THE FRIENDSHIP

OF NATURE

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FOR THE PEOPLE

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LIBRARY

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NATURAL HISTORY

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THE FRIENDSHIP OF
NATURE

THE FRIENDSHIP
OF NATURE

A New England Chronicle of Birds
and Flowers

BY

MABEL OSGOOD WRIGHT

MACMILLAN AND COMPANY

AND LONDON
1894

All rights reserved

6'\-ol

Copyright, 1894,
By MACMILLAN AND CO.

Nortoooti ^xess :

J. S. Gushing & Co. — Berwick & Smith.
Boston, Mass., U.S.A.

IN REMEMBRANCE

IF LOVE A DEBT CAN PAY
AS WELL AS GOLD,
THINK ME NOT BOLD
WHEN I SEEK TO RETURN,
BY LOVING, ALL I LEARN
OF NATURE EVERY DAY

MABEL OSGOOD WRIGHT

Waldstein, Fairfield, Conn.,
March i8, 1894

CONTENTS

I. A New England May-Day

II. When Orchards Bloom ,

III. The Rom aunt of the Rose

IV. The Gardens of the Sea
V. A Song of Summer .

VI. Feathered Philosophers .

VII. Nature's Calm .

VIII. The Story of a Garden .

IX. Rustling Wings .

X. The Loom of Autumn

XI. A Winter Mood .

PAGE

I

IS
30
44
62

85
III
130
159

18S
218

Note. — Acknowledgment is due the Evening Post
for permission to use the first article, which appeared
in that journal, and to the Nerv York Times for like
permission to reprint the second, third, and fourth.
These articles, however, have been re-written since
their first publication.

vii

A NEW ENGLAND MAY-DAY

" That it was May, thus dremede me."
Ro7naunt of the Rose.

Do you know the tale of the months,
the ancient Bohemian legend, — how
by a fire which never goes out, sit
twelve silent men each with a staff in
his hand? The cloaks of three are
white as snow, and three are green
like the spring willow, and three are
gold as the ripened grain, and three
are blood-red like wine. The fire that
never fails is the sun; the silent men
are the months of the year. Each in
his turn stirs the fire with his staff ; for
each has his office, and if one month
should sleep and a turn be made amiss,

2 THE FRIENDSHIP OF NATURE

then the snow would fall, bringing blight
in spring, or drought would sere the
harvest. This year^ April has over-
slept, and March has rudely jostled
May, who in confusion takes up April's
task, leaving its own for June.

Here in New England, we have no
calendar of Nature, no rigid law of
season, or of growth. The climate, a
caprice, a wholly eerie thing, sets tra-
dition at defiance and forces our poets
to contradict each other. The flower
which one declares the harbinger of
spring may be a lazy vanguard in
another year; the fringed gentian, set
by Bryant in frayed and barren fields,
frosty and solitary, usually follows the
cardinal flower, in late September.

Come into the garden. The wind

blows sharply from the north, where

the snow still lies, and the clouds

hang low, yet it is May-day, and a

1 1893.

A NEW ENGLAND MAY-DAY 3

catbird is singing in the arbour. It
is a much-trodden path in a long-
discovered country, but each one dis-
covers anew when he first sees it for
himself. The golden touch, the guinea-
stamp of Nature, is the dandelion in
the grass border; flattened close to the
sward, the wind passes over it, but
bends and twists the masses of paler
daffodils. The honeysuckles show
pinched yellow leaves; the shrubs are
bare, only the Forsythia is budded.

With what green intensity the pines
are thrown into relief by the surround-
ing barrenness ! In the top of one, a
pair of crows are building, stealing
forward and back with the distrust
that is born of their small natures.
Below, in a sheltered nook, patches of
hardy violets are blooming : the little
white violets that our grandmothers
cherished, the odorous dark purple of

4 THE FRIENDSHIP OF NATURE

the English garden-alleys, and the
pansy-like variety from the Russian
Steppes, which, as they bloom, laugh at
our frosty weather. In spots where
the sun has rested, the cowslip shows
its budded panicles, and a friendly
hedge shelters a mat of yellow prim-
roses, the flower of Tory dames. The
same hedge harbours each season in-
numerable birds. Hark! that broken
prelude is from the veery, or Wilson's
thrush, as he darts into his shelter.
Where the stone wall gathers every ray
of heat, are rows of hyacinths, with
ponderous trusses of bloom, rivalling
in variety and richness of colouring any
bulbous growth, and hordes of bees are
thumping about them. If you wish to
study colour, then stay awhile by these
pansies, that jostle and overrun the
borders like a good-natured crowd of
boys. It is strange that we rarely see

A NEW ENGLAND MAY-DAY 5

the most beautiful varieties in the
markets or the flower shows. The
trade florists grow them more for size
and less for j ewel-like markings. Here
are solid colours, hues, veinings, trac-
ings, and varied casts of expression,
harlequin, sober, coquettish, as if con-
tinual hybridization had placed human
intelligence in them.

Not a leaf as yet on the hardy roses,
and the sweet peas are only piercing the
soil. The trellis skirting the garden is
a lattice-work of wintry branches, but
in the wren-boxes cleaning and build-
ing is advancing. Birds are not like
flowers; the climate with them matters
little; the food supply is the great
question, and many a bird, sent south
to winter by the ornithologists, will
remain contentedly here, if grubs and
berries are in plenty. The wren is,
perhaps, the most capable bird of the

6 THE FRIENDSHIP OF NATURE

garden, at once a cheerful, melodious
singer, a thrifty provider, and a Board
of Health in the care of its dwelling.
Nothing that is dirty is allowed to
remain about its snug quarters, and
by a simple and comprehensive plan
its local drainage is made perfect.

Go from the garden down through
the lane to the meadow. What a
burst of bird music greets you, solo,
quartet, and chorus, led by the viva-
cious accentor, the golden-crowned
thrush, with his crescendo of " Teacher
— teacher — teacher ! " This is the
time and season to study the birds,
while their plumage is fresh and typi-
cal, and they never sing so freely as in
the first notes of their love song. The
most puzzling part of the task is their
modifications of plumage ; for not only
in many species are males and females
totally different, but the ip.ale also

A NEW ENGLAND MAY-DAY 7

changes his coat after the breeding
season, and the nestlings wear a hybrid
dress, half father, half mother. Does
the gunner know that the bobolink,
the jaunty Robert of Lincoln, whose
glossy black coat, patched with white
and buff, is so conspicuous in the low-
lands when in May and June he rings
out his delicious incoherent song, but
who becomes silent in August and
changed to a sober brown, is the reed-
bird that he slaughters?

New songsters are arriving daily,
some as birds of passage only, and
others to remain. The bushes along
the lane are alive with twittering
guests. Now it is the wood-pewee,
with his plaintive cry, or his brother
the phoebe-bird, twisting and turning,
who has built his nest under the porch
for many a season, and out in the pas-
ture the chipping sparrow is gleaning

8 THE FRIENDSHIP OF NATURE

fibres and hairs for her nest. The
spring of clear water in the dell is a
great attraction to them; and as they
bathe and drink, we can, with a field-
glass, easily distinguish their markings.
The robins have been building for a
week, and high upon a hickory trunk
a golden-winged woodpecker and a
squirrel are contending loudly for a
hole, which both claim for a nest.
The sparrow tribe is appearing in
force. That flock of brown and ash-col-
oured birds with white-striped crowns
and white-patched throats are peabody
birds, or white-throated sparrows; and
if you look overhead, you will see that
the charming little soprano is the song-
sparrow. He is Nature's bugler who
sounds a reveille from the March
alders, and calls, "Lights out," to the
smouldering autumn fires. Yesterday
a flock of red-brown fox-sparrows, the

A NEW ENGLAND MAY-DAY 9

largest of the family, were drinking at
the spring, but to-day they have passed
northward.

Look at the bank where the sun,
peeping through, has touched the
moss; there is saxifrage, and here are
violet and white hepaticas, pushing
through last year's leaves; lower down
the wool-wrapped fronds of some large
ferns are unfolding. The arbutus in the
distant woods is on the wane, a fra-
grant memory. At the shady side of the
spring are dog-tooth violets; and on
the sunny side the watercourse is traced
by clusters of marsh-marigolds, making
a veritable golden trail. On a flat rock,
almost hidden by layers of leaf mould,
the polypody spreads its ferny carpet,
and the little dicentra — or Dutch-
men's breeches, as the children call it
— huddles in clumps. The columbines
are well budded, but Jack-in-the-pulpit

lO THE FRIENDSHIP OF NATURE

has scarcely broken ground. On the
top of the bank the dogwood stands
unchanged, and the pinxter flower
seems lifeless.

A brown bird, with reddish tail and
buff, arrow-speckled breast, runs shyly
through the underbrush, and perching
on a low bush, begins a haunting, flute-
like song. It is the hermit thrush. Its
notes have been translated into sylla-
bles thus: "Oh speral, speral ! Oh
holy, holy! Oh clear away, clear
away; clear up, clear up!" — again
and again he repeats and reiterates,
until seeing us he sUps into the bushes.
Over the spring in the open is the
thrush's kinsman, the brown thrasher,
a large bird of muscular build, with
specked breast and rust-brown back,
who thrashes the air with his tail held
erect. He is a mocking thrush, allied
to the southern mocking-bird, and like
him is a vociferous singer.

A NEW ENGLAND MAY-DAY 11

Beyond the meadow a heavy belt of
maples marks the course of the river;
the gray, misty hue of winter has gone
from their tops and they are flushed
with red; the willows are yellow, and
here and there show signs of leaf, but
the white birches loom grim and chill-
ing, with their tassels only expanded,
and the anatomy of tree, bush, and
brier is as clearly defined as in Janu-
ary. Bluebirds are very rare this
spring; some chipmunks invaded their
house last year, an intrusion which
they sorely resented; but a number of
warblers are flitting about, and feeding
on young twigs or bark insects. The
warblers, though insignificant singers,
have the most varied and beautiful
plumage; for a week, a flock of
the black-throated green species has
haunted a group of hemlocks, lighting
the dark branches with glints of their

12 THE FRIENDSHIP OF NATURE

gold and green feathers. The swallows
are skimming over the meadow, and
yesterday a belted kingfisher sat high
in a dead maple by the river, with a
flock of jays screaming and quarrelling
near him. The snowbirds, buntings,
nuthatches, and kinglets have passed
to the north, as well as most of the owl
tribe; but the little screech-owl remains
to blink in the summer woods. Yonder
black cloud, settling on the great chest-
nut, is an army of purple grackles, our
crow blackbirds, and their glossy kin
with the scarlet shoulders, whose cry
is a shrill " Quank-a-ree, " is the red-
winged swamp blackbird.

Far down the meadow, where the
grass is coarse and sedgy, and dry
tussocks offer a shelter, the meadow
lark is weaving its nest, working so
deftly that its home is practically safe
from human invaders. See him there.

A NEW ENGLAND J\I AY-DAY 1 3

Striding along in the full splendour of
his plumage, dark brown above, with
speckled sides, wings barred trans-
versely, with brown, yellow breast,
black throat-crescent, and yellow legs;
while his mate is hardly less brilliant.
We must turn homeward now, for
the birds are hurrying to shelter, the
wind is rising, and the sound of the
waves on the bar, two miles distant, is
growing distinct and rhythmic. Big
drops of rain are rustling in the dry
beech leaves, the smoke of burning
brush has enveloped the spring and
shut off the meadow. The logs blaz-
ing on the hearth will give us a cheery
welcome, for the mercury in the porch
registers only ten degrees above freez-
ing. Is it November? No, surely,
but one of the twelve months has slept,
and so wrought all this strange contra-
diction. This is the first of the Moon

14 THE FRIENDSHIP OF NATURE

of Leaves, the May-day of Old Eng-
land, and we have gathered violets and
daffodils, and we have heard the hermit
thrush singing in the lane : —

" The word of the sun to the sky,
The word of the wind to the sea,
The word of the moon to the night,
What may it be?"

WHEN ORCHARDS BLOOM

" The robin and the bluebird piping loud,
Filled all the blossoming orchards with their

glee;
The sparrows chirped as if they still were

proud
Their race in Holy Writ should mentioned

be."

The Birds of Killingivorth.

After a week of showers, the lightly
veiled sun glows potent and compel-
ling. The cloud drift blows from the
west, the green meadow mist lifts,
revealing a greener mist of tender
leaves. An oriole, breaking into song,
queries: "Will you? Will you really,
really, truly?" and a meadow lark
answers: "Spring o' the year; spring
o' the year."

15

1 6 THE FRIENDSHIP OF NATURE

The woods and lanes are astir with
the mysterious whispering of the open-
ing buds; the grass has grown deep in
the fields, and hides the fading violets,
saying as it closes over them : " Sleep
softly, I will protect you." Ceres,
who has been a laggard for weeks, has
suddenly awakened to her duty, as if
Pomona, anxious for her harvest, had
roughly shaken her. The garden is
blazing with a flame of late tulips;
bizarres, byblooms, flakes, and parrots,
with fringed and twisted petals. The
primulas show many hues, from gold
to deepest crimson with a yellow
centre, and mingle their perfume with
the various Narcissi, the double, whose
blooms rival the Gardenia, the trumpet
major, and the pheasant's eye, — the
poet's Narcissus. Masses of lilies-of-
the-valley are straggling into the full
sunlight, in spite of the tradition which

WHEN ORCHARDS BLOOM 1 7

makes them hermits of the shade.
Branches of amethyst lilacs hang over
the gray stone wall, and as they sway
to and fro, the bees, laden too deeply
with honey, fall drowsily to the gromid.
Pear and cherry and plum blossomed
together this year, and the ground is
still powdered with a wealth of their
corollas.

Look through the vista before you,
over the fields and up the hillside,
where the tree tops meet the sky; there
are the blooming apple orchards,
foam-white, or rosy as Aurora's finger-
tips. Flower, bird, man, what a triad
these blossoming orchards typify; for
man's dwellings are always near his
orchards, and in the orchards are the
birds. There they are free and confid-
ing, as though they had the instinctive
assurance that their greatest safety lies
in the protective love of man, against

IS THE FRIENDSHIP OF NATURE

man, and against the unpitying force
of purely natural law. The hair-bird
builds in the garden near the house;
in your brier-rose, perhaps, that the
vagrant cow-bird may not lay an egg,
unnoticed, in its nest. The catbird
chooses a syringa bush by the walk,
that he may chide and chat as you pass
by. The robin takes for his abode
the arbour, or the vine that wreathes
the door; the sparrow tribe lie low
upon the ground, in bush or hedge,
blending with earth, to cheat the
sparrow hawk.

But if you would have the complete
brotherhood of birds, come to the
orchard. The old orchard, where the
trees, long past their prime, are gnarled
and bent and moss-grown toward the
north, where different grafts on the
same trunk are marked by different
blooms, where vines conceal the walls,

WHEN ORCHARDS BLOOM 1 9

and the boughs are left untrimmed
in thriftless beauty. The farm-house,
standing only across the road, boasts of
young, well-pruned trees, with white-
washed trunks; but thrift, alas! is an
iconoclast, and the most comfortably
crooked boughs are cut away, and
there are few worms to tempt bird
appetites. Here in this ancient orchard
there is no change, except the soft,
renewing transmutation of decay. Year
by year, the red-eyed vireo or his kin
has hung a nest in the russet's forking
branch, and called at the children who
would boldly peer at it: "You will
rue, you will rue, you will rue it."
Yellow birds, gay in gamboge and
black, who later hang like errant
flowers on the thistle stalks, gather
here to court and nest and plume the
whole summer through, whistling like'
wild canaries. The king-bird of famed

20 THE FRIENDSHIP OF NATURE

prowess, with crimson-streaked crest,
doubles and darts in his keen pur-
suit of bees, and the yellow-billed
cuckoo, with sturdy neck, cries grat-
ingly, "Kuk, kuk, kuk, " as he probes
the caterpillar from the meshes of
his retreat. The cedar bird, whose
quaker coat is relieved by waxy red-
tipped wings, builds his deep, soft-
lined nest, thinking meanwhile of
laden cherry trees; and in the tufts of
grass out in the open, hovering above
a nest that is merely a heap of twigs,
the bobolink calls in a perfect ecstasy :
"Bobolink o'wadolink, winterseeble-
see me-see me-see ! " The towhee hops
among the bushes to lead you from his
nest, flashing his wings and tail like
Jenny Wren, and darting just above;
his little prototype, the redstart, with
breeze-ruffed feathers, seizes a tiny
moth, and through the branches

WHEN ORCHARDS BLOOM 21

the bluebird's plaintive note drops
liquidly. The yellow warblers, with
cinnamon-streaked breasts, flutter in
flocks, like autumn leaves, and in a
branchless trunk, hollow and hoary,
the white-breasted wood swallows colo-
nize. Two catbirds spy an adder by
the wall, stretched basking on the
stones, and raising an angry cry, they
hover and strike at it, and the adder,
too numb from its winter sleep to
comprehend and exercise its charm,
drags itself into a hole. A woodchuck
lifts its head above the grass and sniffs,
then, half suspicious, it slinks flatly
down the pathway to the brook and
drinks with little conscious sips. Chip-
munks and red squirrels scold and
spring from branch to branch, seizing
the blossoms to eat the succulent cores,
and, if they can, to loot an unwatched
nest. And over all the melody and

22 THE FRIENDSHIP OF NATURE

fragrance, distinctly comes the droning
fugue of bees, and, in a lower key, the
cropping of the rich grass by eager
cows, — a pledge of golden butter in
the churn.

Follow the grass-grown road that
lies between the garden and the farm.
The orchard breath floats on before,
goes with you, then straying, follows
you, pervading everything; and, here
and there, beside the very wheel-tracks,
you find the orchard's offspring, the
wild crab-apple tree, and the orchard
birds become more shy and are wrapt
in reverie, as if overshadowed by the
mood of the wood birds.

Go to the wood, but with a lowered
voice and a velvet tread, in sober,
thrush-like garb, so that you may pass
unnoticed. See how the blood is
stirring in the winter-chilled shrubs
by the path; the canes of the wild

WHEN ORCHARDS BLOOM 23

roses and briers are red, the bayberry
bark is bluish gray, and the sallow an
olive yellow. The shad-bush holds its
feathers proudly above the weeds and
brambles, though they are as fleeting
as hoar frost in the morning. Under
the fence the half-closed anemones
nod and cluster; they are the wind
flowers, for they bloom in a windy
season. Jack-in-the-pulpit comes next;
those growing in the shade are pale
and slender, but in sunny spots they
are vigorous and of a deep brown-
purple, contrasting finely with the
Solomon's seals, one hung with green
bells, and the other, the false Solo-
mon's seal, with a feathery terminal.
A gleam of white from the bank
shows the white dogwood in its perfec-
tion, and mingling with it is the pinx-
ter flower, clad in flawless rose. The
brook breaks through, and bubbles

24 THE FRIENDSHIP OF NATURE

under the road, and in the grass by
the margin are winking bluets and
white violets. Clinging to earthy
stones and swaying about, now float-
ing, now wholly submerged, is the pun-
gent watercress, spreading its naked
roots to keep its balance. Iris and
arums are thrusting up their blades,
near the heart-leaved pickerel weed
and shining arrowhead. In compact
bunches, rank and lusty, are the ferns
that love wet ground, the various
Osmundas, with their fronds of rusty
spores.

Go further yet into the wood; the
banks grow steep, the road winds
through a glen to the side of a narrow
river, which tumbles about restlessly
in its rocky bed. All that is pastoral
stops. The solemn hush of the forest
is irresistible: the characteristics of
the flowers and birds have changed;

WHEN ORCHARDS BLOOM 2$

the contrasts of light and shade are keen-
ly dramatic. Here are laurels, whose
faithful leaves have braved the winter;
the hop-hornbeam, poplar, oak, and
hickory, chestnut, ash, beech, and
towering hemlock trees. The ground-
pine pierces the mould with its per-
sistent antennae-like stems, and the
bellwort vibrates beside the useful
wintergreen, which is not yet in flower.
Over the river hangs a ruined mill,
battered by ice and wind; and all
about are worn millstones, some prop-
ping up the mill, and others crumbling
away and overgrown by moss and ferns.
Below it the river dashing through the
gorge is spanned by a single rough-
hewn tree, to bridge the way for chil-
dren going through the woods to
school; beyond the stream the hill
ascends.

Not a bird note is heard, for topping

26 THE FRIENDSHIP OF NATURE

a wind-scarred pine, a red hawk sits
watching for prey. The undergrowth
is scant, but mosses abound and blend
with the veined leaves of the pipsis-
sewa. Ferns hang their draperies on
everything; frail zones of maiden-
hair, sensitive onoclea, the tufted
Woodsia, the hay-scented Dicksonia,
and feathered asplenium. Fissures in
rock and bank still harbour little beasts,
— the weasel, mink, skunk, raccoon,
and even the fox, and a great horned owl,
disturbed, swoops heavily and flies into
deeper shade. The ground is spongy
and the piney moss makes the foot slip,
and the crushed petals of the purple
trillium give out the odour of blood.

Under the hemlocks are scattered
pairs of leaves, — broad, oval, rough,
and ribbed lengthwise, — do you know
their bloom? Look yonder, on a
straight round stem is hung a pink-

WHEX ORCHARDS BLOOM 2/

veined pouch, and above it, reaching
up octopus-like, are greenish arms. It
is a cypripedium, the Indian moccasin
flower, beautiful as any orchid that the
florist hoards. It was abundant here
a little while ago, but like the Indian
himself it shrinks from the civilizing
touch, and when we meet them now,
perched like a flock of tropic birds, we
look our fill, touch and caress them,
then come away, telling their refuge
only to the bees.

Go backward to the road, by rocks
iridescent with trickling moisture,
whose crevices hold tufts of scarlet
columbine. How science and a web
of fancy identify our common flowers,
and how undiscriminating ignorance
jumbles and confuses them ! Thus,
honeysuckle may mean the columbine,
clover, or the June vine on the porch;
and red-bells stands, in local parlance.

