7\

V

IN MEMORY OF
WILLIAM C. HABBERLEY

. Comp.

BIRDS IN THE BUSH. i6mo, $1.25.
A RAMBLER'S LEASE. i6mo, $1.25.

HOUGHTON, MIFFLIN & CO.

BOSTON AND NEW YORK.

A RAMBLER'S LEASE

BY

BRADFORD TORREY

I have known many laboring men that have got good estates
in this valley. — BUNYAN
Sunbeams, shadows, butterflies, and birds. — WORDSWORTH

BOSTON AND NEW YORK
HOUGHTON, MIFFLIN AND COMPANY

Press, Camfcri&0e
1892

iv PREFATORY NOTE.

matter, he cannot help thinking that some
of his more prosperous neighbors would
do well, in legal phrase, to perfect their
titles. He would gladly be of service to
them in this regard.

CONTENTS.

PAG*

MY REAL ESTATE

A WOODLAND INTIMATE . . . . . 22

AN OLD ROAD

CONFESSIONS OF A BIRD'S-NEST HUNTBR . . 70
A GREEN MOUNTAIN CORN-FIELD .

BEHIND THE EYE 114

A NOVEMBER CHRONICLE I21

NEW ENGLAND WINTER :

A MOUNTAIN-SIDE RAMBLE ....

A PITCH-PINE MEDITATION :

ESOTERIC PERIPATETICISM

BUTTERFLY PSYCHOLOGY 206

BASHFUL DRUMMER* 214

2 M Y REAL ESTATE.

tively unremunerative. Here in New Eng-
land (I know not what may be true else-
where) there is a class of people whom it is
common to hear gossiped about compassion-
ately as "land poor." But, however scanty
the income to be derived from it, a landed
investment is at least substantial. It will
never fail its possessor entirely. If it starve
him, it will offer him a grave. It has the
prime quality of permanence. At the very
worst, it will last as long as it is needed.
Railroads may be "wrecked," banks be
broken, governments become bankrupt, and
we be left to mourn ; but when the earth
departs we shall go with it. Yes, the an-
cient form of speech is correct, — land is
real; as the modern phrase goes, translat-
ing Latin into Saxon, land is the thing ; and
though we can scarcely reckon it among
the necessaries of life, since so many do
without it, we may surely esteem it one of
the least dispensable of luxuries.

But I was beginning to speak of my tax-
bill, and must not omit to mention a further
advantage of real estate over other forms
of property. It is certain not to be over-
looked by the town assessors. Its pro-

MY REAL ESTATE. 3

prietor is never shut up to the necessity of
either advertising his own good fortune, or
else submitting to pay less than his right-
ful share of the public expenses, — a merci-
ful deliverance, for in such a strait, where
either modesty or integrity must go to the
wall, it is hard for human nature to be sure
of itself.

To my thinking there is no call upon a
man's purse which should be responded to
with greater alacrity than this of the tax-
gatherer. In what cause ought we to spend
freely, if not in that of home and country ?
I have heard, indeed, of some who do not
agree with me in this feeling. Possibly
tax -rates are now and then exorbitant.
Possibly, too, my own view of the subject
might be different were my quota of the
public levy more considerable. This year,
for instance, I am called upon for seventy-
three cents ; if the demand were for as
many dollars, who knows whether I might
not welcome it with less enthusiasm ? On
such a point it would be unbecoming for
tm& to speak. Enough that even with my
fraction of a dollar I am able to rejoice that
I have a share in all the town's multifa-

4 MY HEAL ESTATE.

rious outlay. If an additional fire-engine
is bought, or a new school-house built, or
the public library replenished, it is done in
part out of my pocket.

Here, however, let me make a single ex-
ception. I seldom go home (such language
still escapes me involuntarily) without find-
ing that one or another of the old roads
has been newly repaired. I hope that no
mill of my annual seventy or eighty cents
goes into work of that sort. The roads —
such as I have in mind — are out of the
way and little traveled, and, in my opin-
ion, were better left to take care of them-
selves. There is no artist but will testify
that a crooked road is more picturesque
than a straight one ; while a natural border
of alder bushes, grape-vines, Roxbury wax-
work, Virginia creeper, wild cherry, and
such like is an inexpensive decoration
of the very best sort, such as the Village
Improvement Society ought never to allow
any highway surveyor to lay his hands on,
unless in some downright exigency. What
a short -sigh ted policy it is that provides
for the comfort of the feet, but makes no
account of those more intellectual and spir-

MY REAL ESTATE. 0

itual pleasures which enter through the
eye! It may be answered, I know, that in
matters of general concern it is necessary
to consult the greatest good of the great-
est number ; and that, while all the inhab-
itants of the town are supplied with feet,
comparatively few of them have eyes.
There is force in this, it must be admitted.
Possibly the highway surveyor (the high-
wayman, I was near to writing) is not so
altogether wrong in his "improvements."
At all events, it is not worth while for me
to make ^the question one of conscience,
and go to jail rather than pay my taxes,
as Thoreau did. Let it suffice to enter my
protest. Whatever others may desire, for

myself, as often as I revisit W , I wish

to be able to repeat with unction the words
of W 's only poet,1 —

"How dear to ray heart are the scenes of my childhood ! "

And how am I to do that, if the " scenes "
have been modernized past recognition ?

1 Since this essay was originally published (in the Atlantic
Monthly) I have been assured that the author of The Old

Oaken Bucket was not born in W , but in the next town.

Being convinced against my will, however, and finding the
biographical dictionaries divided upon the point, I conclude
to let the text stand unaltered.

6 MY REAL ESTATE.

My own landed possessions are happily
remote from roads. Not till long after
my day will the " tide of progress " bring
them " into the market," as the real-estate
brokers are fond of saying. I have never
yet been troubled with the importunities
of would-be purchasers. Indeed, it is a prin-
cipal recommendation of woodland prop-
erty that one's sense of proprietorship is so
little liable to be disturbed. I often reflect
how altered the case would be were my
fraction of an acre in some peculiarly de-
sirable location near the centre of the vil-
lage. Then I could hardly avoid knowing
that the neighbors were given to speculat-
ing among themselves about my probable
selling price ; once in a while I should be
confronted with a downright offer ; and
what assurance could I feel that somebody
would not finally tempt me beyond my
strength, and actually buy me out ? As it
is, my land is mine ; and, unless extreme
poverty overtakes me, mine it is reasona-
bly certain to remain, till death shall sepa-
rate us.

Whatever contributes to render life in-
teresting and enjoyable goes so far toward

MY REAL ESTATE. 7

making difficult its final inevitable sur-
render ; and it must be confessed that the
thought of my wood-lot increases my other-
wise natural regret at being already so well
along on my journey. In a sense I feel my
own existence to be bound up with that of
my pine-trees ; or, to speak more exactly,
that their existence is bound up with mine.
For it is a sort of unwritten but inexora-
ble law in W , as in fact it appears to

be throughout New England, that no pine
must ever be allowed to reach more than
half its normal growth ; so that my trees
are certain to fall under the axe as soon as
their present owner is out of the way. I
am not much given to superstition. There
are no longer any dryads, it is to be pre-
sumed ; and if there were, it is not clear
that they would be likely to take up with
pines ; but for all that, I cherish an almost
affectionate regard for any trees with which
I have become familiar. I have mourned
the untimely fate of many ; and now, see-
ing that I have been entrusted with the
guardianship of these few, I hold myself
under a kind of sacred obligation to live as
long as possible, for their sakes.

8 MY REAL ESTATE.

It is now a little less than a fortnight
since I paid them a visit. The path runs
through the wood for perhaps half a mile ;
and, as I sauntered along, I heard every
few rods the thump of falling acorns,
though there was barely wind enough to
sway the tree-tops. " Mother Earth has
begun her harvesting in good earnest," I
thought. The present is what the squir-
rels call a good year. They will laugh and
grow fat. Their oak orchards have seldom
done better, the chestnut oaks in partic-
ular, the handsome, rosy-tipped acorns of
which are noticeably abundant.

This interesting tree, so like the chestnut
itself in both bark and leaf, is unfortu-
nately not to be found in my own lot; at
any rate, I have never discovered it there,
although it grows freely only a short dis-
tance away. But I have never explored
the ground with anything like thorough-
ness, and, to tell the truth, am not at all
certain that I know just where the bound-
aries run. In this respect my real estate is
not unlike my intellectual possessions ; con-
cerning which I often find it impossible to
determine what is actually mine and what

MY REAL ESTATE. 9

another's. I have written an essay before
now, and at the end been more or less in
doubt where to set the quotation marks.
For that matter, indeed, I incline to believe
that the whol 3 tract of woods in the midst
of which my little spot is situated belongs
to me quite as really as to the various per-
sons who claim the legal ownership. Not
many of these latter, I am confident, get a
better annual income from the property
than I do ; and even in law, we are told,
possession counts for nine points out of the
ten. They are never to be found at home
when I call, and I feel no scruple about
carrying away whatever I please. My treas-
ures, be it said, however, are chiefly of an
impalpable sort, — mostly thoughts and
feelings, though with a few flowers and
ferns now and then ; the one set about as
valuable as the other, the proprietors of the
land would probably think.

In one aspect of the case, the lot which
is more strictly my own is just now in a
very interesting condition, though one that,
unhappily, is far from being uncommon.
Except the pines already mentioned (only
six or eight in number), the wood was en-

10 MY REAL ESTATE.

tirely cut off a few years before I came
into possession, and at present the place is
covered with a thicket of vines, bushes, and
young trees, all engaged in an almost des-
perate struggle for existence. When the
ground was cleared, every seed in it be-
stirred itself and came up ; others made
haste to enter from without ; and ever since
then the battle has been going on. It is
curious to consider how changed the ap-
pearance of things will be at the end of
fifty years, should nature be left till then
to take its course. By that time the contest
will for the most part be over. At least
nineteen twentieths of all the plants that
enlisted in the fight will have been killed,
and where now is a dense mass of shrub-
bery will be a grove of lordly trees, with
the ground underneath broad -spaced and
clear. A noble result ; but achieved at
what a cost ! If one were likely himself to
live so long, it would be worth while to cat-
alogue the species now in the field, for the
sake of comparing the list with a similar
one of half a century later. The contrast
would be an impressive sermon on the mu-
tability of mundane things. But we shall

MY REAL ESTATE. H

be past the need of preaching, most of us,
before that day arrives, and not unlikely
shall have been ourselves preached about
in enforcement of the same trite theme.

Thoughts of this kind came to me the
other afternoon, as I stood in the path
(what is known as the town path cuts the
lot in two) and looked about. So much
was going on in this bit of earth, itself the
very centre of the universe to multitudes of
living things. The city out of which I had
come was not more densely populous. Here
at my elbow stood a group of sassafras
saplings, remnants of a race that has held
the ground for nobody knows how long.
One of my earliest recollections of the place
is of coming hither to dig for fragrant roots.
At that time it had never dawned upon me
that the owner of the land would some day
die, and leave it to me, his heir. How hard
and rocky the ground was ! And how hard
we worked for a very little bark ! Yet few
of my pleasures have lasted better. The
spicy taste is in my mouth still. Even in
those days I remarked the glossy green
twigs of this elegant species, as well as the
unique and beautiful variety of its leaves,

12 MY REAL ESTATE.

— some entire and oval, others mitten-
shaped, and others yet three-lobed ; an ex-
tremely pretty bit of originality, suiting
admirably with the general comely habit of
this tree. There are some trees, as some
men, that seem born to dress well.

Along with the sassafras I was delighted
to find one or two small specimens of the
flowering dogwood (Cornus florida), — an-
other original genius, and one which I now
for the first time became acquainted with
as a tenant of my own. Its deeply veined
leaves are not in any way remarkable (un-
less it be for their varied autumnal tints),
and are all fashioned after one pattern.
Its blossoms, too, are small and inconspic-
uous ; but these it sets round with large
white bracts (universally mistaken for
petals by the uninitiated), and in flower-
ing time it is beyond comparison the show-
iest tree in the woods, while its fruit is the
brightest of coral red. I hope these sap-
lings of mine may hold their own in the
struggle for life, arid be flourishing in all
their beauty when my successor goes to
look at them fifty years hence.

Having spoken of the originality of the

MY REAL ESTATE. 13

sassafras and the dogwood, I must not fail
to mention their more abundant neighbor,
the witch-hazel, or hainamelis. In com-
parison with its wild freak of singularity,
the modest idiosyncrasies of the other two
seem almost conventional. Why, if not for
sheer oddity's sake, should any bush in this
latitude hold back its blossoms till near the
edge of winter? As I looked at the half-
grown buds, clustered in the axils of the
yellow leaves, they appeared to be waiting
for the latter to fall, that they might have
the sunlight all to themselves. They will
need it, one would say, in our bleak No-
vember weather.

Overfull of life as my wild garden patch
was, it would not have kept its (human)
possessor very long from starvation. One
or two barberry bushes made a brave show
of fruitfulness ; but the handsome clusters
were not yet ripe, and even at their best
they are more ornamental than nutritive,
— though, after the frost has cooked them,
one may go farther and fare worse. A
few stunted maple-leaved viburnums (this
plant's originality is imitative, — a not un-
common sort, by the bye) proffered scanty

14 MY REAL ESTATE.

cymes of dark purplish drupes. Here and
there was a spike of red berries, belong-
ing to the false Solomon's - seal or false
spikenard (what a pity this worthy herb
should not have some less negative title !) ;
but these it would have been a shame to
steal from the grouse. Not far off a single
black alder was reddening its fruit, which
all the while it hugged close to the stem,
as if in dread lest some chance traveler
should be attracted by the bright color. It
need not have trembled, for this time at
least. I had just dined, and was tempted
by nothing save two belated blackberries,
the very last of the year's crop, and a single
sassafras leaf, mucilaginous and savory, ad-
mirable as a relish. A few pigeon-berries
might have been found, I dare say, had I
searched for them, and possibly a few spo-
radic checker-berries ; while right before
my eyes was a vine loaded with large
bunches of very small frost-grapes, such as
for hardness., would have served well enough
for school-boys' marbles. Everything has
its favorable side, however; and probably
the birds counted it a blessing that the
grapes were small and hard and sour ; else

MY REAL ESTATE. 15

greedy men would have come with baskets
and carried them all away. Except some
scattered rose - hips, I have enumerated
everything that looked edible, I believe,
though a hungry man's eyes might have
lengthened the list materially. The cherry-
trees, hickories, and oaks were not yet in
bearing, as the horticultural phrase is ; but
I was glad to run upon a clump of bay berry
bushes, which offer nothing good to eat, to
be sure, but are excellent to smell of. The
leaves always seem to invite crushing, and
I never withhold my hand.

Among the crowd of young trees — scrub
oaks, red oaks, white oaks, cedars, ashes,
hickories, birches, maples, aspens, sumachs,
and hornbeams — was a single tupelo. The
distinguished name honors my catalogue,
but I am half sorry to have it there. For,
with all its sturdiness, the tupelo does not
bear competition, and I foresee plainly
that my unlucky adventurer will inevitably
find itself overshadowed by more rapid
growers, and be dwarfed and deformed, if
not killed outright. Some of the very
strongest natures (and the remark is of
general application) require to be planted

16 MY REAL ESTATE.

in the open, where they can be free to de-
velop in their own way and at leisure. But
this representative of Nyssa multiflora took
the only chance that offered, I presume, as
the rest of us must do.

Happy the humble! who aspire not to
lofty things, demanding the lapse of years
for their fulfillment, but are content to set
before themselves some lesser task, such as
the brevity of a single season may suffice
to accomplish. Here were the asters and
golden -rods already finishing their course
in glory, while the tupelo was still barely
getting under way in a race which, how-
ever prolonged, was all but certain to ter-
minate in failure. Of the golden -rods I
noted four species, including the white —
which might appropriately be called sil-
very-rod — and the blue-stemmed. The
latter {Solidago ccesia) is to my eye the
prettiest of all that grow with us, though
it is nearly the least obtrusive. It is rarely,
if ever, found outside of woods, and ought
to bear some name (sylvan golden-rod, per-
haps) indicative of the fact.

As a rule, fall flowers have little deli-
cacy and fragrance. They are children of

MY REAL ESTATE. 17

the summer ; and, loving the sun, have had
almost an excess of good fortune. With
such pampering, it is no wonder they grow
rank and coarse. They would be more
than human, I was going to say, if they
did not. It is left for stern winter's pro-
geny, the blossoms of early spring-time,
who struggle upward through the snow and
are blown upon by chilly winds, — it is left
for these gentle creatures, at once so hardy
and so frail, to illustrate the sweet uses of
adversity.

All in all, it was a motley company
which I beheld thus huddled together in
my speck of forest clearing. Even the
lands beyond the sea were represented, for
here stood mullein and yarrow, contesting
the ground with oaks and hickories. The
smaller wood flowers were not wanting, of
course, though none of them were now in
bloom. Pyrola and winter - green, violets
(the common blue sort and the leafy-
stemmed yellow), strawberry and five-finger,
saxifrage and columbine, rock -rose and
bed-straw, self - heal and wood - sorrel, —
these, and no doubt many more, were there,
filling the chinks otherwise unoccupied.

18 MY REAL ESTATE.

My assortment of ferns is small, but I
noted seven species: the brake, the poly-
pody, the hay-scented, and four species of
shield - ferns, — Aspidium Noveboracense,
Aspidium spinulosum, variety intermedium,
Aspidium marginale, and the Christmas
fern, Aspidium acrostichoides. The last
named is the one of which I am proudest.
For years I have been in the habit of com-
ing hither at Christmas time to gather the
fronds, which are then as bright and fresh
as in June. Two of the others, the poly-
pody and Aspidium marginale, are ever-
green also, but they are coarser in texture
and of a less lively color. Writing of
these flowerless beauties, I am tempted to
exclaim again, " Happy the humble ! "
The brake is much the largest and stoutest
of the seven, but it is by a long time the
first to be cut down before the frost.

Should I ever meet with reverses, as the
wealthiest and most prudent are liable to
do, and be compelled to part with my
woodland inheritance, I shall count it ex-
pedient to seek a purchaser in the spring.
At that season its charms are greatly
enhanced by a lively brook. This comes

MY REAL ESTATE. 19

tumbling down the hill -side, dashing
against the bowlders (of which the land
has plenty), and altogether acting like a
thing not born to die ; but alas, the early
summer sees it make an end, to wait the
melting of next winter's snow. Many a
happy hour did I, as a youngster, pass
upon its banks, watching with wonder the
swarms of tiny insects which darkened the
foam and the snow, and even filmed the
surface of the brook itself. I marveled
then, as I do now, why such creatures
should be out so early. Possibly our very
prompt March friend, the phoebe, could
suggest an explanation.

A break in the forest is of interest not
only to such plants as I have been remark-
ing upon, but also to various species of
birds. No doubt the towhee, the brown
thrush, and the cat-bird found out this spot
years ago, and have been using it ever since
for summer quarters. Indeed, a cat-bird
snarled at me for an intruder this very
September afternoon, though he himself
was most likely nothing more than a chance
pilgrim going South. This member of the
noble wren family and near cousin of the

20 MY REAL ESTATE.

mocking-bird would be better esteemed if
he were to drop that favorite feline call of
his. But this is his bit of originality (imi-
tative, like the maple-leaved viburnum's),
and perhaps, if justice were done, it would
be put down to his credit rather than made
an occasion of ill-will.

Once during the afternoon a company of
chickadees happened in upon me ; and, tak-
ing my cue from the newspaper folk, I im-
mediately essayed an interview. My imi-
tation of their conversational notes was
hardly begun before one of the birds flew
toward me, and, alighting near by, pro-
ceeded to answer my calls with a mimicry
so exact, as fairly to be startling. To all
appearance the quick - witted fellow had
taken the game into his own hands. In-
stead of my deceiving him, he would prob-
ably go back and entertain his associates
with amusing accounts of how cleverly he
had fooled a stranger, out yonder in the
bushes.

It would have seemed a graceful and ap-
propriate acknowledgment of my rightful
ownership of the land on which the cat-
bird and the titmice were foraging, had

MY REAL ESTATE. 21

they greeted me with songs. But it would
hardly have been courteous for me to pro-
pose the matter, and evidently it did not
occur to them. At all events, I heard no
music except the hoarse and solemn assev-
erations of the katydids, the gentler mes-
sage of the crickets, and in the distance an
occasional roll-call of the grouse. My dog
— who is a much better sportsman than
myself, but whose companionship, I am
ashamed to see, has not till now been men-
tioned— was all the while making forays
hither and thither into the surrounding
woods ; and once in a while I heard, what
is the best of all music in his ears, the
whir of " partridge " wings. Likely as not
he thought it a queer freak on my part to
spend the afternoon thus idly, when with a
gun I might have been so much more profit-
ably employed. He could not know that
I was satiating myself with a miser's de-
lights, feasting my eyes upon my own. In
truth, I fancy he takes it for granted that
the whole forest belongs to me — and to
him. Perhaps it does. As I said just
now, I sometimes think so myself.

A WOODLAND INTIMATE.

Surely there are times
When they consent to own me of their kin,
And condescend to me, and call me cousin.

JAMES RUSSELL LOWELL.

IT is one of the enjoyable features of
bird study, as in truth it is of life in gen-
eral, that so many of its pleasantest expe-
riences have not to be sought after, but
befall us by the way ; like rare and beauti-
ful flowers, which are never more welcome
than when they smile upon us unexpect-
edly from the roadside.

One May morning I had spent an hour
in a small wood where I am accustomed to
saunter, and, coming out into the road on
my way home again, fell in with a friend.
" Would n't you like to see an oven-
bird's nest ? " I inquired. He assented, and
turning back, I piloted him to the spot.
The little mother sat motionless, just
within the door of her comfortable, roofed
house, watching us intently, but all uncon-

A WOODLAND INTIMATE. 23

scious, it is to be feared, of our admiring
comments upon her ingenuity and courage.
Seeing her thus devoted to her charge, I
wondered anew whether she could be so in-
nocent as not to know that one of the eggs
on which she brooded with such assiduity
was not her own, but had been foisted upon
her by a faithless cow-bird. To me, I must
confess, it is inexplicable that any bird
should be either so unobservant as not to
recognize a foreign egg at sight, or so easy-
tempered as not to insist on straightway
being rid of it ; though this is no more in-
scrutable, it may be, than for another bird
persistently, and as it were on principle, to
cast her own offspring upon the protection
of strangers ; while this, in turn, is not more
mysterious than ten thousand every-day oc-
currences all about us. After all, it is a
wise man that knows what to wonder at ;
while the wiser he grows the stronger is
likely to become his conviction that, little
as may be known, nothing is absolutely
unknowable ; that in the world, as in its
Author, there is probably " no darkness at
all," save as daylight is dark to owls and
bats. I did not see the oven-bird's eggs at

24 A WOODLAND INTIMATE.

this time, however, my tender-hearted com-
panion protesting that their faithful custo-
dian should not be disturbed for the grati-
fication of his curiosity. So we bade her
adieu, and went in pursuit of a solitary
vireo, just then overheard singing not far
off. A few paces brought him into sight,
and as we came nearer and nearer he stood
quite still on a dead bough, in full view,
singing all the while. When my friend
had looked him over to his satisfaction, —
never having met with such a specimen be-
fore, — I set myself to examine the lower
branches of the adjacent trees, feeling no
doubt, from the bird's significant behavior,
that his nest must be somewhere in the im-
mediate neighborhood. Sure enough, it was
soon discovered, hanging from near the end
of an oak limb ; a typical vireo cup, sus-
pended within the angle of two horizontal
twigs, with bits of newspaper wrought into
its structure, and trimmed outwardly with
some kind of white silky substance. The
female was in it (this, too, we might have
foreseen with reasonable certainty) ; but
when she flew off, it appeared that as yet
no eggs were laid. The couple manifested

A WOODLAND INTIMATE. 25

scarce any uneasiness at our investigations,
and we soon came away ; stopping, as we
left the wood, to spy out the nest of a scar-
let tanager, the feminine builder of which
was just then busy with giving it some fin-
ishing touches.

It had been a pleasant stroll, I thought,
— nothing more ; but it proved to be the
beginning of an adventure which, to me at
least, was in the highest degree novel and
interesting.

I ought, perhaps, to premise that the sol-
itary vireo (called also the blue-headed vi-
reo and the blue-headed greenlet) is strictly
a bird of the woods. It belongs to a dis-
tinctively American family, and is one of
five species which are more or less abun-
dant as summer residents in Eastern Mas-
sachusetts, being itself in most places the
least numerous of the five, and, with the
possible exception of the white -eye, the
most retiring. My own hunting-grounds
happen to be one of its favorite resorts
(there is none better in the State, I suspect),
so that I am pretty certain of having two
or three pairs under my eye every season,
within a radius of half a mile. I have

26 A WOODLAND INTIMATE.

found a number of nests, also, but till this
year had never observed any marked pecu-
liarity of the birds as to timidity or fear-
lessness. Nor do I now imagine that any
such strong race peculiarity exists. What
I am to describe I suppose to be nothing
more than an accidental and unaccount-
able idiosyncrasy of the particular bird in
question. Such freaks of temperament are
more or less familiar to all field natural-
ists, and may be taken as extreme develop-
ments of that individuality which seems to
be the birthright of every living creature,
no matter how humble. At this very mo-
ment I recall a white - throated sparrow,
overtaken some years ago in an unfre-
quented road, whose tameness was entirely
unusual, and, indeed, little short of ridicu-
lous.

Three or four days after the walk just
now mentioned I was again in the same
wood, and went past the vireos' nest, pay-
ing no attention to it beyond noting that
one of the birds, presumed to be the female,
was on duty. But the next morning, as I
saw her again, it occurred to me to make
an experiment. So, quitting the path sud-

A WOODLAKD INTIMATE. 27

denly, I walked as rapidly as possible
straight up to the nest, a distance of per-
haps three rods, giving her no chance to
slip off, with the hope of escaping unper-
ceived. The plan worked to a charm, or
so I flattered myself. When I came to a
standstill my eyes were within a foot or
two of hers ; in fact, I could get no nearer
without running my head against the
branch; yet she sat quietly, apparently
without a thought of being driven from her
post, turning her head this way and that,
but making no sound, and showing not the
least sign of anything like distress. A
mosquito buzzed about my face, and I
brushed it off. Still she sat undisturbed.
Then I placed my hand against the bottom
of the nest. At this she half rose to her
feet, craning her neck to see what was going
on, but the moment I let go she settled
back upon her charge. Surprised and de-
lighted, I had no heart to pursue the mat-
ter further, and turned away ; declaring to
myself that, notwithstanding I had half
promised a scientific friend the privilege of
" taking " the nest, such a thing should
now never be done with my consent. Be-

28 A WOODLAND INTIMATE.

fore I could betray a confidence like this,
I must be a more zealous ornithologist or
a more unfeeling man, — or both at once.
Science ought to be encouraged, of course,
but not to the outraging of honor and com-
mon decency.

