 17

IN THE CAMBRIDGE SWAMP .... 25

A QUIET AFTERNOON . . . . . .34

POPULAR WOODPECKERS . ... . 42

LATE SUMMER NOTES 50

WOOD SILENCE 60

SOUTHWARD BOUND .... . . .67

FOUR DREAMERS . 74

A DAY IN FRANCONIA . . . . . .82

WITH THE WADERS . . ..."'. . . 91

ON THE NORTH SHORE AGAIN .... 104

AUTUMNAL MORALITIES 117

A TEXT FROM THOREAU 127

THE PLEASURES OF MELANCHOLY ... 135

IN THE OLD PATHS 142

THE PROSPERITY OF A WALK .... 152

SIGNS OF SPRING 159

OLD COLONY BERRY PASTURES .... 168
SQUIRRELS, FOXES, AND OTHERS . . . .177
WINTER AS IT WAS ... 186

viii CONTENTS

" DOWN AT THE STOKE " 194

BIRDS AT THE WINDOW 203

A GOOD-BY TO WINTER 212

BIRD SONGS AND BIRD TALK .... 219
CHIPMUNKS, BLUEBIRDS, AND ROBINS . . . 226

MARCH SWALLOWS 233

WOODCOCK VESPERS 242

UNDER APRIL CLOUDS 250

FLYING SQUIRRELS AND SPADE-FOOT FROGS . 268
THE WARBLERS ARE COMING .... 267

INDEX ... .275

THE CLERK OF THE WOODS

THE CLERK OF THE* WOODS

A SHORT MONTH

MAY is the shortest month in the year.
February is at least twice as long. For a
month is like a movement of a symphony;
and when we speak of the length of a piece
of music we are not thinking of the number
of notes in it, but of the time it takes to
play them. May is a scherzo, and goes like
the wind. Yesterday it was just beginning,
and to-day it is almost done. " If we could
only hold it back ! " an outdoor friend of
mine used to say. And I say so, too. At
the most generous calculation I cannot have
more than a hundred more of such months
to hope for, and I wish the Master's baton
would not hurry the tempo. But who knows ?
Perhaps there will be another series of con-
certs, in a better music hall.

The world hereabout will never be more

2 THE CLERK OF THE WOODS

beautiful than it was eight or ten days ago,
with the sugar maples and the Norway
maples in bloom and the tall valley willows
in young yellow-green leaf. And now for-
sythia is having its turn. How thick it is!
I should not have believed it half so common.
Every dooryard is bright with its sunny
splendor. " Sunshine bush," it deserves to
be called, with no thought of disrespect for
Mr. Forsyth, whoever he may have been.
I look at the show while it lasts. In a week
or two the bushes will all have gone out of
commission, so to speak, till the year comes
round again. Shrubs are much in the case
of men and women ; the amount of atten-
tion they receive depends mainly on the
dress they happen to have on at the moment.
In my next-door neighbor's yard there is a
forsythia bush, not exceptionally large or
handsome, that gives me as much pleasure
as one of those wonderful tulip beds of which
the Boston city gardeners make so much
account. Are a million tulips, all of one
color, crowded tightly together and bordered
by a row of other tulips, all of another color,
really so much more beautiful than a hun-

A SHORT MONTH 3

dred or two, of various tints, loosely and
naturally disposed ? I ask the question with-
out answering it, though I could answer it
easily enough, so far as my own taste is
concerned.

Already there is much to admire in the
wild garden. Spice-bush blossoms have come
and gone, and now the misty shad-blow is
beginning to whiten all the hedges and the
borders of the wood, while sassafras trees
have put forth pretty clusters of yellowish
flowers for the few that will come out to
see them. Sun-bright, cold-footed cowslips
still hold their color along shaded brooks.
" Marsh marigolds," some critical people tell
us we must call them. That is a good name,
too ; but the flowers are no more marigolds
than cowslips, and with or without reason
(partly, it may be, because my unregener-
ate nature resents the " must " ), I like the
word I was brought up with. Anemones and
violets are becoming plentiful, and the first
columbines already swing from the clefts
of outcropping ledges. With them one is
almost certain to find the saxifrage. The
two are fast friends, though very unlike ; the

4 THE CLERK OF THE WOODS

columbine drooping and swaying so grace-
fully, its honey-jars upside down, the saxi-
frage holding upright its cluster of tiny white
cups, like so many wine-glasses on a tray.
Both are children's flowers, — an honorable
class, — and have in themselves, to my ap-
prehension, a kind of childish innocence and
sweetness. If we picked no other blossoms,
down in the Old Colony, we always picked
these two — these and the nodding anemone
and the pink lady's-slipper.

This showy orchid, by the way, I was
pleased a year ago to see in bloom side by
side with the trailing arbutus. One was
near the end of its flowering season, the other
just at the beginning, but there they stood,
within a few yards of each other. This was
in the Franconia Notch, at the foot of Echo
Lake, where plants bloom when they can,
rather than according to any calendar known
to down-country people ; where within the
space of a dozen yards you may see the
dwarf cornel, for example, in all stages of
growth ; here, where a snowbank stayed late,
just peeping out of the ground, and there,
in a sunnier spot, already in full bloom.

A SHORT MONTH 6

In May the birds come home. This is
really what makes the month so short.
There is no time to see half that is going
on. In this town alone it would take a
score of good walkers, good lookers, and
good listeners to welcome all the pretty
creatures that will this month return from
their winter's exile. Some came in March,
of course, and more in April ; but now they
are coming in troops. It is great fun to see
them; a pleasure inexpressible to wake in
the morning, as I did this morning (May 8),
and still lying in bed, to hear the first breezy
fifing of a Baltimore oriole, just back over
night after an eight months' absence. Birds
must be lovers of home to continue living in
a climate where life is possible to them only
four months of the year.

Six days ago (May 2) a rose-breasted
grosbeak gladdened the morning in a similar
manner, though he was a little farther away,
so that I did not hear him until I stepped
out upon the piazza. I stood still a minute
or two, listening to the sweet " rolling " war-
ble, and then crossed the street to have a
look at the rose color. It was just as bright
as I remembered it.

6 THE CLERK OF THE WOODS

Golden warblers (summer yellow-birds)
made their appearance on the last day of
April. The next morning one had dropped
into an ideal summering place, a bit of thicket
beside a pond and a lively brook, — good
shelter, good bathing, and plenty of insects,
— and from the first moment seemed to have
no thought of looking farther. I see and
hear him every time I pass the spot. The
same leafless thicket (but it will be leafy
enough by and by) is now inhabited by a
catbird. I found him on the 6th, already
much at home, f ceding, singing, and mewing.
Between him and his small, high-colored
neighbor there is no sign of rivalry or ill-
feeling ; but if another catbird or a second
warbler should propose settlement in that
clump of shrubbery, I have no doubt there
would be trouble.

May-day brought me the yellow-throated
vireo, the parula warbler, the white-throated
sparrow, and the least flycatcher, the last
two pretty late, by my reckoning. On the
2d came the warbling vireo, the veery, — a
single silent bird, the only one I have yet
seen, — the kingbird, the Maryland yellow-

A SHORT MONTH 7

throat, the oven-bird, and the chestnut-sided
warbler, in addition to the grosbeak before
mentioned. Then followed a spell of cold,
unfavorable weather, and nothing more was
listed until the 6th. That day I saw a
Nashville warbler, — several days tardy, —
a catbird, and a Swainson thrush. On May
7, I heard my first prairie warbler, and to-
day has brought the oriole, the wood thrush,
one silent red-eyed vireo (it is good to know
that this voluble " preacher " can be silent),
and the redstart. It never happened to me
before, I think, to see the Swainson thrush
earlier than the wood. That I have done so
this season is doubtless the result of some
accident, on one side or the other. The
Swainson was a little ahead of his regular
schedule, I feel sure ; but on the other hand,
it may almost be taken for granted that a
few wood thrushes have been in the neigh-
borhood for several days. The probability
that any single observer will light upon the
very first silent bird of a given species that
drops into a township must be slight in-
deed. What we see, we tell of ; but that is
only the smallest part of what happens.

8 THE CLERK OF THE WOODS

Some of our winter birds still go about in
flocks, notably the waxwings, the goldfinches,
and the purple finches. Two days ago I
noticed a goldfinch that was almost in full
nuptial dress; as bright as he ever would
be, I should say, but with the black and the
yellow still running together a little here and
there. Purple finches are living high — in
two senses — just at present, feeding on the
pendent flower-buds of tall beech trees. A
bunch of six or eight that I watched the
other day were literally stuffing themselves,
till I thought of turkeys stuffed with chest-
nuts. Their capacity was marvelous, and
1 left them still feasting. All the while one
of them kept up a happy musical chatter.
There is no reason, I suppose, why a poet
should not be a good feeder.

A FULL MIGRATION

ONE of my friends, a bird lover like myself,
used to complain that by the end of May he
was worn out with much walking. His days
were consumed at a desk, — " the cruel
wood," as Charles Lamb called it, — but so
long as migrants were passing his door he
could not help trying to see them. Morn-
ing and night, therefore, he was on foot,
now in the woods, now in the fields, now in
shaded by-roads, now in bogs and swamps.
To see all kinds of birds, a man must go to
all kinds of places. Sometimes he trudged
miles to visit a particular spot, in which he
hoped to find a particular species. Before
the end of the month he must have one hun-
dred and twenty or one hundred and twenty-
five names in his "monthly list;" and to
accomplish this, much leg-work was necessary.
I knew how to sympathize with him.
Short as May is, — too short by half, — I

10 THE CLERK OF THE WOODS

have before now felt something like relief
at its conclusion. Now, then, I have said,
the birds that are here will stay for at least
a month or two, and life may be lived a little
more at leisure.

This year,1 by all the accounts that reach
me, the migration has been of extraordinary
fullness. Only last night a man took a seat
by me in an electric car and said, what for
substance I have heard from many others,
that he and his family, who live in a desir-
ably secluded, woody spot, had never before
seen so many birds, especially so many war-
blers.

How wiser men than myself expkin this
unusual state of things I do not know. To
me it seems likely that the unseasonable
cold weather caught the first large influx of
May birds in our latitude, and held them
here while succeeding waves came falling in
behind them. The current was dammed,
so to speak, and of course the waters rose.

Some persons, I hear, had strange ex-
periences. I am told of one man who picked
a black-throated blue warbler from a bush,
1 1900.

A FULL MIGRATION 11

as he might have picked a berry. I myself
noted in New Hampshire, what many noted
hereabouts, the continual presence of war-
blers on the ground. 'T is an ill wind that
blows nobody good, and our multitude of
young bird students — for, thank Heaven,
they are a multitude — had the opportunity
of many years to make new acquaintances.
A warbler in the grass is a comparatively
easy subject.

After all, the beginners have the best of
it. No knowledge is so interesting as new
knowledge. It may be plentifully mixed
with ignorance and error. Much of it may
need to be unlearned. Young people living
about me began to find scarlet tanagers
early in April ; one boy or girl has seen a
scissor-tailed flycatcher, and orchard orioles
seem to be fairly common ; but at least new
knowledge has the charm of freshness. And
what a charm that is ! — a morning rose,
with the dew on it. The old hand may
almost envy the raw recruit — the young
woman or the boy, to whom the sight of a
rose-breasted grosbeak, for instance, is like
the sight of an angel from heaven, so strange,

12 THE CLERK OF THE WOODS

so new-created, so incredibly bright and
handsome.

I love to come upon a group or a pair of
such enthusiasts at work in the field, as I
not seldom do; all eyes fastened upon a
bush or a branch, one eager, low voice try-
ing to make the rest of the company see
some wonderful object of which the lucky
speaker has caught sight. " There, it has
moved to that lower limb 1 Right through
there! Don't you see it? Oh, what a
beauty ! "

I was down by the river the other after-
noon. Many canoes were out, and pre-
sently I came to an empty one drawn up
against the bank. A few steps more and I
saw, kneeling behind a clump of shrubbery,
a young man and a young woman, each with
an opera-glass, and the lady with an open
notebook. " It 's a redstart, is n't it ? " I
heard one of them say.

It was too bad to disturb them, but I hope
they forgave a sympathetic elderly stranger,
who, after starting toward them and then
sidling off, finally approached near enough
to suggest, with a word of apology, that per-

A FULL MIGRATION 13

haps they would like to see a pretty bunch
of water thrushes just across the way, about
the edges of the pool under yonder big
willow. They seemed grateful, however
they may have felt. " Water thrushes ! "
the young lady exclaimed, and with hasty
" Thank you's," very politely expressed, they
started in the direction indicated. It is to
be hoped that they found also the furtive
swamp sparrow, of whose presence the bash-
ful intruder, in the perturbation of his spir-
its, forgot to inform them. If they did find
it, however, they were sharp-eyed, or were
playing in good luck.

I went on down the river a little way, and
soon met three Irish- American boys coming
out of a thicket at the water's edge. One
of them lifted his cap. " Seen any good
birds to-day?" he inquired. I answered in
the affirmative, and turned the question upon
its asker. Yes, he said, he had just seen
a catbird and an oriole. I remarked that
there were other people out on the same er-
rand. " Yes," said he, pointing toward the
brier thicket, " there 's a couple down there
now looking at 'em." Then I noticed a sec-

14 THE CLERK OF THE WOODS

ond empty canoe with its nose against the
bank.

This was on a Saturday. Saturday after-
noon and Sunday are busy people's days in
the woods. For their sakes I am always
glad to meet them there — bird students,
flower pickers, or simple strollers ; yet I
have learned to look upon those times as
my poorest, and to choose others so far as I
can. One does not enjoy nature to great
advantage at a picnic. There are woods and
swamps of which on all ordinary occasions I
almost feel myself the owner, but of which
on Saturday and Sunday I have scarcely so
much as a rambler's lease. This I have
learned, however, — and I pass the secret
on, — that the Sunday picnic does not usu-
ally begin till after nine o'clock in the fore-
noon.

When bird study becomes more general
than it is now, as it ought to do, the com-
munity will perhaps find means — or, to
speak more correctly, will use means, since
there is no need of finding them — to re-
strain the present enormous overproduc-
tion of English sparrows, and so to give cer-

A FULL MIGRATION 15

tain of our American beauties a chance to
live.

Two days ago I was walking through a
tract of woodland, following the highway,
when I noticed, to my surprise, a white-
breasted martin (tree swallow) just over
my head. The next moment he fluttered
before a hole in one of the big telegraph
poles. His mate came out, and he alighted
in the entrance, facing outward. And there
he sat, while I in my turn took a seat upon
the opposite bank and fell to watching him.
The light struck him squarely, and it was
good to see his blue-purple crown and his
bright black eye shining in the sun. He
had nothing to do inside, it appeared, but
was simply on guard in his mate's absence.
Once he yawned. " She 's gone a good
while," he seemed to say. But he kept his
post till she returned. Then, with a chirrup,
he was off, and she dropped into the cavity
out of sight.

All this was nothing of itself. But why
should a pair of white-breasted martins,
farm-loving, village-loving, house-haunting
birds, a delight to the eye, and as innocent

16 THE CLERK OF THE WOODS

as they are beautiful — why should such
birds be driven to seek a home in a tele-
graph pole in the woods ? The answer was
ready. I walked on, and by and by came
to a village, young and I dare say thriving,
but overrun from end to end with English
sparrows, whose incessant clatter —

Soul-desolating strains — alas ! too many —

filled my ears. Not a bluebird, not a tree
swallow, nor, to all appearance, any place
for one.

And so it is generally. One of my fel-
low townsmen, however, has an estate which
forms a bright exception. There one sees
bluebirds and martins. Year after year,
punctual as the spring itself, they are back
in their old places. And why? Because the
owner of the estate, by a little shooting,
mercifully persistent and therefore seldom
necessary, keeps the English sparrows out.
My thanks to him. His is the only colony
of martins anywhere in my neighborhood.

A FAVORITE ROUND

AFTER three days of heat, a cool morning.
I take an electric car, leave it at a point
five miles away, and in a semicircular
course come round to the track again a mile
or two nearer home. This is one of my fa-
vorite walks, such as every stroller finds for
himself, affording a pleasant variety within
comfortable distance.

First I come to a plain on which are hay-
fields, gardens, and apple orchards ; an open,
sunny place where, in the season, one may
hope to find the first bluebird, the first ves-
per sparrow, or the first bobolink. A spot
where things like these have happened to one
has henceforth a charm of its own. Memory
walks beside us, as it were, and makes good
all present deficiencies.

I am hardly here this morning before the
tiny, rough voice of a yellow-winged sparrow
reaches me from a field in which the new-

18 THE CLERK OF THE WOODS

mown grass lies in windrows. Grass or
stubble, he can still be happy, it appears.
The grasshopper sparrow — to give him his
better name — is one of the quaintest of
songsters, his musical effort being more like
an insect's than a bird's ; yet he is as fully
inspired, as completely absorbed in his work,
to look at him, as any mockingbird or thrush.
I watched one a few days ago as he sat at
the top of a dwarf pear tree. How seriously
he took himself ! No " minor poet " of a
human sort ever surpassed him in that re-
spect ; head thrown back, and bill most
amazingly wide open, all for that ragged
thread of a tune, which nevertheless was de-
cidedly emphatic and could be heard a sur-
prisingly long distance. I smiled at him,
but he did not mind. When minor poets
cease writing, then, we may guess, the grass-
hopper sparrow will quit singing. Far be
the day. To be a poet is to be a poet, and
distinctions of major and minor are of tri-
fling consequence. The yellow-wing counts
with the savanna, but is smaller and has even
less of a voice. Impoverished grass fields
are his favorite breeding-places, and he is
generally a colonist.

A FAVORITE ROUND 19

This morning (it is July 10) the vesper
sparrow is singing here also, with the song
sparrow and the chipper. And while I am
listening to them — but mainly to the ves-
per— the sickle stroke (as I believe Mr.
Burroughs calls it) of a meadow lark cuts
the air. It is a good concert, vesper spar-
row and lark going most harmoniously to-
gether ; and to make it better still, a bobo-
link pours out one copious strain. Him I
am especially glad to hear. After the grass
is cut one feels as if bobolink days were
over.

However, the grass is not all cut yet. I
hear the rattle of a distant mowing-ma-
chine as I walk, and by and by come in
sight of a man swinging a scythe. That is
the poetry of farming — from the specta-
tor's point of view ; and I think from the
mower's also, when he is cutting his own
grass and is his own master. I like to
watch him, at all events. Every motion he
makes is as familiar to me as the swaying
of branches in the wind. How long will it
be, I wonder, before young people will be
asking their seniors what a scythe was like,

20 THE CLERK OF THE WOODS

and how a man used it ? Pictures of it will
look odd enough, we may be sure, after the
thing itself is forgotten.

While I am watching the mower (now he
pauses a moment, and with the blade of his
scythe tosses a troublesome tangle of grass
out of his way, with exactly the motion that
I have seen other mowers use a thousand
times ; but I look in vain for him to put the
end of the snathe to the ground, pick up a
handful of grass, and wipe down the blade)
— while I am watching him a bluebird
breaks into song, and a kingbird flutters
away from his perch on a fence-wire. After
all, the glory of a bird is his wings ; and
the kingbird knows it. In another field
men are spreading hay — with pitchforks,
I mean ; and that, too, is poetry. In truth,
by the old processes, hay could not be made
except with graceful motions, unless it were
by a novice, some man from the city or out
of a shop. A green hand with a rake, it
must be confessed, is a subject for laughter
rather than for rhymes. The secret of
graceful raking is like the secret of graceful
writing, — a light touch.

A FAVORITE ROUND 21

Raspberries and thimbleberries are getting
ripe (they do not need to be '•'•dead ripe,"
thimbleberries especially, for an old country
boy), and meadow-sweet and mullein are in
bloom. Hardback, standing near them, has
not begun to show the pink.

Now I turn the corner, leaving the farms
behind, and as I do so I bethink myself of a
bed of yellow galium just beyond. It ought
to be in blossom. And so it is — the pret-
tiest sight of the morning, and of many morn-
ings. I stand beside it, admiring its beauty
and inhaling its faint, wholesomely sweet
odor. Bedstraw, it is called. If it will keep
that fragrance, why should mattresses ever
be filled with anything else? This is the
only patch of the kind that I know, and
I felicitate myself upon having happened
along at just the right minute to see it in
all its sweetness and beauty. Year after
year it blooms here on this roadside, and
nowhere else ; millions of tiny flowers of a
really exquisite color, yellow with much of
green in it, a shade for which in my igno-
rance I have no name.

The road soon runs into a swamp, and I

22 THE CLERK OF THE WOODS

stop on the bridge. Swamp sparrows are
trilling on either side of me — a spontaneous,
effortless kind of music, like water running
downhill. A phoebe chides me gently ;
passengers are expected to use the bridge
to cross the brook upon, she intimates, not
as a lounging-place, especially as her nest is
underneath. Yellow bladderworts lift their
pretty hoods above the slimy, black water,
and among them lies a turtle, thrusting his
head out to enjoy the sun. Once I see him
raise a foreclaw and scratch the underside of
his neck. The most sluggish and cold-blooded
animal that ever lived must now and then
be taken with an itching, I suppose.

Beyond the bridge the woods are full of
white azalea (they are full of it now, that is
to say, so long as the bushes are in blossom),
but I listen in vain for the song of a Cana-
dian warbler, whom I know to be living
somewhere in its shadow. A chickadee,
looking as if she had been through the wars,
her plumage all blackened and bedraggled,
makes remarks to me as I pass. The cares
of maternity have spoiled her beauty, and
perhaps ruffled her temper, for the time be-

A FAVORITE ROUND 23

ing. A veery snarls, and a thrasher's reso-
nant kiss makes me smile. If he knew it,
he would smile in his turn, perhaps, at my
" pathetic fallacy." The absence of music
here, just where I expected it most confi-
dently, is disappointing, but I do not stay to
grieve over the loss. As the road climbs to
dry ground again, I remark how close to its
edge the rabbit-foot clover is growing. It
is at its prettiest now, the grayish green heads
tipped with pink. If it were as uncommon
as the yellow bedstraw, perhaps I should
think it quite as beautiful. I have known it
since I have known anything (" pussies," we
called it), but I never dreamed of its being
a clover till I began to use a botany book.
All the way along I notice how it cleaves to
the very edge of the track. " Let me have
the poorest place," it says. And it thrives
there. Such is the inheritance of the meek.
Here in the pine woods a black-throated
green warbler is dreaming audibly, and, bet-
ter still, a solitary vireo, the only one I have
heard for a month or more, sings a few
strains, with that sweet, falling cadence of
which he alone has the secret. From a

24 THE CLERK OF THE WOODS

bushy tract, where fire has blackened every-
thing, a chewink speaks his name, and then
falls to repeating a peculiarly jaunty variation
of the family tune. Dignity is hardly the
chewink's strong point. Now a field sparrow
gives out a measure. There is an artist !
Few can excel him, though many can make
more show. Like the vesper sparrow, he has
a gift of sweet and holy simplicity. And
what can be better than that? Overhead,
hurrying with might and main toward the
woods, flies a crow, with four kingbirds after
him. Perhaps he suffers for his own mis-
deeds ; perhaps for those of his race. All
crows look alike to kingbirds, I suspect.

This, and much beside, while I rest in the
shade of a pine, taking the beauty of the
clouds and listening to the wind in the tree-
tops. The best part of every ramble is the
part that escapes the notebook.

IN THE CAMBRIDGE SWAMP

ONCE a year, at least, I must visit the great
swamp in Cambridge, one of the institu-
tions of the city, as distinctive, not to say
as famous, as the university itself. It is
sure to show me something out of the ordi-
nary run (its courses in ornithology are said
to be better than any the university offers) ;
and even if I were disappointed on that
score, I should still find the visit worth
while for the sake of old times, and old
friends, and the good things I remember.
At the present minute I am thinking es-
pecially of that enthusiastic, wise-hearted,
finely gifted, greatly lamented nature-lover,
Frank Bolles, whom I met here for the first
time one evening when it was too dark to
see his face. We had come on the same
errand, to watch the strange aerial evolu-
tions of the April snipe. Who could have
supposed then that he would be dead so soon,
and the world so much the poorer ?

26 THE CLERK OF THE WOODS

Now it is July. The tall swamp rose-
bushes are in full flower, here and there a
clump, the morning sun heightening their
beauty, though for the most part there is
no getting near them without wading to the
knees. More accessible, as well as more
numerous, are the trailing morning-glory
vines (Convolvulus sepium), with showy,
trumpet-shaped, pink-and-white blossoms ;
and in one place I stop to notice a watery-
stemmed touch-me-not, or jewel-weed, from
which a solitary frail-looking, orange-colored
flower is hanging — the first of the year.
What thousands on thousands will follow
it ; no meadow's edge or boggy spot will be
without them. The pendent jewel makes me
think of hummingbirds, which is another
reason for liking to look at it. Years ago I
used to plant some of its red and white con-
geners (balsams, we called them) in a child's
garden. I wish I were a botanist ; I am
always wishing so ; but I am thankful to
know enough of the science to be able to
recognize a few such relationships between
native " weeds " and cultivated exotics.
Somehow the weeds look less weedy for that

IN THE CAMBRIDGE SWAMP 27

knowledge ; as the most commonplace of
mortals becomes interesting to average hu-
manity if it is whispered about that he is
fourth cousin to the king. The world is
not yet so democratic that anything, even a
plant, can be rated altogether by itself.

The gravelly banks of the railroad, on
which I go dry-shod through the swamp, are
covered with a forest of chicory ; a thrifty
immigrant, tall, coarse, scraggy, awkward,
homely, anything you will, but a great
brightener of our American waysides on
sunny midsummer forenoons. It attracts
much notice, and presumably gives much
pleasure, to judge by the number of persons
who ask me its name. May the town fa-
thers spare it! The bees and the gold-
finches will thank them, if nobody else.
Here I am interested to see that a goodly
number of the plants — but not more than
one in fifty, perhaps — bear full crops of
pure white flowers ; a rarity to me, though
I am well used to pink ones. Gray's Man-
ual, by the by, a Cambridge book, makes no
mention of white flowers, while Britton and
Brown's Illustrated Flora says nothing about

28 THE CLERK OF THE WOODS

a pink variety. In a multitude of books
there is safety, or, if not quite that, some-
thing less of danger. The pink and the
white flowers are reversions to former less
highly developed states, I suppose, if cer-
tain modern theories are to be trusted. I
have read somewhere that the acid of ants
turns the blue of chicory blossoms to a
bright red, and that European children are
accustomed to throw the flowers into ant
hills to watch the transformation. Perhaps
some young American reader will be moved
to try the experiment.

The best plants, however, those that I
enjoy most for to-day, at all events, are the
cat-tails. How they flourish ! — " like a
tree planted by the rivers of water." And
how straight they grow ! They must be
among the righteous. We may almost say
that they make the swamp. Certainly, when
they are gone the swamp will be gone.
Both kinds are here, the broad-leaved and
the narrow-leaved, equally rank, though
angustifolia has perhaps a little the better
of the other in point of height. The two
can be distinguished at a glance, and afar

IN THE CAMBRIDGE SWAMP 29

off, by a difference in color, if by nothing
else. " Cat-tails " and « cat-tail flags," the
Manual and the Illustrated Flora call them;
but I was brought up to say " cat-o'-nine-
tails," with strong emphasis on the numeral,
and am glad to find that more romantic-
sounding name recognized by the latest big
dictionary. Not that the name has any par-
ticular appropriateness ; but like my fellows,
I have been trained to venerate a dictionary,
especially an " unabridged," as hardly less
sacred than the Bible, and am still much
relieved whenever my own usage, past or
present, happens to be supported by such
authority.

Rankness is the swamp's note, we may
say. Look at the spatter-dock leaves and
the pickerel weed ! The tropics themselves
could hardly do better. And what a maze
and tangle of vegetation ! — as if the earth
could produce more than the air could find
room for. So much for plenty of water
and a wholesome depth of black mud. One
thinks of the scriptural phrase about paths
that " drop fatness."

Ever since I arrived, the short, hurried,

30 THE CLERK OF THE WOODS

gurgling trill of the long-billed marsh wren
has been in my ears. If I have been here
an hour, I must have heard that sound five
hundred times. Once only, and only for an
instant, I saw one of the singers. I have not
been on the watch for them, to be sure ; but
if it had been earlier in the season I should
have seen them whether I tried to do so or
not. It must be that the little aerial song-
flights, then so common and so cheerful to
look at, are now mostly over.

In such a place, however, populous as it
is, one does not expect to see many birds —
blackbirds being left out of the reckoning —
at any time. Swamp ornithology is mainly
a matter of " earsight." Birds that live in
cat-tail beds and button-bush thickets are
very little on the wing. Here a least bittern
may coo day after day, and season after sea-
son, and it will be half a lifetime before you
see him do it. I have made inquiries far and
near in the likeliest quarters, and have yet
to learn, even at second hand, of any man
who has ever had that good fortune. Once,
for five minutes, I entertained a lively hope
of accomplishing the feat myself, but the

IN THE CAMBRIDGE SWAMP 31

bird was too wary for me ; and a miss is as
good as a mile. No doubt I shall die with-
out the sight.

So the Carolina rail will whistle and the
Virginia rail call the pigs, but it will be a
memorable hour when you detect either of
them in the act. You will hear the sounds
often enough ; I hear them to-day ; and much
less frequently you will see the birds step-
ping with dainty caution along a favorite
runway, or feeding about the edges of their
cover. But to see them utter the familiar
notes, that is another story.

This morning I see on the wing a night
heron (so I call him, without professing abso-
lute certainty), a bittern (flying from one
side of the railroad tracks to the other), and
a little green heron, but no rail of either
species, although I sit still in favorable
places — where at other times I have seen
them — with exemplary patience. In hunt-
ing of this kind, patience must be mixed with
luck. It pleases my imagination to think
what numbers of birds there are all about
me, each busy with its day's work, and not
one of them visible for an instant, even by
chance.

32 THE CLERK OF THE WOODS

I go to the top of a grassy mound, and seat
myself where I have a lengthwise view of a
ditch. Here, ten years ago, more or less, I
saw my first gallinule. We had heard his
outcries for some days (I speak of myself
and two better men), and a visiting New
York ornithologist had told us that they were
probably the work of a gallinule. They came
always from the most inaccessible parts of
the swamp, where it seemed hopeless to wade
in pursuit of the bird, since we wished to see
him alive ; but turning the question over in
my mind, I bethought myself of this low hill-
top, with its command of an open stretch of
water between a broad expanse of cat-tails
and a wood. Hither I came, therefore. If
there was any virtue in waiting, the thing
should be done. And sure enough, in no
very long time out paddled the bird, with
those queer bobbing motions which I was to
grow familiar with afterward — a Florida
gallinule, with a red plate on his forehead.
Again and again I saw him (patience was
easy now), and when I had seen enough —
for that time — and was on my way back to
the railway station, I met the foremost of

IN THE CAMBRIDGE SWAMP 33

New England ornithologists coming down
the track. He was on the same hunt, and
together we returned to the place I had left ;
and together we saw the bird. A week or
two later he found the nest, and a Massa-
chusetts record was established.

This, I say, was ten years ago. To-day
there is no gallinule, or none for me. The
best thing I hear, the most characteristically
swampy, is the odd diminuendo whistle of a
Carolina rail. " We are all here," he says ;
" you ought to come oftener." And I think
I will.

A QUIET AFTERNOON

AFTER running hither and thither in search
of beauty or novelty, try a turn in the near-
est wood. So my good genius whispered to
me just now ; and here I am. I believe it
was good advice.

