\VALJCS ri NEW ENGLAND CHARLES GOODRICH WHITING LIBRARY OF THE UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA. in jliieto Give to me the gospel of the fields and woods, The sermons written in the book of books ; The sweet communion of the things of earth Fresh with the warm baptism of the sun ; Give me the offertory of bud and bloom, The perfect caroling of happy birds ; Give me the creed of one of God's fair days Wrought in the beauty of its loveliness ; And then the benediction of the stars, His eloquent ministers of the night. — Ravenscroft. o ' •• .J. e UNIV- SITY - •& Walks In New England BY Charles Goodrich Whiting Author of " The Saunterer " With Illustrations from Photographs Published by JOHN LANE == Che Bodley Read ===== LONDON AND NEW YORK M CMIII Copyright by John Lane 1903 Edition Published April 1903 Printed by T. Morey & Son Greenfield Mass. U. S. A. >/ VJ 72- TO SOLOMON STEBBINS MY OLD COMRADE AND THE BEST MAN OF WOOD AND FIELD I EVER KNEW THE ILLUSTRATIONS The illustrations in this volume are reproductions from photographs taken on the walks which gave life to these notes on Nature. All but four were done by Joel H. Hendrick, who, with Chester T. Stockwell, has in these later years been a constant companion. The portrait facing the title was taken by E. J. Lazelle, in the course of a memorable climb over Mount Tom. Three other pictures, of farm life in the Berkshire Hills, were made by Albert Cargill and Edward Elwell Whiting. LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS 1. "The Saunterer," . .... Frontispiece Facing page 2. The Mountain's Peak, 20 3. Gray Birches : Hyla Sunday, 34 4. White Birches on Easter Morn, 49 5. Where the Birds haunt the Spring, .... 68 6. At the Farm House Door, 84 7. The Beetling Brow, Mount Holyoke, .... 86 8. In the Midst of the Woods, 95 9. The Saunterer's Mountain Home, .... 98 10. At the Altar of the Hemlock, 100 11. The View through the Gorge, ..... 105 12. Ferns and Sarsaparillas, 118 13. Blackberrying 140 14. The Mount Tom Range, 145 15. The Hillside Pasture, I52 16. The Lone Pine at Sunset, i?3 17. The White Oak at the Mountain Portal, . . .189 1 8. Wildwater in a Wind of Fall, I98 19. Poet and Mystic at Oak Knoll, 208 20. The Pine's Grand Column, 217 21. Seen over Cedars and Junipers, 231 22. Icicles over Wildwater, 243 23. Wildwater in Winter Ice, . . . . . 252 24. Over Newly Cleared Land, ...... 260 CONTENTS Come! Thou Song Sparrow, . . . . . . . 13 A Sabbath in the Open, . . 21 The Life of Earth, 27 The Sugar Snow, 28 The Hyla's Voice is Heard in the Land, .... 30 In the Soul's Native Air, . 35 Easter Hope, 37 A Far Easter in the Future, . . . • . . *"'..,• 45 " Where Nature Reigns," 49 The Culminating Easter, 55 April at Work, ... . . . . . . 59 The Chain, -65 Opening April, 66 Hepatica, 7° These Summer Visitations, 76 May Song, . . . . . . • . • • • 80 The Marvelous Beauty of the Spring, . . . . • 81 In Mid-May, 88 11 Ah Still Delay ! Thou Art so Fair 1 " . . . : . 93 Fragrance and Melody, 97 An Over-Ardent June, ...'••••• IO2 Birds, Insects, Man and Woman, . . . • .107 Nature's Independence Day, 117 Looking Unto the Hills, I2° The Birds in the Thickets, I24 July Days, I27 The Electric Storm, I3° A Seasonable Divagation, *33 The Height of Summer, J39 In the Dog-Days : 1898, J44 "The Fountain Light of All Our Day," . . . . I51 The Symphony of the Storm, 154 After the Summer J58 Contents Page The Fall Begins, 163 These September Days, 168 After a Dry Summer, 175 Wind of the East, 176 A Fall Day of Mists, • 180 The Glories of October, . . 183 Paradise was Never Lost, 187 Of His Good Pleasure, 193 Let Us Say, " He is Beautiful," . . . . . .199 Ready for Winter, 205 Witch Hazel Bloom, 211 Gliding into Indian Summer, 216 Flowers in November Bloom, 220 One Indian Summer Day, 224 Indian Summer Reverie, 230 The Second Day of December 236 The Day of the Child, 239 Winter Takes Possession . . 242 The Splendour of the New Jerusalem, 247 Skating and Sliding Down Hill, . . . . ... 252 Across Lots is Best, 259 Things One Sees in Winter, 266 A Prophesying Day, 272 Winter Morn and Moon, . 276 Spring Days in Winter, . 280 The Great March Blizzard of 1888, 284 The Picture after the Storm, 289 The Snow-Storm, ... 291 In City and Country, 294 The Unbeginning Love, 299 in WALKS IN NEW ENGLAND Come ! Thou Song Sparrow THE vernal equinox is past, and all the storms are here of snow and sleet and rain, and winter still wages his perpetual quarrel with spring. Late is the coming of spring, long is the winter's persistence ; the birds on the wing from the south wait for the south wind's assistance ; a few of the bluebirds have come, but where is the daring song-sparrow that sings over snowdrifts of home when the March wind is chilling the marrow ? Dumb are the fence-rails he lights on, silent the bush and the brier. Oh ! for the charm that delights one when the sun rises red as a fire, and the sparrow springs swift from the ground in bright unre- strainable joy, and in a sweet whirlwind of sound lets out the whole secret employ of the spell of the opening season, — then we know that the spring is at hand, — we know that in rhyme and in reason new life is at work in the land. Come, 13 14 Walks in New England then, O sparrow ! and hymn to us, — talk of the new greening meadows ; prophesy what is now dim to us, scatter the snowdrifts to shadows ! What are the crows in the field, or crying their caws o'er the forest, — what does the chickadee yield but his courage when need is the sorest, — what do such robins as live in the hemlocks de spite of wild weather, — what can all of these give to compare with the sparrow's specked feather ? Even the bluebird's bright carol is not so inspir ing a presage as when the song-sparrow will dare all the elements with his sweet message. Come then, O sparrow ! and wing to the fence-post and joyously hymn to us, — quick will our spirits then spring to the answer that now is so grim to us. Pardon a trifle of rhapsody, for notwithstand ing the forbidding storms, we have felt the breath of spring, at odd times, on rare days, with dis couragements and miseries between, but still there are the growing trees and shrubs which swell their buds of leaf and bloom, giving evidence that Nature's great processes are steadily advancing. This is after the vernal equinox, which sets a milestone against the boundary of a strenuous and sturdy winter of the most old-fashioned type. Not since the winter of 1842-3 has there been so long a season of snow. Very nearly all sorts Come ! Thou Song Sparrow 1 5 of weather have been furnished, and there is scarcely any stock left except the summer stock. Even our thaws have been very wintry, and the fogs we had in February are, so the farmers say, earnest of frosts in May, while the thunder show ers mean mischief of cold in midsummer. Perhaps there is some sort of balance in the sea sons' malaises, but when we are told that because the first snow-storm came on November 24, we must have 24 snow-storms, and we learn that the tale is not filled without three more, — we find it an overdraft on our credulity. Still, late as it is, by a little hurrying up, the three storms can get here before April. It is certainly rather unusual to look out upon a wild wintry world of white at so late a date. Why, the farmers on the hills are yet sledding over the shun-pikes instead of the turnpikes, — going out into the fields by paths well determined through many generations to avoid the drifts in the established roads. Such an experience is very rare. It is what they call a new thing, — though it is plain that there can be no new types of seasons, — vary as seasons will, they have every one their precedents. And old inhabitants relate how in 1 843 the sleighing lasted in the valley until April 1 1 . In the course of this riotous winter, wonderful exhibitions of beauty have been made. We re- 1 6 IValks in New England call one tremendous day of northwest wind, in which an inch or two of light snow mounted to drifts here and there six or eight feet high. The wind was 50 miles an hour on the top of the Berkshire hills, but as one faced the sunset extraor dinary effects of colour were produced. All the way up in the morning the snow wreaths wrought by the wind made marvelous pictures of magic as they swept up the hillsides, and Emerson's sea, " carving the coastwise mountain into caves," was fellowed with this riot of the drifting snow. And here and again in some curious hollow in the hills one beheld a miniature in delicate gray and white — not black and white, there is no black in Na ture — of the light flames that hover over the crater of such a volcano as Kilauea. But now, suddenly, as the edge of a hill was turned, the rays of the descending sun swept over the crest of a pasture, and all the gray-white snow was turned to rose and glowed with the exquisite beauty of that pure colour, for some minutes, until, the sun declining, it was shot through by a golden glow that empur pled it, — all as if to contradict and destroy the power of the tempest. It was a