25 THE FRIENDSHIP OF NATURE

both for columbine and scarlet clem-
atis. Turn to the names that science
and legend give the columbine : Aqui-
legia, the Latin cognomen for a like-
ness of the flower's petals to an eagle's
claws; Columbine, from the gaudy
mate of Harlequin, for the resemblance
of the flower to the cap which Folly
wears; and another yet, touching both
flower and season, handed down from
the monks of old, who with loving
sentiment wrought flowered margins to
their missals and books of hours, —
Columbine, a dove, the sign of the
Holy Ghost, who descended in the
cloven tongues of flame at the Feast of
Pentecost; and so, to-day, at the Pente-
costal season, the fiery tongues bloom-
ing on the gray New England rocks
repeat the message.

The hawk has gone and the birds are
singing once more, the water thrush,

WHEN ORCHARDS BLOOM 29

and the warbling vireo, and down the
road the cattle saunter homeward from
the pasture, and the orchard fragrance
comes retrospectively, like a refrain
that lingers in the memory.

Precious is the solitude and the
song of the water thrush, for they
soothe the spirit; precious are the
orchards, the sunlight, and the home-
going cattle, for they warm the heart.
The red thrush perching high pours
out his voluble song, while the lilacs
sway over the wall. Still querying in
an elm swings the oriole ; is he bird, or
flower, or cloud, or the transmigration
of all?

THE ROMAUNT OF THE ROSE

" I saw the sweetest flower wild Nature yields,
A fresh-blown musk-rose; 'twas the first that

threw
Its sweets upon the summer." — Keats.

The twilight lingers, yearning for the
rosy dawn. The breeze, laden with
heavy odours, dissolves upon the earth
in dew. The ox-eye daisy bends to
the encircling grass, sighing: "He
loves; he loves me not." From the
hedge, the coral trumpets of the honey-
suckle declare its sweetness, and the
jewelled humming-bird pauses before
it vibrant. The wood thrush ceases
its song, and next the vesper-sparrow;
one final ripple from the bobolink,
30

THE ROMAUXt OF THE ROSE 3 1

a whistle from the chat, and then a
veery, and the booming frogs alone
disturb the silence. A night-hawk
wheels, and low in the west the slender
crescent moon yields precedence to
Venus, the evening star.

In the still garden, from a bed of
emerald leaves, slowly unfolding, per-
fume-clad, a queen comes forth, the
first June rose. The brown moth,
flitting, bears the news through the
garden, fields, and lane. The fireflies
signal it across the swamp, and perch-
ing in a tree, remotely sociable, his
own breast flushed with joy, the gros-
beak murmurs it all through the night.

The east at dawn is a barred fire-
opal; before the prism changes, the
herald tanagers, in red and black, are
speeding through the trees, and in
every field the tinkling bobolinks pro-
claim the climax of the sylvan year, —

32 THE FRIENDSHIP OF NATURE

the birth of the first rose. Over all
the land the rose-blood, pulsing in
flower and fruit, claims relationship.
The well-fed strawberry, with his ruddy,
pitted face, calls himself cousin; the
ripening cherry speaks for the plum,
the pear, and the quince. The tall
blackberry canes wave their snowy
wands in homage, and in the springy
fields, where the fleur-de-lis betray the
sluggish stream, the avens shake their
golden petals crying: "We too, we too
are kin."

Then the gypsy clan, that camp in
bush and grass and tree, ring out their
matins, with the hair-bird as the leader;
the mourning dove sings contralto, the
hermit thrush, robin, song-sparrow, and
bobolink are sopranos, the oriole and
wood-thrush tenors, while cuckoos and
high-holes lend a croaking base. The
catbird mimics and jeers in every key.

THE ROMAUNT OF THE ROSE 33

and the green warbler adds his little
prayer : " Oh, hear me ! Hear me, St.
Theresa! " This is their paean of joy,
their perfect song, before the nesting
cares ruffle their bright feathers, and
scorching July suns weary and silence
them.

With bird notes mingle the flower
voices, in the language of quaint days,
when flowers served as speech between
shy lovers, and each young maiden
working in her garden lived and
dreamed in it. The flowering almond
spoke of hope, the bluebell nodded
constancy ; the vigorous arum, ardour;
the white poppy, closing with the early
shadows, sleep; the pansy, thoughts;
the larkspur, fickleness. But roses,
whether they are red or white, pink-
hearted or yellow, double or single, all
sing of love, the changeful melody of
many keys.

34 THE FRIENDSHIP OF NATURE

Young Cupid once, or so the legend
runs, kissed a red rose, and in its heart
put love. Alas! between its petals
there lurked a bee that stung his lips.
To still his cries of rage, his mother
strung on his bow a swarm of bees,
and plucking out the stings of others,
set them upon the rose's stalk in pun-
ishment. So both love and roses are
beset with thorns.

The wild rose, token of simple-
hearted love, that stars the unmown
edges of the fields and rocky banks, is
the first of the wild tribe, coming
before its paler swamp sister unfurls,
or even the hardy little sand-rose bush
has budded. The slender-stemmed
musk-rose yields its fragrant charm
only at evening; it is capricious love.
The maiden-blush rose, well veiled in
green, says : " If you love me you will
find it out." The moss-bud answers:

THE ROM AUNT OF THE ROSE 35

"I stand confessed." The banner
rose, streaked with red and white,
means war, in memory of the feuds of
Lancaster and York, and the long-
spiked Carolinian cries: "Dangerous
is love." The sprayed white bridal
rose says: "Happy love," and the
sensuous damask, mother of Eastern
attars, only echoes: "Love, I love."
But the eglantine, the rose of sorrow,
dropping its fragrant leaves like tears,
whispers: "I wound to heal." Those
who know only the winter florist's rose,
the growth of forcing steam, do not
know the poor man's rose, or the
lover's rose, the free gifts of the sun,
the air, and the dew, the marriage
token of the earth to June.

Go into the garden now ; do not
delay! Roses are sweetest and keep
longest when picked with the dew on
them. Only yesterday the tulips were

36 THE FRIENDSHIP OF NATURE

holding their cups brimming with
light, and wallflowers mingled the
sweetness of earth and sun. A few
brief weeks ago, in the keen crisp air,
we gathered primroses and violets.
To-day the air is languorous, and the
heat trembles above the gravelled path.
Look at the beds of iris ; some are
royal purple edged with violet, others
yellow laced with crimson, and in the
corner, a group apart, are the white,
with blue patrician veins and each
stamen feathered with gold. See the
spires of foxgloves, whose hairy,
spotted throats allure the bumblebee,
and the hardy poppy, who, borrowing
Mephisto's name and cloak, burns in
the bordering grass, next to masses of
clove pinks, pure white and fringed.
The tall blue larkspur, with flower
stalks of mimic bees, completes the
garden's tricolour, while the great peo-

THE ROMAUNT OF THE ROSE 2>1

nies, red, crimson, and pink, might
pose as roses for Gargantua.

Here are the roses, here and every-
where; they will almost leap into your
arms. Fill your basket, your hat, your
upturned gown, and still there will
be enough to strew the ground with
fragrance. They are not prim, set,
standard trees, pruned like parasols,
but honest bushes, hanging branch over
branch, with clean leaves and lavish
bloom. Ask General Jacqueminot for
half-closed buds, his flowers flatten too
soon in the open sun. Will you have
darker? Here are Dr. Dombrain,
Xavier Olibo, dressed in velvet, and
Prince Camille Rohan, in crimson-
black, and double to the heart. You
may have pink ones too. No rose is
half so much a rose as the great deep-
cupped pink. Here is Paul Neyron,
but he opens back too wide. Gloire

38 THE FRIENDSHIP OF NATURE

de Margottin has a better shape, and
Anne de Diesbach is a perfect globe.
Will you have blush pink? Here
are Captain Christy and the Silver
Queen. Will you have buds? Here
are pink and white moss-buds, and still
another, without a single thorn, whose
petals are the hue of some rosy, curled
sea-shell. For pure white clusters we
must beg of Madame Plantier, who
vies in purity with the Coquette des
Blanches. Pass by that Persian yel-
low; its saffron disks smell badly, and
gather instead the eglantine, for its
leaf is even sweeter than the flower.

Here by the trellised wall are name-
less guests, the relics of more simple
days when roses had no royal names,
and cuttings from a neighbour's bush
spread east and west. There are the
cinnamon rose with brownish bark and
dull-red spicy flowers, and the red rose

THE ROMAUNT OF THE ROSE 39

of Provence, the rose of a hundred
leaves, with hooking thorns, whose
blossoms were much esteemed for rose
cakes and conserves; and lastly the
frail yellow brier with thorns like moss
and fiat, semi-double flowers.

In times when Gothic art followed
in stone the teachings of the trees, the
rose was wrought to be a window in
the vast cathedral walls and called the
rose of Heaven, whose vitreous petals
symbolized blessed souls.

Who is there but can conjure up
tender memories with a rose? Per-
haps it may recall a wild rose hedge,
smothered by elder flowers, where chil-
dren came in recess time, to tie posies
with the pliant grass and play at ring-
a-rosy in the fields. Perhaps it may
bring back a cottage home in a far-
distant land, where the bees flew about
the hives all day, and white jasmine

40 THE FRIENDSHIP OF NATURE

Strove with Gloire de Dijon roses in
the thatch, and life was sweet, — until
the mouths outgrew the bread, and
parting came.

Perchance some old New England
garden blooms again before the misty
eyes. A giant elm shading the picket
gate, the house yellow and white with,
olive blinds, and a pillared porch with
narrow, high-backed seats, a honey-
suckle training up one side to meet a
prairie rose; a straight, flagged walk
down to the gate, bordered on either
side by myrtle and stiff zebra grass;
with syringas by the side fence, a
strawberry shrub and lilacs grown to
trees. About the south porch were
some tender plants"in pots, an oleander
and an orange tree in tubs; while
drumming on the window-panes the
golden laburnum swung, peeping in
and out.

THE ROM AUNT OF THE ROSE 4 1

The great stone chimney had a hearty
breath which needed no aid from
chimney pots or tiles, and sheltered a
tribe of swallows, who, poising high,
dropped to their nests, then whirled
aloft again like wind spirits. The
well, with its long sweep, stood close to
the back porch, a corner screened by
hop and grape vines, where women sat
and sewed of afternoons and talked
with neighbours who stood leaning on
the fence. Here the young people
came from the garden with rose leaves
in their aprons, and their mother took
down the big blue jar, that " grandfather
brought from China" and caged in it
the sweets in fragrant potpourri, read-
ing the rule, meanwhile, from her
grandmother's book: "Take of June
roses just about to fall, two parts.
Shake them well free from dew, and
add of new-blown buds two parts; of

42 THE FRIENDSHIP OF NATURE

rosemary and lavender flowers and
leaves take one part. Place in a jar
with layer for layer of salt, and cover
until the salt has drawn the juice (three
days will do), then add some fresh rose
leaves every day, and stir and mix them
well. When you have filled the jar
with well-steeped leaves, add amber-
gris, gum benzoin, allspice and cassia
buds, a grain or two of musk, and four
vanilla beans broken in bits. Of oil
of jasmine, violet, and rose, add each
an ounce to a full gallon jar."

A walk bordered with box led to the
garden gate, half choked by woodbine,
and once there, beauty and rude nature
overran New England thrift. Johnny-
jumpers peered between the stones;
snowballs and weigela shrubs almost
hid a fallen apple tree where indigo
birds built their nests. Lupins and
Londonpride, nasturtiums, touch-me-
nots, grew side by side with fennel,

THE ROMAUNT OF THE ROSE 43

thyme, and rue. Catnip and radishes,
with tender lettuce-heads, were next to
bouncing-Bet, sweet peas, and China
pinks; and roses, pushing vigorous
suckers out, walked freely all about the
place and gathered thick around the
moss-grown sun-dial.

Perhaps a recollection still more
dear may rise. A gift of roses with
the thorns picked off, a walk in sum-
mer ways but not alone, the choosing
of a rose such as Lothair received from
Corisande, — then bridal roses.

Oh, calm June days that overflow the
night, and brief June nights that yield
another day ! oh, rose of June that by
day and night breathes hopeful love !
close in the starlit garden, far on the
wood-dark hill, where the wind sweeps
and the arching eglantine, raising its
crown of thorns over lonely graves,
whispers, "I wound to heal," and
shares its vigil with the whip-poor-will.

THE GARDENS OF THE SEA

" On the wide marsh the purple-blossomed
grasses
Soak up the sunshine." — Lowell.

The sea was at war with the land
long ago. The land stretched out an
arm to bar its way, but the sea, chafed
by the mute resistance, swept on across
the beach, clove through the sand-crest
where deeply rooted grasses bound the
shifting particles, and spread upon the
meadows, a salt rime, foaming and
raging, until the tree-crowned knolls
were islands, and the soil turned to
stiff ebon ooze.

The sea-breeze met the land-breeze,
44

THE GARDENS OF THE SEA 45

and they roared to and fro above the
marshy waste, disputing its possession.
Upon their hill the Twelve Months sat
in council to hear the tale of strife.
December smoothed his frosty beard,
leaned on his staff, and issued the
decree: "These lands, henceforth,
shall belong to no one. They shall
be desired but yet debatable ; yield-
ing no crop but beauty, they shall
be the gardens of the sea. Both land
and sea shall blend their strength in
their creation : the land-breeze sowing
abroad a myriad seeds, the sea-breeze
lending its fertile breath to quicken
them. The sun and mist shall dye the
coarse, rank grass with richest colours,
and from the slime breed dragon-flies
with painted wings, while birds of
passage shall be sentinels and keep
their watch throughout the year. If
man shall till the marshes, then the sea

46 THE FRIENDSHIP OF NATURE

will come, and lapping up his toil
obliterate his steps."

The flush of morning comes upon
the sea and pales the beacon's rays.
The night mists shrink before the sun,
and the low coast is revealed, a bar of
copper. There is no breath of wind,
not a ripple; the boats at anchor are
motionless as sleeping swans. A fisher-
man, whose gray sail hangs idle above
the piles of nets, poles his way up the
creek, and the startled herons drop
among the reeds.

On the land the trees, now in full
summer leaf, bend low, and the drench-
ing dews distil the scent of the mown
fields. Between the sea and land lie
the marshes; here and there men
have essayed to build a dike to keep
them from the sea, or pile a road to
traverse them. Always the sea tran-
scends their work, and pushing, swal-

THE GARDENS OF THE SEA 47

lowing, has kept its gardens to be a
thing of dreams, a picture in twelve
panels like the year.

Down from the village runs the
dusty road; the plough uproots it, fall
and spring, and turns the turfy edge
and heaps it in a jolting crown. Fol-
lowing the plough, each autumn,
careless men lop with their stubble
scythes the wealth of flowers that make
the waysides bright, and bare the shift-
less fences.

The straight road lies past low cot-
tages and onion fields; on either side
of it the land is treeless; there are no
birds but crows, that pry and sneak
behind the mullein stalks, watching
until some cottage woman comes to
give her chickens corn. The road
halts before a pair of bars, and with a
sudden angle takes an inland turn, and
at these bars the tillage stops, and all

48 THE FRIENDSHIP OF NATURE

the other scars of toil. Stretching
beyond, you see a cool, close lane, with
lines of grass between the tracks of
hoofs and wheel, and it invites, yes,
quite compels, the tread of willing feet.
There are no fences here; where they
were once a living barrier has sprung
from their decay, and willows luxuriate.
Tall sumach bushes follow up the line,
then hickory saplings, silver birches,
and choke-cherry trees, with here and
there a group of sassafras or young
maples, while wild grape vines bind
the whole into a leafy wall, and freight
the air with the fragrance of their
blossoms. Meadow-rue sends up its
foamy-tipped stalks above the pink
milkweed whose globes are food for
butterflies, and glowing wild roses,
crimson more than pink, from the deep,
strong soil, powder the blundering
bumblebees with gold pollen. On

THE GARDENS OF THE SEA 49

every side, broad cymes of white elder
flowers reflect the light, and rough-
fronded brakes line the path.

The upland fields of timothy that
border on the lane are not yet mown,
and field sparrows warble and swing
on the stout grasses. Yonder in that
briery maze a yellow-breasted chat is
hiding, who calls with a ventriloquist's
whistle, until a dozen birds seem
answering. The madcap bobolinks
are now anxious to disperse their
broods before the mowers lay bare
their shabby nests; and half bewitched,
they sing, and pausing, float with out-
spread wings, then soaring, pour out
torrents of high notes, — allegro-con-
fuoco.

In the black alders further down the
lane sound notes of warning. Circling
above the trees, a red-winged black-
bird, trig as an hussar, is uttering cries

E

50 THE FRIENDSHIP OF NATURE

in a shrill falsetto voice, while his rusty
mate flits in and out in agitation.
Pull back the bushes and you will find
their nest, hanging upon a stalk by
twisted strands of sedge, and in its
deep, soft bowl are cradled two light
blue eggs with umber spots, and two
young birds. But now the frantic
parents have aroused all their kin, and
twenty birds or more are on the wing,
screaming at once.

Look through the button bushes with
their feathered balls, here on the sea-
ward side. There lie the marshes,
and the lane slopes down and bounds
them until it melts into the green
morass, and all the rest is trackless.
What do you see? A cloth of soft
warm green stretched toward the sea,
a silver thread of water, fold by fold,
embroiders it, framing with curious
patterns the still, mirror pools. Long

THE GARDENS OF THE SEA 5 1

bands of dark oak woods lie on either
side; before you are some tufts of sand
grass, and a few dwarf trees are out-
lined black against the sky, while
beyond the crest the boats slip through
the golden haze. No colour of the
spectrum but you will find it there
at some time in the rounded year.
Dominant now are purples, browns,
and yellows merging into greens that
stain the ground, until the sea and sky,
meeting, absorb them.

Thread through this pathless garden,
now stepping on grass hummocks to
leave the sucking mud, now going dry-
shod over drifted sand heaps and
through belts of brakes, struggling
waist-deep among the clinging fronds,
but watching for the treacherous
ditches where bending reeds join
hands over the little tide channels,
and the cat-tail flag, with its flat

52 THE FRIENDSHIP OF NATURE

green leaves, holds up its rusty mace,
and grasses that twist about the
feet, ensnaring you, conceal the oozy
ground.

At the first step the bindweed hold-
ing the grass by its spiral curves arrests
you, and lifts its rosy chalice. Beyond
are a bristling regiment of yellow
thistles with bayonets fixed, and be-
tween them, fiat on the soil, the star
grass shines. The great blue flag still
lingers, though long out of season,
beside wide mats of sundrops, the
diurnal mate of the paler evening
primrose.

The ferns and brakes that border the
low woods thin into groups and mingle
with the swamp rose and blueberry. A
streak of lovely mauve on a closer view
reveals masses of calopogon, a flower
of the orchid's tribe, clustered on
slender stems; its hinging lips are

THE GARDENS OF THE SEA 53

bearded with hairs, yellow, white, and
purple, while near by, where the grass
is shorter, blooms the fragrant rose
pogonia, both fringed and crested,
also an orchid. Over all the flowers
and grasses, the swallows skirt and dip,
and high above some vagrant clouds
cast dazzling shadows, and the breeze,
full of sea-moisture, leaves salt upon
the lips. This is to-day, but yesterday
the beauty was as great; last month the
soft new greens were brighter still, and
as the year wears on the colours burn
and deepen, and the herbage grows
richer and more luxuriant.

In winter, when the frost-crust hid
the ground and the caked ice banked
the stiffened creek, the reeds and
sedges, long since gone to seed, rustled
and cracked in the wind, etching clear
shadows on the snow. The stripped
bushes, with every twig articulated by

54 THE FRIENDSHIP OF NATURE

crystal points, were perches for the
owls, and on the wooded knoll, by the
creek's mouth, the eagle watched high
in a tattered oak. The star\-ing crows
winged past like silhouettes, and the
gulls, with hollow laugh, swept morsels
from the sea, and at sunset all the
scene was suffused with a cold purple
glow.

Next came the vernal equinox with
its swelling tides, which overleaped
the shore and swept away the barriers
that the frost had set. The south
creek and the east joined hands in
amity, and made the marshes one vast,
surging lake. The welcome osprey
brought promise of good things : —

" She brings us fish, she brings us spring,
Good times, fair weather, warmth, and plenty,"

and, gathering the flotage of sticks
and seaweed from the shore, built a

THE GARDENS OF THE SEA 55

wide-spreading nest in the same tree
where in winter the eagle perched.
Then, as the waters fell, the herons
came, the red-breasted sandpiper,
golden plover, and the snipe. The
green bittern also, who stayed, and for
food quarried from the mud the larvae
of the dragon-fly. The long-stemmed
marsh violets pushed above the upland
grass ; on the sand ridges bloomed
white sprays of beach plum, and the
bayberry put out its pungent leaves.

The spring slipped on to summer,
and land birds filled all the bushes with
colour, life, and song; the trees con-
cealed their limbs with pliant dra-
peries, and the sea-gardens bloomed
again and glowed with flowers. The
sky at evening wore cool reflections of
the west, at morning bathed in mist,
and all day long shaped fancies of its
own; catching lights and burying them

56 THE FRIENDSHIP OF NATURE

in the sea; piling angry fortresses only
to riddle them with thunderbolts and
cast them down upon the dunes in show-
ers, holding a rainbow in their stead.
The black waters of the creek double
in its depths the shifting scenery, the
storm clouds and the lightning forking
down, the rainbow resting upon the
leaden sea, the full moon, the sailing
hawk, and the winking stars. As July
lengthens, the spraying bloom of the
sea-lavender spreads over the salt grass;
and where fresh springs mingle with
the bog the sundew, with its honeyed,
fly-ensnaring leaves, buds out beside
the pitcher plant, in whose water-laden
carafes unwary insects drown them-
selves. On the dunes the prickly
Indian fig expands its yellow wheels,
pressing the sand closely in its love of
heat. A band of flame edges a mass
of reeds, and the deep-rooted Philadel-

THE GARDENS OF THE SEA 57

phia lily, orange-red, lifts its spotted
cups, and straggling toward the lane in
dryer soil, the Canada lily hangs its
whorls of red or yellow bells, like
miniature pagodas.