This venerable chestnut tree, with its
deeply furrowed, shadow-haunted, lichen-
covered bark of soft, lovely grays and gray-
ish greens, is as stately and handsome as
ever. How often I have stopped to admire
it, summer and winter, especially in late
afternoon, when the level sunlight gives it a
beauty beyond the reach of words. Many a
time I have gone out of my way to see it, as
I would have gone to see some remembered
landscape by a great painter.

There is no feeling proud in such com-
pany. Anything that can stand still and
grow, filling its allotted place and contented
to fill it, is enough to put our futile human

A QUIET AFTERNOON 35

restlessness to the blush. The wind has
long ago blown away some of its branches,
but it does not mind. It is busy with its
year's work. I see the young burrs, no
bigger than the end of my little finger.
When the nuts are ripe the tree will let
them fall and think no more about them.
How different from a man ! When he does
a good thing, if by chance he ever does, he
must put his hands behind his ears in hopes
to hear somebody praising him. Mountains
and trees make me humble. I feel like a
poor relation.

The pitch-pines are no longer at their
best estate. They are brightest when we
need their brightness most, in late winter
and early spring. This year, at least, the
summer sun has faded them badly; but
their fragrance is like an elixir. It is one
of the glories of pine needles, one of the
things in which they excel the rest of us,
that they smell sweet, not " in the dust "
exactly, but after they are dead.

A nuthatch in one of the trees calls "Tut,
tut, tut," and is so near me that I hear his
claws scratching over the dry bark. A busy

36 THE CLERK OF THE WOODS

and cheerful body. Just beyond him a scar-
let tanager is posed on a low, leafless twig.
Like the pine leaves, he looks out of condi-
tion. I am sure I have seen brighter ones.
He is silent, but his mate, somewhere in the
oak branches over my head, keeps up an
emphatic chip-cherr, chip-cherr. Yes, I see
her now, and the red one has gone up to
perch at her side. She cocks her head,
looking at me first out of one eye and then
out of the other, and repeats the operation
two or three times, like a puzzled microsco-
pist squinting at a doubtful specimen ; and
all the while she continues to call, though I
know nothing of what she means. Once
her mate approaches too near, and she opens
her bill at him in silence. He understands
the sign and keeps his distance. I admire
his spirit. It is better than taking a city.

The earliest of the yellow gerardias is in
bloom, and a pretty desmodium, also (Z>.
nudiflorum), with a loose raceme of small
pink flowers, like miniature sweet-pea blos-
soms, on a slender leafless stalk. These are
in the wood, amidst the underbrush. As I
come out into a dry, grassy field I find the

A QUIET AFTERNOON 37

meadow-beauty ; an odd creature, with a tan-
gle of long stamens ; bright-colored, showy
in its intention, so to speak, but rather curi-
ous than beautiful, in spite of its name; es-
pecially because the petals have not the grace
to fall when they are done, but hang, with-
ered and discolored, to spoil the grace of
later comers. The prettiest thing about it
all, after the freshly opened first flower, is
the urn-shaped capsule. That, to me, is of
really classic elegance.

Now I have crossed the road and am
seated on a chestnut stump, with my back
against a tree, on the edge of a broad, roll-
ing, closely cropped cattle-pasture, a piece
of genuine New England. Scattered loosely
over it are young, straight, slender-waisted,
shoulder-high cedars, and on my right hand
is a big patch of hardback, growing in tufts
of a dozen stalks each, every one tipped with
an arrow-head of pink blossoms. The whole
pasture is full of sunshine. Down at the
lower end is a long, narrow, irregular-shaped
pond. I cannot see it because of a natural
hedge against the fence-row on my left ; but
somehow the landscape takes an added beauty

38 THE CLERK OF THE WOODS

from the water's presence. The truth is,
perhaps, that I do see it.

High overhead a few barn swallows and
chimney swifts are scaling, each with happy-
sounding twitters after its kind. A jay
screams, but so far off as merely to empha-
size the stillness. Once in a while a song spar-
row pipes ; a cheerful, honest voice. When
there is nothing better to do I look at the
hardback. The spiraeas are a fine set ; many
of them are honored in gardens ; but few are
more to my liking, after all, than this old
friend (and enemy) of my boyhood. Whether
it is really useful as an herb out of which to
make medicinal " tea " I feel no competency
to say, though I have drunk my share of the
decoction. It is not a virulent poison : so
much I feel reasonably sure of. Hardhack,
thoroughwort, and pennyroyal, — with the o
left out, — these were the family herbalist's
trinity in my day. Now, in these better
times of pellets and homoeopathic allopathy,
children hardly know what medicine-taking
means. We remember, we of an older gen-
eration. " Pinch your nose and swallow it,
and I will give you a cent." Does that

A QUIET AFTERNOON 39

sound vulgar in the nice ears of modern
readers ? Well, we earned our money.

Now an oriole's clear August fife is heard.
A short month, and he will be gone. And
hark ! A most exquisite strain by one of the
best of field sparrows. I have never found
an adjective quite good enough for that bit
of common music. I believe there is none.
Nor can I think of any at this moment with
which to express the beauty of this summer
afternoon. Fairer weather was never seen
in any corner of the world. Four crows fly
over the field in company. The hindmost of
them has a hard time with a redwing, which
strikes again and again. " Give it to him ! "
say I. Between crow and man I am for
the crow; but between the crow and the
smaller bird I am always for the smaller
bird. Whether I am right or wrong is not
the question here. This is not my day for
arguing, but for feeling.

How pretty the hardhack is ! Though it
stands up rather stiff, it feels every breath
of wind. Its beauty grows on me as I look,
which is enough of itself to make this a pro-
fitable afternoon. There is no beauty so
welcome as new beauty in an old friend.

40 THE CLERK OF THE WOODS

A kingbird, one of two or three here-
about, comes to sit on a branch over my
head. He is full of twitters, which sound
as if they might be full of meaning ; but
there is no interpreter. He, too, like the
oriole, is on his last month. I have great
respect for kingbirds. A phrebe shows her-
self in the hedge, flirting her tail airily as
she alights. " Pretty well, I thank you,"
she might be saying. Every kind of bird
has motions of its own, no doubt, if we look
sharply enough. The phoebe's may be seen
of all men.

I had meant to go out and sit awhile
under the spreading white oak yonder, on
the upper side of the pasture, near the
huckleberry patches; but why should I?
Well enough is well enough, I say to my-
self; and it sounds like good philosophy,
in weather like this. It may never set the
millpond on fire ; but then, I don't wish to
set it on fire.

And although I go on mentioning par-
ticulars, a flower, a bird, a bird's note, it
is none of these that I am really enjoying.
It is the day — the brightness and the quiet,

A QUIET AFTERNOON 41

and the comfort of a perfect temperature.
Great is weather. No man is to blame for
talking about it, unless his talk is twaddle.
Out-of-door people know that few things
are more important. A quail's whistle, a
thought too strenuous, perhaps, for such an
hour, — a breezy quoit, — breaks my dis-
quisition none too soon ; else I might have
been brought in guilty under my own rul-
ing.

As I get over the fence, on my start
homeward, I notice a thrifty clump of choke-
cherry shrubs on the other side of the way,
hung with ripening clusters, every cherry a
jewel as the sun strikes it. They may hang
" for all me," as schoolboys say. My coun-
try-bred taste is pretty catholic in matters of
this kind, but it extends not to chokecherries.
They should be eaten by campaign orators
check upon fluency.

POPULAR WOODPECKERS

THERE are two birds in Newton, the pre-
sent summer, that have perhaps attracted
more attention than any pair of Massachu-
setts birds ever attracted before; more, by
a good deal, I imagine, than was paid to a
pair of crows that, for some inexplicable
reason, built a nest and reared a brood of
young a year ago in a back yard on Beacon
Hill, in Boston. I refer to a pair of red-
headed woodpeckers that have a nest (at
this moment containing young birds nearly
ready to fly) in a tall dead stump standing
on the very edge of the sidewalk, like a
lamp-post. The road, it should be said, is
technically unfinished; one of those "pri-
vate ways," not yet " accepted " by the city
and therefore legally " dangerous," though
in excellent condition and freely traveled.
If the birds had intended to hold public
receptions daily, — as they have done with-

POPULAR WOODPECKERS 43

out intending it, — they could hardly have
chosen a more convenient spot. The stump,
which is about twenty-five feet in height,
stands quite by itself in the middle of a
small open space, with a wooded amphithe-
atrical knoll at its back, while on the other
side it is overlooked by the windows of sev-
eral houses, the nearest almost within stone's
throw. So conspicuous is it, indeed, that
whenever I go there, as I do once in two or
three days, to see how matters are coming
on, I am almost sure to see the birds far in
advance of my arrival.

They are always there. I heard of them
through the kindness of a stranger, on the
26th of June. His letter reached me (hi
Boston) at two o'clock in the afternoon, and
at half past three I was admiring the birds.
It cannot be said that they welcomed my at-
tentions. From that day to this they have
treated me as an intruder. " You have
stayed long enough." " We are not at home
to-day." " Come now, old inquisitive, go
about your business." Things like these
they repeat to me by the half hour. Then,
in audible asides, they confide to each other

44 THE CLERK OF THE WOODS

what they think of me. " Watch him," says
one at last. " I must be off now after a
few grubs." And away she goes, while her
mate continues to inform me that I am a
busybody, a meddler in other birds' matters,
a common nuisance, a duffer, and every-
thing else that is disreputable. All this is
unpleasant. I feel as I imagine a baseball
umpire feels when the players call him a
" gump " and the crowd yells " robber ; " but
like the umpire, I bear it meekly and hold
my ground. A good conscience is a strong
support.

In sober truth I have been scrupulously
careful of the birds' feelings ; or, if not of
their feelings, at least of their safety. I
began, indeed, by being almost ludicrously
careful. The nest was a precious secret, I
thought. I must guard it as a miser guards
his treasure. So, whenever a foot-passenger
happened along the highway at my back, I
made pretense of being concerned with any-
thing in the world rather than with that
lamp-post of a stump. What was Hecuba
to me, or I to Hecuba ? I pretty soon
learned, however, that such precautions

POPULAR WOODPECKERS 45

were unnecessary. The whole town, or at
least the whole neighborhood, was aware of
the birds' presence. Every school-teacher
in the city, one man told me, had been there
with his or her pupils to see them. So
popular is ornithology in these modern days.
He had seen thirty or forty persons about
the place at once, he said, all on the same
errand. "Look at the bank there," he
added. " They have worn it smooth by sit-
ting on it."

I have not been fortunate enough to as-
sist at any such interesting " function," but
I have had plenty of evidence to prove the
truth of what I said just now — that the
birds and their nest have become matters
of common knowledge. On my third visit,
just as I was ready to come away, a boy
turned the corner on a bicycle, holding his
younger sister in front of him.

" Are they here ? " he inquired as he dis-
mounted.

"Who?" said I.

" The red-headed woodpeckers," he an-
swered.

He had known about the nest for some

46 THE CLERK OF THE WOODS

weeks. Oh, yes, everybody knew it. So-
and-so found it (I forget the name), and
pretty soon it was all over Newtonville. A
certain boy, whose wretched name also I
have forgotten, had talked about shooting
one of the birds ; he could get a dollar and
a half for it, he professed ; but policeman
Blank had said that a dollar and a half
would n't do a boy much good if he got hold
of him. He — my informant, a bright-faced,
manly fellow of eleven or twelve — had
brought his younger sister down to see the
birds. He thought they were very hand-
some. " There ! " said he, as one of them
perched on a dead tree near by, " look ! " and
he knelt behind the little girl and pointed
over her shoulder till she got the direction.
After all, I thought, a boy is almost as pretty
as a woodpecker. His father and mother
were Canadians, and had told him that birds
of this kind were common where they used
to live. Then he lifted his sister upon the
wheel, jumped up behind her, and away they
trundled.

At another time an older boy came along,
also on a bicycle, and stopped for a minute's

POPULAR WOODPECKERS 47

chat. He, too, was in the secret, and had
been for a good while. " Pretty nice birds,"
his verdict was. And at a later visit a man
with his dog suddenly appeared. "Hand-
some, aren't they?" he began, by way of
good-morning. He had seen one of them as
long ago as when snow was on the ground,
but he did n't discover the nest. He was
looking in the wrong place. Since then he
had spent hours in watching the birds, and
believed that he could tell the female's voice
from the male's. " There ! " said he ; " that 's
the mother's call." He was acquainted with
all the birds, and could name them all, he
said, simply by their notes ; and he told me
many things about them. There were gros-
beaks here. Did I know them ? And tana-
gers, also. Did I know them ? And another
bird that he was especially fond of ; a beauti-
ful singer, though it never sang after the
early part of the season ; the indigo-bird, its
name was. Did I know that ?

As will readily be imagined, we had a good
session (one does n't fall in with so congenial
a spirit every day in the week), though it
ran a little too exclusively to questions and

48 THE CLERK OF THE WOODS

answers, perhaps ; for I, too, am a Yankee.
He was the man who told me about the
throngs of sightseers that came here. The
very publicity of the thing had been the
birds' salvation, he was inclined to believe.
The entire community had taken them under
its protection, and with so many windows
overlooking the place, and the police on the
alert (I had noticed a placard near by, signed
by the chief, laying down the law and calling
upon all good citizens to help him enforce it),
it would have been hard for anybody to med-
dle with the nest without coming to grief.
At all events, the birds had so far escaped
molestation, and the young, as I have said,
would soon be on the wing. One of them
was thrusting its full-grown, wide-awake,
eager-looking, mouse-colored head out of the
aperture as we talked.

" But why so much excitement over a fam-
ily of woodpeckers ? " some reader may be
asking. Rarity, my friend ; rarity and bril-
liant feathers. So far as appears from the
latest catalogue of Massachusetts birds, this
Newton nest is one of a very small number
ever found in the State, and the very first

POPULAR WOODPECKERS 49

one ever recorded from the eastern half of
it.1 Put that fact with the further one that
the birds are among the showiest in North
America, real marvels of beauty, — splendid
colors, splendidly laid on, — and it is plain
to see why a city full of nature lovers should
have welcomed this pair with open arms and
watched over their welfare as one watches
over the most honored of guests. For my
part, I should not think it inappropriate if
the mayor were to order the firing of a salute
and the ringing of bells on the happy morn-
ing when the young birds take wing. Tons
of gunpowder have been burnt, before now,
with less reason.

1 The formal record will be found in the Auk, voL
xviii. p. 394.

LATE SUMMER NOTES

ON this bright morning I am passing fields
and kitchen gardens that I have not seen
since a month ago. Then the fields were
newly mown stubble-fields, such as all men
who knew anything of the luxury of a bare-
footed boyhood must have in vivid remem-
brance. (How gingerly, with what a sudden
slackening of the pace, we walked over them,
if circumstances made such a venture neces-
sary,— in pursuit of a lost ball, or on our
way to the swimming-hole, — setting the
foot down softly and stepping high I I can
see the action at this minute, as plainly as I
see yonder fence-post.) Now the first thing
that strikes the eye is the lively green of the
aftermath. It looks as soft as a velvet car-
pet. I remember what I used to hear in
haying time, that cattle like the second crop
best. I should think they would.

Grass is man's patient friend. Directly

LATE SUMMER NOTES 51

or indirectly, we may say, he subsists upon
it. Nay, the Scripture itself declares as
much, in one of its most familiar texts. It
is good to see it so quick to recover from the
cruel work of the scythe, so responsive to the
midsummer rains, its color so deep, its leaves
so full of sap. It is this spirit of hopeful-
ness, this patience under injury, that makes
shaven lawns possible.

As to the beauty of grass, no man appre-
ciates it, I suppose, unless he has lived where
grass does not grow. " When I go back to
New England," said an exile in Florida, " I
will ask for no garden. Let me have grass
about the house, and I can do without roses."

The century ends with an apple year ; and
every tree is in the fashion. The old, the
decrepit, the solitary, not one of them all but
got the word in season ; as there is no woman
in Christendom but learns somehow, before
it is too late, whether sleeves are to be worn
loose or tight. Along the roadside, in the
swamp, in the orchard, everywhere the story
is the same. Apple trees are all freemasons.
This hollow shell of a trunk, with one last
battered limb keeping it alive, received its
cue with the rest.

52 THE CLERK OF THE WOODS

In the orchard, where the trees are younger
and more pliable, a man would hardly know
them for the same he saw there in May and
June; so altered are they in shape, so
smoothly rounded at the top, so like Babylo-
nian willows in the droop of the branches.
Baldwins are turning red — greenish red —
and russets are already rusty. " Yes," says
the owner of the orchard, " and much good
will it do me." Apples are an " aggravating
crop," he declares. " First there are none ;
and then there are so many that you cannot
sell them." Human nature is never satis-
fied ; and, for one, I think it seldom has rea-
son to be.

A bobolink, which seems to be somewhere
overhead, drops a few notes in passing. " I
am off," he says. " Sorry to go, but I know
where there is a rice-field." From the or-
chard come the voices of bluebirds and king-
birds. Not a bird is in song ; and what is
more melancholy, the road and the fields are
thick with English sparrows.

Now I stop at the smell of growing corn,
which is only another kind of grass, though
the farmer may not suspect the fact, and

LATE SUMMER NOTES 53

perhaps would not believe you if you told him
of it ; more than he would believe you if you
told him that clover is not grass. He and
his cow know better. A queer set these
botanists, who get their notions from books !
Corn or grass, here grow some acres of it,
well tasseled ("all tosselled out"), with
the wind stirring the leaves to make them
shine. Does the odor, with which the breeze
is loaded, come from the blossoms, or from
the substance of the plant itself ? A new
question for me. I climb the fence and put
my nose to one of the tassels. No, it is not
in them, I think. It must be in the stalk
and leaves ; and I adopt this opinion the
more readily because the odor itself — the
memory of which is part of every country
boy's inheritance — is like that of a vegetable
rather than of a flower, a smell rather than
a perfume. I seem to recall that the stalk
smelled just so when we cut it into lengths
for cornstalk fiddles ; and the nose, as every-
one must have remarked, has a good memory,
for the reason, probably, that it is so near
the brain.

I turn the corner, and go from the garden

54: THE CLERK OF THE WOODS

to the wild. First, however, I rest for a few
minutes under a wide-branching oak opposite
the site of a vanished house. You would
know there had been a house here at some
time, even if you did not see the cellar-hole,
by the old maid's pinks along the fence.
How fresh they look ! And how becomingly
they blush ! They are worthy of their name.
Age cannot wither them. Less handsome
than carnations, if you will, but faithful,
home-loving souls ; not requiring to be waited
upon, but given rather to waiting upon others.
Like mayweed and catnip, they are what I
have heard called " folksy plants ; " though on
second thought I should rather say " homey."
There is something of the cat about them ;
a kind of local constancy ; they stay by the
old place, let the people go where they will.
Probably they would grow in front of a new
house, — even a Queen Anne cottage, so
called, — if necessity were kid upon them,
but who could imagine it? It would be
shameful to subject them to such indignity.
They are survivals, livers in the past, lovers
of things as they were, charter members, I
should say, of the Society of Colonial Dames.

LATE SUMMER NOTES 55

As I come to the edge of the swamp I see
a leaf move, and by squeaking draw into
sight a redstart. The pretty creature peeps
at me furtively, wondering what new sort of
man it can be that makes noises of that kind.
To all appearance she is very desirous not to
be seen ; yet she spreads her tail every few
seconds so as to display its bright markings.
Probably the action has grown to be habitual
and, as it were, automatic. A bird may be
unconsciously coquettish, I suppose, as well
as a woman or a man. It is a handsome tail,
anyhow.

Somewhere just behind me a red-eyed
vireo is singing in a peculiar manner; re-
peating his hackneyed measure with all his
customary speed, — forty or fifty times a
minute, — but with no more than half his
customary voice, as if his thoughts were
elsewhere. I wish he would sing so always.
It would be an easy way of increasing his
popularity.

Not far down the road are three roughly
dressed men, — of the genus tramp, if I read
the signs aright, — coming toward me ; and
I notice with pleasure that when they reach

56 THE CLERK OF THE WOODS

the narrow wooden bridge over the brook
they turn aside, as by a common impulse,
to lean over the rail and look down into
the water. When I get there I shall do
the same thing. So will every man that
comes along, unless he happens to be on
" business."

Running water is one of the universal
parables, appealing to something primitive
and ineradicable in human nature. Day
and night it preaches — sermons without
words. It is every man's friend. The most
stolid find it good company. For that rea-
son, largely, men love to fish. They are
poets without knowing it. They have never
read a line of verse since they outgrew
Mother Goose; they never consciously ad-
mire a landscape; they care nothing for a
picture, unless it is a caricature, or tells a
story ; but they cannot cross moving water
without feeling its charm.

Well, in that sense of the word, I too am
a poet. The tramps and I have met and
passed each other, and I am on the bridge.
The current is almost imperceptible (like
the passage of time), and the black water

LATE SUMMER NOTES 67

is all a tangle of cresses and other plants.
Lucky bugs dart hither and thither upon
its surface, quick to start and quick to stop
(quick to quarrel, also, — like butterflies,
— so that two of them can hardly meet
without a momentary set-to), full of life,
and, for anything that I know, full of
thought; -true poets, perhaps, in ways of
their own ; for why should man be so nar-
row-minded as to assume that his way is of
necessity the only one ?

On either side of the brook, as it winds
through the swamp, are acres of the stately
Joe Pye weed, or purple boneset, one of the
tallest of herbs. I am beginning to think
well of its color, — which is something like
what ladies know as " crushed strawberry,"
if I mistake not, — though I used to look
upon it rather disdainfully and call it faded.
The plant would be better esteemed in that
regard, I dare say, if it did not so often in-
vite comparison with the cardinal flower. I
note it as one of the favorites of the milk-
weed butterfly.

Here on the very edge of the brook is the
swamp loosestrife, its curving stems all reach-

68 THE CLERK OF THE WOODS

ing for the water, set with rosy bloom. My
attention is drawn to it by the humming of
bees, a busy, contented, content-producing
sound. How different from the hum of the
factory that I passed an hour ago, through
the open windows of which I saw men hur-
rying over " piece-work," every stroke like
every other, every man a machine, or part
of a machine, rather, for doing one thing. I
wonder whether the dreariness of the modern
" factory system " may not have had some-
thing to do with the origin and rapid devel-
opment of our nineteenth-century breed of
peripatetic thieves and beggars.

Above the music of the bees I hear, of a
sudden, a louder hum. " A hummingbird,"
I say, and turn to look at a jewel-weed. Yes,
the bird is there, trying the blossoms one
after another. Then she drops to rest upon
an alder twig (always a dead one) directly
under my nose, where I see her darting out
her long tongue, which flashes in the sun-
light. I say " she." She has a whitish
throat, and is either a female or a male of
the present season. Did any one ever see a
hummingbird without a thrill of pleasure?
Not I.

LATE SUMMER NOTES 69

As I go on I note, half sadly, half gladly,
some tokens of waning summer ; especially
a few first blossoms of two of the handsom-
est of our blue asters, Icevis and patens.
Soon the dusty goldenrod will be out, and
then, whatever the almanac-makers may say,
autumn will have come. Every dry road-
side will publish the fact.

WOOD SILENCE

THE scarcity of birds and bird music, of
which I spoke a week ago, still continues.
The ear begins to feel starved. A tanager's
chip-cherr, or the prattle of a company of
chickadees, is listened to more eagerly than
the wood thrush's most brilliant measures
were in June and July. Since September
came in (it is now the 8th) I have heard
the following birds in song: robins, half a
dozen times, perhaps, in snatches only; a
Maryland yellow-throat, once ; warbling vir-
eos, occasionally, in village elms ; yellow-
throated vireos, rarely, but more frequently
than the last ; a song sparrow (only one !),
amusing himself with a low-voiced, inarticu-
late warble, rather humming than singing ;
an oriole, blowing a few whistles, on the 4th ;
a phffibe, on a single occasion ; wood pewees,
almost daily, oftener than all the foregoing

WOOD SILENCE 61

Except a single water thrush, on the first
day of the month, I have seen no land bird
that could be set down with certainty as a
migrant, and in the eight days I have listed
but thirty-seven species. And of this num-
ber twelve are represented in my notes by a
single individual only. My walks have been
short, it is fair to say, but they have taken
me into good places. I could spin a long
chapter on the birds I have not seen ; but
perhaps the best thing I could do, writing
merely as an ornithologist, would be to make
the week's record in two words : " No quo-
rum."

My last hummingbird (but I hope for
others before the month ends) was seen on
the 2d. He was about a bed of tall cannas
in a neighbor's dooryard, thrusting his tongue
into the flowers, one after another, and I
went near and focused my opera-glass upon
him, taking my fill of his pretty feathers and
prettier movements. It was really the best
music of the week. The sun was on his
emerald back and wings, making them shine.

One thing that pleased me, as it always
does, was his address in flying backwards.

62 THE CLERK OF THE WOODS

Into the flower he would dart, stay a longer
or shorter time, as he found occasion, and
then like a flash draw out and back away,
his wings all the while beating themselves to
a film of light. I wonder if any other of
our common hovering birds — the kingbird,
for example, or the kingfisher — can match
the hummer in this regard.

A second thing that interested me was his
choice of blossoms. My neighbor's canna
bed is made up in about equal parts of two
kinds of plants, one with red blossoms, the
other with yellow. The hummer went to
the red flowers only. He must have probed
a hundred, I should say. As for the yellow
ones, he seemed not to know they were there.
Now, was not this a plain case of color pre-
ference? It looked so, surely; but I re-
membered that hummingbirds are persistent
haunters of the yellow blossoms of the jewel-
weed, and concluded that something besides
a difference of color must account for what
appeared to be this fellow's well-considered
line of conduct. It is hard work, but as far
as possible, let us abstain from hasty gener-
alizations.

WOOD SILENCE 63

There is no music sweeter than wood si-
lence. I am enjoying it now. It is not
strictly silence, though it is what we call by
that name. There is no song. No one
speaks. The wind is not heard in the
branches. But there is a nameless some-
thing in the air, an inaudible noise, or an
audible stillness, of which you become con-
scious if you listen for it ; a union of fine
sounds, some of which, as you grow inwardly
quiet, you can separate from the rest — beats
of distant crickets, few and faint, and a hum
as of tiny wings. Now an insect passes
near, leaving a buzz behind him, but for a
second only. Then, before you can hear it,
almost, a frog out in the swamp yonder has
let slip a quick, gulping, or string-snapping
syllable. Once a small bird's wings are
heard, just heard and no more. Far over-
head a goldfinch passes, with rhythmic calls,
smooth and soft, not so much sounds as a
more musical kind of silence.

The morning sun strikes aslant through
the wood, illuminating the trunks of the
trees, especially a cluster of white birches.
A lovely sisterhood ! I can hardly take my

64 THE CLERK OF THE WOODS

eyes from them. In general all the leaves
are motionless, but now and then a tree, or
it may be a group of two or three at once, is
jostled for an instant by a touch too soft for
my coarser human apprehension. " Dee-dee"
says a titmouse ; " Here," answers a flicker.
But both speak under their breath, as if they
felt the spell of the hour. Listen ! was that
a hyla or a bird? There is no telling, so
elusive and so distant-seeming was the sound.
And anon it has ceased altogether.

Now, for the smallest fraction of a second,
I see the flash of a moving shadow. The
flicker's, perhaps. Yes, for presently he calls
as in spring, but only for four or five notes.
If it were April, with the vernal inspiration
in his throat, there would be four or five
times as many, and all the woods would be
ringing. And now the breeze freshens, and
the leaves make a chorus. No thrush's song
could be sweeter. It is not a rustle. There
is no word for it, unless we call it a murmur,
a rumor. Even while we are trying to name
it, it is gone. Leaves are true Friends, they
speak only as the spirit moves. " Wicker,
wicker," says the woodpecker, and his voice
is in perfect tune with the silence.

WOOD SILENCE 65

How still and happy the boulders look,
with friendly bushes and ferns gathered
about them, and parti-colored lichens giving
them tones of beauty ! Men call them dead.
" Dead as a stone," has even passed into a
proverb. "Stone dead," we say. But I
doubt. They would smile, inwardly, I think
to hear us. We have small idea, the wisest
of us, what we mean by life and death. Men
who hurry to and fro, scraping money to-
gether or chasing a ball, consider themselves
alive. The trees, and even the stones, know
better.

Yes, that is a crow, cawing ; but far, far
off. Distance softens sound as it softens
the landscape, and as time, which is only
another kind of distance, softens grief. A
cricket at my elbow plays his tune, irreg-
ularly and slowly. The low temperature
slackens his tempo. Now he is done. There
is only the stirring of leaves. Some of the
birch leaves, I see, are already turning yel-
low, and once in a while, as the wind whis-
pers to one of them, it lets go its hold and
drops. " Good-by," I seem to hear it say ;
" my summer is done." How tenderly the

66 THE CLERK OF THE WOODS

air lets it down, as loving arms lower a
child to its burial. Yet the trees are still
happy. And so am I. The wood has blessed
me. I have sensations, but no thoughts. It
is for this that I have been sitting here at
this silent concert. I wish for nothing.
The best that such an hour can do for us is
to put us into a mood of desirelessness, of
complete passivity ; such a mood as mystics
covet for a permanent possession; a state
of surrender, selflessness, absorption in the
infinite. I love the feeling. All the trees
have it, I think.

So I sit in their shadow, my eyes return-
ing again and again to those dazzling white
birch boles, where loose shreds of filmy bark
twinkle as the breeze and the sunlight play
upon them. Once two or three chickadees
come into the branches over my head and
whisper things to each other. Very simple
their utterances sound, but perhaps if I
could understand them I should know more
than all the mystics.

SOUTHWARD BOUND

ALTHOUGH it is the 20th of September, the
autumnal migration of birds, as seen in this
neighborhood, is still very light. Robins
are scattered throughout the woods in loose
flocks — a state of things not to be wit-
nessed in summer or winter ; the birds ris-
ing singly from the ground as the walker
disturbs them, sometimes all silent, at other
times all cackling noisily. Chickadees, too,
are in flocks, cheerful companies, good to
meet in any weather ; behaving just as they
will continue to do until the nesting season
again breaks the happy assembly up into
happier pairs.

My wood pewee — a particular bird in a
grove near by — whistled pretty constantly
till the 17th, and a warbling vireo was still
true to his name on the 19th. I have heard
no yellow-throated vireos since the 6th, and
conclude that they must have taken their

68 THE CLERK OF THE WOODS

departure. May joy go with them. This
morning, for the first time in several weeks,
a pine warbler was trilling. Song sparrows
have grown numerous within a few days, but
are almost entirely silent. One fellow sang
his regular song — not his confused autum-
nal warble — on the 19th. I had not heard
it before since the month opened.

No blackpoll warblers showed themselves
with me till the 18th, though I had word of
their presence elsewhere a few days earlier.
On that day I saw three ; yesterday and to-
day have shown but one bird each. The
movement is barely begun.

I should like to know how common it is
for blackpolls to sing on their southward
migration. Eleven years ago, in September,
1889, they came very early, — or I had the
good fortune to see them very early, — and
on the 4th and 5th of the month a few were
" in full song," so my notes record, " quite
as long and full as in May." I had never
heard them sing before in autumn, nor have
I ever had that pleasure since. Neither
have I ever again seen them so early. Prob-
ably the two things — the song and the

SOUTHWARD BOUND 69

exceptional date — were somehow connected.
At the time, I took the circumstance as an
indication that the adult males migrate in
advance of the great body of the species ;
and I fancied that, having detected them
once thus early and thus musical, I should
be likely to repeat the experience. If I am
ever to do so, however, I must be about it.
Eleven years is a large slice out of an adult
man's remaining allowance.