On the following day, after repeating
such amenities as I had previously indulged
in, I put forth my hand as if to stroke the
bird's plumage ; seeing which, she raised
her beak threateningly and emitted a very
faint deprecatory note, which would have
been inaudible at the distance of a few
yards. At the same time she opened and
shut her bill, not snappishly, but slowly, —
a nervous action, simply, it seemed to me.

Twenty-four hours later I called again,
and was so favorably received that, besides
taking hold of the nest, as before, I brushed
her tail feathers softly. Then I put my
hand to her head, on which she pecked my
finger in an extremely pretty, gentle way, —
more like kissing than biting, — and made
use of the low murmuring sounds just now
spoken of. Her curiosity was plainly wide
awake. She stretched her neck to the ut-
most to look under the nest, getting upon

A WOODLAND INTIMATE. 29

her feet for the purpose, till I expected
every moment to see her slip away ; but
presently she grew quiet again, and I with-
drew, leaving her in possession.

By this time a daily interview had come
to be counted upon as a matter of course,
by me certainly, and, for aught I know,
by the vireo as well. On my next visit I
stroked the back of her head, allowed her
to nibble the tip of my finger, and was
greatly pleased with the matter-of-fact man-
ner in which she captured an insect from
the side of the nest, while leaning out to
oversee my manoeuvres. Finally, on my
offering to lay my left hand upon her, she
quit her seat, and perched upon a twig,
fronting me ; and when I put my finger to
her bill she flew off. Even now she made
no outcry, however, but fell immediately to
singing in tones of absolute good -humor,
and before I had gone four rods from the
tree was back again upon the eggs. Of
these, I should have said, there were four,
— the regular complement, — all her own.
Expert as cow-birds are at running a block-
ade, it would have puzzled the shrewdest of
them to smuggle anything into a nest so
sedulously guarded.

80 A WOODLAND INTIMATE.

Walking homeward, I bethought myself
how foolish I had been not to offer my little
protegee something to eat. Accordingly, in
the morning, before starting out, I filled a
small box with leaves from the garden
rose-bush, which, as usual, had plenty of
plant-lice upon it. Armed in this manner,
as perhaps no ornithologist ever went armed
before, — I approached the nest, and to my
delight saw it still unharmed (I never came
in sight of it without dreading to find it
pillaged) ; but just as I was putting my
hand into my pocket for the box, off started
the bird. Here was a disappointment in-
deed ; but in the next breath I assured my-
self that the recreant must be the male, who
for once had been spelling his companion.
So I fell back a little, and in a minute or
less one of the pair went on to brood. This
was the mother, without question, and I
again drew near. True enough, she wel-
comed me with all her customary polite-
ness. No matter what her husband might
say, she knew better than to distrust an
inoffensive, kind -hearted gentleman like
myself. Had I not proved myself such
time and again ? So I imagined her to be

A WOODLAND INTIMATE. 31

reasoning. At all events, she sat quiet and
unconcerned ; apparently more unconcerned
than her visitor, for, to tell the truth, I was
so anxious for the success of this crowning
experiment that I actually found myself
trembling. However, I opened my store of
dainties, wet the tip of my little finger, took
up an insect, and held it to her mandibles.
For a moment she seemed not to know
what it was, but soon she picked it off and
swallowed it. The second one she seized
promptly, and the third she reached out to
anticipate, exactly as a tame canary might
have done. Before I could pass her the
fourth she stepped out of the nest, and
took a position upon the branch beside it ;
but she accepted the morsel, none the less.
And an extremely pretty sight it was, — a
wild wood bird perched upon a twig and
feeding from a man's finger !

She would not stay for more, but flew to
another bough ; whereupon I resumed my
ramble, and, as usual, she covered the eggs
again before I could get out of sight. When
I returned, in half an hour or thereabouts, I
proffered her a mosquito, which I had saved
for that purpose. She took it, but presently

32 A WOODLAND INTIMATE.

let it drop. It was not to her taste, prob-
ably, for shortly afterward she caught one
herself, as it came fluttering near, and dis-
carded that also ; but she ate the remain-
der of ray rose-bush parasites, though I was
compelled to coax her a little. Seemingly,
she felt that our proceedings were more or
less irregular, if not positively out of charac-
ter. Not that she betrayed any symptoms
of nervousness or apprehension, but she re-
peatedly turned away her head, as if deter-
mined to refuse all further overtures. In
the end, nevertheless, as I have said, she ate
the very last insect I had to give her.

During the meal she did something which
as a display of nonchalance was really
amazing. The eggs got misplaced, in the
course of her twisting about, and after vainly
endeavoring to rearrange them with her
feet, as I had seen her do on several occa-
sions, she ducked her head into the nest,
clean out of sight under her feathers, and
set matters to rights with her beak. I was
as near to her as I could well be, without
having her actually in my hand, yet she
deliberately put herself entirely off guard,
apparently without the slightest misgiving !

A WOODLAND INTIMATE. 33

Fresh from this adventure, and all aglow
with pleasurable excitement, I met a friend
in the city, a naturalist of repute, and one
of the founders of the American Ornitholo-
gists' Union. Of course I regaled him with
an account of my wonderful vireo (he was
the man to whom I had half promised the
nest) ; and on his expressing a wish to see
her, I invited him out for the purpose that
very afternoon. I smile to remember how
full of fears I was, as he promptly accepted
the invitation. The bird, I declared to my-
self, would be like the ordinary baby, who,
as everybody knows, is never so stupid as
when its fond mother would make a show
of it before company. Yesterday it was so
bright and cunning ! Never was baby like
it. Yesterday it did such and such unheard-
of things ; but to-day, alas, it will do noth-
ing at all. However, I put on a bold face,
filled my pen -box with rose-leaves, ex-
changed my light-colored hat for the black
one in which my pet had hitherto seen me,
furnished my friend with a field-glass, and
started with him for the wood. The nest
was occupied (I believe I never found it
otherwise), and, stationing my associate in

34 A WOODLAND INTIMATE.

a favorable position, I marched up to it,
when, lo, the bird at once took wing. This
was nothing to be disconcerted about, the
very promptness of the action making it
certain that the sitter must have been the
male. The pair were both in sight, and the
female would doubtless soon fill the place
which her less courageous lord had deserted.
So it turned out, and within a minute
everything was in readiness for a second es-
say. This proved successful. The first
insect was instantly laid hold of, whereupon
I heard a suppressed exclamation from be-
hind the field-glass. When I rejoined my
friend, having exhausted my supplies, noth-
ing would do but he must try something of
the kind himself. Accordingly, seizing my
hat, which dropped down well over his ears,
he made up to the tree. The bird pecked
his finger familiarly, and before long he
came rushing back to the path, exclaiming
that he must find something with which to
feed her. After overturning two or three
stones he uncovered an ant's nest, and
moistening his forefinger, thrust it into a
mass of eggs. With these he hastened to
the vireo. She helped herself to them ea-

A WOODLAND INTIMATE. 35

gerly, and I could hear him counting, " One,
two, three, four," and so on, as she ate
mouthful after mouthful.

Now, then, he wished to examine the
contents of the nest, especially as it was the
first of its kind that he had ever seen out-
of-doors. But the owner was set upon not
giving him the opportunity. He stroked
her head, brushed her wings, and, as my
note-book puts it, " poked her generally ; "
and still she kept her place. Finally, as he
stood on one side of her and I on the other,
we pushed the branch down, down, till she
was fairly under our noses. Then she
stepped off ; but even now, it was only to
alight on the very next twig, and face us
calmly ! and we had barely started away
before we saw her again on* duty. Brave
bird ! My friend was exceedingly pleased,
and I not less so ; though the fact of her
making no difference between us was some-
thing of a shock to my self-conceit, en-
deavor as I might to believe that she had
welcomed him, if not in my stead, yet at
least as my friend. What an odd pair we
must have looked in her eyes ! Possibly she
had heard of the new movement for the pro-

36 A WOODLAND INTIMATE.

tection of American song-birds, and took us
for representatives of the Audubon Society.

Desiring to make some fresh experiment,
I set out the next morning with a little
water and a teaspoon, in addition to my
ordinary outfit of rose-leaves. The mother
bird was at home, and without hesitation
dipped her bill into the water, — the very
first solitary vireo, I dare be bound, that
ever drank out of a silver spoon ! After-
wards I gave her the insects, of which she
swallowed twenty-four as fast as I could
pick them up. Evidently she was hungry,
and appreciated my attentions. There was
nothing whatever of the coquettishness
which she had sometimes displayed. On
the contrary, she leaned forward to wel-
come the tidbits, one by one, quite as if it
were the most natural thing in the world
for birds to be waited upon in this fashion
by their human admirers. Toward the end,
however, a squirrel across the way set up
a loud bark, and she grew nervous ; so that
when it came to the twenty-fifth louse,
which was the last I could find, she was
too much preoccupied to care for it.

At this point a mosquito stung my neck,

A WOODLAND INTIMATE. 37

and, killing it, I held it before her. She
snapped at it in a twinkling, but retained
it between her mandibles. Whether she
would finally have swallowed it I am not
able to say (and so must leave undecided a
very interesting and important question in
economic ornithology), for just then I re-
membered a piece of banana with which I
had been meaning to tempt her. Of this
she tasted at once, and, as I thought, found
it good ; for she transfixed it with her bill,
and, quitting her seat, carried it away and
deposited it on a branch. But instead of
eating it, as I expected to see her do, she
fell to fly-catching, while her mate promptly
appeared, and as soon as opportunity of-
fered took his turn at brooding. My eyes,
meanwhile, had not kept the two distinct,
and, supposing that the mother had re-
turned, I stepped up to offer her another
drink, but had no sooner filled the spoon
than the fellow took flight. At this the
female came to the rescue again, and un-
hesitatingly entered the nest. It was a
noble reproof, I thought; well deserved,
and very handsomely administered. " Oh,
you cowardly dear," I fancied her saying,

38 A WOODLAND INTIMATE.

" he '11 not hurt you. See me, now ! I 'm
not afraid. He 's queer, I know ; but he
means well."

I should have mentioned that while the
squirrel was barking she uttered some very
pretty sotto voce notes of two kinds, — one
like what I have often heard, and one en-
tirely novel.

A man ought to have lived with such a
creature, year in and out, and seen it under
every variety of mood and condition, before
imagining himself possessed of its entire
vocabulary. For who doubts that birds,
also, have their more sacred and intimate
feelings, their esoteric doctrines and ex-
periences, which are not proclaimed upon
the tree-top, but spoken under breath, in
all but inaudible twitters ? Certainly this
pet of mine on sundry occasions whispered
into my ear things which I had never heard
before, and as to the purport of which, in
my ignorance of the vireonian tongue, I
could only conjecture. For my own part,
I am through with thinking that I have
mastered all the notes of any bird, even the
commonest.

I wondered, by the bye, whether my

A WOODLAND INTIMATE. 39

speech was as unintelligible to the greenlet
as hers was to me. I trust, at all events,
that she divined a meaning in the tones,
however she may have missed the words ;
for I never called without telling her how
much I admired her spirit. She was all
that a bird ought to be, I assured her, good,
brave, and handsome; and should never
suffer harm, if I could help it. Alas ! al-
though, as the apostle says, I loved " not in
word, but in deed and in truth," yet when
the pinch came I was somewhere else, and
all my promises went for nothing.

Our intercourse was nearing its end. It
was already the 10th of June, and on the
12th I was booked for a journey. During
my last visit but one it gratified me not
a little to perceive that the wife's example
and reproof had begun to tell upon her
mate. He happened to be in the nest as I
came up, and sat so unconcernedly while I
made ready to feed him that I took it for
granted I was dealing with the female, till
at the last moment he slipped away. I
stepped aside for perhaps fifteen feet, and
waited briefly, both birds in sight. Then
the lady took her turn at sitting, and I

40 A WOODLAND INTIMATE.

proceeded to try again. She behaved like
herself, made free with a number of insects,
and then, all at once, for no reason that I
could guess at, she sprang out of the nest,
and alighted on the ground within two
yards of my feet, and almost before I could
realize what had occurred was up in the
tree. I had my eyes upon her, determined,
if possible, to keep the pair distinct, and suc-
ceeded, as I believed, in so doing. Pretty
soon the male (unless I was badly de-
ceived) went to the nest with a large in-
sect in his bill, and stood for some time be-
side it, eating and chattering. Finally he
dropped upon the eggs, and, seeing him
grown thus unsuspicious, I thought best to
test him once more. This time he kept his
seat, and with great condescension ate two
of my plant-lice. But there he made an
end. Again and again I put the third one
to his mouth ; but he settled back obsti-
nately into the nest, and would have none
of it. For once, as it seemed, he could be
brave ; but he was not to be coddled, or
treated like a baby — or a female. There
were good reasons, of course, for his being
less hungry than his mate, and conse-

A WOODLAND INTIMATE. 41

quently less appreciative of such favors as
I had to bestow ; but it was very amusing
to see how tightly he shut his bill, as if his
mind were made up, and no power on earth
should shake it.

If any inquisitive person raises the ques-
tion whether I am absolutely certain of
this bird's being the male, I must answer
in the negative. The couple were dressed
alike, as far as I could make out, save that
the female was much the more brightly
washed with yellow on the sides of the
body ; and my present discrimination of
them was based upon close attention to
this point, as well as upon my careful and
apparently successful effort not to confuse
the two, after the one which I knew to be
the female (the one, that is, which had
done most of the sitting, and had all along
been so very familiar) had joined the other
among the branches. I had no downright
proof, it must be acknowledged, nor could
I have had any without killing and dissect-
ing the bird ; but my own strong convic-
tion was and is that the male had grown
fearless by observing my treatment of his
spouse, but from some difference of taste,

42 A WOODLAND INTIMATE.

or, more probably, for lack of appetite,
found himself less taken than she had com-
monly been with my rather meagre bill of
fare.

This persuasion, it cannot be denied,
was considerably shaken the next morning,
when I paid my friends a parting call. The
father bird, forgetful of his own good ex-
ample of the day before, and mindless of
all the proprieties of such a farewell occa-
sion, slipped incontinently from the eggs
just as I was removing the cover from my
pen-box. Well, he missed the last oppor-
tunity he was likely ever to have of break-
fasting from a human finger. So ignorant
are birds, no less than men, of the day of
their visitation ! Before I could get away,
— while I was yet within two yards of the
nest, — the other bird hastened to occupy
the vacant place. She knew what was due
to so considerate and well-tried a friend,
if her partner did not. The little darling !
As soon as she was well in position I
stepped to her side, opened my treasures,
and gave her, one by one, twenty-six insects
(all I had), which she took with avidity,
reaching forward again and again to antici-

A WOODLAND INTIMATE. 43

pate my motions. Then I stole a last look
at the four pretty eggs, having almost to
force her from the nest for that purpose,
bade her good-by, and came away, sorry
enough to leave her ; forecasting, as I could
not help doing, the slight probability of
finding her again on my return, and pictur-
ing to myself all the sweet, motherly ways
she would be certain to develop as soon as
the little ones were hatched.

Within an hour I was speeding toward
the Green Mountains. There, in those an-
cient Vermont forests, I saw and heard
other solitary vireos, but none that treated
me as my Melrose pair had done. Noble
and gentle spirits ! though I were to live a
hundred years, I should never see their like
again.

The remainder of the story is, unhappily,
soon told. I was absent a fortnight, and on
getting back went at once to the sacred
oak. Alas ! there was nothing but a sev-
ered branch to show where the vireos' nest
had hung. The cut looked recent ; I was
thankful for that. Perhaps the " collector,"
whoever he was, had been kind enough to
wait till the owners of the house were done

44 A WOODLAND INTIMATE.

with it, before he carried it away. Let us
hope so, at all events, for the peace of his
own soul, as well as for the sake of the
birds.

AN OLD ROAD.

Methinks here one may, without much molestation, be
thinking what he is, whence he came, what he has done,
and to what the King has called him. — BUNYAN.

I FALL in with persons, now and then,
who profess to care nothing for a path when
walking in the woods. They do not choose
to travel in other people's footsteps, — nay,
nor even in their own, — but count it their
mission to lay out a new road every time
they go afield. They are welcome to their
freak. My own genius for adventure is less
highly developed ; and, to be frank, I have
never learned to look upon affectation and
whim as synonymous with originality. In
my eyes, it is nothing against a hill that
other men have climbed it before me ; and
if their feet have worn a trail, so much the
better. I not only reach the summit more
easily, but have company on the way, —
company none the less to my mind, per-
haps, for being silent and invisible. It is

46 AN OLD ROAD.

well enough to strike into the trackless for-
est once in a while ; to wander you know
not whither, and come out you know not
where ; to lie down in a strange place, and
for an hour imagine yourself the explorer
of a new continent : but if the mind be
awake (as, alas, too often it is not), you
may walk where you will, in never so well
known a corner, and you will see new
things, and think new thoughts, and return
to your house a new man, which, I venture
to believe, is after all the main considera-
tion. Indeed, if your stirring abroad is to
be more than mere muscular exercise, you
will find a positive advantage in making
use of some well-worn and familiar path.
The feet will follow it mechanically, and
so the mind — that is, the walker himself
— will be left undistracted. That, to my
thinking, is the real tour of discovery
wherein one keeps to the beaten road, looks
at the customary sights, but brings home a
new idea.

There are inward moods, as well as out-
ward conditions, in which an old, half-dis-
used, bush-bordered road becomes the saun-
terer's paradise. I have several such in my

AN OLD ROAD. 47

eye at this moment, but especially one, in
which my feet, years ago, grew to feel at
home. It is an almost ideal loitering place,
or would be, if only it were somewhat
longer. How many hundreds of times
have I traveled it, spring and summer,
autumn and winter ! As I go over it now,
the days of my youth come back to me,
clothed all of them in that soft, benignant
light which nothing but distance can be-
stow, whether upon hills or days. This
gracious effect is heightened, no doubt, by
the fact that for a good while past my visits
to the place have been only occasional.
Memory and imagination are true yoke-
fellows, and between them are always pre-
paring some new pleasure for us, as often
as we allow them opportunity. The other
day, for instance, as I came to the top of
the hill just beyond the river, I turned sud-
denly to the right, looking for an old pear-
tree. I had not thought of it for years, and
the more I have since tried to recall its
appearance and exact whereabouts, the less
confident have I grown that it ever had any
material existence ; but somehow, just at
that moment my mouth seemed to recollect

48 AN OLD ROAD.

it ; and in general I have come to put faith
in such involuntary and, if I may say so,
sensible joggings of the memory. I wonder
whether the tree ever was there — or any-
where. At all events, the thought of it
gave me for the moment a pleasure more
real than any taste in the mouth, were it
never so sweet. Thank fortune, imagina-
tive delights are as far as possible from
being imaginary.

The river just mentioned runs under the
road, and, as will readily be inferred, is one
of its foremost attractions. I speak of it
as a " river " with some misgivings. It is
a rather large brook, or a very small river ;
but a man who has never been able to leap
across it has perhaps no right to deny it the
more honorable appellation. Its source is
a spacious and beautiful sheet of water,
which heretofore has been known as a
"pond," but which I should be glad to
believe would hereafter be put upon the
maps as Lake Wessagusset. This brook or
river, call it whichever you please, goes
meandering through the township in a
northeasterly direction, turning the wheels
of half a dozen mills, more or less, on its

AN OLD ROAD. 49

way ; a sluggish stream, too lazy to work,
you would think ; passing much of its time
in flat, grassy meadows, where it idles along
as if it realized that the end of its course
was near, and felt in no haste to lose itself
in the salt sea. Out of this stream I pulled
goodly numbers of perch, pickerel, shiners,
flatfish, and hornpouts, while I was still care-
less-hearted enough (" Heaven lies about
us in our infancy ") to enjoy this very ami-
able and semi - religious form of "sport;"
and as the river intersects at least seven
roads that came within my boyish beat, I
must have crossed it thousands of times ; in
addition to which I have spent days in pad-
dling and bathing in it. Altogether, it is
one of my most familiar friends; and —
what one cannot say of all familiar friends
— I do not remember that it ever served
me the slightest ill-turn. It passes under
the road of which I am now discoursing, in
a double channel (the bridge being sup-
ported midway by a stone wall), and then
broadens out into an artificial shallow,
through which travelers may drive if they
will, to let their horses drink out of the
stream. First and last, I have improved

50 AN OLD ROAD

many a shining hour on this bridge, leaning
industriously over the railing. I can see
the rocky bed at this moment, — yes, and
the very shape and position of some of the
stones, as I saw them thirty years ago ;
especially of one, on which we used to bal-
ance ourselves to dip up the water or to
peer under the bridge. In those days, if
we essayed to be uncommonly adventurous,
we waded through this low and somewhat
dark passage ; a gruesome proceeding, as
we were compelled to stoop a little, short
as we were, to save our heads, while the
road, to our imagination, seemed in momen-
tary danger of caving in upon us. Cour-
age, like all other human virtues, is but a
relative attribute. Possibly the heroic
deeds upon which in our grown-up estate
we plume ourselves are not greatly more
meritorious or wonderful than were some
of the childish ventures at the recollection
of which we now condescend to feel
amused.

On the surface of the brook flourished
two kinds of insects, whose manner of life
we never tired of watching. One sort had
long, wide-spreading legs, and by us were

AN OLD ROAD. 51

known as " skaters," from their movements
(to this day, I blush to confess, I have no
other name for them) ; the others were
flat, shining, orbicular or oblong, lead- col-
ored bugs, — " lucky bugs " I have heard
them called, — and lay flat upon the water,
as if quite without limbs ; but they darted
over the brook, and even against the cur-
rent, with noticeable activity, and doubtless
were well supplied with paddles. Once in
a while we saw a fish here, but only on
rare occasions. The great unfailing attrac-
tion of the place, then as now, was the
flowing water, forever spending and never
spent. The insects lived upon it ; appar-
ently they had no power to leave it for an
instant ; but they were not carried away
by it. Happy creatures ! We, alas, sport-
ing upon the river of time, can neither dive
below the surface nor mount into the ether,
and, unlike the insects (" lucky bugs," in-
deed ! ), we have no option but to move
with the tide. We have less liberty than
the green flags, even, which grow in scat-
tered tufts in the bed of the brook ; whose
leaves point forever down stream, like so
many index fingers, as if they said, "Yes,

52 AN OLD ROAD.

yes, that is the way to the sea ; that way
we all must go ; " while for themselves,
nevertheless, they manage to hold on by
their roots, victorious even while profess-
ing to yield. ,

To my mind the river is alive. Reason
about it as I will, I never can make it oth-
erwise. I could sooner believe in water
nymphs than in many existences which are
commonly treated as much more certain
matters of fact. I could believe in them, I
say ; but in reality I do not. My coinmun-
ings are not with any haunter of the river,
but with the living soul of the river itself.
It lags under the vine-covered alders, has-
tens through the bridge, then slips care-
lessly down a little descent, where it breaks
into singing, then into a mill-pond and out
again, and so on and on, through one expe-
rience after another ; and all the time it is
not dead water, but a river, a thing of life
and motion. After all, it is not for me to
say what is alive and what dead. As yet,
indeed, I do not so much as know what life
is. In certain moods, in what I fondly call
my better moments, I feel measurably sure
of being alive myself; but even on that

AN OLD ROAD. 53

point, for aught I can tell, the brook may
entertain some private doubts.

Just beyond the bridge is an ancient ap-
ple orchard. This was already falling into
decay when I was a boy, and the many
years that have elapsed since then have
nearly completed its demolition ; although
I dare say the present generation of school-
boys still find it worth while to clamber
over the wall, as they journey back and
forth. Probably it will be no surprise to
the owner of the place if I tell him that
before I was twelve years old I knew the
taste of all his apples. In fact, the orchard
was so sequestered, so remote from any
house, — especially from its proprietor's, —
that it hardly seemed a sin to rob it. It
was not so much an orchard as a bit of
woodland ; and besides, we never shook the
trees, but only helped ourselves to windfalls ;
and it must be a severe moralist who calls
that stealing. Why should the fruit drop
off, if not to be picked up ? In my time, at
all events, such appropriations were never
accounted robbery, though the providential
absence of the owner was unquestionably a
thing to be thankful for. He would never

54 AN OLD ROAD.

begrudge us the apples, of course, for he
was rich and presumably generous ; but it
was quite as well for him to be somewhere
else while we were gathering up these fa-
vors which the winds of heaven had shaken
down for our benefit. There is something
of the special pleader in most of us, it is to
be feared, whether young or old. If we
are put to it, we can draw a very fine dis-
tinction (in our own favor), no matter how
obtuse we may seem on ordinary occasions.

Remembering how voracious and undis-
criminating my juvenile appetite was, I
cannot help wondering that I am still alive,
— a feeling which I doubt not is shared by
many a man who, like myself, had a coun-
try bringing-up. We must have been born
with something more than a spark of life,
else it would certainly have been smothered
long ago by the fuel so recklessly heaped
upon it. But we lived out-of-doors, took
abundant exercise, were not studious over-
much (as all boys and girls are charged
with being nowadays), and had little to
worry about, which may go far to explain
the mystery.

It provokes a smile to reckon up the

AN OLD ROAD. 55

many places along this old road that are
indissolubly connected in my mind with
the question of something to eat. At the
foot of the orchard just now spoken of, for
example, is a dilapidated stone wall, be-
tween it and the river. Over this, as well
as over the bushes beside it, straggled a
small wild grape-vine, bearing every year
a scanty crop of white grapes. These, to
our unsophisticated palates, were delicious,
if only they got ripe. That was the rub ;
and as a rule we gathered our share of
them (which was all there were) while
they were yet several stages short of that
desirable consummation, not deeming it
prudent to leave them longer, lest some
hungrier soul should get the start of us.
Graping, as we called it, was one of our
regular autumn industries, and there were
few vines within the circle of our perambu-
lations which did not feel our fingers tug-
ging at them at least once a year. Some
of them hung well over the river; others
took refuge in the tops of trees; but by
hook or by crook, we usually got the better
of such perversities. No doubt the fruit
was all bad enough ; but some of it was

56 AN OLD ROAD.

sweeter (or less sour) than other. Perhaps
the best vine was one that covered a cer-
tain superannuated apple-tree, half a mile
west of our river-side orchard, before men-
tioned. Here I might have been seen by
the hour, eagerly yet cautiously venturing
out upon the decayed and doubtful limbs,
in quest of this or that peculiarly tempting
bunch. These grapes were purple (how
well some things are remembered !), and
were sweeter then than Isabellas or Cataw-
bas are now. Such is the degeneracy of
vines in these modern days !