In x-\ugust a wave of orange-yellow
covers the ground. On stiff leafy stalks,
the yellow-fringed orchid blooms in
short, densely clustered spikes. Its
rare beauty and tropic colouring attract
the fertilizing bees, and allure the girls
who revel in the air and sun to search
for it in the sea-gardens. Under the
hickory shade on the dry knoll you will
find the oak-leaved yellow Gerardia, a
shy recluse, with half-exotic flowers,
that hold their rank with garden
pentstemons and tender gloxinias. In
August, too, a ruddy glow spreads on
the marshes when the great rose-mallow
blooms and trails its sheets of pink all
up and down, wading deep in ditches

58 THE FRIENDSHIP OF NATURE

with the flowering rush, following the
lanes and zigzagging across the mead-
ows; and in its wake trudge the sun-
flowers with their golden coronets.
The clethra bushes in the deep runnel
on either side of the lane, pluming
with spicy bloom, are latticed in and
out with white wreaths of clematis.
The sea-pink, spreading its carpet,
repeats the mallow's colour, and the
frail maritime Gerardia echoes it still
further.

The falling tide has left bare the
edges of the creek, and in a slouching
boat the crabber feels his way between
the shoals, his net held low and his
eyes fixed on the sidling shadows under-
neath. On the marsh-islands mowers
gather up the rough, salt hay and pile it
on flat barges, and, with the rising tide,
float slowly inland on the water road,
like some strange hybrid wains, akin to

THE GARDENS OF THE SEA 59

those that glide dikewise between the
Holland fields, piled high with flowers
and produce from the farm, with dun-
brown sails for horses.

The keen September winds kindle
the autumn fires, and reds, yellows,
and purples hold their final tourna-
ment. The stubbly meadows wear a
yellow tinge, which blends to brown
in the shorn marshes, while the golden-
rod has filled the place of wild rose,
orchid, and mallow. Wands of the
blazing-star, and the various asters,
purple the fields and lane, where the
pokeberry with crimson stem and fruit
vies with glazed sumach leaves. Vir-
ginia creeper wraps the tallest trees in
scarlet, and up and down, wasting the
beauty of the marshes and the lane, the
fire goes and creeps with briers through
the scorched brown grass. Maples and
sumach, sassafras and oak, burn slowly

6o THE FRIENDSHIP OF NATURE

out, leaving the clematis smoking,
while a dull yellow flame consumes the
brakes and weeds.

Then the wild ducks gather, and
before the autumn storms, the plover,
flying low, falls a prey to gunners
hidden in the reeds, and the brown
moulted bobolinks, no longer song-
birds, are shot ruthlessly. The east
winds come and bring wild tides that
beat and pile the seaweed on the
sand, and long rains veil the marshes.
The sharp-prowed duck-boat pierces
through the flags in the gray of the
late dawn, and tired geese pause in
their flight to rest. The shortened
days are broken by swift sunsets, the
nights are steel-blue and touched by
electric fingers pointing from the north.
Frost flowers bloom and gem the heaps
of leaves, and men come out and cut
the sedge grass, the last yield of the

THE GARDENS OF THE SEA 6 1

marshes. Beauty still lingers and the
sea is murmuring of its gardens, and
with its siren voices greets the return-
ing gulls.

Gliding through the night, torch in
hand, his eel spear poised, the boatman
calls, then listens. Answering from
upper air are whirling wings, and birds
of passage troop like untiring sentinels.

A SONG OF SUMMER

" Shine ! shine ! shine !
Pour down your warmth, great sun !
While we bask, we two together."

Walt Whitman.

The south wind sweeps over the
mignonette, passing through the hedged
sweet peas into the wood gap. The
reeds on the brink of the river tremble
and the pendulous red-gold meadow
lilies ring the midsummer in with their
clamouring bronze tongues. It is not
the sun-god's day of the Julian calen-
dar, the summer solstice; not the fes-
tival of St. John the Baptist, when old
English custom trimmed the doors with
St. Johnswort and green branches, when
a wheel bound with straw was taken to
62

A SONG OF SUMMER 63

some neighbouring hill and set on fire
and then rolled down to bear away
harm and mark the sun's descent; but
middle July, the New England mid-
summer, the half-way stile between the
first cautious growth of June and Sep-
tember's ripening.

A haze drops between the sky and
the earth, laden with oppressive heat;
the deeply shadowed porch is airless,
and under it the two dogs lie panting
and exhausted. Ben-Uncas, a St. Ber-
nard, who loves cold and snow, dreams
of the river, and Colin, a veteran
setter, thinks of the fern copse where
the rabbits hide.

We two stand together out in the
full sunshine, with the summer sur-
rounding us, pulsing in the hot earth
under our feet, and with summer in
the heart. Spring is a restless season,
the time of mating, planting, hoping.

64 THE FRIENDSHIP OF NATURE

The sap flows into dry branches and the
river leaps along madly, but summer,
with its poppy-fringed cloak, brings
the peace of fulfilment.

Standing in the sunlight, we listen
and hesitate; the wind whispers as it
passes and brings alluring messages.
The trees call us to come to their shade
and learn the birds' secrets, to rest on
their moss-cushioned trunks, and listen
to the music of the brook as it makes
harp-strings of their pushing roots and
sings the Song of Summer. So, per-
suaded, we go out through the mid-
summer ways, and the dogs reconnoitre
before us as scouts.

The weeds and flowers are mingled
together along the roadside, and the
loiterer treasures many things that the
farmer casts out of his fields. The
yellow-starred St. Johnswort traces
the path, and the grimy burdock.

A SONG OF SUMMER 65

meshed with dust-hung cobwebs, crowds
the moth-mullein, and wild carrots
spread their filmy umbels beside brown
stalks of last year's dock. Creeping,
with clean, green leaves, the yellow
hop-clover spreads and mats with the
sweet white clover escaped from the
fields. The yellow toad-flax, or butter
and eggs, a cousin of the garden snap-
dragon, with its densely packed ra-
cemes, steps in and out, climbing on
stone heaps, tangled thick with trailing
blackberry vines, underneath whose
leaves lies the ripe, sweet, astringent
fruit. Tasting it, we suck the purple
drops of summer wine, and drinking,
grow in tune with Nature's melodies.

A silvery warble and the ripening
thistles show a hovering flock of yellow
birds, braving the prickly stalks for the
sake of the winged seeds and down, to
line their nests. For this gay bird

66 THE FRIENDSHIP OF NATURE

builds late, though he has been here
a long time; he waits for the ripening
of certain seeds to feed his young.
" Ker, cher, che, che ! just look
at me ! " he calls, and straightway
roughs his golden breast and fanwise
smooths out his sable wings, speeding
with a dipping flight to his shy olive
mate, whistling softly, "We two, we
two."

On each side of the road stretch the
rough stone walls, skirting the pastures,
intersecting fields and overgrown wood
lots. The chipmunk darts in through
the chinks, and gambols, whisks up a
branch that holds a nest and hides again
from the angry birds. The fields of
straight-limbed timothy have cast their
seed, and already we hear the clatter-
ing buzz of the horse-mower. Top-
pling, the grass falls sideways into
lines, and much labour is saved, even

A SONG dp-SirMMER 67

though the scythe circled with a truer
rhythm.

On the hillside they are cradling
rye. The long awned heads sway on
the glistening stalks, the breeze ripples
this golden sea, and billowing it, a
wave of music passes across, as if Pan
was blowing softly through his oaten
pipe a gentle prelude to the jovial
harvest dance. Behind the cradle lies
the prostrate rye, screening the sharp
stubble, and here and there the pink-
purple corn-cockle blends its flowers
with the gold. In the neighbouring
trees and bushes the birds lurk, wait-
ing for the noontime silence, that they
may gather up the gleanings.

Back of the rye field, a round knoll
is topped by blooming chestnut trees.
All the light and fragrance of the day
is meshed by their feathery stamened
spikes, and sifting through the mass of

68 THE FRIENDSHIP OF NATURE

restless leaves, it refracts and breaks
in countless tints. Romping all down
the hill like jolly Indian babes, are
troops of black-eyed-Susans, gay in
warm yellow gowns. Perched on the
road bank, nod blue campanulas, one
of a tribe of half-wild things that
escaped from gardens to beautify the
roads and fields; only they strayed
away so many years ago, that they
seem completely merged in their sur-
roundings and quite to the manor
born.

An herby odour rises from the path,
and in a space of less than twenty
steps, sweet mint, catnip, wild thyme,
yarrow, camomile, and tansy yield a
bunch of simples, such as once hung
on the rafters of every country garret,
ready to be brewed in teas for various
aches and pains. History, even in
science, still repeats itself, and the

A SONG OF SUMMER 69

peppermint, steeped into the tea that
Lydia Languish might have sipped for
the vapours, is now distilled and min-
isters to the nerves under the name
of menthol, and the leaves of win-
ter-green, that gran'ther chewed for
his rheumatics, still pursue the same
complaint, wearing its Latin name,
Gaultheria. But do not let us talk of
ills and medicines in mellowing sum-
mer-time, when the sunshine draws
stagnation from the blood and clears
its channels. To-day let the world
slip, and let us live in a summer
reverie.

The locust drowses in the open
places and the shade stops as we pass
a strip of onion fields. The deep, flat
soil is cleared of every tree or bush
that might give shade or take the sub-
stance from it. Outside the fence,
some great elms lie rotting, elms that

JO THE FRIENDSHIP OF NATURE

were hewn down because they barred
the eastern light, and sent out too
many thirsty roots to suck the richness
of the field. The useless onion stones,
gleaned from the much-tilled ground,
are piled between the trunks of the
decaying trees, and nettles and worm-
wood sprout vigorously about them.

If you serve Nature, waiting her
moods, taking what she yields un-
forced, giving her a love devoid of
greed, she will be a regal mistress, and
all she has to bestow will be yours.
Exact and say to one little field : " This
year you shall yield this crop or that,"
and it becomes a battle-ground, where
Nature, well equipped, wages war with
man.

The bare onion field is the last stand
of all. In early springtime, all the
ground is smoothed and swept of every
pebble, and the seed is sown. If it

A SONG OF SUMMER 7 1

is not rotted by too copious rains the
toil begins as soon as the lines of
misty green appear. In the morning,
when the malarial breath steams from
the soil, rank with dung, the ragged
boys crawl silently astride the rows,
plucking the weeds, and women too
sometimes, shapeless and pitiful to see.
Prostrate and crouched, the slow pro-
cession kneels, as if in supplication to
the sun to yield a crop, who, heedless,
blisters and scorches them, as day by
day they creep before his force, eyeing
the ground like the Trappist monks,
who each day claw the mould out with
their fingers, digging their own graves.
No flower cools the eye, no bird note
thrills the senses, the very crows desert
the onion field, and the dogs, with
lolling tongues, slink beside the wall.
O truth painter of Barbizon, this, this
is Toil ! You gave your earth-worn

72 THE FRIENDSHIP OF NATURE

peasants the vesper bells to round their
day, — the factory whistle is the New
World's Angelus.

The dogs are true philosophers.
While we, absorbed, still look over the
quivering field, heat-sickened, they go
on before, and spying a wayside pool,
scatter the prim, important geese, and
rolling in the shallow water, drink and
bathe at once. Again we welcome the
trees; thick maples arch the road, turn-
ing up the silver lining of their leaves
in every whiff of air. Yonder is the
bank of elecampane and the old
locusts, and here are the mossy bars
that lead to welcome depths of shade.
Ben bounds over, shaking his wet coat,
and rolls headlong in the deep, wild
grass beyond; the path goes to the
river and he knows it very well, knows
every deep cold spring and muskrat
run, knows also that all day he may

A SONG OF SUMMER J^

run wild, and in an ecstasy he leaps
and dashes to and fro.

Colin once followed the track of
every field-mouse, scented the birds
when neither human eye nor ear could
detect them, crossed the country
straight, leaped ditches, swam streams,
but now grown old he waits until the
bars are dropped, pretends he does not
scent the trails he may no longer
explore, and trusting us to choose an
easy way, follows, looking up and rub-
bing his soft ears against us, his great
brown eyes mutely confident; turning
to man, to his dog-brain a god, to
spare his age. Now wading deep in a
maze of grass, weeds, ferns, we press
through the unkempt lot to a great
band of trees, and from them toward
the heated body comes a wave of cool-
ness, grateful as a refreshing draught to
the lips or as music to the heart.

74 THE FRIENDSHIP OF XATURE

Small pointed cedars and young
oaks mix with the undergrowth, and
the tall staghorn-sumach, broken away
to make a path, hedges it, offering
delicious greens to our bouquet, — the
dull green, red-stemmed leaves and the
lighter panicled flowers, the whole
blending with slender vines of the
frost grape. The ground becomes
moister, tall lady-ferns and cinnamon
Osmundas wave with the heavy sway
of palms, and a perfume unlike wood-
odours, dense, tropical, suggestive of
Gardenias or bridal stephanotis, steals
on the questioning sense. A few steps
further and a mass of white conceals
the bushes, and we find the swamp-
azalea, called viscosa, from the viscid
honey of the flower. In runnels by the
roadside you may often meet this bush,
broken by cattle or by the careless
passer, with the blossoms browned by

A SONG OF SUMMER 75

heat; but here in the rich muck,
screened from the fierce noon sun, it
grows unscathed and opens flower by
flower in all perfection.

An upward pitch rolls to the crest of
woods, and smaller ferns make the
undergrowth; overhead are oaks and
beeches; here and there a silver birch
gleams with light, and from a copse of
dogwood, cornel, pepperidge, black
thorn, some aspens twirl and balance
their odd leaves as if trembling with
excitement. Entering the woods on a
full summer day, it always seems as if
another world of thought, speech, and
sense lay open, that the mystic wood-
sounds, the creaking of interlacing
branches, the snapping of twigs, and
leaf lappings, might be construed as a
language to tell of the tree's life and
desires. For trees are totally unlike
in their moods and influence, and give

76 THE FRIENDSHIP OF NATURE

out their individual impress of joy or
gloom, strength or variability, each
according to his character. No one
would tie chaplets of willow for a
conqueror, or weave garlands of oak
leaves for a bride. Stones washed
from the banks by the winter storms
are frescoed by lichens, and between
them are tufts of ebony spleenwort;
swinging by drooping branches, we
reach the summit, and resting on the
deep, soft moss, look on, through the
sun-flecked tree boles, to a trackless
wilderness of wood and leafage, un-
scarred as yet by the axe, unspoiled by
man's touch. A giant chestnut crowns
the place, with a four-branched trunk,
as if some well-filled burr had seeded
where it fell; while underneath it is
one unbroken stretch of moss.

Summer is singing its noon song,
and we listen, leaning against the tree.

A SONG OF SUMMER 7/

as if, sibyl-like, it might whisper to
us. Trees surge and the sun sifts
through with sapphire sky glints; the
spider-webs are idle, Arachne is nap-
ping. A black and white lizard comes
into a sunny spot, and a locust, split-
ting the back of his pupa, crawls out
on a root, his wings yet limp and moist
from the mysterious change of condi-
tion. The golden-crowned thrush wakes
fitful echoes in the trees by the river;
the wood thrush tunes and then lapses
to silence. The leaf-shadows dance,
the branches above us make strange
hypnotic passes, and the heat-veil is
stealing over the pastures : —

" Woof of the fen, ethereal gauze,
Woven of Nature's richest stuffs,
Visible heat, air-water and dry sea,
Last conquest of the eye;
Toil of the day displayed, sun-dust,
Aerial surf upon the shores of earth.
Ethereal estuary, frith of light,

78 THE FRIENDSHIP OF NATURE

Breakers of air, billows of heat,

Fine summer spray on inland seas;

Bird of the sun, transparent winged,

Owlet of noon, soft pinioned.

From health or stubble rising without

song,
Establish thy serenity o'er the fields."
Thoreau.

And the old tree murmurs: "Rest is
the summer song of noonday."
*****
The breeze revives, and the shad-
ows, drawn in by noontide, drop to
eastward; a fragrance wafts from the
moss tufts and guides us to its giver,
— the dainty pipsissewa, — growing in
bunches and masses, sprouting from
creeping rootstalks, with a stem of
madder-lined dark leaves with creamy
veinings, crowned by waxy white
flowers, their petals reflexed, having
flesh-coloured stamens and a willow-
green centre. This is the last of the

A SONG OF SUMMER 79

spring tinted and scented flowers that
carpet the woods, thriving in its shad-
ows. Who can describe its perfume?
It is a combination of all the wild,
spicy wood-essences, -refined and dis-
tilled by the various chemical changes
from the autumn-dyed leaves to their
mould, that rears the flower in its
bosom. From a heap of slowly crum-
bling brown leaves, the Indian pipe pro-
trudes its ice-white, scentless flowers,
that blacken at the gentlest touch, and
though of the pipsissewa's clan, they
are a parasitic growth.

The old setter stretches and yawns,
but his companion is always fresh and
ecstatic, and bounds down the slope to
the river, trampling through the sweet-
fern bushes, snapping dead branches,
heedless of briers, and leaving a path
where we may follow. Coiled on a
stump, sunning himself, but not at all

8o THE FRIENDSHIP OF NATURE

sleepy, lies a flat-headed adder, of a
brownish colour, patched with a darker
brown, and with the upper lip horny
and aggressive. Instantly there springs
up the old grudge born in the Garden
of Eden, but Eve cautiously holds
aloof, fearing perhaps that she may be
further tempted, and Adam, replacing
the Biblical heel with a stone, promptly
bruises the serpent's head. Whether
they are hurtful or not, snakes always
seem a token of evil, the sign of some
sinister power, and doubly so when we
come upon them amid birds and
flowers.

Again the undergrowth changes, and
grows bolder. Great bushes of meadow-
sweet appear, — the wild white spirea
salicifolia, — burr-reeds, and flowering
sedge, with thickets of spurred jewel-
weed, and feathers of the late meadow-
rue. Parting the tall weeds, we pushed

A SONG OF SUMMER 8 1

through, and the odour of peppermint,
crushed by our tread, rises about us;
butterflies hover in flocks above the
purple milkweeds, and the river glis-
tens between the sallows. It is not
a great stream carrying a burden of
traffic, but a sociable, gossiping sort
of a river, bearing the small tattle of
mill-wheels, hidden in byways and cor-
ners, bringing down some bark from
the saw-mill, or a little meal- foam from
the grist-mill; scolding the pebbles,
but growing silent as it passes the
pools where the pickerel, like motion-
less shadows, hide under projections.
In a bit of curled bark, drifted into
a shallow, a song-sparrow bathes, and
chirps an answer to the babbling water.
If he would, he might tell us the story
of the river. We sit on the bank and
watch as he preens and spatters and
flies to a brier, warbling with a heav-

82 THE FRIENDSHIP OF NATURE

ing breast, his heart-beats keeping the
rhythm, until the meaning of the river
is blended in his song. Ben half
wades, half swims in the water; Colin
renews his youth at the fresh draught
he laps, while down the river races to
the willows : —

" Sing willow, willow, willow."

Is there any other tree that sings the
river's measure so truly? The name
itself is music, and its pendulous
branches sweep an accompaniment to
the melody of the water.

All through the afternoon we follow
the river bank; the stream divides,
and branching, trails its beauty through
an open field, but the deeper channel
still keeps to the woods and meets the
straggler in the mill-pond. The pond's
edge is thickly hedged and the bushes
are tied together by wiry dodder; the

A SONG OF SUMMER 83

heart-leaved pickerel-weed, with its
purple spikes, outlines the shallow
water, and the lily pads, whose flowers
are closed or closing, rock with the
gentle motion.

A kingfisher perching in a sycamore,
above the mill house, dives suddenly;
his reflection is so distinct that he
seems to wrestle with himself under
the water. One by one the birds
begin to warble as the sun slants
behind the cedars that top the hill,
and we sit in the enclosing shadows.
The colours of the submerged clouds
circle and eddy with all the shifting
hues of a bubble, and blend in an end-
less prism. The dogs, unnoticed, have
slipped away and gone home. The
shadows lengthen and then cease, pass-
ing to dark reflections; a mistlike
breath comes from the water. A night-
hawk, with white-spotted wings, skirls

84 THE FRIENDSHIP OF NATURE

high in the air, and others answer.
We two wait with full hearts. Silent
in the present content, as in an endless
vista where the past and future meet
in the present.

A star flowers out, then another, heat
lightning quivers at the horizon, a bat
flaps low, the wind drops through the
willows, and the pond grows black and
glassy as we listen for the song of
evening. From the clouds to the
water the words come like an echo: —

Rest is the even-song of summer.

FEATHERED PHILOSOPHERS

You cannot with a scalpel find

The poet's soul, or yet the wild bird's song.
A Wood Song.

Man's kingdom is a bit of ground
and his birthright a resting-place on
the earth's bosom. Out of the ground
grow the trees that hang their leaves in
the wind to shelter him, the flowers that
unfold in the sun, the ferns that deepen
the silence in the shadowy byways
where the lichens trace their crypto-
grams on the rocks. Above this bit of
ground is a scrap of sky holding its
rotary star treasure, showing the sea-
son's various signs, and on the ground,
in the trees, and in the sky, are the
birds ; through the heat, and in the
85

86 THE FRIENDSHIP OF NATURE

cold, sociable or remote, one for each
thought, one for each mood, one for
every passion. A bird for every day,
from the ghostly white owl skimming
the January meadows, to the humming-
bird that darts roseward in the mid-
summer twilight.

The sun in its journey from equinox
to equinox marks out the seasons, but
they are brought nearer to the eye and
heart by the shifting calendar of
feathers that measures the seasons by
its songs, changes of colour, and com-
ings and goings. The birds are more
time-true than the flowers, who may be
hidden by late snows, or cut off by
early frosts. To claim the confidence
of one feathered brother, to compass
his ways and learn his secrets, to
fathom his traits and philosophy, to
gain recognition from him, is a labour
worthy of trial.

FEATHERED PHILOSOPHERS 8/

The character study of the bird is
beyond the mazes of classification,
beyond the counting of bones, out of
the reach of the scalpel and the litera-
ture of the mircoscope. We compre-
hend its air-filled bones, and its physi-
cal evolution, uses, and limitations.
We know that it is frailly mortal, —
but still a bird will seem like a voice
from some unknown region. The
beasts of the earth are bound to its
face, and man also, for science, as yet,
can guide but very poorly even the
most limited aerial navigation; but
the bird appears, in a way, to surmount
the attraction of gravitation, and, as
its eulogist Michelet says, "feels itself
strong beyond the limits of its action."