transfiguration wrought by the elements in evidence of the po tential glory of winter. Later there was a lull in the storms, and the fogs came and crusted the trees and the shrubs Come / Thou Song Sparrow 1 7 with delicate frost-work. This was charming and gracious, but there was finer beauty to come in the several ice-storms of the season. Never were there more glorious exhibitions of ice-draped and sun lit forests than in the course of the winter that still lingers. Those who dwell in cities and see only the trees in the streets know little about the brilliant impression the forest makes in such a garb. Indeed, a vast deal of the glory of Nature is only to be realized in the winter, when the trees stand forth in their essential character of strength and vigour. The woodland was magnifi cent in the great ice-storm of midwinter, when the ice remained on the trees for some ten days, glittering and rustling in the wind and sun. But it was a ruinous glory to many a tree. The birches were bent in picturesque arches over mountain roads, and dipped their heads deep in the snow which followed and pinned them down. A remarkable effect was produced in the park of Holland mountain, so wonderfully planned by Nature, with its groups and vistas of red cedars. In all that beautiful hilltop there were few of these cedars which remained upright ; and a great number of them were broken off at half or two-thirds their height. Then there have been many storms which left the trees covered with light, soft snow, creating a fairyland less B 1 8 Walks in New England glowing with rainbow colours, but most deli cately graceful. The winter has been notable in these later weeks for the swelling of the flower and leaf buds on shrubs and trees, so manifest that everyone must have noted it. The elm buds, which are not the earliest, are distinctly ready to come forth, and as for the willow catkins, never was there a season in which they have been more ambitious or more un decided. They usually begin to show themselves at the very outset of winter, just enough to indi cate their intentions ; but this passing season the bushes at the edges of ponds, in the swamps or along the river banks, have thrust out their silky " pussies/' and then drawn them in closer to their sheaths, even when the ice was close about their roots, or in the midst of snowdrifts. But the poet is right — " None is too late — none is too soon." Now around the borders of the swamps, where the ghostly drooping panicles of the poison sumach are seen beneath the cedars and the hackmatacks, the flower buds of the cassandra are growing very definite and determined, and the more delicate pink andromeda follows its sturdier example. For colour, there is nothing to surpass in its way a swamp of the cassandra, whose leaves are now rich bronze, or fairly copper hue, while around Come ! Thou Song Sparrow 19 the shores the huckleberry bushes are reddening their new shoots, and the spice bushes and clethras add their note of coming leafage and flowering. Still linger also the varied leaves of last year on the oaks, and the pines rise with green distinction in the midst of the otherwise bare branches. A striking picture, the other day, was that of a great balm-of-gilead poplar, its buds far advanced, and in its top a crow, whose prismatic black was relieved against the greenish yellow of the trunk and boughs. The crows have been very abundant, and hundreds have been seen before these last snows feeding on grubs in the pastures around the city. Now they have betaken themselves to the Long Island Sound shores, until the snow shall melt again. It is marvelous how these things re cur, year after year, and our eyes are so blind and our hearts so dull to realize how infinite life throbs through the earth, and God is living in all that he has sent out, to tell us that we are not the sole re cipients of his spirit. We see through a glass darkly, and yet we may see face to face as truly now as we ever shall. No man hath seen God at any time, no man ever will see him except in the myriad manifestations of his life, around us at every step, and most wonderfully present, no doubt, to the generations that seek after a sign, in the opening of spring. 2O IValks in New England Let us open our eyes, our ears, our hearts, to the great current of his life, of which we are but a part, — how small a part or how great we cannot yet imagine. Unnumbered lives, infinite worlds, remain for us to learn, and we would do well to learn as much of this one as we can, and ap prehend in some degree the marvel of the divine life. THE MOUNTAIN'S PEAK A Sabbath in the Open 21 A Sabbath in the Open IT was a good Sabbath that was kept in the fields and woods ; a good Sunday, too, full of spring hope and heart, and as one stood on the brow of a brown hill, and saw the oaks and apples and maples suddenly alive with bluebirds and robins, with now and then a sparrow, not to mention woodpeckers, coming in on the south west wind, and heard the exquisite warble of the bluebird from every tree, there stirred in the heart that thrilling pleasure that is almost as poignant as pain, so keen and sudden and serious is its appeal to the hidden life, that reveals itself so reticently and with such hesitations and with drawals throughout the long wintry season. Here then sounds the emphatic call of Nature : Mistake not ; the moment arrives, the harbingers are at hand ; my most unselfish child, spring, is busy with the marsh cabbage and busy with the hepatica buds ; out again creep the willow pussies that had retired while February froze the air ; again swell the poplar and the hazel and alder 22 Walks in New England aments, — this time they may come out and fear naught. So irresistibly suggest the undertones of Na ture, echoing the bluebird and the robin, and tell ing of the song-sparrow that begins to sing on the verge of the snowdrifts the song he will not cease to sing until November closes tight the sheaths of the buds that are to bloom another year. Of course, one finds the bluejays in fine fettle with their spring whistling to balance their shrill screams ; of course the crows are plenty, for they are with us all through the winter. Perhaps the chickadee is never happier than now, as he begins slowly to try his vernal phoebe note, while he ex plores the trees and stumps for those insects which are his food, — a useful as well as a beauti ful brave creature. He is life, — life sentient and conscious and at work in the realm for which it has been fitted, — life that goes on and can never cease. This lovely creature, so small, so mod est, but so unafraid ; with clear black poll above that bright and trusting eye ; hopping almost at your very feet, is he not the frankest of the bird races ? He scarcely suspects a man who behaves himself. But the crow that drops inadvertently into the neighbourhood of one of us, — how furtively and silently he departs ! — nor makes a note of criticism A Sabbath in the Open 23 until he gets well out of gunshot, — then he tells all the other fellows that in such and such a glen or wood their arch-enemy has a posted sentinel. We hear him, far overhead, screaming, " Don't go there ! " His first cousin, the dandy bluejay, has no such timidity : indeed it is scorn this gay, skyey-tinted predatory rascal expresses as he swings down close overhead of the intruding human being. All the birds have their opinion of men. There is the ruffed grouse, which we call the partridge,- — hen and cock are so distrust ful that they are up and away before we know where they be. All these one may espy in a March ramble, if circumstances favour, and might be wholly happy in espying them were it not for the knowledge that there are guns. Traces, too, of other birds may be detected, as when in a wood of yellow pines, the ground beneath is littered with the eviscerated shells of the cones, on whose seeds the Canadian crossbills have been feeding, and no doubt some bluejays also. The tracks in the forest snows are eloquent of life, as silence is eloquent in this secret manner. When, traversing the snowy woods, one finds a convergence of fox and dog tracks to some cav ernous ledge, which shows that there has been many a chase that ended at that refuge, he readily imagines the shrewd joy of Master Reynard in 24 Walks in New England leading his free-foot pursuers to the place where they must perforce lose him. There is nothing more interesting in its way than the insouciant fashion in which a fox will regard the dog that is chasing him. He will loiter, and turn, and sniff, and swing his broad brush, and then dart off, with a sure lead, and anon double and cross, and pres ently vanish. Then the free-foot dog will pause, and cry, and give it up after a while, — un less the man is along; and the man does not make it sure. Curious things may be observed, as for instance when among a lot of mouse tracks one perceives a straight mark between one line of individual toes, and realizes that an unfortunate mouse has had his tail broken so that it trails behind him. Mice have ways of