Altogether more important than the
grapes were the huckleberries, for which,
also, we four times out of five took this
same famous by-road. Speaking roughly,
I may say that we depended upon seven
pastures for our supplies, and were accus-
tomed to visit them in something like reg-
ular order. It is kindly provided that huck-
leberry bushes have an exceptionally strong
tendency to vary. We possessed no the-
ories upon the subject, and knew nothing
of disputed questions about species and va-
rieties; but we were not without a good
degree of practical information. Here was

AN OLD ROAD. 57

a bunch of bushes, for instance, covered
with black, shiny, pear-shaped berries, very
numerous, but very small. They would do
moderately well in default of better. An-
other patch, perhaps but a few rods re-
moved, bore large globular berries, less
glossy than the others, but still black.
These, as we expressed it, " filled up "
much faster than the others, though not
nearly so " thick." Blue berries (not blue-
berries, but blue huckleberries) were com-
mon enough, and we knew one small clus-
ter of plants, the fruit of which was white,
a variety that I have since found noted by
Doctor Gray as very rare. Unhappily, this
freak made so little impression upon me as
a boy that while I am clear as to the fact,
and feel sure of the pasture, I have no dis-
tinct recollection of the exact spot where
the eccentric bushes grew. I should like
to know whether they still persist. Gray's
Manual, by the way, makes no mention of
the blue varieties, but lays it down suc-
cinctly that the fruit of Graylussacia re-
sinosa is black.

The difference we cared most about, how-
ever, related not to color, shape, or size,

58 AN OLD ROAD.

but to the time of ripening. Diversity of
habit in this regard was indeed a great piece
of good fortune, not to be rightly appre-
ciated without horrible imaginings of how
short the season of berry pies and puddings
would be if all the berries matured at once.
You may be sure we never forgot where
the early sorts were to be found, and where
the late. What hours upon hours we spent
in the broiling sun, picking into some half-
pint vessel, and emptying that into a larger
receptacle, safely stowed away under some
cedar - tree or barberry bush. How proud
we were of our heaped-up pails ! How
carefully we discarded from the top every
half-ripe or otherwise imperfect specimen !
(So early do well-taught Yankee children
develop one qualification for the diaconate.)
The sun had certain minor errands to look
after, we might have admitted, even in
those midsummer days, but his principal
business was to ripen huckleberries. So it
seemed then. And now — well, men are
but children still, and for them, too, their
own little round is the centre of the world.
All these pastures had names, of course,
well understood by us children, though I

AN OLD ROAD. 59

am not sure how generally they would
have been recognized by the townspeople.
The first in order was River Pasture, the
owner of which turned his cattle into it,
and every few years mowed the bushes,
with the result that the berries, whenever
there were any, were uncommonly large
and handsome. Not far beyond this (the
entrance was through a " pair of bars,"
beside a spreading white oak) was Mill-
stone Pasture. This was a large, strag-
gling place, half pasture, half wood, full of
nooks and corners, with by-paths running
hither and thither, and named after two
large bowlders, which lay one on top of the
other. We used to clamber upon these
to eat our luncheon, thinking within our-
selves, meanwhile, that the Indians must
have been men of prodigious strength. At
that time, though I scarcely know how to
own it, glacial action was a thing by us un-
heard of. We are wiser now, — on that
point, at any rate. Two of the other pas-
tures were called respectively after the rail-
road and a big pine-tree (there was a big

pine-tree in W once, for I myself have

seen the stump), while the remainder took

60 AN OLD ROAD.

their names from their owners, real or re-
puted; and as some of these appellations
were rather disrespectfully abbreviated, it
may be as well to omit setting them down
in print.

To all these places we resorted a little
later in the season for blackberries, and
later still for barberries. In one or two
of them we set snares, also, but without
materially lessening the quantity of game.
The rabbits, especially, always helped
themselves to the bait, and left us the
noose. At this distance of time I do not
begrudge them their good fortune. I hope
they are all alive yet, including the young-
ster that we once caught in our hands and
brought home, and then, in a fit of con-
trition, carried back again to its native
heath.

All in all, the berries that we prized
most, perhaps, were those that came first,
and were at the same time least abundant.
Yankee children will understand at once
that I mean the checkerberries, or, as we
were more accustomed to call them, the
boxberries. The very first mild days in
March, if the snow happened to be mostly

AN OLD ROAD. 61

gone, saw us on this same old road bound
for one of the places where we thought our-
selves most likely to find a few (possibly a
pint or two, but more probably a handful
or two) of these humble but spicy fruits.
Not that the plants were not plentiful
enough in all directions, but it was only in
certain spots (or rather in very uncertain
spots, since these were continually shift-
ing) that they were ever in good bearing
condition. We came after a while to un-
derstand that the best crops were produced
for two or three years after the cutting off
of the wood in suitable localities. Letting
in the sunlight seems to have the effect of
starting into sudden fruitfulness this hardy,
persistent little plant, although I never
could discover that it thrived better for
growing permanently in an open, sunny
field. Perhaps it requires an unexpected
change of condition, a providential nudge,
as it were, to jog it into activity, like some
poets. Whatever the explanation, we used
now and then in recent clearings (and no-
where else) to find the ground fairly red
with berries. Those were red-letter days
in our calendar. How handsome such a

62 AN OLD ROAD.

patch of rose-color was (though we made
haste to despoil it), circling an old stump
or a bowlder ! The berries were pleasant
to the eye and good for food ; but after all,
their principal attractiveness lay in the fact
that they came right upon the heels of
winter. They were the first - fruits of the
new year (ripened the year before, to be
sure), and to our thinking were fit to be
offered upon any altar, no matter how
sacred.

I have called the subject of my loving
meditations a by-road. Formerly it was the
main thoroughfare between two villages, but
shortly after my acquaintance with it began
a new and more direct one was laid out.
Yet the old road, half deserted as it is, has
not altogether escaped the ruthless hand of
the improver. Within my time it has been
widened throughout, and in one place a new
section has been built to cut off a curve.
Fortunately, however, the discarded portion
still remains, well grown up to grass, and
closely encroached upon by willows, alders,
sumachs, barberries, dogwoods, smilax, cle-
thra, azalea, button-bush, birches, and what
not, yet still passable even for carriages,

AN OLD ROAD. 63

and more inviting than ever to lazy pedes-
trians like myself. On this cast-off section
is a cosy, grassy nook, shaded by a cluster
of red cedars. This was one of our favorite
way-stations on summer noons. It gives
me a comfortable, restful feeling to look
into it even now, as if my weary limbs had
reminiscences of their own connected with
the place.

Right at this point stands an ancient rus-
set-apple tree, which seems no older and
brings forth no smaller apples now than it
did when I first knew it. How natural it
looks in every knot and branch ! Strange,
too, that it should be so, since I do not re-
call its ever contributing the first mouthful
to my pleasures as a schoolboy gastronomer.
In those times I judged a tree solely by the
New Testament standard, very literally in-
terpreted, — " By their fruits ye shall know
them." Now I have other tests, and can
value an old acquaintance of this kind for its
picturesqueness, though its apples be bitter
as wormwood.

I am making too much of the food ques-
tion, and will therefore say nothing of straw-
berries, raspberries, thimbleberries, cranber-

64 AN OLD ROAD.

ries (which last were delicious, as we took
them out of their icy ovens in the spring),
pig-nuts, hazel-nuts, acorns, and the rest.
Yet I will not pass by a small clump of dan-
gleberry bushes (a September luxury not
common in our neighborhood) and a lofty
pear-tree. The latter, in truth, hardly be-
longs under this head ; for though it bore
superabundant crops of pears, not even a
child was ever known to eat one. We called
them iron pears, perhaps because nothing but
the hottest fire could be expected to reduce
them to a condition of softness. My mouth
is all in a pucker at the mere thought of
the rusty-green bullets. It did seem a pity
they should be so outrageously hard, so ab-
solutely untoothsome ; for the tree, as I say,
was a big one and provokingly prolific, and,
moreover, stood squarely upon the roadside.
What a godsend we should have found it,
had its fruit been a few degrees less stony !
Such incongruities and disappointments go
far to convince me that the creation is in-
deed, as some theologians have taught, under
a curse.

My appetite for wild fruits has grown
dull with age, but meanwhile my affection

AN OLD ROAD. 65

for the old road has not lessened, but rather
increased. In itself the place is nowise re-
markable, a common country back road
(its very name is Back Street) ; but all the
same I " take pleasure in its stones, and
favor the dust thereof." There are none
of us so matter-of-fact arid unsentimental, I
hope, as never to have experienced the force
of old associations in gilding the most ordi-
nary objects. For my own part, I protest,
I would give more for a single stunted clus-
ter of orange -red berries from a certain
small vine of Roxbury wax-work, near the
entrance to Millstone Pasture aforesaid,
than for a bushel of larger and handsomer
specimens from some alien source. This
old vine still holds on, I am happy to see,
though it appears to have made no growth
in twenty years. Long may it be spared !
It was within a few rods of it, beside the
path that runs into the pasture, that I shot
my first bird. Newly armed with a shot-
gun, and on murder bent, I turned in here ;
and as luck would have it, there sat the in-
nocent creature in a birch. The temptation
was too great. • There followed a moment
of excitement, a nervous aim, a bang, and

66 AN OLD ROAD.

a catbird's song was hushed forever. A
mean and cruel act, which I confess with
shame, and have done my best to atone for
by speaking here and there a good word for
this poorly appreciated member of our na-
tive choir. I should be glad to believe that
the schoolboys of the present day are more
tender-hearted than those with whom I
mixed ; but I am not without my doubts.
As Darwin showed, all animals in the em-
bryonic stage tend to reproduce ancestral
characteristics ; and our Anglo-Saxon ances-
tors (how easy it seems to believe it !) were
barbarians.

This same Millstone Pasture, by the bye,
was a place of special resort at Christmas
time. Here grew plenty of the trailing
plant which we knew simply as " ever-
green," but which now, in my superior
wisdom, I call Lycopodium complanatum.
This, indeed, was common in various direc-
tions, but the holly was much less easily
found, and grew here more freely than any-
where else. The unhappy trees had a hard
shift to live, so broken down were they with
each recurring December ; and the more
berries they produced, the worse for them.

AN OLD ROAD. 67

Their anticipations of Christmas must have
been strangely different from those of us
toy-loving, candy-eating children. But who
thinks of sympathizing with a tree?

As for the wayside flowers, they are, as
becomes the place, of the very commonest
and most old - fashioned sorts, more wel-
come to my eye than the choicest of
rarities : golden - rods and asters in great
variety and profusion, hardback and mead-
ow-sweet, St. John's wort and loosestrife,
violets and anemones, self-heal and cranes-
bill, and especially the lovely but little-
known purple gerardia. These, with their
natural companions and allies, make to me
a garden of delights, whereunto my feet, as
far as they find opportunity, do continually
resort. What flowers ought a New Eng-
lander to love, if not such as are charac-
teristic of New England ?

And yet, proudly and affectionately as I
talk of it, Back Street is not what it once
was. I have already mentioned the straight-
ening, as also the widening, both of them
sorry improvements. Furthermore, there
was formerly a huge (as I remember it)
and beautifully proportioned hemlock-tree,

68 AN OLD ROAD.

at which I used to gaze admiringly in the
first years of my wandering hither. What
millions of tiny cones hung from its pendu-
lous branches ! The magnificent creation
should have been protected by legislative
enactment, if necessary ; but no, almost as
long ago as I can remember, long before I
attained to grammar-school dignities, the
owner of the land (so he thought himself,
no doubt) turned the tree into firewood.
And worse yet, the stately pine grove that
flourished across the way, with mossy bowl-
ders underneath and a most delightsome
density of shade, — this, too, like the patri-
archal hemlock, has been cut off in the
midst of its usefulness.

" Their very memory is fair and bright,
And my sad thoughts doth cheer ! "

Now there is nothing on the whole hillside
but a thicket of young hard-wood trees (I
would say deciduous, but in New England,
alas, all trees are deciduous), through which
my dog loves to prowl, but which warns me
to keep the road. Such devastations are
not to be prevented, I suppose, but at least
there is no law against my bewailing them.
Even in its present decadence, however,

AN OLD ROAD. 69

my road, as I said to begin with, is a kind
of saunterer's paradise. When we come to
particulars, indeed, it is nothing to boast of ;
but waiving particulars, and taking it for
all in all, there is no highway upon the
planet where I better enjoy an idle hour.
There is a boy of perhaps ten years whose
companionship is out of all reason dear to
me ; and nowhere am I surer to find him at
my side, hand in hand, than in this same
lonely road, although I know very well that
those who meet or pass me here see only
one person, and that a man of several times
ten years. But thank Heaven, we are not
always alone when we seem to be.

CONFESSIONS OF A BIRD'S-NEST
HUNTER.

I am bold to show myself a forward guest.

SHAKESPEARE.

LET it be said at the outset that the
seeker after bird's-nests is never without
plenty of company, of one sort and another.
For instance, I was out early one cloudy
morning last spring, when I canght sight
of a handsome black and white animal
nosing his way through the bushes on one
side of the path. He had come forth on
the same errand as myself ; and I thought
at once of the veery's nest, for which I
had been looking in vain, but which could
not be far from the very spot where my
black and white rival was just at this mo-
ment standing. I wondered whether he
had already found it ; but I did not stay to
ask him. In spite of his beauty, and in
spite of our evident community of interest,
I felt no drawings toward a more intimate

A BIRD'S-NEST HUNTER. 71

acquaintance. I knew him by name and
reputation, — Mephitis mephitica the scien-
tific folk call him, with felicitous reverbera-
tive emphasis, — and that sufficed. At an-
other time, a few weeks later than this, I
overheard an unusual commotion among
the birds in our apple orchard. "Some
rascally cat ! " I thought ; and, picking up
a stone, I hastened to put a stop to his de-
predations. But there was no cat in sight ;
and it was not till I stood immediately
under the tree that I discovered the ma-
rauder to be a snake, just then slowly mak-
ing toward the ground, with a young bird
in his jaws. Watching my opportunity,
while he was engaged in the delicate opera-
tion of lowering himself from one branch to
another, I shook the trunk vigorously, and
down he tumbled at my feet. Once and
again I set my heel upon him ; but the tall
grass was in his favor, and he succeeded in
getting off, leaving his dead victim behind
him.1

1 The birds at once became quiet, and I went back com-
placently to my book under the linden-tree. Who knows,
however, whether there may not have been another side to
the story ? Who shall say what were the emotions of the
snake, as he wriggled painfu'ly homeward after such an

72 A BIR&S-NEST HUNTER.

It is noble society in which we find our-
selves, is it not? In the front rank are
what we may call the professional oologists,

— such as follow the business for a liveli-
hood : snakes, skunks, weasels, squirrels,
cats, crows, jays, cuckoos, and the like.
Then come the not inconsiderable number
of persons who, for a more or less strictly
scientific purpose, take here and there a
nest with its contents ; while these are fol-
lowed by hordes of school-boys, whom the
prevalent mania for " collecting " drives to
scrape together miscellaneous lots of eggs,

— half-named, misnamed, and nameless, —
to put with previous accumulations of post-
age-stamps, autographs, business cards, and
other like precious rubbish.

Alas, the poor birds ! These " perils of rob-
bers " and " perils among false brethren "
are bad enough, but they have many others
to encounter; " journey ings often" and
u perils of waters " being among the worst.
Gentle and innocent as they seem, it speaks

assault ? Myself no vegetarian, by what right had I bela-
bored him for liking the taste of chicken V It were well,
perhaps, not to pry too curiously into questions of this
kind. Most likely it would not flatter our human self-esteem
to know what some of our " poor relations " think of us.

A BIR&S-NEST HUNTER. 73

well for their cunning and endurance that
they escape utter extermination.

This phase of the subject is especially
forced upon the attention of observers like
myself, who search for nests, not mischiev-
ously, nor even with the laudable design of
the scientific investigator, but solely as a
means of promoting friendly acquaintance.
We may not often witness the catastrophe
itself ; but as we go our daily rounds, now
peeping under the bank or into the bush,
and now climbing the tree, to see how some
timid friend of ours is faring, we are only
too certain to come upon first one home
and then another which has been rifled
and deserted since our last visit ; till we
begin to wonder why the defenseless and
persecuted creatures do not turn pessimists
outright, and relinquish forever their at-
tempt to " be fruitful, and multiply, and
replenish the earth."

Thinking of these things anew, now that
I am reviewing my last spring's experi-
ences, it is doubly gratifying to recall that
I robbed only one nest during the entire
season, and that not of malice, but by ac-
cident. It happened on this wise. A couple

74 A BIR&8-NEST HUNTER.

of solitary vireos had taken up their abode
on a wooded hillside, where they, or others
like them, had passed the previous sum-
mer, and one day I proposed to a friend
that we make it our business to search out
the nest. It proved to be not very difficult
of discovery, though, when we put our eyes
upon it, it appeared that we had walked
directly by it several times, all in sight as
it was, suspended from near the end of an
oak-tree branch, perhaps nine feet from the
ground. It contained five eggs, including
one of the cow-bird; but just as my com-
panion was about to let go the branch,
which he had been holding down for my
convenience, the end snapped, up went the
nest, and out jumped four of the eggs. We
were sorry, of course, but consoled our-
selves with the destruction of the parasite,
which otherwise would very likely have
been the death of the vireos' own offspring.
Meanwhile, the birds themselves took mat-
ters coolly. One of them fell to singing
as soon as we withdrew, while the other
flew to the nest, looked in, and without a
word resumed her seat. After all, the ac-
cident might turn out to be nothing worse

A BIRD'S-NEST HUNTER. 75

than a blessing in disguise, we said to each
other. But before many days it became
evident that the pair had given up the nest,
and I carried it to a friend whom I knew
to be in want of such a specimen for his
cabinet.

It is worth noticing how widely birds of
the same species differ among themselves
in their behavior under trial. Their minds
are no more run in one mould than human
minds are. In their case, as in ours, in-
numerable causes have worked together to
produce the unique individual result. Much
is due to inheritance, no doubt, but much
likewise to accident. One mother has
never had her nest invaded, and is there-
fore careless of our presence. Another has
so frequently been robbed of her all that
she has grown hardened to disaster, and
she also makes no very great ado when we
intrude upon her. A third is still in a
middle state, — alive to the danger, but not
yet able to face it philosophically, — and
she will become hysterical at the first symp-
tom of trouble.

At the very time of the mishap just
described I was keeping watch over the

76 A BIRD'8-NEST HUNTER.

household arrangements of another and
much less stoical pair of solitary vireos.
These, as soon as I discovered their secret
(which was not till after several attempts),
became extremely jealous of my proximity,
no matter how indirect and innocent my
approaches. Even when I seated myself
at what I deemed a very respectful dis-
tance the sitting bird would at once quit
her place, and begin to complain in her
own delightfully characteristic manner, —
chattering, scolding, and warbling by turns,
— refusing to be pacified in the least until
I took myself off. Once I remained for
some time close under the nest, on purpose
to see how many of the neighbors would be
attracted to the spot. With the exception
of the wood wagtails, I should say that
nearly all the small birds in the immediate
vicinity must have turned out : black-and-
white creepers, redstarts, chestnut - sided
warblers, black - throated greens, a blue
golden-wing, red-eyed vireos, and a third
solitary vireo. If they were moved with
pity for the pair whose lamentations had
drawn them together, they did not mani-
fest it, as far as I could see. Perhaps they

A BIRD'S-NEST HUNTER. 77

found small occasion for so loud a disturb-
ance. Possibly, moreover, as spectators
who had honored me with their presence
(and that in the very midst of their busy
season), they felt themselves cheated, and,
so to speak, outraged, by my failure to
finish the tragedy artistically, by shooting
the parent birds and pulling down the nest.
Creatures who can neither read novels nor
attend upon dramatic performances may be
presumed to suffer at times for lack of a
pleasurable excitement of the sensibilities.
At all events, these visitors contented them-
selves with staring at me for a few minutes,
and then one by one turned away, as if it
were not much of a show after all. To the
interested couple, however, it was a matter
of life and death. The female especially
(or the sitter, for the sexes are indistin-
guishable) hopped close about my head,
sometimes uttering a strangely sweet, plead-
ing note, which might have melted a heart
much harder than mine. Her associate
kept at a more cautious remove, but made
amends by continuing to scold after the
danger was all over. By the bye, I noticed
that in the midst of the commotion, as soon

78 A BIR&S-NEST HUNTER.

as the first agony was past, the one who
had been sitting was not so entirely over-
come as not to be able to relish an occa-
sional insect, which she snatched here and
there between her vituperative exclama-
tions. Faithful and hungry little mother I
her heart was not broken, let us hope, when
within a week or so some miscreant, to me
unknown, ravaged her house and left it
desolate.

Not many rods from the vireos' cedar-
tree was a brown thrasher's nest in a bar-
berry bush. It had an exceedingly dilapi-
dated, year-old appearance, and I went by
it several times without thinking it worth
looking at, till I accidentally observed the
bird upon it. She did not budge till I was
within a few feet of her, when she tumbled
to the ground, and limped away with loud
cries. Perceiving that this worn-out ruse
did not avail, she turned upon me, and ac-
tually seemed about to make an attack.
How she did rave ! I thought that I had
never seen a bird so beside herself with
anger.

Shortly after my encounter with this irate
thrush I nearly stepped upon one of her

A BIRD'3-NEST HUNTER. 79

sisters, brooding upon a ground nest; and
it illustrates what has been said about vari-
ety of temperament that the second bird
received me in a very quiet, self-contained
manner ; giving me to understand, to be
sure, that my visit was ill-timed and un-
welcome, but not acting at all as if I were
some ogre, the very sight of which must per-
force drive a body crazy.

In the course of the season I found three
nests of the rose-breasted grosbeak. The
first, to my surprise, was in the topmost
branches of a tall sweet-birch, perhaps forty
feet above the ground. I noticed the female
flying into the grove with a load of building
materials, and a little later (as soon as my
engagement with an interesting company of
gray-cheeked thrushes would permit) I fol-
lowed, and almost at once saw the pair at
their work. And a very pretty exhibition
it was, — so pretty that I returned the next
morning to see more of it. It must be ad-
mitted that the labor seemed rather un-
equally divided : the female not only fetched
all the sticks, but took upon herself the en-
tire business of construction, her partner's
contribution to the enterprise being limited

80 A BIRD'S-NEST HUNTER.

strictly to the performance of escort duty.
When she had fitted the new twigs into
their place to her satisfaction (which often
took considerable time) she uttered a sig-
nal, and the pair flew out of the wood to-
gether, talking sweetly as they went. The
male was aware of my presence from the
beginning, I think, but he appeared to re-
gard it as of no consequence. Probably
he believed the nest well out of my reach,
as in fact it was. He usually sang a few
snatches while waiting for his wife, and, as
he sat within a few feet of her and made
no attempt at concealment, it could hardly
be supposed that he refrained from offering
to assist her for fear his brighter colors
should betray their secret. Some different
motive from this must be assigned for his
seeming want of gallantry. To all appear-
ance, however, the parties themselves took
the whole proceeding as a simple matter of
course. They were but minding the most
approved grosbeak precedents ; and after
all, who is so likely to be in the right as he
who follows the fashion ? Shall one bird
presume to be wiser than all the millions
of his race ? Nay ; as the Preacher long

A BIR&S-NEST HUNTER. 81

ago said, " The thing that hath been, it is
that which shall be." Nothing could have
been more complacent and affectionate than
the lady's voice and demeanor as often as
she gave the finishing touches to a twig,
and called to her companion, " Come, now,
let 's go for another." Naturally, the female
is the one most concerned about the stabil-
ity and comfortable shape of the nest, and
possibly she does not count it prudent to
entrust her spouse with any share in so deli-
cate and important an undertaking ; but, if
so, she must know him for an arrant bun-
gler, since the structure which she herself
puts together is a most shabby - looking
affair, scarcely better than the cuckoo's.

Such happiness as that of these married
lovers was perhaps too perfect to last. At
any rate, it was only a week before their
idyl all at once turned to tragedy. A sharp
click, click ! attracted my attention, as I
passed under their birch (on my way to call
upon a pair of chickadees, who were keep-
ing house in a low stump close by), and,
glancing up, I saw the bushy tail of a red
squirrel hanging over the edge of the nest.
The male grosbeak was dashing wildly

82 A BIRD'S-NEST HUNTER.

about the invader, while a wood thrush,
a towhee bunting (who looked strange at
such a height), a red-eyed vireo, and a blue
golden-winged warbler were surveying the
scene from the adjacent branches, — though
the thrush withdrew in the midst of the
tumult, and fell to singing (as one may see
happy young couples going merrily home-
ward after witnessing the murder of Duncan
or Desdemona). Meanwhile, the squirrel,
having finished his work, descended leis-
urely toward the ground, snickering and
chuckling, as if he felt immensely pleased
with his achievement. Probably his emo-
tions did not differ essentially from those of
a human sportsman, but it was lucky for
him, nevertheless, that I had no means of
putting an end to his mirth. I could have
blown his head off without compunction.
When he had gone, and the visiting birds
with him, the grosbeak returned to his nest,
and in the most piteous manner hovered
about the spot, — getting into the nest and
out again, — as if completely dazed by the
sudden disaster. Throughout the excite-
ment the female did not show herself, and
I wondered whether she could have sub-

A BIR&S-NEST HUNTER. 83

mitted to be killed rather than desert her
charge. To the honor of her kind be it said
that the supposition is far from incredible.

My second nest of this species was within
twenty rods of the first, and was in use at
the same time ; but it met with no better
fate, though I was not present to see it
robbed. The third was more prosperous,
and, unless something befell the young af
the last moment, they were safely launched
upon the wing. This nest was situated in
a clump of witch-hazel bushes, at a height
of eight or nine feet. I remarked a gros-
beak singing near the spot, and, seeing him
very unwilling to move away, concluded
that his home could not be far off. It was
soon found, — a slight, shapeless, frail-look-
ing bundle of sticks, with the female upon
it. I took hold of the main stem, just be-
low her, and drew her towards me ; but she
would not rise, although I could see her
moving uneasily. I had no heart to annoy
her ; so I called her a good, brave bird, and
left her in peace. Her mate, all this while,
kept on singing ; and to judge from his be-
havior, I might have been some honored
guest, to be welcomed with music. The

84 A BIRD'S-NEST EUNTER.

simple-hearted — not to say simple-minded
— fearlessness of this bird is really aston-
ishing ; especially in view of the fact that
his showy plumage makes him a favorite
mark for every amateur taxidermist. He
will even warble while brooding upon the
eggs, a delicious piece of absurdity, which I
hope sooner or later to witness for myself.