Instinct may serve to designate such
acts as the sex impulse or that bear the
stamp of heredity, but a wider scope
must be allowed to the brain of the

88 THE FRIENDSHIP OF NATURE

bird, which with keen sense and a trite
philosophy often outshines in manners
and morals some of the human animals.
Have birds a language ? Surely they
have between themselves a spoken
understanding, which the least discern-
ing man may translate, and distinguish
between their cries of joy and of fear;
may separate their love songs and their
scolding from the subtle ventriloquism
that lures the searcher from a nest.
The chronicler of the Val Sainte Vero-
nique says that a superstition still
lingers there, — the belief that every
bird repeats some phrase of its own,
and that in every village there is
some one who understands and could
interpret it, but that he is in honour
bound to guard the knowledge until
when on his death-bed; then he may
reveal it to his nearest of kin: at
such a time, however, his thoughts

FEATHERED PHILOSOPHERS 89

being upon other things, the secret is
lost.

It is more likely that in the sleep
which precedes birth, the forces of
Nature stamp impressions upon the
white brain-mass and string the latent
senses to keen susceptibility, which
later, in their full development, vibrate
at Nature's lightest touch. So from
prenatal circumstance some beings are
more closely drawn toward the crea-
tures of air and earth and comprehend
their voices: —

" We are what suns and winds and waters

make us;
The mountains are our sponsors, and the rills
Fashion and win their nursling with their

smiles." — Landor.

People who care little for birds
because of their lovable qualities, or
for their ministry to eye and ear, still
associate them with signs, warnings.

90 THE FRIENDSHIP OF NATURE

and supernatural power. In an old
legend, Death is pictured going through
the land with a bird perched upon his
shoulder and choosing his victims by
its aid. The bird tapped at a win-
dow, and if, through heedlessness or
fear, the casement remained closed
and shelter was refused it, Death
knocked the same night. If the bird
was admitted. Death passed on.

" ' Knock at this window,' said Death.
In flew the bird, scant of breath :
They fed him, succoured him, let him fly.
Death passed by."

And even now people shiver when a
wind-driven bird dashes against the
pane, and half-smiling, fear, as they
do when a mirror quivers and breaks.
The negress also, a victim of voodoo,
with rolling eyes and bated breath tells
stories of the magic Zombi bird, which

FEATHERED PHILOSOPHERS 9 1

if it is killed and eaten continues to
sing inside its murderer, revealing the
sin of which he has been guilty.

What is more human in its expres-
sion than the despair shown by a caged
wild bird? Its first mad impotent
struggles, the head turned back as it
searches in vain for a loophole of
escape, and then the silent drooping
attitude of heart-broken anguish. Such
things always move me to a pitying
vengeance. "I can't get out, no, I
can't get out," wailed the starling,
when Sterne tore vainly at the wires of
its cage, and he wrote : " I never had
my affections more tenderly awakened. "

By accident, I once had two wild
birds that showed a human likeness in
the different ways with which they
bore imprisonment. One bitterly cold
Christmas eve, I bought them from a
street pedlar, my only wish being to

92 THE FRIENDSHIP OF NATURE

take them in from the numbing cold,
and in spring to let them fly away.
One was an English goldfinch and the
other a siskin. Each had a cage with
water and food, placed in a subdued
light, to calm its strugglings more
easily. The siskin was of a Byronic
mood, fought against comfort, twisted
the cage wires, would neither eat nor
drink, and in the morning I found him
hanging dead with his head between
the bars. The goldfinch, when I
brought him home, let me hold his
draggled body in my hands, until their
warmth had unbent his stiffened claws,
so they might grasp the perch; then
he shook himself, took a sip of water
and a seed or two, and fell to smooth-
ing out his wings and coat, pluming
slowly. If a feather hung besmeared
and broken he bravely pulled it out,
and, his self-respect restored, he settled

FEATHERED PHILOSOPHERS 93

comfortably for the night, head under
wing.

Never afterward did he show any
signs of fear, but when I whistled to
him he would always come close to the
cage bars and make a soft kissing
sound and part his beak. When spring-
time came, I found that to let him fly
meant solitude and perhaps starvation.
One mild day, I hung his cage in a
low tree, when suddenly a tremor shook
him, and throwing back his head he
looked up through the leaves where the
insects buzzed, as if the remembrance
of some forgotten time had come back
to him, and beating his wings, he fell
from the perch with his eyes closed;
but when taken indoors he rallied
quickly, and lived, singing and cheer-
ful, for many years.

The sky was gray, unrevealing.

94 THE FRIENDSHIP OF NATURE

dumb; the earth was covered with ice
crystals; the snow dropped its obliter-
ating veil between the two, and there
was no sun to mark the season by its
position. Was it midwinter? No one
could tell by mere sense of vision.
Colin lifted his head, and extending
his moist, vibrating nostrils, sniffed
suspiciously. The black-capped tit-
mice, the brown and white buntings,
and the slate-coloured juncos fearlessly
picked up the crumbs near his kennel,
and the nuthatch, less trustful, seizing
a morsel, took it to a more quiet place.
Colin, raising himself, crept softly
toward the copse of spruces, lifting
his feet from the new snow with cat-
like deliberation. Did he hear the
crossbill snapping the scales from
the pine cones? Hardly that, for the
flock, seeing him, had changed their
position, and he halted before the

FEATHERED PHILOSOPHERS 95

spruces with his paw raised and tail
rigid. Was it midwinter? Ah! the
dog had found augurs to answer that
question. Perched in the spruces were
a score of sturdy male robins, not the
gaunt resident birds who had fasted and
battled with the rigours of winter, but
the plump scouts of the coming spring,
with the alert, well-fed air of migrants.
The gray sky and white earth may
cling to the winter curtain, but the
bird heart beating warm leads us to
March in the calendar; and when the
snow-cloud divided, I could see that the
sun was hurrying toward the vernal
equinox, and I knew that the snow
buntings would soon hasten northward
after the white owls.

Again the sky was gray and the
woods were choked and matted with
brown leaves, the storm-stirred brook
was brown, and the grass also. Was it

96 THE FRIENDSHIP OF NATURE

dead autumn or unawakened spring?
There stole into the sky a rift of blue,
and on the ground lay the azure
feather of a bluebird's wing, his spring
sign this, for his autumn coat is rusty.
The dun sky swallowed up the blue
again, and near the bluebird's feather
lay a hawk's barred quill. Comedy
and tragedy side by side. Which over-
came? the hawk by force, or the blue-
bird by escape, — who knows? But in
a neighbouring farm-yard above a hen-
coop swung a dead hawk, compelled
by the wind to flap his wings in
warning.

In early April two robins came to
the leafless vine on the western piazza
and began a nest. In the morning
snow fell, and in the evening lightning
blazed. The birds were discouraged,
but after a few days returned and com-
pleted their dwelling, and another pair

FEATHERED PHILOSOPHERS 97

chose a trellis over the foot-path, and
still another an evergreen branch by
the roadside. All three nests were in
plain sight, and I watched their com-
ings and goings at intervals from morn-
ing until evening. The father and
mother alternately covered the eggs
and supplied the wants of the nestlings ;
but at night if I looked at the nest by
the aid of a lantern, the mother alone
was sitting, and no peering or shaking
of the branches revealed the perch of
the father. This seemed a little un-
usual, as in the case of others of the
same family, the wood thrush and the
catbird, I had seen the male perch on
the edge of the nest, on a twig near
by, or huddling close to the female.

One bright moon-lit June night,
chancing to go near the pines in the
loneliest part of the garden, a hubbub
arose as some night bird flapped in

H

96 THE FRIENDSHIP OF NATURE

among the branches, and there sounded
the rapid "quick! quick!" of alarm
from a score or two of robins. But
daylight did not reveal the trace of a
nest in these pines, and after much
watching and debating, I discovered
that the birds which congregated there
nightly were males, who gathered from
sundown until an hour or so after, and
roosted while their mates guarded the
nests.

Bradford Torrey has noted this trait
at length, wdth many interesting details,
telling of roosts where the robins troop
in nightly by hundreds, from a widely
extended region; but this roost was in
a garden where there were many passers,
and seemed like a most exclusive cote-
rie, or a very select bit of clubdom.
They continued roosting in this way
until early July, when, joined by their
young, they disappeared for a time.

FEATHERED PHILOSOPHERS 99

Have you ever noticed the oriole's
fleetness of wing, foot, and eye? He
is the fiery hang-bird who, wearing
Lord Baltimore's colours, flits about
among the sweeping elm branches in
May, searching for a wand both strong
and supple, where he may safely anchor
his sky cradle. There is much thought
required in the choosing of a location,
with a dense leafy spray above it like
an umbrella, and fio twigs underneath
to chafe when the wind rocks.

Near here is a garden, arched by
elms and beeches, where all the season
the most gorgeous flowers blaze upon
the even turf, from the gold of the first
crocus until the last chrysanthemum
yields to the frost, and even then glass-
shielded orchids and a mist of ferns
and regal roses bridge the winter.
The keeper of this garden lives with
the flowers, watching the signs of sky

lOO THE FRIENDSHIP OF NATURE

and bird, and at night follows the
moths with his net and lantern, and he
told me this story of an oriole's power
of thought.

Late in May, three pairs of orioles
were locating their nests in the garden
elms and there had been much skir-
mishing, fighting, and singing. Sud-
denly there arose a wonderful noise
and commotion. Robins were giving
the alarm to the bluebirds, thrushes,
and sparrows, for high in the fork of
a branch, a female oriole, who had
slipped or was caught in flying, hung
by the neck. Near by sat the three
males, more quiet than agitated, while
the other birds dashed about in the
wildest excitement. The females cried,
hovering about their unfortunate sister,
pulling and jerking her tail, yet only
succeeding in wedging her still more
firmly. At last a gorgeous male darted

FEATHERED PHILOSOPHERS lOI

Up, and with wings spread dropped
quickly on the forking prison, and
with feet braced seized the choking
bird by the neck with his beak, with
one jerk releasing her, unhurt save for
the loss of some feathers.

How the bird colours ebb and flow
from spring until autumn ! The grays
of March and April are glinted by
flying colour, though the earliest birds
are more soberly clad than those that
arrive when the leafage has grown.
Wise Mother Nature, to drape your
scouts in browns and russets with a
dash of sky-blue or bark-green ! How
would the tanager, oriole, redstart, the
chat and Maryland yellow-throat, or
the bouquet of warblers escape the birds
of prey, if when they came they found
only bare branches? And the great,
gold, swallow-tailed butterflies also,
with the blue, the brick-red, and the

102 THE FRIENDSHIP OF NATURE

variegated Apollo, reign in the torrid
months, when their bird enemies have
mostly gone northward, and they share
the garden with the humming-bird.

The humming-bird hides his nest, or
rather conceals it, by a trick of con-
struction, which blends the nest with
the branch, binding the soft bed of
fern-wool and lichens to it so closely
that the eye passes it over, and I sel-
dom have found more than one nest in
a season, though the flocks of parents
and young gave indications of at least
a dozen. In a nest that I saw this
year, saddled aslant on a drooping
beech bough, were two little hummers,
a day or so from the egg, who bore
hardly a bird-like feature, looking like
tiny black beans pricked over with
stiff dark bristles, but in two weeks
they were wearing their iridescent
coats of mail.

FEATHERED PHILOSOPHERS I03

What becomes of the father birds,
with their wonderful ruby gorgets, after
the young are reared? All through
July and August the birds have lived
in the garden and swarmed in flocks
about the sweet peas, carnations, and
Japanese lilies, but I have never seen
a ruby throat among them since the
nesting time. In middle July, when I
was training a vine to the arbour, a flock
of humming-birds flew so close that
I could have touched them with my
hand. Contrary to their restless habits,
they frequently perched on the trellis,
and with a swift circular motion of the
tongue licked the aphis from the curled
edges of the leaves. They were newly
fledged young wearing the female col-
ours, as many birds do in their baby-
hood, but differing from their mothers
in their lack of endurance, in a soft
and infantile roundness, and in a total

104 THE FRIENDSHIP OF NATURE

absence of fear. The old birds seldom
alight, and I have seen one return from
a dizz)^ flight and cover her nest with-
out even grazing the margin. Some-
times the flock would number thirty or
forty, and all the summer from dawn
until sunset they fed in the garden,
uttering harsh little cries, whirling and
fighting, and only yielding their haunt
to the hawk-moths at dusk. When there
came with September some few days of
dark, stormy weather, they circled high
in excitement, and the next morning,
as a flock, they had passed to the
south, though a few stragglers remained
all through October.

On the top of the trellis where the
humming-birds and butterflies gath-
ered, in a blaze of July sunshine, was a
young cowbird. It did not perch, it
sat, its only comprehension seeming to
be the possession of a stomach, and

FEATHERED PHILOSOPHERS I05

the only sound it made was a sort of
wheezing. At its side, a little beneath,
was the nest of a chipping sparrow, the
alien egg in its nest being one of the
commonest tales of birdland sociology.
The little sparrow, however, seemed
proud of the rank, ungainly offspring,
and lavished special care upon it,
stretching on tiptoe to give the food
that its size demanded, while her own
nestlings, hungry and meagre, clam-
oured feebly. The cowbird typifies
matter and craft, a dangerous con-
junction, and the sparrow a case where
scant sense is entirely subservient to
the maternal instinct; tragedies that
are not alone of the nest arise from
such combinations.

*****

The swallows distrusted the new barn ;
perhaps the paint startled them, or the
slope of the eaves was inconvenient,

Io6 THE FRIENDSHIP OF NATURE

and the glazed hay-loft window repelled
them. In a few years the paint grew
dim and weather-stained, crysalids
hung in the groovings, and the glazed
sash was left down to air the hay, so
that its sweets, floating out, reassured
them. In June a belated pair were
looking for lodgings, and the outside
not satisfying them, they ventured in
at the window and busied themselves
with a minute examination of every
beam and rafter, prying here and there
and peering about with the gait of
woodpeckers. Then they attempted a
nest, and all one day brought clay,
with which, together with hay-straws,
they moulded a bracket ; but the second
day it fell all in a lump, the smooth
wood having in some way upset their
plan of adhesion. They began another
tour of inspection, and they found a
support that was made of mellow old

FEATHERED PHILOSOPHERS lO/

timber, sound and firm, but with a
rough cuticle which absorbed more
quickly and to which the clay stuck
firmly. Here they again essayed, and
in two days they had really completed
their building.

The brood was ready to fly one warm
day in the early part of August, or the
parents at least thought so, but the nest-
lings were perfectly content where they
were; the table was good and the view
unexceptional. Coaxing did not avail,
so next day the parents relentlessly
pushed them out on the hay, and there
they stayed for two days more. But
they either could not or would not fly,
and seemed to have cramps in their
claws and weak ankles (tarsi is the
more accurate term). The third day
the parents refused to come further
in than the window-sill, where they
uttered a lisping chirp, fluttered their

I08 THE FRIENDSHIP OF NATURE

wings, and held out insects temptingly.
In this way the young were lured up,
and finally spent the night on the sill,
cuddled together.

Next morning the wind blew sharply
and the perch was disagreeable and
draughty, so with encouraging cries
the youngsters were coaxed to the
limbs of a hemlock, the nearest tree to
the window, but one which offered
only a perilous footing. Two of the
four found rest in the most steady
branches, but two grasped bending
twigs and swung over head downward,
having no strength of grip with which
to regain an upright position. Under
one bird were tiers of soft green
branches, under the other a stone wall,
rough and jagged. The old birds gave
a few sibilant twitters and darted
invisibly high; in a minute or two the
sky was alive with swallows, fluttering

FEATHERED PHILOSOPHERS I09

about the bird who was suspended over
the wall; so many swallows had not
been seen this season in all the village.
To and fro they wheeled, keeping
always above the little one, as if to
attract its attention. The parents
stayed nearer, and the mother held a
moth in her beak and seemed to urge
an effort to secure it. In a few min-
utes the bird who hung over the
branches, relaxing his hold, turned, and
spreading his wings slightly dropped to
the branch beneath, where he settled
himself comfortably.

Still above the wall the other hung
motionless, except that its head was
slowly drooping backward, and the
circling birds grew more vociferous.
Suddenly the parent who held the
butterfly lit on the branch at the spot
where the bird was clinging, and its
mate darted swiftly close beneath.

no THE FRIENDSHIP OF NATURE

Whether the darting bird really pushed
the little one up, or only made the
rush to startle it to sudden action, I
could not discover, but in a flash the
deed was accomplished and the bird
righted and led into a bushy cover.
The visiting swallows wheeled and
lisped for a minute, and then were
engulfed by the sky as mist in the air
blends with the sunlight.

Tell me, positive science, were these
manoeuvres merely instinctive? Or,
if you cannot, then confess bravely
that there are things that you may not
fathom.

NATURE'S CALM

" The mountain brows, the rocks, the peaks are
sleeping,

Uplands and gorges hush !
The* thousand moorland things are stillness
keeping;

The beasts under each bush
Crouch, and the hived bees
Rest in their honeyed ease;
In the purple sea fish lie as they were dead,
And each bird folds his wing over his head."
Alcman (Edwin Arnold's trans.).

The end of day. Sounds soften as
the wind, their messenger, dies away;
heat lessens as the sun gathers up
his shafts before disappearing; dew
glistens as the coolness holds down the
moisture; then a twilight interlude of
shadows. Shadows that roll ground-
ward, cloud shadows drifting through

112 THE FRIENDSHIP OF NATURE

the sun smoke, clasping the horizon
with their clinging fingers; shadows of
evening melody, shadows of pine fra-
grance, until all the shadows gather to
line the sky arch and make it night.

The day is too short for the labours
and pleasures crowding it, so that it
would borrow time from the night; but
night has need of its own hours, for
sleeping Nature has its moods and
attributes as well as Nature waking.
When the warring day forces are at
rest, and their star-angled differences
converged, then in quiet may we look
upon our mother earth, may hear her
voices, and see in waking dreams the
pictures that man can never chain to
canvas as he does the things of day.

Day is relentless, boundless, pushing
in its thoughts and suggestions; one
road opens upon another and every
path has its branches. Walk in the

NATURE'S CALM II3

fields; at each step you meet a new
circumstance and a different idea is
forced upon you. In the woods you
are led by a strange leaf, a new flower,
a mossed stone, — in themselves trifles,
— into infinite mental detail. The
flight of a bird opens vista upon vista,
until you cease to follow, cease even
to absorb, but are .both possessed and
absorbed by the power of Nature.
Beauty becomes almost an oppression,
and the sun-fed colour blinding, the
sense of personal littleness humbling.
How can we realize it all, how can we
arrange ourselves in relation to it and
interpret it rightly? There is so much
to see, so much to learn, and so little
time between the first consciousness of
the eye and its closing.

Night comes: a boundary is fixed
above and around us; the horizon draws
nearer ; we are no longer at large, but

114 THE FRIENDSHIP OF NATURE

surrounded, protected. It is a time
of confidences; the migrating bird
reveals to night the purpose of its
silent journey, and the sleeping bird
draws the darkness doubly close with
his veiling wing. The flowers drowse
in various attitudes, and man, in peace,
may reconcile his tripartite nature,
body, mind, and soul. Outside his
door is the vast stage, well set with
scenes for the revolving night-drama;
the orchestra is ready; the Will-o'-the-
wisp, the moon, the northern Aurora,
and the piercing winter stars, — man
only needs to send his fancy out to set
all moving.

The first scene of the winter night-
world is the sky above the window.
When it is cloudless the constellations
pace across it, but when clouded it is
fathomless. Nowadays science teaches
the places of the stars by lines and

NATURE'S CALM II5

angles, but to those who when chil-
dren studied the old black charts, with
the strange figures of mythology enclos-
ing their component stars outlined in
white, the heavens are more vitally
peopled. We cannot all be positive
scientists, and heaven help the world
if we could be ! the spirit of things
would be dried away by letter, and the
affections ranged in systems about
material suns.

From Indian summer until the vernal
equinox is the time when vision most
tends skyward. The Pleiad sisters
lead the Milky Way in its scarf dance,
and Taurus, with the star Aldebaran
set in his forehead, follows Orion, the
night-watchman, with his belt and
club, who wears Betelgeuse for a shoul-
der knot. Below Orion, Canis Major
trots backward, holding Sirius, for a
lantern, in his jaws, and to the east

Il6 THE FRIENDSHIP OF NATURE

Gemini, the smiling twins, Walk in the
Milky Way. In the northern sky the
star-tailed Ursa Major points to Polaris,
and southeastward Bootes leads his
hounds, Asterion and Chara, as he
drives the great star herds, almost touch-
ing with his spear Corona Borealis, the
crown that Bacchus gave to Ariadne.

Under the stars the world seems
closed, outline, not substance, and the
clear, frosty sky a thing apart, of long
ago, the region of gods and goddesses.
When the earth, waking again, breathes
gently, and the faint haze dims the
electric winter clearness, Pan stirs in
his sleep and raises to his lips his
pipe, all choked with snow, and it
gives forth a crackling purr, the first
peep of the marsh hylode, and at this
sound the sky draws again towards the
earth and becomes a tributary.

Go out into the March night. The

nature's calm 117

rough wind rattles against the blinds;
there are snow patches in the garden
and snow banks under the north fences.
The leaves still rustling on the honey-
suckle are answered by those that the
winter's hail has failed to beat from
the oaks and beeches; but when the
tender buds come, they will do what
force could not do, and the withered
leaves will fall away, as Death's fetters
drop before the touch of immortality.
You hear the same sounds as of the
past months: the creakings of tree
trunks and of boughs, the sparrows
fidgeting in their perch under the
piazza eaves, and perhaps an owl
quavering in the old chestnut. Yet
there is a sense of change, a different
quality to the air, and more, for two
new sounds separate themselves from
all the others. The river, freed from
ice, is rushing over the milldam, and
the hylodes are peeping faintly.

Il8 THE FRIENDSHIP OF NATURE

Daylight did not show even an early
bee, though for a week wood has been
sawed in a sunny spot and the sweet
dust lies scattered on the ground; but
through the night, from the warm
southeast, where the sun first touches
the fields that run to the marshes,
where there are old matted reeds,
comes the welcome " peep ! peep !
peep ! " As the days lengthen, from
afternoon till dawn you hear the marsh
frogs' chorus; it is not musical and
would be little prized at any other
season. Surely the hylodes, more than
the larger frogs, inspired Aristophanes
by their ceaselessness : —

" In their yearly revelry,
Brekeke — kesh, ko-ash, ko-ash ! "

But this croaking makes the blood flow
quicker; it is the vocal spring sign of
animal nature, even though the fox and

NATURE'S CALM I I9

owl may breed in February, and it is
the prophet of the coming bird music
even as the skunk-cabbage is the fore-
runner of the violet. The late March
moon has a more human face, though
it still casts bare shadows, and as it
pales at morning the song-sparrows
huddled in the bushes sing half to the
night and half to the day.