On the 18th I found a single olive-backed
thrush, silent, in company with a flock of
robins, or in the same grove with them — a
White Mountain bird, thrice welcome ; and
this morning a few white-throated sparrows
appeared. The first one that I saw — the
only one, in fact — was a young fellow, and
as I caught sight of him facing me, with his
clear white throat, and his breast prettily
streaked, with a wash of color across it, I
was half in doubt what to call him. While
I was taking observations upon his plumage,
trying to make him look like himself, he
began to chip, as if to help me out, and a
second one unseen fell to singing near by;
a very feeble and imperfect rendering of the

70 THE CLERK OF THE WOODS

dear old tune, but well marked by the " Pea-
body" triplets. It was a true touch of
autumn, a voice from the hills.

Shortly before this I had spent a long
time in watching the actions of a Lincoln
finch. He was feeding upon Koman worm-
wood seeds by the roadside, in company with
two or three chipping sparrows ; very meek
and quiet in his demeanor, and happily not
disposed to resent my inquisitiveness, which
I took pains to render as little offensive as
possible. I had not seen the like of him
since May, and have seen so few of his race
at any time that every new one still makes
for me an hour of agreeable excitement.

In the same neighborhood an indigo-bird
surprised me with a song. He was as badly
out of voice as the white-throat, but his spirit
was good, and he sang several times over.
One would never have expected music from
him, to look at his plumage. The indigo
color was largely moulted away — only the
rags of it left. It was really pitiful to see
him ; so handsome a coat, now nothing but
shreds and patches. Most likely he was
not a traveler from farther north, but a lin-

SOUTHWARD BOUND 71

gering summer resident of our own, as I
remember to have seen three birds of his
name in the same spot fifteen days ago. It
would be interesting to know whether bright
creatures of this kind do not feel humiliated
and generally unhappy when they find their
beauty dropping away from them, like leaves
from the branch, as the summer wanes.

The best bird of the month, so far, — bet-
ter even than the Lincoln finch, — was a
Philadelphia vireo, happened upon all unex-
pectedly on the 17th. I had stopped, as I
always do in passing, to look down into a
certain dense thicket of shrubbery, through
which a brook runs, a favorite resort for
birds of many kinds. At first the place
seemed to be empty, but in answer to some
curiosity-provoking noises on my part a
water thrush started up to balance himself
on a branch directly under my nose, and the
next moment a vireo hopped into full sight
just beyond him ; a vireo with plain back
and wings, with no dark lines bordering the
crown, and having the under parts of a bright
yellow. He was most obliging; indeed, he
could hardly have been more so, unless he

72 THE CLERK OF THE WOODS

had sung for me, and that was something
not fairly to be expected. For a good while
he kept silence. Then, in response to a jay's
scream, he began snarling, or complaining,
after the family manner. I enjoyed the sight
of him as long as I could stay (he was the
second one I had ever seen with anything
like certainty), and when I returned, an
hour later, he was still there, and still will-
ing to be looked at.

And then, to heighten my pleasure, a
rose-breasted grosbeak, invisible, but not far
away, broke into a strain of most entrancing
music; with no more than half his spring
voice, to be sure, but with all his May sweet-
ness of tone and inflection. Again and
again he sang, as if he were too happy to
stop. I had heard nothing of the kind for
weeks, and shall probably hear nothing more
for months. It was singing to be remem-
bered, like Sembrich's "Casta Diva," or
Nilsson's "I know that my Kedeemer
liveth."

Scarlet tanagers are still heard and seen
occasionally, — one was calling to-day, — but
none of them in tune, or wearing so much as

SOUTHWARD BOUND 73

a single scarlet feather. Here and there,
too, as we wander about the woods, we meet
— once in two or three days, perhaps — a
lonesome-acting, silent red-eyed vireo. A
great contrast there is between such solitary
lingerers and the groups of gossiping chicka-
dees that one falls in with in the same
places; so merry-hearted, so bubbling over
with high spirits, so ready to be neighborly.
When I whistle to them, and they whistle
back, I feel myself befriended.

Within a few days we must have the
grand September influx of warblers — crowds
of blackpolls, myrtles, black-throated greens,
and many more. For two months yet the
procession will be passing.

FOUE DREAMERS

I REMEMBER the first man I ever saw sit-
ting still by himself out of doors. What his
name was I do not know. I never knew.
He was a stranger, who came to visit in our
village when I was perhaps ten years old. I
had crossed a field, and gone over a low hill
(not so low then as now), and there, in the
shade of an apple tree, I beheld this stranger,
not fishing, nor digging, nor eating an ap-
ple, nor picking berries, nor setting snares,
but sitting still. It was almost like seeing a
ghost. I doubt if I was ever the same boy
afterward. Here was a new kind of man.
I wondered if he was a poet ! Even then I
think I had heard that poets sometimes acted
strangely, and saw things invisible to others'
ken.

I should not have been surprised, I sup-
pose, to have found a man looking at a pic-
ture, some " nice," high-colored " chromo,"

FOUR DREAMERS 76

such as was a fashionable parlor ornament in
our rural neighborhood, where there was more
theology to the square foot (and no preacher
then extant with orthodoxy strait enough to
satisfy it, though some could still make the
blood curdle) than there was of art or poetry
to the square acre ; but to be looking at Nat
Shaw's hayfield and the old unpainted house
beyond — that marked the stranger at once
as not belonging in the ranks of common
men. If he was not a poet, he must be at
least a scholar. Perhaps he was going to be
a minister, for he seemed too young to be one
already. A minister had to think, of course
(so I thought then), else how could he
preach ? and perhaps this man was meditating
a sermon. I fancied I should like to hear a
sermon that had been studied out of doors.

Times have changed with me. Now I sit
out of doors myself, and by myself, and look
for half an hour together at a tree, or a
bunch of trees, or a lazy brook, or a stretch
of green meadow. And I know that such
things can be enjoyed by one who is neither
a poet nor a preacher, but just a quite ordi-
nary, uneducated mortal, who happens, by

76 THE CLERK OF THE WOODS

the grace of God, to have had his eyes opened
to natural beauty and his heart made sen-
sitive to the delights of solitude. I have
learned that it is possible to enjoy scenery at
home as well as abroad, — scenery without
mountains or waterfalls ; scenery that no
tourist would call "fine;" a bit of green
valley, an ancient apple orchard, a woodland
vista, an acre of marsh, a cattle pasture. In
fact, I have observed that painters choose
quiet subjects like these oftener than any of
the more exceptional and stupendous mani-
festations of nature. Perhaps it is because
such subjects are easier ; but I suspect not.
I suspect, indeed, that they are harder, and
are preferred because, to the painter's eye,
they are more permanently beautiful.

At this very moment I am looking at a
patch of meadow inclosing a shallow pool of
standing water, over the surface of which a
high wind is chasing little waves. A few
low alders are near it, and the grass is green
all about. That of itself is a sight to make
a man happy. For the world just now is
consumed with drought. All the uplands are
sere, and every roadside bush is begrimed

FOUR DREAMERS 77

with dust. I have come through the woods
to this convenient knoll on purpose to find re-
lief from the prevailing desolation — to rest
my eyes upon green grass. For the eye loves
green grass as well, almost, as the throat loves
cold water.

Even in my boyish country neighborhood,
though nobody, or nobody that I knew
(which may have been a very different mat-
ter), did what I am now doing, there were
some, I think (one or two, at least), who in
their own way indulged much the same tastes
that I have come to felicitate myself upon
possessing. I remember one man, dead long
since, who was continually walking the fields
and woods, always with a spaniel at his heels,
alone except for that company. He often
carried a gun, and in autumn he snared par-
tridges (how I envied him his skill !) ; but I
believe, as I look back, that best and first of
all he must have loved the woods and the si-
lence. He was supposed to have his faults.
No doubt he had. I have since discovered
that most men are in the same category. I
believe he used to " drink," as our word was
then. But I think now that I should have

78 THE CLERK OF THE WOODS

liked to know him, and should have found
him congenial, if I had been mature enough,
and could have got below the protective crust
which naturally grows over a man whose
ways of life and thought are different from
those of all the people about him. I have
little question that when he was out of the
sight of the world he was accustomed to sit as
I do to-day, and look and look and dream.

One thing he did not dream of, — that a
boy to whom he had never spoken would be
thinking of him forty years after he had
taken his last ramble and snared his last
grouse.

"An idler," said his busier neighbors,
though he earned his own living and paid
his own scot.

" A misspent life," said the clergy, though
he harmed no one.

But who can tell ? " Who knoweth the
interpretation of a thing ? " Perhaps his,
also, was — for him — a good philosophy.
As one of the ancients said, " A man's mind
is wont to tell him more than seven men that
sit upon a tower." If we are not born alike,
why should we be bound to live alike ? "A

FOUR DREAMERS 79

handful with quietness " is not so bad a por-
tion.

Yes, but time is precious. Time once past
never returns.

True.

We must make the best of it, therefore.

True.

By making more shoes.

Nay, that is not so certain.

The sun is getting low. Longer and
longer tree-shadows come creeping over the
grass, making the light beyond them so much
the brighter and lovelier. The oak leaves
shimmer as the wind twists the branches.
The green aftermath is of all exquisite shades.
A beautiful bit of the world. The meadow
is like a cup. For an hour I have been
drinking life out of it.

Now I will return home by a narrow
path, well- worn, but, barely wide enough for
a man's steps ; a path that nobody uses, so
far as I know, except myself. Till within
a year or twp it belonged to a hermit, who
kept it in the neatest possible condition.
That was his chief employment. His path
was the apple of his eye. He was as jealous

80 THE CLERK OF THE WOODS

over it as the most fastidious of village
householders is over his front-yard lawn.
Not a pebble, nor so much as an acorn, must
disfigure it. Fallen twigs were his special
abhorrence, though he treated them hand-
somely. Little piles or stacks of them were
scattered at short intervals along the way,
neatly corded up, every stick in line. I no-
ticed these mysterious accumulations before
I had ever seen the maker of them, and won-
dered not a little who could have been to so
much seemingly aimless trouble. At first
I imagined that some one must have laid
the wood together with a view to carrying it
home for the kitchen stove. But the bits
were too small, no bigger round, many of
them, than a man's little finger; not even
Goody Blake could have thought such things
worth pilfering for firewood ; and besides, it
was plain that many of them had lain where
they were over at least one winter.

The affair remained a riddle until I saw
the man himself. This I did but a few
times, a long way apart, and always at a
little distance. Generally his eyes were fas-
tened on the ground. Sometimes he had a

FOUR DREAMERS 81

stick in his hand, and was brushing leaves
and other litter out of the path. Perhaps
he had married a model housekeeper in his
youth, and had gone mad over the spring
cleaning. He always saw me before I could
get within easy speaking range ; and he had
the true woodman's knack of making himself
suddenly invisible. Sometimes I was almost
ready to believe that he had dropped into
the ground. Evidently he did not mean to
be talked with. Perhaps he feared that I
should ask impertinent questions. More
likely he thought me crazy. If not, why
should I be wandering alone about the woods
to no purpose ? I had no path to keep in
order.

And perhaps I am a little crazy. Medi-
cal men insist upon it that the milder forms
of insanity are much more nearly universal
than is commonly supposed. Perfectly sound
minds, I understand them to intimate, are
quite as rare as perfectly sound bodies. At
that rate there cannot be more than two or
three truly sane men in this small town ;
and the probabilities are that I am not one
of them.

A DAY IN FRANCONIA

IT is the most delightful of autumn days,
too delightful, it seemed to me this morning,
to have been designed for anything like
work. Even a walking vacationer, on pe-
destrian pleasures bent, would accept the
weather's suggestion, if he were wise. Long
hours and short distances would be his pro-
gramme ; a sparing use of the legs, with a
frequent resort to convenient fence-rails and
other seasonable invitations. There are
times, said I, when idleness itself should be
taken on its softer side ; and to-day is one of
them.

Thus minded, I turned into the Landaff
Valley shortly after breakfast, and at the
old grist-mill crossed the river and took my
favorite road along the hillside. As I passed
the sugar grove I remembered that it was
almost exactly four months since I had spent
a delicious Sunday forenoon there, seated

A DAY IN FRANCONIA 83

upon a prostrate maple trunk. Then it was
spring, the trees in fresh leaf, the grass newly
sprung, the world full of music. Bobolinks
were rollicking in the meadow below, and
swallows twittered overhead. Then I sat in
the shade. Now there was neither bobolink
nor swallow, and when I looked about for a
seat I chose the sunny side of the wall.

Only four months, and the year was already
old. But the mountains seemed not to know
it. Washington, Jefferson, and Adams ;
Lafayette, Haystack, and Moosilauke ; — not
a cloud was upon one of them. And be-
tween me and them lay the greenest of val-
leys.

So for the forenoon hours I sat and walked
by turns ; stopping beside a house to enjoy
a flock of farm-loving birds, — bluebirds
especially, with voices as sweet in autumn as
in spring, — loitering under the long arch of
willows, taking a turn in the valley woods,
where a drumming grouse was almost the
only musician, and thence by easy stages
sauntering homeward for dinner.

For the afternoon I have chosen a road
that might have been made on purpose for

84 THE CLERK OF THE WOODS

the man and the day. It is short (two miles,
or a little more, will bring me to the end of
it), it starts directly from the door, with no
preliminary plodding through dusty village
streets, and it is not a thoroughfare, so that
I am sure to meet nobody, or next to no-
body, the whole afternoon long. At any
rate, no wagon loads of staring " excursion-
ists " will disturb my meditations. It is sub-
stantially level, also ; and once more (for a
man cannot think of everything at once) it is
wooded on one side and open to the afternoon
sun on the other. For the present occasion,
furthermore, it is perhaps a point in its favor
that it does not distract me with mountain
prospects. Mountains are not for all moods ;
there are many other things worth looking at.
Here, at this minute, as I come up a slope,
I face halfway about to admire a stretch of
Gale River, a hundred feet below, flowing
straight toward me, the water of a steely
blue, so far away that it appears to be mo-
tionless, and so little in volume that even
the smaller boulders are no more than half
covered. Beyond it the hillside woods are
gorgeously arrayed — pale green, with reds

A DAY IN FRANCONIA 85

and yellows of all degrees of brilliancy. The
glory of autumn is nearly at the full, and at
every step the panorama shifts. As for the
day, it continues perfect, deliciously cool in
the shade, deliciously warm hi the sun, with
the wind northwesterly and light. Many
yellow butterflies are flitting about, and once
a bright red angle-wing alights in the road
and spreads itself carefully to the sun. While
I am looking at it, sympathizing with its
comfort, I notice also a shining dark blue
beetle — an oil-beetle, I believe it is called
— as handsome as a jewel, traveling slowly
over the sand.

I have been up this way so frequently of
late that the individual trees are beginning
to seem like old friends. It would not take
much to make me believe that the acquaint-
ance is mutual. " Here he is again," I fancy
them saying one to another as I round a turn.
Some of them are true philosophers, or their
looks belie them. Just now they are all
silent. Even the poplars cannot talk, it ap-
pears (a most worthy example), without a
breath of inspiration to set them going. The
stillness is eloquent. A day like this is the

86 THE CLEKK OF THE WOODS

crown of the year. It is worth a year's life
to enjoy it. There is much to see, but best
of all is the comfort that wraps us round and
the peace that seems to brood over the world.
If the first day was of this quality, we need not
wonder that the maker of it took an artist's
pride in his work and pronounced it good.

As for the road, there is still another thing
to be said in its praise : While it follows a
straight course, it is never straight itself for
more than a few rods together. If you look
ahead a little space you are sure to see it run-
ning out of sight round a corner, beckoning
you after it. A man would be a poor stick
who would not follow. Every rod brings a new
picture. How splendid the maple leaves are,
red and yellow, with the white boles of the
birches, as white as milk, or, truer still, as
white as chalk, to set off their brightness. I
could walk to the world's end on such an in-
vitation.

But the road, as I said, is a short one. Its
errand is only to three farms, and I am
now on the edge of the first of them. Here
the wood moves farther away, and mountains
come into view, — Lafayette, Haystack, and

A DAY IN FRANCONIA 87

the Twins, with the tips of Washington, Jef-
ferson, and Adams. Then, when the second
of the houses is passed, the prospect narrows
again. An extremely pretty wood of tall,
straight trees, many fine poplars among them
(and now they are all talking), is close at
my side. The sunlight favors me, falling
squarely on the shapely, light-colored trunks
(some of the poplars are almost as white as
the birches), and filling the whole place with
splendor. I go on, absorbed in the lovely
spectacle, and behold, it is as if a veil were
suddenly removed. The wood is gone, and
the horizon is full of mountain-tops. I have
come to the last of the farms, and in another
minute or two am at the door.

There is nobody at home, to my regret, and
I sit down upon the doorstep. Moosilauke,
Kinsman, Cannon, Lafayette, Haystack, the
Twins, Washington, Clay, Jefferson, Adams,
and Madison — these are enough, though
there are others, too, if a man were trying to
make a story. All are clear of clouds, and,
like the trees of the wood, have the western
light full on them. Even without the help
of a glass I see a train ascending Mt. Wash-

88 THE CLERK OF THE WOODS

ington. Happy passengers, say I. Would
that I were one of them ! The season is end-
ing in glory at the summit, for this is almost
or quite its last day, and there cannot have
been many to match it, the whole summer
through.

I loiter about the fields for an hour or
more, looking at the blue mountains and the
nearer, gayer-colored hills, but the occupant
of the house is nowhere to be found. I was
hoping for a chat with him. A seeing man,
who lives by himself in such a place as this,
is sure to have something to talk about. The
last time I was here he told me a pretty story
of a hummingbird. He was in the house, as
I remember it, when he heard the familiar,
squeaking notes of a hummer, and thinking
that their persistency must be occasioned by
some unusual trouble, went out to investi-
gate. Sure enough, there hung the bird in
a spider's web attached to a rosebush, while
the owner of the web, a big yellow-and-brown,
pot-bellied, bloodthirsty rascal, was turning
its victim over and over, winding the web
about it. Wings and legs were already fast,
so that all the bird could do was to cry for

A DAY IN FRANCONIA 89

help. And help had come. The man at once
killed the spider, and then, little by little, for
it was an operation of no small delicacy, un-
wound the mesh in which the bird was en-
tangled. The lovely creature lay still in his
open hand till it had recovered its breath,
and then flew away. Who would not be glad
to play the good Samaritan in such guise ?
As I intimated just now, you may talk with
a hundred smartly dressed, smoothly spoken
city men without hearing a piece of news half
so important or interesting.

It is five o'clock when I leave the farms
and am again skirting the woods. Now I
face the sun, the level rays of which trans-
figure the road before me till its beauty is
beyond all attempt at description. I look at
it as for a very few times in my life I have
looked at a painted landscape, with unspeak-
able enjoyment. The subject is of the sim-
plest : a few rods of common grassy road,
arched with bright leaves and drenched in
sunshine ; but the suggestion is infinite.
After this the way brings me into sight of the
fairest of level green meadows, with pools of
smooth water — " water stilled at even " —

90 THE CLERK OF THE WOODS

and scattered farmhouses. The day is end-
ing right ; and when I reach the hotel piazza
and look back, there in the east is the full
moon rising in all her splendor, attended by
rosy clouds.

WITH THE WADERS

THE 12th of October was a day. There are
few like it in our Massachusetts calendar.
And by a stroke of good fortune I had
chosen it for a trip to Eagle Hill, on the
North Shore. All things were near per-
fection ; the only drawbacks to my enjoy-
ment being a slight excess of warmth and
an unseasonable plague of mosquitoes.

" Yes, it is too fine," said the stable-keeper,
who drove me down from the railroad sta-
tion. " It won't last. It 's what we call a
weather breeder."

" So be it," thought I. Just then I was
not concerned with to-morrow. Happy men
seldom are. The stable-keeper spoke more
to the purpose when he told me that during
the recent storm a most exceptional number
of birds had been driven in. A certain gun-
ner, Cy Somebody, had shot twenty-odd dol-
lars' worth in one day. " There he is now,"

92 THE CLERK OF THE WOODS

he remarked after a while, as a man and a
dog crossed the road just before us. " Any
birds to-day, Cy ? " he inquired. The man
nodded a silent affirmative — a very unusual
admission for a Yankee sportsman to make,
according to my experience.

I was hardly on foot before I began to
find traces of this good man's work. The
first bird I saw was a sandpiper with one
wing dragging on the ground. Near it was
an unharmed companion which, even when
I crowded it a little hard, showed no dis-
position to consult its own safety. " Well
done," said I. " ' There is a friend that
sticketh closer than a brother.' "

A few steps more, and a larger bird
stirred amid the short marsh herbage be-
yond the muddy flat — a black-bellied plover,
or " beetle-head." He also must be disabled,
I thought, to be staying in such a place;
and perhaps he was. At all events he would
not fly, but edged about me in a half circle,
with the wariest kind of motions (there was
no sign of cover for him, the grass coming
no more than to his knees), always with his
big black eye fastened upon me, while ray

WITH THE WADERS 93

field-glass brought him near enough to show
all the beauty of his spots.

He was well worth looking at (" What
short work a gunner would make of him ! "
I kept repeating to myself), but I could not
stay. Titlark voices were in the air. The
birds must be plentiful on the grassy hills
beyond ; with them there might be Lapland
longspurs ; and I followed the road. This
presently brought me to a bit of pebbly
beach, along which I was carelessly walking
when a lisping sound caused me to glance
down at my feet. There on the edge of
the water was a bunch of seven sandpipers ;
white-rumps, as I soon made out, though
my first thought had been of something else.
One of them hobbled upon one leg, but the
others seemed thus far to have escaped in-
jury. There they stood, huddled together
as if on purpose for some pot-shooter's con-
venience, while I drew them within arm's
length ; pretty creatures, lovely in their fool-
ish innocence ; more or less nervous under
my inspection, but holding their ground,
each with its long black bill pointed against
the breeze. " We who are about to die
salute you," they might have been saying.

94 THE CLERK OF THE WOODS

Having admired them sufficiently, I passed
on. Titlarks were beginning to abound, but
where were the longspurs ? A shot was
fired some distance away, and as I looked
in that direction two great blue herons went
flying across the marsh, each with his legs
behind him. It was good to see them still
able to fly.

Then something — I have no idea what ;
no sight or sound that I was sensible of —
told me to look at a bird beside the little
pool of water I had just passed. It was
another white-rumped sandpiper, all by him-
self, nearer to me even than those I had left
a little way back. What a beauty he was !
— his dark eye (which I could see winking),
the lovely cinnamon-brown shading of his
back and wings, setting off the marbled
black and white, and his shyly confiding
demeanor. I had scarcely stopped before
he flew to my side of the pool and stood
as near me as he could get — too near to
be shot at. He too had been hit, or so it
seemed. One foot was painful, though he
could put it down, if necessary, and even
take a limping step upon it. Happy bird !
He had fared weU !

WITH THE WADERS 95

Up the steep, grassy hill I started out of
the road; but I soon halted again, this time
to gaze into the sky. Straight above me
were numbers of herring gulls, some far, far
up under the fleecy cirrus clouds, others
much lower. All were resting upon the air,
sailing in broad circles. Round and round
they went, — a kind of stationary motion,
a spectator might have called it; but in a
minute or two they had disappeared. They
were progressing in circles, circle cutting
circle. It is the sea-gull's way of taking a
long flight. I remember it of old, and have
never seen anything to surpass it for grace-
fulness. If there were only words to de-
scribe such things ! But language is a
clumsy tool.

The hilltop offered beauty of another
kind: the blue ocean, the broad, brown
marshes, dotted with haycocks innumerable,
the hills landward, a distant town, with its
spires showing, the inlet yonder, whitened
with swimming gulls. Crickets chirped in
the grass, herds of cattle and sheep grazed
peacefully on all sides, and when I turned
my head, there behind me, a mile away,

96 THE CLERK OF THE WOODS

perhaps, were the shining Ipswich dunes,
wave on wave of dazzling white sand. I
ought to have stayed with the picture, per-
haps; but there were no longspurs, and
somehow this was a day for birds rather
than for a landscape. I would return to
the muddy flats, and spend my time with
the sandpipers and the plover. The telltale
yellow-legs were whistling, and who could
guess what I might see?

At the little pool I must stop for another
visit with my single sandpiper. He would
be there, I felt certain. And he was; as
pretty as before, and no more alarmed at
my presence, though as he balanced himself
on one leg his body shook with a constant
rhythmical pulsation, as if his heart were
beating more violently than a bird's heart
should. He did not look happy, I thought.
And why should he, far from home, with a
wounded foot, no company, and an unknown
number of guns yet to face before reaching
the end of his long journey? He was hardly
bigger than a sparrow, but he was one of
the creatures which lordly man, endowed
with "godlike reason," a being of "large

WITH THE WADERS 97

discourse," so wise and good that he nat-
urally thinks of the Creator of all things as
a person very like himself, finds it amusing

to km.

And when I came to the few rods of
beach, there stood my seven sandpipers,
exactly as before. They stirred uneasily
under my gaze, whispering a few words to
one another (" Will he shoot, do you
think?"), but they kept their places,
bunched closely together for safety. Did
they know anything about their lonely
brother — or sister — up yonder on the hill-
side? If they noticed her absence, they
probably supposed her dead. Death is so
common and so sudden, especially in migra-
tion time.

Now I am back again on a grassy mound
by the muddy flats, and the big plover is
still here. How alert he looks as he sees
me approach! Yet now, as an hour ago,
he shows no inclination to fly. The tide is
coming in fast. He steps about in the
deepening water with evident discomfort, and
whether he will or not, he must soon take
to whig or wade ashore. And while I am

98 THE CLERK OF THE WOODS

eyeing his motions my glass falls unexpect-
edly on two sandpipers near him in the
grass ; pectoral sandpipers — grass-birds —
I soon say to myself, with acute satisfac-
tion. It is many years since I saw one. How
small their heads look, — in contrast with
the plover's, — and how thickly and finely
their breasts are streaked ! I remember the
portrait in Nelson's " Birds of Alaska," with
its inflated throat, a monstrous vocal sac,
half as large as the bird itself. A graceful
wooer !

They, too, are rinding the tide a trouble,
and no doubt are wishing the human in-
truder would take himself off. Now, in
spite of my presence, one of them follows
the other toward the land, scurrying from
one bit of tussock to another, half wading,
half swimming. Time and tide wait for no
bird. Both they and the plover have given
up all thoughts of eating. They have enough
to do to keep their eyes upon me and the
water.

The sandpipers, being smaller, make their
retreat first. One, as he finds himself so
near a stranger, is smitten with sudden

WITH THE WADERS 99

fright, and runs by at full speed on his
pretty dark-green legs. Yet both presently
become reassured, and fall to feeding with
all composure almost about my feet. I have
been still so long that I must be harmless.
And now the plover himself takes wing (I
am glad to find he can), but only for a rod
or two, alighting on a conical bit of island.
There is nothing for him to eat there, ap-
parently, but at least the place will keep his
feet dry. He stands quiet, waiting. And
so he continues to do for the hour and more
that I still remain.

My own stay, I should mention, is by this
time compulsory. I, too, am on an island
(I have just discovered the fact), and not
choosing to turn wader on my own account,
must wait till the tide goes down. It is no
hardship. Every five minutes brings me
something new. I have only now noticed
(a slight cry having drawn my attention)
that there are sandpipers of another kind
here — a little flock of dunlins, or redbacks.
They are bunched on the pebbly edge of a
second island (which was not an island a
quarter of an hour ago), nearer to me even

100 THE CLERK OF THE WOODS

than the plover's, and are making the best
of the high tide, which has driven them from
their feeding-grounds, by taking a siesta.
Once, when I look that way, — which I can
do only now and then, there are so many
distractions, — I find the whole eight with
their bills tucked under their wings. Now,
is n't that a pretty sight ! Their name, as
I say, is the redbacked sandpiper ; but at
this season their upper parts are of a uni-
form mouse color, or soft, dark gray — I
hardly know how to characterize it. It is
very distinctive, whatever word we use, and
equally so is the shape of the bill, long and
stout, with a downward inflection at the tip.
Eight birds, did I say? No, there are nine,
for I have just discovered another, not on
the island, but under the very edge of the*
grassy bank on which I am standing. He
has a broken leg, poor fellow, and seems to
prefer being by himself; but by and by,
with a sudden cry of alarm, for which I can
see no occasion, he flies to rejoin his mates.
Meanwhile, seven white-rumps have come
and settled near them ; the same flock that
I saw yonder on the roadside beach, I have

WITH THE WADERS 101

little question. Probably the encroaching
tide has disturbed them also. At the same
time I hear distant voices of yellow-legs, and
presently six birds are seen flying in this
direction. They wheel doubtfully at the
unexpected sight of a man, and drop to the
ground beyond range ; but I can see them
well enough. How tall they are, and how
wide-awake they look, with their necks
stretched out ; and how silly they are, —
" telltales " and " tattlers " indeed, — to pub-
lish their movements and whereabouts to
every gunner within a mile ! While my
head is turned they disappear, and I hear
them whistling again across the marsh.
They are all gone, I think ; but as I look
again toward my sandpipers' island, be-
hold ! there stands a tall fellow, his yellow
legs shining, and his eye fastened upon me.
Either he has lost his reason, if he ever had
any, or he knows I have no gun. Per-
fectly still he keeps (he is not an absolute
fool, I rejoice to see) as long as I am look-
ing at him. Then I look elsewhere, and
when my eye returns to his place, he is not
there. He has only moved behind the corner

102 THE CLERK OF THE WOODS

of the islet, however, as I find when I shift
my own position by a rod or two. He seems
to be dazed, and for a wonder he holds his
tongue.

Titlarks are about me in crowds. One is
actually wading along the shore, with the
water up to his belly. Yes, he is doing it
again. I look twice to be sure of him. A
flock of dusky ducks fly just above my head,
showing me the lining of their wings. Truly
this is a birdy spot ; and luckily, though
there are two or three " blinds " near, and
guns are firing every few minutes up and
down the marshes, there is no one here to
disturb me and my friends. I could stay
with them till night ; but what is that ? A
buggy is coming down the road out of the
hills with only one passenger. This is my
opportunity. I pack up my glass, betake
myself to the roadside, and when the man
responds to my question politely, I take a seat
beside him. As he gets out to unlatch the
gate, a minute afterward, a light-colored —
dry-sand-colored — bird flies up and perches
on a low fence-rail. This is no wader, but
is none the less welcome. It is an Ipswich

WITH THE WADERS 103

sparrow, I explain to my benefactor, who
waits for me to take an observation. The
species was discovered here, I tell him, and
was named in the town's honor. He seems
interested. " I should n't have known it,"
he says. So I have done some good to-day,
though I have thought only of enjoying my-
self.

ON THE NORTH SHORE AGAIN

IF you have once seen a picture, says
Emerson somewhere, never look at it again.
He means that hours of insight are so rare
that a really high and satisfying experience
with a book, picture, landscape, or other ob-
ject of beauty is to be accepted as final, a
favor of Providence which we have no warrant
to expect repeated. If you have seen a thing,
therefore, really seen it and communed with
the soul of it, let that suffice you. Attempts
to live the hour over a second time will only
result in failure, or, worse yet, will cast a
shadow over what ought to have been a per-
manently luminous recollection.

There is a modicum of sound philosophy
in the advice. We must take it as the coun-
sel of an idealist, and follow it or not as oc-
casion bids. The words of such men, as one
of them was given to saying, are only for
those who have ears to hear. We may be

ON THE NORTH SHORE AGAIN 106

sure of one thing : poems, landscapes, pic-
tures, and all other works of art (art human
or superhuman) are never to be exhausted
by one look, or by a hundred. If a man is
good for anything, and the poem or the land-
scape is good for anything, he will find new
meanings with new perusals. In other words,
we may turn upon Emerson and say : " Yes,
but then, you know, we never do see a pic-
ture — a picture that is a picture."