While watching my first couple of gros-
beaks I suddenly became aware of a wood
thrush passing back and forth between the
edge of a brook and a certain oak, against
the bole of which she was making ready her
summer residence. She seemed to be quite
unattended ; but just as I was beginning
to contrast her case with that of the fem-
inine grosbeak overhead, her mate broke
into song from a low branch directly behind
me. She had all the while known where
he was, I dare say, and would have been
greatly amused at my commiseration of
her loneliness. The next morning she
was compelled to make longer flights for
such stuff as she needed ; and now it was
pleasant to observe that her lord did not
fail to accompany her to and fro, and to sing
to her while she worked.

A BIR&S-NEST HUNTER. 85

The wood thrush has the name of a re-
cluse, and, as compared with the omnipres-
ent robin, he may deserve the title ; but
he is seldom very difficult of approach, if
one only knows how to go about it, while
his nest is peculiarly easy of detection. I
remember one which was close by an un-
fenced road, just outside the city of Wash-
ington ; and two or three years ago I found
another in a barberry bush, not more than
fifteen feet from a horse-car track, and so
near the fence as to be almost within arm's-
length of passers-by. This latter was in
full view from the street, and withal was so
feebly supported that some kind-hearted
neighbor had taken pains to tie up the bush
(which stood by itself) with a piece of dan-
gerously new-looking rope. And even as I
write I recall still a third, which also was
close by the roadside, though at the very
exceptional elevation of twenty-five or thirty
feet.

It is one of the capital advantages of the
ornithologist's condition that he is rarely
called upon to spend his time and strength
for naught. If he fails of the particular
object of his search, he is all but sure to

86 A BIR&S-NEST HUNTER.

be rewarded with something else. For ex-
ample, while I was unsuccessfully playing
the spy upon a pair of my solitary vireos,
a female tanager suddenly dropped into her
half-built nest in a low pine-branch, at the
same time calling softly to her mate, who
at once came to sit beside her. Unfortu-
nately, one of the pair very soon caught sight
of me, and they made off in haste. I lin-
gered about, till finally the lady appeared
again, with her beak full of sticks, standing
out at all points of the compass. She was
so jealous of my espionage, however, that it
looked as if she would never be rid of her
load. No sooner did she alight in the tree
than she began to crane her neck, staring
this way and that, and chipping nervously ;
then she shifted her perch ; then out of the
tree she went altogether ; then back again ;
then off once more ; then back within a
yard of the nest; then away again, till at
last my patience gave out, and I left her
mistress of the field. All this while the
male was in sight, flitting restlessly from
tree to tree at a safe distance. I have never
witnessed a prettier display of connubial
felicity than this pair afforded me during

A BIR&S-NEST HUNTER. 87

the minute or two which elapsed between
my discovery of them and their discovery of
me. I felt almost guilty for intruding upon
such a scene ; but, if they could only have
believed it, I intended no harm, nor have
I now any thought of profaning their inno-
cent mysteries by attempting to describe
what I saw.

The male tanager, with his glory of jet
black and flaming scarlet, is in curious con-
trast with his mate, with whose personal
appearance, nevertheless, he seems to be
abundantly satisfied. Possibly he looks upon
a dirty greenish-yellow as the loveliest of
tints, and regards his own dress as nothing
better than commonplace, in comparison.
Like the rose - breasted grosbeak and the
wood thrush, however, he is brought up with
the notion that it belongs to the female to
be the carpenter of the family ; a belief in
which, happily for his domestic peace, the
female herself fully concurs.

As a general thing, handsomely dressed
people live in handsome houses (emphasis
should perhaps be laid on the word dressed),
and it would seem natural that a like con-
gruity should hold in the case of birds.

88 A BIR&S-NEST HUNTER.

But, if such be the rule, there are at least
some glaring exceptions. I have alluded
to the rude structure of the rose-breast, and
might have used nearly the same language
concerning the tanager's, which latter is
often fabricated so loosely that one can see
the sky through it. Yet these two are
among the most gorgeously attired of all
our birds. On the other hand, while the
wood pewee is one of the very plainest, there
are few, if any, that excel her as an archi-
tect. During the season under review I had
the good fortune to light upon my first nest
of this fly-catcher ; and, as is apt to be true,
having found one, I immediately and with-
out effort found two others. The first two
were in oaks, the third in a hornbeam ; and
all were set upon the upper side of a hori-
zontal bough ("saddled" upon it, as the
manuals say), at the junction of an offshoot
with the main branch. Two of them were
but partially done when discovered, and I
was glad to see one pair of the birds in
something very like a frolic, such a state as
would hardly be predicted of these pecu-
liarly sober-seeming creatures. The builder
of the second nest was remarkably confid-

A BIRD'S-NEST HUNTER. 89

ing, and proceeded with her labors, quite
undisturbed by my proximity and undis-
guised interest. It was to be remarked
that she had trimmed the outside of her
nest with lichens before finishing the inte-
rior ; and I especially admired the very
clever manner in which she hovered against
the dead pine-trunk, from which she was
gathering strips of bark. Concerning her
unsuspiciousness, however, it should be said
that the word applies only to her treatment
of myself. When a thrasher had the im-
pertinence to alight in her oak she ordered
him off in high dudgeon, dashing back and
forth above him, and snapping spitefully
as she passed. She knew her rights, and,
knowing, dared maintain. When a bird
builds her nest in any part of a tree she
claims every twig of it as her own. I have
even seen the gentle-hearted chickadee re-
sent the intrusion of a chipping sparrow,
though it appeared impossible that the lat-
ter could be suspected of any predatory or
sinister design.

The shallowness of the wood pewee's sau-
cer-shaped nest, its position upon the branch,
and especially its external dress of lichens,

90 A BIRD'S-NEST EUNTER.

all conspire to render it inconspicuous. It
is an interesting question whether the owner
herself appreciates this, or has merely in-
herited the fashion, without thought of the
reasons for it. The latter supposition, I
reluctantly confess, looks to me the more
probable. It must often be true of other
animals, as it is of men, that they build
better than they know. Their wisdom is
not their own, but belongs to a power back
of them, — a power which works, if you
will, in accordance with what we designate
as the law of natural selection, and which,
so to speak, enlightens the race rather than
the individual.

After all, it is the ground birds that puz-
zle the human oologist. Crossing a brook,
I saw what I regarded as almost infallible
signs that a pair of Maryland yellow-throats
had begun to build beside it. Unless I was
entirely at fault, the nest must be within a
certain two or three square yards, and I de-
voted half an hour, more or less, to ran-
sacking the grass and bushes, till I thought
every inch of the ground had been gone
over ; but all to no purpose. Continuing
my walk, I noticed after a while that the

A BIRD'S-NEST HUNTER. 91

male warbler was accompanying me up the
hillside, apparently determined to see me
safely out of the way. Coming to the same
brook again the next morning, I halted for
another search ; and lo ! all in a moment
my eye fell upon the coveted nest, not on
the ground, but perhaps eight inches from
it, in a little clump of young golden-rods,
which would soon overgrow it completely.
The female proprietor was present, and
manifested so much concern that I would
not tarry, but made rather as if I had seen
nothing, and passed on. It was some time
before I observed that she was keeping
along beside me, precisely as her mate had
done the day before. The innocent crea-
tures, sorely pestered as they were, could
hardly be blamed for such precautions ; yet
it is not pleasant to be "shadowed" as a
suspicious character, even by Maryland yel-
low-throats.

This was my first nest of a very common
warbler, and I felt particularly solicitous
for its safety ; but alas ! no sooner was the
first egg laid than something or somebody
carried it off, and the afflicted couple de-
serted the house on which they had ex-
pended so much labor and anxiety.

92 A BIRD'S-NEST HUNTER.

Not far beyond the yellow-throats' brook,
and almost directly under one of the pe wees'
oaks, was a nest which pretty certainly
had belonged to a pair of chewinks, but
which was already forsaken when I found
it, though I had then no inkling of the fact.
It contained four eggs, and everything was
in perfect order. The mother had gone
away, and had never come back ; having
fallen a victim, probably, to some collec-
tor, human or inhuman. The tragedy was
peculiar ; and the tragical effect of it was
heightened as day after day, for nearly a
fortnight at least (I cannot say for how
much longer), the beautiful eggs lay there
entirely uncovered, and yet no skunk, squir-
rel, or other devourer of such dainties hap-
pened to spy them. It seemed doubly
sad that so many precious nests should be
robbed, while this set of worthless eggs was
left to spoil.

I have already mentioned the housekeep-
ing of a couple of chickadees in a low birch
stump. Theirs was one of three titmouse
nests just then claiming my attention. I
visited it frequently, from the time when
the pair were hard at work making the

A BIRD'S- NEST HUNTER. 93

cavity up to the time when the brood were
nearly ready to shift for themselves. Both
birds took their share of the digging, and on
several occasions I saw one feeding the
other. After the eggs were deposited, the
mother (or the sitter) displayed admirable
courage, refusing again and again to quit
her post when I peered in upon her, and
even when with my cane I rapped smartly
upon the stump. If I put my fingers into
the hole, however, she followed them out in
hot haste. Even when most seriously dis-
turbed by my attentions the pair made use
of no other notes than the common chick-
adee, dee, but these they sometimes deliv-
ered in an unnaturally sharp, fault-finding
tone.

My two other titmouse nests were both
in apple-trees, and one of them was in my
own door-yard, though beyond convenient
reach without the help of a ladder. The
owners of this last were interesting for a
very decided change in their behavior after
the young were hatched, and especially as
the time for the little ones' exodus drew
near. At first, notwithstanding their door
opened right upon the street, as it were,

94 A BIRD'S-NEST HUNTER.

within a rod or two of passing horse-cars,
the father and mother went in and out
without the least apparent concern as to
who might be watching them ; but when
they came to be feeding their hungry off-
spring, it was almost laughable to witness
the little craftinesses to which they resorted.
They would perch on one of the outer
branches, call chickadee, dee, fly a little
nearer, then likely enough go further off,
till finally, after a variety of such " false
motions," into the hole they would duck, as
if nobody for the world must be allowed to
know where they had gone. It was really
wonderful how expert they grew at enter-
ing quickly. I pondered a good deal over
their continual calling on such occasions.
It seemed foolish and inconsistent ; half the
time I should have failed to notice their ap-
proach, had they only kept still. Toward
the end, however, when the chicks inside
the trunk could be heard articulating chick-
adee, dee with perfect distinctness, it oc-
curred to me that possibly all this persistent
repetition of the phrase by the old birds
had been only or mainly in the way of tui-
tion. At all events, the youngsters had

A BIRD'S-NEST HUNTER. 95

this part of the chickadese vocabulary right
at their tongues' end, as we say, before
making their debut in the great world.

But it was reserved for my third pair of
tits to give me a genuine surprise. I had
been so constant a visitor at their house
that I had come to feel myself quite on
terms of intimacy with them. So, after
their brood was hatched, I one day climbed
into the tree (as I had done more than once
before), the better to overlook their paren-
tal labors. I had hardly placed myself in a
comfortable seat before the couple returned
from one of their foraging expeditions.
The male — or the one that I took for such
— had a black morsel of some kind in his
bill, which, on reaching the tree, he passed
over to his mate, who forthwith carried it
into the hollow stub, in the depths of which
the hungry little ones were. Then the male
flew off again, and presently came back with
another beakful, which his helpmeet took
from him at the door, where she had been
awaiting his arrival. After this perform-
ance had been repeated two or three times,
curiosity led me to stand up against the
stub, with my hand resting upon it ; at

96 A BIR&S-NEST HUNTER.

which the female (who was just inside the
mouth of the cavity) slipped out, and set up
an anxious chickadee, dee, dee. When her
mate appeared, — which he did almost im-
mediately, — he flew into what looked like
a downright paroxysm of rage, not against
me, but against the mother bird, shaking
his wings and scolding violently. I came
to the unhappy lady's relief as best I could
by dropping to the ground, and within a
few minutes the pair again approached the
stub in company ; but when the female
made a motion to take the food from her
husband's bill, as before, he pounced upon
her spitefully, drove her away, and dived
into the hole himself. Apparently he had
not yet forgiven what he accounted her pu-
sillanimous desertion of her charge. All
in all, the scene was a revelation to me, a
chickadee family quarrel being something
the like of which I had never dreamed of.
Perhaps no titmouse ever before had so
timorous a wife. But however that might
be, I sincerely hoped that they would not
be long in making up their difference. I
had enjoyed the sight of their loving inter-
course for so many weeks that I should have

A BIR&S-NEST HUNTER. 97

been sorry indeed to believe that it could
end in strife. Nor could I regard it as so
unpardonable a weakness for a bird to move
off, even from her young, when a man put
his fingers within a few inches of her. Pos-
sibly she ought to have known that I meant
no mischief. Possibly, too, her doughty
lord would have behaved more coinmend-
ably in the same circumstances ; but of that
I am by no means certain. To borrow a
theological term, my conception of bird
nature is decidedly anthropomorphic, and I
incline to believe that chickadees as well as
men find it easier to blame others than to
do better themselves.

Here these reminiscences must come to an
end, though the greater part of my season's
experiences are still untouched. First, how-
ever, let me relieve my conscience by put-
ting on record the bravery of a black-billed
cuckoo, whom I was obliged fairly to drive
from her post of duty. Her nest was a
sorry enough spectacle, — a flat, unwalled
platform, carpeted with willow catkins and
littered with egg-shells, in the midst of
which latter lay a single callow nestling,
nearly as black as a crow. But as I looked

98 A BIR&S-NEST HUNTER.

at the parent bird, while she sat within ten
feet of me, eying my every movement in-
tently, and uttering her wrath in various
cries (some catlike me wings among them),
my heart reproached me that I had ever
written of the cuckoo as a coward and a
sneak. Truth will not allow me to take the
words back entirely, even now ; but I felt
at that moment, and do still, that I might
have been better employed mending my
own faults than in holding up to scorn the
foibles of a creature who, when worst came
to worst, could set me such a shining exam-
ple of courageous fidelity. It is always in
order to be charitable ; and I ought to have
remembered that, for those who are them-
selves subject to imperfection, generosity is
the best kind of justice.

A GREEN MOUNTAIN CORN-FIELD.

Thus, without theft, I reap another's field. — SIDNEY
LANIER.

I WAS passing some days of idleness in
a shallow Vermont valley, situated at an
elevation of fifteen or sixteen hundred feet,
circled by wooded hills, and intersected by
an old turnpike, which connects the towns
near Lake Champlain with the region be-
yond the mountains. Small farmhouses
stood here and there along the highway,
while others were scattered at wide inter-
vals over the lower slopes of the outlying
hills.

With all the brightness and freshness
of early summer upon it, it was indeed
an enchanting picture; but even so, one
could not altogether put aside a feeling of
something like commiseration for the peo-
ple who, year in and year out, from baby-
hood to old age, found in this narrow
vale, with its severity of weather, and its

100 A GREEN MOUNTAIN CORN-FIELD.

scarcity of social comforts and opportuni-
ties, their only experience of what we fondly
call this wide, wide world.

From my inn I had walked eastward for
perhaps a mile; then at the little school-
house had taken a cross-road, which pres-
ently began to climb. Here I passed two
or three cottages (one of them boasting the
singularity of paint), and after a while came
to another, which appeared to be the last,
as the road not far beyond struck into the
ancient forest. First, however, it ran up
to a small plateau, where, out of sight from
the house, lay a scanty quarter of an acre,
in which the old parable, " First the blade,
then the ear, then the full corn in the ear,"
was in the primary stage of its fresh annual
fulfillment. The ground was but newly
cleared, and the brambles still felt them-
selves its true and rightful possessors. Who
was this puny-looking, good-for-nothing for-
eigner, that they should be turned out of
house and home for his accommodation ?
So they seemed to be asking among thern-
selyes, as they lifted up their heads here and
there in the midst of the pale-green shoots.
The crows, on the other hand, bade the new-

A GREEN MOUNTAIN CORN-FIELD. 101

comer welcome, — S3 the wolf welcomes the
lamb. Against these hungry lovers of his
crop (who loved not unwisely, but too well),
the farmer had fenced his field with a single
string, stretched from corner to corner. He
must put extraordinary faith in the con-
siderateness of the birds, a looker-on might
think; such a barrier as this could be, at
the most, nothing more than a polite hint
of ownership, a delicate reminder against
thoughtless trespassing, a courteously indi-
rect suggestion to such as needed not a phy-
sical, but only a moral, restraint. Or one
might take it as an appeal to some known
or fancied superstitiousness on the crows'
part ; as if the white cord were a kind of
fetich, with which they would never pre-
sume to meddle. But the rustic would have
laughed at all such far-fetched cockneyish
inferences. This strange-seeming device of
his was simply an attempt to take the sus-
picious in their own suspiciousness ; to set
before Corvus a hindrance so unmistakably
insufficient that he would mistrust it as a
cover for some deep-laid and deadly plot.
Probably the scheme had not been crowned
with complete success in the present in-

102 A GREEN MOUNTAIN CORN-FIELD.

stance, for from a pole in the middle of the
inclosure a dead crow was dangling in the
breeze. This was a more business-like sig-
nal than the other ; even a cockney could
hardly be in doubt as to its meaning ; and
the farmer, when I afterwards met him,
assured me that it had answered its purpose
to perfection. The crow is nobody's fool.
"Live and learn" is his motto; and he
does both, but especially the former, in a
way to excite the admiration of all disin-
terested observers. In the long struggle
between human ingenuity and corvine sa-
gacity, it is doubtful which has thus far
obtained the upper hand. Nor have I ever
quite convinced myself which of the con-
testants has the better case. " The crow is
a thief," the planter declares ; " he should
confine himself to a wild diet, or else sow
his own garden." " Yes, yes," Corvus
makes reply ; " but if I steal your corn,
you first stole my land." Unlike his cousin
the raven, — who, along with the Indian,
has retreated before the pale-face, — the
crow is no ultra - conservative. Civiliza-
tion and modern ideas are not in the least
distasteful to him. He has an unfeigned

A GREEN MOUNTAIN CORN-FIELD. 103

respect for agriculture, and in fact may be
said himself to have set up as gentleman-
farmer, letting out his land on shares, and
seldom failing to get his full half of the
crop ; and, like the shrewd manager that he
is, he insures himself against drought and
other mischances by taking his moiety early
in the season. As I plant no acres myself,
I perhaps find it easier than some of my
fellow -citizens to bear with the faults and
appreciate the virtues of this sable abori-
ginal. Long may he live, I say, this true
lover of his native land, to try the patience
and sharpen the wits of his would-be exter-
minators.

The crow's is only the common lot. The
whole earth is one field of war. Every
creature's place upon it is coveted by some
other creature. Plants and animals alike
subsist by elbowing their rivals out of the
way. Man, if he plants a corn-field, puts
in no more grains than will probably have
room to grow and thrive. But Nature, in
her abhorrence of a vacuum, stands at no
waste. She believes in competition, and
feels no qualms at seeing the weak go to
the wall.

104 A GREEN MOUNTAIN CORN-FIELD.

" The good old rule
Sufficeth her, the simple plan,
That they should take who have the power,
And they should keep who can."

If she wishes a single oak, she drops acorns
without number. Her recklessness equals
that of some ambitious military despot, to
whom ten thousand or a hundred thousand
dead soldiers count as nothing, if only the
campaign be fought through to victory.

Man's economy and Nature's prodigality,
— here they were in typical operation, side
by side. The corn was in " hills " uni-
formly spaced, and evidently the proprietor
had already been at work with plough and
hoe, lest the weeds should spring up and
choke it ; but just beyond stood a perfect
thicket of wild-cherry shrubs, so huddled
together that not one in twenty could possi-
bly find room in which to develop. If they
were not all of them stunted beyond recov-
ery, it would be only because ja few of the
sturdiest should succeed in crowding down
and killing off their weaker competitors.

The import of this apparent wastefulness
and cruelty of Nature, her seeming indiffer-
ence to the welfare of the individual, is a

A GREEN MOUNTAIN CORN-FIELD. 105

question on which it is not pleasant, and, as
I think, not profitable, to dwell. We see
but parts of her ways, and it must be unsafe
to criticise the working of a single wheel
here or there, when we have absolutely no
means of knowing how each fits into the
grand design, and, for that matter, can only
guess at the grand design itself. Rather
let us content ourselves with the prudent
saying of that ancient agnostic, Bildad the
Shuhite : " We are but of yesterday, and
know nothing." The wisest of us are more
or less foolish, by nature and of necessity ;
but it seems a gratuitous superfluity of folly
to ignore our own ignorance. For one,
then, I am in no mood to propose, much
less to undertake, any grand revolution in
the order of natural events. Indeed, as far
as I am personalty concerned, I fear it
would be found but a dubious improvement
if the wildness were quite taken out of the
world, — if its wilderness, according to the
word of the prophet, were to become all
like Eden. Tameness is not the only good
quality, whether of land or of human
nature.

As I sat on my comfortable log (the noble

106 A GREEN MOUNTAIN CORN-FIELD.

old tree had not been cut down for nothing),
birds of many kinds came and went about
me. Wordsworth's couplet would have
suited my case : —

" The birds around me hopped and played,
Their thoughts I cannot measure ; "

but I could hardly have rounded out the
quotation ; for, joyful as I believed the crea-
tures to be, many of their motions were
plainly not " thrills of pleasure," but tokens
of fear. It was now the very heyday of
life with them, when they are at once hap-
piest and most wary. There were secrets
to be kept close ; eggs and little ones, whose
whereabouts must on no account be di-
vulged. For the birds, too, not less than
the corn, the bramble, and the cherry, not
less even than the saint, find this earthly
life a daily warfare.

The artless ditty of the mourning warbler
came to my ears at intervals out of a tangle
of shrubbery, and once or twice he allowed
me glimpses of his quaint attire. I would
gladly have seen and heard much more of
him, but he evaded all my attempts at
familiarity. Nor could I blame him for his
furtive behavior. How was he to be cer-

A GREEN MOUNTAIN CORN-FIELD. 107

tain that I was no collector, but only an
innocent admirer of .birds in the bush ?
Sought after as his carcass is by every New
England ornithologist, the mourning war-
bler exercises only a reasonable discretion
in fighting shy of every animal that walks
upright.

It is evident, however, that for birds, as
for ourselves, the same thing often has both
a bright and a dark side. If men are some-
times heartless, and never to be altogether
confided in, yet at the same time their
doings are in various respects conducive to
the happiness and increase of feathered
life ; and this not only in the case of some
of the more familiar species, but even in
that of many which still retain all their
natural shyness of human society. A clear-
ing like that in which I was now resting
offers an excellent illustration of this ; for
it is a rule without exceptions that in such
a place one may see and hear more birds in
half an hour than are likely to be met with
in the course of a long day's tramp through
the unbroken forest. The mourning war-
bler himself likes a roadside copse better
than a deep wood, jealous as he may be of

108 A GREEN MOUNTAIN CORN-FIELD.

man's approach. Up to a certain point,
civilization is a blessing, even to birds.
Beyond a certain point, for aught I know,
it may be nothing but a curse, even to
men.

Here, then, I sat, now taken up with the
beautiful landscape, and anon turning my
head to behold some fowl of the air. I
might have mused with Emerson, —

" Knows he who tills this lonely field,

To reap its scanty corn,
What, mystic fruit his acres yield
At midnight and at morn,"

— only " mystic fruit " would have been
rather too high-sounding a phrase for my
commonplace cogitations. Hermit thrushes,
olive -backed thrushes, and veeries, with
sundry warblers and a scarlet tanager, sang
in chorus from the woods behind me, while
in front bluebirds, robins, song sparrows,
vesper sparrows, and chippers were doing
their best to transform this fresh Vermont
clearing into a time-worn Massachusetts
pasture ; assisted meanwhile by a goldfinch
who flew over my head with an ecstatic
burst of melody, and a linnet who fell to
warbling with characteristic fluency from a

A GREEN MOUNTAIN CORN-FIELD. 109

neighboring tree-top. At least two pairs of
rose-breasted grosbeaks had summer quar-
ters here ; and busy enough they looked, flit-
ting from one side of the garden to another,
yet not too busy for a tune between whiles.
One of the males was in really gorgeous
plumage. The rose-color had run over, as
it were (like Aaron's " precious ointment "),
and spilled all down his breast. It is hard
for me ever to think of this brilliant, tropi-
cally dressed grosbeak as a true Northerner ;
and here once more I was for the moment
surprised to hear him and the olive-backed
thrush singing together in the same wood.
Could such neighborliness have any patri-
otic significance ? I was almost ready to ask.
Across the corn-field a Traill's flycatcher
was tossing up his head pertly, and vocifer-
ating kwee-kwee. I took it for a challenge :
" Find my nest if you can, brother ! " But
I found nothing. Nor was I more success-
ful with a humming-bird, who had chosen
the tip of a charred stub, only a few rods
from my seat, for his favorite perch. Again
and again I saw him there preening his
feathers, and once or twice I tried to invei-
gle him into betraying his secret. Either

110 A GREEN MOUNTAIN CORN-FIELD.

his house was further off than I suspected,
however, or else he was too cunning to fall
into my snare. At any rate, he permitted
me to trample all about the spot, without
manifesting the first symptom of uneasiness.
What a traveler the humming-bird is ! I
myself had come perhaps three hundred
miles, and had accounted it a long, tiresome
journey, notwithstanding I had been brought
nearly all the way in a carriage elaborately
contrived for comfort, and moving over iron
rails. But this tiny insect -like creature
spent last winter in Central America, or it
may be in Cuba, and now here he sat, per-
fectly at home again in this Green Moun-
tain nook; and next autumn he will be off
again betimes, as the merest matter of
course, for another thousand -mile flight.
Verily, a marvelous spirit and energy may
be contained within a few ounces of flesh !
But if Trochilus be indeed Prosperous ser-
vant in disguise, as one of our poets makes
out, why, then, to be sure, his Sittings back
and forth are little to wonder at. How
slow, overgrown, and clumsy human beings
must look in his eyes ! I wonder if he is
never tempted to laugh at us. Who knows

A GREEN MOUNTAIN CORN-FIELD. HI

but humming-birds have it for a by-word,
" As awkward as a man " ?