their own. They work along un der the snow until they reach the edge of a drift beneath a ledge, or the stem of some tree or bush, with its melted passage to the ground, when they emerge, — thus covering their real home from dis covery. The forest is full of tricks, — full of evi dences of the wisdom of the furry or feathery tribes that inhabit it. And their wisdom and folly, whichever is shown, is marvelously akin to the human wisdom and folly. Now surely the spells of the frost are loosened, and those skunk cabbages that choose, and that A Sabbath in the Open 25 have not hurried too much, will presently be humming all over their spadixes with pollen- scattering flowers, — for there is sound in this work of reproduction, though our ears be not finely enough attuned to distinguish it. Our yet im perfect senses miss a hundred shades and hues and tints of colour, which artists are ever striving to discover and fix on canvas ; they cannot see light where multitudes of living things of so- called lower orders do see light and go about their businesses ; they cannot catch the myriad overtones even of the musical instruments we make, no one of which, not even the subtle violin, ever registered the infinite delicacies and refine ments of tone that vibrate to the spiritual sense ; they cannot hear the corn grow, though they hear the waters trickle and the frosts whisper ; and even the movements of the ants in the ground, the beetles in the bark, the larvae in the wood, are only heard by a few whose trained ears have reached a neater touch of hearing. We live in a world of sense and manifestation scarce apprehended, and for many of its phenom ena we are less finely organized than the trivial creatures which we regard not. Man is the lord of creation, but while he assumes this rank with great conceit, he knows little of his lordship, and less of his subjects. The few that study life and 26 Walks in New England dwell amid its myriad forms, and search in them for the great secrets, in great measure begin at the wrong end with an assumption of the material as the ultimate. But there is new light gleaming over the field of life, — a new study of the things we can physically touch and see as related to things beyond physics, — a growth of science to ward spirit, — a conviction that life was before those manifestations which touch our imperfect physical sense ; which was and is infinite and illimitable, and as it never began can never end. The uni verse, from least atom to greatest concourse of atoms, from the simplest sensitiveness to the fur thest reach of man's soul, is all one living being, of which man no less surely and no more truly than the amoeba is the expression. The Life of Earth 27 THE LIFE OF EARTH The Spring's life breathes in the air amid the snows ; The Spring's pulse beats beneath the eager sun's ray ; Pliant and yellow and mellow the willow bark grows ; The beechen buds listen and glisten and think of May ; Sweet at the forest's cool verge there steals a scent, A scent that is tender and intimate, yet not bold To quarrel and rival the pine, but still has lent A freedom that whispers and smiles amid the cold. The knolls are bare and the mosses are freshly green, The wintergreen berries redden and spice the view, Where the pulse of the young year's heart is sensibly seen As arbutus blushes peep from their sleep anew. This is the grace of the Spring New England knows, — The arbutus rathe and blithe, that wins to its side The earliest ardour the sun can give to the snows, The perfume that promises all the dear spring-tide. 28 Walks in New England The Sugar Snow THE snow was a surprise, certainly. Few years within the memory of this genera tion or the last can parallel the experi ence of finding this wintry substance covering the ground a foot deep on the morning of March 29. Let us try to hope that it was the last foot fall of winter. The birds have a right to complain of misplaced confidence, and so have we, since the blandness of spring, the day before, deluded us into regarding her in tentions as honourable, and we welcomed her in expensive language, forgetting what an inveterate coquette she is. Where spring went, after flirting with us all so sweetly, Saturday, who can say ? — but no doubt she was just as insinuating and cheating, wherever she was. The bluebirds woke up Sunday morning and took the snow as the joke of the season ; — they warbled around genially and expressed a clear conviction that they could stand it longer than the snow could. The snow felt a good deal that way, too, before night. The The Sugar Snow 29 crows, naturally, observed that no such thing ever came without cause, and they gave a few for its speedy departure. The old farmer, starting for meetin' on runners, said this was as near goin' sleighin' on the Fourth as he ever wanted to. The boys said they were glad there was so much of it — for there would be some left for snowballs Monday. Moreover, it gave everybody some thing fresh to say about the weather. Something was heard about filling milk-pans with it, to pour the boiling syrup on and make that dainty, maple wax. It was surely a sugar snow, one of those swift night falls, on frozen ground, which send the sap stirring up the maples when the sun comes out. It was really very beautiful snow, and whether dissipating in the sunshine or shining in the moonlight, it was several degrees whiter than the average. Less meteoric dust in it. Spring snow always looks so very young, and it is a blessing to the new grass and young grain, — one of those blessings that brighten as they take their flight. 30 Walks in New England The Hylas Voice is Heard in the Land THE last Sunday in Lent was the first Sunday in Lent to assume in its exterior phases, as a day of the grace of God in Nature, that truly joyous aspect which belongs to a feast day, as all the Sundays in Lent are feast days by the church reckoning. So far as the common feeble mortal is concerned, he wants the sun to shine if his mood is to be festal. The morning indications were all for rain before the day should end, bright though it began ; but the wind shifted to northwest, without much increase of cold, and the splendid sun ruled the day to a fine sunset. There will be many other perfect days, in the hastening advance of summer, and beyond ; but Easter itself will be rare, indeed, if it equals the transcendent beauty of yester day, when life informed the air, the earth, the birds, the marsh-king's courtiers — hyla and croak ing frog ; and breathed low beneath the ground the summons of bloom. Every character of The Hylas Voice is Heard 31 life was in the over breeze and the subterranean whispers. There were bluebirds with the sky on their backs and the earth on their breasts, warbling with that tender and unobtrusive delicacy of which they have the sole secret. There were robins, cheery and bold ; and there was the modest phoebe, — whose fellow the chickadee now is little in evidence, going northward. There is much talk of plagiarism in music, and it might be a question which of these birds is the plagiarist of the phoebe call, if it had not been for Paderewski's daring and truthful assertion that there is no proper theft in music, since no theme can be ab solutely original, and the question depends on the use of the theme. This lets out both the phoebe and the chickadee, for each has an unde niable right to the notes he was born with. The song-sparrow, most celestially lovely of all the songsters of our clime, is now in his first rich de light in new light, new love, new home, new life. He is a wonderful fellow for continuous joy ; for sweet as all the others are, he will sing for the beautiful love of song until November chills. Other sparrows there are now to keep him com pany, called by various names, but none of them has quite the inspiration of this nonpareil of the early fields and copses. There is pleasure now, 32 IValks in New England as always, in the hoarse and knowing caws of the crows and the lighter but still passionate tempers of the bluejay. But no longer the crow and his cousin jay, no longer the tones of winter strike the keynote — gentler, tenderer, more exquisite strains are filling the air. One may hardly call the croak of the early bullfrog and the shrill piping of the hyla by such titles as these ; but these queer creatures now make, wherever there are ponds or marshes, an important part of the spring symphony. What an elusive being is this little hyla, clinging to the stems of the cat-tail or sweet-flag or to the sedges and water grasses, indistinguishable from the stems he clings to — unless one with exhaustless patience sits beside some marsh until the tiny crea ture forgets that the alien is there, and again raises muzzle above the water. Even then what a long time will pass before the " curious impertinent " (to quote from the Cardenio story in " Don Quixote ") may detect the fifer. Shrill beyond the highest-keyed piccolo rises the hyla's greeting to spring, and none may be sure that the winter barrier has been broken until it is heard. This