As was related a week ago, I spent the
12th of October on the North Shore. I
brought back the remembrance of a glorious
piece of the world's beauty. In outline, I
had it in my mind. But I knew perfectly,
both at the time and afterward, that I had
not really made it my own. I had been too
much taken up with other things. The eye
does not see the landscape ; nor does the mind
see it. The eye is the lens, the mind is the
plate. The landscape prints itself upon the
mind, through the eye. But the mind must
be sensitive and still, and — what is of tener
forgotten — the exposure must be sufficiently
prolonged. The clearest-eyed genius ever
born never saw a landscape in ten minutes.

106 THE CLERK OF THE WOODS

On all grounds, then, I was entitled to
another look. And this time, perhaps, the
Lapland longspurs would be there to be en-
joyed with the rest. I would go again, there-
fore ; and on the morning of the 18th, long
before daylight, judging by the quietness of
the trees outside that the wind had gone down
(for wind is a serious hindrance to quiet
pleasure at the seashore in autumn, and visits
must be timed accordingly), I determined to
set out in good season and secure a longish
day. Venus and the old moon were growing
pale in the east when I started forth, and
three hours afterward I was footing it
through Ipswich village toward East Street
and the sea.

As I crossed the marsh and approached
the gate, a stranger overtook me. We man-
aged the business together, one pulling the
gate to, the other tending the hook and
staple, and we spoke of the unusual green-
ness of the hills before us, on which flocks
and herds were grazing. «« There 's better
feed now than there 's been all summer,"
the stranger said. It was easy to believe it.
Those broad-backed, grassy hills are one of
the glories of the North Shore.

ON THE NORTH SHORE AGAIN 107

I followed the road as it led me among
them. A savanna sparrow had been dodg-
ing along the edge of a ditch near the gate ;
titlark voices at once became common, and
after a turn or two I saw before me a bunch
of shore larks dusting themselves in the
sandy middle of the track. They were mak-
ing thorough work of it, crowding their
breasts and necks, and even the sides of
their heads into the soil, with much shaking
of feathers afterward.

The road brought me to a beach, where
were two or three houses, and, across the
way, a pond stocked with wooden geese and
ducks, with an underground blind for gun-
ners in the side of the hill. Some delights
are so keen that it is worth elaborate prepa-
rations to enjoy them. Here the titlarks
were in extraordinary force, and I lingered
about the spot for half an hour, awaiting the
longspurs that might be hoped for in their
company. Hoped for, but nothing more.
I was still too early, perhaps.

Well, their absence, the fact of it once
accepted, left me free-minded for the main
object of my trip. I would go up the hill,

108 THE CLERK OF THE WOODS

over the grass, and take the prospect north-
ward. A narrow depression, down which a
brook trickled with a pleasant, companion-
able noise, as if it were talking to itself, af-
forded me shelter from the wind, and at the
same time bounded my outlook on either
side, as a frame bounds a picture. The hill
fell away sharply to the water just beyond
my feet, and up and down the inlet gulls
were flying. Once, to my pleasure, two
black-backed "coffin-bearers" passed, the
only ones I was able to discover among the
thousands of herring gulls that filled the air
and the water, and crowded the sand-bars,
the whole day long. Across the blue water
were miles of brown marsh, and beyond the
marsh rose wooded hills veiled with haze,
the bright autumnal colors shining through.
Crickets were still musical, buttercups and
dandelions starred the turf, and once a yel-
low butterfly (Philodice) flitted near. The
summer was gone, but here were some of its
children to keep it remembered. Titlarks
walked daintily about the grass, or balanced
themselves upon the boulders, and once I
turned my head just in time to see a marsh

ON THE NORTH SHORE AGAIN 109

hawk sailing over the hill at my back, his
white rump showing.

When I had left the hills behind me, and
was again skirting the muddy flats, I found
myself all at once near a few sandpipers, —
a dozen, more or less, of white-rumps, —
one with a foot dragging, one with a leg
held up, and beside them a single red-back,
or dunlin, staggering on one leg, the same
bird, it seemed likely, that I had pitied a
week ago. I pitied him still. Ornithology,
studied under such conditions, was no longer
the cheerful, exhilarating science to which
I am accustomed. It was more like socio-

Perhaps I am sentimental. If so, may I
be forgiven. There is no man but has his
weakness. The dunlin was nothing, I knew ;
one among thousands ; a few ounces of flesh
with feathers on it ; what if he did suffer ?
It was none of my business. Why should
I take other men's amusements sadly ? The
bird was greatly inferior to the being who
shot him ; at least that is the commonly ac-
cepted theory ; and the superior, as every one
but an anarchist must admit, has the rights

110 THE CLERK OF THE WOODS

of superiority. And for all that, the dunlin
seemed a pretty innocent, and I wished that
he had two good legs. As for his being only
one of thousands, so am I — and no very
fine one either ; but I should n't like to be
shot at from behind a wall; and when I
have a toothache, the sense of my personal
insignificance is of small use in dulling the
pain. Poor dunlin !

I allowed myself two hours from the gate
back to the railroad station, though it is less
than an hour's walk. Some of the fairest
views are to be obtained from the road ; and
there, I told myself, I should be sheltered
from the wind and could sit still at my ease.
The first half of the distance, too, would
take me between pleasant hedgerows, in
which are many things worthy of a stroller's
notice.

For some time, indeed, I did little but stop
and look behind. The marshes pulled me
about : so level, so expansive, so richly
brown, so pointed with haycocks (once, the
notion taking me, I counted far enough to
see that there were more than two hundred
in sight), and so beautifully backed by the

ON THE NORTH SHORE AGAIN 111

golden autumnal hills. I can see them yet,
though I have nothing to say about them.

" The world lies east : bow ample, the marsh and the sea
and the sky!"

Trains of gulls went flying up the inlet as
the tide went out. They live by the sea's
almanac as truly as the clam-diggers, two of
whom I had watched, an hour before, sailing
across the inlet in a rude boat (more pictur-
esque by half than a gentleman's yacht), and
setting about their day's work on a shoal
newly uncovered. Thank Heaven, there are
still some occupations that cannot be carried
on in a factory.

The roadsides were bright with gay-
colored fruits : barberries, thorn apples, Rox-
bury waxwork, and rose-hips. Of thorn
bushes there were at least two kinds ; one
already bare-branched, with scattered small
fruit ; the other still in leaf, and loaded with
gorgeous clusters of large red apples. More
interesting to me than any of these were the
frost grapes ; familiar acquaintances of an
Old Colony boyhood, but now grown to be
strangers. They were shining black, ripe

112 THE CLERK OF THE WOODS

and juicy (of the size of peas), and if their
sweetness failed to tempt the palate, that,
for aught I know, may have been the eater's
fault rather than theirs. Why might not
their quality be of a too excellent sort, be-
yond his too effeminate powers of apprecia-
tion? Is there any certainty that man's
taste is final in such matters ? Was my own
criticism of them anything more than a piece
of unscientific, inconclusive impressionism ?

Surely they were not without a tang. The
most exacting mouth could not deny them
individuality. I tried them, and retried
them; but after all, they seemed most in
place on the vines. To me, in the old days,
they were known only as frost grapes.
Others, it appears, have called them chicken
grapes, possum grapes, and winter grapes.
No doubt they find customers before the sea-
son is over. Thoreau should have liked them
and praised them, but I do not recall them
in his books. Probably they do not grow in
Concord. They are of his kin, at all events,
wildings of the wild. I wish I had brought a
bunch or two home with me. In my present
mood I believe they would " go to the spot."

ON THE NORTH SHORE AGAIN 113

But if I was glad to see the frost grapes,
I was gladder still to see a certain hickory
tree. I was scarcely off the marsh before I
came to it, and had hardly put my eye upon
it before I said to myself (although so far
as I could have specified, it looked like any
other hickory ; but there is a kind of know-
ledge, or half knowledge, that does not rest
upon specifications), " There I That should
be a bitternut tree." Now the bitternut is
not to be called a rarity, I am assured ; but
somehow I had never found it, notwithstand-
ing I was a nut-gatherer in my youth, and
have continued to be one to this day, an early
taste for wild forage being one of the vir-
tues that are seldom outgrown. Well, some-
thing distracted my attention just then, and
I contented myself with putting a leaf and a
handful of nuts into my pocket. Only on
getting home did I crack one and find it bit-
ter. Now, several days afterward, I have
cracked another, and tested it more fully.
The shell is extremely thin, — like a pecan
nut's for fragility, — and the meat, which is
large and full, is both bitter and puckery,
suggesting the brown inner partitions of a

114 THE CLERK OF THE WOODS

pecan shell, which the eater learns so care-
fully to avoid. In outward appearance the
nut is a pig-nut pure and simple, the reader
being supposed to be enough of a country-
man to know that pig-nuts, like wild fruits in
general, vary interminably in size, shape, and
goodness.

Pretty butter-and-eggs still bloomed be-
side the stone wall, and the " folksy may-
weed " was plentiful about a barnyard. Out
from the midst of it scampered a rabbit as I
approached the fence to look over. He dis-
appeared in the cornfield, his white tailtip
showing last, and I wondered where he be-
longed, as there seemed to be neither wood
nor shrubbery within convenient distance.

Just beyond this point (after noticing a
downy woodpecker in a Balm-o'-Gilead tree,
if the careful compositor will allow me that
euphonious Old Colony contraction), I had
stopped to pick up a shagbark when five
children, the oldest a girl of nine or ten,
came down the road together.

" Out of school, so early ? " said I.

"No," was the instantaneous response ;
" we 've got the whooping cough."

ON THE NORTH SHORE AGAIN 115

"Ah, that's better than going to school,
is n't it ?" said I, not so careful of my moral
influence as a descendant of the Puritans
ought to have been, perhaps; but I spoke
from impulse, remembering myself how I
also was tempted.

"Yes," said one of the children; "No,"
said another; and the reader may believe
which he" will, looking into his own childish
heart, if he can still find it, as I hope he
can.

Apple trees were loaded ; hollyhocks, mari-
golds, and even tender cannas and dahlias,
still brightened the gardens (so much for be-
ing near the sea, even on the North Shore),
but what I most admired were the handsome
yellow quinces in many of the door-yards.
Quince preserve must be a favorite dish in
Ipswich. I thought I should like to live
here. I could smell the golden fruit — in
my mind's nose — clean across the way.
And when I reached the village square I
stopped (no, I walked slowly) to watch a
real Old Colony game that I had not seen
played for many a day. Two young men
had stuck a jackknife into the hard earthen

116 THE CLERK OF THE WOODS

sidewalk and were " pitching cents." It was
like an old daguerreotype. One of the game-
sters was having hard luck, but was taking
it merrily. " I owe you six," I heard him
say, as his coin stood on edge and rolled per-
versely away from the knife-blade.

This was very near to "Meeting-house
Green." I hope I am doing no harm to
of it.

AUTUMNAL MORALITIES

FOR the month past my weekly talk has been
more or less a traveler's tale — of things
among the mountains and at the seaside.
Now, on this bright afternoon in the last
week of October, a month that every outdoor
man saddens to see coming to an end (like
May, it is never half long enough), let me
note a little of what is passing in the lanes
and byroads nearer home.

Leaves are rustling below and above. As
is true sometimes in higher circles, they seem
to grow loquacious with age ; the slightest
occasion, the merest nudge of suggestion, the
faintest puff of the spirit sets them off. For
me they will never talk too much. I love
their preaching seven days in the week. The
driest of them never teased my ears with a
dry sermon. I scuff along the path on pur-
pose to stir them up. " Your turn will come
next," I hear them saying ; but the message

118 THE CLERK OF THE WOODS

does not sound like bad news. I listen to it
with a kind of pleasure, as to solemn music.
If the doctor or the clergyman had brought
me the same word, my spirit might have
risen in rebellion ; but the falling leaf may
say what it likes. It has poet's leave.

How gracefully they come to the ground,
here one and there another ; slowly, slowly,
with leisurely dips and turns, as if the breeze
loved them and would buoy them up till the
last inevitable moment. Children of air and
sunshine, they must return to the dust. So
all things move in circles, — life and death,
death and life. Happy leaves ! they depart
without formalities, with no funereal trap-
pings. The wind whispers to them, and they
follow.

As I watch them falling, a gray squirrel
startles me. I rejoice to see him. He, too,
is a falling leaf. In truth, his living pre-
sence takes me by surprise. So many gun-
ners have been in this wood of late, all so
murderously equipped, that I had thought
every squirrel must before this time have
gone into the game-bag. Be careful, young
fellow ; you will need all your spryness and

AUTUMNAL MORALITIES 119

cunning, all your knack of keeping on the
invisible side of the trunk, or your frolic will
end in sudden blackness. This is autumn,
the sickly season for squirrels and birds.
" The law is off," and the gun is loaded to
kill you. Take a friend's advice, and fight
shy of everything that walks upright " in the
image of God."

Yonder round-topped sweet-birch tree is
one of October's masterpieces; a sheaf of
yellow leaves with the sun on them. How
they shine ! Yet it is not so much they as
the sunlight. Nay, it is both. Let the
leaves have the honor that belongs to them.
In a week they will all be under foot. To-
day they are bright as the sun, and airy and
frolicsome as so many butterflies. Blessed
are my eyes that see them. And look ! how
the light (what a painter it is !) glorifies the
lower trunk of the white oak just beyond.
The furrowed gray bark is so perfect a piece
of absolute beauty that, if it were framed
and set up in a gallery, the crowd — or the
few that are better than a crowd — would
be always before it. So cheap and universal
are visual delights, so little dependent upon

120 THE CLERK OF THE WOODS

place or season — sunlight and the bark of a
tree!

In the branches overhead are chestnut-
loving blackbirds, every one with a crack in
his voice. Far away a crow is cawing, and
from another direction a jay screams. These
speak to the world at large. Half the
township may hear what they have to offer.
I like them ; may their speech never be A
whit softer or more musical ; but if compari-
sons are in order, I give my first vote for less
public — more intimate — birds, such as
speak only to the grove or the copse. And
even as I confess my preference, a bluebird's
note confirms it : a voice that caresses the
ear ; such a tone as no human mouth or hu-
manly invented instrument can ever pro-
duce the like of. He has no need to sing.
His simplest talk is music.

Here, by the wayside, a few asters have
sprung up after the scythe, and are freshly
in flower. How blue they are ! And how
much handsomer a few stalks of them look
now than a full acre did two months ago. So
acceptable is scarcity. There is nothing to
equal it for the heightening of values. It is

AUTUMNAL MORALITIES 121

only the poor who know what money is worth.
It is only in October and November that we
feel all the charm of Aster lazvis. I think
of Bridget Elia's lament over the " good old
times " when she and her cousin were " not
quite so rich." Then the spending of a few
shillings had a zest about it. A purchase
was an event, a kind of festival. I believe
in Bridget's philosophy ; for the asters teach
the same; yes, and the goldenrods also.
They, too, have come up in the wake of the
scythe, and still dwarfed, having no time to
attain their natural growth, as if they knew
that winter was upon them, are already
topped with yellow. I carry home a scanty
half handful of the two, asters and golden-
rods, as treasure-trove. They are sure to be
welcome. When all the fields were bright
with such things, they seemed hardly worth
house-room. This late harvest of blossoms
is one small compensation for all the ugliness
inflicted upon the landscape by the habit —
inveterate with highway " commissioners " —
of mowing back-country roadsides. As if
stubble were prettier than a hedge !

Now I pass two long-armed white oaks,

122 THE CLERK OP THE WOODS

which I never come near without thinking
of a friend of mine and of theirs who used
to walk hereabouts with me ; a real tree
lover, who loves not species, not white oaks
and red oaks, but individual trees, and goes
to see them as one goes to see a man or a
woman. This pair he always called the
twins. They have summered and wintered
each other for a hundred years. Who knows
— putting the matter on grounds of pure
science — whether they do not enjoy each
other's companionship? Who knows that
trees have no kind of sentience? Not I.
We take a world of things for granted ; and
if all our neighbors chance to do the same,
we let the general assumption pass for cer-
tainty. If trees do know anything, I would
wager that it is something worth knowing,
something quite as good as is to be found in
any newspaper.

Here are red maples as bare as December,
and yonder is one that is almost in full leaf ;
and by some freak of originality every leaf
is bright yellow. Three days more and it
will be naked also. Under it are white-alder
bushes (Clethrd) clothed in dark purple, and

AUTUMNAL MORALITIES 123

tall blueberry bushes all in red, with yellow
shadings by way of contrast. This is in a
swampy spot, where a lonesome hyla is peep-
ing. Just beyond, the drier ground is red-
dened — under the trees — with huckleberry
and dangleberry. Nobody who has not
attended to the matter would imagine how
much of the brightness of our New England
autumn — one of the pageants of the world

— is due to these lowly bushes, which most
people think of solely as useful in the produc-
tion of pies and puddings. Without being
mown, the huckleberry bears a second crop

— a crop of color. It is twice blest; it
blesses him that eats and him that looks. In
many parts of New England, at least, the
autumnal landscape could better spare the
maples than the blueberries and the huckle-
berries. Kum-cherry trees and shrubs —
more shrubs than trees — are dressed in
lovely shades of yellow and salmon. Spice-
bushes wear plain yellow of a peculiarly deli-
cate cast. I roll a leaf in my hand and find
it still spicy. A bush looks handsomer, I be-
lieve, if it is known to smell good. The same
thought came to me a week ago while I was

124 THE CLERK OF THE WOODS

admiring the sassafras leaves. They were
then just at the point of ripeness. Now they
have turned to a dead brown. The maple's
way is in better taste — to shed its leaves
while they are still bright and fresh. They
are under my feet now, a carpet of red and
yellow.

One of the oddest bits of fall coloration
(I cannot profess greatly to like it) is the
ghostly white — greenish white — of Rox-
bury waxwork leaves. It is unique in these
parts, so far as I can recall, but is almost
identical with the pallor of striped maple
foliage (Acer Pennsylvanicum) as one sees
it in the White Mountains. Waxwork pig-
ments all go to the berries, it appears. These
are showy enough to suit the most barbaric
taste, and are among the things that speak
to me strongest of far-away times, when my
childish feet were just beginning to wander
in nature's garden. The sight of them re-
minds me of what a long time I have lived.

A gust of wind strikes a tall willow just
as I approach it. See the leaves tumble !
Thick and fast they come, a leafy shower,
with none of those pretty, hesitating, para-

AUTUMNAL MORALITIES 125

chute-like reluctances which we noticed the
rounder and lighter birch leaves practicing
half an hour ago. The willow leaves, narrow
and pointed, fall more like arrows. I am put
in mind, I cannot tell why, of an early morn-
ing hour, years ago, when I happened to cross
a city garden after the first killing frost, and
stopped near a Kentucky coffee tree. Its
foliage had been struck with death. Not a
breath was stirring, but the leaves, already
blackened and curled, dropped in one con-
tinuous rain. The tree was out of its lati-
tude, and had been caught with its year's work
half done. The frost was a tragedy. This
breeze among the willow branches is nothing
so bad as that. Its errand is all in the order
of nature. It calls those who are ready.

My meditations are still running with the
season, still playing with mortality, when a
blue jay quits a branch near by (I had not
seen him) and flies off in silence. The jay
is a knowing bird. No need to tell him that
there is a time for everything under the sun.
He has proverbial philosophy to spare. Hark !
he has found his voice ; like a saucy school-
boy, who waits till he is at a safe distance and

126 THE CLERK OF THE WOODS

then puts his thumb to his nose, and cries
« Yaah, yaah ! "

Well, the reader may thank him for one
thing. He has made an end of my autumnal
sermon, the text of which, if any one cares to
look for it, may be found in the sixty-fourth
chapter of Isaiah, at the sixth verse.

A TEXT FROM THOREAU

" THERE is no more tempting novelty than
this new November. No going to Europe
or to another world is to be named with it.
Give me the old familiar walk, post-office
and all, with this ever new self, with this
infinite expectation and faith which does not
know when it is beaten. We '11 go nutting
once more. We'll pluck the nut of the
world and crack it in the winter evenings.
Theatres and all other sight-seeing are pup-
pet shows in comparison. I will take an-
other walk to the cliff, another row on the
river, another skate on the meadow, be out
in the first snow, and associate with the
winter birds. Here I am at home. In the
bare and bleached crust of the earth, I re-
cognize my friend."

Thus bravely did Thoreau enter upon the
gray month. It was in 1858, when he was
forty-one years old. He wants nothing new,

128 THE CLERK OF THE WOODS

he assures himself. He will "take the
shortest way round and stay at home."
" Think of the consummate folly of attempt-
ing to go away from here" he says, under-
scoring the final word. As if whatever
place a man might move to would not be
" here " to him ! As if he could run away
from his own shadow ! So I interpret the
italics.

His protestations, characteristically un-
qualified and emphatic, imply that thoughts
of travel have beset him. Probably they
beset every outdoor philosopher at this short-
day season. They are part of the autumnal
crop. Our northern world begins to look —
in cloudy moods — like a place to escape
from. The birds have gone, the leaves have
fallen, the year is done. " Let us arise and
go also," an inward voice seems to whisper.
Not unlikely there is in us all the dormant
remainder of an outworn migratory instinct.
Civilization has caged us and tamed us;
" hungry generations " have trodden us
down ; but below consciousness and memory
there still persists the blind stirring of an-
cestral impulse. The fathers were nomads,

A TEXT FROM THOREAtf 129

and the children's feet are still not quite
content with day's work in a treadmill.

Let our preferences be what they may,
however, the greater number of us must
stay where we are put, and play the hand
that is dealt to us, happy if we can face the
dark side of the year with a measure of
philosophy. If there is a new self, as Tho-
reau says, there will be a new world and a
new season. If we carry the tropics within
us, we need not dream of Florida. And
even if there is no constraint upon our going
and coming, we need not be in haste to run
away. We may safely wait a week or two,
at least. November is often not half so bad
as it is painted — not half so bad, indeed,
as Thoreau himself sometimes painted it.
For the eleventh month was not one of his
favorites. "November Eat-Heart," he is
more than once moved to call it. The ex-
perience of it puts his equanimity to the
proof. Even his bravest words about it
sound rather like a defiance than a welcome,
— a little as if he were whistling to keep up
his courage. With the month at its worst,
he confesses, he has almost to drive himself

130 THE CLERK OF THE WOODS

afield. He can hardly decide upon any
route ; " all seem so unpromising, mere sur-
face-walking and fronting the cold wind."
" Surface-walking." How excellent that is !
Every contemplative outdoor man knows
what is meant, but only Thoreau could have
hit it off to such perfection in a word.

I must admit that I am not sorry to find
the Walden stoic once in a long while over-
taken by such a comparatively unheroic mood.
He boasted so often and so well (with all
the rest he boasted of his boasting) that it
pleases me to hear him complain. So the
weather could be too much even for him, I
say to myself, with something like a chuckle.
He was mortal, after all ; and the day was
sometimes dark, even in Concord.

Not that he ever whimpered. And had
he done so, in any moment of weakness, it
should never have been for me to lay a pub-
lic finger upon the fact. Nobody shall be
more loyal to Thoreau than I am, though
others may understand him better and praise
him more adequately. If he complained, he
did it " man-fashion," and was within a man's
right. To say that the worst of Massachu-

A TEXT FROM THOREAU 131

setts weather is never to be spoken against
is to say too much ; it is stretching the
doctrine of non-resistance to the point of
absurdity. As well forbid us to carry um-
brellas, or to put up lightning-rods. There
is plenty of weather that deserves to be
spoken against.

Only let it be done, as I say, "man-
fashion ; " and having said our say, let us go
about our business again, making the best of
things as they are — as Thoreau did. For,
having owned his disrelish for what the gods
provided, he quickly recovered himself, and
proceeded to finish his entry in a cheerier
strain. Matters are not so desperate with
him, after all. He has to force himself out of
doors, it is true, but once in the woods he
often finds himself "unexpectedly compen-
sated." " The thinnest yellow light of No-
vember is more warming and exhilarating
than any wine they tell of." He meets with
something that interests him, and immedi-
ately the day is as warm as July — as if the
wind had shifted from northwest to south.
There is the secret, in November as in May
— to be interested. Then there is no longer

132 THE CLERK OF THE WOODS

a question of " surface walking." The soul
is concerned, and life has begun anew.

Thus far, the present November (I write
on the 4th) has been unusually mild ; some
days have been really summer-like, too warm
for comfort ; but the sun has shone only by
minutes — now and then an hour, at the
most. Deciduous trees are nearly bare, the
oaks excepted; flowers are few and mostly
out of condition, though it would be easy to
make a pretty high-sounding list of names ;
and birds are getting to be almost as scarce
as in winter. There is no longer any quiet
strolling in the woods. If you wish to lis-
ten for small sounds you must stand still.
The ground is so thick with crackling leaves
that it is impossible to go silently. Every-
thing prophesies of the death of the year.
It is almost time for the snow to fall and
bury what remains of it.

Yet in warm days one may still see dra-
gon-flies on the wing. Yesterday meadow
larks were singing with the greatest aban-
don and in something like a chorus. I
must have seen a dozen, and most if not
all of them were in tune. On the 1st of

A TEXT FROM THOREAU 133

the month a grouse drummed again and
again ; an unseasonable piece of lyrical en-
thusiasm, one might think ; but I doubt if
it was anything so very exceptional. Once,
indeed, a few years ago, I heard a grouse
drum repeatedly in January, on a cloudy
day, when the ground in the woods was
deep under snow. That, I believe, was an
event much out of the common, though by
no means without precedent. I wish Thoreau
could have been there ; he would have im-
proved the occasion so admirably. So long
as the partridge can keep his spirits up to
the drumming point, why should the rest of
us outdoor people pull a long face over hard
times and short rations ? Shall we be less
manly than a bird?

The partridge will neither migrate nor
hibernate, but looks winter in the eye and
bids the wind whistle. It is too bad if we
who command the services of coal dealers
and plumbers, tailors and butchers, doctors
and clergymen, cannot stand our ground with
a creature that knows neither house nor fuel,
and has nothing for it, summer and winter,
but to live by his wits. To the partridge

134 THE CLERK OF THE WOODS

man must look like a weak brother, a cod-
dler of himself, ruined by civilization and
" modern improvements ; " a lubber who
would freeze to death where a chickadee
bubbles over with the very joy of living.

With weather-braving souls like these
Thoreau would associate ; and so will I. It
is true, what all the moralists have told us,
that it is good for a man to keep company
with his superiors. Not that in my own
case I look for their example and tuition to
make me inherently better ; it is getting late
for that; "nothing that happens after we
are twelve counts for very much ; " I shall
be content if they make me happier. And
so much I surely depend upon. Good spirits
are contagious. It is the great advantage
of keeping a dog, that he has happiness to
spare, and gives to his master. So a flock
of chickadees, or snowbirds, or kinglets, or
tree sparrows, or goldfinches brighten a man's
day. He comes away smiling. I will go out
now and prove it.

THE PLEASURES OF MELAN-
CHOLY

THIS wintry November forenoon I was on
a sea beach ; the sky clouded, the wind high
and cold, cutting to the marrow; a bleak
and comfortless place. A boy, dragging a
child's cart, was gathering chips of drift-
wood along the upper edge of the sand, — one
human figure, such as painters use to make
a lonesome scene more lonesome. A loon,
well offshore, sat rocking upon the water,
now lifted into sight for an instant, now lost
behind a wave. Distant sails and a steam-
ship were barely visible through the fog.
So much for the world on its seaward side.
There was little to cheer a man's soul in that
quarter.

On the landward side were thickets
of leafless rosebushes covered with scarlet
hips ; groves of tall, tree-like, smooth-barked
alders ; swampy tracts, wherein were ilex

136 THE CLERK OF THE WOODS

bushes bright with red Christmas berries,
and blueberry bushes scarcely less bright
with red leaves. Sometimes it was neces-
sary to put up an opera-glass before I could
tell one from the other. Here was a marshy
spot ; dry, shivering sedges standing above
the ice, and among them four or five mud-
built domes of muskrat houses. Shrewd
muskrats ! They knew better than to be
stirring abroad on a day like this. " If you
have n't a house, why don't you build one ? "
they might have said to the man hurrying
past, with his neck drawn down into his
coat collar. Here I skirted a purple cran-
berry bog, having tufts of dwarfed, stubby
bayberry bushes scattered over it, each with
its winter crop of pale-blue, densely packed,
tightly held berry clusters.

Not a flower ; not a bird. Not so much
as a crow or a robin in one of the stunted
savin trees. I remembered winter days here,
a dozen years ago, when the alder clumps
were lively with tree sparrows, myrtle war-
blers, and goldfinches. Now the whole penin-
sula was a place forsaken. I had better
have stayed away myself. Here, as so often
elsewhere, memory was the better sight.

THE PLEASURES OF MELANCHOLY 137

By a summer cottage upon the rocks was
a ledge matted over with the Japanese trail-
ing white rose. There were no blossoms, of
course, but what with the leaves, still of a
glossy green, and the bunches of handsome,
high-colored hips, the vine could hardly have
been more beautiful, I was ready to say, even
when the roses were thickest upon it. Be-
side another house a pink poppy still looked
fresh. Frail, belated child of summer ! I
could hardly believe my eyes. All its human
admirers were gone long since. Every cot-
tage stood vacant. Nobody would live here
in this icy wind, if he could find another
place to flee to. I remembered Florida
beaches, summery abodes, where every breath
from the sea brought a welcome coolness.
Why should I not take the next train south-
ward? Shall a man be less sensible than a
bird?

That was five or six hours ago. Now I
am a dozen miles inland. The air is so still
that the sifting snowflakes fall straight down-
ward. Even the finest twigs of the gray
birches, so sensitive to the faintest breath,
can hardly be seen to stir. A narrow foot-

138 THE CLERK OF THE WOODS

path under the window is a line of white
running through the green grass. Beyond
that is the brown hillside, brightened with a
few pitch-pines ; and then a veil shuts down
upon the world, with a spray of bare tree-
tops breaking through. It is the gray month
in its grayest mood.

Be it so. I will sit at my window and
enjoy the world as it is. This sombre day
has a beauty and charm of its own — the
charm of melancholy. The wise course is
to tune our thought to nature's mood of so-
berness, rather than to force a different note,
profaning the hour, and cheating ourselves
with shallow talk and laughter. There is a
time for everything under the sun — L' Alle-
gro and II Penseroso, each in its turn.

Now is a time to think of what has been
and of what will be. Only the other day the
year was young ; grass was greening, violets
were budding, birds were mating and singing.
Now the birds are gone, the flowers are dead,
the year is ending as all the years have ended
before it.

And as the year is, so are we. A few
days ago we were children, just venturing to

THE PLEASURES OF MELANCHOLY 139

run alone. We knew nothing, had seen
nothing, looked forward to nothing. Life
for us was only a day in a house and a door-
yard, a span of playtime between two sleeps.

A few days ago, I say. Yet what a weary
distance we have traveled since then, and
what an infinity of things we have seen and
dealt with. How many thoughts we have
had, coming we know not whence, how many
hopes, one making way for the other, how
many dreams. We have made friends ;
friends that were to be friends forever ; and
long, long ago, with no fault on either side,
the currents of the world carrying us, they
and we have drifted apart. It is all we can
do now to recall their names and their man-
ner of being. Some of them we should pass
for strangers if we met them face to face.