My ruminations were suddenly broken in
upon by the approach of a carriage, driven
by a boy of perhaps ten years, a son of the
farmer from whose land I was, as it were,
gathering the first fruits. We had made
each other's acquaintance the day before,
and now, as he surmounted the hill, he
stopped to inquire politely whether I would
ride with him. Yes, I answered, I would
gladly be carried into the forest a little
way. It proved a very little way indeed ;
for the road was heavy from recent rains,
and the poor old hack was so short of
breath that he could barely drag us along,
and at every slump of the wheels came to a
dead standstill. "Pity for a horse o'er-
driven " soon compelled me to take to the
woods, in spite of the protestations of my
charioteer, who assured me that his steed
could trot " like everything," if he only
would. It is an extremely unpatriotic Ver-
monter, I suspect (I have never yet discov-
ered him), who will not brag a little over
his horse ; and I was rather pleased than
otherwise to hear my flaxen-haired friend

112 A GREEN MOUNTAIN CORN-FIELD.

set forth the good points of his beast, even
while he confessed that the " heaves " were
pretty bad. I was glad, too, to find the
youngster in a general way something of an
optimist. When I asked him how long the
land had been cleared, he pointed to one
corner of it, and responded, using the pro-
noun with perfect naivete, " We cleared up
that piece last fall ; " and on my inquiring
whether it was not hard work, he replied,
in a tone of absolute satisfaction, "Oh, yes,
but you get your pay for it." Evidently he
believed in Green Mountain land, which I
thought a very fortunate circumstance. " Be
content with such things as ye have," said
the Apostle ; and it is certainly easier to
obey the precept if one looks upon his own
things as the best in the world. My youthful
philosopher seemed to consider it altogether
natural and reasonable that prosperity, in-
stead of coming of itself, should have to be
earned by the sweat of the brow. Perhaps
the crow and the cherry-tree are equally un-
sophisticated. Perhaps, too, men's fates are
less uneven than is sometimes supposed. For
I could not help thinking that if this boy
should retain his present view of things, he

A GREEN MOUNTAIN CORN-FIELD. 113

would pass his days more happily than
many a so-called favorite of fortune.

On my way back to the inn I met an old
man from the lowlands, driving over the
mountains for the first time since boyhood.
" You have a pretty good farming country
here," he called out cheerily, — "a little
rolling." He took me for a native, and I
hope to be forgiven for not disclaiming the
compliment.

As I write, I find myself wondering how
my nameless farmer's crop is prospered.
In my corner of the world we have lately
been afflicted with drought. I hope it has
been otherwise on his hillside plateau. In
my thought, at all events, his corn is now
fully tasseled, and waves in a pleasant
mountain wind, all green and shining.

BEHIND THE EYE.

As what he sees is, so have his thoughts been. — MAT-
THEW ARNOLD.

NOTHING is seen until it is separated
from its surroundings. A man looks at the
landscape, but the tree standing in the mid-
dle of the landscape he does not see until,
for the instant at least, he singles it out as
the object of vision. Two men walk the
same road ; as far as the bystander can per-
ceive, they have before them the same
sights ; but let them be questioned at the
end of the journey, and it will appear that
one man saw one set of objects, and his
companion another ; and the more diverse
the intellectual training and habits of the
two travelers, the greater will be the dis-
crepancy between the two reports.

And what is true of any two men is
equally true of any one man at two different
times. To-day he is in a dreamy, reflective
mood, — he has been reading Wordsworth,

BEHIND THE EYE. 115

perhaps, — and when he takes his afternoon
saunter he looks at the bushy hillside, or at
the wayside cottage, or down into the loi-
tering brook, and he sees in them all such
pictures as they never showed him before.
Or he is in a matter-of-fact mood, a kind of
stock-market frame of mind ; and he looks
at everything through economical specta-
cles? — as if he had been set to appraise the
acres of meadow or woodland through which
he passes. At another time he may have
been reading some book or magazine article
written by Mr. John Burroughs ; and al-
though he knows nothing of birds, and can
scarcely tell a crow from a robin (perhaps
for this very reason), he is certain to have
tantalizing glimpses of some very strange
and wonderful feathered specimens. They
must be rarities, at least, if not absolute
novelties ; and likely enough, on getting
home, he sits down and writes to Mr. Bur-
roughs a letter full of gratitude and inquiry,
— the gratitude very pleasant to receive,
we may presume, and the inquiries quite
impossible to answer.

Some men (not many, it is to be hoped)
are specialists, and nothing else. They are

116 BEHIND THE EYE.

absorbed in farming, or in shoemaking, in
chemistry, or in Latin grammar, and have
no thought for anything beyond or beside.
Others of us, while there may be two or
three subjects toward which we feel some
special drawing, have nevertheless a general
interest in whatever concerns humanity.
We are different men on different days.
There is a certain part of the year, say from
April to July, when I am an ornithologist ;
for the time being, as often as I go out-of-
doors, I have an eye for birds, and, com-
paratively speaking, for nothing else. Then
comes a season during which my walks all
take on a botanical complexion. I have had
my turn at butterflies, also ; for one or two
summers I may be said to have seen little
else but these winged blossoms of the air.
I know, too, what it means to visit the sea-
shore, and scarcely to notice the breaking
waves because of the shells scattered along
the beach. In short, if I see one thing, I
am of necessity blind, or half-blind, to all
beside. There are several men in me, and
not more than one or two of them are ever
at the window at once. Formerly, my en-
joyment of nature was altogether reflective,

BEHIND THE EYE. 117

imaginative ; in a passive, unproductive
sense, poetical. I delighted in the woods
and fields, the seashore and the lonely road,
not for the birds or flowers to be found
there, but for the " serene and blessed
mood " into which I was put by such friend-
ship. Later in life, it transpired, as much
to my surprise as to anybody's else, that I
had a bent toward natural history, as well
as toward nature ; an inclination to study,
as well as to dream over, the beautiful world
about me. I must know the birds apart,
and the trees, and the flowers. A bit of
country was no longer a mere landscape, a
picture, but a museum as well. For a time
the poet seemed to be dead within me ; and
happy as I found myself in my new pursuits,
I had fits of bewailing my former condition.
Science and fancy, it appeared, would not
travel hand in hand ; if a man must be a
botanist, let him bid good-by to the Muse.
Then I fled again to Emerson and Words-
worth, trying to read the naturalist asleep
and reawaken the poet. Happy thought !
The two men, the student and the lover,
were still there ; and there they remain to
this day. Sometimes one is at the window,
sometimes the other.

118 BEHIND THE KYE.

So it is, undoubtedly, with other people.
My fellow-travelers, who hear me discours-
ing enthusiastically of vireos and warblers,
thrushes and wrens, whilst they see never a
bird, unless it be now and then an English
sparrow or a robin, talk sometimes as if the
difference between us were one of eyesight.
They might as well lay it to the window-
glass of our respective houses. It is not
the eye that sees, but the man behind the
eye.

As to the comparative advantages and
disadvantages of such a division of interests
as I have been describing, there may be
room for two opinions. If distinction be
all that the student hungers for, perhaps he
cannot limit himself too strictly ; but for
myself, I think I should soon tire of my own
society if I were only one man, — a botanist
or a chemist, an artist, or even a poet. I
should soon tire of myself, I say ; but I
might have said, with equal truth, that I
should soon tire of nature; for if I were
only one man, I should see only one aspect
of the natural world. This may explain
why it is that some persons must be forever
moving from place to place. If they travel

BEHIND THE EYE. 119

the same road twice or thrice, or even to
the hundredth time, they see only one set
of objects. The same man is always at the
window. No wonder they are restless and
famished. For my own part, though I
should delight to see new lands and new
people, new birds and new plants, I ain
nevertheless pretty well contented where I
am. If I take the same walks, I do not see
the same things. The botanist spells the
dreamer ; and now and then the lover of
beauty keeps the ornithologist in the back-
ground till he is thankful to come once
more to the window, though it be only to
look at a bluebird or a song sparrow.

How much influence has the will in de-
termining which of these several tenants of
a man's body shall have his turn at sight-
seeing? It would be hard to answer def-
initely. As much, it may be, as a teacher
has over his pupils, or a father over his chil-
dren ; something depends upon the strength
of the governing will, and something upon
the tractability of the pupil. In general, I
assume to command. As I start on my
ramble I give out word, as it were, which of
the men shall have the front seat. But

120 BEHIND THE EYE.

there are days when some one of them
proves too much both for me and for his
fellows. It is not the botanist's turn, per-
haps ; but he takes his seat at the window,
notwithstanding, and the ornithologist and
the dreamer must be content to peep at
the landscape over his shoulders.

On such occasions, it may as well be con-
fessed, I make but a feeble remonstrance ;
and for the sufficient reason that I feel
small confidence in my own wisdom. If the
flower-lover or the poet must have the hour,
then in all likelihood he ought to have it.
So much I concede to the nature of things.
A strong tendency is a strong argument,
and of itself goes far to justify itself. I
borrow no trouble on the score of such com-
pulsions. On the contrary, my lamenta-
tions begin when nobody sues for the place
of vision. Such days I have ; blank days,
days to be dropped from the calendar; when
" those that look out of the windows be
darkened." The fault is not with the
world, nor with the eye. The old preacher
had the right of it ; it is not the windows
that are darkened, but " those that look out
of the windows."

A NOVEMBER CHRONICLE.

I Ve gathered young spring-leaves, and flowers gay. —
KEATS.

I LOOKED forward to the month with
peculiar interest, as it was many years since
I had passed a November in the country,
and now that it is over I am moved to pub-
lish its praises : partly, as I hope, out of
feelings of gratitude, and partly because it
is an agreeable kind of originality to com-
mend what everybody else has been in the
habit of decrying.

In the first place, then, it was a month of
pleasant weather; something too much of
wind and dust (the dust for only the first
ten days) being almost the only drawback.
To me, with my prepossessions, it was little
short of marvelous how many of the days
were nearly or quite cloudless. The only
snow fell on the llth. I saw a few flakes
in the afternoon, just enough to be counted,
and there must have been another slight

122 A NOVEMBER CHRONICLE.

flurry after dark, as the grass showed white
in favorable spots early the next morning.
Making allowance for the shortness of the
days, I doubt whether there has been a
month during the past year in which a man
could comfortably spend more of his time
in out-of-door exercise.

The trees were mostly bare before the
end of October, but the apple and cherry
trees still kept their branches green (they
are foreigners, and perhaps have been used
to a longer season), and the younger growth
of gray birches lighted up the woodlands
with pale yellow. Of course the oak-leaves
were still hanging, also ; and for that mat-
ter they are hanging yet, and will be for
months to come, let the north wind blow
as it may. I wonder whether their winter
rustling sounds as cold in other ears as in
mine. My own feeling is most likely the
result of boyish associations. How often I
waded painfully through the forest paths,
my feet and hands half frozen, while these
ghosts of summer shivered sympathetically
on every side as they saw me pass ! I won-
der, too, what can be the explanation of this
unnatural oak-tree habit. The leaves are

A NOVEMBER CHRONICLE. 123

dead ; why should they not obey the general
law, — " ashes to ashes, dust to dust " ? Is
our summer too short to ripen them, and so
to perfect the articulation ? Whatever its
cause, their singular behavior does much to
beautify the landscape ; particularly in such
a district as mine, where the rocky hills are,
so many of them, covered with young oak
forests, which, especially for the first half of
November, before the foliage is altogether
faded, are dressed in subdued shades of ma-
roon, beautiful at all hours, but touched
into positive glory by the level rays of the
afternoon sun.

I began on the very first day of the month
to make a list of the plants found in bloom,
and happening, a week afterward, to be in
the company of two experienced botanical
collectors, I asked them how many species
I was likely to find. One said thirty. The
other, after a little hesitation, replied, " I
don't know, but I should n't think you
could find a dozen." Well, it is true that
November is not distinctively a floral month
in Massachusetts, but before its thirty days
were over I had catalogued seventy-three
species, though for six of these, to be sure,

124 A NOVEMBER CHRONICLE.

I have to thank one of the collectors just
now mentioned. Indeed, I found thirty-
nine sorts on my first afternoon ramble;
and even as late as the 27th and 28th I
counted twelve. All in all, there is little
doubt that at least a hundred kinds of plants
were in bloom about me during the month.
Having called my record a chronicle, I
should be guilty of an almost wanton disre-
gard of scriptural models if I did not fill it
largely with names, and accordingly I do
' not hesitate to subjoin a full list of these
my November flowers ; omitting Latin ti-
tles, — somewhat unwillingly, I confess, —
except where the vernacular is wanting
altogether, or else is more than commonly
ambiguous : — creeping buttercup, tall but-
tercup, field larkspur, celandine, pale cory-
dalis, hedge mustard, shepherd's-purse, wild
peppergrass, sea-rocket, wild radish, com-
mon blue violet, bird-foot violet, pansy,
Deptford pink, common chickweed, larger
mouse-ear chickweed, sand spurrey, knawel,
common mallow, herb-robert, storksbill, red
clover, alsyke, white clover, white sweet
clover, black medick, white avens, common
cinque- foil, silvery cinque -foil, witch-hazel,

A NOVEMBER CHtlOtilCLE. 125

common evening-primrose, smaller evening-
primrose, carrot, blue-stemmed golden-rod,
white golden-rod (or silvery-rod), seaside
golden -rod, Solidago juncea, Solidago ru-
gosa, dusty golden -rod, early golden -rod,
corymbed aster, wavy-leaved aster, heart-
leaved aster, many-flowered aster, Aster vi~
mineus, Aster diffusus, New York aster,
Aster puniceus, narrow - leaved aster, flea-
bane, horse-weed, everlasting, cudweed, cone-
flower, mayweed, yarrow, tansy, groundsel,
burdock, Canada thistle, fall dandelion,
common dandelion, sow thistle, Indian
tobacco, bell-flower (Campanula rapun-
culoides), fringed gentian, wild toad-flax,
butter and eggs, self - heal, motherwort,
jointweed, doorweed, and ladies' tresses
(Spiranthes cernud).

Here, then, we have seventy-three species,
all but one of which (Spiranthes cernud)
are of the class of exogens. Twenty-two
orders are represented, the great autumnal
family of the Cpmpositce naturally taking
the lead, with thirty species (sixteen of
them asters and golden -rods), while the
mustard, pink, and pulse families come
next, with five species each. The large and

126 A NOVEMBER CHRONICLE.

hardy heath family is wanting altogether.
Out of the whole number about forty-three
are indigenous. Witch-hazel is the only
shrub, and, as might have been expected,
there is no climbing plant.

In setting down such a list one feels it a
pity that so few of the golden-rods and as-
ters have any specific designation in Eng-
lish. Under this feeling, I have presumed
myself to name two of the golden -rods,
Solidago Canadensis and Solidago nemora-
lis. With us, at all events, the former is
the first of its genus to blossom, and may
appropriately enough wear the title of early
golden-rod, while the latter must have been
noticed by everybody for its peculiar gray-
ish, " dusty-miller " foliage. It has, more-
over, an exceptional right to a vernacular
name, being both one of the commonest
and one of the showiest of our roadside
weeds. Till something better is proposed,
therefore, let us call it the dusty golden-rod.

It must in fairness be acknowledged that
I did not stand upon the quality of my
specimens. Many of them were nothing
but accidental and not very reputable-look-
ing laggards; but in November, especially

A NOVEMBER CHRONICLE. 127

if one is making a list, a blossom is a blos-
som. The greater part of the asters and
golden-rods, I think, were plants that had
been broken down by one means or another,
and now, at this late day, had put forth a
few stunted sprays. The narrow-leaved as-
ter ( Aster linariifolius) seemed peculiarly
out of season, and was represented by only
two heads, but these sufficed to bring the
mouth-filling name into my catalogue. Of
the two species of native violets I saw but
a single blossom each. My pansy (common
enough in gardens, and blooming well into
December) was, of course, found by the
roadside, and the larkspur likewise, as I
made nothing of any but wild plants.

At this time of the year one must not
expect to pick flowers anywhere and every-
where, and a majority of all my seventy-
three species (perhaps as many as two
thirds) were found only in one or more of
three particular places. The first of these
was along a newly laid-out road through a
tract of woodland ; the second was a shel-
tered wayside nook between high banks;
and the third was at the seashore. At this
last place, on the 8th of the month, I came

128 A NOVEMBER CHRONICLE.

unexpectedly upon a field fairly yellow with
fall dandelions and silvery cinque-foils, and
affording also my only specimens of bur-
dock, Canada thistle, cone-flower, and the
smaller evening -primrose; in addition to
which were the many-flowered aster, yar-
row, red clover, and sow thistle. In truth,
the grassy hillside was quite like a garden,
although there was no apparent reason why
it should be so favored. The larger even-
ing-primrose, of which I saw two stalks, one
of them bearing six or eight blossoms, was
growing among the rocks just below the
edge of the cliff, in company with abun-
dance of sow thistle, all perfectly fresh ;
while along the gravelly edge of the bank,
just above them, was the groundsel (Sene-
cio vulgari9)i looking as bright and thrifty
as if it had been the first of August instead
of near the middle of November.

Perhaps my most surprising bit of good
luck was the finding of the Deptford pink.
Of this, for some inscrutable reason, one
plant still remained green and showed sev-
eral rosy blossoms, while all its fellows, far
and near, were long since bleached and
dead. Fortune has her favorites, even

A NOVEMBER CHRONICLE. 129

among pinks. The frail - looking, early-
blooming corydalis (we have few plants
that appear loss able to bear exposure) waH
in excellent condition up to the very end
of the month, though the one patch then
explored was destitute of flowers. These
were as pretty as could be — prettier even
ilr.ui in May, I thought — on the 16th, anc1
no doubt might have been found on the
80th, with careful search. The little gera-
nium known as herb-robert is a neighbor of
the corydalis, and, like it, stands the cold

n:m;uU;il>ly well. Us middling, finely cut,
leaves were fresh and flourishing, but though
I often looked for its flowers, I found only
one during the entire month. The storks-
bill, its less known cousin, does not grow
within my limits, but came to me from
Essex County, through the kindness <>i :t
friend, being one of the six species cont i il»
uted by her, as I have before mentioned.

The hardiness of some of these late
bloomers is surprising. It is now the 2d
of December, and yesterday the tempera-
ture fell about thirty degrees below the
freezing-point, yet I notice shepherd's-purse,
peppergrass, chick weed, and knawel still

130 A NOVEMBER CHRONICLE.

bearing fresh-looking flowers. Nor are they
the only plants that seem thus impervious
to cold. The prostrate young St. John's-
wort shoots, for instance, all uncovered and
delicate as they are, appear not to know
that winter with all its rigors is upon them.

It was impossible not to sympathize ad-
miringly with some of my belated asters and
golden-rods. Their perseverance was truly
pathetic. They had been hindered, but
they meant to finish their appointed task,
nevertheless, in spite of short days and cold
weather. I have especially in mind a plant
of Solidago juncea. The species is nor-
mally one of the earliest, following hard
upon Solidago Canadensis, but for some
reason this particular specimen did not be-
gin to flower till after the first heavy frosts.
Indeed, when I first noticed it, the stem
leaves were already frost-bitten ; yet it kept
on putting forth blossoms for at least a fort-
night. Whatever may be true of the lilies
of the field, this golden-rod was certainly a
toiler, and of the most persistent sort.

Early in the month the large and hardy
Antiopa butterflies were still not uncommon
in the woods, and on the 3d — a delightful,

A NOVEMBER CHRONICLE. 131

summer-like day, in which I made a pil-
grimage to Walden — I observed a single
clouded- sulphur (Philodice), looking none
the worse for the low temperature of the
night before, when the smaller ponds had
frozen over for the first time.

Of course I kept account of the birds as
well as of the flowers, but the number, both
of individuals and of species, proved to be
surprisingly small, the total list being as
follows : — great black-backed gull, Ameri-
can herring gull, ruffed grouse, downy wood-
pecker, flicker, blue jay, crow, horned lark,
purple finch, red crossbill, goldfinch, snow
bunting, Ipswich sparrow, white - throated
sparrow, tree sparrow, snowbird, song spar-
row, fox sparrow, Northern shrike, myrtle
warbler, brown creeper, white-breasted nut-
hatch, chickadee, golden-crowned kinglet,
and robin. Here are only twenty-five spe-
cies ; a meagre catalogue, which might have
been longer, it is true, but for the patriot-
ism or prejudice (who will presume always
to decide between these two feelings, one of
them so given to counterfeiting the other?)
which would not allow me to piece it out
with the name of that all too numerous
parasite, the so-called English sparrow.

132 A NOVEMBER CHRONICLE.

My best ornithological day was the 17th,
which, with a friend like-minded, I passed
at Ipswich Beach. The special object of our
search was the Ipswich sparrow, a bird un-
known to science until 1868, when it was
discovered at this very place by Mr. May-
nard. Since then it has been found to be
a regular fall and winter visitant along the
Atlantic coast, passing at least as far south
as New Jersey. It is a mystery how the
creature could so long have escaped detec-
tion. One cannot help querying whether
there can be another case like it. Who
knows ? Science, even in its flourishing
modern estate, falls a trifle short of omnis-
cience.

My comrade and I separated for a little,
losing sight of each other among the sand-
hills, and when we came together again he
reported that he had seen the sparrow. He
had happened upon it unobserved, and had
been favored with excellent opportunities
for scrutinizing it carefully through a glass
at short range ; and being familiar with its
appearance through a study of cabinet spec-
imens, he had no doubt whatever of its
identity. This was within five minutes cf

A NOVEMBER CHRONICLE. 133

our arrival, and naturally we anticipated no
difficulty in finding others ; but for two or
three hours we followed the chase in vain.
Twice, to be sure, a sparrow of some sort
flew up in front of us, but in both cases it
got away without our obtaining so much as
a peep at it. Up and down the beach we
went, exploring the basins and sliding down
the smooth, steep hills. Every step was
interesting, but it began to look as if I
must go home without seeing Ammodramus
princeps. But patience was destined to
have its reward, and just as we were tra-
versing the upper part of the beach for the
last time, I caught a glimpse of a bird
skulking in the grass before us. He had
seen us first, and was already on the move,
ducking behind the scattered tufts of beach-
grass, crouching and running by turns ; but
we got satisfactory observations, neverthe-
less, and he proved to be, like the other, an
Ipswich sparrow. He did not rise, but
finally made off through the grass without
uttering a sound. Then we examined his
footprints, and found them to be, so far as
could be made out, the same as we had been
noticing all about among the hills.

134 A NOVEMBER CHRONICLE.

Meanwhile, our perambulations had not
been in vain. Flocks of snow buntings
were seen here and there, and we spent a
long time in watching a trio of horned
larks. These were feeding amid some
stranded rubbish, and apparently felt not
the slightest suspicion of the two men who
stood fifteen or twenty feet off, eying their
motions. It was too bad they could not
hear our complimentary remarks about
their costumes, so tastefully trimmed with
black and yellow. Our loudest exclama-
tions, however, were called forth by a dense
flock of sea-gulls at the distant end of the
beach. How many hundreds there were I
should not dare to guess, but when they
rose in a body their white wings really
filled the air, and with the bright sunlight
upon them they made, for a landsman, a
spectacle to be remembered.

Altogether it was a high day for two en-
thusiasts, though no doubt it would have
looked foolish enough to ordinary mortals,
our spending several dollars of money and a
whole day of time, — in November, at that,
— all for the sake of ogling a few birds, not
one of which we even attempted to shoot.

A NOVEMBER CHRONICLE. 135

But what then ? Tastes will differ ; and
as for enthusiasm, it is worth more than
money and learning put together (so I be-
lieve, at least, without having experimented
with the other two) as a producer of happi-
ness. For my own part, I mean to be en-
thusiastic as long as possible, foreseeing
only too well that high spirits cannot last
forever.

The sand-hills themselves would have re-
paid all our trouble. Years ago this land
just back of the beach was covered with
forest, while at one end of it was a flour-
ishing farm. Then when man, with his
customary foolishness, cut off the forest,
Nature revenged herself by burying his
farm. We did not verify the fact, but ac-
cording to the published accounts of the
matter it used to be possible to walk over
the grave of an old orchard, and pick here
and there an apple from some topmost
branch still jutting out through the sand.

Among the dunes we found abundance of
a little red, heath-Rke plant, still in full
blossom. Neither of us recognized it, but
it turned out to be jointweed (Polygonum
articulatum), and made a famous addition
to my November flower catalogue.

136 A NOVEMBER CHRONICLE.

In connection with all this I ought, per-
haps, to say a word about our Ipswich
driver, especially as naturalists are some-
times reprehended for taking so much in-
terest in all other creatures, and so little in
their fellow-men. As we drew near the
beach, which is some five miles from the
town, we began to find the roads quite un-
der water, with the sea still rising. We
remarked the fact, the more as we were to
return on foot, whereupon the man said
that the tide was uncommonly high on ac-
count of the heavy rain of the day before !
A little afterward, when we came in sight
of a flock of gulls, he gravely informed us
that they were " some kind of ducks " !
He had lived by the seashore all his life, I
suppose, and of course felt entirely compe-
tent to instruct two innocent cockneys such
as he had in his wagon.

Four days after this I made a trip to
Nahant. If Ammodramus princeps was at
Ipswich, why should it not be at other simi-
lar places ? True enough, I found the birds
feeding beside the road that runs along the
beach. I chased them about for an hour or
two in a cold high wind, and stared at them

A NOVEMBER CHRONICLE. 137

till I was satisfied. They fed much of the
time upon the golden-rods, alighted freely
upon the fence-posts (which is what some
writers would lead us never to expect), and
often made use of the regular family tseep.
Two of them kept persistently together, as
if they were mated. One staggered me
by showing a blotch in the middle of the
breast, a mark that none of the published
descriptions mention, but which I have
since found exemplified in one of the skins
at the Museum of Comparative Zoology, in
Cambridge.

" A day is happily spent that shows me
any bird I never saw alive before." So
says Dr. Coues, and he would be a poor
ornithologist who could not echo the senti-
ment. The Ipswich sparrow was the third
such bird that I had seen during the year
without going out of New England, the
other two being the Tennessee warbler and
the Philadelphia vireo.

Of the remainder of my November list
there is not much to be said. Robins were
very scarce after the first week. My last
glimpse of them was on the 20th, when I
saw two. Tree sparrows, snowbirds, chick-

138 A NOVEMBER CHRONICLE.

adees, kinglets, crows, and jays were often-
est met with, while the shrike, myrtle war-
bler, purple finch, and song sparrow were
represented by one individual each. My
song sparrow was not seen till the 28th,
after I had given him up. He did not sing
(of course he scolded ; the song sparrow
can always do that), but the mere sight of
him was enough to suggest thoughts of
springtime, especially as he happened to
be in the neighborhood of some Pickering
hylas, which were then in full cry for the
only time during the month. Near the end
of the month many wild geese flew over the
town, but, thanks to a rebellious tooth (how
happy are the birds in this respect !), I was
shut indoors, and knew the fact only by
hearsay. I did, however, see a small flock
on the 30th of October, an exceptionally
early date. As it chanced, I was walking
at the time with one of my neighbors, a man
more than forty years old, and he assured
me that he had never seen such a thing
before.

For music, I one day heard a goldfinch
warbling a few strains, and on the 21st a
chickadee repeated his clear phoebe whistle

A NOVEMBER CHRONICLE. 139

two or three times. The chickadees are
always musical, — there is no need to say
that ; but I heard them sing only on this
one morning.