year hyla is ahead of time, as indeed all the birds have been. One of our few close observers assures us that this is an extraordinary season for early migrations to our latitude. It is now three The Hylas Voice is Heard 33 weeks since the first flight of wild geese to the north ; a great detachment swung over Mount Tom last Monday. As for flowers, hepaticas have bloomed in the city limits, and two weeks ago dandelions were caught sight of. To be honest, there were adven titious circumstances that helped them ; and so, nevertheless, the only reliable blossom of the season is that of the skunk cabbage, — one of the richest and most splendid of plants, notwithstand ing its name, and for all that it is modest, and does not force itself upon the attention. It is one of those exceptional plants which spends all its substance of obvious beauty on the hood which hides the blossoms ; the beauty of the flowers themselves is reserved for the microscope to dis cover. Let no one despise a type like this ; there is a certain nobility in this efFacement. There are human analogues, if we would care to follow out the resemblance. And it must be said that the infinite charm of the day was that of perpetual promise. So goes on the life of earth, only interfered with by man, who does his worst to ruin and obliterate this con stant impulse of life. He, the height of evolution, lingers yet in shallow sense of the place he holds, and of his duty as conservator of all that earth holds. In the scripture parable men are judged c 34 Walks in New England by the use they have made of the talents intrusted to them. Here has a vast world of continually reproducing beauty and glory been committed to man's care, and he should be bound by the condi tions of the gift to increase and glorify the work of Nature. But instead, the line of the poet is true : " Man marks the earth with ruin." In this springtide, with every force of Nature, — that is, of God — bent on the greater beauty, how sluggish, how short-sighted, how injurious is our custody of the treasures of beauty ! It is yet to be discovered by mankind that there is nothing in Nature which can be sacrificed without loss ; that everything in Nature has value ; that not the least, but the greatest value in the earth is its beauty. It belongs and appeals to the spiritual part of man, which will exist and find its fit place of evolution or of devolution after this day, and will be judged, saith the scripture, by the deeds done in the body. Lo ! Easter comes ! and let us get quickly into sympathy with that symbolic and noble coming, in which God and Nature meet in one being, and man is a part and an heir of both, — that is to say, of the selfsame begotten kinship, along with the flower of the field, the bird of the air, the hyla of the marsh, and the finest intelligence that sings before the throne of God ! In the Soul's Native Air 35 IN THE SOUL'S NATIVE AIR Dear is the breath of the April winds, in the pines on the hillside, Dear is the smile of the sun on the knolls where the ground pines creep, Dear are the showers that waken the flowers to bloom by the rillside, Dear are those blossoms that answer the sun and the rain from their sleep. Aye, when the torrents adown from the springs of the mountain are dashing, Gleams of celestial silver illuming the hemlock's deep shade, The spirit of God moves those waters, so vividly rushing and flashing, Even as on the great day when the firmament highly was made. Still we behold it anew, as if God were the first time cre ating, Nature eternally showing the pulse of continuing life ; Nature forever repeating, all of her forces relating, Glory and beauty and honour born out of storm and of strife. Crumble the rocks into mould, and trees spring from out of the ruin, Climb to the sunlight and sway their breathing leaves in the breeze; 36 Walks in New England Sheltered beneath them spring the delicate flowers that renew in Loveliness ever unfailing worship that never shall cease. Over the pastures the grasses slowly grow sweet and pre pare them Food of the servants of man, as erst of the rabbit and deer ; Green o'er the meadows the grasses, and swell the pink buds that o'erfare them, Promise of fruit for the feasting that comes of the fall of the year. Aye, and the birds that fly northward, pause here and so journ and sing to us, Birds with the sky in their voices, the message of love in their lays, Birds that are free in the ether, and poise and waver, and bring to us Thoughts of the time when we too shall escape from the tumult of days, — Escape and flee and evanish, and soar to the home of the spirit, Soar there and sing, even we, the song that all life and breath share, Praising and loving and honouring Him in whose grace we ensphere it, — Once more in the bosom of God, restored to the soul's native air. Raster Hope 37 Easter Hope THE day of the rising of Jesus, the sea son of the rising of Nature, come into the closest connection this late Easter ; and the hope of humanity, the promise of earth, are blent in one common springtide, as irresistible as the sunlight and the south winds, that waken the grass and swell the buds, cheer the birds, and invite the peaceful forces of the spirit of all life to renew the miracle of summer. How charming is youth ! The very fact of youth is a prefigure- ment of immortality. Energies that find their way to the seed in the ground, to the germ in the egg ; that fill the birds with joy and the air with their happy melody ; that stir the pulses with vigour and make strife more expectant and ideals draw nearer, — these are the same that thrill the stars in their courses and bring the vital warmth of our sun to all its little worlds, and so with all the other suns and their attendant worlds. It is still the word of Jesus that throbs with undiminished conviction this Easter : " Because 38 Walks in New England I live, ye shall live also." Not with Jesus was born the sense of the divine spirit of original, con tinuing and never ending life and advance. In the myriad ages of our race upon this planet there have been many prophets and priests of the liv ing God who knew this truth and could not be put down by discouragements of transient and evil days. Not with Jesus did the line of these sons of God end, nor will it ever end. But it was he who first, so far as we have record, so knew the purpose of the Spirit and was so possessed by its unity, its sacred essence and its illimitable glory in ages beyond imagination to conceive, that his sense thereof was not hope, but knowledge, the certainty where is no room for doubt. He spake, because he knew at first hand. The voice of his Father was his own voice, for they were one. " If a man die, shall he live again ? " This is the form the question of questions has taken all down through the ages. It is the riddle of the eternal sphinx, of which all legendary sphinxes are but shadowy types ; and notwithstanding CEdipus, it may be maintained that no sphinx ever was answered, — for his answer was an over whelming catastrophe. Perhaps it is near the time when the riddle shall assume a new form, and we shall no longer ask a question that predicates Raster Hope 39 death as a condition ; when it shall be fully known that death is no more than an incident of life, like sleep its twin, and that life is the only fact of the universe of God. This day is consecrated to the memory of the resurrection of Jesus, who is called the Christ, as narrated in the gospels of the faith called after his office of anointed Master of Life, who brought immortality to light, as it is written. And, indeed, though there are thousands of millions of human beings who have no heredity of faith in this ex traordinary personage, and though among peoples called broadly after his name the confidence in this revealed evidence is growing dulled and lost, nevertheless, it must always be from him that the strongest of evidence proceeds, — because, a spirit ual man, conscious of his divine sonship, he knew and from his knowledge declared that the spirit of man does not die at all. It is not necessary to hold the creed of any Christian church, so- called ; it is not necessary to think at all of the trinity or any other dogma or theologic conception. To give full force to what he has said, it needs only to recognize that element in him which has never been absent from the poet and the prophet, — the spirit's own witness to the spirit's undy ing continuance. " Because I live, ye shall live also," is enough. Viewed merely as the utter- 40 Walks in New England ance of a soul so infinitely one with the in forming soul of the universe that no other word is possible to it, it thus puts on a universal author ity, independent of Hebrew precedent or Pauline glosses, and all that theologians have since argued or invented. It is one with the certainty of Socrates as he was about to drink the hemlock, and answered to his lamenting friends, who asked his preference as to his burial — " Bury me where you will, — if you can catch me ! " It is one with Walter Raleigh's