The typical spring night is only
quiet in comparison to dawn and twi-
light. Even-song lasts an hour after
sundown and matins begin as long
before sunrise. Even in the mid-
night hours, the forces of Nature are
too potent to rest wholly; in this lies
the principal difference between the
nights of spring and those of early
autumn. The temperature of the two
seasons is much alike, and the shadows
also, but the spring nights overflow
with little murmurinsfs. Birds stir and

I20 THE FRIENDSHIP OF NATURE

change their perching, and with drowsy
bustle flutter from branch to branch;
the whip-poor-will awakes the wood
echoes, and his cry never grows too
familiar to lend a touch of mystery to
common things. A veery, suddenly
awakened, thinks the moon the sun
and sings a few dreamy notes, and a
startled robin calls "quick! quick!"
in alarm. The great green pond frogs
call out unblushingly, " d-r-r-r-unk !
d-r-r-r-unk 1 " and the swifts, rising
from their chimney nests with whirling
wings, make mimic thunder. The
brooks and the river run at freshet
speed, and the sound coming unmufifled
by walls of leaves seems at the door;
the tide measures its height upon the
beach with ringing strokes.

As darkness limits the range of the
eye, the senses of ear and nose grow
keener, and the denser night air in-

nature's calm 121

tensifies both sound and perfume. If
you should start in quest of the little
screech-owl, that seems to call from
the cedars near by, you will need
magic boots to take you across the wet
meadows before you will find him; and
the cloying fragrance that envelops
the porch in reality comes from the
beds of hyacinths down in the garden.

The autumn night has few voices,
and fewer perfumes. There are no
pond frogs, and the hylode's peep is
exchanged for the dryer chirp of
crickets. The whip-poor-will is gone
and the night-hawk also; the owl re-
mains persistently and mingles his
infrequent hooting with the cries of
wild ducks and geese signalling the
way to salt water; while the essence
of decaying vegetation is the only
perfume.

What wonderful pictures the moon

122 THE FRIENDSHIP OF NATURE

sketches in black and white ! she is
the universal artist. In winter she
etches on a plate of snow, biting
deeply the branch shadows, retouching
with twig dry-point all the bones of
things. Nature's anatomy. In spring,
she broadens her work to a soft mezzo-
tint, and then on to India- ink washes
and sepia groundings. First, the out-
lined catkin, then leaf forms; next,
simply draped branches, and then to
complete, though rapid, compositions.
The May-fly then hums every night
among the wood-fragrant flowers of
the lindens, the grass has grown high,
the wind-flower hangs its closed petals,
and the scouring-rush, strung with
dewdrops, equals the diamond aigrette
of an empress. The moon-pictures
deepen and expand as the shadows
grow more dense, until they become
intelligible, impressionistic, and truth
tellino;.

nature's calm 123

The drama of the summer night fol-
lows, with times of Egyptian darkness,
when the woods are thick with a
blackness that overpowers reason itself.
The air is heavy with sleeplessness;
the earth teems with form, life, and
colour. The sky is subservient to this
beauty; the moon is a lamp to reveal
it, and shares its domain with the
lightning; for now we do not look so
much at the moon as at what the moon
shows us.

The full-leaved trees make cavernous
shadows, and the meadows, silvered
with dew, seem like enchanted lakes.
Every strip of woods becomes a Black
Forest, the tall grass and brakes are
jungles, the cat crouching through them
a tiger, and the bats soaring witches.
The lane seems endless, the trimmed
hemlocks solidify into a fortress, the
pool where the birds bathe looks bot-

124 THE FRIENDSHIP OF NATURE

tomless. The leaves of the water-lily
lie heavily; the iris blades, steeled with
dew, rise like the spears of engulfed
knights. The frogs keep up a fitful
groaning; the sharp-slanting moon-
streaks shoot across the dell like
search-lights, unravelling a mystery.
Moisture drips from the fern fronds,
and where old tree stumps have lain a
long time on the ground, a night vil-
lage has sprung up. The gypsy race
of plant-land has reared its fungus
encampment, with wide white tents
and peaked brown pagodas, where the
fiat glow-worm is the general manager.
Motes and great moths float on the
path made by the moon's rays, —

"Or, weird and wee, sits Puck himself,
With legs akimbo, on a fern ? "

Have you ever watched the flower
world asleep ? In the fields the clover

NATURE'S CALM 1 25

clasps its leaves like clenched fists; the
wayside partridge-pea shuts its leaflets
into a clasp-knife, resembling its seed-
pod. The ox-eye daisy droops its
head and faces the sunset, but turns
until it again faces the sun at dawn.
The wild aster tribe curl their ray
flowers into little bundles, and the blue
gentian closes its fringed eyelids.

In the garden some sleep and some
are awake. The poppy closes to a
pilgrim's cockle-shell, just as the even-
ing primrose spreads its green-gold
salvers; the eglantine simply curls in its
petals, as do also the single rose and
the blackberry. The calendulas draw
their rays into a stack, and the sturdy
lupins drop their leaflets or sometimes
shoot them up like reversed umbrellas.
The moon-flower, the white ipomea,
opens in rivalry a planetary system of
its own with the green trellis for an
orbit.

126 THE FRIENDSHIP OF NATURE

The sweet peas contract rather than
close; the single Dahlias lose their
rigidity, and almost all single flowers,
missing the sun's stimulus, twist or
droop. Even the vagrant pusley, with
palm pressed to palm, prays the night
wind for pity on its despised estate.
The morning-glories hold to dawn
their wine cups, drinking night out
and crying wassail to morning. In
what factory of crystal was their trans-
lucence fashioned? Were they con-
cealed in some treasure-laden tomb of
Nineveh? Did Venice foster them, or
is their beauty wholly Bohemian ? Who
dreamed their shaping, melting wide
rainbows for their colouring? Who
poised them on their standards? Was
it Palissy? No ! simply Nature, whose
workshop sends out all incomparable
things, fashioned them to meet Aurora's
pledging lips.

nature's calm 127

The fragrance of the Virgin's lilies
pierces you through and through; the
honeysuckle odour clings and over-
whelms the heliotrope until the mign-
onette seems almost a stimulant by
contrast. The rose-bed scatters scented
petals, and the buds of yesterday relax
the grip of the green calyx, only wait-
ing for the sun's expanding touch.

Beyond the marshes the sea-sands do
not blind the eyes as in the daytime,
but cool, gray, and sparkling with
mica, they blend with the sky and
water, while the lighthouse eyes wink
wisely. Across the sky and the water
down to your feet stretches the path of
the moon, scintillating and drawing
you to it, obliterating everything else
and bridging space by its magnetism.
Step in the current; the black tide
looks solid; you marvel the feet can
move through it. Wade further in;

128 THE FRIENDSHIP OF NATURE

up the water creeps as you advance.
Swim ! the cold and resistance seem to
lessen as you cleave the liquid moon-
light. It is a different world, yourself
and Nature, yourself and space, with
self a pigmy in it. A white-sailed
boat dives through the silver and breaks
the enchantment; how cold the water
grows again in spite of the languor of
the summer night !

The sea-breeze rolls the mist over
the meadows, until it envelops both
plain and village in soft folds of tulle;
the church steeple emerges above it,
and the distant hills are islands, with
strange cloud-shapes hanging above
them. What flocks and herds graze in
the pastures of the sky, now following
the moon and then flying from it ! The
black-edged wind-clouds are South-
down sheep disturbed by a shadow,
and then a herd of brown buffaloes

NATURE S CALM 1 29

gallop across, a trail of mist dust fol-
lowing. A desert caravan crawls close
to the horizon, and on the earth the
shadows sharpen and the pointed cedars
take weird shapes like those which
Dore portrayed haunting the Wander-
ing Jew.

All these things of the night pass in
a little space, and man may gather and
arrange them to suit his needs; for the
body, sleep; for the mind, peace; for
the soul, a clearer vision. It was
night that brought to the hillside shep-
herds the vision of the Bethlehem Star.

K

THE STORY OF A GARDEN

" Nature, as far as in her lies,
Imitates God," ^ ^ ^ — TENNYSON.

There is a garden that is not like
the other gardens round about. In
many of these gardens the flowers are
only prisoners, forced to weave car-
pets on the changeless turf, and when
the eye is sated and the impression
palls, they become to their owners,
who have no part in them, merely pur-
chased episodes.

This garden that I know has a bit
of green, a space of flowers, and a
stretch of wildness, as Bacon says a
garden should always have. At its
birth the twelve months each gave to

THE STORY OF A GARDEN I3I

it a gift, that it might always yield an
offering to the year, and presently it
grew so lovable that there came to it a
soul.

The song-sparrow knows that this is
so; the mottled owl that lives in the
hollow sassafras has told it to the night-
hawk. Catbirds and robins, routed
from other gardens by fusillades, still
their quick-throbbing hearts, feeling
its protection. The coward crow alone
knows its exclusion, for he was un-
housed from the tall pines and banished
for fratricide. The purling bluebird,
claiming the pole-top house as an
ancestral bequest, repeats the story
every springtime. The oriole and
swallow whisper of it in their south-
ward course, and, returning, bring with
them willing colonists.

The rock polypody creeps along in
confidence, with no ruthless hand to

132 THE FRIENDSHIP OF NATURE

strip it off, and the first hepatica opens
its eyes in safety, for tongues of flame
or the grub-axe have not crippled it
during the winter. Once the petted
garden beauties looked askance, from
their smooth beds in the tilled corner,
and drew their skirts away from the
wild-wood company, but now, each
receiving according to its need, they
live in perfect concord.

The wild rose in the chinky wall
peeps shyly at her glowing sisters, and
the goldenrod bows over it to gossip
with the pentstemon. And this is how
it came to be, for the garden was no
haphazard accident. Nature began it,
and, following her master-touch, the
hand and brain of a man, impelled
by a reverent purpose, evolved its
shaping.

This man, even when a little boy,
had felt the potency of Nature's touch

THE STORY OF A GARDEN 1 33

to soothe the heartache. One day,
led by an older mate, he trudged a
weary way to see a robber hanged.
The child, not realizing the scene he
was to witness, was shocked to nervous
frenzy, and a pitying bystander, think-
ing to divert his mind, gave him a
shilling. Spying a bird pedlar in the
crowd, he bought a goldfinch and a
pint of seeds, and the horror of the
hanging was quite forgotten and effaced
by the little bird, his first possession.
To it he gave his confidence and told
all his small griefs and joys, and
through the bird Nature laid her warm
hand on his heart and gently drew it
toward their mutual Master, and never
after did he forget her consolation.

All this was more than seventy years
ago. When the boy grew to manhood,
following the student life, the spirit
of the bird that had blotted out the

134 THE FRIENDSHIP OF NATURE

scene of civil murder was still with
him. Its song kept his thoughts single
and led him toward green fields, that
their breath might leaven lifeless
things, strengthening the heart that
felt a world-weariness, as all must feel
at times when facing human limita-
tions.

Love came, and home; then, follow-
ing hand in hand, honour and dis-
appointment; and again, with double
purpose, he turned Natureward. Not
to the goatish Pan, but to Nature's
motherhood, to find a shrine upon her
breast where he might keep his holiest
thoughts, and watch them grow. A
place apart, where the complete man
might be at rest, and walking in the
cool of day feel the peace of God.

At first the garden was a formless
bit of waste, but Nature tangles things

THE STORY OF A GARDEN 1 35

with a motive, and it was in the mak-
ing that it came to win a soul, for the
man's spirit grew so calm and strong
that it gave its overplus to what it
wrought.

The garden's growth was nowhere
warped or stunted by tradition; there
was no touch of custom's bondage to
urge this or that. No rudeness had
despoiled its primal wildness, and
lovers, who had trodden paths under
the trees, were its sole discoverers. It
was rock-fenced and brier-guarded; the
sharp shadows of the cedars dialed the
hours, and the ground-pine felt its
darkened way beneath them with grop-
ing fingers.

This happened before I was, but
hearing of it often, sound has imparted
its sense to sight, and it all seems
visual. With my first consciousness,
the days were filled with planting and

136 THE FRIENDSHIP OF NATURE

with growth; the pines already hid the
walls, and cattle tracks were widened
into paths and wound among young
maples, elms, and beeches. Then
there grew in me a love that made the
four garden walls seem like the boun-
daries of the world.

Nothing was troubled but to free it
from the oppression of some other
thing. The sparrow kept his bush,
and between him and the hawk-
headsman a hand was raised. The
wood thrush, finding his haunts un-
touched, but that his enemies, the
black snakes, might no longer boldly
engulf his nestlings, raised his clear
voice and sang " O Jubilate Deo ! "
The gardener who planted no longer
watches the bird's flight, but the gar-
den still tells its story. Will you
come in? The gate is never closed
except to violence.

THE STORY OF A GARDEN 1 37

Eight acres of rolling ground, and
in the centre a plainly cheerful house
decides the point of view. The loca-
tion of a house much affects the in-
mates; here sunshine penetrates every
room and a free current of air sweeps
all about, and there is a well of spark-
ling water close at hand. This well is
rock-drilled, deep and cold, and the
patron divinity of all good wells, the
north star, watches over it, and nightly
Ursa Major's dipper circles above, as
if offering a cooling draught to all the
constellations.

For a space about the house the
grass is cropped, and some plump beds
of geraniums, Fuchsias, heliotropes,
serve to grade the eye from indoor
precision, to rest the vision before the
trees and moving birds compel it to
investigation. However much natural
wildness may soothe and satisfy, the

138 THE FRIENDSHIP OF NATURE

home is wholly a thing of man's mak-
ing, and he may gather about it the
growing things that need his constant
ministry. The sight of such an open
space gives the birds more confidence,
and the worm enemies that always fol-
low cultivation offer them a change of
food.

The old queen-apple tree that casts
its petals every May against the win-
dow-panes, like snow blushing at its
own boldness, held many nests last
spring. A bluebird spied a knot-hole
where decay had left him an easy task;
a pair of yellow warblers, with cinna-
mon-streaked breasts, fastened their
tiny cup between a forked branch
above the range of sight. For several
days I watched these birds, fluttering
about the window corners where cob-
webs cling and spiders weave, and
thought they searched for food, until,

THE STORY OF A GARDEN 1 39

following the yellow flash they made
among the leaves, I saw that they were
building; and when I secured the
empty nest in August, it proved to be
a dainty thing woven of dry grass, the
down of dandelions, cocoons, and cob-
webs.

A robin raised two broods, building
a new nest for the second, as the first
one was too near the path to suit his
partner's nerves. He spent his days
in prying earth-worms from the lawn,
singing at dawn and twilight so deli-
ciously that he furnished one more
proof that bird voices, even of the
same species, have individual powers
of expression, like those of men.

The fourth bird to build, a red-eyed
vireo, was quite shy at first, yet hung
the nest over the path, so that when I
passed to and fro her ruby eyes were
on a level with me. After the eggs

140 THE FRIENDSHIP OF NATURE

were laid, she allowed me to bend
down tlie branch, and a few days
later, to smooth her head gently with
my finger. A chipping sparrow added
his wee nest to the collection, watching
the horses as they passed, timidly crav-
ing a hair from each, and finally secur-
ing a tuft from an old mattress, with
which he lined his home to his com-
plete content. •

If you would keep the wild birds in
your garden, you must exclude from it
four things : English sparrows, the usual
gardeners, cats, and firearms. These
sparrows, even if not belligerent, are
antagonistic to song birds, and brawl
too much; a cat of course, being a cat,
carries its own condemnation; a gun
aimed even at a target brings terror
into bird-land; and a gardener, of the
type that mostly bear the name, is a
sort of bogyman, as much to Nature-

THE STORY OF A GARDEN I4I

lovers as to the birds. The gardener
wishes this, orders that, is rigid in
point of rights and etiquette, and looks
with scarcely veiled contempt at all
wild things, flowers, birds, trees; would
scrape away the soft pine needles from
the foot-paths and scatter stone dust
in their place, or else rough, glaring
pebbles. He would drive away the
songsters with small shot, his one idea
of a proper garden bird being a china
peacock.

It is, of course, sadly true, that
cherries, strawberries, grapes, and hun-
gry birds cannot meet with safety to
the fruit, but we should not therefore
emulate the men of Killingworth. We
may buy from a neighbouring farmer,
for a little money, all the fruit we lack,
but who for untold gold can fill the
hedge with friendly birds, if once we
grieve or frighten them away?

142 THE FRIENDSHIP OF NATURE

You may grow, however, tender peas
in plenty, and all the vegetables that
must go direct from earth to table to
preserve their flavour; only remember
when you plant the lettuce out, to
dedicate every fourth head to the wild
rabbits, who, even while you plant, are
twitching their tawny ears under the
bushes, and then you will suffer no
disappointment. Once in a time a
gardener-naturalist may drift to you,
and your garden will then entertain
a kindred spirit. Such a man came
to this garden, a young Dane, full of
northern legend and sentiment, recog-
nizing through rough and varied work
the motive of the place, — like drawing
like; and with him, a blonde-haired,
laughing wife, and a wee daughter
called Zinnia, for the gay flowers, and
he found time to steal among the trees
in the June dawns to share in the

THE STORY OF A GARDEN 1 43

bird's raptures, making his life in
living.

■3^ TP" "JV ^ ^

It is a drowsy August afternoon; the
birds are quiet, and the locusts express
the heat by their intonation. The
Japan lilies, in the border back of the
house, are densely sweet, the geraniums
mockingly red, and the lemon-verbena
bushes are drooping. The smooth
grass and trim edges stop before an
arch that spans the path, and about it
shrubs straggle, grouping around a tall
ash. This ash, a veritable lodestone
to the birds, is on the borderland of
the wild and cultivated, and they regard
it as the Mussulman does his minaret,
repairing there to do homage. Before
the leaves appear the wood thrush takes
the topmost branch to sing his matins,
as if, by doing so, he might, before his
neighbours, give the sun greeting.

144 THE FRIENDSHIP OF NATURE

. The robins light on it, en route, when
they fear that their thefts in other gar-
dens will find them out, and the polite
cedar-birds, smoothing each other's
feathers, sun themselves in it daily
before the flocks break into pairs.
Upon the other side, a hospitable dog-
wood spreads itself, a goodly thing
from spring till frost, and from it
spireas, Deutzias, weigelas, lilacs, the
flowering quince, and strawberry shrub,
follow the path that winds under the
arch, past mats of ferns and laurel, to
a tilled corner, a little inner garden,
where plants are nursed and petted,
and no shading tree or greedy root
robs them of sun or nourishment.

Along the path between the pines,
the black leaf mould of the woods has
been strewn freely. The fern tribe is
prolific in this neighbourhood, and a
five-mile circuit encloses some twenty

THE STORY OF A GARDEN 1 45

species, most of which may be trans-
planted, if you keep in mind their
special needs. This spot is cool and
shady, but the soil h dry from care-
ful drainage. The aspidiums flourish
well; ^. acrosHchoides, of two varieties,
better known as the Christmas fern,
with heavy varnished fronds, A. mar-
gindie, with pinnate, dull-green fronds,
A. cristalu/n, almost doubly pinnate
and with them the fragrant Dicksonia
punctilobula, whose straw-coloured lace
carpets the autumn woods with sun-
light, and the black- stemmed maiden-
hair grows larger every year, rearing its
curving fronds two feet or more.

What endless possibilities creep into
the garden with every barrow of wood
earth ! How many surprises cling about
the roots of the plant you hope to
transfer uninjured from its home!
Bring a tuft of ferns, lo ! there springs

146 THE FRIENDSHIP OF NATURE

up a dozen unseen things — a pad of
partridge vine, an umbel of ginseng, a
wind flower; in another year the round
leaves of the pyrola may appear and
promenade in pairs and trios quite at
their ease, until the fern bed becomes
a constant mystery. For many years
some slow awaking seeds will germi-
nate, the rarer violets, perhaps an
orchis.

I brought a mat of club moss, with a
good lump of earth, as was my habit,
from the distant woods. Several years
after, happening to stop to clear away
some dead branches, 1 started in sur-
prise, for enthroned in the centre of
the moss, a very queen, was a dark
pink cypripedium, the Indian mocca-
sin. It is an orchid very shy of trans-
position, seldom living over the second
season after its removal, seeming to
grieve for its native home with the

THE STORY OF A GARDEN 1 47

fatal Heimweh, so that the seed must
have come with the moss and done its
growing in the fern nook.

* * * * #

Do you hear that hoarse call — kuk-
kuk-kuk? Above are a pair of yellow-
billed cuckoos, with ashy breasts, brown
backs warming in colour toward the
tail and on the wings, and with power-
ful beaks. They have little in common
with the European cuckoo, being,
though less beautiful, superior in mor-
ality, and our greatest protector against
the tent-worm. They promised last
May, in return for shelter, to clear the
orchard of this pest, and they kept
faith. Day after day they worked,
tearing the wormy films apart in very
wantonness and not for food, though
before the caterpillars came the cuckoo
was almost a stranger.

Come into the rustic shelter that

146 THE FRIENDSHIP OF NATURE

overlooks the flower corner. The
cedars that make it were born upon
the soil, and the bitter-sweet vine
around the entrance is their old ac-
quaintance. On the right is the spar-
rows' hedge, dense, and full eight feet
wide, and the sparrows claim it from
attic to cellar and grow quite pert in
their security. The flower corner faces
west and south; a few hours later you
may see the sun go down behind the
hills, and the bright colours of the
flowers focus the eye for sunset glories.
This shelter is a place for twilight
hours. The vesper-sparrow comes here,
and the veery haunts the trees that
follow a watercourse down in the
meadow; and together they perform a
duet — flute and flageolet — while the
spiders, crawling out as the darkness
deepens, trace their webs to and fro,
to and fro, drop a stitch, pick up a
stitch — crafty knitters !