What a long procession of things and
events have gone by us and been forgotten.
Almost we have forgotten our own childish
names, it is so many years since any one called
us by them. Should we know ourselves,
even, if we met in the street the boy or girl
of thirty or forty or fifty years ago ? Was
it indeed we who lived then ? who believed

140 THE CLERK OF THE WOODS

such things, enjoyed such things, concerned
ourselves with such things, trembled with
such fears, were lifted up by such hopes, felt
ourselves enriched by such havings ? How
shadowy and unreal they look now ; and once
they were as substantial as life and death.
Nay, it is some one else whose past we are
remembering. The boy and the man cannot
be the same.

Shall we rejoice or be sad that we have
outgrown ourselves thus completely ? Some-
thing of both, perhaps. It matters not. The
year is ending, the night is falling. The
past is as if it had never been ; the future is
nothing ; and the present is less than either
of them. Life is a vapor ; nothing, and less
than nothing, and vanity.

So we say to ourselves, not sadly, but with
a kind of satisfaction to have it so. Yet we
love to live over the past, and, with less as-
surance, to dream of the future.

" The flower that once has blown forever dies."

Yes, we have heard that, and we will
not dispute ; this is not an hour for disput-
ing ; but the flowers that bloomed forty years

THE PLEASURES OF MELANCHOLY 141

ago — the iris and the four-o'clocks in a
child's garden — we can still see in recollec-
tion's magic glass. And they are brighter
than any rose that opened this morning. We
have forgotten things without number ; but
other things — we shall never forget them.
A friend or two that died when they and we
were young ; " the loveliest and the best ; "
we can see them more plainly than most of
those whose empty, conventionalized faces,
each like the other, each wearing its mask,
we meet day by day in the common round of
business and pleasure. Death, which seemed
to destroy them, has but set them beyond
the risk of alteration and forgetfulness.

After all, the past is our one sure posses-
sion. There is our miser's chest. With that,
while memory holds for us the key, we shall
still be rich. There we will spend our gray
hours, with friends that have kept their
youth ; one of the best of them our own true
self, not as we were, nor as we are, but as we
meant to be.

" These pleasures, Melancholy, give ;
And I with thee will choose to lire."

IN THE OLD PATHS

FOB men who know how to bear themselves
company there are few better ways of im-
proving a holiday, especially a home-keep-
ing, home-coming, family feast, like our au-
tumnal Thanksgiving, than to walk in one's
own childish steps — up through the old cat-
tle pasture behind the old homestead, into
the old woods. Every jutting stone in the
path — and there are many — is just where
it was. Your feet remember them perfectly
(as your hand remembers which way the
door-knob turns, though you yourself might
be puzzled to tell), and of their own accord
take a zigzag course among them, coming
down without fail in the clear intermediary
spaces. Or if, by chance, in some peculiarly
awkward spot, the toe of your boot forgets it-
self, the jar only helps you to feel the more at
home. You say with the poet, " I have been
here before." Some things are unaltered,

IN THE OLD PATHS 143

you are glad to find. The largest of the
trees have been felled, but nobody has dug
out the protruding boulders or blasted away
the outcropping ledges. One good word we
may say for death. It lasts well. It is no-
thing like a vapor.

Not a rod of the way but talks to you of
something. Here, on the left, down in the
hollow by the swamp, you used to set snares.
Once — fateful day ! — you found a partridge
in the noose. Then what a fury possessed
you! If you had shot your first elephant
you could hardly have been more completely
beside yourself. It was a cruel sight ; you
felt it so ; but you had caught a partridge !
With all your boyish unskillfulness you had
lured the unhappy bird to his death. A
spray of red barberries had been too bright
for his resistance. He discovered his mis-
take when the cord began to pull. " Oh,
why was I such a fool ! " he thought ; just
as you have thought more than once since
then, when you have run your own neck into
some snare of the fowler.

Yonder, on the right, grew little scattered
patches of trailing arbutus. Every spring

144 THE CLERK OF THE WOODS

you gathered a few blossoms, going thither
day after day, watching for them to open.
And the patches are there still. Some of
them are no broader than a dinner plate, and
the largest of them would not cover the top
of a bushel basket. For more than fifty
years — perhaps for more than five hundred
— they have looked as they do now ; a few
score of leaves and an annual crop of a dozen
or two of flowers. Their endurance, with so
many greedy hands after them, is one of the
miracles. Probably they are older than any
tree in the township. It is n't the tall things
that live longest.

Here the path goes through an opening in
a rude stone wall, which was tumbling down
as long ago as you can remember. Beyond
it, in your day, stood a dense pine wood, a
darksome, solemn place, where you went
quietly. Now, not a pine is left. A mere
wilderness of hardwood scrub. The old
" cart-path," which at this point swerved to
the left, has grown over till there is no fol-
lowing it. But the loss does not matter. You
take a trail among the boulders, a trail famil-
iar to you of old ; the same that you took in

IN THE OLD PATHS 145

winter, skates in hand, bound for Jason
Halfbrook's meadow. Many a merry hour
you spent there, heedless of the cold. You
could skate then, or thought you could.
The backward circle, the " Dutch roll," the
"spread-eagle," these and other wonders
were in your repertory. They were feats to
be proud of, and you made the most of them.
Nor need you feel ashamed now at the recol-
lection. When the Preacher said, "There is
nothing better than that a man should rejoice
in his own works," he was not thinking exclu-
sively of an author and his books. You did
well to be proud while you were able. It was
pride, in part, that kept you warm. Now,
if you stand beside a city skating-resort, you
see young fellows performing feats that throw
all your old-fashioned, countrified accomplish-
ments into the shade. You look on, open-
mouthed. Boys of to-day have better skates
than you had. Perhaps they have better
legs. One thing they do not have, — a bet-
ter time.

This morning, however, you are not going
to the Halfbrook meadow. There is no ice,
or none that will bear a man's weight ; and

146 THE CLERK OF THE WOODS

perhaps you would not skate if there were.
Do I take you to be too old ? No, not that ;
but you are out of practice. I should hate
to see you risking yourself well over on the
outer edge, or attempting a sudden turnabout.
And you agree with me, I imagine, for you
quit the trail at the Town Path (the com-
positor will please allow the capitals — the
path deserves them) and turn your steps
northward. The path, I say, deserves a proper
name. It is not strictly a highway, I am
aware ; if you were to stumble into a hole
here, the town could not be held liable for
damages ; but it is a pretty ancient thor-
oughfare, nevertheless, a reasonably straight
course through the woods by the long way
of them. Generation after generation has
traveled it. You are walking not only in
your own footsteps, but in those of your an-
cestors, who must have gone this way many
a time to speak and vote at town meeting.
Some of the oldest of them are buried in this
very wood, less than half a mile back; a
resting-place such as you would like pretty
well for yourself when the time comes.
You follow the path till it brings you near

IN THE OLD PATHS 147

to a cliff. This is one of the places you had
in your eye on setting out. This land is
yours, and you have come to look at it.

A strange thing it is, an astonishing im-
pertinence, that a man should assume to own
a piece of the earth ; himself no better than
a wayfarer upon it ; alighting for a moment
only ; coming he knows not whence, going he
knows not whither. Yet convention allows
the claim. Men have agreed to foster one
another's illusions in this regard, as in so
many others. They knew, blindly, before any
one had the wit to say it in so many words,
that "life is the art of being well deceived."
And so they have made you owner of this
acre or two of woodland. All the power of
the State would be at your service, if neces-
sary, in maintaining the title.

These tall pine trees are yours. You have
sovereignty over them, to use a word that is
just now sweet in the American mouth. You
may do anything you like with them. They
are older than you, I should guess, and in the
order of nature they will long outlive you ;
for aught I know, also, it may be true, what
Thoreau said (profanely, as some thought),

148 THE CLERK OF THE WOODS

that they will go to as high a heaven ; but
for the time being they have no rights that
you are under the slightest obligation to con-
sider. You may kill them to-morrow, and no-
body will accuse you of murder. You may
turn all their beauty to ashes, and it will be
nobody's business to remonstrate. The trees
are yours.

I hope, notwithstanding, that you do not
quite think so. I would rather believe that
you look upon your so-called proprietorship
as little more than a convenient legal fiction ;
of use, possibly, against human trespassers,
but having no force as against the right of
the trees to live a tree's life and fulfill a tree's
end.

One of them, I perceive, is dead already.
Like many a human being we have known,
it had a poor start ; no more than " half a
chance," as the saying goes. It struck root
on a ledge, in a cleft of rock, and after a
struggle of twenty or thirty years has found
the conditions too hard for it. Its neighbors
all appear to be doing well, with the excep-
tion of one that had its upper half blown
away a few years ago by a disrespectful

IN THE OLD PATHS 149

wind. The wind is an anarchist ; it bloweth
where it listeth, with small regard for human
sovereignty.

Your land, to my eye, is of a piece with all
the land round about ; or it would be, only
for its tall gray cliff. That is indeed a beauty,
a true distinction ; not so tall as it was forty
or fifty years ago, of course, but still a brave
and picturesque sight. I should like the illu-
sion of owning a thing like that myself. And
the brook just beyond, so narrow and so lively,
— that, too, you may reasonably be proud of,
though it is nothing but a wet-weather stream,
coming from the hill and tumbling musically
downward into Dyer's Run, past one boul-
der and another, from late autumn till late
spring, and then going dry. You have only
pleasant memories of it, for you were oftenest
here in the wet season. It has always been
one of your singularities, I remember, to be
less in the woods in summer than at other
times.

Now you have crossed your own boundary ;
but who would know it ? You yourself seem
not to feel the transition. The wood is one ;
and really it is all yours, as it is any man's

150 THE CLERK OF THE WOODS

who has eyes to enjoy it. Appreciation is
ownership.

So you go on, pausing here and there to
admire a lichen-covered boulder or stump
(there is nothing prettier, look where you
will), a cluster of ferns, a few sprouts of
holly, a sprinkling of pyrola leaves (green
with the greenness of all the summers of the
world), or a bed of fruit-bespangled par-
tridge-berry vine, till by and by you begin to
feel the overshadowing, illusion-dispelling,
soul-absorbing presence of the wood itself.
The voice of eternity is speaking in the pine
leaves. Your own identity slips away from
you as you listen. You are part of the
whole ; nay, you are not so much a part of
it as lost in it. The raindrop has fallen into
the sea. For a moment you seem almost to
divine a meaning in that bold, pantheistical,
much neglected scripture, " That God may
be all in all."

For a moment only. Then a cord snaps,
and you come back to your puny self and
its limitations. You are looking at this and
that, just as before. A chickadee chirps, and
you answer him. You are you again, a man

IN THE OLD PATHS 151

who used to be a boy. These are the old
paths, and you are still in the body. You
will prove it an hour hence at the dinner-
table.

THE PROSPERITY OF A WALK

A BIRD lover's daily rations during a New
England winter are somewhat like Robinson
Crusoe's on his island in the wet season.
" I eat a bunch of raisins for my breakfast,"
he says, " a piece of goat's flesh or of the
turtle for my dinner, and two or three of the
turtle's eggs for my supper." Such a fare
was ample for health, perhaps ; and probably
every item of it was sufficiently appetizing,
in itself considered ; but after the first week
or two it must have begun to smack of mo-
notony. The castaway might have com-
plained with some of old, " My soul loatheth
this light bread." He might have com-
plained, I say; I do not remember that
he did. What I do remember is that when,
moved by pious feeling, he was on the point
of thanking God for having brought him to
that place, he suddenly restrained himself, or
an influence from without restrained him.

THE PROSPERITY OF A WALK 153

" I know not what it was," he says, " but
something shocked my mind at that thought,
and I durst not speak the words. ' How
canst thou be such a hypocrite ? ' said I."

So I imagine that most bird-gazing men
would hesitate to thank the Divine Provi-
dence for a northern winter, with its rigors,
its inordinate length, and its destitution.
They put up with it, make the best of it,
grumble over it as politely as may be ; but
they are not so piously false-tongued as to
profess that they like it.

By the last of December they have begun,
not exactly to tire of chickadees and blue
jays, but to sigh for something else, some-
thing to go with these, something by way of
variety. " Where are the crossbills," they
ask, " and the redpoll linnets, and the pine
grosbeaks ? " All these circumpolar species
are too uncertain by half, or, better say, by
two thirds. Summering at the apex of the
globe, so to speak, with Europe, Asia, and
America equally at their elbow, they seem
to flit southward along whatever meridian
happens to take their fancy. Once in a
while chance brings them our way, but only

154 THE CLERK OF THE WOODS

once in a while. Last winter we had redpolls
and both kinds of crossbills, the white-wings
for the first time in many years. They made
a bright season. This winter, to the best of
my knowledge, not one of these hyperborean
species has sent so much as a deputation for
our enlivenment.

And to make matters worse, even our regu-
lar local stand-bys seem to be less numerous
than usual. Tree sparrows and snowbirds
are both abnormally scarce, by my reckoning.
As for the Canadian nuthatches, which helped
us out so nobly a year ago, they are not only
absent now, but were so throughout the fall.
I have not seen nor heard one in Massachu-
setts since the middle of May, a most unusual
— to the best of my recollection a quite un-
precedented — state of things. I should like
very much to know the explanation of the
mystery.

The daily birds at present, as I find them,
are the chickadee (which deserves to head
all lists), the Carolina nuthatch, the downy
woodpecker, the crow, and the jay. Less
regularly, but pretty frequently (every day,
if the walk is long enough), one meets with

THE PROSPERITY OF A WALK 155

tree sparrows, goldfinches, snowbirds, brown
creepers, flickers, and golden-crowned king-
lets. Twice since December came in I have
seen a shrike. Once I heard a single pine
finch passing, invisible, far overhead. On
the same day (December 2) I caught the fine
staccato calls of a purple finch, without see-
ing the author of them. On the 2d and 3d
three or four rusty blackbirds were unexpect-
edly in the neighborhood. Quail and grouse
are never absent, of course, but I happen to
have seen neither of them of late, though one
day I heard the breezy quoiting of a quail,
greatly to my pleasure. On the 14th I came
upon a single robin in the woods, the first
since November 21. He was perched in a
leafless treetop, and was calling at the top
of his voice, as if he had friends, or hoped
that he had, somewhere within hearing. The
sight was rather dispiriting than otherwise.
He looked unhappy, in a cold wind, with the
sky clouded. He had better have gone south
before this time, I thought. Half an hour
afterward I heard the quick, emphatic, an-
swer-demanding challenge of a hairy wood-
pecker (as much louder and sharper than the

156 THE CLERK OF THE WOODS

downy's as the bird is bigger), and on start-
ing in his direction saw him take wing. Him
I should never think of commiserating. He
can look out for himself. These, with Eng-
lish sparrows (" the poor ye have always with
you "), Old Squaws, herring gulls, and loons,
make up my December list of twenty-two
species. It might be worse, I suppose. I
remember the remark of a friend of mine on
a similar occasion. " Well," said he, " the
month is only half gone. You ought to see
as many more before the end of it." He was
strong in arithmetic, but weak in ornithology.
If bird lists could be made on his plan, we
should have our hands full in the dullest sea-
son. Even in January, I would engage to
find more than three hundred species within
a mile of my doorstep.

As matters are, we must come back (we
cannot do so too often, in winter especially)
to the good and wholesome doctrine that
pleasure is not in proportion to numbers or
rarity. It depends upon the kind and degree
of sympathy excited. One day, in one mood,
you will derive more inspiration from a five-
minute chat with a chickadee than on another

THE PROSPERITY OF A WALK 167

day, in some mood of dryness, you would get
from the sight of nightingales and birds of
paradise. Worldlings and matter-of-fact men
do not know it, but what quiet nature lovers
(not scenery hunting tourists) go to nature
in search of is not the excitement of novelty,
but a refreshment of the sensibilities. You
may call it comfort, consolation, tranquillity,
peace of mind, a vision of truth, an uplifting
of the heart, a stillness of the soul, a quick-
ening of the imagination, what you will. It
is of different shades, and so may be named
in different words. It is theirs who have the
secret, and the rest would not divine your
meaning though your speech were transpar-
ency itself.

To my thinking, no one, not even Tho-
reau, or Jefferies, or Wordsworth, ever said
a truer word about it than Keats dropped
in one of his letters. Nothing in his poems
is more deeply poetical. " The setting sun
will always set me to rights," he says, "or
if a sparrow come before my window, I take
part in his existence and pick about the
gravel." There you have the soul of the

158 THE CLERK OF THE WOODS

matter. " I take part in his existence."
When you do that, the bird or the flower
may be never so common or so humble.
Your walk has prospered.

SIGNS OF SPEING

THEY are not imaginary, but visible and
tangible. I have brought them home from
the woods in my hands, and here they lie
before me. I call them my books of the
Minor Prophets.

This one is an alder branch. Along its
whole length, spirally disposed at intervals
of an inch or two, are fat, purplish leaf-
buds, each on its stalk. As I look at them
I can see, only four months away, the tender,
richly green, newly unfolded, partly grown
leaves. How daintily they are crinkled!
And how prettily the edges are cut ! It is
like the work of fairy fingers. And what
perfection of veining and texture ! I have
never heard any one praise them ; but half
the things that bring a price in florists'
shops are many degrees less beautiful.

Still more to the purpose, perhaps, more
conspicuous, at all events, as well as nearer

160 THE CLERK OF THE WOODS

to maturity, and so more distinctly prophetic
of spring, are the two kinds of flower-buds
that adorn the ends of the twigs. These
also are of a deep purplish tint, which in
the case of the larger (staminate) catkins
turns to a lovely green on the shaded under
side. Mower-buds, I call them ; but they
are rather packages of bud-stuff wrapped
tightly against the weather, cover overlap-
ping cover. The best shingling of the most
expert carpenter could not be more abso-
lutely rain-proof. " Now do your worst,"
says the alder. The mud freezes about its
roots and the water about the base of its
stem, but it keeps its banners flying. Why
it should be at such pains to anticipate the
season is more than I can tell. Perhaps it
is none of my business. Enough that it is
the alder's way. There is no swamp in New
England but has a shorter and brighter win-
ter because of it.

This smooth, freckled, reddish-barked
twig is black birch (or sweet birch), taken
from a sapling, and therefore bearing no
aments, which on adult trees are already
things of grace and promise. I broke it

SIGNS OF SPRING 161

(it invites breaking by its extreme fragility)
for its leaf -buds, pointed, parti-colored, —
brown and yellowish green, — tender-look-
ing, but hardy enough to withstand all the
rigors of New England frost. The broken
end of the branch, where I get the spicy
fragrance of the inner bark, brings back a
sense of half-forgotten boyish pleasures. I
used to nibble the bark in spring. A little
dry it was, as I remember it, but it had the
spicy taste of wintergreen (checkerberry),
without the latter's almost excessive pun-
gency, or bite. Some of my country-bred
readers must have been accustomed to eat
the tender reddish young checkerberry
leaves, and will understand perfectly what
I mean by that word " bite." I wonder if
they had our curious Old Colony name for
those vernal dainties. It sounds like canni-
balism, but we gathered them and ate them
in all innocence (the taste is on my tongue
now) as "youngsters." No doubt the tree
gets its name, " sweet birch," from this
savoriness of its green inner bark, rather
than from the pedagogic employment of
its branches in schoolrooms as a means of
promoting the sweet uses of adversity.

162 THE CLERK OF THE WOODS

Now I take up another freckled, easily
broken twig, with noticeably short branch-
lets, some of them less than an inch in
length. Every one, even the shortest, is set
with brown globular buds of the size of pin-
heads. Toward the tip the main stem also
bears clusters of such tiny spheres. If you
do not know the branch by sight, I must ask
you to smell or taste the bark. " Sassa-
fras ? " No, though the guess is not surpris-
ing. It is spice-bush. The buds are flower-
buds. The shrub is one of our very early
bloomers, and makes its preparations accord-
ingly. While flowers are still scarce enough
to attract universal attention, it is thickly
covered with sessile or almost sessile yellow
rosettes, till it looks for all the world like
the early-flowering cornel (Cornus J/as),
which blossoms about the same time in gar-
dens. Seeing these spice-bush buds, though
January is still young, I can almost see May-
day ; and when I snap the brittle stem and
sniff the fresh wood, I can almost believe
that I have snapped off half a century from
my life. What a good and wholesome smell
it is ! Among the best of nature's own.

SIGNS OF SPRING 163

Here is a poplar twig, with well-devel-
oped, shapely buds. I pull off the outer
coverings and lay bare a mass of woolly
fibres, fine and soft, within which the tender
blossoms lie in germ. And next is a willow
stem. Already, though winter is no more
than a fortnight old, the " pussy " has begun
to push off its dark coverlid, as if it were in
haste to be up and feel the sun. Yes, spring
will soon be here, and the willow proposes
not to be caught napping.

These long, slender, cinnamon-colored,
silky buds, like shoemakers' awls for shape,
are from a beech tree. The package is done
up so tightly and skillfully that my clumsy
human fingers cannot undo it without tear-
ing it in pieces. Layer after layer I remove,
taking all pains, and here at the heart is the
softest of vegetable silk. How did the wood
learn to secrete such delicacies, and to wrap
them with such miraculous security? Why
could it not wait till spring, and save the
need of all this caution ? I do not know.
How should I? But I am glad of every
such vernal prophecy, as well as of every
such proof of vegetable intelligence. It

164 THE CLERK OF THE WOODS

would be strange if a beech tree could not
do some things better than you and I can.
Every dog knows his own trick.

Next comes a dry, homely, crooked, black-
ish, dead-looking twig, the slender divisions
of which are tipped with short clusters of
very fine purplish buds, rich in color, but so
small as readily to escape notice. This I
broke from a bush in a swampy place. It
is Leucothoe, a plant of special interest to
me for personal reasons. Year after year,
as I turned the leaves of Gray's Manual on
one errand and another, I read this roman-
tic-sounding Greek name, and wondered what
kind of plant it stood for. Then, during a
May visit to the mountains of North Caro-
lina, I came upon a shrub growing mile after
mile along roadsides and brooksides, loaded
down, literally, with enormous crops of sick-
ishly sweet, white flower-clusters. At first I
took it for some species of Andromeda, but
on bringing it to book found it to be Leu-
cothoe. I was delighted to see it. It is a
satisfaction to have a familiar name begin to
mean something. Finally, a year or two
later, passing in winter through a bit of

SIGNS OF SPRING 165

swamp where I had been accustomed to wan-
der as a child, with no thought of finding
anything new (as if there were not some-
thing new everywhere), I stopped before a
bush bearing purple buds and clusters of dry
capsules. The capsules might have been
those of Andromeda, for aught I should have
noticed, but the buds had a novel appear-
ance and told a different story. Again I be-
took myself to the Manual, and lo ! this
bush, growing in the swamp that I should
have thought I knew better than any other
in the world, turned out to be another
species — our only northern one — of Leu-
cothoe. So I might have fitted name and
thing together long ago, if I had kept my
eyes open. As Hamlet said, " There 's the
rub." Keeping one's eyes open is n't half
so easy as it sounds. Keally, the bush is
one that nobody except a botanist ever sees
(which is the reason, doubtless, why it has
no vernacular name) ; or if here and there
a man does see it, it is sure to be in flower-
ing time (in middle June), when he passes
it by without a second glance as " high-bush
blueberry." I am pleased to have it grow-

166 THE CLERK OF THE WOODS

ing on my present beat, and to give it a place
here in my collection of Minor Prophets.

How little the two (Leucothoe and blue-
berry) resemble each other at this time of
the year may be seen by comparing the stem
I have been talking about with the one lying
next to it — a short twig, every branchlet
of which ends in a very bright, extremely
handsome (if one stops to regard it) pinkish
globe. This is the high-bush blueberry in
its best winter estate. Every bud is like a
jewel.

Only one branch remains to be spoken of,
for I took but a small handful : a dark green

— blackish-green — tarnished stem, the two
branches of which bear each a terminal bud
of the size of a pea. This specimen you will
know at once by its odor, if you were ever
happy enough to dig sassafras roots, or to
eat sassafras lozenges, such as used to come

— perhaps they do still — rolled up in paper,
as bankers roll up coins. " Sassafras lossen-
gers," we called them, and the shopkeeper
(who is living yet, and still " tending store "
at ninety-odd) seemed never in doubt as to
what we meant. Each kind of lozenge,

SIGNS OF SPRING 167

peppermint, cayenne, checkerberry, and the
rest, came always in paper of a certain color.
Can I be wrong in my recollection of the
sassafras tint ? I would soon find out if I
could go into the old store. I would lay five
cents upon the counter (the price used to be
less than that, but it may have gone up since
my last purchase), and say, " A roll of sassa-
fras lossengers." And I miss my guess, or
the wrapper would be yellow.1

1 How fallible a thing is a man's memory ! The wrap-
per was not yellow, but green. Yellow was for lemon.
So more than one friendly correspondent has made haste
to inform me, and the venerable shopkeeper himself has
sent me a roll of the " lossengers " to prove it. My com-
pliments to him.

OLD COLONY BERRY PASTURES

THE last holiday of the century found me in
the place where I was born, with weather
made on purpose for out-of-door pleasures —
warm, bright, and still. A sudden inspiration
took me. I would go to see the old berry
pastures — not all of them (the forenoon
would hardly be long enough for that), but
two or three of the nearest, on opposite sides
of the same back road. It would be a kind
of second boyhood.

As I traveled the road itself, past two or
three houses that were not there in the old
time, two at least of the older wayside trees
greeted me with the season's compliments.
Or possibly it was I that greeted them. In
this kind of intercourse, it is hard to tell
speaker from hearer. We greeted each
other, let us say, though they are the older,
and by good rights should have spoken first.
They have held their own exceedingly well,

OLD COLONY BERRY PASTURES 169

far better than the clerk who is writing about
them, and for anything that appears, bid fair
to be hale and hearty at the next century-
mark.

One is a pear tree ; none of your modern,
high-bred, superfine, French-named dwarfs,
rather shrubs than trees, twenty of which may
grow, without crowding, in a scanty back
garden, but a burly, black-barked, stubby-
branched, round-topped giant. It looks to-
day exactly as it did when my boyish legs
first took me by it. In these many years it
has borne thousands of bushels of pears, all
of which must have served some use, I sup-
pose, in the grand economy of things, though
I have no idea what. No man, woman, or
child, I am reasonably sure, ever had the
hardihood to eat one. And still the tree
holds up its head and wears a brave, un-
ashamed, undiscourageable look. Long may
it stand in its corner, a relic and remem-
brancer of Puritanic times.

The other is an apple tree, one of those
beneficent creations, good Samaritans among
fruit trees, that bear a toothsome, early-ripen-
ing crop, and spill a generous portion of it

170 THE CLERK OF THE WOODS

on the roadward side of the wall. I remem-
ber it perfectly — the fruit, I mean — color,
shape, and flavor. Every year I see apples
of the same name in the market, but some-
how I can never buy any that look or taste
half so good as those that I used in lucky
moments to find here, waiting for me, in the
roadside grass.

Those were Old Testament times in New
England. Gleanings belonged to " the poor
and the stranger." Who could dispute our
title ? We believed in special providences ;
and edible windfalls on the nigh side of
the fence were among the chief est of them.
Schoolboys of the present day, I take for
granted, are brought up under a different
code. They would go past such temptations
with their hands in their pockets and with-
out a squint sideways. They apprehend no
difference between " picking up " an apple
and stealing one. Such is the evolution of
morality. The day of the gleaner is past.
Naomi and Ruth have become mythical per-
sonages, as much so as Romulus and Remus.

I was going first to Harvey White's pas-
ture (not to dwell unsafely upon confessions

OLD COLONY BERRY PASTURES 171

that begin to seem like thin ice), and by
and by came to the wood-path leading to it.
How perfectly I remembered the place : this
speedy, uphill curve to the left, rounding the
hill ; this dense bunch of low-branched ever-
greens a little farther on, under which, with
our pails full (or half full — we could not
work miracles, though we lived under the
Mosaic economy), we used to creep for rest
and shade while trudging homeward on
blazing summer noons. But the path was
surprisingly overgrown. At short intervals
thorny smilax vines (cat-briers) were sprawl-
ing over the very middle of it, and had to
be edged through cautiously. The appear-
ance of things grew less and less familiar. I
must be on the right track, but surely I had
gone far enough. The broad clearing should
be close at hand. I went on and on. Yes,
here was the old stone wall between Harvey
White's pasture and Pine-tree pasture. But
the pastures themselves? They were not
here. Then it came over me, with all the
force and suddenness of a direct revelation,
that forty years is a long time. In less time
than that a pasture may become a forest. I

172 THE CLERK OF THE WOODS

pushed about a little, in one direction and
another, and finding nothing but woods, re-
turned to the path and retraced my steps. I
might as well try to find my own lost youth as
those well-remembered huckleberry patches.
Even in that far-away time — so the re-
collection comes to me now — the place was
not strictly a pasture. It had been such, no
doubt, and Harvey White, whoever he was,
had owned it. Probably his cattle had once
been pastured there. Now he owned no land,
being nothing but a clod himself, and this
broad clearing would not have kept a single
cow from starvation. The wilderness was
claiming its own again. Instead of the grass
had come up the huckleberry bushes, the New
England heather. These, with a sprinkling
of blackberry vines, barberry bushes, and
savins, filled the place from end to end. We
knew them all. In the season we gathered
huckleberries, blackberries, and barberries
(the last made what some gastronomic cob-
bler called felicitously " shoe-peg sauce "),
while the young cone-shaped cedars were of
use as landmarks. We could leave a pail or
basket in the shelter of one, and with good

OLD COLONY BERRY PASTURES 173

luck have no great difficulty in finding it
again.

That was forty years ago. Now, the
huckleberry bushes have followed the grass.
Massachusetts land belongs to the woods.
Clear it never so thoroughly, and with half
a chance the trees will have it back again.
If you will climb any Massachusetts hill,
not directly upon the seashore, — and I am
not certain that even that exception need
be made, — you will see the truth of this at
once. Something like it, I remember, was
the first thing I thought of when I stood first
on Mount Wachusett. There lay the whole
State, so to speak, outspread below ; and it
was all a forest.

In this very Old Colony town many acres
that were once excellent pasturage are now
so perfectly reconverted to woodland that no
ordinary walker over them would suspect
that they had ever been anything else. If
this has happened within twenty miles of
Boston, within half the lifetime of a man,
there seems to be no great danger that the
State will ever be deforested ; and those of
us who love wild things, and look upon civ-

174 THE CLERK OF THE WOODS

ilization as a mixed good, may be cheered
accordingly,

For to-day, however, I had something else
in my eye; and once back in the road I
started for the entrance to what we children
knew familiarly as " Millstone " — that is to
say, Millstone Pasture ; a large, irregular
clearing, or half clearing, distinguished by
the presence of two broad flat boulders, ly-
ing one upon the other. This was among
the best of our foraging grounds ; a boy's
wild orchard — orchard and garden in one.
Here we gathered all the berries before
named, and besides them checkerberries
(boxberries), dangleberries, and grapes.

The path leading into it was still open,
but there was no need to go far to discover
that here, as in Harvey White's, the wood
had got the upper hand of everything else.
" I should starve here," I said to myself,
" at the very height of the berry season."
Nothing looked natural — nothing but the
superimposed boulders. They had suffered
no change, or none except an inevitable
" subjective " dwindling. As for the old
apple orchard near them (in which I shot

OLD COLONY BERRY PASTURES 175

my last bird upwards of twenty years ago),
it was more like a cedar grove, although by
searching for them one could still discover
a few stumps and ruins of what had once
been apple trees. " Perish your civiliza-
tion ! " Mother Nature seemed to be say-
ing. " Give me a few years, and I will
undo the whole of it." I was half glad to
hear her. The planter of the orchard was
dead long ago, and his work had followed
him.