lines, " Yet stab at thee who will, No stab the soul can kill." It is one with every outburst of the Spirit itself, in Cicero and in Bernard, from the psalmists to Longfellow, in Emerson, Tenny son, Browning and Whitman. This is the essen tial and unchanging testimony of the inspiration of God, which has never failed the poets, who re buke the sluggish faith of their fellows and give them an uplift in the on-going life. And this is to be said, in this age of science, which has seemed to tend toward materialism of the most crushing character, even to the point where men actually say that there is no truth at tainable save through the processes of the labora tory, and that nothing is proved until the retort has tried it and the figures have demonstrated it. What folly is this ! The age of science, we have Easter Hope 41 termed it. But what is our science ? Marvelous as have been the progresses of investigation in the century that has passed, who can say that any thing ultimate has been reached ? A hundred years ago science was as sure as it is now, — yet there is not a book in any branch of science that is authoritative if it is more than five years old. We consult the books of the beginnings if we go back to the epoch-making cc Origin of Species." Since then, while that book and its fellows are guides of vast value, and have even more weight than when they were new, nevertheless almost every day adds so many marvels of development that they are good for principles rather than for particulars. The steps grow larger and the in terstices between them compass more. Now we are learning from men of research in biology and physics that their studies are leading them to a point where they are catching glimpses and touches of a something mysterious, which, as one of them has substantially said, " we can call by no name more fitting than Love/' The point has been reached where physical standards no longer suffice ; where in the unknown ether has been found a substance which is not susceptible of the laws and qualities of matter, and which may be the true expression of the endless creative energy. 42 Walks in New England Instead of a question of life, it comes to this, that there is nothing but life. The infinite Spirit fills all Nature, our souls no more truly, though so much more greatly, than the earth on which we live. That life is not potential, but actual, in every atom, and it never ceases, but still advances toward an unimaginable unity with the " master light, the secret truth of things, which is the body of the infinite God," as Arthur Hallam says. Science grows and discovers, and no man can say that it has a pause ; but before sciences, before theologies, there was always the intuition of the spirit, and it is the one evi dence which deserves credence, for it has never failed. Spontaneous it seems in its expression, but it is the indrawn breath of a diviner life than ours on earth that makes the poet so ab solute. Emerson did not wait for Darwin and Wallace to read evolution in the record of earth. When he said : — Ever fresh the broad creation, A divine improvisation, From the heart of God proceeds, A single will, a million deeds. Once slept the world an egg of stone, And pulse and sound and light was none ; And God said " Throb ! " and there was motion, And the vast mass became vast ocean, — Easter Hope 43 — it was an additional revelation to that of the primeval poet of Genesis, because to him it was not a thing outside of God on which God acted, but a direct emanation of God. Life that never begins, life that never ceases, is Em erson's word. " The eternal Pan " is but an other name of him who "layeth the world's incessant plan ": — Halteth never in one shape But forever doth escape Like wave or flame, into new forms Of gem and air, of plants and worms. This vault which glows immense with light Is the inn where he lodges for a night. What recks such traveler if the bowers Which bloom and fade like meadow flowers A bunch of fragrant lilies be Or the stars of eternity ? Alike to him the better, the worse The glowing angel, the outcast corse ; Thou metest him by centuries, And lo ! he passes like the breeze ; Thou seek'st in globe and galaxy, He hides in pure transparency. And let us cite one more of this seer's command ing divinations which fills the Easter of the spirit : — 44 IValks in New England Saying : What is excellent As God lives, is permanent. Hearts are dust, hearts' loves remain, Heart's love will meet thee again. A Far Easter in the Future 45 A Far Easter in the Future " 1^ TOW late on the Sabbath day, as it be- ^W] gan to dawn toward the first day of the week, came Mary Magdalene and the other Mary to the sepulchre. And behold, there was a great earthquake, for an angel of the Lord descended from heaven and came and rolled away the stone, and sate upon it. His appearance was as lightning and his raiment white as snow ; and for fear of him the watchers did quake, and became as dead men. And the angel answered and said unto the women : c Fear not ye ; for I know that ye seek Jesus, which hath been crucified. He is not here, for he is risen, even as he said/ ' It is well to recall on this Easter morning the simple narrative of the resurrection of Jesus who is called the Christ, told by the most gentle and humble of his immediate companions. Not one of his four biographers comes any nearer to an ex planation of how that sealed tomb of Joseph of Arimathea was left by its temporary occupant. The Roman soldiers, overcome at their post in in- 46 Walks in New England explicable terror, excused themselves in what way they could, and the ruling Jews imposed secrecy upon them, and sealed it by a bribe, and taught them the tale that the disciples of the false prophet had stolen away his body, and this was the story current among the Jews. The concern of the Christian church has been too much with the body, stolen away privily, and too little with the living Christ, the spirit, which was not and could not be so treated, since he was free, and privileged to take a body as he should please, — a body which might be present to his im mediate followers, and be translated to spiritual essence on the hill of Ascension, and might at any time appear in vision before fine and simple souls to say to them, when faith should shrink, " I have ascended to my father and your father, to my God and your God." It was not necessary longer to live the life of earth ; had he done so, he would have been a noble force dissipated in unequal struggle with the conditions of alien men and low planes of life. Instead of such a failure, he rose above earth and became a transcendent and glorified ideal ; imagination wove around his risen form the trans figured splendours of the life he had lived among his fellows ; and the man of the people, born in poverty, reared in labour, who rebuked the proud A Far Easter in the Future 47 and exalted the humble, who arraigned the priests and their scheduled worship and asserted the per fect simplicity of approach to the divine Father, — he it was who gained and yet keeps the first place in the worship of the world. No prince like Sakya-Muni, no wild warrior-chief like Moham med, no cold philosopher like Confucius, — not to be compared with any other saviour of the earth, — this Jesus reigns because he was a man and loved his kind, — loved them without consideration of place or privilege, — his sole scorn and reproach for arrogance, oppression and hypocrisy — those vile sins which Jesus never condoned. The era of the people, of man in himself as the child of God, arose to light on that strange wild morning in Judea, when over the bare eastern hills rose the violet dawn, and the light thereof showed to the two Marys the angel in the sepul chre of Joseph. Was it for nothing in the fu ture of the life of man on this earth that Jesus was of the common ranks of life, that his chosen friends were of those who laboured for daily bread, that the gentle Mary of Bethany and the ardent Mary of Magdala were the first to see and speak with him in his risen appearance ? All these things were of infinite significance. From that day the people began to be the immediate and ultimate object of the world's progress ; and de- 48 Walks in New England spite feudalism, despotism, priestcraft and plutoc racy, it is the people who rose with Christ, and still are rising. The time shall come when there will be no more despoilment of man by his brother man ; when wealth as now conceived will have become a meaningless term ; when all things shall be done for the good of all and nothing for the good of one, — be that one king, emperor, priest, president or great capitalist. The time shall come, — and then warVillhave become a hideous legend of the past, and no more shall men destroy the lives and hopes and happiness of other peoples for a little trivial aggrandizement and the interest of a few ignorant and pitiable men misled by false ideas. This is the Easter of the future. But because of the life of Jesus, we may be confident that it is to come. Even as he said : " Because I live, ye shall live also." WHITE BIRCHES ON EASTER MORN " Where Nature Reigns " 49 Where Nature Reigns " EASTER was perfect. The sun was a true Easter sun, brilliant, yet softened in its heat by the light vapours which portended new storm ; the deep blue sky, with its mare's- tail clouds, was worthy altogether of Hamlet's appreciation : " This most excellent canopy, the air, look you ! this brave o'erhanging firmament, this majestical roof fretted with golden fire," — for such was the show of Sunday. It could not be surpassed if one had the pick of the year. And the tender, wooing, winning movement of the light breeze coaxed out more than the blossoms, and these and the grasses and clovers, feeling the invitation of the gentle rain, sprang with instant response. What a day it was for the red maples and the elms — the scarce slippery elm was in flower in a miraculous moment, — a richer, larger, sweeter flower than that of the white elm. The poplar's tassels swung free and scattered pollen, and the willow pussies burst from kittenhood into full bloom, and the bees took their first full taste D 50 IValks in New England of spring honey, their hum of wings heard a rod or two before one reached the bushes. On the way to the mountain one saw an ex traordinary apparition, — a little bevy of terns from the sea, dipping and swinging over the waters of the Connecticut. They are back to salt water before this, we hope, or some fool will be shooting them. Over the valley inside of Mount Tom, an eagle sailed, a noble wild crea ture, and with an air of majesty even beyond the osprey's, which is fine enough. Birds were on every hand ; the song-sparrow, singing on the fences, and in the hedge-rows that Nature fur nishes along even barbed-wire barriers, with that infinitely happy melody which he knows so well and varies so joyously ; the robin, with his clear, bold notes ; the bluebird, repeating his modest warble ; the chewink, the dashing flicker, the chickadee and phcebe, the grackle, besides the jays and crows, who are old winter familiars. Truly a rich body of Easter music, all of them praising God as he inspires them. Lesser crea tures, too ; for not only the bees, but flies of un known families, butterflies here and there making the scene more vivid with their wayward flights ; spiders all over the leaves, and ants rustling be neath them ; and the hylas in the pools fifing and flageoleting because life is too good to be silent. " Where Nature Reigns " 51 It is only the infinite that is silent, says a poet, it is the finite that must speak. But is not their speech that of the infinite, through its myriad tongues ? How otherwise reach our own dull finite senses ? Does it not teach us what has been so well said by William Mountford, — a religious soul that loved Nature and knew well her se crets : — " Nature about us is a companionship, which our souls feel, and were meant to feel, for there is to be caught from it a tone so peculiar as to be in tentional. Cheerful is what Nature would make us, — not merry, nor melancholy. Now it is in cheerfulness that our moral faculties are freest, — that we most readily trust, and are kind, and con trol ourselves. . . . And then, in itself, this earth is what we ought to die out of triumphantly. For in this world, has not God's presence been what rightly makes us long for a manifestation of of it, higher and still plainer ? " The flowers of Easter were for the most part of the trees and the shrubs ; yet there is an amaz ing forwardness in the saxifrages, whose little flower bunches so far swell out amid the pretty rosettes of foot leaves with their bronze and reddish hues, that another week will see them open. The arbutus is much slower to respond, and will wait awhile. But the wonderful discovery was of hun- 52 Walks in New England dreds of hepaticas in full beauty on a sunny hill side, with their miraculous blue, lavender, pink and milk-white, — every one a marvel of variable colour, pulsing with the very heart of earth, and the aspirant essence of the spring. Hepaticas like this on the joth of March, — who ever knew the like ! It is as much as one expects to see a solitary hepatica in the first fortnight of April. But everything is hastening to light this spring, — the birds are antedating their arrivals. Perhaps they are too daring, but until the frost comes, let us forget that such a thing can be, and delight in the sunny flavours of the woodland, the gracious sweetness of the flowers, the music of the birds and the busy murmur of the bees ; and as one drinks of the cold spring beneath the hemlocks, he partakes of the greatest blessing of Nature, the pure essence of her life, distilled through clouds and suns, and filtered through the chan nels of the holy earth, where as yet man has not arrived to delete and pollute with his many in ventions. All these wonderful things — the faint ruddy tinges of the red maples and the delicate yellow tints of the poplars on the great mountain side, beneath the many forest trees whose responses are yet invisible, the sweep of sunny atmosphere through the delectable valley, the delicious fra- " Where Nature Reigns " 53 grances of the fallen leaves of last year warmed by the first spring fervours, the charm of bird song and butterfly wavering, the blossoms that are seek ing the light from earth's warming bosom, — all these call us up higher. The birds will die, as human folk die ; the flowers in their present beauty will vanish ; but " what decays in flowers," says Mountford, " is not what you care for ; the beauty in them that you love never perishes, and every year it is fresh to look at. Oh, flowers are words about a life more spiritual than is plainly to be signified in this earth by things springing out of it. Sometimes, in looking at a flower, my mind is drawn into a mood that is like a firm persuasion of immortality, it is so largely thought ful and full of peace. Summer and winter, sun shine and darkness, rolling seas and high moun tains, — there is that in me that is like them all. If only flowers, or only trees, or only some one class of objects in Nature were beautiful to us, then their perishing might infect us with mortal fears. But now all things are made beautiful to us in their time, — all things of God's making are. And the feeling of this is fellow feeling with God." And in this mood of responsiveness to the divine life, expressing itself in these myriads of beautiful shapes and sounds and breaths, we know 54 IValks in New England that there is no death, but as Carl Spencer apostrophizes : — Thou angel of the other change unknown, With such vague terrors rife, Speak to us in thine own familiar tone, And we shall call thee Life. " When death takes those we love, then we love death." And it is for that reason we love it, or may love it, — that it is only change to new life. As Mountford writes : " The grace that rises from the earth in many a tree ; the fascination that eddies and murmurs in flowing water, keeps the gazer standing by the riverside ; the beauty that lives along the plain, and draws man's out stretched hands toward itself, as in recognition ; the loveliness that in a valley is around and over man, and embosomed in which he feels unearthly and sublimed ; the dear and fearful beauty of the lightning ; the wild grandeur of a September sun set ; — what is in them we shall all feel again, and drink in everlastingly. And it will be a dearer delight than now ; intenser and fuller. For then, O God ! we shall be in thee and of thee, and thou wilt be to us like an ocean of delight, our little spirits being bathed in thine infinite spirit." The Culminating Easier 55 The Culminating Easter IT was a wise, and in no respect accidental adaptation, that took into the young Chris tianity the ancient Teutonic festival of Spring, and named from the imagined goddess thereof the time wherein the rising of the Saviour from the tomb took place. It is so much easier for the human consciousness to apprehend the immortal life in the presence of those lovely analogies which the new springing life of earth multiply before the eyes of dwellers in those northern climes where Eostre's rites were celebrated, as those of Rhea and Persephone were in the Nature- worship of the Greeks. Nothing is more natural than to believe in perpetual life for the soul that can perceive this wonderful resemblance to itself. It is so plain that the forms alone die, but the life, depending not upon forms, but on essential principles, cannot die. And even that imperfec tion which gives to many a seed no fertility, that misfortune which blasts the new buds in their 56 Walks in New England sheaths and brings what we call death to the tree and the shrub, indicates but a conversion of life force into new modes of manifestation. Life ends not, but forever begins. And as it has been, so it shall be. The individual life, as it is a growth, may have its pause or its conclusion ; let the spirit see to it that, set free from whatever circumstances forbid or contract it, it shall have continuance in