THE STORY OF A GARDEN 1 49

This flower corner hears the call of
spring before its messenger has pene-
trated the woodlands. Daphne meze-
retnn, touched by early sunbeams, shows
its pink clusters in March, and starts
the glad procession before even the
hepatica has stirred, and the sweet
white violets often open where the sun
has made dimples in the snow. This
little close yields a posy every day,
from March until in late November it
offers the last pansy as a thought of
all the season's beauty, and even in
snow and ice a few sashed frames hold
a store of blooming violets, to keep
spring in the heart.

You saw the garden when on May-
day, bleak and chilly, the bulb-growths
wrapped it in colour; then when the
quaint border beauties followed, and
when the roses rioted, and after their
brief festival left the earth strewn with

150 THE FRIENDSHIP OF NATURE

the perfumed tatters of their leaves.
Now those rose trees yield a pleasant
aftermath to mingle with the scentless
autumn flowers.

The asters of all hues and forms
make solid banks of colour; the tall
Dahlias, precise and quilled, carry out
the scheme, going into lighter fancies
with the more graceful single blooms.
There is a ponderous majesty in these
precursors of the chrysanthemum, a
weight of velvets following the laces
and silks of the earlier season.

The latest garden gift, the Margaret
carnation, brings with it every shade
and tint, giving a refreshing spiciness
to the bouquet, and mignonette always
lives out its name. The simple borders
are so fashioned that they have their
seasons like wild Nature, — spring,
summer, autumn, and even in winter
they wear a quilt of leaves and cheerful
cedar boughs.

THE STORY OF A GARDEN I5I

Walk down with me to the seat
beside the honeysuckle trellis. On the
right is a wall of green, and under the
arched spruces goes the lane walk.
The lane is shady with a wood dim-
ness, and from it stray dogwood, red-
berried elder, white thorn, birch,
clethra, sumach, oak, and sassafras.
This is Thrush Lane; here the hermit
thrush comes in May, and in October
returns to feed on the wedge-shaped
magnolia berries. Here the brown
thrasher scratches and rustles daily and
the wood thrush stays to nest, while the
olive-backed and gray-cheeked thrushes
make semi-annual visits. The catbird
and the sociable robin find the lane
too dull except for noon siestas, but the
warblers love it for the shelter and the
food it yields them.

Between the bushes, in little gaps,
the elm-leaved sfoldenrod, the silver

152 THE FRIENDSHIP OF NATURE

rod, wild sunflowers, and asters are
now opening. Where the sun breaks
through, before the turn, you see the
path line is carried out with shrubs,
snowballs, bush-honeysuckle, tamarix,
cotoneaster, barberry, and many others.
In a clearing, where the ground rolls
to some apple trees, the mulberry,
mountain ash, and a choke-cherry tree
were planted especially for the benefit
of the birds, and the rough old willow,
too, is surrounded by young hawthorns,
where the hair-bird likes to build.
See ! all through the stubbly orchard
grass run pale green ribbons of the
sensitive fern, and in another month
the bronze-fronded moonwort will fol-
low them.

Up hill a bit, the pines and spruces
meet you, the rocks break through the
scanty soil; in fact, the garden, like
some hillside vineyards, is founded on

THE STORY OF A GARDEN 1 53

a rock, the soil being deep only in
pockets. This is all the better for
wood things that love chinks and
crannies; and the evergreens flourish,
having the knack of running out their
roots like anchors.

How much we owe to these same
evergreens, beautiful and protective
at all times, in all seasons! Snow-
feathered they give a Christmas glad-
ness to the landscape, then pink-tipped
in their blooming time before putting
on their fresh green summer plumes;
in autumn filling the sudden empti-
ness, waving warning arms to drive the
cold from all the tender things that
creep or fly into their shelter. The
hemlock, ever faithful, breaks the fury
of the north wind; the Scotch pine
sends out warmth from its ruddy bark;
the white pine emerges from the morn-
ing mist, shaking diamonds from its

154 THE FRIENDSHIP OF NATURE

drenched locks, and in autumn drops
them like elfin straws to make a winter
thatch for all the little colonies in the
earth. The pines are cheerful and
strong, even from the tiny seedling
piercing the moss : —

" First a little slender line,
Like a mermaid's green eyelash, and then

anon
A stem a tower might rest upon.
Standing spear-straight in the waist-deep

moss,
Its bony roots clutching around and across.
As if they would tear up earth's heart in their

grasp
Ere the storm should uproot them or make

them unclasp :
Its cloudy boughs singing as suiteth the pine."

Even the juniper that spreads itself in
the pasture gives the same pledge to
the fields that the witch-hazel gives
to the woods. Under the trees on each

THE STORY OF A GARDEN 1 55

side of the path the pipsissevva raises
its rigid leaves, and the fruit even now
is reddening on the partridge vine. Go
up the three stone steps to the resting-
place between the shaggy hickories.
It is so high that the outlook is through
the branches. It is a perch where the
birds are neighbours, and the red
squirrels leap from branch to roof, for-
ward and back, and the chipmunk
crawls through a knot-hole in the floor
to quizz you, and then pours out a
wrathful volley at your intrusion.

In October it is good to sit up here
as the leaves fall with a soft monotony,
such as water-ripples make, and clos-
ing the eyes one can hear the drift of
the leafy tide, breaking in unhurried
waves. In spring the rocks are red
with columbines and the black birch
gilds them with its pollen.

Look below! there lies the garden's

156 THE FRIENDSHIP OF NATURE

eye, its heart of hearts, the pool, fed
by a ceaseless spring and tingeing the
ground about with emerald. What
bird is there that does not claim it
for his summer watering-place ? When
every other pond and many brooks are
dry in this arid month of August, the
pool remains, only shrinking a little at
the margin, showing the stems of
pickerel-weed and sagittaria. White
water-lilies sway upon its surface;
some are shut and others, in the last
day of their flowerhood, are still open,
as if reluctant to close their eyes on so
much beauty. Sharp flag leaves break
the edge, and tall Osmundas look over
them to see their own reflections;
O. regalis, the queen, who often wears
in her pinnate fronds the mystic number
thirteen ; O. cmiiamo?nea, whose leaves,
wool-wrapped in youth, yield their
fleece to line the nests of humming-

THE STORY OF A GARDEN 1 57

birds and warblers; and straggling
away from them is the common brake,
alike of roadside, marsh, or clearing.

Beyond in the moist dell, where a
hundred or two red-gold flower spikes
glow, is a transplanted stranger, the
barbaric yellow-fringed orchid of the
sea-gardens, now quite at home, and its
insect friends have found it, so that it
seeds as freely as in its native marsh.

Another of the orchid tribe flourishes
under the maples, the large yellow
cypripedium, called in France, le Soulier
de Notre Dame ; and in a dozen places,
the little tway-blade, in June, throws
up its purple-green flowers.

Watch the birds flutter and bathe on
the flat shelving stones! Some evi-
dently take a dozen baths a day. The
great iridescent frogs swim lazily and
the dragon-flies dart and flash; a tired
dog, following a wagon on the highway.

158 THE FRIENDSHIP OF NATURE

comes to the pool quite fearlessly and
drinks with long laps of satisfaction.

Oaks, maples, chestnuts, shade a
tranquil vista, lovely now, but fairer
still in June, when the ox-eye daisies
swept the shadowy dell with their sun-
dance and the iris stepped a minuet
between tall grasses.

In yonder arch of spruces, Dante
stands carved in stone. The temper-
ing mould and moss relax his stern
features, set with the vision of human
destiny. A glint of sunshine, passing
across his face like a thought of Bea-
trice, illuminates it, and warms the
lips to seeming speech : — ■

" All hate abandon ye who enter here ! "

In truth this one small word is all the
span between heaven and hell.

RUSTLING WINGS

" All the feathered airy nation,
Birds of every size and station,
Are convened in convocation.
*****
How they thicken, how they muster.
How they clutter, how they cluster !
Now they ramble here and thither.
Now they scramble all together."

Aristophanes^ Birds (Frere's trans.).

The wood swallows began it and
signalled the grackles, or perhaps the
grackles, chattering in the trees, so
jarred upon the nerves of the swallows
that they fled to the dunes, where there
are no echoes.

It was the first of September, and
I was gathering sea-lavender on the
159

l6o THE FRIENDSHIP OF NATURE

borders of the marsh, where it had
escaped the mowers. There was a
great fluttering in the bayberries and
sand-plum bushes; they bent and
swayed, and the heavy-topped golden-
rod quivered unreasonably. Becom-
ing curious, I crept behind a trail of
old rail fences toward the place, briers
holding me back and all the weeds
clutching at me with their desperate
little seed claws. From the bushes the
swallows darted, percussive, bolt-like,
then spreading widely, flying by tens
and hundreds, cutting the air with the
scattering swiz-z-z of shot, followed by
the smoke of intense vibration, until
they seemed only a point in the dis-
tance, yet a punctuation point in the
unbroken phrase of summer.

We are never ready for autumn,
when the almanac doles out September.
Mind and body are relaxed and ex-

RUSTLING WINGS l6l

panded by the liberal juices of sum-
mer, the air above is still soft, the
grass richly green, the eye filled with
colour and focused for sunlight, the
skin pores moist, respirative, and the
house of the body unguarded. So
Nature, never abrupt, sends a bird
message — a gentle, unjarring reminder
— to prepare the way, before a single
tree shows the red flag of warning or
a chilly breath contracts the muscles.

In this interval, when the com-
mencement of the season's ebb-tide is
scarcely perceptible, it is a sort of high
noon. In the spring the eye went from
the leafless trees to the birds, and then
back to the trees, as the birds became
hidden by their leafage. In this, the
earth's middle season, as the great sap-
ebbing begins. Nature draws the eye
again to the birds, and these wander-
ing minstrels play a comedy for those

1 62 THE FRIENDSHIP OF NATURE

who will look at them, a sociological
drama — name it, The Ideal Republic
of Birdland.

As the birds change their plumage
and drift, their companions, the leaves,
soon follow, knowing that their protec-
tion is no longer needed. Down on
the dunes, the smnmer-bright first of
September the wood swallows came,
and we watch and wait and thrill as
one by one the birds of spring return
and in a motley dress flutter about us.
Some come on night wings, others stop
to rest at twilight, in flocks of a kind,
by twos and threes, or in a strag-
gling army together, all tribe barriers
dropped, all social etiquette banished.

The blue sky and gold sun, filtered
together, shoot green glints on the
dunes, on the water, on the spume-
edged tide pools, where the sandpipers
patter and leave their sharp footprints;

RUSTLING WINGS 1 63

and there the wood swallows began the
play, the waves lapping the overture.
Hidden in the cover of sand plums,
I waited to see what would happen.
The volley that had flown over my head
shifted, neared twice, then parted, and
finally settled all around, with the
sound that only wings or winds make,
yes, even on the bunch of sea-lavender
that I was holding.

The most startling thing was the
flock impulse binding them together.
In the spring an individual bird sings
an individual song, and if you have
keen ears you may detect that no two
birds of a species have precisely the
same intonation, and some birds, as
the song- sparrow for instance, vary
their theme until even their identity is
puzzling. Each woos for himself an
individual mate, with the exception of
one or two vagabonds, and builds a

164 THE FRIENDSHIP OF NATURE

particular nest, and wears a coat which
marks both his sex and tribe. In
autumn, the vital need of these things
having passed, the characteristics in
themselves are in a measure merged,
and in the search for shelter and food
the collective instinct holds sway.

These swallows did not feed, but
merely twittered, and clung to small
twigs, keeping their wings and tails in
motion, as soldiers keep step when
halting. For three or four minutes
they rested, and then came another
ascension, and as they flew over, their
wing-beats gave me the same sensation
as a pelting of small pebbles.

For three days I went to watch them,
and finally decided that all the seem-
ingly useless effort of flying and
counterflying was, in fact, an initia-
tion for the young in the fatigues and
manoeuvres of travel, a sort of awkward

RUSTLING WINGS 1 65

squad drill. On the first day some
stragglers dropped from the column,
some clung to the bushes and chirped
in irresolution, but on the third day
they flew as one swallow.

After this, an easterly storm pre-
vailed and the marshes were flooded.
Upon the seventh of September I went
again to the beach, and was watching
a fishhawk, who had twice lost his prey
in mid-air, when a heap of metallic
seaweed beyond me seemed to move,
and, startled, I saw the swallows rise
in a straight line, then angle and sweep
over the Sound at a point west of south,
and that was their last rehearsal.

I should like to know if they lingered
on Long Island; for if they began their
long southward journey, they travel by
day, as their start was at ten o'clock in
the morning.

Meanwhile the purple grackles, which

1 66 THE FRIENDSHIP OF NATURE

reappeared the same day as the swal-
lows, continued to forage in the pas-
tures, and daily augmented their hosts.
After the silence of late August, even
their harsh cry is not disagreeable, but
rather suggests that Nature's doors, so
long open to sunshine and summer,
though reluctant to close, are trying
their rusty hinges. There is something
quite exciting as, after much fussing
and shifting, a flock of grackles settle
down on the maples, and thence to the
ground. These birds are extremely
wary of alighting on any species of
evergreen, and in this are a rare excep-
tion. I have watched them year after
year, and though the place is sur-
rounded by pines, spruces, and cedars,
the birds seldom more than brush them
in passing. The sun develops a won-
derful iridescence in their sombre
coats. They appear coal-black from

rustling"wings 167

beneath, but as they walk on the ground
and the light strikes on their backs,
purples, blues, and greens develop,
coming to a focus in the yellow circle
of the iris. Even in autumn, they are
not always the ravenous corn-destroyers
that they are reputed. I watched a
flock in a newly ploughed field, where
the ground was heavy and sour, full of
grubs and evil larvae, and the grackles
went to work and for a week poked and
gobbled, doing away with quantities
of injurious insects.

The migratory range of birds appears
to be a largely unsettled question. Do
they go further north after nesting and
return for a time in the autumn, or do
the local birds merely retreat to the
deep woods and then reappear? For
myself, I think that here in south-
eastern Connecticut, many birds go
further north and east in August, re-

1 68 THE FRIENDSHIP OF NATURE

turning to their haunts in advance of
the general migration.

It may be fancy perhaps, but I believe
that I can distinguish the birds that
have nested and brought out their young
in the garden, from the strangers; there
is something more friendly in those
that have let me watch them, that have
perched on my favourite arbour —
surely they ought to be more confiding
than the mere transients of passage.
There are many birds that we never see
here except during their migrations;
an innumerable list, topped by the
great fox-sparrow and dwindling to the
ruby-crowned kinglet.

Two birds especially have lent me a
key to the situation : a male robin
with strange white markings on the
back, as if hoar frost had clung to his
feathers, and a catbird with a claw so
crumpled that he hopped on the ankle.

RUSTLING WINGS 1 69

These birds were quite tame and had
nested close to the foot-path, so that I
really had an intimate friendship with
them. In early August I missed them,
but when, during the second week of
September, after some very rough
weather, I was looking out early one
morning at a small flock of robins, I
saw my albino among them. In an
hour or so, he was prying about in his
garden haunts, with an inquiring air,
to see what changes had occurred in
his absence.

Another day we hung some bunches
of half-ripe grapes on the boughs of a
pear tree, and watched to see what
birds would come to take them. Many
catbirds had returned, pert as ever, but
they had forgotten their songs, and the
cool nights had stiffened their throats
into mewing. These catbirds spied the
grapes first, and the robins followed,

170 THE FRIENDSHIP OF NATURE

taking the clusters away to eat at their
leisure, and on the roof of the porch I
distinguished my old friend with the
crumpled claw.

Autumn's sky colours are very illu-
sive; the smoky brown mist rising
from the ground veils the most exquisite
combinations. The songs of the adult
birds, if the few disconnected notes
may be called songs, touch chords
wholly of reminiscence. I heard a
fluty whistle coming from a tangle —
instantly my thoughts receded. " If it
was June," I said, " I should know that
a chat was hiding there." All the
while, this olive and gold recluse
was perching close at hand, giving
his call at intervals so softly, as if
even to himself it was but the whis-
per of memory. The young birds,
however, furnish by their little war-
blings one of the enchantments of

RUSTLING WINGS I71

autumn that is a forecast of spring
rapture.

Go to some hollow or bushy nook
not far remote from houses, — a garden
seat in an arbour, or a stone by the
spring, are perhaps the best places, —
and when the surroundings have accus-
tomed themselves to you, have accepted
the honesty of your intentions so that
you may move your head without caus-
ing any alarm, then you may listen to
the babbling of the young birds of the
season, the first sounds from the newly
developed throats. These notes are
so fresh and young, so sweet and guile-
less, wholly without emotion, like child-
ish prattle, and in keeping with the
birds' hybrid feathers. It is easy to tell
the young from their experienced par-
ents, even when there is nothing deci-
sive in their plumage: they are less
timid and gaze about in an unconcerned

172 THE FRIENDSHIP OF NATURE

way, and their proportions have a
callow roundness.

The old wrens now are silent, and
seem transformed from the cheerful,
fussy companions of June days, to sulky
misanthropes. Listen to that roulade !
low and uncertain, but one of the
young is telling you how he will sing
next May. After a few days spent
with the autumnal bird flocks, you will
decide that the call notes come from
the old, but the scraps of song mostly
from the young birds, and that such
music as autumn yields is not so much
a farewell as a prelude.

On the tenth of September the golden
orioles came and swung in a trumpet
vine, and a half dozen young ones
dashed about in a flycatcher way, lisp-
ing a little. The same day, the white-
breasted nuthatch was climbing in the
great white oak by the spring, perform-

RUSTLING WINGS 1 73

ing numerous acrobatic feats, head
downward, and announcing himself by
his grating call. His note, a mere
scrap of the jay's scream, associates
him with those smartly dressed thieves,
as their seasons of return are alike.

Now the birds come drifting steadily
along; one morning will bring a flock
of chestnut-crowned sparrows, and the
next some brown thrashers, while a
little later the towhee will be seen,
hopping with nice precision. Is there
any other bird to whom the word neat
applies more truly than to this ground-
robin, as we locally call him, with his
trig build, his precise plumage and
markings, and his thrifty, satisfied
note?

The middle of the month, the fly-
catchers held a great rally in the top
of a dead elm : the king-bird, though
fearless, keeping the furthest aloof; the

174 THE FRIENDSHIP OF NATURE

phoebes, the only ones of the tribe who
carry a note of music, coming down to
a pear tree where insects hover over
the fallen fruit. The great crested fly-
catcher, with a nonchalant air of
defiance, followed very cautiously the
flight of the king-bird. The least
flycatcher, with white eye-ring, gray-
green back, and "chebec call " was the
most sociable, and peered about the
apple trees; his yellow-bellied cousin
chose the trumpet vine for a point of
vantage, and muttered its slow call in
imitation of the wood-pewee. For
many days these birds drew all atten-
tion to themselves by their eccentric
ways, each choosing a separate forag-
ing spot, but when disturbed, returning
to the elm. They held the air in such
absolute mastery that it seemed to
represent both earth and water. They
flew through it, next seemed to swim.

RUSTLING WINGS 1 75

then twisted and moved by jerks as if
running on the ground. By the twenty-
fifth of the month they had all dis-
appeared, except the phoebes and
least flycatchers, and the next day a
gust of titmice and snowbirds filled
their places.

The vesper-sparrow, the well-known
grass finch, "flies with a quick, sharp
movement, showing the two quills in
his tail. " The junco shows these white
quills still more plainly. In the gray
morning twilight, when I noticed his
return, his ashy form might have passed
unnoticed, but for these telltale white
stripes.

As the foliage thins, the woodpeckers
come more under the observation. The
red-headed woodpecker was here yes-
terday, and to-day the creepers have
been circling the crooked apple tree
close by the house. The black and

176 THE FRIENDSHIP OF NATURE

white creeper, one of the warbler
family, a trifle larger than a wren, was
so tame that it only fluttered away when
I went toward it, and its barred friend,
the true brown-creeper, with strange
gait, kept going round and round the
trunk, as I followed it, quizzing me
with a chirping, "No, you don't."
For even the migrant birds become
friendly when they are within the pro-
tection of the garden close.

The shyest wood bird seems to feel
that here the law is set against their
destruction. There came and perched
during a single day, upon a half-dead,
gray-mossed ash, the hairy and downy
woodpeckers, much alike in markings,
save that the first is larger and has a
red head-spot, and the golden-winged
woodpecker, who has never left the
location where he augured the hole for
his nest, but flies about with the heavi-
ness of a pigeon.

RUSTLING WINGS 1 77

Coming and still coming, trooping
in by little groups — to catalogue each
one would be reviewing New England
ornithology. No concerted stampede
as yet, save in the case of the swallows.
The cedar-birds are again travelling in
flocks, and this morning I watched
them for almost an hour as they
plumed, sitting in rows in the ash tree,
where I first saw them in spring, the
fierce weather last year having driven
them away from December to April.
The young have a bunched, home-made
look, with their incipient tufts and soft
quaker feathers.

October comes in with a day of
palpitating heat, like August. Helio-
trope blooms in the garden, and Jack
roses, who open their carmine lips in
wonder, when told by the monk's-hood
that it is not June, and that the grass-
hopper sparrow brought news from the

178 THE FRIENDSHIP OF NATURE

north that the peabody-birdhad started.
A humming-bird yet darts about the
arbour; but be ready, for eastward and
northward there are high winds; the
sea-smell is sharp in the nostrils, and
in spite of the warm yellow light on the
pastures, the surf sends a warning note
from the shore.

The night was heavy and starless,
with frequent gusts of wind, but the
storm parted sidewise, and before the
late dawn, dull gray clouds with
embered edges, like damp wood
smouldering, lay in the southeast, and
the bird storm the night had brought
was spread over dell, garden, and
hedge. It had come, the high tide of
the fall migration ! Many years will
pass with nicely graded weather, when
the birds slip past unnoticed, and then
a storm will bring them on its crest
like driftwood.

RUSTLING WINGS 1 79

The Greeks had their Spring Swallow
Song; why will not some one give us a
bird song of autumn, not pathetic, but
tripping with realistic bustle?

Where to look first? Robins were
thick on the lawn, wood thrushes
scratched under the purple-leaved rose
bushes. The berry-tipped dogwood
was quaking with the horde that feasted
upon it; the foot-paths were alive with
the sociable hair-birds, and mingling
with them came the beautiful white-
throated sparrows.