Altogether, with the cloudless, mild days,
the birds, the tree-frogs, the butterflies, and
the flowers, November did not seem the
bleak and cheerless season it has commonly
been painted- Still it was not exactly like
summer. On the last day I saw some
very small boys skating on the Cambridge
marshes, and the next morning December
showed its hand promptly, sending the
mercury down to within two or three de-
grees of zero.

NEW ENGLAND WINTER.

While I enjoy the friendship of the seasons, I trust that
nothing can make life a burden to me. — THOREAU.

THOSE who will have us all to be study-
ing the Sacred Books of the East, and other
such literature, are given to laying it down
as an axiom that whoever knows only one
religion knows none at all, — an assertion, I
am bound to acknowledge, that commends
itself to my reason, notwithstanding the
somewhat serious inferences fairly deduci-
ble from it touching the nature and worth
of certain convictions of my own, which I
have been wont to look upon as religious. I
cannot profess ever to have pried into the
mysteries of any faith except Christianity.
So, of course, I do not understand even that.
And the people about me, so far as I can
discover, are all in the same predicament.
Yet I would fain believe that we are not
exactly heathen. Some of my neighbors
(none too many of them, I confess) are

NEW ENGLAND WINTER. 141

charitable and devout. They must be
pleasing to their Creator, I say to myself,
unless He is hard to please. Sometimes I
go so far as to think that possibly a man
may be religious without knowing even his
own religion. Let us hope so. Otherwise,
we of the laity are assuredly undone.

And what is true of creeds and churches
is true likewise of countries and climates.
We grow wise by comparison of one thing
with another, not by direct and exclusive
contemplation of one thing by itself. Hu-
man knowledge is relative, not absolute, and
the inveterate stayer at home is but a poor
judge of his own birthplace.

All this I have in lively remembrance as
I sit down to record some impressions of
our New England winter. With what pro-
priety do I discourse upon winter in Mas-
sachusetts, having never passed one any-
where else ? Had I spent a portion of my
life where roses bloom the year round, then,
to be sure, I might assume to say something
to the purpose about snow and ice.

But if the " tillers of paper " wrote only
of such topics as they possessed full and
accurate acquaintance with, how would the

142 NEW ENGLAND WINTER.

Scripture be fulfilled ? " Of making many
books " there surely would be an end,
and that speedily. I venture to think,
moreover, that a man may never have set
foot beyond the boundaries of his native
city, and yet prove a reasonably competent
guide to its streets and by-ways. His in-
formation is circumscribed, but such as it
is, it is precise and to the point. Though
he assure you soberly that the principal
thoroughfare of his tenth-rate town is more
magnificent than any in New York or Lon-
don, you may none the less depend upon
him to pilot you safely out of its most in-
tricate and bewildering corner. Indeed, he
might fairly claim members! iip in what is,
at present, one of the most flourishing of
intellectual guilds : I mean the sect of the
specialists; whose creed is that one may
know something without knowing every-
thing, and who choose for their motto : Re-
main ignorant in order that you may learn.
In this half - developed world there is
nothing so perfect as to be past a liability
to drawbacks and exceptions. The best of
beef is poisonous to some eaters, and straw-
berries are an abomination to others ; and

NEW ENGLAND WINTER. 143

in like manner there is no climate, nor
any single feature of any climate, but by
some constitutions it will be found unen-
durable. The earth is to be populated
throughout, so it would appear ; and to that
end sundry necessary precautions have been
taken against human inertia. A certain
proportion of boys must be born with a
propensity for wandering and adventure ;
and the most favored spot must not contain
within itself all conceivable advantages. If
everybody could stand the rigors of New
England weather, what would become of
the rest of the continent ?

Unless I misjudge myself, I should soon
tire of perpetual summer. Like the ungrate-
ful Israelites with the manna, my soul would
loathe such light bread. To my provincial
mind, as I believe, nothing else could ever
quite take the place of a rotation of the sea-
sons. There should be rain and shine, cold
and heat. A change from good weather to
bad, and back again, is on the whole better
than unbroken good weather. Dullness to
set off brightness, night to give relief to
the day, such is the wise order of nature ;
and I do not account it altogether a token

144 NEW ENGLAND WINTER.

of depravity that honest people, who love>
a paradox without knowing it, find perfec-
tion, of no matter how innocent a sort, just
a little wearisome. Therefore, I say, let
me have a year made up of well-defined
contrasts ; in short, a New England year,
of four clearly marked seasons.

It is often alleged, I know, that we really
have only three seasons ; that winter leaps
into the lap of summer, and spring is noth-
ing but a myth of the almanac makers. I
shall credit this story when I am convinced
of the truth of another statement, equally
current and equally well vouched, that
every successive summer is the hottest (or
the coldest) for the last twenty-five years.
As there is no subject so much talked about
as the weather, so, almost of course, there
is none so much lied about. Winter claims
most of March, as the astronomers give it
leave to do, I believe ; but April and May,
despite a snow-storm or two in the former,
and a torrid week in the latter, are neither
summer nor winter, but spring ; somewhat
fickle, it is true, more or less uncertain of it-
self, but still retaining its personal identity.

As for our actual winter, it may enhance

NEW ENGLAND WINTER. 145

its value in our eyes if we take into account
that the three other seasons all depend upon
it for their peculiar charms. In the case of
spring this dependence is palpable to every
one. Berate as we may its backwardness
and deceit, muffle ourselves never so pet-
tishly against its harsh breath, yea, even
deny it all claim to its own proper title, yet
anon it gets the better of our discontent,
and we thank our stars that we have lived
to see again the greening of the grass, and
to hear once more the song of a bird. A
mild day in March is like a foretaste of
heaven ; the first robin seems an angel ;
while saxifrage, anemones, and dandelions
win kindly notice from many a matter-of-
fact countryman who lets all the June roses
go by him unregarded. It is pleasures of
this kind, natural, wholesome, and univer-
sal, that largely make up the total of hu-
man happiness. Our instinct for them only
strengthens with age. They are like the
" divine ideas " of Olympian bards, —

"Which always find us young,
. And always keep us so."

All this glory of the revival would be
•wanting but for the previous months of

146 NEW ENGLAND WINTER.

desolation. The hepatica is not more beau-
tiful than many another flower, but it takes
us when we are hungry for the sight of a
blossom. What can we do ? When it
peeps out of its bed of withered leaves, puts
off its furs, and opens to the sunlight its
little purple cup, we have no choice but to
love it as we cannot love the handsomer
and more fragrant hosts that follow in its
train.

And as winter over and gone sets in
brighter relief the warmth and resurrection
of springtime, so does the shadow of its
approach lend a real if somewhat indefin-
able attractiveness to the fall months. The
blooming of the late flowers, the ripening
of leaf and fruit, the frosty air, the flocking
of birds, all the thousand signs of the au-
tumnal season take on a kind of pathetic
and solemn interest, as being but prelusive
to the whiteness and deadness so soon to
cover the earth. Indeed, if there were no
winter, there could be neither spring nor
autumn ; nay, nor any summer. Leave out
the snow and ice, and the whole round year
would be metamorphosed; or, rather, the
year itself would pass away, and nothing be
left but time.

NEW ENGLAND WINTER. 147

I am not yet a convert to the pessimistic
doctrine that " all pleasure is merely relief
from pain ; " but I gladly believe that pain
has its use in heightening subsequent hap-
piness, and that one man's evil qualities
(mine, for example) may partly atone for
themselves by setting off the amiable char-
acteristics of worthier men around him. It
consoles me to feel that my neighbors seem
better to themselves and to each other be-
cause of the abrupt antithesis between
their dispositions and mine. It is better
than nothing, if my failure can serve as
a background for their virtuous success.
With reverent thankfulness do I acknow-
ledge the gracious and far-reaching frugal-
ity which, by one means and another, saves
even my foolishness and imperfection from
running altogether to waste.

Viewed in this light, as an offset or foil
for the remainder of the year, we may say
that the worse the winter is, the better it is.
Within reasonable limits, it can hardly be
too long or too rigorous. And just here, as
it appears to me, our New England climate
shows most admirably. Without being un-
endurably hot or insufferably cold, it does

148 NEW ENGLAND WINTER.

offer us an abundant contrast. An opposi-
tion of one hundred and twenty-five degrees
between January and July ought to be
enough, one would say, to impress even the
dullest imagination.

But winter has its positively favorable
side, and is not to be passed off with merely
negative compliments ; as if it were like a
toothache or a tiresome sermon, — some-
thing of which the only good word to be
said is, that it cannot last forever. It is
not to be charged as a defect upon cold
weather that some people find it to disagree
with them. We might as well chide the
hill for putting a sick man out of breath.
It is with persons as with plants : some are
hardy, others not. The date-palm cannot
be made to grow in Massachusetts ; but is
Massachusetts to blame for the palm-tree's
incapacity ? All things of which the spe-
cific office is to promote strength (exercise,
food, climate) presuppose a degree of
strength sufficient for their use. So it is
with cold weather. Its proper effect is to
brace and invigorate the system ; but there
must be vigor to start with. The law
is universal : " To him that hath shall be
given."

NEW ENGLAND WINTER. 149

Enough, then, of apologies and negative
considerations. There was never a good
Yankee, of moderately robust health, and
under fifty years of age, that did not wel-
come cold weather as a friend. Ask the
school-boys, especially such as live in coun-
try places, whether summer or winter brings
the greater pleasure. Two to one they will
vote for winter. Or look back over your
own childhood, and see whether the sports
of winter-time do not seem, in the retro-
spect, to have been the very crown of the
year. How vivid my own recollections are !
Other seasons had their own distinctive
felicities ; the year was full of delights ;
but we watched for the first snow-fall and
the first ice as eagerly as I now see elderly
and sickly people watching for the first
symptoms of summer. As well as I can
remember, winter was never too long nor
too cold, whatever may have been true of
a single day now and then, when the old
school-house, with its one small stove, and
its eight or ten large windows, ought, in all
reason, to have been condemned as unin-
habitable. But the frolics out-of-doors! It
makes the blood tingle even now to think

150 NEW ENGLAND WINTER.

of them. How brief the days were ! How
cruel the authority that kept us in the
house after dark, while so many of our
mates were still " sliding down hill " (we
knew nothing of "coasting" where I was
born), or skating in the meadow ! Child-
hood in the sunny South must be a very
tame affair, New England youngsters being
judges.

Trifles of this kind, if any be moved to
call them such, are not to be sneered out of
court. Fifteen years form no small part
of a human life, and whatever helps us to
grow up happy contributes in no slight de-
gree to keep us happy to the end. " When
I became a man I put away childish
things " ? Yes, it may be ; but the very
things that I boast of outgrowing have
made me what I am. In truth, when it
comes to such a question as this, I confess
to putting more faith in the verdict of
healthy children than in the unanimous
theories and groans of whole congresses of
valetudinarians. I am not yet so old nor
so feeble but I gaze with something of my
youthful enthusiasm upon the first snow.
It quickens my pulse to see the ponds

NEW ENGLAND WINTER. 151

frozen over, although my skates long since
went out of commission ; and I still find
comfort in a tramp of five or six miles, with
the path none too good, and the mercury
half-way between the freezing point and
zero. I like the buffeting of the north
wind, and am not indisposed once in a while
to wrestle with the frost for the possession
of my own ears. Well as I love to loiter,
I rejoice also in weather which makes loi-
tering impossible ; which puts new springs
into a man's legs, and sets him spinning
over the course whether he will or no. It
will be otherwise with me by and by, I sup-
pose, seeing how my venerable fellow-citi-
zens are affected, but for the present nothing
renews my physical youth more surely than
a low temperature ; a fact which I welcome
as evidence that I am not yet going down-
hill, however closely I may be nearing the
summit.

Winter does us the honor to assume that
we are not weaklings. Summer may coddle
and flatter, but cold weather is no senti-
mentalist. Its kindest and tenderest mood
has something of a stoical severity about it.
It lays its finger without mercy on our most

152 NEW ENGLAND WINTER.

vulnerable and sensitive spots. But withal,
as I have said, if we really possess any
reserved strength, it knows how to bring
it out and make the most of it. What a
fullness of vitality do we suddenly develop
as we come into close quarters with this
well-intentioned but rough and ready an-
tagonist ! In fine, winter is one of those
rare and invaluable friends of whom Emer-
son speaks, who enable us to do what we
can. To its good offices it is largely at-
tributable, no doubt, that in the long run
the inhabitants of temperate regions have
always been too powerful for their rivals
within the tropics. Frigidity is like pov-
erty, a blessing to those who can bear it.

Winter in New England is not a time for
gathering flowers out-of-doors, though, tak-
ing the years together, there is no month of
the twelve wherein one may not pick a few
blossoms even in Massachusetts ; but if it
effaces one set of pictures, it paints for us
another ; and a wise and liberal taste will
reckon itself a debtor to both. To say
nothing of the half-dozen mornings on
which every tree and bush is arrayed in
all the splendor of diamonds, or the other

NEW ENGLAND WINTER. 153

half-dozen when they bow themselves un-
der masses of new-fallen snow, — making
no account of such exceptional pageants,
which, indeed, are often so destructive as
to lose much of their glory in the eyes of
provident spectators, — I, for my own part,
find a beauty in the very commonest of
winter landscapes. Let the ground be al-
together white, or altogether brown, or let
it be covered so thinly that the grass-blades
show dark above the snow ; in any case,
white or brown, or white and brown, to
me it is all beautiful ; beautiful in itself,
and also by contrast with the greenness
before and after ; while, as for the trees, I
like them so well in their state of undress
that I question sometimes whether their
leafy garments do not conceal more love-
liness than they confer. We are grateful,
of course, to pines and spruces ; but what
if all trees were evergreen ? A questionable
improvement, surely. No ; suggestive and
solemn as the falling of the leaves must ever
be to us who read our own destiny in the
annual parable, it would be sadder still if
there were no such alternation, no diversity,
but only one monotonous year on year of
changeless verdure.

154 NEW ENGLAND WINTER.

Winter beauty, such as I have been hint-
ing at, is not far to seek, whether by towns-
man or rustic. Bostonians have only to
cross the Mill-Dam, — a rather too fashion-
able promenade, it is true, but even here
one may be tolerably certain of elbow-room
on a January morning. Often have I taken
this road to health and happiness, waxing
enthusiastic as I have proceeded, admiring
the snow-bound scene with a fervor which
the most opulent of summer landscapes sel-
dom excites ; and, pushing on with increas-
ing exhilaration, have brought up at last on
Corey Hill, where the inquisitive north-wind
has very likely abbreviated my stay, but
has never yet spoiled my rapture at the
wonderful white world underneath.

Economy has its pleasures, it is said, for
all healthily constituted minds. We like,
all of us, to make much out of little ; to do
a notable piece of work with ordinary tools ;
to treat a meagre and commonplace theme
in such a manner that whoever begins to
read has no alternative but to finish ; to
tempt an epicure with the daintiest of re-
pasts out of the simplest and fewest of
every - day materials ; to paint a picture

NEW ENGLAND WINTER. 155

which has nothing in it, but compels the
eye ; in a word, to demonstrate to others,
and not less to ourselves, that the secret
of success lies in the man and not in the
stuff. It is good, once in a while, to take
advantage of a disadvantage to show what
we can do.

On the same principle we are glad to
find ourselves, if only not too often, in un-
propitious circumstances. Otherwise how
should we ever make proof of our philoso-
phy ? It heightens my confidence in the
goodness nt the heart of things to see how,
as if by instinct, men of sound natures in-
evitably right the scale in seasons of loss
and scarcity. If half the fortune disap-
pears, the other half straightway doubles
in value. Faith easily puts aside calcula-
tion, and proves, off-hand, that a part is
equal to the whole.

Thus it is with me as a lover of out-door
life, and especially as a field student of
ornithology. At no time of the year does
the fellowship of the birds afford me keener
enjoyment than in the dead of winter. In
June one may see them everywhere, and
hear them at all hours; a few more or a

156 NEW ENGLAND WINTER.

few less are nothing to make account of;
but in Janu'ary the sight of a single brown
creeper is sufficient to brighten the day,
and the twittering of half a dozen gold-
finches is like the music of angels.

As a certain outspoken philosopher would
not visit some of his relatives because he
disliked to be alone, so do I in my jaunts
avoid the highway whenever it is possible,
even in midwinter. What so lonesome as
the presence of people with whom we must
not speak, or, worse yet, with whom we
must speak, but only about the weather
and like exciting topics ! As I have inti-
mated, however, it is usually the public
street or nothing with me during the cold
season. All the more grateful am I, there-
fore, to those familiar winter birds, some of
whom are sure to bid me good morning out
of the hedges and shade-trees as I go past.
Not unlikely a shrike sits motionless and
dumb upon a telegraph wire, or in contrary
mood whistles and chirrups industriously
from some tree-top. He is no angel, that is
plain enough ; but none the less I am glad
to meet him. If he fails of being lovable,
he is at least a study. It is wonderful how

NEW ENGLAND WINTER. 157

abruptly his whim changes ; how discon-
nected his behavior seems ; how quickly and
unexpectedly he can pass from the most per-
fect quiescence into a fit of most intense ac-
tivity. I came upon such a fellow the other
day in crossing the Common, who, just as I
espied him, swooped upon a bunch of spar-
rows in an elm. He missed his aim, and in
half a minute made a second attempt upon
a similar group in another tree. This time
he singled out one of the flock, and took
chase after it ; but the terrified creature
ducked and turned, and finally got away,
whereupon the shrike betook himself to
a perch, and fell to making all manner of
noises, — squeaks, whistles, twitters, and
what not, — hopping about nervously mean-
while. The passers-by all stopped to look
at the show (perhaps because they saw
me staring upward), till finally a laborer
yielded to the school-boy instinct and let
fly a stone. The scamp was not greatly
frightened by this demonstration, and
merely flew to the tip of one of the tall
cotton - woods, where he immediately re-
sumed his vocal practice.

It ought to be helpful to a man's inde-

158 NEW ENGLAND WINTER.

pendence of spirit to fall in once in a while
with such a self-reliant and nonchalant
brother. For one, I wish I were better able
to profit by his example. He seems made
for hard times and short rations. Doubt-
less it is a delusion of the fancy, but he and
winter are so connected in my thought that
I can hardly conceive of him as knowing
what summer means, or as caring to know.
To a person of my tastes it is one of win-
ter's capital recommendations that it brings
its own birds with it, thus affording sundry
ornithological pleasures which otherwise
one would be compelled to go without.
The tree-sparrows, for instance, are very
good cold-weather acquaintances of mine.
There is nothing peculiarly taking about
their dress or demeanor ; but they are
steady-going, good-humored, diligent peo-
ple, whose presence you may always depend
upon. I lately witnessed a very pretty
trick of theirs. It was in the marsh just
over the fence from Beacon Street, where
a company of the birds, a dozen perhaps,
were breakfasting off the seeds of evening
primrose. Less skillful acrobats than their
neighbors and frequent traveling com pan-

NEW ENGLAND WINTER. 159

ions, the red-poll linnets, it is not easy for
them to feed while hanging upon the pods.
So, taking the weeds one by one, they
alighted at the very tip, and then with
various twitchings and stampings shook the
stalk as violently as possible, after which
they dropped quickly upon the snow to
gather up the results of their labors. As I
say, it was an extremely pretty perform-
ance, and by itself would have rewarded me
for my morning tramp, putting me in mind,
as it did, of happy hours long since past,
when I climbed into the tops of nut-trees on
business of the same sort. One of the prin-
cipal uses of friendship, human or other, is
this of keeping the heart young.

I hope I am not lacking in a wholesome
disrespect for sentimentality and affecta-
tion ; for artificial ecstasies over sunsets and
landscapes, birds and flowers ; the fashion-
able cant of nature- worship, which is enough
almost to seal a true worshiper's lips under
a vow of everlasting silence. But such re-
pugnances belong to the library and the
parlor, and are left behind when a man goes
abroad, either by himself or in any other
really good company. For my own part

160 NEW ENGLAND WINTER.

the first lisp of a chickadee out of a way-
side thicket disperses with a breath all
such unhappy and unhallowed recollections.
Here is a voice sincere, and the response is
instantaneous and irresistible.

It would be a breach of good manners, an
inexcusable ingratitude, to write never so
briefly of the New England winter without
noting this, the most engaging and charac-
teristic enlivener of our winter woods ; who
revels in snow and ice, and is never lacking
in abundant measures of faith and cheerful-
ness, enough not only for himself, but for
any chance wayfarer of our own kind. He
is every whit as independent as the shrike,
but in how opposite a manner ! — with a
self-reliance that is never self-sufficiency,
and bravery that offers no suspicion of bra-
vado. Happy in himself, he is at the same
time of a most companionable spirit. Per-
fect little philosopher! What a paradise
New England would be if all her inhabi-
tants were like him !

In such a winter climate as ours it is em-
phatically true that we " know not what
shall be on the morrow/ ' The season is
not straitened in its resources, and caters

NEW ENGLAND WINTER. 161

to all tastes in a way which some may look
upon as fickleness, but which I prefer to re-
gard as catholicity. Its days are of many
types, and it spreads them out before us
like a patient shopkeeper, — as if it recog-
nized in the Yankee a customer hard to suit.
I do not mean to affirm that the weather
and I are never at odds ; but all in all, in
the long run and theoretically, I approve
its methods. What a humdrum round life
would be if nothing ever happened but the
expected ! I wonder if there are beings
anywhere who have forgotten how it feels
to be surprised. The children of this world,
at all events, were not intended for any
such condition of fixity. When there is no
longer anything new under the sun, it will
be time to get above it.

Even in so simple and regular a proceed-
ing as a morning walk, one wishes always
to see something new, or failing of that,
something old in a new light ; an easy
enough task, if one has eyes. For as we
cannot diink twice of the same river, so we
cannot twice take the same ramble. I went
over the same course yesterday and to-day ;
but yesterday's landscape and sky were dif-

162 NE W ENGLAND WINTER.

ferent from to-day's. I saw different birds,
and had different thoughts ; and after all,
the principal part of a walk is what goes
on in the mind. Still, the activities of the
intellect are greatly under the influence of
external surroundings, a fact which makes
largely in favor of a varied year like that
we have been praising. The experience of
it tends to widen and diversify the thinking
of men. In a smaller degree it answers the
same end as travel. For aught I know, it
may possibly have its little share in the
onerous task of liberalizing systems of the-
ology. Who shall say that our New Eng-
land climate, with its frequent and extreme
contrasts, — what I have called its habit of
catholicity, — may not have had more or less
to do with that diffusion of free thought
which has made the home of the Pilgrims
the birthplace of heresies without number ?
The suggestion is fanciful, perhaps. Let it
pass. Such profundities do not come within
my province. Only I must believe that,
even in the matter of weather, it is good
for us to be educated out of bigotry into
a large-minded toleration. Hence it is, in
part, that I give my suffrage for our Massa-

NEW ENGLAND WINTER. 163

chnsetts winter, which not only widens the
scope of the year, but contains within itself
a variety wellnigh endless.

I have kept my subject out-of-doors. It
is well always to have at least one point of
originality. Let it be mine, in the present
instance, that I have said nothing about the
pleasures of the fireside, about long even-
ings and drawn curtains. If I were in win-
ter's place, I should not greatly care to hear
people tell how comfortable they could make
themselves by jealously shutting me out.
Their speech might be eloquent, and their
language eulogistic ; but somehow I should
not feel that they were praising me*

A MOUNTAIN-SIDE RAMBLE.

I will go lose myself. — SHAKESPEARE.

THEKB are two sayings of Scripture
which to my mind seem peculiarly appro-
priate for pleasant Sundays, — "Behold the
fowls of the air," and " Consider the lilies."
The first is a morning text, as anybody may
see, while the second is more conveniently
practiced upon later in the day, when the
dew is off the grass. With certain of the
more esoteric doctrines of the Bible (the
duty of turning the other cheek, for exam-
ple, or of selling all that one has and giving
to the poor) we may sometimes be troubled
what to do, — unless, like the world in gen-
eral, we turn them over to Count Tolstoi
tmd his followers ; but such precepts as I
have quoted nobody is likely ever to quar-
rel with, least of all any " natural man."
For myself, I find them always a comfort,
no matter what my mood or condition,
while their observance becomes doubly
agreeable when I am away from home ; the

A MOUNTAIN-SIDE RAMBLE. 165

thought of beholding a strange species of
fowl, or of considering a new sort of lily,
proving even more attractive than the pros-
pect of listening to a new minister, or, what
is somewhat less probable, of hearing a new
sermon.

Thus it was with me, not long ago, when
I found myself suddenly left alone at a
small hotel in the Franconia Valley. The
day was lowery, as days in the mountains
are apt to be ; but when duty goes along
with inclination, a possible sprinkling is no
very serious hindrance. Besides, a fort-
night of " catching weather " had brought
me into a state of something like philosophi-
cal indifference. I must be reckoned either
with the just or with the unjust, — so I had
come to reason, — and of course must ex-
pect now and then to be rained on. Ac-
cordingly, after dinner I tucked my faith-
ful umbrella under my arm, and started up
the Notch road.

I had in view a quiet, meditative ramble,
in harmony with the spirit of the day, and
could think of nothing more to the purpose
than a visit to a pair of deserted farms, out
in the woods on the mountain-side. The

166 A MOUNTAIN-SIDE RAMBLE.

lonesome fields and the crumbling houses
would touch my imagination, and perhaps
chasten my spirit. Thither would I go, and
"consider the lilies." I am never much of
a literalist, — except when a strict construc-
tion favors the argument, — and in the
present instance it did not strike me as at
all essential that I should find any speci-
mens of the genus Lilium. One of the
humbler representatives of the great and
noble family of the Liliacece — the pretty
clintonia, now a little out of season, or even
the Indian cucumber -root — would come
fairly within the spirit of the text ; while,
if worst came to worst, there would cer-
tainly be no scarcity of grass, itself nothing
but a kind of degenerate lily, if some recent
theories may be trusted.

I followed the highway for a mile or two,
and then took a wood-road (a u cart-path " I
should call it, if I dared to speak in my own
tongue wherein I was born) running into
the forest on the left. This brought me
before long to a " pair of bars," over which
I clambered into a grassy field, the first of
the two ancient clearings I had come out
to see. The scanty acres must have been

A MOUNTAIN-SIDE RAMBLE. 167

wrested from the encompassing forest at no
small cost of patience and hard labor; and
after all, they had proved not to pay for
their tillage. A waste of energy, as things
now looked ; but who is to judge of such
matters ? It is not given to every man to
see the work of his hands established. A
good many of us, I suspect, might be thank-
ful to know that anything we have ever
done would be found worthy of mention
fifty years hence, though the mention were
only by way of pointing a moral.