itself by virtue of that which in the sight of Jesus made man of a farther advance than the flowers of the field and the birds of the air, and yet of the same nature and under the same care. Not a sparrow falleth to the ground without your Father. It was not necessary to make a hypothetical emen dation here ; this does not mean that God had a purpose in the sparrow's fall, or that he decreed it, but that he must perforce be present in all the incident and result of life, — the Father is not outside, but within the phenomena we see ; he is all and in all. Jesus was a pantheist, as all high poetic natures have been, for he knew no place where God was not. But this is hidden to some by ecclesiasticism, to some by dogma, and the most religious may be deficient in this spiritual sense. For as Cowley wrote : — Only the spirit can the spirit own. The Culminating Easter 57 And to quote again from William Mount- ford :— "In God the fountains rise and the rivers run and the oceans ebb and flow ; and shall not my spirit continue to be a spirit in him ? But in death there is the loss of the body ; and in health, is there not a losing of the body and a regaining of other flesh every minute ? And then has a river the same water running in it any two hours together ? A fountain is a fountain, in God, for a hundred, a thousand, and many thousand years ; and I will not fear but my soul shall be a soul in him for ages of ages." In Mountford's beautiful book, which he called " Euthanasy," Aubin says : — " In the woods I seldom was long before I was possessed by a spirit, like what the Greeks imag ined was Pan. A fearful pleasure ! At first it seemed as though the low wind whispered me ; and then, as though it waited about me and curled about my face. If a branch waved, it was toward me, and if a leaf fluttered, so did my heart. Then I would sit down and wonder in awe and joy and tears. And the awe in my spirit would deepen, and the joy, too, and my tears would fall faster, till I felt as the child Samuel may have done in the temple, while waiting for the Lord to speak. And there was speech from God to me at those 58 Walks in New England times ; because from my feelings then I am now sure, even to myself, of the blessedness which is to be felt with God by the pure in heart." And this is no extravagance. Until the spirit ual resurrection comes to business, politics and the great affairs of the world, — until the convic tion of a spiritual life touches, informs and trans forms everything which humanity has to accom plish, the divine purpose waits, and with infinite patience, for that culminating Easter morning when the life of God shall possess man as it pos sesses the new springing earth, and Jesus, the first fruit, shall welcome his brothers and sisters to the fullness of life. April at IVork 59 April at Work CONVERSATION on the weather is one of the universal and continuous indul gences of humanity. There is no speech nor language where this talk is not heard — unless in places like the city of Mexico or the desert of Sahara, where they have only one kind of weather. In this country nothing but politics and religion can rival the weather as a subject, and it is a curi ous fact that the basis of talk about the weather is not the familiarity which characterizes the treat ment of politics, but rather a religious mystery. No sort of weather is accepted as natural, the very sort to be expected and just the thing that is wanted. It is always unusual, extraordinary, in comprehensible. Men " never saw such a steady pull of cold weather," or " such a fearful hot spell," or " such a dry time," or " so long a siege of rain," — and so on, — or " leastwise, not at this time of the year," or " not for ten years," or " not since the summer of 1811," or "1837," or some other remote date. 60 Walks in New England Yet the gospel of God in Nature is published abroad upon the mountain tops and down the valleys, so far as the sun has shone to unlock the voices of the waters and the birds, and to stir the pulses of growth in the earth. Many a long and dreary day of gray forbiddance we wait through, with rebellion and discouragement, while the rains prepare the ground and the north winds restrain the buds from premature ventures. This is the trial of our faith, which in the natural as the spirit ual life worketh patience, that after these may come experience and hope. The sequence is always the same, the experience that came in past years has no sort of effect in working patience in the present. Indeed in all things is it not so ? It is only by looking at the results of ages over the whole human race that we can discern strongly marked the value of experience : and that value, as Paul the tent-maker said, is to develop hope. Hope is the virtue and moral essence of spring time, wherein nothing is as we would have it, and yet to the observant eye the promises abound of all the comforts and recompenses of summer. For the hardier fern fronds begin to uncoil and the hepatica buds to prick through the mat of forest leaves ; pussy-willow is tossing yellow pollen on the air; the pale yellow butterflies, hatched from last year's chrysalids, flit around these cat- April at Work 61 kins ; the trailing arbutus is wooing all, — even those whom it would not wish to know ; the robins sing at morning and evening around our homes, and the song-sparrow in the fields ; all these and their like assuring us how Once again the Heavenly Power Makes all things new. There is no need of haste ; the season is before us, and all its appointed events have their proper and reasonable course ; were sunshine continuous and winds from the south each day, were there not these gloomy skies and bitter winds to retard, — then everything would rush to manifest life at once, and the uses of discipline and the allure ments of hope alike be lost to us. It is strange that we should complain of spring, seeing that in completeness is so great an element in all that is pleasant in life, and pursuit the charm of all am bition and endeavour. Who would have all at once the blessings he desires ? The zest of living would be lost if we had the purse of Fortunatus or the ring of Aladdin, and our only chance to recover it would be to lose the magic talisman. We might set forth at once on the quest for a new one ; but that would lead to new adventures, new experiences, and give something again to live for. If by some such magic power we could environ 62 IValks in New England ourselves with perpetual summer, skies always sweet and bloom ever fair, fruit beside blossom and trees never bare, birds that do not depart, and all unchanging luxury and unresting perfec tion, would it not grow tedious ? Could our New England virtues live where Droops the heavy blossomed bower, hangs the heavy- fruited tree, Summer isles of Eden lying in dark purple spheres of sea? April is a charming creature at times, full of coy and pretty caprices, but one does not get very intimate with her, there is commonly a distant chilliness in her smiles, and it takes a brave wooer to fall heartily in love with her. Yet the earth is waking up leisurely, day by day, as she traverses the old paths. We see the grass springing green and hear the robins and the bluebirds ; even a few fire-hang-birds are prospecting in couples ; the wild geese fly high northward ; the lilac bushes swell their leaf-buds, and alders and black birches are shaking pollen from their tassels. There is a treasure of charm in the sunny valleys that lie in the hearts of the hills, for although there is no richness of colour and scarcely a breath of fragrance in their spaces, there is an indefinable expectation in the air, and the eye, lacking the greater things April at Work 63 of interest, finds pleasure in the humble beginnings and hints, such as the incipient fronds of ferns in the clefts of the ledges, the herb-robert's delicate, reddish leaves, as beautiful as flowers, the first leaves of honest saxifrage or bold corydalis or gypsy columbine. Small things are as interesting as large ones, and mean as much in the everlasting mystery of creation and resurrection. The waters now dash in splendid cataracts down many a precipice of basaltic trap that will be only dry rock a month hence ; and one may lie on a sun-warmed rock, and watch the birds as they dart and drop and chatter, and call and fling out bursts of hopeful song, or see here and there tiny whirl winds lift a spiral twist of brown leaves far above the trees they fell from in the fall, and enjoy other privileges that the forest foliage will presently re strict. On the mountain's peak, one of these fresh spring mornings, the earth seems deliciously slumbrous, as if at the verge of awakening, but enjoying its morning naps, — turning itself therein, and saying like the sluggard in the Proverbs : " Yet a little sleep, a little slumber, a little folding of the hands to sleep." There lies to the southward a mist from the seething snows, clouding the hori zon ; and all around indeed this melting vapour rises ; yet Greylock seems so near as if one might 