How many associations follow in the
train of a single incident ! The white-
throated sparrow's soft call is the first
bird note that I remember from child-
hood. In May, returning from a long
stay in the city, with my heart swelling
with pent-up longing, I stood on the
steps of the little station, and as the
train ceased breaking the stillness and

l8o THE FRIENDSHIP OF NATURE

I could again breathe the earthy fra-
grance, the first sound was this spar-
row's note of welcome. I was sure
that his slow call said, " Oh-my ! Here-
you-are, here-you-are ! " and that he
was glad that I too had returned, and
I wondered vaguely where he had stayed
in the interval, and if he had cried as
often as I had. In those days, I
imagined the birds crept into the cones
of the evergreens to spend the winter,
and that when the cones snapped open
in spring they were released.

The bluebirds hovered for a long
time about a Gothic hotel newly erected
for them. They peeped into every
room, squabbled and fought for apart-
ments as if spring was already urging
them to build. Below the garden, the
old orchard was on the qui vive. The
birds had so much to relate to the
confiding branches, it mattered little

RUSTLING WINGS l8l

though the trees showed green-netted
apples instead of curving buds. One
tree, that autumn's storms had stripped
of leaves, stretched out a branch set
with flowers, and a greedy bud-eating
vireo clung to it as if it had bloomed
for his sole benefit. All the birds
were fearless and hungry, or perhaps
their hunger caused their lack of fear.
They looked with scorn at the jays,
who kept at a distance, for now the
eggs, which they had threatened in
spring, were sturdy birds capable of
self-protection : —

"Turn, turn my wheel ! All life is brief:
What now is bud will soon be leaf,

What now is leaf will soon decay;
The wind blows east, the wind blows west;
The blue eggs in the robin's nest
Will soon have wings and beak and breast,

And flutter and fly away."

Along the lane, the fox-sparrows

Ic52 THE FRIENDSHIP OF NATURE

hop, the oHve-backed thrush tried to be
bold but failed in courage, and a her-
mit thrush did not move as I passed.
Was he the hermit who enchanted us
on May-day, who sang above the smoke
of smouldering leaves?

If we only knew it all, knew all that
there is to learn between the coming
and going! The journey is so short,
and before we are thoroughly used to
being here, the time has come for our
flitting. If only, like the birds, we
may keep in our hearts the songs of
another season !

The night-hawks, kin of the whip-
poor-will, now circle at noon, as in
June they did at twilight, and the
brown hawk flies toward the sun. Owl
notes come nearer at night, for they
are leaving the deep woods, and down
by the river a stone thrown over the

RUSTLING WINGS 1 83

bushes will startle the coveys of black
ducks.

One by one the birds will go, until
the grackles and vesper-sparrows have
vanished and we hear only the notes of
a single song- sparrow, and the winter
birds quietly take possession.

Under the pointed roof of a summer-
house close to the garden, a pair of
robins lived all through the ice of last
winter. During the day they took
shelter in the pines, foraging among
the bushes until the berries were picked
clean; then they drew nearer to their
roost, and finished the season with the
fruit of the honeysuckles, climbing
around it. Had they eaten this at
first, the snow might have besieged and
starved them, so they worked outside
and left their garrison victualled.
*****

The curtain slowly falls and the

184 THE FRIENDSHIP OF NATURE

troupe of minstrels vanish; the cicadae
have unstrung their fiddles, the glow-
worms snuffed their candles, and the
swallows that began it all are telling
the news in Florida.

THE LOOM OF AUTUMN

*' There she weaves both night and day
A magic web with colours gay."

The Lady of Shalott.

Earth, wedded to the Sun, gave
birth to four daughters, and confided
the shaping of her vesture to their
keeping. Winter, the eldest, silent,
ermine-cloaked, wears the northern
crown, and from her ice shuttle the
pole star rays and gleams. About her,
the North Wind roars his gusty love,
and by her side Orion watches, as she
weaves the snow linen of force-con-
serving sleep. Spring, the youngest,
is the heart flov/er, with curving pale
gold hair bound by the moon's slim
185

r86 THE FRIENDSHIP OF NATURE

crescent, wide curious eyes, like deep
frost-free pools that drink the sky, and
all her tender body is wrapped in a
warm mist, her mother's vital breath.
Capriciously she webs a soft green
gown, and meshes in its folds snow-
flakes and violets, and in its trailing
length ensnares bright birds, who hold
it not imprisonment, and sing so freely
that strains of music float from the
folds that sweep the ground. The
broad girdle to bind the robe about
is wrought with gold in dent-de-lion
work, and the ruby clasps are gorgets
of humming-birds rivetted with dia-
mond raindrops. At her first touch,
the mole, deep in his tunnelled home,
bestirs himself; the spring breaks forth,
and at the cadence of her spinning-
song, the motive floats aloft and the
swift hawk feels its pang. Even re-
luctant man, so far withdrawn from

THE LOOM OF AUTUMN 1 87

Nature, opens his door, and shading
his tired eyes, looks for green fields.

Summer has an ampler mien; full-
lipped is she, with , red-gold hair,
crowned with roses, and a generous
body. Restful and satisfied she sits
in the sun's rays, fanned by her spouse,
the South Wind, and weaves the heavy
damask robe of matronhood, dense with
sweet odours, rich-hued and opulent,
such as befits the benignant Earth to
wear when, with her arms piled high
with ripened sheaves, she gives her
children bread.

Autumn, the wayward daughter, steals
all her sisters' moods; wedded to the
East Wind she scoffs him, and lures the
South and the West by turns. She is
under spell always to toil to finish the
work of others; to shake the nut and
mellow apple down, and bear the sweet-
skinned grape to the wine-press, but to

1 88 THE FRIENDSHIP OF NATURE

have no issue of her own. At her
touch all growing things blaze with a
hectic fire, but their life-blood dries
away. And as she chants snatches of
broken tunes, that are merely echoes,
her voice drops to a cricket's droning,
and the silent birds troop off in appre-
hension. She seems so fair, and yet
she w^ears upon her face Time's rav-
ages; and the gray hollows round the
eyes, the treacherous nostril's curve,
the too bright lip, all token the ash of
passion. With one hand she offers
tempting fruits, while the other holds
the leash of her messengers — two gaunt
hounds, the black frost and the white.
She must, for her mother, weave a
gorgeous robe for a night's brief
revelling, but even as she dyes it bright
with every subtle tint the fabric drops
away between her hands, leaving them
empty.

THE LOOM OF AUTUMN 1 89

Autumn passed through the lowlands
many days ago, and set her tree-loom
by the mill house. All day long she
roves afield to fill her shuttle, and
weaves all night, so that the fabric
shifts and changes with every dawn.
When she first came the dodder tied
the bushes on the pond's edge in its
tangles, and the flame of the cardinal
flowers was creeping up the stalks
toward its extinguishment. The vari-
ous goldenrods filled the pastures and
tramped cheerfully along the roads,
thinning and looking dwarfed as they
swarmed in a broken phalanx over the
dry hills, then growing stout and ample
when they lined the outside of a gar-
den wall, waving gaily over the bar-
rier, and stretching underneath their
hungry roots. Surely Midas must have
left the underworld some day, and
strolled through Yankee lands, brush-

190 THE FRIENDSHIP OF NATURE

ing the weeds as he passed by with his
golden but barren touch.

The Virginia creeper, or five-fingered
woodbine, fringed the old grist mill
and fell trailing on the ground.
Straightway autumn caught at it for
her first strand, and everywhere that it
grew, around tree trunks in snake-like
coils, binding rail fences, clinging to
rough briers, it turned crimson, scarlet,
yellow, then paled until the leaflets,
mesmerized, let go their hold and
dropped shrivelling. The maples on
the low pond-islands followed the
woodbine, but being of much sturdier
growth were longer in dying, and for a
week or two glowed and flushed, the
top leaves fading first, then down,
down, down, in the track of the reced-
ing life-blood, leaving only the skele-
ton. The osiers that grow embedded
in the water, margining the pond, mix-

THE LOOM OF AUTUMN I9I

ing with the blackened leaves of the
pickerel weed, meanwhile have turned
into a bank of pink and yellow.

The dogwood, Corniis florida, stands
out from all the crowding group of
trees and bushes, suggesting a moral
sketch by Hogarth, which might be
called, The Past, Present, and Future
of a Virtuous Tree. The gaily col-
oured leaves are the badges of past
service, the rosettes of polished, red,
brown-tipped berries make a present
feast for worthy pilgrim birds. The
well-wrapped flower buds capping the
season's growth, with their square par-
cels, hold the next spring's promise,
when by unfurling their white flags
they will call a truce with the frost and
tell the farmer that he may fearlessly
plant his Indian corn.

All this time the South Wind is blow-
ing with summer fervour, only chilled

192 THE FRIENDSHIP OF NATURE

by the lavish dews of earlier twilights.
Seeing this, the jealous East Wind starts
from the ocean, follows the incoming
tide, and rakes heavy salt drift over the
marshes, pelting the land with sharp-
angled rain, wrestling with the trees
until their joints crack, bending the
supple to the ground, tearing the stiff
and aged limb from limb, beating the
striped apples down, mangling the
fields of ripened corn with juggernaut
wheels, cutting rough channels in the
ploughed hillsides, swelling the river
until it washes threateningly around
the mill house. Autumn, drenched,
overpowered, dismayed, her fabric
soaked, despoiled, hides until the East
Wind has spent his rage. Back creeps
the South Wind, keeping well toward
the west for shelter, dries the shivering
ground, and for a week brings retro-
spective glimpses.

THE LOOM OF AUTUMN 1 93

In the meadows, lately shorn of
aftermath, the veins of moisture out-
line the old growth by fresh green rib-
bons. Springy roadsides and the banks
of quiet streams shelter the purple
closed gentian; they are mysterious
blossoms, wood-sphinxes, making the
silence deeper. Even the bees ap-
proach them noiselessly, and lighting
on the flower tip give a secret signal
for admission. Do forest treasons
incubate in those purple caves, and
brookside plots and wayside politics,
or do the sly bees only step sociably
in, to sample an extra brand of honey?

The gentians come almost alone
among autumn's tribe of Compositae;
the cardinal lobelia and turtle head
are fading when they appear. Back
from the shore where the little ridgy
hills bound the meadow, and unmown
strips teeming with bog-growth guard

o

194 THE FRIENDSHIP OF NATURE

their treasures, reached by lanes and
byways where the great amber-red fox-
grape shows its clusters as the brown-
ing leaves curl back, where the pepper-
idge and tulip tree mark the wood-
growth, there in the open meadows
grows the blue fringed gentian. We
may find it by the wayside, or perhaps
on a rocky bank where an overflow of
earth has washed the seed, but its
chosen home is the deep meadow,
companioned by brittle ferns, slender
Spiranthes, or the white grass of Par-
nassus. Here in New England, there
does not grow at any season a more
lovely or individual flower. It brings
to September a springtime delicacy,
wholly at variance with the autumn's
purples, yellows, and scarlets.

It is at best only prophecy to fix set
times and seasons for the blooming of
wild things, and you may find violets.

THE LOOM OF AUTUMN 1 95

wild roses, and strawberry flowers,
when on a gentian quest. Thoreau,
in 185 1, records this flower in bloom
November yth, and by a similar chance,
Bryant found it even later, among the
Cummington hills, though late Septem-
ber, with a week or two for leeway, is
its Connecticut season. Its colour
pales or deepens according to the
quality of soil in which it grows, and
with the shade or sunlight of the loca-
tion. Away from its green surround-
ings, its perfect blue takes a more
purplish tint; but in coming through
the twilight of a dense wood-path, into
the sudden gold-hazed sunlight of a
gentian field, one dreams that the sky,
once moulting, dropped its soft-edged
feathers on the grass, and earth turned
them into flowers.

*****
A jay screams by the river, and at

196 THE FRIENDSHIP OF NATURE

the sound Autumn picks up her web,
repairing the threads the wind has
torn, but she may not replace them all,
for rain has soaked away the freshest
hues of her best dyes. The dewberry,
trailing down the sandy roadbank,
crimsons and bronzes, then brightens
near the tip, glowing and paling like
splinters of molten steel. The black
birch pales, then yellows, until it
reaches gold, in company with the rock-
maple. The scarlet and pin oaks wear
rich enamel, and the black oak is
drenched with burgundy. On steep
hillsides, the maple-leaved cornel takes
a deep raspberry tone, the leaves of
the wild roses redden to bronze, and,
curling, show bunches of shining red
berries, and the eglantine wears her
necklace of oval coral beads.

Every bit of earth and rock and
sand swarms Vv^ith Compositae. The

THE LOOM OF AUTUMN 1 97

asters range through lilac, violet,
purple, white, claiming September as
a festival. Their beauty has given
them a place in English shrubberies,
where they bloom at Michaelmas, when
the farmer eats his goose, and they are
gathered to trim the churches on the
double festival, the purple being called
Michaelmas daisies, and the snowy
white species. All Angels. Science has
taught us all but what we wish most to
learn; has tried to ignore the soul, but
burning its fingers in the inextinguish-
able flame, smarting, smiles a wincing
smile and says, "We do not know!"
How much poetry we shall miss if the
time ever comes when festivals and
holidays are no longer kept, but are
packed away as the world's childish
toys. No fear of it; for all time there
will be those who find in simple way-
side things — All Angels.

198 THE FRIENDSHIP OF NATURE

Now again Autumn gathers her
thread in armsful. The sassafras is
shedding its variegated mittens, and
the hickory and walnut their sere yel-
lows; the chestnut leaves are rusty,
though the burrs are green; the barberry
hangs full of fruit, the purple-berried
cornel also; and the white baneberry,
the orange-red bitter-sweet, red alder,
wintergreen, and creeping partridge
vine abound. Berries everywhere, how
do they escape the birds? The cau-
tious birds know what will keep the
best, and so eat the more substantial
food when they can find it. There are
yet small, rich seeds, grubs, larvae, and
belated worms, to be preferred to
berries. Yellow birds linger where the
sunflowers hold their brown-seeded
combs; how much nourishment and
cold-repelling strength lies in these
oily seeds! and why should catbirds

THE LOOM OF AUTUMN 1 99

and robins eat husky, sour things,
while the grape arbour holds a single
tempting cluster? Even the jays are
not easily driven to acorn dieting.

The last of September ! There was
a flutter of brown wings this morning,
then a halt upon some hemlocks lying
toward the south and a flock of birds
plume their damp feathers, A glint
of white, — so you have returned, merry
peabody-birds ! we wish all your brother
sparrows carried as certain marks of
identification as you wear on your white
throats. Have you travelled all night?
Is there frost and snow in the north ?
You have returned early! The great
crested flycatcher is here, and catbird
and other thrushes, and yesterday, by
the glint of the sun on a dry twig, a
golden-crowned kinglet might be
seen.

A flock of plump birds settle where

200 THE FRIENDSHIP OF NATURE

some new grass is seeded, a motley,
haphazard group. A glance names
them j uncos and grasshopper-sparrows.
Juncos ! the last of a warm September;
surely it is very early, and some sharp
storm must have warned them. A
closer view shows that the birds are all
juncos, the males and females, the
others being unmoulted young, wearing
the stripes of the sparrow tribe.

October comes, and Autumn handles
the shuttle more nervously; she has
sped here and there for fresh designs,
and now in a night weaves in great
masses of colour. Yesterday the maples
that follow the high river bank all
reddened at once; to-day, the night-
shade along the fence yellows, and the
smooth sumach has an extra coat of
varnish. A noise, like the croaking
of tree toads, comes from the nut-
hatches that are skirting the branches

THE LOOM OF AUTUMN 201

and trunks of trees; the pond frogs are
silent, and the hylodes of the spring
"peep" now and then, having ex-
changed the marsh for tree dwellings.
The cricket chirps day and night, and
at twilight some teal-ducks fly over on
their way to salt water, as rapidly as
swallows, but so low that the glistening
of their green feathers can be seen.

No frost, but Autumn roving, steps
over the wall into the garden; before
this she has only looked over. The
scarlet sage blazes indignantly, the
quilled Dahlias bob their prim heads
and nod in grave apprehension to the
hedge of nasturtiums. The favoured
chrysanthemums smile and look know-
ing, for they are already potted and
sure of protection. Low-lying mats
of verbenas glow with comfort, and the
carnations and more rugged roses pass
the word to stray pansies : " Never fear;

202 THE FRIENDSHIP OF NATURE

winter only can alarm us. " The honey-
suckle blooms unconcerned, a pear tree
holds fresh sprouts and a spray of
blossoms, and as if mating this freak
in the animal world, two humming-
birds pause to rest on the trellis.
Where are they from? Their flocks
passed away in the middle of Septem-
ber. Have they lost their almanac, and
do they think aphides and honey will
hold out through their long journey?

The kingfishers and blue herons are
about, and the larks are stalking
through the beach meadows. In cross-
ing a rough hillside, covered by dwarf
sumachs and briers, a brown thrush
unearthed, in scratching, some of the
leathery shells of the eggs of the black
snake. He pecked at them uncon-
sciously, not dreaming that from them
had emerged a tribe of his chief
enemies.

THE LOOM OF AUTUMN 203

Now comes the second reign of the
orchard. In May she queened it with
flowers, and now again with her buxom
fruit. Beauty is deeply bedded in the
apple's skin; look at its texture, grain,
and harmonious colouring. This russet
with greenish cast, sucked by a fly,
might yield a book-binder hints for
the cover of some quaint Walton. The
Baldwin, as fervid red levant morocco,
in untempered Jansen style, should wrap
Laus Veneris. This stippled pippin
could guard Gerarde's Herball, and
these generous greenings, wrought in
gold, with angle, curve, and floriature,
might fitly bear the genial stamp of Gro-
lier, while Cobden-Sanderson could
ask for no daintier pattern for his
tooling than the gold leaf-shadows
dancing and latticing the heaps of the
Northern Spy.

The apple holds the first place in

204 THE FRIENDSHIP OF NATURE

the pictorial farm pageant, even though
the giant mangles, like lumps of beef,
pile up the wagons, and onions, car-
rots, and turnips yield greater profit.
The pumpkin still exists and grins
among the cornstalks, but the apple,
though pursued by moth and rust, is
yet the bright, crisp fruit our forbears
deemed it, and every autumn sees its
panorama. The apples are picked and
sorted into heaps, and the surplus being
shaken down, the ox carts crawl with
them to the cider-mill. With what a
crunch the teeth meet in the fruit,
when exercise and the keen air make
the blood tingle and parch the throat,
and what a pleasure lies in the quick
gush of the responsive juice ! The
apple is the friend of every one.

The cider-mill, on one side half
fallen down, and patched with rough
chestnut boards, hangs over the tum-

THE LOOM OF AUTUMN 205

bling stream and, being idle all the
year, save for a month or two, vines
have crawled over it and mosses spread
their mimic forests on the roof. The
other portion, bare and new, serves as
post-office and the village store. The
stream leaps down and swings the
wheel around, the millstones crush,
and the apples spurt, then cake to
pumice between the layers of straw,
and bees swarm thick about the mass,
and no one hurries. The oxen chew
their cud, the men who grind the
apples move lazily, or sit and chew
straws, while the passer-by may help
himself at will to straw, or cloudy cider
from a battered cup. Some boys, with
chilled red legs and trousers high
rolled, are bobbing barrels in a pool
to rinse and swell them.

An odour of fields, orchards, woods,
sweeps past, joined to the yeasty smell

206 THE FRIENDSHIP OF NATURE

of fermentation. The amber fluid as
yet feels no pulsing in its veins, and
merely cloys the stomach; but give it
time and it will turn the drinker's
temper and fog his brain quicker than
all the wiles of Veuve Cliquot. The
sugar-maple drops its leaves with a
staccato sound, and the stream and
wind and bees intone a part song, the
last verse of the orchard melody that
they began in May. Drink a health to
autumn, a health to all seasons, to all
weathers, if we may but keep our
hearts young and remember our Earth-
mother !

A few John o' Dreams days, no signs,
no forebodings, then the steel-white
sky looks forbidding. Warm noon
cools suddenly; no wind, a hush over
the lowlands and up creeps a dense,
tangible coldness. By the mill house.

THE LOOM OF AUTUMN 207

the green malarial mist rises from the
dead vegetation, soaking and melting
away in the pond, where no current
washes the margin. Autmnn's shuttle
falls from between her numbing fingers,
and the loomed cloth sleaves, as she
slips the leash of the white frost hound
and he glides through the meadows.
All night he runs, breathing on the
weeds as he passes, trampling the grass,
touching the mossy stones and the
tree bark, his breath remaining in
white crystals. He comes up and slips
through the garden, but his force is
spent, and he only sniffs at the helio-
tropes and stiff edgings of coleus, and
crushes the rank marrow vines. At
dawn the hoar lies thick, dandelion
rosettes gleam in the sunlight, and the
leaves ripen and scatter.

After the first frost a golden lapse
follows, a pensive time between sleep-

208 THE FRIENDSHIP OF NATURE

ing and waking. Nature is ripe, deadly
ripe, and Autumn pauses thrilled,
hardly daring to breathe lest the en-
chanted fabric should vanish, yet half
believing the robe is something more
than a bright phantom. Then there
comes a pantomime, a ballet interlude
before the last act. Beauty gathers,
the seasons seem topsy-turvy, the earth
is saturated with colour, and the gay
birds of summer in sober dominos,
silent as becomes their part, pervade
their former haunts. The brown water
holds argosies of leaf boats, and other
leaves, tricked out in flower colours,
dance on the grass, while katydids and
crickets twang their little banjos, and
the pines wave applause. What dainty
disguises the wood things wear ! The
medeola, with whorled, two-storied
stalk, is dressed in buff and pink, with
blue berries for a top knot, each stalk

THE LOOM OF AUTUMN 209

a unique thing. False buckwheat
covers the fence rails with its seeds,
reclothes the mullein stalks, luring one
to think it a new flower, and many
berries mingle their colours with the
yellowing ferns.