The old barn was long ago blown down,
and as I mounted the fence a woodchuck
went scampering out of sight among the
timbers. The place was not entirely un-
inhabited, as it seemed, in spite of appear-
ances: and as I turned toward the house,
the door of which stood uninvitingly open,
there sat a second woodchuck in the door-
way, facing me, intent and motionless, full
of wonderment, no doubt, at the unspeak-
able impertinence of such an intrusion. I
was glad to see him, at any rate, and made
haste to tell him so ; greeting him in the
rather unceremonious language wherewith
tb(? now famous titmouse is said to have

168 A MOUNTAIN-SIDE RAMBLE.

addressed our foremost American gentleman
and philosopher : —

" Good day, good sir !
Fine afternoon, old passenger !
Happy to meet you in these places."

But the churlish fellow had no notion of
doing the honors, and by the time I had
advanced two or three paces he whisked
about and vanished inside the door. " Well
done ! " I thought. " Great is evolution.
Woodchucks used to be cave-dwellers, but
they are getting to live above ground, like
the rest of us. So does history repeat it-
self. Who knows how soon they may be
putting up cottages on their own account? "
Perhaps I gave the creature more credit
than really belonged to him. I followed
him into the house, but he was nowhere to
be seen, and it is not unlikely that he lived
in a cave, after all. Nearly half the floor-
ing had rotted away, and there was nothing
to hinder his getting into the cellar. He
may have taken the old farmhouse as a con-
venient portico for his burrow, a sort of
storm-porch, as it were. In his eyes this
may be the final end and aim, the teleolog-
ical purpose, of all such board-and-shingle

A MOUNTAIN-SIDE RAMBLE. 169

edifices. Mr. Ruskin seems to hold that
a house falls short of its highest useful-
ness until it has become a ruin ; and who
knows but woodchucks may be of the same
opinion ?

This particular house was in two parts,
one of them considerably more ancient than
the other. This older portion it was, of
which the floor had so badly (or so well)
fallen into decay ; while the ceiling, as if in
a spirit of emulation, had settled till it
described almost a semicircle of convexity.
To look at it, one felt as if the law of grav-
ity were actually being imposed upon.

It must have marked an epoch in the his-
tory of the household, this doubling of its
quarters. Things were looking well with
the man. His crops were good, his family
increasing ; his wife had begun to find the
house uncomfortably small ; they could af-
ford to enlarge it. Hence this addition, this
" new part," as no doubt they were in the
habit of calling it, with pardonable satisfac-
tion. It was more substantially built than
the original dwelling, and possessed, what I
dare say its mistress had set her heart upon,
one plastered room. The " new part " I

170 A MOUNTAIN-SIDE RAMBLE.

How ironical the words sounded, as I re-
peated them to myself ! If things would
only stay new, or if it were men's houses
only that grew old !

The people who lived here had little oc-
casion to hang their walls with pictures.
When they wanted something to look at,
they had but to go to the window and gaze
upon the upper slopes of Mount Lafayette
and Mount Cannon, rising in beauty be-
yond the intervening forest. But every
New England woman must have a bit of
flower garden, no matter what her sur-
roundings ; and even here I was glad to
notice, just in front of the door, a clump of
cinnamon rose-bushes, all uncared for, of
course, but flourishing as in a kind of im-
mortal youth (this old-fashioned rose must
be one of Time's favorites), and just now
bright with blossoms. For sentiment's sake
I plucked one, thinking of the hands that
did the same years ago, and ere this, in all
likelihood, were under the sod ; thinking,
too, of other hands, long, long vanished,
and of a white rose-bush that used to stand
beside another door.

On both sides of the house were apple-

A MOUNTAIN-SIDE RAMBLE. 171

trees, a few of them still in good trim, but
the greater number decrepit after years of
buffeting by mountain storms. A phrebe
sat quietly on the ridge-pole, and a chipper
was singing from the orchard. What knew
they of time, or of time's mutations ? The
house might grow old, — the house and the
trees ; but if the same misfortune ever be-
falls phoabes and sparrows, we are, fortu-
nately, none the wiser. To human eyes
they are always young and fresh, like the
buttercups that bespangled the grass before
me, or like the sun that shone brightly upon
the tranquil scene.

Turning away from the house and the
grassy field about it, I got over a stone wall
into a pasture fast growing up to wood:
spruces, white pines, red pines, paper
birches, and larches, with a profusion of
meadow-sweet sprinkled everywhere among
them. A nervous flicker started at my ap-
proach, stopped for an instant to reconnoi-
tre, and then made off in haste. A hermit
thrush was singing, and the bird that is
called the " preacher " — who takes no sum-
mer vacation, but holds forth in " God's first
temple " for the seven days of every week

172 A MOUNTAIN-SIDE RAMBLE.

— was delivering his homily with all ear-
nestness. He must preach, it seemed,
whether men would hear or forbear. He
had already announced his text, but I could
not certainly make out what it was. " Here
we have no continuing city," perhaps; or
it might have been, " Vanity of vanities,
saith the Preacher, all is vanity." It should
have been one of these, or so I thought ;
but, as all church-goers must have observed,
the connection between text and sermon is
sometimes more or less recondite, and once
in a while, like the doctrine of the sermon
itself, requires to be taken on faith. In the
present instance, indeed, as no doubt in
many others, the pew was quite as likely to
be at fault as the pulpit. The red-eye's
eloquence was never very persuasive to my
ear. Its short sentences, its tiresome up-
ward inflections, its everlasting repetitious-
ness, and its sharp, querulous tone long
since became to me an old story ; and I have
always thought that whoever dubbed this
vireo the "preacher" could have had no
very exalted opinion of the clergy.

I stayed not to listen, therefore, but kept
on through the wood, while a purple finch

A MOUNTAIN-SIDE RAMBLE. 173

pitched a tune on one side of the path (he
appeared to feel no compunctions about in-
terrupting the red-eye's exhortation), and a
squirrel sprung his rattle on the other ; and
presently I came to the second farm: a
large clearing, bounded by the forest on all
hands, but after these many years still
yielding a very respectable hay-crop (so
does the good that men do live after them),
and with a house and barn still standing at
the lower end. I reached the house just in
time to escape a shower, making an en-
forced obeisance as I entered. It was but
the ghost of a dwelling, — the door off its
hinges, and no glass in the four small win-
dows ; but it had a substantial quality about
it, notwithstanding, as a not very tall man
was liable at any moment to be reminded
should he carry himself a trifle too proudly
under the big unhewn timbers. It is better
to stoop than to bump your head, they
seemed to be saying. Hither came no tour-
ists but the rabbits ; and they, it was plain,
were not so much tourists as permanent
residents. As I looked at the blank walls
and door-posts, after a fortnight's expe-
rience among the mountains, I felt grateful

174 A MOUNTAIN-SIDE RAMBLE.

at the sight of boards on which Brown of
Boston and Smith of Smithfield had not yet
inscribed their illustrious names. I had left
the city in search of rest and seclusion. For
the time, in the presence of Nature herself,
I would gladly have forgotten the very ex-
istence of my all-too-famous countrymen ;
and I rejoiced accordingly to have found
one lonely spot to which their restless feet
had not yet penetrated. Tall grass grew
untrodden quite up to the door-sill; rasp-
berry vines thrust their arms in at the pane-
less windows ; there was neither paint nor
plastering ; and the tiny cupboard was so
bare that it set my irreverent fancy to quot-
ing Mother Goose in the midst of my most
serious moralizings.

The owner of this farm, like his neigh-
bor, had planted an apple orchard, and his
wife a patch of cinnamon roses ; and, not to
treat one better than another, I picked a
rose here also. There is no lover of flow-
ers but likes to have his garden noticed,
and the good housewife would have been
pleased, I knew, could she have seen me
looking carefully for her handsomest and
sweetest bud.

A MOUNTAIN-SIDE RAMBLE. 175

By this time the shower was over, and a
song-sparrow was giving thanks. I might
never have another opportunity to follow
up an old forest path, of which I had heard
vague reports as leading from this point to
the railway. "It starts from the upper
corner of the farm," my informant had said.
To the upper corner I went, therefore,
through the rank, wet grass. But I found
no sign of what I was looking for, and with
some heartfelt but unreportable soliloquiz-
ings, to the effect that a countryman's direc-
tions, like dreams, are always to be read
backwards, I started straight down toward
the lower corner, saying to myself that I
ought to have had the wit to take that
course in the beginning. Sure enough, the
path was there, badly overgrown with
bushes and young trees, but still traceable.
A few rods, and I came to the brook. The
bridge was mostly gone, as I had been fore-
warned it probably would be, but a single
big log answered a foot passenger's require-
ments. Once across the bridge, however, I
could discover no sign of a trail. But what
of that ? The sun was shining ; I had only
to keep it at my back, and I was sure to

176 A MOUNTAIN-SIDE. RAMBLE.

bring up at the railroad. So I set out, and
for a while traveled on bravely. Then I
began to bethink myself that I was not go-
ing up-hill quite so fast as it seemed I ought
to be doing. Was I really approaching the
railway, after all ? Or had I started in a
wrong direction (being in the woods at the
time), and was I heading along the moun-
tain-side in such a course that I might walk
all night, and all the while be only plunging
deeper and deeper into the forest? The
suggestion was not pleasurable. If I could
only see the mountain ! But the thick foli-
age put that out of the question.

After a short debate with myself I con-
cluded to be prudent, and make my way
back to the brook while I still had the sun
to guide me ; for I now called to mind the
showeriness of the day, and the strong like-
lihood that the sky might at any moment
be overcast. Even as things were, there
was no assurance that I might not strike
the brook at some distance from the bridge,
and so at some distance from the trail, with
no means of determining whether it was
above or below me. I began my retreat,
and pretty soon, luckily or unluckily, — I

A MOUNTAIN-SIDE RAMBLE. 177

am not yet certain which, — in some un-
accountable manner my feet found them-
selves again in the path.

Now, then, I would carry out my original
intention, and I turned straight about. For
a while the path held clear. Then it was
blocked by a big tree that had toppled into
it lengthwise. I must go round the obstruc-
tion, and pick up the trail at the other end.
But the trail would not be picked up. It
had faded out or run into the ground.
Finally, when I was just on the point of
owning myself beaten, my eyes all at once
fell upon it, running along before me. A
second experience of the same kind set me
thinking how long it would take to go a
mile or two at this rate (it was already half
past four o'clock), even if I did not in the
end lose my way altogether. But I kept on
till I was stopped, not by a single windfall,
but by a tangle of half a dozen. This time
I hunted for a continuation of the path on
the further side till I was out of patience,
and then determined to be done with the
foolish business, and go back by the way I
had come. A very sensible resolve, but
when I came to put it into execution it

178 A MOUNTAIN-SIDE RAMBLE.

turned out to be too late. The path was
lost entirely. I must fall back upon the
sun ; and if the truth is to be told, I
commenced feeling slightly uncomfortable.
The bushes were wet ; my clothing was
drenched ; I had neither compass nor
matches; it certainly would be anything
but agreeable to spend the night in the
forest.

Happily there was, for the present, no
great danger of matters coming to such a
pass. If the sun would only shine for half
an hour longer I could reach the brook (I
could probably reach it without the sun),
and even if I missed the bridge I could
follow the stream out of the woods before
dark. I was not frightened, but I was be-
ginning to tremble lest I should be. The
loss of the path was in itself little to worry
about. But what if I should lose my wits
also, as many a man had done in circum-
stances no worse, and with consequences
most disastrous ? Unpleasant stories came
into my head, and I remember repeating to
myself more than once (candor is better
than felicity of phrase), " Be careful, now ;
don't get rattled ! " Then, having thus

A MOUNTAIN-SIDE RAMBLE. 179

pulled myself together, as an Englishman
would say, I faced the sun and began " step-
ping westward," though with no thought of
Wordsworth's poem. A spectator might
have suspected that if I was not " rattled,"
I was at least not far from it. " Now who
is this," he might have queried,

" whose sore task
Does not divide the Sunday from the week ? "

Meanwhile I was, of course, on the look-
out for any signs of the missing path, and
after a time I descried in the distance, on
one side, what looked like a patch of bushes
growing in the midst of the forest. I made
for it, and, as I expected, found myself once
more on the trail. This time I held it,
reached the bridge, crossed it, and, still
keeping up my pace, was presently out in
the sunshine of the old farm, startling a
brood of young partridges on the way.
Happy birds ! They were never afraid of
passing a night in the woods. A most ab-
surd notion ! But man, as he is the strong-
est of all animals, so is he also the weakest
and most defenseless.

This last reflection is an afterthought, I
freely acknowledge. At the moment I was

180 A MOUNTAIN-SIDE RAMBLE.

taken up with the peacefulness of the pas-
toral scene into which I had so happily
emerged, and was in no mood to envy any-
body. How bright and cheerful the rag-
worts and buttercups looked, and what
sweet and homelike music the robin made,
singing from one of the apple-trees ! The
cool north wind wafted the spicy odor of
the cinnamon roses to my nostrils ; but —
alas for the prosaic fact ! — the same cool
wind struck through my saturated gar-
ments, bidding me move on. The pessi-
mistic preacher was right when he said,
" Truly the light is sweet, and a pleasant
thing it is for the eyes to behold the sun."
I wonder whether he was ever bewildered
in a dark wood. From boyhood I have
loved the forest, with its silence, its shad-
ows, and its deep isolation, but for the pres-
ent I had had my fill of such mercies.

As I came out upon the highway, it
occurred to me what Emerson says of
Thoreau, — that " he could not bear to
hear the sound of his own steps, and there-
fore never willingly walked in the road."
My own taste, I was obliged to admit,
was somewhat less fastidious. Indeed, my

A MOUNTAIN-SIDE RAMBLE. 181

boots, soaked through and through as they
were, made very grateful music striking
along the gravel. And after supper, while
walking back and forth upon the piazza, in
all the luxury of slippers and a winter over-
coat, I turned more than once from the
glories of the sunset to gaze upon the black
slope of Lafayette, thinking within myself
how much less comfortable I should be up
yonder in the depths of the forest, so dark
and wet, without company, without fire,
without overcoat, and without supper. Af-
ter all, mere animal comfort is not to be
despised. Let us be thankful, I said, for
the good things of life, of no matter what
grade ; yes, though they be only a change
of clothing and a summer hotel.

It was laughable how my quiet ramble
had turned out. My friend, the red-eyed
vireo, may or may not have stuck to his
text ; but if he had seen me in the midst
of my retreat, dashing through the bushes
and clambering over the fallen trees, he
certainly never would have guessed mine.
" Consider the lilies," indeed ! He was
more likely to think of a familiar Old Tes-
tament scripture: "The wicked flee when
no man pursueth."

A PITCH-PINE MEDITATION.

So waved the pine-tree through my thought.

EMERSON.

IN outward, every-day affairs, in what
we foolishly call real life, man is a stickler
for regularity, a devout believer in the max-
im, " Order is heaven's first law." He sets
his house at right angles with the street;
lays out his grounds in the straightest of
straight lines, or in the most undeviating of
curves ; selects his shade-trees for their trim,
geometrical habit ; and, all in all, carries
himself as if precision and conformity were
the height of virtue. Yet this same man,
when he comes to deal with pictorial rep-
resentations, makes up his judgment ac-
cording to quite another standard ; finding
nothing picturesque in tidy gardens and
shaven lawns, discarding without hesitation
every well-rounded, symmetrical tree, de-
lighting in disorder and disproportion, lov-
ing a ruin better than the best appointed

A PITCH-PINE MEDITATION. 183

palace, and a tumble-down wall better than
the costliest and stanchest of new-laid ma-
sonry. It is hard to know what to think
of an inconsistency like this. Why should
taste and principle be thus opposed to each
other, as if the same man were half Philis-
tine, half Bohemian ? Can this strong aes-
thetic preference for imperfection be based
upon some permanent, universal law, or is
it only a passing whim, the fashion of an
hour?

Whatever we may say of such a prob-
lem, — and where one knows nothing, it is
perhaps wisest to say nothing, — we may
surely count it an occasion for thankfulness
that a thing so common as imperfection
should have at least its favorable side.
Music would soon become tame, if not in-
tolerable, without here and there a discord ;
and who knows how stupid life itself might
prove without some slight admixture of
evil? From my study- windows I can see
sundry of the newest and most commodious
mansions in town ; but I more often look,
not at them, but at a certain dilapidated
old house, blackening for want of paint,
and fast falling into decay, but with one

184 A PITCH-PINE MEDITATION.

big elm before the door. I have no han-
kerings to live in it; as a dwelling-place, I
should no doubt prefer one of the more
modern establishments ; but for an object
to look at, give me the shanty.

Human nature is nothing if not paradox-
ical. In its eyes everything is both good
and bad; and for my own part, I some-
times wonder whether this may not be the
sum of all wisdom, — to find everything
good in its place, and everything bad out
of its place.

Thoughts like these suggest themselves
as I look at the pitch-pine, which, to speak
only of such trees as grow within the range
of my own observation, is the one irregular
member of the family of cone-bearers. The
white or Weymouth pine, the hemlock, the
cedars, the spruces, the fir, and the larch,
these are all, in different ways, of a de-
cidedly symmetrical turn. Each of them
has its own definite plan, and builds itself
up in fastidious conformity therewith, ex-
cept as untoward outward conditions may
now and then force an individual into some
abnormal peculiarity. And all of them, it
need not be said, have the defect of this

A PITCH-PINE MEDITATION. 185

quality. They are not without charm, not
even the black spruce, while the Weymouth
pine and the hemlock are often of surpass-
ing magnificence and beauty ; but a punctil-
ious adherence to rule must of necessity be
attended with a corresponding absence of
freedom and variety. The pitch-pine, on
the other hand, if it works upon any set
scheme, as no doubt it does, has the grace
to keep it out of sight. Its gift is genius
rather than talent. It has an air, as genius
always has, of achieving its results without
effort or premeditation. Its method is that
of spontaneity ; its style, that of the pic-
turesque-homely, so dear to the artistic tem-
perament. Its whole make-up is consis-
tent with this germinal or controlling idea.
Angular in outline, rough and ragged in its
bole, with its needles stiff and its cones
hard and sharp, it makes no attempt at
gracefulness, yet by virtue of its very way-
wardness it becomes, as if in spite of itself,
more attractive than any of its relatives.

The Puritans of New England are mostly
dead ; the last of their spiritual descend-
ants, we may fear, will soon be dead like-
wise ; but as long as Pinus rigida covers

186 A PITCE-PINE MEDITATION.

the sandy knolls of Massachusetts, the
sturdy, uncompromising, independent, eco-
nomical, indefatigable, all-enduring spirit of
Puritanism will be worthily represented in
this its sometime thriving-place.

For the pitch-pine's noblest qualities are,
after all, not artistic, but moral. Such un-
alterable contentment, such hardiness and
persistency, are enough to put the stoutest
of us to shame. Once give it root, and no
sterility of soil can discourage it. Every-
thing else may succumb, but it — it and
the gray birch — will make shift to live.
Like the resin that exudes from it, having
once taken hold, it has no thought of let-
ting go. It is never " planted by the riv-
ers of water," but all the same its leaf does
not wither. No summer so hot and dry, no
winter so cold and wet, but it keeps its per-
ennial green. What cannot be done in one
year may, perchance, be accomplished in
three or four. It. spends several seasons in
ripening its fruit. Think of an apple-tree
thus patient !

The pitch-pine is beautiful to look at,
and " profitable for doctrine, for reproof,
for correction, for instruction in righteous-

A PITCH-PINE MEDITATION. 187

ness," but it would be a shame not to add
that it is also most excellent to smell of.
If I am to judge, scarcely any odor wears
better than this of growing turpentine.
There is something unmistakably clean and
wholesome about it. The very first whiff
savors of salubrity. " The belief in the
good effects of pine forests in cases of
phthisis is quite unanimous" (so I read the
other day in a scientific journal), "and the
clinical evidence in favor of their beneficial
influence is unquestioned." Who can tell
whether our New England climate, with
all its consumptive provocations, might not
be found absolutely unendurable but for
the amelioration furnished by this gener-
ously diffused terebinthine prophylactic?

When all is said, however, nothing else
about the pitch-pine ever affects me so
deeply as its behavior after man has done
his worst upon it. It would appear to
have some vague sense of immortality, some
gropings after a resurrection. The tree was
felled in the autumn, and the trunk cut up
ignominiously into cord-wood ; but in the
spring the prostrate logs begin to put forth
scattered tufts of bright green leaves, — life

188 A PITCH-PINE M EDIT AT JON.

still working under the ribs of death, —
while the stump, whether " through the
scent of water " I cannot say, is perhaps
sending up fresh shoots, — a piece of post-
mortem hopefulness the like of which no
white pine, for all its seemingly greater
vitality, was ever known to exhibit. But
leaves and shoots alike come to nothing.
If a pitch-pine die, it shall not live again.
The wood's blind impulses, if not false
in themselves, were at least falsely inter-
preted. Alas ! alas ! who has not found it
so? What seemed like the prophetic stir-
rings of a new life, were only the last flick-
erings of a lamp that was going out.

ESOTERIC PERIPATETICISM.

I walk about ; not to and from. — CHARLES LAMB.

TAKING a walk is something different
from traveling afoot. The latter I may do
when on my way to the cars or the shop ;
but my neighbor, seeing me at such times,

never says to himself, " Mr. is taking

a walk." He knows I cannot be doing that,
so long as I am walking for the sake of get-
ting somewhere. Even the common people
understand that utilitarianism has nothing
to do with the true peripatetic philosophy.

The disciples of this philosophy, the no-
ble fraternity of saunterers, among whom I
modestly enroll myself, are not greatly con-
cerned with any kind of merely physical ac-
tivity. They believe that everything has
both a lower and a higher use ; and that in
the order of evolution the lower precedes
the higher. Time was when walking —
going erect on one's hind limbs — was a
rare accomplishment, sufficient of itself to

190 ESOTERIC PF.RIPATETIC1SM.

confer distinction. Little by little this ac-
complishment became general, and for this
long time now it has been universal; yet
even to the present day it is not quite nat-
ural ; else why does every human infant still
creep on all-fours till it is taught otherwise ?
But of all who practise the art, only here
and there a single individual has divined
its loftier use and significance. The rest
are still in the materialistic stage — pedes-
trians simply. In their view walking is only
a convenience, or perhaps I should say an
inconvenience ; a cheap device for getting
from one place to another. They resort to
it for business, or, it may be, for health.
Of strolling as a means of happiness they
have scarcely so much as heard. They be-
long to the great and fashionable sect of the
wise and prudent ; and from all such the
true peripatetic philosophy is forever hid-
den. We who are in the secret would
gladly publish it if we could ; but by its
very nature the doctrine is esoteric.

Whoso would be initiated into its mys-
teries must first of all learn how not to be
in a hurry. Life is short, it is true, and
time is precious; but a day is worth notli-

ESOTERIC PERIPATETICISM. 191

ing of itself. It is like money, — good only
for what it will buy. One mast not play
the miser, even with time. " There is that
withholdeth more than is meet, but it tend-
eth to poverty." Who does not know men
so penurious of minutes, so everlastingly
preoccupied, that they seldom spend an
hour to any good purpose, — confirming the
paradox of Jesus, " He that loveth his life
shall lose it"? And between a certain two
sisters, was not the verdict given in favor of
the one who (if we take the other's word
for it) was little better than an idler? The
saunterer has laid to heart this lesson. On
principle, he devotes a part of his time to
what his virtuous townsmen call doing
nothing. " What profit hath a man of all
his labor?" A pertinent inquiry; but I am
not aware that the author of it ever sug-
gested any similar doubt as to the net re-
sults of well-directed idleness. A laborious,
painstaking spirit is commendable in its
place; it would go hard with the world to
get on without it ; but the fact remains
that some of the very best things of this
life — things unseen and (therefore) eter-
nal— are never to be come at industriously.

192 ESOTERIC PERIPATETIC1SM.

It is useless to chase them. We can only
put ourselves in their way, and be still.
The secret is as old as mysticism itself : if
the vision tarry, wait for it.

Walking, then, as adepts use the word,
is not so much a physical as a spiritual
exercise. And if any be disposed to look
askance at this form of expression, as if
there were possibly a suggestion of pro-
fanity about it, they will please bethink
themselves of an ancient sacred book (to
which, according to some friendly critics, I
am strangely fond of referring), wherein is
narrated the history of a man who went out
into the fields at eventide to meditate. He
could never have misunderstood our speech,
nor dreamed of its needing justification.
And your true saunterers of the present
day, no matter what their creed, are of
Isaac's kin, — devout and imaginative souls,
who may now and then be forced to cry
with the Psalmist, " O that I had wings ! "
but who, in all ordinary circumstances, are
able to walk away and be at rest. Like
the patriarch, they have accustomed their
feet to serve them as ministers of grace.

It must be a bad day indeed when, on re-

ESOTERIC PERIPATETICISM. 193

treating to the woods or the fields, we find it
impossible to leave the wearisome world —
yes, and our more wearisome selves, also —
behind us. As a rule, this result is not the
better attained by quickening the gait. We
may allow for exceptions, of course, cases
in which a counter-excitement may perad-
venture be of use ; but most often it is
better to seek quietness of heart at a quiet
pace; to steal away from our persecutors,
rather than to invite pursuit by too evident
a purpose of escape. The lazy motion is of
itself a kind of spiritual sedative. As we
proceed, gazing idly at the sky, or with our
attention caught by some wayside flower or
passing bird, the mind grows placid, and,
like smooth water, receives into itself the
image of heaven. What a benediction of.
repose falls upon us sometimes from an old
tree, as we pass under it ! So self-poised it
seems ; so alive, and yet so still ! It was
planted here before we were born. It will
be green and flourishing long after we are
dead. In it we may behold a perfect illus-
tration of the dignity and peace of a life
undeviatingly obedient to law, — the law of
Us own being ; never in haste, never at a

194 ESOTERIC PERIPATETICISM.

loss, but in every fibre doing, day by day,
its appropriate work. Sunshine and rain,
heat and cold, calm and storm, — all minis-
ter to its necessities. It has only to stand
in its place and grow; happy in spring-
time, with its buds and leaves ; happy in
autumn, with its fruit ; happy, too, in win-
ter,— repining not when forced to wait
through months of bareness and dearth for
the touch of returning warmth. Enviable
tree ! As we contemplate it, we feel our-
selves rebuked, and, at the same time, com-
forted. We, also, will be still, and let the
life that is in us work itself out to the ap-
pointed end.