But the holly trees ! They are Nature's
own children. I would have a look at
them, remembering perfectly, I thought,
the exact spot where a pretty bunch used to
grow. And I found them, after a protracted
search — but no longer a pretty clump.
One tree was perhaps fifteen feet high — a
beanpole, which still put forth at the very
top a few branchlets, one or two feet in
length, just to prove itself alive. The rest
of the bunch had been cut down to the
ground. All that remained was a few
suckers, each with a spray of green leaves.
The sight was pitiful. Poor trees ! They
were surrounded by a dense wood, instead

176 THE CLERK OF THE WOODS

of standing in the open, as they had done
in my day. And between the competi-
tion of the pines and the knives and axes
of collectors of Christmas greenery, they
were nigh to extermination. By and by,
however, before many years, the pines will
fall under the axe. Then, I dare say, the
old holly roots will have their turn again.
Then, too, the checkerberry vines will enjoy
a few years of fruitf ulness. So the wheel of
fortune goes round, all the world over, in
the wood no less than in the city. There
is no scotching it. As well try to scotch
the earth itself. All things are at seesaw.

" They say the lion and the lizard keep
The courts where Jamshyd gloried and drank deep ;

And Bahrain, that great hunter —the wild ass
Stamps o'er his head, but cannot break his sleep."

If such things have happened, if Nineveh
and Babylon flourished and came to naught,
why wonder at the decline and fall of Old
Colony berry pastures ?

SQUIRRELS, FOXES, AND OTHERS

" Do you know where there are any flying
squirrels ? " I asked a friend, two or three
weeks ago. My friend, I should mention,
is a farmer, living a mile or two away from
the village, and, being much out of doors
with his eyes open, has sometimes good things
to show me. With all the rest, he has more
than once taken me to a flying squirrel's
tree and given me a chance to see the crea-
ture " fly."

This peculiar member of the squirrel
family, as all readers may be presumed to
know, is nocturnal in its habits, and for that
reason is seldom seen by ordinary strollers.
Once my friend, who was just then at work
in the woods, found a hollow tree in which
one was living, and we visited the spot to-
gether. I posted myself conveniently, and
he went up to the tree and hammered upon
it with his axe. Out peeped the squirrel at

178 THE CLERK OF THE WOODS

a height of perhaps twenty feet, and as the
blows continued it " took wing " and came
to the ground safely, and more or less grace-
fully, alighting at the foot of another tree
some distance away. At all other times I
have seen the flight from outside nests, as
they may be called — bulky aggregations of
leaves and twigs placed hi the bare tops of
moderately tall, slender trees, preferably gray
birches, and mostly in swampy woods.

On the present occasion my friend told
me that he knew of no nests now in use, but
that if I would come to his house the next
morning he would go with me in search
of some. I called for him at the hour
appointed. Squirrels or no squirrels, it is
always worth while to take a walk in good
company.

He led me along the highway for a quar-
ter of a mile, and then struck into a wood-
road, which presently brought us into a
swampy forest, with here and there a bit of
pond, which we must go out of our way to
cross on the ice (a light snow had covered
it within twenty-four hours), on the look-
out for fox tracks and what not. We were

SQUIRRELS, FOXES, AND OTHERS 179

headed for the "city-house lot," he told
me.

"The city-house lot," said I; "what is
that?"

" Why, there used to be two or three
houses over in this direction. The largest
of them, the one that stood the longest, was
known as the city house. More than fifty
years ago, before my father camo here to
live, it was moved to a place on the main
road. You must remember it. It was
pulled down, or fell to pieces, within six or
eight years."

I did remember it, but had never known
its name or its history. The surprising
thing about the story was the fact that there
was no indication of a road hereabout, nor
any sign that there had ever been one ;
and all the while we were plunging deeper
and deeper into the woods, now following
a footpath, now leaving it for a short cut
among the trees. By and by we came to a
drier spot, and an old cellar-hole. This was
not the city-house cellar, however, but that
of some smaller house. About it were evi-
dences of a former clearing, though a casual

180 THE CLERK OF THE WOODS

observer would scarcely have noticed them.
Tufts of beard-grass stood above the snow, —
" Indian grass," my guide called it, — and
the remains of an ancient stone wall still
marked the line, if one might guess, where
the grazing-land had been divided from the
tillage. It was a farm in ruins.

Soon we came to a larger cellar-hole, of
which, as of the smaller one, bushes and trees
had long ago taken possession. Here had
stood the city house, a " frame " structure
(whence its name, probably), a famous af-
fair in its day, the pride of its owner's
heart. It was one of five or six houses, if I
understood my informant correctly, that had
once been scattered over this part of the
town of Weston (or what is at present the
town of Weston) within a radius of a mile or
so. Of them all not a trace remains now
but so many half-filled cellars.

I thought of something I had been saying
lately about the manner in which the forest
reclaims Massachusetts land as soon as its
human possessors let go their hold upon it.
Now it was suggested to me that if a man is
ambitious to do something that will last, he

SQUIRRELS, FOXES, AND OTHERS 181

had better not set up a house or a monument,
but dig a hole in the ground. Humility
helps to permanence. The lower you get,
the less danger of falling. Nature is slower
to fill up than to pull down, though she will
do either with all thoroughness, give her
time enough. To her a man's life is but a
clock's tick, and all his constructions are
but child's play in the sand. A trite bit of
moralizing? "Well, perhaps it is; but it
sounded anything but trite, as the old cel-
lar-hole spoke it to me. A word is like a
bullet : its force is in the power behind it.

Not far beyond this point we found our-
selves in a gray-birch swamp. Here, if any-
where, should be the nests we were in search
of. And soon we began to see them, one
here, another there. We followed the same
course with them all ; my companion shook
or jarred the tree, while I stood off and
watched for the squirrels. And the result
was alike in all cases. Every nest was
empty. We tried at least a score, and had
our labor for our pains. "There are, no
flying squirrels this year," my companion
kept saying. Perhaps they had migrated.

182 THE CLERK OF THE WOODS

With one or two exceptions, indeed, the nests
could be set down in advance — from their
color and evident dilapidation — as being at
least a year old.

Once we started a rabbit, and here and
there a few chickadees accosted us. Once,
I think, we heard the voice of a golden-
crowned kinglet. For the rest, the woods
seemed to be deserted, and at the end of
our long detour we came back to the road
half a mile above the point at which we had
left it.

And still the world is not depopulated,
even in winter, nor are all the pretty wild
animals asleep. The snakes are, to be sure,
and the frogs (though hylas were peeping
late in December), and the chipmunks and
the woodchucks ; but there is abundant life
stirring, nevertheless.

Yesterday I called on my friend again,
and together we walked up the road — a
back-country thoroughfare. This time, also,
a light snow had just fallen, and my com-
panion, better informed than I in such mat-
ters, began to discuss footprints with me.

" You know this one? " he asked.

SQUIRRELS, FOXES, AND OTHERS 183

" Oh, yes ; a rabbit."

" And this one ? "

" A fox," said I, doubtfully.

" Yes, indeed. See the shape and size of
the foot. Yes, that 's a fox."

"And this one?"

" Oh, that 's a kitty." (A cat, he meant
to say.) " Strange how many cats are prowl-
ing about this country at night," he contin-
ued. " I have caught two this season, and
C has caught two."

" Do you skin them ? "

" Yes," with a laugh.

Here were red-squirrel tracks, and here a
big dog's, and here again a fox's. At an-
other point a bevy of quail had crossed the
road. " One, two, three," my farmer began
to count. " Yes ; there were twelve." I
had remarked, just before, that I hadn't
seen a quail for I did n't know how long.
" And look here," he said, as we approached
the farm on our return. He led the way to
a diminutive chicken-coop sitting by itself in
the orchard. A single hen, which had been
ailing, was confined in it, he said. A fox
had gone round and round it in the night,

184 THE CLERK OF THE WOODS

and once had stopped to scratch at the back
side of it.

"He knew what was in there," said I.
The farmer laughed.

" Oh, he is an old fellow," he answered.
" I have a trap set for him just where he
used to pass. Now he crosses the field, but
he goes round that spot ! I see his tracks.
They say it is easy to trap foxes. Perhaps
it is ; but it is n't for me."

Yet he has shown me — not this year —
more than one handsome skin.

Once, too, he showed me the fox himself.
Hounds were baying in the distance as I
came to the house on my Sunday morning
walk, and we spoke of their probable course.
He thought it likely that they would cross
a certain field, and taking a by-road that
would carry us within sight of it, we kept
our eyes out till the dogs seemed to have
diverged in the wrong direction. Then I
was walking carelessly along, talking as
usual (a bad habit of mine), when my com-
panion seized me by both shoulders and
swung me sharply about. " Look at that ! "
he said. And there stood the fox, five or ten

SQUIRRELS, FOXES, AND OTHERS 185

rods away, facing us squarely. He had come
up a little rise of ground, and had stopped
as he saw us. But for my friend's muscular
assistance, I should have missed him, near as
he was, for in one second he was gone ; and
though we scaled the wall instantly and ran
up the slope, we got no further sight of
him.

Yes, if you are a discouraged, winter-killed
nature lover, who has begun to think that
Massachusetts woods — woods within sight
of the State House dome — are pretty much
devoid of wild life, go out after a light snow-
fall and read the natural history record of a
single night. We shall not be without woods,
nor will the woods be without inhabitants,
for a good while yet.

WINTER AS IT WAS

WITH the wind howling from the northwest,
and the mercury crouching below the zero
mark, it seems a good time to sit in the house
and think of winter as it used to be. What
is the advantage of growing old, if one can-
not find an hour now and then for the plea-
sures of memory ?

The year's end is for the young. Such is
the order of the world, the universal paradox.
Opposite seeks opposite. And we were young
once, — a good while ago, — and for us, also,
winter was a bright and busy season, its days
all too short and too few. I speak of " week-
days," be it understood. As for winter Sun-
days, in an unwarmed meeting-house (though
the sermon might be like the breath of
Nebuchadnezzar's furnace), we should have
been paragons of early piety, beings too good
to live, if we had wished the hours longer.
Let their miseries be forgotten.

WINTER AS IT WAS 187

On week-days, once out of school, we
wasted no time. We knew where we were
going, and we went on the run. We were
boys, not men. Some of us, at least, were
not yet infected with the idea that we ever
should be men. We aspired neither to
men's work nor to men's pleasures. We
aimed not at self -improvement. We thought
not of getting rich. We might recite " Ex-
celsior " in the schoolroom, but it did us
no harm ; our innocence was incorruptible.
Two things we did: we skated, and we slid
down-hill. There was always either snow
or ice. The present demoralization of the
seasons had not yet begun. Winter was
winter. Snowdrifts were over your head,
and ice was three feet thick. And zero —
for boys who slept in attics to which no
particle of artificial heat ever penetrated,
zero was something like summer. Young
America was tough in those days.

I recall at this moment the bitterly cold
day when one of our number skated into an
airhole on Whitman's Pond. It was during
the noon recess. His home was a mile or
more east of the pond, and the schoolhouse

188 THE CLERK OF THE WOODS

was at least a mile west of the pond. He sank
into the water up to his chin, and saved him-
self with difficulty, the airhole luckily being
small and the ice firm about the edges. What
would a twentieth-century boy do under such
circumstances? I can only guess. But I
know what Charles H. did. He came back
to the schoolhouse first, to make his apologies
to the master ; I can see him now, as he
came in smiling, looking just a little foolish ;
then he ran home — three miles, perhaps —
to change his clothing. And he is living still.
Oh, yes, we were tough, — or we died young.
That was while we were in the high school,
when I was perhaps eleven or twelve years
old. But my liveliest recollections of winter
antedate that period by several years. Then
sliding down-hill was our dearest excitement.
Ours was " no great of a hill," to use a form
of speech common among us ; I smile now
as I go past it ; but it could not have
suited us better if it had been made on pur-
pose ; and no half holiday or moonlight even-
ing was long enough to exhaust our enjoy-
ment of the exercise — walking up and sliding
down, walking up and sliding down. " Mo-

WINTER AS IT WAS 189

notorious," do I hear some one say ? It was
monotony such as would have ended too soon
though it had lasted forever. If I had a
thousand dollars to spend in an afternoon's
sport now, I should not know how to get half
as much exhilaration out of it as two hours
on that snow-covered slope afforded. There
is 'something in a boy's spirits that a man's
money can never buy, nor a man's will bring
back to him.

As years passed, we ventured farther from
home to a steeper and longer declivity.
Glorious hours we spent there, every boy
riding his own sled after his own fashion.
Boys who were boys rode " side-saddle " or
"belly-bump;" but here and there a timid
soul, or one who considered the toes of his
boots, condescended to an upright position,
feet foremost, like a girl — in the language
of the polite people, sur son seant.

Later still came the day of the double-
runner, when we slid down-hill gregariously,
as it were, or, if you will, in chorus (the
word is justified), every boy's arms clinging
to the boy in front of him. Older fellows
now took a hand with us, and we resorted

190 THE CLERK OF THE WOODS

to the highway. With the icy track at its
smoothest, we went the longer half of a mile,
and had a mile and a half to walk back, the
"going" being slippery enough to double
the return distance.

At this time it was that there came a pass-
ing rage (such as communities are suddenly
taken with, now and then, for a certain
amusement — golf, croquet, or what not)
for coasting in a huge pung. Grown people,
men and women, filled it, while one man
sat on a hand-sled between the thills and
guided its course. Near the foot of the hill
the road took a, pretty sharp turn, with a
stone wall on the awkward side of the way ;
but the excitement more than paid for the
risk, and by sheer good luck a thaw inter-
vened before anybody was killed.

There was quiet amusement in the neigh-
borhood, I remember, because Mrs. C., who
was distressingly timid about riding behind
a horse (she could never be induced to get
into a carriage unless the animal were " old
as Time and slow as cold molasses "), saw
no danger in this automobile on runners,
which traveled at the rate of a mile a min-

WINTER AS IT WAS 191

ute, more or less, with nothing between its
occupants and sudden death except the
strength and skill of the amateur steersman,
who must keep his own seat and steer the
heavy load behind him. So it is. A man
goes into battle with a cheer, but turns pale
at finding himself number thirteen at the
dinner-table.

Sliding down-hill was such sport as no
language can begin to describe ; but skating
was unspeakably better. Those first skates !
I wish I had them still, though I would
show them with caution, lest the irreverent
should laugh. They would be a spectacle.
How voluminously the irons curled up in
front ! And how gracefully as well ! A
piece of true artistry. And how comforta-
bly they were cut off short behind, so that
you could stop " in short metre," no matter
what speed you had on, by digging your
heels into the ice. And what a complicated
harness of straps was required to keep them
in place. Those straps had much to answer
for in the way of cold feet, to say nothing of
the passion we were thrown into when one
of them broke ; and we a mile or two from

192 THE CLERK OF THE WOODS

home, with the ice perfection — "a perfect
glare " — and the fun at its height. This
was before the day of " rockers," of which
I had a pair later, — and a proud boy I
was. Pretty treacherous we found them to
start with, or rather to stop with ; but for
better or worse we got the hang of their
peculiarities before our skulls were irrepa-
rably broken.

Skating then was like whist-playing now,
— an endless study. You thought you were
fairly good at it till a new boy came along
and showed you tricks such as you had
never dreamed of ; just as you thought, per-
haps, that you could play whist till you sat
opposite a man who asked, in a tone between
bewilderment and asperity, why on earth
you led him a heart at a certain critical stage,
or why in the name of common sense you
didn't know that the ten of clubs was on
your left. Art is long. It was true then,
as it is now. But what matter ? We
skated for fun, as we did everything else
(out of school), except to shovel paths and
saw wood. Those things were work. And
work was longer even than art. Work was

WINTER AS IT WAS 193

never done. So it seemed. And how bleak
and comfortless the weather was while we
were doing it ! A cruel world, and no mis-
take. But half an hour afterward, on the
hillside or the pond, the breeze was just
balmy, and life — there was no time to think
how good we found it. No doubt it is true,
as the poet said, —

" There 's something in a flying horse,
There 's something in a huge balloon ; "

but there 's more, a thousand times over, in
being a boy.

"DOWN AT THE STORE"

I TALKED, a week ago, as if, in my time as
a boy, we lived out of doors every day, and
all day long, regardless of everything that
winter could do to hinder us. That was an
exaggeration. Now and then there came a
time when the weather shook itself loose, as
it were, and bore down upon us with ban-
ners flying. Then the strong man bowed
himself, and even the playful boy took to
his burrow. The pond might be smooth
as glass, but he did not skate; the hill-
track might be in prime condition, but he
did not slide. He sang low, and waited for

Not that he stayed at home from school.
Let no degenerate reader, the enfeebled
victim of modern ideas, think that. The
day of coddling had not yet dawned upon
New England. There was no bell then to
announce a full holiday, or " one session,"

"DOWN AT THE STORE" 195

because of rain or snow. And as truly as
" school kept," so truly the boy was ex-
pected to be there. No alternative was so
much as considered. But on such a morn-
ing as we now have in mind he went at full
speed, looking neither to right nor left, and
he thanked his stars when he came in sight
of the village store. That, whether going
or coming, he hailed as a refuge. Possibly
he had a cent in his pocket, a real " cop-
per," and felt it in danger of burning
through ; but cent or no cent, he went in
to warm his fingers and his ears, and inci-
dentally to listen to the talk of the assem-
bled loafers.

I can see them now, one perched upon a
barrel-head, one on a pile of boxes, three or
four occupying a long settee, and one, wear-
ing a big light-colored overcoat, who came
every day, sitting like a lord in the comfort-
able armchair in front of the cylinder stove.
This last man was not rich ; neither was he
in any peculiar sense a social favorite ; he
said little and bought less ; but he always
had the chief seat. I used to wonder what
would happen if some day he should come

196 THE CLERK OF THE WOODS

in and find it occupied. But on that point
it was idle to speculate. As well expect a
simple congressman to drop into the Speak-
er's chair, leaving that functionary to dis-
pose of his own corporeal dignity as best
he could. Prescription, provided it be old
enough, is the best of titles. What other
has the new king of Great Britain and Ire-
land?

If it was shortly before schooltime, on
one of those mornings when the weather
seemed to be laying itself out to establish a
record, the talk was likely to be of ther-
mometers.

" My glass was down to nineteen below,"
one man would say, by way of starting the
ball.

" Mine touched twenty at half-past six,"
the next one would remark.

And so the topic would go round, the
mercury dropping steadily, notch by notch.
As I said a week ago, whiter was winter in
those days. It may have occurred to me,
sometimes, that the man who managed to
speak last had a decided moral advantage
over his rivals. He could save the honor

"DOWN AT THE STORE" 197

of his thermometer at the least possible ex-
pense of veracity.

So far things were not very exciting,
though on the whole rather more so, per-
haps, than studying a geography lesson (as
if it were anything to me which were the
principal towns in Indiana !) ; but now, not
unlikely, the conversation would shift to
hunting exploits. This was more to the
purpose. Wonderful game had been shot,
first and last, down there in the Old Colony ;
almost everything, it seemed to a listening
boy, except lions and elephants. If Mr.
Roosevelt had lived in those times, he need
not have gone to the Rocky Mountains in
search of adventure.

I listened with both ears. There never
was a boy who did not like to hear of do-
ings with a gun. I remember still one of
my very early excitements in that line. I
was on my way home at noon when a flock
of geese flew directly over the street, honk-
ing loudly. At that moment a shoemaker
ran out of his little shop, gun in hand, and
aiming straight upward, let go a charge.
Nothing dropped, to my intense surprise

198 THE CLERK OF THE WOODS

and no small disappointment ; but I had
seen the shot fired, and that was something
— as is plain from the fact that I remember
it so vividly these many years afterward.
The names of the principal towns of Indiana
long ago folded their tents like the Arabs
and silently stole away, but I can still see
that shoemaker running out of his shop.

It was a common practice, I was to learn
as I grew older, for shoemakers to keep a
loaded gun standing in a corner, ready for
such contingencies. There was a tradition
in the town that a certain man (I have for-
gotten his name, or I would bracket it with
Mr. Roosevelt's) had once brought down a
goose in this way. It is by no means im-
possible ; for flocks of geese were an every-
day sight in the season (I am sure I have
seen twenty in an afternoon), and some-
times, in thick weather, they almost grazed
the chimney-tops. Geese (of that kind)
have grown sadly fewer since then, and per-
haps have learned to fly higher.

After the hunting reminiscences would
likely enough come a discussion of fast
horses, Flora Temple and others — includ-

"DOWN AT THE STORE" 199

ing " Mart " So-and-So's of our village ; or
possibly (and this I liked best of all, I
think), the conversation would flag, and old
Jason Andcut would begin whistling softly
to himself. Then I was all ears. Such a
tone as he had, especially in the lower regis-
ter ! And such trills and bewitching turns
of melody! Why, it was almost as good
as the Weymouth Band, which in those days
was every whit as famous as the Boston
Symphony Orchestra is now. When it
played the " Wood-up Quickstep " or " De-
parted Days," the whole town was moved,
and one boy that I knew was almost in
heaven.

In fact, ours was a musical community.
The very man who now occupied the arm-
chair in front of the stove (how plainly he
comes before me as I write, taking snuff and
reading the shopkeeper's newspaper of the
evening before) had acquired the competency
of which he was supposed to be possessed by
playing the flute (or was it the clarinet ?)
in a Boston theatre orchestra ; and at this
very minute three younger men of the village
were getting rich in the same sure and easy

200 THE CLERK OF THE WOODS

manner. As for whistling, there was hardly
a boy in the street but was studying that
accomplishment, though none of them could
yet come within a mile of Jason Andcut.
His was indeed " a soft and solemn-breathing
sound," as unlike the ear-piercing notes
which most pairs of puckered lips gave forth
as the luscious fruit of his own early pear
tree ("Andcut's pears," we always called
them) was unlike certain harsh and crabbed
things that looked like pears, to be sure, but
tied your mouth up in a hard knot if, in
a fit of boyish hunger, you were ever rash
enough to set your teeth in one. The good
man ! I should love to hear his whistle
now ; I believe I should like it almost as
well as Mr. Longy's oboe ; but the last of
those magical improvisations was long ago
finished. I have heard good whistling since
(not often, but I have heard it, both pro-
fessional and amateur), but nothing to match
that soliloquistic pianissimo, which I stole
close to the man's elbow to get my fill of.
Was the prosperity of the music partly in
the boyish ear that heard it?

That corner-grocery gathering was one

"DOWN AT THE STORE" 201

of our institutions ; I might almost say the
chief of them — casino and lyceum in one.
If somebody once called the place a " yarn
factory," that was only in the way of a joke.
On a rainy holiday it was a great resource.
There were always talkers and listeners there,
— the two essentials, — and the talk was
often racy, though never, so far as I know,
unfit for a boy's hearing. The town sup-
ported no local newspaper, nor did we feel
the need of any. You could get all the news
there was, and more too, " down at the
store." If the regular members of the club
failed to bring it in, the baker or the candy
peddler would happen along to supply the
lack. And after all, say what you will, word
of mouth is better than printers' ink.

And while you listened to the talk, you
could be eating a stick of barber's-pole candy
or a cent's worth of dates, or, if your wealth
happened to admit of such extravagance, you
could enjoy, after the Cranford fashion, quite
unembarrassed by Cranford pudicity, a two-
cent orange. Those were the days of small
things. Dollars did not grow on every bush.
Seven-year-old boys, at all events, were not

202 THE CLERK OF THE WOODS

yet accustomed to go about jingling a pocket-
ful of silver. Once, I remember, I saw a
little chap sidle up to the counter and look
long at the jack-knives and other temptations
displayed in the showcase. By and by the
shopkeeper espied a possible customer, and
came round to see what was wanted.

" How much are those tops ? " asked the
boy, pointing with his finger.

" Ten cents," was the answer.

The boy was silent. He was thinking it
over. Then he said : " I '11 take two cents'
worth of peanuts."

Poor fellow ! I have seen many a grown
man since then who was obliged to content
himself with the same kind of philosophy.
And who shall say it is not a good one ? If
you cannot spend the summer in Europe,
take a day at the seashore. If you miss of
an election to Congress, bid for a place on
the school committee. If you cannot write
ten-thousand-dollar novels, write — well,
write a weekly column in a newspaper.
There is always something within a capable
man's reach, though it be only " two cents'
worth of peanuts."

BIEDS AT THE WINDOW

THE winter has continued birdless, not only
in eastern Massachusetts, but, as far as I can
learn, throughout New England. Letters
from eastern Maine, the White Mountain
region, and western Massachusetts all bring
the same story : no birds except the com-
monest — chickadees and the like. Cross-
bills, redpolls, and pine grosbeaks have left
us out in the cold.

The only break in the season's monotony
with me has been a flock of six purple
finches, seen on the 29th of January. I was
nearing home, in a side street, thinking of
nothing in particular, when I heard fault con-
versational notes close at hand, and stopping
to look, saw first one and then another of
the bright carmine birds ; for five of the six
were handsome adult males. All were eat-
ing savin berries, and conversing in their
characteristic soft staccato. It was by all

204 THE CLERK OF THE WOODS

odds the brightest patch of feathers of the
new century. The birds must be wintering
not far away, I suppose ; but though I have
been up and down that road a dozen times
since February came in, I have seen nothing
more of them. Within a month they will
be singing, taking the winds of March with
music. No more staccato then, but the
smoothest of fluency.

Much the birdiest spot known to me just
now is under our own windows — under them
and against them, as shall presently be ex-
plained. Indeed, we may be said to be run-
ning a birds' boarding-house, and we are cer-
tainly doing an excellent business. " Meals
at all hours," our signboard reads. We " set
a good table," as the trade expression is, and
our guests, who, being experienced travelers,
know a good thing when they see it, have
spread the news. There is no advertisement
so effective as a satisfied customer.

The earliest comers are the blue jays.
They anticipate the first call for breakfast,
appearing before sunrise. Jays are a shrewd
set. They can put two and two together with
the sharpest of us. Man, they have dis-

BIRDS AT THE WINDOW 205

covered, is a laggard in the morning. Then
is their time. In very bad weather, indeed,
they come at all hours ; but they are always
wary. If I raise the window an inch or two
and set it down with a slam, away they go ;
though, likely as not, I look out again five
minutes later to find them still there. In
times of dearth one may reasonably risk
something for a good piece of suet.

The jays take what they can, somewhat
against our will. The table is spread for
smaller people : for downy woodpeckers,
white-breasted nuthatches, and chickadees,
with whom appears now and then, always
welcome, a brown creeper. The table is set
for them, I say ; and they seem to know it.
They come not as thieves, but as invited
guests, or, better still, as members of the
family. No opening and shutting of win-
dows puts them to flight. Why should it?
There are at least a dozen baiting-places
about the house, and they know every one
of them. Though the fare is everywhere
the same, they seem to find a spice of vari-
ety in taking a bite at one table after an-
other.

206 THE CLERK OF THE WOODS

My own principal enjoyment of the busi-
ness, at present, is connected with a new toy,
if I may call it so : a small, loosely knit, or
crocheted, bag — made of knitting-cotton, I
think I was told — sent to me by a corre-
spondent in Vermont. Into this, following
the donor's instructions, I have put nutmeats
and hung it out of a window of my working-
room, throwing a cord over the top of the
upper sash, and allowing the bag to dangle
against the pane.

At first I broke the nuts into small pieces,
but I soon learned better than that. Now I
divide the filbert once, and for the most part
the birds (chickadees only, thus far) have to
stay on the bag and eat, instead of pulling
out the pieces whole and making off with
them. The sight is a pretty one — as good
as a play. I am careful not to fill the bag,
and the feeder is compelled to hang bottom
side up under it, and strike upward. The
position is graceful and not in the least in-
convenient, and possesses, moreover, a great
economical advantage : the crumbs, some of
which are of necessity spilled, drop on the
eater's breast, instead of to the ground. I

BIRDS AT THE WINDOW 207

see him stop continually to pick them off.
" Gather up the fragments," he says, " that
nothing be lost."

When one of the pieces in the bag is so
far nibbled away that a corner of it can be
pulled through one of the interstices, matters
become exciting. Then comes the tug of
war. The eater, who knows that his time is
limited, grows almost frantic. He braces
himself and pulls, twitching upward and
downward and sidewise (" Come out, there,
will you?"), while the wind blows him to
and fro across the pane, and one or two of
his mates sit upon the nearest branch of the
elm, eyeing him reproachfully. " You greedy
thing ! " they say. " Are you going to stay
there forever?" Often their patience gives
out (I do not wonder), and one after another
they swoop down past the window, not to
strike the offender, but to offer him a hint
in the way of moral suasion. Sometimes one
alights, with more or less difficulty, on the
narrow middle sash just below, and talks to
him; or one hovers near the bag, or even
perches sidewise on the string, just above, as
much as to say, " Look out ! " Then I hear

208 THE CLERK OF THE WOODS

a burst of little, hurried, sweet-sounding,
angry notes — always the same, or so nearly
the same that my ear is unable to detect the
difference.

Generally these manoauvres are success-
ful ; but now and then the feeder is so per-
sistently greedy that I am tempted to assert
a landlord's prerogative and tell him to be-
gone. Only once have I ever seen two birds
clinging to the bag together, although so far
as I can make out, there is nothing to hinder
their doing so; and even then they were
not eating, but waiting to see which should
give place to the other.

All in all, it is a very pleasing show. It is
good to see the innocent creatures so happy.
Nobody could look at them, their black eyes
shining, their black bills striking into the
meats, all their motions so expressive of eager
enjoyment, without feeling glad on their ac-
count. And with all the rest, it may be said
that an ease-loving man, with a meddlesome
New England conscience, is not always sorry
to have a decent, or better than decent, ex-
cuse for dropping work once in a while to
look out of the window. Who says we are

BIRDS AT THE WINDOW 209

idle while we are taking a lesson in natural
history ? I do not know how many times I
have broken off (seeing a bird's shadow in
the room, or hearing a tap on the pane) while
writing these few paragraphs.

Once, indeed, I saw something like actual
belligerency. Two birds reached the bag at
the same instant, and neither was inclined to
withdraw. They came together, bill to bill,
each with a volley of those fine, spitfire notes
of which I spoke just now, and in the course
of the set-to, which was over almost before it
began, one of them struck beak-first against
the window, as if he were coming through.
Then both flew to the elm branches, fifteen
feet away, and in a moment more one of them
came back and took a turn at feeding. I
am not going to take in the bag for fear of
the immoral effects of excessive competition.
Competition — among customers — is the
life of trade. I am glad to see my table so
popular.

The nuthatches, of which we have at least
two, male and female, as I know by the dif-
ferent color of their crowns, have not yet dis-
covered the nuts, but come regularly to the

210 THE CLERK OF THE WOODS

suet in the trees, and pretty often to a piece
that is nailed upon one of my window-sills.
I hear the fellow's pleasant, contented, gut-
tural, grunting notes, and rise to look at him,
liking especially to watch the tidbits as they
travel one after another between his long
mandibles. Even if he does not call out, I
know that it is he, and not a chickadee, by
the louder noise he makes in driving his bill
into the fat.

I have fancied, all winter, that the birds
— these two nuthatches, I mean — were
mated, seeing them so often together ; and
perhaps they are ; but the other day I wit-
nessed a little performance that seemed to
put another complexion upon the case. I
was leaving the yard when I heard bird notes,
repeated again and again, which I did not
recognize. To the best of my recollection
they were quite new. I looked up into a
tree, and there were the two nuthatches, one
chasing the other from branch to branch,
with that peculiarly dainty, fluttering, min-
cing action of the wings, a sort of will-you-be-
mine motion, which birds are given to using
in the excitement of courtship. There could

BIRDS AT THE WINDOW 211

be no doubt of it, though it was only the
10th of February: Corydon was already
" paying attentions " to Phyllis. Success to
him ! I notice, also, that chickadees are be-
ginning to whistle " Pho3be " with consider-
able frequency, though there is nothing in
the weather to encourage them. Birds have
an almanac of their own. Spring is coming.