The hedges now are at their best.
We have no trim thorn hedgerows,
leashed by ivy and "lush woodbine";
ours are the patient growths that follow
old walls, claiming the rough stone's
protection from the stubble scythe.
Out of ploughed fields step back the
sumachs, the fragrant clethra, meadow-
sweet, shad-bush, white thorn, cornel,
dwarf willow, flowering raspberry and
wild rose. Up from the roadside climb
bayberry, sunflowers, elecampane, and
hazels hang their fringed-podded nuts,
all clasping hands to make New Eng-
land's waysides the fascinating things
they are. And how we love these

2IO THE FRIENDSHIP OF NATURE

hedges ! They yield surprises, from
pussy-willow time until the snow, and
even then above it the witch-hazel
waves its boughs. The autumn hedges
are the colour-bearers for the sombre
fields, and as the wind puffs, birds and
leaves whirl aloft.

Middle October comes, and all along
the road bouncing-Bet is laughing,
blue flax blooms in stone crannies,
and toad-flax spreads in the gravel
banks; iron-weed, yarrow, clover, ox-
eye daisies, are fresh as in hay-days,
and moth-mullein thrives in every
waste. Chestnut burrs relax from very
ripeness, and cast their freight upon
wood-sorrel, and burr-marigolds blaze
in the same places that the marsh-
marigolds gilded. Fall wheat is two
inches high and strawberries are in
flower; cider is flowing, and there are
flower patches on hillside apple trees.

THE LOOM OF AUTUMN 211

Nature lets loose her fancy to show
what she can do, setting at naught
man's wisdom, and mocking his fore-
casts and his calendars.

When October comes, the farmer
promptly takes out his air-tight stove
and plants it in his sitting-room, put-
ting therein a fire of coals to stifle out
what life remains in him after the
summer toil. When early twilights,
more than the cold, draw the house-
hold around its hearth-heart, the logs
piece out the scant day with their
treasured surplus of sunlight. Nature
draws out and gratifies each sense with
colour, perfume, heat, and all the while
the wood juices whistle a little tune,
learned long ago in sapling days, from
the peeping marsh frogs. When pine
cones add their incense to the flames,
with it returns the forest perfume, and
if we close the eyes, the thoughts go

212 THE FRIENDSHIP OF NATURE

springward to pink-pouched cypripedes
and hermit thrushes.

A few more golden days and now
once again the wind returns; low puffs,
sharp moaning from the east, then
northern gusts. October has but two
more days to live. Will the wind
drop to-night? No ! blow, rack, blow,
the stars glisten as if a veil had been
torn away between them and the earth.

Another day: the wind veers from
north to west and lessens; to-night
will bring a "killing frost." The
gardener draws the sashes on the violet
frames, covers the plant pit tightly
with straw mats, and muffles a few pet
border things to give them a last
chance. The farmer's wife takes in
her geraniums, slipped in old tin cans,
her amaryllis from the south porch, her
cacti and Fuchsias, putting them in the
warmest window of the kitchen, takes

THE LOOM OF AUTUMN 213

from the shed the apples spread for
drying, and tomatoes kept for seed,
and tucks an old quilt about her ragged
chrysanthemums.

Four o'clock and the wind dies
away, but leaves all its sharpness in
the air. How clear it is ! You can
trace all the distant hills, the ripples
on the waters of the Sound clearly
mark the currents, and the Long Island
shore, twelve miles across, is sharply
definite. Every twig snap resounds,
and the jay's scream is percussive. Ah !
they are nutting now, carrying the
acorns from the red oaks in the dell to
a hollow sassafras, and the squirrels
chuckle and look very wise. The air
is alert with a sense of change. You
are restless also, you cannot go indoors,
the garden of summer hours holds out
its begging hands, already cold and
bloodless.

214 THE FRIENDSHIP OF NATURE

To sleep, dear flowers, go to sleep;
your light must be blown out, but your
work is well done. Many messages
you have carried from the garden in
your persuasive language, many frail
humming-birds your hearts have held
and nourished, and you have drawn sun-
shine earthward to the sorrowful. Chil-
dren have kissed you, and you have
filled lonely hearts with bright mem-
ories. And you, dear roses, you have
veiled a silent breast in its earth sleep
and your fragrance followed the spirit
through the morning gates. By root
and bulb and seed, your forms are all
perpetuate.

Lie low, nasturtiums, release your
grasp, even your sharp tongues will not
save you. Carnations, your courage
only prolongs a useless struggle. Con-
volvuli, your cups were made for sweet
dew-wine, sherbet will break them.

THE LOOM OF AUTUMN 215

You alone, faithful honeysuckles that
wall the garden, have yet a lease.
When your vanilla-scented flowers van-
ish, your thick persistent leaves and
firm berries will shelter and feed the
winter birds. We will call you the
garden's Royal Inn; what bird have
you not harboured cheerfully, how
many little claws have signed your
register? Transients and steady lodg-
ers, prolific wrens that brought out
three broods of a season, robins that
only stopped to see how the straw-
berries and currants ripened, the oriole
who paused to fray a string, that bound
you once, that he might lash his sky
boat, and at evening the vesper-sparrow
came, and facing the glowing west
poured out his heart in song; and still
your hospitable thatch will shelter all
that ask, until fresh buds bring renewal.
Wide beds of bloom, you are already

21 6 THE FRIENDSHIP OF NATURE

changing; your sap has ebbed. Nature,
unhampered, never deals to death with
a painful, stinging blow. The bird
that the hawk grasps feels no pain : the
pang is deadened by a purposeful
mesmeric power.

Softly! the change is coming! In
the southwest the sky is a clear red,
fading through gold to a blue white.
The moon, many hours high, gives a
gradual icy light, and the clear air is
stinging. What is Autumn doing down
by the mill house? She is haggard
and cold, her weaving is falling away
and her shuttle is warping as with
trembling fingers she frees the leash
from the black frost hound, her exe-
cutioner. Away ! river, wall, trellis,
nothing impedes his blasting course !

A pall lies on the ground the first
morning after, but the next brings frost
flowers, which graft their fairy blossoms

THE LOOM OF AUTUMN 217

upon the heliotropes. The frozen sap
between the bark and stem, expanded
by the sun, turning into crystals the
second night, curving in the thread-
like shapes of its former channels,
covers the plants with gypsum flowers.
*****
The spell is breaking, Autumn's gar-
ish robe frays and tears, and, floating
away, a fragment catches here and
there, colouring the sere fields. Then
the East Wind whirls his trembling
mate up through the webless loom,
mocking its emptiness, and a gypsy
child, gathering fagots, binds the
warped shuttle in her pack. The mil-
ler rakes away the huddling dead leaves,
lest they should choke the flume, and,
heaping high, sets them ablaze. The
imprisoned gases mingle their opal-
escence with the smoke, and through
the flame appears the year's mirage
that we call Indian Summer.

A WINTER MOOD

" Here might I pause and bend in reverence
To Nature and the power of human mind."
Wordsworth.

Blow all the day, gray wind, blow
all the day ! Sweep the cold sky and
polish its jewels, sweep all the earth's
corners and release their vapours.
Blow all the day, gray wind, and bury
the wood-path in brown leaves; pluck
even the leaf rags from the tenacious
beeches, as the crow rends the last
shred from a carcass.

Whirl in the mottled sands, and
cover the bronze seaweeds, the gold
and silver shells, bits of wreckage
bright with barnacles, the drift fagots,
the tracks of the wader, and the ridged

A WINTER MOOD 219

sound waves, left by the beating of the
ebbing ocean. Call to the sand reeds :
their slender pipes have grown shrill
and they whistle an answer; they are
hoarse, their fluting is over.

Beat on the marshes ; the tawny grass
flattens and does not rise behind you.
Puff through the lane and salt meadows
— at last you have raised evil spirits;
the ghosts of burr-marigolds, of avens,
tick- trefoil, and goose-grass, like brock-
en witches, rise, and following in
your wake, fasten hooked claws to the
hide of the cattle, burrowing deep in
their rough coats, and flying aloft on
winged broomsticks, make a tour of
perpetuation. Brush heaps are smoul-
dering by the fields' edges; circle
about, then, gray wind, until the flame
devours them. Labour all day, gray
wind, but when the sun goes down,
cloud-curtained, cease, and bid the

220 THE FRIENDSHIP OF NATURE

wild sheep that graze in northern pas-
tures, drop their crystal fleece to wrap
the earth from winter.

7^ ^ y^ y^ ^

A morning in winter; can there be
morning in the dead season? There
is no dead season. Men say that it is
summer, or autumn, or winter, but
Nature has set no fixed bounds to her
actions, and does not perish when she
casts off her apparel, but, gathering her
forces to herself, prepares for new
effort. Nature knows but two changes,
putting forth and withdrawing, and
between these there is a constant tran-
sition. We call the first of them birth,
the last, death, and choose to surround
them with mystery. Nature, left to
herself, has gentle gradations, blending
all from the first breath to the last, as
she mingles the prismatic colours, with
no gap to measure where youth ends or

A WINTER MOOD 221

age begins. We fasten attributes to
things, and hold them there by mere
persistency. There is no really dead
season; there are no snows so deep but
somewhere in the firs the crossbill
holds his sign of the sacred legend, no
ice so thick but under it the warm
current stirs, no age so dreary that love
may not quicken it until eternal spring.
* ^^ * * *
The first snow fell in the night, not
deeply, but tenderly, shielding the
newly bared things from the grasp of
the ice. It came flake upon flake,
clinging, not driving pitiless; begin-
ning softly and ending as the late sun
pushed through the clouds, and yawned,
uncertain whether to rise or to take one
more nap, letting his pale hair straggle
on the cloud pillows; then succumbing,
wrapped the mist once more about
him.

222 THE FRIENDSHIP OF NATURE

What silence ! the cold has chained
even the waves of sound, and the new
snow muffles the echoes. Open the
frost-engraved window; the air enters
in half-vapourized particles, cutting
the throat and nostrils like diamond
dust. Yellow light covers the snow,
not sunlight nor light from the sun's
direction, but a weighed-down refrac-
tion; the solid brown sky shades to
buff toward the eastward, the landscape
perspective is altered, and there are
no shadows. The sociable, nestling
snow has no depth and thaws at a
breath, yet it is a magician, writing
cheerful winter on everything, and it
is the fitting interpreter for the sea-
son of silence, when Nature's voice is
hushed and she is less responsive.

There comes a faint, lisping chirp,
and a flock of white-vested juncos
wheel from the arbour. Many hopes

A WINTER MOOD 223

of food and shelter for birds surround
a dwelling whose deep porches are
hung with evergreen honeysuckle, with
a garden arbour or two, and a copse of
pine, fir, and hemlocks, or hedges of
arbor-vitae, the true life trees. When
snow and frost bury all other sources of
food, then do not forget to scatter a
handful of buckwheat, oats, or crumbs
to the pensioners. How inexpressibly
dear are these lodgers that we shelter;
they keep the eye keen and the heart
warm in the waiting. The titmice are
fearless, and come within hand-reach
as they pry in and out or play hide-
and-seek about the knot holes with the
pine finch and nuthatch; they are very
sociable and court rather than reject
human society.

Come out, then, under the sky.
The north wind has made rifts in the
clouds and the sun comes and goes at

224 THE FRIENDSHIP OF NATURE

pleasure. The snow has dropped from
the firs and now only lightens their
shadows, and on the ground acts as a
tablet of wax to receive the etched
impressions of the trees; sharp grass
blades pierce through the depressions
and little thaw pools outline the foot-
path. On a day like this, forms are
unmuffled and the lines are clear cut.
The trees show all their muscles and
sinews, and the rocks, brightly stained
by lichens, peer between their grim
boles. Now the reign of the ever-
greens— trees, ferns, and mosses — •
triumphantly begins. The Christmas
tree by the hearth centres the heart-
beats of winter, and its mates in the
copse take out of doors the same
Christmas feeling, and spreading their
loving arms draw the brave little birds
to shelter, and, to satisfy their hunger,
dangle before them well-thatched cone-
granaries.

A WINTER MOOD 225

In groups and lines straggling to the
meadow are pines, spruces, and firs.
In the wild fields the cedars, looking
so black in the distance, grow warm-
hued on nearer acquaintance, and on
the ground the juniper bushes seem like
the nests of the obsolete dodo.

Black and white winter, are you both
flowerless and songless? It may seem
so, but there is both music and colour;
for the tones of winter are as really
distinctive as those of all other seasons.
If you search, as you have done each
day, in the spring, summer, or autumn,
you will find constantly a new beauty,
a fresh surprise. For birds, you may
see hereabouts, upwards of thirty
species between late November and
early March; not all in one day, or
one month even, but scattered accord-
ing to food and to changes of tempera-
ture. The juncos and snowflakes, birds

Q

226 THE FRIENDSHIP OF NATURE

of the most rigorous weather, owls
small and large, hen hawks, crows,
jays, and shrikes. Robins, bluebirds,
and song-sparrows are kept with us by
genial weather, as well as the purple
finches, crossbills, siskins, nuthatches,
titmice, winter-wrens, the golden-
crowned kinglet, and the edge of the
woodpecker tribe. In the salt mead-
ows you may see the field and shore
larks, wild ducks and geese, and in the
stubble the quail, and perhaps a few
wild pigeons in the thin woods.

Let us go up the road to the lane
that winds round the hill until it, by
twisting, caps it — the lane where the
wild apples bloomed in May. The
first impression is of sombreness. The
thin snow carpets the road to the stone
wall, but through it break sprays of
the smoky-seeded goldenrod, and the
skeleton nests of wild carrot, while by

A WINTER MOOD 227

the gate a barberry bush glows with
coral, and upon this gate some quail
are perching. Surely here is colour
enough. The birds walk away uncon-
cernedly, with long strides, like warmly
coated little boys who tramp in the
snow for amusement. The road cuts
through a trap-crest, and the deep blue
stone, stained and streaked with rusty
brown where it faces the weather, adds
one more tint to the palet. In the
field on the left are the telltale tracks
of wild rabbits — hop, sit! hop, sit!
The trail runs through the bushes and
under the fence; there they are mak-
ing a feast of cast-away turnips.

The split, empty milkweed pods
point upward with their sharp fingers,
and the black-purple berries shine on
the polished green strands of cat-brier.
It seems more like a metal than any-
thing organic and living, as it grasps

228 THE FRIENDSHIP OF NATURE

your clothing tightly and winds you
into its clutches. I think this vine
must have been the model for the
treacherous barbed-wire fencing, and
its hooks are often the meat-safe where
the butcher-bird hangs his provisions.
No wonder that the chat feels secure
from nest-hunters when he builds in a
cat-brier tangle.

Beyond is a crimson patch of sumach
berries, with their steeple-shaped
bunches, and the bitter-sweet hangs
its red quartered fruit nigh in the top
of a cedar. Something is fluttering
there, pulling and pecking at the
berries; soon the black, polished beak
and cinnamon crest of the cedar-bird
emerges and the vibrations of the
dense green branches indicate others.
Winter birds seldom go far from houses
in their haunts or habits of feeding,
but seem to say quiescently : " We are

A WINTER MOOD 229

but few; let us huddle together. If the
snow hides our food, we will go near
to man's dwellings, and he will see
that we are fed and protected. He
may, perhaps, shoot a great owl, or the
hawk, and the marsh duck, but he will
seldom hurt us, for we are the King's
minstrels. So we love man, for with-
out him, his houses, gardens, and
orchards, to shield us, the hawk and
the shrike would prevail over us, and in
the forests we never dare to warble as
freely as we do in the hedges."

The narrowing lane is quite birdless,
in spite of the red-berried alders and
the thistles, that have not all scattered
their winged seeds, and the ghostly
sprays of the asters. The wild rose
stalks glow red, as if new blood was
already flowing, and the raspberry
canes are pink with a pearly bloom.
Through the tangles of underbrush the

230 THE FRIENDSHIP OF NATURE

white mottled trunks of the silver birch
pole their way, and the cupped seed-
pods of the tulip tree give a dice-like
rattle in the wind. Look forward and
back at the thick woods of chestnut,
and the oaks with gray trunks, stretch-
ing in the distance. The orchard
twists iron-black branches where the
jays jeer, as they quarry the frozen
apples. The lane runnel is skimmed
by a crust of ice, which is broken and
jagged in places, and across it lies a
chestnut, felled years ago and aban-
doned as worthless until, nibbled by
fungi and lichens, it is slowly resolv-
ing into earth particles. In the border
of the swamp the long cat-tail flags,
gone to seed, wave wool-white, as if
the missing tails of Bo Peep's flock
were awaiting their owners.

Under the path the runnel drops and
flows over the stones; the green weeds

A WINTER MOOD 23 1

on the bottom sway as they do at mid-
summer. Dip your hand in the water;
it warms more than chills you. Under-
neath the bushes the ground-pine is
spicy, and the thrifty club mosses make
miniature forests. The frailer ferns
have vanished, but the hardy asple-
niums, aspidiums, and the rock poly-
pody still keep their fronds, and the
mosses, with their seed-vessels held
like fixed bayonets, swarm in armies
and flourish where the surface is grass-
less. Mats of Sphagnum cover the bog,
and cupped lichens fill in the cracks
of the rocks and gnarled trees.

Stop! here by the wall, in a sun-
streak, the witch-hazel shows its gold
threads; pause as you pass, and listen
to its story of the winter-opening
flower, of youth in old age.

Zigzag goes the lane to the top of
the hill; a pasture, whose bars were

232 THE FRIENDSHIP OF NATURE

left down, when in November the last
cow walked through, holds an old
chestnut, and from it a flock of crows
have just flown. In the next field,
which marks the edge of a clearing,
the cornstalks are stacked like the tents
of an Indian village, and the field mice
rustle in and out among them, the
crows keeping a jealous watch. On
the edge of the farm-house piazza some
fowl are roosting, and give a life touch
with their red combs and gray and
white feathers. How welcome seems
the smoke that floats from the stone
chimney, and how pleasant is the greet-
ing that comes from the geraniums
inside the window, who turn their
blooms to the glass as if they tried to
keep count of the passers. The bark
of the ragged brown collie sounds
cheerfully human; he curves his back
and wags his tail in a most apologetic

A WINTER MOOD 233

manner, as if to say, " I must bark for
my living, but you know that I am
really quite glad to see you."

This is home, the hand-mark of
man close on the edge of the woods.
At night, a light from the window will
traverse the darkness, breaking and
dispersing it, as the eye of the Maker
beamed through the void. With the
dwelling we find the birds again. The
snowflake, whose soft coat is white,
with the brown leaf stains of autumn;
the Canada nuthatch walks, head down,
round a plane tree, and a winter-wren
peeps out from the woodpile. For a
little while the sun again overcomes
the clouds, and you can hear the soft
drip of the snow thawing on the fences,
and the "day, day, day," of the tit-
mouse makes music. One more turn
and we gain the hill-top; we are above
the world and surrounded by pic-

234 THE FRIENDSHIP OF NATURE

turesque winter. The water of the
Sound is gray-bkie, but with the chang-
ing flaws it wears as many hues as the
moods of the stirring winds. Not a
sail is to be seen nor even a smoke
puff. Two lighthouses stand at the
reef-points, the tide creeps over the
sand beach in a crescent. By the mouth
of the creek, the bells of St. Mary's
hang silent, the gulls sweep about and
float on the water, and clattering, flock
on the long sand bars. Next lies the
village, with its various houses nestled
among the bare elms, a rampart of out-
lines. To the east^vard stand tall chim-
neys that breathe flame and cinders, a
factory city, whose thin, piercing spires
are partly hidden by smoke.

Look at these chimneys also, though
they break the harmonious circle, we
must wear clothes and we must eat, for
we may not all find sweetness in white

A WINTER AIOOD 235

oak acorns, like Thoreau. In winter,
which lays bare the earth, man's needs
appear, and intensify his personal limi-
tations. Mutual dependence, and not
isolation, was the plan of creation.
Man needs the earth, and the earth
needs man's stamp of progression.

From the village, the hill rolls up-
ward to our feet, and parting and
meeting again the hills sweep on until
they are shut off by the sky cover.
Farms near at hand, farms on the
slopes, farms standing boldly against
the horizon, and over all the white
wings of the dove of peace are folded.

At last the sun fiercely breaks the
clouds and drops to a majestic setting.
There is no winter, if you can view
it from this point, only the splendour
of a tense concentration, of a power
beyond the present. The snow grows
purple, the clouds dive down the hori-

236 THE FRIENDSHIP OF NATURE

zon, the sun, in the southwest, has now
reached its solstitial turning.

Is winter the end or a clearer begin-
ning? The wind goes abroad and
drives the sound of the surf into the
pine tops, the blue jays have vanished.
The owl still keeps in his cover, but the
titmouse creeps closer and nods gaily.
Can this crystalline transformation be
the year in its dotage, a vague second
childhood? Age and winter should
take for their sign the witch-hazel, the
flower of unconquered hope. There is
no winter or age for the heart that feels
Nature's throbbings, and crowns the
earth's beauty with human brotherhood.
White-haired frost is not decay's grim-
visaged servant, but a transmuter, wear-
ing invisible on its breast the circle
sign of the whole plan.

Our Dr. Holmes, a little past his
seventieth birthday, wrote in a letter

A WINTER MOOD lyj

thus:^ "It is a mixed kind of feeling
with which one reaches the top of this
Pisgah and peeps over into the mists
that hover over Jordan. I felt as if
Bryant was old and out of sight on his
seventieth birthday, but now — bless
me ! why, what did the Psalmist mean
with his 'threescore years and ten'?
Think of Tennyson, of Gladstone, of
Disraeli, of the stout old fellows who
ride to the hounds in England — of
old Radetsky — and the possibilities
— think of Thomas Parr! Think of
Henry Jenkins ! That is the way one
feels and talks to himself when he finds
himself driven into that fast-narrowing
corner, where the drivers — the deaf,
inexorable years — have at last edged
us almost without our knowing they
were driven. The horizon flies as we
travel westward, the sun goes back as it
^Unpublished letter in author's possession.

238 THE FRIENDSHIP OF NATURE

did for Joshua. At fifty years seventy
seemed like sunset. At seventy, we
find it is as yet only cheerful, shining
afternoon. Nature has more artifices
than all the human conjurers that ever
lived." This is the witch-hazel spirit,
the talisman for the twilight of year or
years.

The shadows grow more purple, twigs
snap, and ice-strands web the thaw
pools. The distant water blackens
and swallows the flashes from the
beacon. Smoking clouds linger above
the sunset; then night gathers her gar-
ments close. But the titmouse, retreat-
ing to his hole, still declares that it is
"day! day! day!"

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IV. A Stratford Chronicle.

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VI. Beauties of France.

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