The seeing eye is a gift so unusual that
whoever accustoms himself to watch what
passes around him in the natural world is
sure to be often entertained by the remarks,
complimentary and otherwise, which such
an idiosyncrasy calls forth. Some of his
neighbors pity him as a ne'er-do-well, while
others devoutly attribute to him a sort of
superhuman faculty. If only they had such
eyes ! But. alas ! they go into the woods,
and they see nothing. Meanwhile the ob-
ject of their envy knows well enough that

ESOTERIC PERIPATETICISM. 195

his own vision is but rudimentary. He
catches a glimpse now and then, — nothing
more. Like his neighbors, he, too, prays
for sight. Sooner or later, however, he dis-
covers that it is a blessing to be able on
occasion to leave one's scientific senses at
home. For here, again, surprising as it
may seem, it is necessary to be on our
guard against a superserviceable activity.
There are times when we go out-of-doors,
not after information, but in quest of a
mood. Then we must not be over-obser-
vant. Nature is coy ; she appreciates the
difference between an inquisitor and a
lover. The curious have their reward, no
doubt, but her best gifts are reserved for
suitors of a more sympathetic turn. And
unless it be here and there some creature
altogether devoid of poetic sensibility, some
"fingering slave," —

" One who would peep and botanize
Upon his mother's grave," —

unless it be such a person as this, too poor
to be conscious of his own poverty, there
can be no enthusiastic student of natural
history but has found out for himself the
truth and importance of the paradoxical

196 ESOTERIC PER1PATETICISM.

caution now suggested. One may become
so zealous a botanist as almost to cease to
be a man. The shifting panorama of the
heavens and the earth no longer appeals to
him. He is now a specialist, and go where
he will, he sees nothing but specimens. Or
he may give himself up to ornithology, till
eye and ear grow so abnormally sensitive
that not a bird can move or twitter but he
is Instantly aware of it. He must attend,
whether he will or no. So long as this
servitude lasts, it is idle to go afield in
pursuit of joys " high and aloof," such as
formerly awaited him in lonesome places.
Better betake himself to city streets or a
darkened room. For myself, I thankfully
bear testimony that when I have been thus
under the tyranny of my own senses I have
found no more certain means of temporary
deliverance than to walk in the early even-
ing. Indeed, I have been ready, many a
time, to exclaim with Wordsworth, —
" Hail, Twilight, sovereign of one peaceful hour ! "

Then the eye has no temptation to busy
itself with petty details ; " day's mutable
distinctions" are removed from sight, and
the mind is left undistracted to rise, if it

ESOTERIC PERIPATETICISM. 197

can, into communion with the spirit of the
scene.

After all, it is next to nothing we are
able to tell of the pleasures of such fellow-
ship. We cannot define them to ourselves,
— though they are "felt in the blood and
felt along the heart," — much less to an-
other. Least of all need we attempt to ex-
plain them to any Philistine ; the walls of
whose house are likely enough hung with
"chromos," but who stares at you for a
fool or a sentimentalist (which comes, per-
haps, to nearly the same thing), when he
catches you standing still before one of
Nature's pictures. How shall one blest
with a feeling for the woods put into lan-
guage the delight he experiences in saun-
tering along their shady aisles? He enjoys
the stillness, the sense of seclusion, the
flicker of sunlight and shadow, the rustle
of leaves, the insect's hum, the passing of
the chance butterfly, the chirp of the bird,
or its full-voiced song, the tracery of lichens
on rock and tree, the tuft of ferns, the car-
pet of moss, the brightness of blossom and
fruit, — all the numberless sights and sounds
of the forest ; but it is not any of these, nor

198 ESOTERIC PERIPATET1CISM.

all of them together, that make the glory
of the place. It is the wood — and this is
something more than the sum of all its
parts — which lays hold upon him, taking
him, as it were, out of the world and out of
himself. Let practical people sneer, and
the industrious frown ; we who retain our
relish for these natural and innocent feli-
cities may well enough be indifferent to
neighborly comments. Whatever world-
lings may think, the hour is not wasted
that brings with it tranquillity of mind and
an uplifting of the heart. We seem to be
going nowhere and looking for nothing?
Yes; but one may be glad to visit the
Land of Beulah, though he have no special
errand thither. Who ever saw a child but
was fond of an idle hour in the woods?
And for my part, while I have with me the
children (and the dogs and the poets) I
count myself in excellent company ; for
the time, at least, I can do without what is
vulgarly esteemed good society. A man to
whom a holiday affords no pleasure is al-
ready as good as dead; nothing will save
him but to be born again. We have heard
of convicts so wonted to prison cells that

ESOTERIC PERIPATETIC IBM. 199

they could feel at home nowhere else ; and
we have known men of business whose feet,
when they stopped going the regular hum-
drum round, knew no other course to take
but to steer straight for the grave. It
behooves us to heed the warning of such
examples, and now and then to be idle
betimes, lest the capacity for idleness be
extirpated by disuse.

The practice of sauntering may especially
be recommended as a corrective of the mod-
ern vice of continual reading. For too
many of us it has come to be well-nigh im-
possible to sit down by ourselves without
turning round instinctively in search of a
book or a newspaper. The habit indicates
a vacancy of mind, a morbid intellectual
restlessness, and may not inaptly be com-
pared with that incessant delirious activity
which those who are familiar with death-
bed scenes know so well as a symptom of
approaching dissolution. Possibly the two
cases are not in all respects analogous.
Books are an inestimable boon ; let me
never be without the best of them, both old
and new. Still, one would fain have an
occasional thought of one's own, even

200 ESOTERIC PER1PATETICISM.

though, as the common saying is, it be
nothing to speak of. Meditation is an old-
fashioned exercise ; the very word is com-
ing to have an almost archaic sound ; but
neither the word nor the thing will alto-
gether pass into forgetfulness so long as the
race of saunterers — the spiritual descend-
ants of Isaac — continue to inherit the
earth.

There is little danger that the lives of
any of us will be too solitary or lived at too
leisurely a rate. The world grows busier
and busier. Those whose passion for Na-
ture is strongest and most deep-seated are
driven to withhold from her all but the
odds and ends of the day. We rebel some-
times ; the yoke grows unendurable ; come
what may, we will be quit of it; but the
existing order of things proves too strong
for us, and anon we settle back into the
old bondage. And perhaps it is better so.
Even the most simple and natural delights
are best appreciated when rarely and briefly
enjoyed. So I persuade myself that, all in
all, it is good for me to have only one or
two hours a day for the woods. Human
nature is weak; who knows but I might

ESOTERIC PERIPATETICISM. 201

grow lazy, were I my own master? At
least, " the fine point of seldom pleasure "
would be blunted.

The ideal plan would include two walks :
one in the morning for observation, with
every sense alert ; the other toward night,
for a mood of " wise passiveness," wherein
Nature should be left free to have her own
way with the heart and the imagination.
Then the laureate's prayer might be ful-
filled:—

" Let knowledge grow from more to more,
But more of reverence in us dwell ;
That mind and soul, according well,
May make one music, as before."

But this strict division of time is too often
out of the question, and we must contrive,
as best we can, to unite the two errands, —
study and reverie : using our eyes and ears,
but not abusing them ; and, on the other
hand, giving free play to fancy and imagi-
nation, without permitting ourselves to de-
generate into impotent dreamers. Every
walker ought to be a faithful student of at
least one branch of natural history, not
omitting Latin names and the very latest
discoveries and theories. But, withal, let

202 ESOTERIC PERIPATETICISM.

him make sure that his acquaintance with
out-of-door life is sympathetic, and not
merely curious or scientific. All honor to
the new science and its votaries ; we run
small risk of too much learning; but it
should be kept in mind that the itch for
finding out secrets is to be accounted no-
ble or ignoble, according as the spirit that
prompts the research is liberal or petty.
Curiosity and love of the truth are not yet
identical, however it may flatter our self-
esteem to ignore the distinction. One may
spend one's days and nights in nothing else
but in hearing or telling some new thing,
and after all be no better than a gossip. It
would prove a sorry exchange for such of
us as have entered, in any degree, into the
feeling of Wordsworth's lines, —

" To me, the meanest flower that blows can give
Thoughts that do often lie too deep for tears," —

and I believe the capacity for such moods
to be less uncommon than many suppose,
— it would be a sorry bargain, I say, for us
to lose this sensitiveness to the charm of
living beauty, though meanwhile we were
to grow wiser than all the moderns touch-
ing the morphology and histology of every
blossom under the sun.

ESOTERIC PERIPATETICISM. 203

"Who loves not Knowledge? Who shall rail against
her beauty •? "

Not we, certainly ; but we will be bold to
add, with Tennyson himself, —

" Let her know her place ;
She is the second, not the first."

In treating a theme of this kind, it is
hard not to violate Nature's own method,
and fall into a strain of exhortation. Our
intercourse with her is so good and whole-
some, such an inexhaustible and ever-ready
resource against the world's trouble and un-
rest, that we would gladly have everybody
to share it. We say, over and over, with
Emerson, —

" If I could put my woods in song,
And tell what 's there enjoyed,
All men would to my gardens throng,
And leave the cities void."

But this may not be. At best, words can
only hint at sensations ; and the hint can
be taken only by as many as are predestined
to hear it. As I have said, the doctrine is
esoteric. How are those who have never
felt the like to understand the satisfaction
with which I recall a certain five or ten
minutes of a cool morning in May, a year

204 ESOTERIC PERIPATETIC ISM.

or more ago ? I was drawing towards
home, after a jaunt of an hour or two,
when I came suddenly into a sheltered and
sunny nook, where a bed of the early saxi-
frage was already in full bloom, while a
most exquisite little bee-fly of a beautiful
shade of warm brown was hovering over it,
draining the tiny, gold-lined chalices, one
by one, with its long proboscis, which
looked precisely like the bill of a humming-
bird. An ordinary picture enough, as far
as words go, — only a little sunshine, a
patch of inconspicuous and common flow-
ers, and a small Bombylian without even
the distinction of bright colors. True; but
my spirit drank a nectar sweeter than any
the insect was sipping. And though, as a
rule, an experience of this sort were per-
haps better left unspoken, —

"A thought of private recollection, sweet and still,"

yet the mention of it can do no harm, while
it illustrates what I take to be one of the
principal advantages of the saunterer's con-
dition. His treasures are never far to seek.
His delight is in Nature herself, rather than
in any of her more unusual manifestations.
He is not of that large and increasingly

ESOTERIC PERIPATETIC1SU. 205

fashionable class who fancy themselves lov-
ers of Nature, while in fact they are merely
admirers, more or less sincere, of fine scen-
ery. Not that anything is too beautiful for
our rambler's appreciation : he has an eye
for the best that earth and heaven can offer ;
he knows the exhilaration of far-reaching
prospects; but he is not dependent upon
such extraordinary favors of Providence.
He has no occasion to run hither and
thither in search of new and strange sights.
The old familiar pastures ; the bushy lane,
in which his feet have loitered year after
year, ever since they began to go alone ; an
unfrequented road ; a wooded slope, or a
mossy glen ; the brook of his boyish memo-
ries; if need be, nothing but a clump of
trees or a grassy meadow, — these are
enough for his pleasure. Fortunate man !
Who should be happy, if not he ? Out of
his own doorway he steps at will into the
Elysian fields.

BUTTERFLY PSYCHOLOGY.

Gay creatures of the element,
That in the colors of the rainbow live. — MILTON.

Speak to me as to thy thinkings. — SHAKESPEARE.

IT happened to me once to spend a long
summer afternoon under a linden-tree, read-
ing " Middlemarch." The branches were
loaded with blossoms, and the heavy per-
fume attracted the bees from far and near,
insomuch that my ears were all the time
full of their humming. Butterflies also
came, though in smaller numbers, and si-
lently. Whenever I looked up from my
book I was sure to find at least one or two
fluttering overhead. They were mostly of
three of our larger sorts, — the Turnus, the
Troilus, and the Archippus (what noble
names !), beautifully contrasted in color.
The Turnus specimens were evidently the
remnant of a brood which had nearly
passed away ; their tattered wings showed
that they had been exposed to the wear
and tear of a long life, as butterflies reckon.

BUTTERFLY PSYCHOLOGY. 207

Some of them were painful to look at, and
I remember one in particular, so maimed
and helpless that, with a sudden impulse of
compassion, I rose and stepped upon it. It
seemed an act of mercy to send the wretched
cripple after its kindred. As I looked at
these loiterers, with their frayed and faded
wings, — some of them half gone, — I found
myself, almost before I knew it, thinking
of Dorothea Brooke, of whose lofty ideals,
bitter disappointments, and partial joys I
was reviewing the story. After all, was
there really any wide difference between
the two lives ? One was longer, the other
shorter ; but only as one dewdrop outlasts
another on the grass.

" A moment's halt, a momentary taste
Of Being from the well amid the waste,
And lo ! the phantom caravan has reach'd
The Nothing it set out from."

Then I fell to musing, as I had often done
before, upon the mystery of an insect's life
and mind.

This tiger swallow-tail, that I had just
trodden into the ground, — what could have
been its impressions of this curious world
wherein to it hud been ushered so uncere-

208 BUTTERFLY PSYCHOLOGY.

moniously, and in which its day had been
so transient? A month ago, a little more
or a little less, it had emerged from its
silken shroud, dried its splendid party-col-
ored wings in the sun, and forthwith had
gone sailing away, over the pasture and
through the wood, in quest of something,
it could hardly have known what. Nobody
had welcomed it. When it came, the last
of its ancestors were already among the an-
cients. Without father or mother, without
infancy or childhood, it was born full-grown,
and set out, once for all, upon an indepen-
dent adult existence. What such a state of
uninitiated, uninstructed being may be like
let those imagine who can.

It was born adult, I say ; but at the same
time, it was freer from care than the most
favored of human children. No one ever
gave it a lesson or set it a task. It was
never restrained nor reproved ; neither its
own conscience nor any outward authority
ever imposed the lightest check upon its
desires. It had nobody's pleasure to think
of but its own ; for as it was born too late
to know father or mother, so also it died
too soon to see its own offspring. It made

B UTTERFL T PS YCHOL OGY. 209

no plans, needed no estate, was subject to
no ambition. Summer was here when it
came forth, and summer was still here when
it passed away. It was born, it lived upon
honey, it loved, and it died. Happy and
brief biography !

Happy and brief ; but what a multitude
of questions are suggested by it ! Did the
creature know anything of its preexistence,
either in the chrysalis or earlier? If so,
did it look back upon that far-away time
as upon a golden age ? Or was it really as
careless as it seemed, neither brooding over
the past nor dreaming of the future ? Was
it aware of its own beauty, seeing itself
some day reflected in the pool as it came to
the edge to drink? Did it recognize smaller
butterflies — the white and the yellow, and
even the diminutive " copper " — as poor re-
lations ; felicitating itself, meanwhile, upon
its own superior size, its brilliant orange-
red eye-spots, and its gorgeous tails ? Did
it mourn over its faded broken wings as age
came on, or when an unexpected gust drove
it sharply against a thorn ? Or was it en-
abled to take every mischance and change
in a philosophical spirit, perceiving all such

210 BUTTERFLY PSYCHOLOGY.

evils to have their due and necessary place
in the order of Nature ? Was it frightened
when the first night settled down upon it,
— the horrible black darkness, that seemed
to be making a sudden end of all things ?
As it saw a caterpillar here and there, did
it ever suspect any relationship between the
hairy crawling thing and itself ; or would
it have been mortally offended with any
profane lepidopteran Darwin who should
have hinted at such a possibility ?

The Antiopa butterfly, according to some
authorities a near relative of the tiger swal-
low-tail, has long been especially attractive
to me because of its habit of passing the
winter in a state of hibernation, and then
reappearing upon the wing before the very
earliest of the spring flowers. A year ago,
Easter fell upon the first day of April. I
spent the morning out-of-doors, hoping to
discover some first faint tokens of a resur-
rection. Nor was I disappointed. In a
sunny stretch of the lonely road, I came
suddenly upon five of these large " mourn-
ing-cloaks," all of them spread flat upon the
wet gravel, sucking up the moisture while
the sun warmed their wings. What sight

BUTTERFLY PSYCHOLOGY. 211

more appropriate for Easter ! I thought.
These were some who had been dead, and
behold, they were alive again.

Then, as before under the linden-tree, I
fell to wondering. What were they think-
ing about, these creatures so lately born a
second time ? Did they remember their
last year's existence ? And what could
they possibly make of this brown and deso-
late world, so unlike the lingering autumnal
glories in the midst of which, five or six
months before, they had " fallen asleep " ?
Perhaps they had been dreaming. In any
event, they could have no idea of the ice
and snow, the storms and the frightful cold,
through which they had passed. It was
marvelous how such frail atoms had with-
stood such exposure ; yet here they were,
as good as new, and so happily endowed
that they had no need to wait for blossoms,
but could draw fresh life from the very
mire of the street.

This last trait, so curiously out of char-
acter, as it seems to us, suggests one further
inquiry : Have butterflies an aesthetic fac-
ulty ? They appreciate each other's adorn-
ments, of course. Otherwise, what becomes

212 BUTTERFLY PSYCHOLOGY.

of the accepted doctrine of sexual selection ?
And if they appreciate each other's beauty,
what is to hinder our believing that they
enjoy also the bright colors and dainty
shapes of the flowers on which they feed ?
As I came out upon the veranda of a sum-
mer hotel, two or three friends exclaimed :

44 Oh, Mr. , you should have been here

a few minutes ago ; you would have seen
something quite in your line. A butterfly
was fluttering over the lawn, and noticing
what it took for a dandelion, it was just
settling down upon it, when lo, the dande-
lion moved, and proved to be a goldfinch ! "
Evidently the insect had an eye for color,
and was altogether like one of us in its
capacity for being deceived.

To butterflies, as to angels, all things are
pure. They extract honey from the vilest
of materials. But their tastes and propen-
sities are in some respects the very opposite
of angelic ; being, in fact, thoroughly hu-
man. All observers must have been struck
with their quite Hibernian fondness for a
shindy. Two of the same kind seldom
come within hail of each other without a
little set-to, just for sociability's sake, as it

B UTTEBFL Y PS YCHOL OG Y. 213

were ; and I have seen a dozen or more
gathered thickly about a precious bit of
moist earth, air crowding and pushing for
place in a manner not to be outdone by the
most patriotic of office-seekers.

It is my private heresy, perhaps, this
strong anthropomorphic turn of mind,
which impels me to assume the presence
of a soul in all animals, even in these airy
nothings ; and, having assumed its exist-
ence, to speculate as to what goes on within
it. I know perfectly well that such ques-
tions as I have been raising are not to be
answered. They are not meant to be an-
swered. But I please myself with asking
them, nevertheless, having little sympathy
with those precise intellectual economists
who count it a waste to let the fancy play
with insoluble mysteries. Why is fancy
winged, I should like to know, if it is never
to disport itself in fields out of which the
clumsy, heavy-footed understanding is de-
barred ?

BASHFUL DRUMMERS.

He goes but to see a noise that he heard.

SHAKESPEARE.

AT the back of my father's house were
woods, to my childish imagination a bound-
less wilderness. Little by little I ventured
into them, and among my earliest recollec-
tions of their sombre and lonesome depths
was a long, thunderous, far-away drumming
noise, beginning slowly and increasing in
speed till the blows became almost contin-
uous. This, somebody told me, was the
drumming of the partridge. Now and then,
in open spaces in the path, I came upon
shallow circular depressions where the bird
had been dusting, an operation in which I
had often seen our barnyard fowls compla-
cently engaged. At other times I was
startled by the sudden whir of the bird's
wings as he sprang up at my feet, and went
dashing away through the underbrush. I
heard with open-mouthed wonder of men
who had been known to shoot a bird thus

BASHFUL DRUMMERS. 215

flying ! All in all, the partridge made a
great impression upon my boyish mind.

By and by some older companion initi-
ated me into the mystery of setting snares.
My attempts were primitive enough, no
doubt; but they answered their purpose,
taking me into the woods morning and
night, in all kinds of weather, and afford-
ing me no end of pleasurable excitement.
Once in a great while the noose would be
displaced (the " slip-noose," we called it,
with unsuspected pleonasm), and the bar-
berries gone. At last, after numberless
disappointments, I actually found a bird in
the snare. The poor captive was still alive,
and, as I came up, was making frantic ef-
forts to escape ; but I managed to secure
him, in spite of my trembling fingers, and
then, though the deed looked horribly like
murder, I killed him (I would rather not
mention how), and carried him home in
triumph.

Many years passed, and I became in my
own way an ornithologist. One by one I
scraped acquaintance with all the common
birds of our woods and fields; but the
drumming of the partridge (or of the ruffled

216 BASHFUL DRUMMERS.

grouse, as I now learned to call him) re-
mained a mystery. I read Emerson's de-
scription of the " forest-seer : " —

" He saw the partridge drum in the woods j
He heard the woodcock's evening hymn ;
He found the tawny thrushes' broods ;
And the shy hawk did wait for him ; "

and I thought : " Well, now, I have seen
and heard the woodcock at his vespers ; I
have found the nest of the tawny thrush ;
the shy hawk has sat still on the branch just
over my head ; but I have not seen the par-
tridge drum in the woods. Why should n't
I do that, also ? " I made numerous at-
tempts. A bird often drummed in a small
wood where I was in the habit of rambling
before breakfast. The sound came always
from a particular quarter, and probably
from a certain stone wall, running over a
slight rise of ground near a swamp. The
crafty fellow evidently did not mean to be
surprised ; but I made a careful reconnois-
sance, and finally hit upon what seemed a
feasible point of approach. A rather large
boulder offered a little cover, and, after sev-
eral failures, I one day spied the bird on the
wall. He had drummed only a few min-

BASHFUL DRUMMERS. 217

utes before ; but his lookout was most
likely sharper than mine. At all events,
he dropped off the wall on the further side,
and for that time I saw nothing more of
him. Nor was I more successful the next
time, nor the next. Be as noiseless as I
could, the wary creature inevitably took the
alarm. To make matters worse, mornings
were short and birds were many. One day
there were rare visiting warblers to be
looked after ; another day the gray-cheeked
thrushes had dropped in upon us on their
way northward, and, if possible, I must
hear them sing. Then the pretty blue
golden - winged warbler was building her
nest, and by some means or other I must
find it.

Thus season after season slipped by.
Then, in another place, I accidentally
passed quite round a drummer. I heard
him on the right, and after traveling only
a few rods, I heard him on the left. He
must be very near me, and not far from the
crest of a low hill, over which, as in the
former instance, a stone wall ran. He
drummed at long intervals, and meanwhile
I was straining my eyes and advancing at

218 BASHFUL DRUMMERS.

a snail's pace up the slope. Happily, the
ground was carpeted with pine needles, and
comparatively free from brush and dead
twigs, those snapping nuisances that so
often bring all our patience and ingenuity
to nought. A section of the wall came into
sight, but I got no glimpse of the bird.
Presently I went down upon all fours ;
then lower yet, crawling instead of creep-
ing, till I could look over the brow of the
hill. Here I waited, and had begun to fear
that I was once more to have my labor for
my pains, when all at once I saw the grouse
step from one stone to another. " Now for
it ! " I said to myself. But the drumming
did not follow, and anon I lost sight of the
drummer. Again I waited, and finally the
fellow jumped suddenly upon a top stone,
lifted his wings, and commenced the fa-
miliar roll-call. I could see his wings beat-
ing against his sides with quicker and
quicker strokes ; but an unlucky bush was
between us, and hoping to better my posi-
tion, I moved a little to one side. Upon
this, the bird became aware of my presence,
I think. At least I could see him staring
straight at me, and a moment later he

BASHFUL DRUMMERS. 219

dropped behind the wall ; and though I re-
mained motionless till a cramp took me, I
heard nothing more. " If it had not been
for that miserable bush ! " I muttered. But
I need not have quarreled with an innocent
bush, as if it, any more than myself, had
been given a choice where it should grow.
A wiser man would have called to mind the
old saw, and made the most of "half a
loaf."

Another year passed, and another spring
came round. Then, on the same hillside, a
bird (probably the same individual) was
drumming one April morning, and, as my
note-book has it, "I came within one" of
taking him in the act. I miscalculated his
position, however, which, as it turned out,
was not upon the wall, but on a boulder
surrounded by a few small pine-trees. The
rock proved to be well littered, and clearly
was the bird's regular resort. " Very
good," said I, " I will catch you yet."

Five days later I returned to the charge,
and was rewarded by seeing the fellow
drum once ; but, as before, intervening
brush obscured my view. I crept forward,
inch by inch, till the top of the boulder

220 BASHFUL DRUMMERS.

came into sight, and waited, and waited,
and waited. At last I pushed on, and lo,
the place was deserted. There is a familiar
Scripture text that might have been writ-
ten on purpose for ornithologists : " Let
patience have her perfect work."

This was April 14th. On the 19th I
made the experiment again. The drummer
was at it as I drew near, and fortune favored
me at last. I witnessed the performance
three times over. Even now, to be sure,
the prospect was not entirely clear, but it
was better than ever before, and by this
time I had learned to be thankful for small
mercies. The grouse kept his place be-
tween the acts, moving his head a little
one way and another, but apparently doing
nothing else.

Of course I had in mind the disputed
question as to the method by which the
drumming noise is produced. It had
seemed to me that whoever would settle
this point must do it by attending carefully
to the first slow beats. This I now at-
tempted, and after one trial was ready, off-
hand, to accept a theory which heretofore I
had scouted ; namely, that the bird makes

BASHFUL DRUMMERS. 221

the sound by striking his wings together
over his back. He brought them up, even
for the first two or three times, with a quick
convulsive movement, and I could almost
have made oath that I heard the beat before
the wings fell. But fortunately, or unfor-
tunately, I waited till he drummed again ;
and now I was by no means so positive in
my conviction. If an observer wishes to
be absolutely sure of a thing, — I have
learned this by long experience, — let him
look at it once, and forever after shut his
eyes ! On the whole, I return to my pre-
vious opinion, that the sound is made by
the downward stroke, though whether
against the body or against the air, I will
not presume to say.

A man who is a far better ornithologist
than I, and who has witnessed this perform-
ance under altogether more favorable con-
ditions than I was ever afforded, assures me
that his performer sat down ! My bird took
no such ridiculous position. So much, at
least, I am sure of.

When he had drummed three times, my
partridge quit his boulder (I was near
enough to hear him strike the dry leaves),

222 BASHFUL DRUMMERS.

and after a little walked suddenly into plain
sight. We discovered each other at the
same instant. I kept motionless, nay field-
glass up. He made sundry nervous move-
ments, especially of his ruff, and then si-
lently stalked away.

I could not blame him for his lack of
neighborliness. If I had been shot at and
hunted with dogs as many times as he prob-
ably had been, I too might have become
a little shy of strangers. To my thinking,
indeed, the grouse is one of our most esti-
mable citizens. A liking for the buds of
fruit-trees is his only fault (not many of
my townsmen have a smaller number, I
fancy), and that is one easily overlooked,
especially by a man who owns no orchard.
Every sportsman tries to shoot him, and
every winter does its worst to freeze or
starve him ; but he continues to flourish.
Others may migrate to sunnier climes, or
seek safety in the backwoods, but not so the
partridge. He was born here, and here he
means to stay. What else could be ex-
pected of a bird whose notion of a lover's
serenade is the beating of a drum ?

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