A GOOD-BY TO WINTER

WINTER is not quite done, but it will be
by the time this " Clerk " is printed. That
is to say, my winter will be done. In this
respect, as in many others, I am a conserv-
ative. My calendar is of the old school.
" There are four seasons in the year —
spring, summer, autumn or fall, and winter."
So we began our school compositions ; and
by " spring " we meant the spring months
— March, April, and May. The tempera-
ture might belie the almanac ; there might
be "six weeks' sledding in March;" but
when March began, spring began.

And by the way, what a capital subject
that was — " The Seasons " ! A theme with-
out beginning and without end ; a theme to
be taken seriously or humorously, in prose
or verse; a theme of universal interest.
Best of all, there was no difficulty about the
first sentence. No need to sit for half an hour

A GOOD-BY TO WINTER 213

chewing the end of one's pencil and wait-
ing for inspiration. Down it went : " There
are four seasons in the year — spring, sum-
mer, autumn or fall, and winter." We never
omitted to say " autumn or fall ; " the syn-
onymy helped out the page, and gave us
the more time in which to consider what we
should say next. That is the great difficulty
in authorship. On that shoal many a good
ship has struck. A man who always has
something to say next is bound to get on —
as a " space writer," if as nothing else.

Our opening remark was not strictly ori-
ginal, but we did not mind. It was true,
if it was n't new ; and without being told,
I think we had discovered — by intuition,
I suppose — what older heads seem to have
learned by rule, that it is good rhetoric, so
to speak, to begin with a quotation. I was
pleased, the other day, to see a brilliant essay-
ist commending it as an excellent and be-
coming practice to leapfrog into one's subject
over the back of some famous predecessor.
Such was our custom, for better or worse,
till a certain master (I am tempted to name
him, but forbear) announced just before the

214 THE CLERK OF THE WOODS

fatal day, that compositions on " The Sea-
sons " would no longer be accepted. That
was cruelty to authors. He spoke with a
smile, but it was a smile of malice. I have
never forgiven him. He is living still, a
preacher of the gospel. When Saturday
night comes, and he finds himself hard put
to it for the morrow's sermon (as I have no
doubt he often does — I hope so, at all
events), does he never remember the day
when with the word of his mouth he deprived
thirty or forty young innocents of their
easiest and best appreciated text? He is
righteously punished. Let him preach to
himself, some Sunday, from Numbers xxxii.
23, " Be sure your sin will find you out."

Why shouldn't one write about the sea-
sons, I wonder. There is scarcely anything
more important, or more universally inter-
esting, than the weather. Ten to one it
was the first thing we all thought of this
morning. And the seasons are nothing
but weather in large packages — weather
at wholesale. Their changes are our epochs,
our date-points. But for them, all days
being alike, there would be no calendar. It

A GOOD-BY TO WINTER 215

is well known that people who live in the
tropics seldom know their own age. How
should they, with nothing to distinguish one
time of year from another ? Young or old,
they have never learned that " there are four
seasons in the year."

We are better off. Life with us is not
all in the present tense. As Hamlet said,
we look before and after. (Hence it is, I
suppose, that we have "such large dis-
course," and continue, some of us, to write
compositions.) We live by expectation.
" Behold," says the weather, " I make all
things new." Every day is another one,
and every season also. At this very minute
a miraculous change is at hand. A great
and effectual door is about to swing on its
hinges, and I, for one, wish to be awake to
see it ; not to wake up by and by and find
the door wide open.

So far from wearying of the seasons as an
old story, I am more intensely interested in
them than ever. If any of my fellow citi-
zens are not just now thinking daily of the
passing of winter and the advent of spring,
I should like to know what they are made

216 THE CLERK OF THE WOODS

of. For myself, I am like a man in jail.
My term is about to expire, and I am notch-
ing off the days one by one on a stick.
" Three more," say I ; "two more." "Wel-
come the coming, speed the parting guest."
And I am ready to hang my cap on the
horns of the moon.

" You are too much in haste," some man
will say ; the same that said, " How are the
dead raised up?" But I know better. It
is one happy effect of ornithological habits
that they shorten the winter. There will be
no spring flowers for a good while yet, but
there will be spring birds within a fortnight,
perhaps within a week ; nay, there may be
some before night. Indeed, I have just come
in from a two-hour jaunt, and at almost
every step my ears were open for the first
vernal note. I have seen bluebirds, before
now, earlier than this ; and what has hap-
pened once may happen again. So, while
the wind blew softly from the southwest, and
all the hills were mantled with a dreamy
haze, I chose a course that would take me
past one apple orchard after another ; and,
as I say, my ears (which I often think are

A GOOD-BY TO WINTER 217

better ornithologists than their owner, — if
he is their owner) kept themselves wide
awake. If that sweet voice, " Purity,
purity " (with all bird lovers I thank Mr.
Burroughs for the word) — if that heavenly
voice, the gentlest of prophets, was on the
breeze, they meant to hear it.

They heard nothing, but that is not to say
that they listened to no purpose. They
heard nothing, and they heard much; for
there is an ear within the ear, and the new
year's voice — which is the bluebird's — was
in the deepest and truest sense already
audible. The ornithologist failed to catch
it ; for him Sialia sialis is still to look for ;
but the other man was in better luck.

The " new year's voice," I say ; for the
year begins with spring. We had the sea-
sons in their true order when we were school-
children— "spring, summer, autumn or
fall, and winter." It must have been some
very old and prosy chronologist that ar-
ranged their progression as our almanacs
now give it. The young are better in-
structed. Does not the Scripture say,
" The last shall be first " ?

218 THE CLERK OF THE WOODS

And within three days — I can hardly be-
lieve it — the old year will be done. So let
it be. Its passing brings us so much nearer
the grave ; worse yet, perhaps, it leaves us
with our winter's work half accomplished;
but our eyes are forward. After all, our
work is not important. We are twice too
busy; living as our neighbors do, rather
than according to the law of our own being ;
playing the fool (there is no fool like the
busy one) ; selling our birthright for a mess
of pottage. The great thing, especially in
springtime, is to lie wide open to the life
that enfolds us, while the " gentle deities "
show us, for our delight, —

" The lore of colors and of sounds,
The innumerable tenements of beauty."

Yes, that is the wisdom we should pray for.
The youngest of us will not see many springs.
Let us see the most that we can of this one.
So much there will be to look at ! Now, of
all times, we may say with one of old, " Lord,
that I might receive my sight." What a
new world we should find ourselves living
in ! I can hardly imagine it.

BIKD SONGS AND BIRD TALK

I MENTIONED a fortnight ago a flock of half
a dozen purple finches (linnets) seen and
heard conversing softly among themselves
in some roadside savin trees on the 29th of
January. They must be passing the winter
somewhere not far away, I ventured to
guess. " Within a month," I added, " they
will be singing, taking the winds of March
with music."

This forenoon (March 5) I had walked
up the same pleasant by-road, meaning to
follow it for a mile or two, but finding my-
self insufficiently shod for so deep a slush,
I turned back after going only a little way.
It was too bad I should have been so im-
provident, I said to myself ; but accident is
often better than the best-laid plan, and so
it was now. As I neared the bunch of ce-
dars — which I have looked into day after
day as I have passed, hoping to find the lin-

220 THE CLERK OF THE WOODS

nets again there — I descried some smallish
bird in one of the topmost branches of a
tall old poplar across the field. My opera-
glass brought him nearer, but still not near
enough, till presently he turned and took
an attitude. " Ah, yes," said I ; " a purple
finch." Attitude and gait, though there
may be nothing definable about them, are
often almost as good as color and feature
for purposes of identification. I had barely
named the bird before he commenced sing-
ing, and as he moved into a slightly better
light (the sky being clouded) I saw that he
was a red one. He seemed to be not yet
in full voice ; perhaps he was not in full
spirits ; but he ran through with his long,
rapid, intricate, sweetly modulated warble
with perfect fluency, and very much to my
pleasure. It was the first song of spring.
The linnet is of the true way of thinking ;
spring, with him, begins with the turn of the
month.

Purple finches, by the bye, are among the
birds of which it has been said — by Minot,
and perhaps by others — that both sexes sing.
I hope the statement is true ; I could never

BIRD SONGS AND BIRD TALK 221

see any reason in the nature of things why
female birds should not have musical sus-
ceptibilities and musical accomplishments ;
but I am constrained to doubt. It is most
likely, I think, that the opinion has arisen
from the fact that adult males — a year or
more old, and fathers of families — some-
times continue to wear the gray, sparrow-like
costume of the gentler sex.

My bird of this morning dropped from
his perch while I was trying to get nearer to
him, and could not be found again. I still
suppose that the flock is spending the season
somewhere not far off. I have lived with
myself too long to imagine that birds must
be absent because I fail to discover them.

Half an hour before, in almost the same
place, I had stopped to look at six birds
perched in a bare treetop. They were so
silent, so motionless, and so closely bunched,
that I put up my opera-glass expecting to
find them cedar waxwings. Instead, they
were nothing but blue jays. While my glass
was still on them, the whole flock seemed to
be taken with a dancing fit. This lasted for
a quarter of a second, more or less, and was

222 THE CLERK OF THE WOODS

so quickly over that I cannot say positively
that it was anything more than an optical
illusion. The next moment all hands took
flight with loud screams. They did not go
far, and presently crossed the road in front
of me, still screaming lustily, for no reason
that I could discover signs of. However, the
blue jay is as far as possible from being a
fool, and whenever he talks it is safe conclud-
ing that he has something to say.

It has long been an opinion of mine that
the jay language is worthy of systematic
study. Some man with a gift of patience
and a genius for linguistics should undertake
a jay dictionary ; setting down not only all
jay words and phrases, but giving us, as far
as possible, their meaning and their English
equivalents. It would make a sizable vol-
ume, and would be a real contribution to
knowledge.

All bird language, I have no doubt, is full
of significance. It has been evolved ex-
actly as human language has been, and while
it is presumably less copious and less nicely
shaded than ours, it is probably less radically
unlike it than we may have been accustomed

BIRD SONGS AND BIRD TALK 223

to assume. That it has something answer-
ing to our " parts of speech " we may almost
take for granted. It could scarcely be intel-
ligible — as it assuredly is — if some words
did not express action, others things, and still
others quality. Verbs, substantives, adjec-
tives, and adverbs, — these, at least, all real
language must possess. The jay tongue has
them, I would warrant, in rudimentary
forms, but in good number and of clearly
defined significance.

Jays are natural orators ; for among birds,
as among men, there are " diversities of
operations." " All species are not equally
eloquent," said Gilbert White. And the
same capable naturalist made another shrewd
remark, which I would commend to the man,
whoever he may be, who shall undertake the
jay-English dictionary that I have been de-
siderating. "The language of birds," said
White, " is very ancient, and, like other an-
cient modes of speech, very elliptical ; little
is said, but much is meant and understood."

The blue jay, I am confident, though I do
not profess to be a jay scholar, makes a large
use of interjections. This will constitute one

224 THE CLERK OF THE WOODS

of the difficulties with which his lexico-
grapher will have to contend ; for interjec-
tions, as all students of foreign tongues
know, are among the hardest words to ren-
der from one language to another. A literal
translation is liable to convey almost no
meaning. When a Spaniard grows red in
the face and vociferates, " Jesus, Maria y
Jose ! " he is not thinking of the holy family,
but in all likelihood of something very, very
different ; and when a devout New England
deacon hears some surprising piece of news,
and responds with " My conscience ! " he is
not thinking at all of the voice of God in
the soul of man. Such phrases — and the
jay language, I feel sure, is full of them —
are not so much expressions of thought as
vents for feeling. You may call them safety-
valves. Emotion is like steam. If you stop
the nose of the tea-kettle, off goes the cover.
The hotter the blood, of course, the more
need for such exclamatory outlets ; and the
jay, unless his behavior belies him, is Span-
iard, Italian, and Frenchman all in one. I
pity his lexicographer if he undertakes to
render all his subject's emotions in prim lit-

BIRD SONGS AND BIRD TALK 225

erary English. But I hope he will do the
best he can, and I promise to buy his book.

The linnet's was the first spring song, I
said ; but it was first by an inch only ; for
even while I was setting down the paragraph
a white-breasted nuthatch broke into a whis-
tle close by my window. I turned at once to
look at him. There he stood, in the top of
the elm, perched crosswise upon a small twig,
just as a sparrow might have been, and every
half a minute throwing forward his head
and emitting that peculiar whistle, broken
into eight or ten syllables. Between tunes
he looked to right and left, as if he had
been calling for some one and was expecting
a response. No response came, and after a
little he disappeared.

That was the second spring song, and a
good one, though not to be compared with
the linnet's for musical quality. Now, say
I, who bids for the third place ? Perhaps it
will be a bluebird, perhaps a robin, perhaps
a song sparrow.

CHIPMUNKS, BLUEBIKDS, AND
ROBINS

THE season was opened, formally, on the
10th of March. I am speaking for myself.
Friday, the 8th, brought genuine spring
weather, sunny and warm, an ideal day for
the first bluebird ; but I was obliged to
waste it in the city. The 9th was rainy
and cold, and though I spent some hours
out of doors, I saw no vernal signs. Birds
of all sorts were never so few. The next
morning — cloudy, with a raw northeasterly
wind — I was fifteen minutes away from
home when a squirrel came out of the woods
on one side of the way and ran across the
road before me. It was a chipmunk, my
first one of the new year, wide-awake and
quick on its legs ; and it was hardly in the
hazel bushes on the other side of the road
before another joined it, and the two chased
each other out of sight. Spring had come.

CHIPMUNKS, BLUEBIRDS, ROBINS 227

Chickarees and gray squirrels have been
common enough throughout the cold wea-
ther, but the chipmunk, or striped squirrel,
takes to its burrow in the late autumn, and
sleeps away the winter. In other words,
along with the woodchuck (the largest and
the smallest of our New England squirrels
being alike in this respect), it migrates —
into the " land of Nod." I imagine, how-
ever, that its sleep is not so sound but that
it wakes up now and then to feed, though
as to this point I know really nothing, my
impression arising wholly from the fact that
chipmunks store away food. They would
hardly do this, I should think, unless they
expected to find a use for it.

Late in September, five months ago, I
went to visit friends in the White Moun-
tains, and one of the first things I heard
from them was that Betty had disappeared.
She had not been seen for about two months.
Betty was a chipmunk that had been in the
habit of coming upon the piazza, and had
grown tame under kind treatment till she
would take food from her friends' fingers
and even climb into their laps. Once, in-

228 THE CLERK OF THE WOODS

deed, the lady of the house, having gone
upstairs, noticed the presence of something
heavy in her pocket (she is a naturalist,
and for that reason, I suppose, still wears
a pocket in her gown), and on putting her
hand into it, found Betty inside.

But, as I say, Betty had suddenly discon-
tinued her visits, and there was mourning
at the cottage. Worse yet, there was wrath,
and the stable cat had barely escaped with
his life. But now, on a Sunday noon, when
the cottagers appeared at the hotel dinner-
table, they announced with beaming faces
that there was great news : Betty had re-
turned ! I must come over and see her ;
for up to this time I knew her charms only
by report.

As soon as dinner was finished, therefore,
we repaired to the cottage veranda, and
pretty soon, while we were talking of one
thing and another, the lady said, " Ah, here
she is ! Here 's Betty ! " Filberts had been
provided, and she began at once to climb
into our laps after them. She carried them
away three at a time, — one in each cheek-
pouch and one between her teeth, — going

CHIPMUNKS, BLUEBIRDS, ROBINS 229

and coming in the most industrious and
businesslike manner. She would pass the
winter in a state of hibernation, without a
doubt, but her conduct obviously implied
that she expected to see a time now and
then when a bite of something to eat would
" come handy."

My 10th of March chipmunks were a wel-
come sight. I wondered how long they had
been awake. For several days, probably.
And I tried to imagine what it must be like
to open one's eyes after a five months' nap.
Hibernation has the look of a miracle. And
yet, what is it but a longer sleep? Well,
perhaps sleep itself is a miracle — as truly
so as life or thought. Probably, the world
being all of a piece, if we understood one
thing we should understand everything. Who
knows? Anyhow, spring had come.

But there were no bluebirds. I kept on
for two hours, past the likeliest of places,
but saw and heard nothing. It was too bad,
but there was no help for it. Bluebirds,
blackbirds, song sparrows, fox sparrows, all
were still to be looked for.

Then I sat indoors for an hour or two ;

230 THE CLERK OF THE WOODS

I would stay in till afternoon, I thought;
books, also, are a world, as Wordsworth said ;
but pretty soon the sun shone out ; things
looked too inviting. " I will go over as far
as Longfellow's Pond," said I. "Perhaps
there will be something in that quarter."
That was a happy thought. I was hardly in
the old cattle pasture, feeling it good to have
the grass under my feet once more, all
bleached and sodden though it was, when I
stopped. Wasn't that a bluebird's note?
No, it was probably nothing but my imagi-
nation. But the sound reached me again ;
faint, fugacious, just grazing the ear. I put
up my hands to my ears' help, and stood still.
Yes, I certainly heard it ; and this tune I got
its direction. A glance that way and I saw
the bird, pretty far off, at the tip of an elm
sapling standing by itself down in a sheltered
hollow. I leveled my field-glass upon him
(it was well I had brought it), made sure of
his color, a piece of pure loveliness, and
hastened to get nearer. Before I could turn
the corner of the intervening wire fence,
however, he took flight, and another with
him. I followed hastily, and was approach-

CHIPMUNKS, BLUEBIRDS, ROBINS 231

ing some roadside maples when the voice
was heard anew, and the two birds, both
calling, mounted into the air and vanished
beyond the wood northward.

What a sweet voice the bluebird's is !
Calling or singing, it is the very soul of
music. And the spring was really open. I
went home in high spirits.

This happened on the 10th. Now it is
the 13th. I have seen no more bluebirds,
and song sparrows are still missing ; but this
morning an ecstatic purple finch warbled,
and better still (for somehow, I do not
know how or why, it gave me more plea-
sure), a flicker called again and again in
his loud, peremptory, long-winded manner.
He, or another like him, has been in the
neighborhood all winter, but this was his
first spring utterance. It was no uncertain
sound.

The bluebird peeps in upon us, as it were.
His air is timid. " Is winter really gone ? "
he seems to say ; but the flicker is a breezier
customer. His mood is positive. He pushes
the door wide open, and slams it back against
the wall. " Spring, spring ! " he shouts, and

232 THE CLERK OF THE WOODS

all the world may hear him. Soon he and
the downy will begin their amorous drum-
ming on dry stubs and flakes of resonant
bark.

This was early in the morning. Since
then I have been over to the cattle pasture,
and in it found a flock of ten or twelve
robins. They were feeding in the grass, but
at my approach flew into some savin trees
and fell to eating berries. As seems to be
always true at this time of the year, they
were in splendid color, and apparently in the
very pink of physical condition ; their bills
were never so golden, it seemed to me, nor
their heads so velvety black, nor their eyelids
so white. They would not sing, but it was
like the best of music to hear them cackle
softly as they flew from the grass into the
cedars. Say what you will, the robin is a
pretty fine bird, especially in March.

MARCH SWALLOWS

THE birds are having their innings. They
have been away and have come back, and
even the most stolid citizen is for the moment
aware of their presence. I rejoice to see
them so popular.

Two or three mornings ago I met a friend
in the road, a farmer, one of the happy men,
good to talk with, who glory in their work.
A phffibe was calling from the top of an
elm, and as we were near the farmer's house
I asked, "How long has the phoebe been
here ? " He looked up, saw the bird, and
answered with a smile, " He must have just
come. I haven't heard him before." I
made some remark about its being pleasant
to have such creatures with us again, and he
responded, as I knew he would, in the hearti-
est manner. " Oh, I do love to see them ! "
he said.

I was reminded of a lady of whom I had

234 THE CLERK OF THE WOODS

been told the day before. She had felt
obliged, as I heard the story, to attend a meet-
ing of the woman's club, but remarked to
one of her assembled sisters that she had had
half a mind to stay at home. The truth
was, she explained, that two or three meadow
larks were singing gloriously in the rear of
her house, and she could hardly bear to come
away and leave them. I hope her self-denial
was rewarded.

On the same day I heard of a servant who
hastened into the sitting-room to say to her

mistress, " Oh, Mrs. ! there 's a little

bird out in the hedge singing to beat the
band." The newcomer proved to be a song
sparrow, and the lady of the house was fully
as enthusiastic as the servant in her welcome
of it, though I dare say she expressed her-
self hi less picturesque language.

And I know another house, still nearer
home, where a few days ago the dinner-table
was actually deserted for a time, in the very
midst of the meal. Three bluebirds, with
snowbirds, goldfinches, and chickadees, had
suddenly appeared under the windows.
" There ! there ! In the maple ! Will you

MARCH SWALLOWS 236

look at him ! Oh-h-h ! " The dinner might
" get cold," as the prudent housewife sug-
gested, but it did not matter. Such a color
as those bluebirds displayed was better than
anything that an eater could put into his
mouth.

Yes, as I say, the birds are having their
innings. In whichever direction I walk, in
town or country, I am asked about them.
A schoolgirl stopped me in the street the
other day. " Can you tell me what that bird
is?" she inquired. A white-breasted nut-
hatch was whistling over our heads in a shade
tree. Possibly the study of live birds will be
as fashionable a few years hence as the wear-
ing of dead ones was a few years ago.

On the 22d of March, as I stood listening
to a most uncommonly brilliant song sparrow
(now is the time for such things, before the
greater artists monopolize our attention) and
the outgivings of a too chary fox sparrow, the
first cowbird of the year announced himself.
Polygamist, shirk, and, by all our human
standards, general reprobate, I was still glad
to hear him. He is what he was made.
Few birds are more interesting, psychologi-
cally, if one wishes an object of study.

236 THE CLERK OF THE WOODS

Saturday, the 23d, was cloudless, a rare
event at this time of the year, and with
an outdoor neighbor I made an excursion
to Wayland, to see what might be visible
and audible in those broad Sudbury River
meadows.

We took a " round " familiar to us (to
one of us, at least), down the road to the
north bridge and causeway, thence through
the woods on the opposite side of the river to
a main thoroughfare, or turnpike, and back
to the village again over the south causeway.
Meadow larks were in full tune, now from a
treetop, now from a fence-post. They were
my first ones since the autumn, and their
music was relished accordingly.

As we stopped on the bridge to look down
the blue river and across the overflowed
meadow lands to a gray, flat-topped hill far
beyond toward Concord, we suddenly discov-
ered a shining white object on the surface of
the water. It proved to be a duck, one of
two, jet black and snow white, and presum-
ably a merganser, though it was too far away
to be made out with positiveness. Thoreau,
I remember, makes frequent mention of

MARCH SWALLOWS 237

mergansers and golden-eyes in his March
journals.

We were admiring this couple (a couple
only in the looser sense of the word, for both
birds were drakes), when all at once some
small far-away object " swam into my ken."
" A swallow ! " said I, and even as I spoke
a second one came into the field of the glass.
Yes, there they were, two white-breasted
swallows, sailing about over the meadows on
the 23d of March. How unspeakably beau-
tiful they looked, their lustrous blue-green
backs with the bright sun shining on them !
The date must constitute a "record," I as-
sured my companion. Once before, at least,
I had seen swallows in March, but that, I
felt certain, was on one of the last days
of the month. Strange that such creatures
should have ventured so far northward thus
early. If Gilbert White could see them, he
would be more firmly convinced than ever
that swallows "lay themselves up in holes
and caverns, and do, insect-like and bat-like,
come forth at mild times, and then retire
again to their latebrse." For my own part,
not being able to accept this doctrine, I con-

238 THE CLERK OF THE WOODS

tented myself with Americanizing Shake-
speare. " Swallows," said I, —

" Swallows that come before the daffodil dares,
And take the winds of March with beauty."

I could hardly recover from my excite-
ment, which was renewed an hour afterward
when, on the southern causeway, a third
bird (or one of the same two) passed near
us. But now see how untrustworthy a clerk
a man's memory is ! On reaching home I
turned at once to my book of dates, and be-
hold, it was exactly four years ago to an
hour, March 23, 1897, that I saw two white-
breasted swallows about a pond here in
Wellesley. We had broken no " record,"
after all. But I imagine the Rev. Gilbert
White saying, " Yes, yes ; you will notice that
in both cases the birds were seen in the im-
mediate neighborhood of water." And there
is no doubt that such places are the ones in
which to look most hopefully for the first
swallows of the year.

All this time a herring gull, a great
beauty in high plumage, was sailing up and
down the meadows like a larger swallow.
He, too, was one of Thoreau's river friends

MARCH SWALLOWS 239

at this season ; and since we are talking of
dates, I note it as a coincidence that precisely
forty-two years ago (March 23, 1859), he
entered in his journal that he saw "come
slowly flying from the southwest a great gull,
of voracious form, which at length, by a
sudden and steep descent, alighted in Fair
Haven Pond [a wide place in the river],
scaring up a crow which was seeking its
food on the edge of the ice." Our bird,
also, made one " sudden and steep descent,"
and picked from the ice some small, dark-
colored object, which at our distance might
have been a dead leaf. But if Thoreau saw
ducks and gulls, he saw no March swallows.
His earliest date for them, so far as the
printed journals show, seems to have been
April 5.

The woods brought us nothing, — beyond
a chickadee or two, — but we were hardly
out of them before we heard the blue-jay
scream of a red-shouldered hawk, and pre-
sently saw first one bird and then another
(rusty shoulder and all) sailing above us.
A grand sight it is, a soaring and diving
hawk. May it never become less frequent.

240 THE CLERK OF THE WOODS

I must quote Thoreau once more, this time
from memory, and for substance only. I am
with him, heart and soul, when he prays for
more hawks, though at the cost of fewer
chickens. And I like the spirit of a friend
of mine who girdled a tall pine tree in his
woods, that it might serve as a perching sta-
tion for such visitors.

As we approached the village again, we
came upon two phcebes. Like the white-
breasted swallow, the phoabe winters in
Florida, and is by a long time the earliest
member of its family to arrive in New Eng-
land. Red-winged blackbirds were numer-
ous, of course, every one a male, and in one
place we passed a flock of crow blackbirds
feeding on the ground.

Not the least interesting bird of the fore-
noon was a shrike, sitting motionless and
dumb in an apple tree. The shrike has all
the attractiveness of singularity. He is no
lover of his kind, save as the lion loves the
lamb and the hawk the chicken. Lonesome ?
No, I thank you. Except in breeding-time,
he is sufficient unto himself. Even when he
happens to feel like conversation, he goes

MARCH SWALLOWS 241

not in search of company. He is like the
amiable philosopher who was asked by some
busybody why he so often talked to himself.
" Well," said he, " for two reasons : first, I
like to talk to a sensible man, and secondly,
I like to hear a sensible man talk." In the
present instance the shrike may very well
have considered that there was little occa-
sion for his talking, either to himself or to
anybody else, since a bunch of twenty mas-
culine redwings in some willow trees near
by were chattering in chorus until, to use
a good Old Colony phrase, a man could
hardly hear himself think. Blackbird lo-
quacity, each particular bird sputtering " to
beat the band," is one of the wonders of
the world.

WOODCOCK VESPERS

WHEN I came to this town to live, in April,
ten years ago, one of my first concerns was
to find a woodcock resort. The friend with
whom I commonly took a stroll at sundown
had never heard the " evening hymn " of
that bird, and, knowing him for a lover of
" the poetry of earth," I was eager to help
him to a new pleasure. If the thing was to
be done at all, it must be done soon, as the
bird's musical season is brief. So we walked
and made inquiries.

A farmer, who knew the region well, told
us that woodcock used to be common about
a certain swamp, but had not been so, he
thought, of recent years. We visited it, of
course, but heard nothing. Then the same
man bethought himself of a likelier place,
farther away. Thither, also, we went, hav-
ing to hasten our steps, for the bird must
be caught at precisely such a minute, between

WOODCOCK VESPERS 243

daylight and dark. Still we had our labor
for our pains. And so the season passed,
with nothing done.

Then, a year or two afterward, walking
one afternoon in a quiet back road, I startled
a woodcock from directly beside the track.
" Well, well," said I, " here is the very place ; "
for I noticed not far off a bit of alder swamp,
with a wood behind it and an open field near
by. All the conditions were right, and on
the first available evening, with something
like assurance, I made my way thither. Yes,
the bird was there, in the full ecstasy of his
wonderful performance — for wonderful it
surely is.

My friend was not with me, however, and
for one reason or another, now past recall,
another year went by without our being able
to visit the spot together at the necessary
minute. Then a day came. He heard the
bird (well I remember the hour), was de-
lighted beyond measure, and that very even-
ing, still under the spell of the "miracle,"
put his impressions of it on paper. The
next day they were printed, and I remember
still my pleasure when the most competent

244 THE CLERK OF THE WOODS

of all men to speak of such a matter sent me
word that it was the best description of the
performance that he had ever seen. If any
of my readers desire to see it, it is to be
found in a little volume of most delightful
outdoor essays entitled " The Listener in the
Country."

All this I lived over again last evening as
I went, alone, to the same spot — not having
visited it on this errand for several years —
to see whether the bird would still be true
to his old tryst. I believed that he would
be, in spite of the skepticism of a wide-awake
man who lives almost" within stone's throw
of the place ; for though woodcock are said
to be growing less and less common, I have
strong faith in the conservative disposition of
all such creatures. Once they have a place
to their mind, they are likely to hold it.

Fox sparrows were singing in their best
manner as I passed on my way, and I would
gladly have stayed to listen ; their season,
also, is a short one ; but I kept to my point.

And after all, I arrived a few minutes
ahead of time. Up and down the road I
paced (no one in sight, nor any danger of

WOODCOCK VESPERS 245

any one), with an ear always awake for a
certain note, the "bleat," so called, of the
woodcock. Should I near it ? It was fast
getting dark, the western sky covered with
black clouds (a great disadvantage), with
only scattered gleams of bright color, very
narrow, just on the horizon. Hark ! Yes ;
that was it — Spneak. There is no putting
the sound into letters, but those who know
the call of the nighthawk may understand
sufficiently well what I am trying to express,
for the two notes are almost identical.

With this note, single, repeated for a con-
siderable time at intervals of perhaps half a
minute, — the bird still on the ground, and
turning about, so that some of his utterances
sound three or four times as far away as oth-
ers, — with this strange, unmusical, almost
ridiculous overture the woodcock invariably
introduces his evening recital. I wait, there-
fore, leaning against the heavy stone wall,
costly and unromantic, with which the rich
new owner of the land has lately fenced his
possession, till all at once the silence is bro-
ken by the familiar whistling noises made by
the heavy bird as he leaves the ground. This

246 THE CLERK OF THE WOODS

time they are unusually faint, and are lost
almost immediately. Only for my acquaint-
ance with the matter I should assume that
the bird had flown away, and that my even-
ing was lost. As it is, I continue to listen.
Once and again I catch the sounds. The
fellow is still rising. I can see him, but only
in my mind's eye. Those black clouds hide
him quite as effectually as if he were behind
them. Still I can see him. I know he has
gone up in a broad spiral — up, up, up, as
on a winding staircase.

Now, after silence, begins a different sound,
more musical, more clearly vocal ; breathless,
broken, eager, passionate, ecstatic. And now,
far aloft in the sky, where the clouds are of
a lighter color, I suddenly catch sight of the
bird, a dark speck, shooting this way and
that, descending in sharp zigzags, whistling
with his last gasps. And now, as if ex-
hausted,— and well he may be, — he drops
to earth (I see him come down) very near
me, much nearer than I had thought.

Spneak, he calls. I know exactly what is
coming. At intervals, just as before, he re-
peats the sound, till suddenly he is on the

WOODCOCK VESPERS 247

wing again, whistling as he goes. He flies
straight from me, — for this time, by good
luck, I see him as he starts, — and mounts
and mounts. Then, far, far up, he whistles,
zip, zip, and then, when he can stay no
longer, comes down in crazy zigzags.

A wonderful display. If a man could be
as truly enraptured as the woodcock seems
to be, he would know the joys of the blest.
I wonder how many thousand Aprils this
cumbrous-looking, gross-looking, unpoetical-
looking bird has been disporting himself thus
at heaven's gate. There must be a real soul
in a creature, no matter what his appearance,
who is capable of such transports and ravish-
ments, such marvelous upliftings, such mad
reaches after the infinite.

I listen and wonder, and then come away,
meditating on what I have seen and heard.
The last of the small birds have fallen si-
lent. Only a few hylas are peeping as I
pass a cranberry meadow. Then, halfway
home, as the road traverses a piece of woods,
with a brook singing on one side, and the
moon peeping through fleecy clouds, sud-
denly I halt. That was a screech owl's

248 THE CLERK OF THE WOODS

voice, was it not ? Yes ; faint, tremulous,
sweet, a mere breath, the falling, quavering
strain again reaches my ear. The bird is
somewhere beyond the brook. I wonder
how far. Well up on the wooded hillside,
I think it likely. I put my hands behind
my ears and hearken. Again and again I
hear it ; true music ! music and poetry in
one; the voice of the night. But look!
What is that dark object just before me on
a low branch not two rods away ? There is
no light with which to be sure of its out-
lines ; a tuft of dead leaves, perhaps ; but it
is of a screech owl's size. Another phrase.
Yes, it comes from that spot, or I am tricked.
And now the bird moves, and the next in-
stant takes wing. But he goes only a few
feet, and alights even nearer to me than
before. How soft his voice is ! Almost
as soft as his flight. How different from
the woodcock's panting, breathless whistle !
Though I can see him, and could almost
touch him, the tremulous measure might
still be coming from the depths of the wood.
I listen with all my ears, till an approaching
carriage turns a corner in the road below.

WOODCOCK VESPERS 249

I hope the owl will not mind; but as the
wheels come near he leaves his perch, flies
directly before my face (with no more noise
than if a feather were falling through the
air), and disappears in the forest opposite.

Two good birds I have listened to. The
evening has been kind to me. Two birds ?
nay, two poets : a poet in a frenzy, and a
poet dreaming.

UNDEE APRIL CLOUDS

" GOOD-MORNING."

" Ah, good-morning. How are you? "
I was on what I suppose is habitually the
most crowded sidewalk in Boston, where
men in haste are always to be seen betaking
themselves to the street as the only means
of making headway. A hand was laid on
my shoulder. A business man, one of the
busiest, I should think he must be, had
come up behind me. He was looking happy.
Yes, he said, he was very well. " And yes-
terday," he continued, " I had a great plea-
sure. I saw my first fox-colored sparrow,
and heard him sing."

No wonder his face shone. His condition
was enviable. The fox sparrow is a noble
bird, with a most musical voice, the prince
of all sparrows. To hear him for the first
time — if one does hear him — is a real
event. A man might well walk a crowded

UNDER APRIL CLOUDS 261

city sidewalk the next day and smile to him-
self at the memory of such high fortune.

After all, happiness is a good thing. Not
so desirable, perhaps, as a great office, or a
mint of money, but a pretty good thing, nev-
ertheless. It is encouraging, in these days
of far-sought pleasures and prodigal expense,
to see men get it at a low rate and on inno-
cent terms.

For myself, I think I have never known
fox sparrows more plentiful than for the
past week. From our human point of view
their present migration has been eminently
favorable ; from the birds' point of view it
has probably been in the highest degree unfa-
vorable, the prolonged spell of cloudy and
rainy weather having made night flights diffi-
cult, not to say impossible. The travelers
have been obliged to stay where the storm had
caught them, and we, at this intermediate
station, have profited by their misfortune.

On the 7th I stood in the midst of as fine
a flock as a man could wish to see. A thick
cloud enveloped us ; we might have been on
a mountain-top ; but for the minute it had
ceased raining, and the birds were in a lively

252 THE CLERK OF THE WOODS

mood. Sometimes as many as five or six
were singing together, while a chorus of
snowbirds trilled the prettiest of accompani-
ments ; a concert worthy of Easter or any
other festival.

The weather has been of a kind to keep
night-traveling migrants here, I say ; which is
as much as to say that it has been of a sort
to prevent other such birds from arriving.
There have been no bright nights, I think,
since April came in. So it happens, accord-
ing to my theory (which may be as sound or
as unsound as the reader pleases), that al-
though it is now the 10th of the month,
there has been, for my eye, no sign of chip-
per, field sparrow, or vesper sparrow. How
should there be? How should such crea-
tures find their way, with the fog and the
rain blinding them night after night ? No
doubt they are impatient to be at home again
in the old dooryards, the old savin-dotted
pastures, and the old hay-fields. By and by
the clouds will vanish, and they will hasten
northward in crowds. The night air will be
full of them, and the next day all outdoor,
bird-loving people will be in clover.

UNDER APRIL CLOUDS 263

Unfavorable as the weather is, however,
and against all probabilities, one cannot quite
forego seasonable expectations. I pass the
border of a grass field. A sparrow sings in
the distance, and I stop to listen. Could
that have been a vesper sparrow? The
song conies again. No ; it begins a little in
the vesper's manner ; the opening measure
is unusually smooth and unemphatic; but
the bird is only a song sparrow. It is no
shrewder than Peter. Its speech bewray-
eth it.

One kingfisher I have seen, shooting
through the misty air far aloft, his long
wings making him look at that height like
some seabird or wader. I remember when
the sight — not uncommon in spring — was
to me an insoluble mystery. As for calling
the bird a kingfisher, such a thought never
occurred to me. I knew the kingfisher well
enough, or imagined that I did, but not at
that altitude and flying in that strong, pur-
poseful manner. Yet even at such times he
commonly sounds his rattle before him, as
if he wished his identity and his where-
abouts to be known.

254 THE CLERK OF THE WOODS

I have seen also a single marsh hawk.
That was on the 9th, and the circumstances
of the case were ludicrous. I had stopped
to look down from a wooded hilltop into a
swampy pool, where ducks sometimes alight,
when I saw a white object moving rapidly
along the farther side of the swamp, now
visible, now hidden behind a veil of trees
and shrubbery. A road runs along that
border of the swamp, and I took this mov-
ing white object for a bundle which a boy
was carrying upon a bicycle (making pretty
quick time), till suddenly I perceived that
it was only a marsh hawk's rump ! A red-
wing had given chase to the hawk — mostly
for sport, I imagine, or just to keep his hand
in ; for I do not suppose he could have had
any real grudge to settle. Probably this is
the first case on record in which a hawk was
ever mistaken for a wheelman.

Two evenings ago I made a solitary ex-
cursion to an extensive swamp and meadow,
hoping to witness, or at least to hear, the
aerial performance of the snipe. The air
was full of a Scotch mist, and the sky cloudy.
If the birds were there, and in a performing

UNDER APRIL CLOUDS 265

mood, they would be likely to get under way
in good season. I waded across the meadow
out of the sight of houses, and, having found
what seemed to be a promising position, I
took it and held it for perhaps an hour. But
I heard none of those strange, ghostly, swish-
ing noises that I was listening for. Perhaps
the birds had not yet arrived. Perhaps this
was not a snipe meadow.

For a time robins and song sparrows made
music more or less remote, and an unseen
fox sparrow, nearer at hand, amused me
with excellent imitations of the brown
thrasher's smacking kiss. Then, as it grew
really dark, I relinquished the hunt and
started homeward. And then the real music
began ; for as I approached the highway I
heard the whistle of a woodcock, and pre-
sently discovered that, for the first time in my
life, I was walking through what might be
called a veritable woodcock concert. Once
three birds were vocal together ; one was
" bleating " on the right, another on the
left, while a third was at the very height of
his ecstasy overhead. For a mile or more I
walked under a shower of this incomparable,

266 THE C&ERK OF THE WOODS

indescribable music. It dropped into my ears
like rain from heaven.

One bird was calling just over the road-
side wall. I stole nearer and nearer, taking
a few cautious steps after each bleat, till
finally I could hear the water dropping into
the hogshead. I wonder how many readers
will know what I mean by that. After each
call, as a kind of pendant to it, there comes,
if you are very, very close, a curious small
sound, exactly as if a drop of water (the
comparison is not mine) had fallen into a
hogshead already half full. I had not heard
it for years. In fact, I had forgotten it,
and heard it now for the first few times
without recollecting what it was.

Then the bird rose — always invisible, of
course, for by this time there was no thought
of seeing anything — and went skyward in
broad circles, till he was at the top of his
flight, and when he descended he came to
earth on the other side of the road, a good
distance away. He had seen me, I suppose,
with those big bull's-eyes of his, which do so
much to heighten the oddity of his personal
appearance.

UNDER APRIL CLOUDS 267

He was the last of his kind. For the rest
of my walk I heard no music except the
sweet whistling of hylas here and there, and
once, in a woodland pool, the grating chorus
of a set of wood frogs.

Butterflies are waiting for sunshine —
like the rest of us ; I have not seen so much
as an Antiopa ; and the only wild flowers I
have yet picked are the pretty red blossoms
(pistillate blossoms) of the hazel; tiny
things, floral egrets, if you please to call
them so, of a lively and beautiful color.
Sunshine or no sunshine, they were in bloom
for Easter.

FLYING SQUIRRELS AND SPADE-
FOOT FROGS

IT is pleasant to realize familiar truths anew ;
to have it brought freshly to mind, for ex-
ample, how many forms of animal life there
are about us of which we seldom get so much
as a glimpse.

In all my tramping over eastern Massa-
chusetts I have met with two foxes. One I
saw for perhaps the tenth part of a second,
the other for perhaps two or three seconds.
And probably my experience has not been
exceptional. In this one particular it would
be safe to wager that not one in ten of those
who read this article will be able to boast of
any great advantage over the man who wrote
it. Yet every raiser of poultry hereabout
will certify that foxes are by no means un-
common, and I know a man living within
fifteen miles of the State House who, last
winter, by a kind of " still hunt" — without

FLYING SQUIRRELS 259

a dog — killed three foxes in as many suc-
cessive days. Reynard has fine gifts of in-
visibility, but a man with foxes on his mind
will be likely to find them.

This same near neighbor of mine takes
now and then an otter ; only three or four
weeks ago he showed me the skin of one on
its stretching-board ; and the otter is an ani-
mal that I not only have never seen in this
part of the world, but never expect to see.
I have n't that kind of an eye. As for musk-
rats, the trapper takes them almost without
number; " rats," he calls them ; while to me
it is something like an event if once or twice
a year I happen to come upon one swimming
in a brook.

Another of these seclusive races, that man-
age to live close about us unespied by all
except the most inquisitive of their human
neighbors, is the race of flying squirrels.
Whether they are more or less common than
red squirrels, gray squirrels, and chipmunks,
it would be difficult to say ; but while red
squirrels, gray squirrels, and chipmunks flit
before you wherever you go, you may haunt
the woods from year's end to year's end with-

260 THE CLERK OF THE WOODS

out seeing hide or hair of their interesting
cousin. Flying squirrels stir abroad after
dark ; not because their deeds are evil (though
they are said to like small birds and birds'
eggs), but because — well, as the wise old
nursery saw very conclusively puts it, because
" it is their nature to."

Several times during the past winter I
made attempts to see them (the story of one
of these attempts has been told in a previous
chapter), but always without success, though
twice I was taken to a nest that was known
to be in use. The other day I went to the
same place again, the friend who conducted
me having found a squirrel there that very
forenoon. He shook the tree, a small gray
birch, with a nest of leaves and twigs perched
in its top, and out peeped the squirrel.
"See him?" said my friend. "Yes." Then
he gave the tree a harder shake, and in a
moment the creature spread his "wings"
and sailed gracefully away, landing on the
trunk of an oak not far off, at about the
height of my head. There he clung, his large
handsome eye, full of a startled emotion,
fastened upon me. I wondered if he would

FLYING SQUIRRELS 261

let me put my hand on him ; but as I ap-
proached within three or four yards he
scrambled up the tree into the small branches
at the top. He was going to take another
flight, if the emergency seemed to call for it,
and the higher he could get, the better. The
oak was too big to be shaken, but a smaller
tree stood near it. This my companion
shook in the squirrel's face, and again he
took flight. This time he passed squarely
over my head, showing a flat outspread sur-
face sailing through the air, looking not the
least in the world like a squirrel or any
other quadruped. Again he struck against
a trunk, and again he ran up into the tree-
top. And again he was shaken off.

Four times he flew, and then I protested
that I had seen enough and would not have
him molested further. We left him in a
maple-top, surrounded by handsome red
flower clusters.

The flight, even under such unnatural con-
ditions, is a really pretty performance, the
surprising thing about it being the ease and
grace with which the acrobat manages to
take an upward turn toward the end of his

262 THE CLERK OF THE WOODS

course, so as always to alight head upper-
most against the bole.

It would be fun to see such a carnival as
Audubon describes, when two hundred or
more of the squirrels were at play in the
evening, near Philadelphia, running up the
trees and sailing away, like boys at the old
game of " swinging off birches." " Scores of
them," he says, "would leave each tree at
the same moment, and cross each other, glid-
ing like spirits through the air, seeming to
have no other object in view than to indulge
a playful propensity."

Compared with that, mine was a small
show ; but it was so much better than no-
thing.

Two mornings later (April 30) I was
walking up the mam street of our village,
lounging along, waiting for an electric car to
overtake me, when I heard loud batrachian
voices from a field on my left hand. " Aha ! "
said I, " the spade-foots are out again." It
had occurred to me within a day or two that
this should be their season, if, as is believed,
their appearance above ground is conditioned
upon an unusual rainfall.

SPADE-FOOT FROGS 263

Some years ago, when I was amusing my-
self for a little with the study of toads and
frogs, checking Dr. J. A. Allen's annotated
list of the Massachusetts batrachia, I became
very curious about this peculiar and little
understood species, known scientifically as
/Scaphiopus holbrookii, or the solitary spade-
foot. It was originally described from South
Carolina, I read, and was first found in
Massachusetts, near Salem, about 1810. Its
cries were said to have been heard at a dis-
tance of half a mile, and were mistaken for
those of young crows. For more than thirty
years afterward the frogs were noticed at this
place only three times. They were described
as burrowing in the ground, coming forth
only to spawn, and that, as far as could be
ascertained, at very irregular intervals, some-
times many years in length.

This, as I say, I read in Dr. Allen's cat-
alogue, to the great sharpening of my curi-
osity. If I ever heard such noises, I should
be prepared to guess at the author of them.
Well, some years afterward (it was almost
exactly eight years ago), fresh from a first
visit to Florida, where my ears had grown

264 THE CLERK OF THE WOODS

expectant of strange sounds (a great use of
travel), I stepped out of my door one even-
ing in late April, and was hardly in the
street before I heard somewhere ahead of
me a chorus of stentorian frog-notes. " That
should be the spade-foot's voice," I said to
myself, with full conviction. I hastened
forward, traced the tumult to a transient
pool in a field, and as I neared the place
picked up a board that lay in the grass, and
with it, by good fortune, turned the first
frog I came in sight of into a specimen.
This I sent to the batrachian specialist at
Cambridge, who answered me, as I knew he
would, that it was Scaphiopus.

My spade-foots of yesterday morning
were in the same spot. I could not stay
then to look at them, for at that moment
the car came along. I left it at a favorite
place in the next township, and had gone a
mile or so on foot when from another tran-
sient roadside pool I heard the spade-foot's
voice again. This was most interesting. I
skirted the water, trying to get within reach
of one of the performers. The attempt was
unsuccessful ; but in the course of it I saw

SPADE-FOOT FROGS 265

for the first time the creature in the act of
calling. And every time I saw him I
laughed. He lay stretched out at full length
upon the surface of the pool, floating high,
as if he were somehow peculiarly buoyant.
Then suddenly his hind parts dropped, his
head flew up, his enormous white, or pinkish-
white, vocal sac was instantaneously inflated
(like a white ball on the water), and the
grating call was given out ; after which the
creature's head dropped, his hinder parts
bobbed up into place (sometimes he was
nearly overset by the violence of the action),
and again he lay silent.

This same ludicrous performance — which
by the watch was repeated every three or four
seconds — I observed more at length in the
other pool after my return. It seems to be
indulged in only so long as the frogs are
unmated. I took it for the call of the male,
the " lusty bachelor." At the same moment
couples lay here and there upon the water,
all silent as dead men.

That was yesterday afternoon. At night,
as had been true the evening previous (the
neighbors hi at least four of the nearer

266 THE CLERK OF THE WOODS

houses having noticed the uproar), the chorus
was loud. I could hear it from my window,
perhaps a quarter of a mile distant. This
morning there is no sign of batrachian life
about the place. Within a very short time
— long before the tadpoles, which will be
hatched in two or three days, can possibly
have matured — the pool will in the ordi-
nary course of nature have dried up, and all
those eggs will have gone to waste.

A strange life it seems. What do the
frogs live on underground ? Why do they
omit, year after year, to come forth and lay
their eggs ? Do they wait to be drowned
out, and then (like thrifty farmers, who im-
prove a wet season in which to marry) pro-
ceed to perpetuate the species ?

These and many other questions it would
be easy to ask. Especially one would like
to read from the inside the story of the life
and adventures of the young, which grow
from the egg to maturity — through tadpole
to frog — without seeing father or mother.
What a little we know ! And how few are
the things we see !

THE WARBLERS ARE COMING

THEY are a grand army. The Campbells
are nowhere in the comparison, whether for
numbers or looks. And this is their month.
Let us all go out to see them and cry them
welcome.

They are late, most exceptionally so. I
have never known anything to match it.
Brave travelers as they are (some of them,
yes, many of them, are on a three or four
thousand mile journey ; and a long flight it
is for a five-inch bird, from South America
to the arctic circle) — brave travelers as
they are, they cannot contend against the
inevitable, and our April weather, this year,
was too much even for a bird's punctuality.

The yellow warbler, for example, one of
the prettiest of the tribe, is by habit one of
the truest to his schedule. In any ordinary
season he may be confidently expected to
arrive in our Boston country on the first

268 THE CLERK OP THE WOODS

day of May. If conditions favor his pas-
sage, he may even anticipate the date, per-
haps by forty-eight hours. This year not a
yellow warbler was to be seen up to May 6.
Then, between the evening of the 6th and
the morning of the 7th, the birds dropped
into their accustomed places, and hi the
early forenoon, when I went out to look for
them, they were singing as cheerily as if they
had never been away. With nothing but
their wits and their wings to depend upon,
I thought they had done exceedingly well.
To me, on such terms, South America would
seem a very long way off.

The same night brought the Nashville
warblers. On the 6th not one was visible,
for I made it my business to look. On the
morning of the 7th I had no need to search
for them. In all the old haunts, among the
pitch-pines and the gray birches, they were
flitting about and singing, as fresh as larks
and as lively as crickets. They, too, have
come from the tropics, and will go as far
north, some of them, as " Labrador and the
fur countries." A bold spirit may live under
a few feathers.

THE WARBLERS ARE COMING 269

With them, I am pretty sure, came a
goodly detachment of myrtle warblers (yel-
low-rumps), though the advance guards of
that host (two birds were all that fell under
my eye) were seen on the 18th of April.
The great host is still to come ; for the
myrtles are a host, — a multitude that no
man can number. As I listen to their soft,
dreamy trill on these fair spring mornings,
when the tall valley willows are all in their
earliest green, — a sight worth living for, —
I seem sometimes to be for the moment on
the heights of the White Mountains. Well
I remember how much I enjoyed their quiet
breath of song on the snowy upper slopes of
Mt. Moosilauke in May a year ago. For the
myrtle, notwithstanding his name, is a great
lover of knee-high spruces.

He is a lovely bird, wherever he lives, and
it is good to see him flourish, though by so
doing he forfeits the peculiar charm of nov-
elty. Everything considered, I am bound
to say, that is not so regrettable a loss. If
he were as scarce as some of his relatives,
every collector's hand would be against him.
Czars and rare birds must pay the price.

270 THE CLERK OF THE WOODS

The first member of the family to make
his appearance with me this spring was the
pine warbler. He was trilling in a pine
grove (his name is one of the few that fit) on
April 17. "The warblers are coming," he
said. Not so pronounced a beauty as many
of his tribe, he is one of the most welcome.
He braves the season, and with his lack of
distinguishing marks and his preference for
pine-tops, he offers an instructive deal of puz-
zlement to beginners in ornithology. His
song is simplicity itself, and, rightly or
wrongly, always impresses me as the coolest
of the cool.

I stood the other day between a pine war-
bler and a thrasher. The thrasher sang
like one possessed. He might have been
crazy, beside himself with passion. Oper-
atic composers, aiming at something new
and brilliant in the way of a " mad scene,"
should borrow a leaf out of the planting
bird's repertory. The house would " come
down," I could warrant. The pine warbler
sang as one hums a tune at his work.
Among birds, as among humans, it takes all
kinds to make a world.

THE WARBLERS ARE COMING 271

After the advent of the myrtle warblers,
on April 18, eleven days elapsed with no
new arrivals, so far as I discovered, except
a few chipping sparrows, first seen on the
23d! The weather was doing its worst.
Then, on the 29th, I saw three yellow palm
warblers. They were singing, as they
usually are at this season — singing and
wagging their tails, and incidentally putting
me in mind of Florida, where in winter
they are seen of every one. It is noticeable
that these three earliest of the warblers all
have, by way of song, a brief trill. Very
much alike the three efforts are, yet clearly
enough distinguished, if one hears them
often enough. The best and least of them
is the myrtle's, I being judge.

The yellow palm warbler ought to be a
Southerner of the Southerners, one would
say, from his tropical appellation ; but the
truth is that he makes his home from Nova
Scotia northward, and visits the land of
palms only in the cold season. He is a
low-keeping bird (for a warbler), much on
the ground, very bright hi color, and well
marked by a red crown, from which he is

272 THE CLERK OF THE WOODS

often called the yellow redpoll. If he could
only keep his tail still !

Next in order was the black-throated
green (May 4), which, take him for all in
all, is perhaps my favorite of the whole
family. He is the bird of the white pine,
as the pine warbler is the bird of the pitch-
pine. And now we have a real song; no
longer a simple trill, but a highly charac-
teristic, sweetly modulated tune — or two
tunes, rather, perfectly distinguished one
from the other, and equally charming. If
the voice is rough, it is sweetly and musi-
cally rough. I would not for anything have
it different.

What a vexatiously pleasant time I had,
years ago, in tracing the voice home to its
author ! How vividly I remember the day
when I lay flat on my face in a woodland
path, opera-glass in hand, a manual open
before me, and the bird singing at intervals
from a pine tree opposite ; and a neighbor,
who had known me from boyhood, coming
suddenly down the path. I may err in my
recollection (it was long ago), but I think
I heard the music for weeks before I satis-

THE WARBLERS ARE COMING 273

fied myself as to the identity of the singer.
" Trees, trees, murmuring trees : " so I once
translated the first of the two songs ; and
to this day I do not see how to improve
upon the version. He is talking of the
Weymouth pine, I like to believe.

Black-and-white creeping warblers have
been common since the 4th (under normal
weather conditions they should have been
here a fortnight sooner), and on the 6th the
oven-bird took possession of the drier woods.
He looks very little like a warbler, but those
who ought to know whereof they speak class
him with that family. I have not yet heard
his flight song, but he has no idea of keep-
ing silence. As is true of every real artist,
he is in love with his part. With what a
daintily self-conscious grace he walks the
boards ! It is a kind of music to watch
him. He makes me think continually of the
little ghost in Mrs. Slosson's story. Like
that insubstantial reality he is always say-
ing : " Don't you want to hear me speak my
piece ? " And whether the answer is yes or
no, it is no matter — over he goes with it.

Yesterday my first blue yellow-back was

274 THE CLERK OF THE WOODS

singing, and to-day (May 8) the first chest-
nut-sides are with me. And there are num-
bers to follow. From now till the end of
the month they will be coming and going —
a procession of beauty. In my mind I can
already see them: the gorgeous redstart,
the lovely blue golden-wing, the splendid
magnolia, and the more splendid Black-
burnian, the Cape May (a " seldom plea-
sure "), and the multitudinous blackpoll —
these and many others that are no less
worthy. At this time of the year a man
should have nothing to do but to live in the
sun and look at the passing show.

INDEX

INDEX

ALDER, 159.

Cat-tail, 28.

black, 135.

Cedar, red, 39, 172.

Anemone, 3.
Apple, 51.
Arbutus, trailing, 4, 143.

Checkerberry,161,174,176.
Cherry, rum, 123.
Chestnut, 34.

Asters, 59, 120.

Chewink, 24.

Azalea, swamp, 22.

Chickadee, black - capped,

22, 60, 64, 66, 67, 73, 134,

Barberry, 111, 172.
Bayberry, 136.

150, 153, 154, 182, 205,
206, 234, 239.

Beech, 163.

Chicory, 27.

Bees, 58.

Chipmunk, 182, 226, 227.

Birch, sweet, 119, 160.

Chokecherry, 41.

Bittern, 31.

Clethra, 122.

least, 30.

Clover, rabbit-foot, 23.

Bitternnt, 113.

Coffee-tree, 125.

Blackbird, crow, 120, 240.

Columbine, 3.

red-winged, 39, 240, 241,

Corn, 52.

254.

Cornel, dwarf, 4.

rusty, 155.

Cowbird, 235.

Blackberry, 172.
Bladderwort, 22.

Cowslip, 3.
Creeper, brown, 155.

Blueberry, 123, 136, 166.

Crickets, 65.

Bluebird, 16, 52, 83, 120,

Crossbill, red, 154.

217, 230, 231, 234

white-winged, 154.

Bobolink, 19, 52, 83.

Crow, 24, 39, 42, 65, 154.

Butter-and-eggs, 114.

Butterflies, 57, 85, 108.

Dahlia, 115.

Canna, 62, 115.

Dangleberry, 123, 174.
Desmodium nudiflorum,

Catbird, 6, 7.

36.

Catnip, 54.

Duck, dusky, 102.

INDEX

Finch, Lincoln, 70.

Kingbird, 6, 24, 40, 52.

pine, 155.

Kingfisher, 253.

purple, 8, 155, 203, 219,

Kinglet, golden - crowned,

225, 231.

134, 155, 182.

Flicker, 64, 155, 231.

Flycatcher, least, 6.

Lady's-slipper, 4.

Forsythia, 2.

Lark, shore, 107-

Fox, 183, 258.

meadow, 19, 132, 234,

Frog, spade-foot, 262.

236.

•wood, 257.

Leucothoe, 164.

Frost grape, 111.

Loosestrife, swamp, 57.

Lucky-bug, 57.

Galium, yellow, 21.
GaUinule, Florida, 32.

Maple, red, 122, 124.

Gerardia, 36.

striped, 124.

Goldenrod, 59, 121.

Maryland yellow-throat, 6,

Goldfinch, 8, 27, 63, 134,

60.

136, 155, 234.

Mayweed, 54, 114.

Goose, Canada, 198.

Meadow-beauty, 37.

Grass, 50, 76.

Meadow-sweet, 21.

Grosbeak, rose-breasted, 5,

Morning-glory, 26.

47, 72.

Mullein, 21.

Grouse, ruffed, 83, 133, 143,

Muskrat, 136, 259.

155.

Gull, black-backed, 108.

Nuthatch, red - breasted,

herring, 95, 108, 111, 156.

154.

238.

white-breasted, 35, 154,

205, 209, 225, 235.

Hardback, 21, 37, 38, 39.

Hawk, red-shouldered, 239.

Old-maid's pinks, 54.

marsh, 108, 254.

Old Squaw, 156.

Heron, great blue, 94.

Oriole, Baltimore, 5, 7, 39,

green, 31.

60.

night, 31.

Otter, 259.

Holly, 150, 175.
Huckleberry 123, 172.
Hummingbird, 58, 61, 88.

Oven-bird, 7, 273.
Owl, screech, 248.

Partridge-berry, 150.

Indigo-bird, 47, 70.

Pennyroyal, 38.

Phoebe, 22, 40, 60, 233, 240.

Jay, blue, 38, 120, 125, 154,

Pickerel-weed, 29.

204, 221.

Pine, pitch, 35.

Jewel-weed, 26, 58, 62.

Plover, black -bellied, 92,

Joe Pye weed, 57.

97, 99.

INDEX

279

Quail, 41, 155.

Tanager, scarlet, 36, 47, 60,

Quince, 115.

72.

Thimbleberry, 21.

Rail, Carolina, 31, 33.

Thorn, 111.

Virginia, 31.

Thoroughwort, 38.

Raspberry, 21.

Thrasher, brown, 23, 270.

Redpoll, 153, 154.

Thrush, northern water, 13,

Redstart, 7, 12, 55, 274.

61, 71.

Robin, 60, 67, 155, 232, 255.

Swainson, 7, 69.

Rose, swamp, 26.

wood, 7.

Titlark, 93, 94, 102, 107,

Sandpiper, pectoral, 98.

108.

red-backed, 99, 109.

white-rumped, 93, 94, 96,

Veery, 6, 23.

97, 100, 109.

Vireo, Philadelphia, 71.

Sassafras, 3, 124, 166.

red-eyed, 7, 55, 73.

Saxifrage, 3.

solitary, 23.

Shadbush, 3.

warbling, 6, 60, 67.

Shrike, 155, 240.

yellow- throated, 6, 60,

Snipe, 25, 254.

67.

Snowbird, 134, 154, 155,

234, 252.

Warbler, black-and-white,

Sparrow, chipping, 19, 70,

273.

271.

Blackburnian, 274.

English, 14, 16, 52, 156.

blackpoll, 68, 73, 274.

field, 24, 39.

black-throated blue, 10.

fox, 235, 244, 250, 255.

black-throated green, 23,

grasshopper, 17.
Ipswich, 102.

73, 272.
blue golden-winged, 274.

savanna, 18, 107.

Canadian, 22.

song, 19, 38, 60, 68, 234,

Cape May, 274.

235, 253.

chestnut-sided, 7, 274.

swamp, 13, 22.

golden, 6, 267.

tree, 134, 136, 154, 155.

magnolia, 274.

vesper, 19, 24, 253.

myrtle, 73, 136, 269.

white-throated, 6, 69.

Nashville, 7, 268.

Spatter-dock, 29.
Spice-bush, 3, 123, 162.

parula (blue yellow-
backed), 6, 274.

Squirrel, gray, 118, 227, 259.

pine, 68, 270.

flying, 177, 259.

prairie, 7.

red, 227, 259.

yellow palm, 271.

Swallow, barn, 38.

Waxwing, cedar, 8.

tree, 15, 16, 237.

Waxwork, Roxbury, 111,

Swift, 38.

124.

INDEX

Woodchnck, 182.
Woodcock, 242, 255.
Woodpecker, downy, 114,
154, 205.

hairy, 155.

red-headed, 42.

Wood pewee , 60, 67.
Wren, long-billed marsh,
30.

Yellow-legs, greater, 96,
101.

dfte tfiticrsfibe

Elf ctrotyptd and printed by H. O. Houghton <5r- C<7
Cambridge, Mass., U.S,A.

000 672 281 3