64 HSalks in New England put his hand on that white snow-cap ; Haystack looms blue further north, Monadnoc's grand dome shows its dark spruce belt, and gentle Wachusett rises blandly in the east. While one views the vast panorama of mountain and valley, the sense grows upon him of the perfect oneness of the whole scene, and of all scenes of Nature, as pass ing exhibitions of the constant life, which originates and informs them all. Here are we, midgets of a moment, which we call human life and mark out into hours and days and years, fretting over the vexing incidents of that moment. We are excited, eager, angry, emulating, envying, disappointed, despairing. And yet we know we shall presently be gone where all such emotions shall appear to us as the snow mists from the height ; and we shall wonder that we were moved by so slight considera tions. The Chain 65 THE CHAIN This is the chain that binds the world In endless sequence, life in life ; This coil, inextricably curled, Draws soul and sense to ceaseless strife ; These fatal links, untiring whirled, Enclose a penance without strife ; These golden gleaming bands unfurled Display a growth with canker rife; — What is this chain, this coil, these bands, And what the danger of their spell, The evil of their mystic grasp ? Let him then answer whose weak hands Their power in vain essayed to quell, In vain essayed to loose their clasp ! E 66 IValks in New England Opening April FAIRLY launched in April, the most hope ful, most capricious, dearest of the spring months, we are quarreling with the chilly winds of north and west, and wishing for summer. 'T is most unreasonable. Is there anything less satisfying than fulfilment, — anything more de licious than expectation ? Luxury comes with summer, but this tardy, hesitating, lingering spring possesses the finer charm of reticent retreat and delicate enticement. A little advance of green grass in sunny spots beside the hedge of the road sides ; a little freshening of the willow bark and the soft maples ; a brave and sudden disengage ment of the buttonwood's brown shell of out grown bark, revealing the clear, splendid gayety of its fresh garniture ; a deepening of tone all along the woodland, — the young growth first flinging its modified reds against the gray of win ter ; a new tint swelling in the swamps, where the Cassandra's young buds push out beneath the copper bronze of the winter-living leaves ; — these Opening April 67 and many more signs are saying that all is as it should be, — that " God's in his heaven, All's right with the world ! " But now we wait for April opening, such as its name invites. South winds must hurry to come, thrust back the western breezes and keep busy until they melt the snows of the mountains north and northwest ; for so long as those snows lie in the forest depths unyielding, so long the summer waits. Yet now the hepaticas are opening in the sunny dells of the woodland ; and now the birds are flying from southern climes and singing all about us. Hear the robins with their bold and heartsome warbles and calls ; hear the fleets of grackles, swinging through the groves and call ing their all-hails to the new earth ; the song- sparrows and their congeners ; the meadow larks, and the brown thrasher, flinging forth his vernal hymn at a fence corner, in so off-hand a way that one feels as if winter had been a mere dream. All the pulse of lasting life is in these beautiful rebirths, all the promise of immortality. Ay, truly, such manifestations are but the earnest of the vast splendours of realms and climes that lie beyond. Hear Vaughan's teaching : — 68 IValks in New England " Hark ! how the birds do sing And woods do ring ! All creatures have their joy, and man hath his ; Yet if we rightly measure Man's joy and pleasure Rather hereafter than in present is. " Not that he may not here Taste of the cheer ; But as birds drink, and straight lift up their head, — So must he sip and think Of better drink He may attain to after he is dead." Dead? It is but a euphemism, — a mode of speech, a concession to faithless humanity. There is no analogue for this word in what we see of Na ture's processes, and less than none in what the soul is self-convicted of. Why not such a thren ody as we may thus express ? — Man hath his travail here, And much that he must learn, But learning, lift his soul above his task ; For here 't is he shall earn Whatever from his Father he would ask For that continuing sphere. Why, then, sing as the birds ! Make so our transient nest, Rear broods and love them well, — then all resign ; WHERE BIRDS HAUNT THE SPRING Opening April 69 Above remains our rest, Thereto we tend, and when we 're there, we '11 shine Brighter than all our words. Yet think, the while we sing, To furnish holy food For those we leave when we adventuring go ; As Jesus on the rood Blest those who brought him there, — even so, We '11 love as we take wing. 70 Walks in New England Hepatica THE watchword of the day is Hepatica! or it is Arbutus, or it is Saxifrage, or possibly in some camps of Nature it may be Dirca ! Awhile ago it was Pussy- Willow ; pretty soon it will be Quaker Lady or Blue Violet. These are peaceful tokens of speech, and even the cruel lovers of beauty have them at their tongues' end. In the sweet new winds of the west — they are rare, this spring, but we have felt them — one should have only gracious thoughts to match such words. But Nature bars none, — her gates are always open, and it rests with the one who enters to be worthy or unworthy of her intimacy. On the conscience and the heart of the visitor it depends whether blessing or barren ness comes. One may rightly weigh for no little time the respective charms of the mayflower and the he- patica. What can be more delicious than the pink sweetness of the trailing arbutus, — that ex quisite bloom of mossy wildwood knolls, nestled Hepatica 7 1 beneath the shields of green leaves somewhat rusty from the winter weather, springing from furry stems that are so hardy in appearance, and so full of the character of the heath family to which this lovely flower belongs. This creeping vine may be aspiring to become a shrub, like its cousins, the white-belled cassandras and pink- belled andromedas of the swamps (which are even now vine-like), like the blueberries and the aza leas, — like the kalmias, those glorious bushes we call mountain laurel. All of these share the hard iness and the delicacy in one of the arbutus, and the kindred is not difficult to discern. If the ar butus has this longing, then as its sensitive flowers aspire to a more perfect state, — for they are now changing, botanists tell us, from self-fertilizing to insect-fertilizing, as the way of evolution is, — and its stem would fain lift into the air, it must more readily yield, as it does, to the onslaughts of spoilers, and so give up the struggle with intru sion. The very neighbourhood of our coarse civilization affronts it, and even were it not torn asunder by robbers wherever it is found, it would retreat and resign its place as houses get near. 'Tis the fragrance of the trailing arbutus which gives it precedence in the popular esteem ; and added to that, it will kindly blossom after pluck- 72 Walks in New England ing, because of the sustaining force of its woody stem. But the hepatica scarcely survives the plucking ; it wilts and dies as it departs from the earth. It is said that it has no fragrance, but this saying about flowers means only that our sense is not fine enough to apprehend the subtlety of their evanescent breath. Doubtless the hepatica has fragrance ; doubtless the common blue violet, and the branching white violet, and surely the branch ing yellow violet, as well as the dainty marsh white violet, have their fragrances. Only the last mentioned, the tiny blanda, with its violet streaks in white, is credited with the faintest of perfume. But there are those who, long loving flowers, find in them the properties that others miss, and will not allow that the deficiency in such as these is more than relative. Be that as it may, the hepatica needs no charms but those that are obvious to gain our love. And yet not all obvious. There is something more than meets the first glance in this modest, simple flower, espied in the midst of the dry brown leaves of the forest, where the fall ripening shook them from the boughs upon the warm slopes open to the south. Generally the old leaves of the year that went, encompass the crown of the new bloom, but sometimes the blossoms come in a pathetic loneliness. Always they wear the look of celes- Hepatica 73 tial visitants, entering the new world of the spring with a certain surprise. The hepatica is so beautiful that it transcends the sky and the earth, and brings heaven close. Look into the heart of the flower, and view its wondrous life ; most of all, that pulsating colour which lifts and dilates, and drops and lessens, from blue of the sapphire to soft purple of the amethyst, as if the sky itself were living in this tiny blossom. And if the bloom be white, then note how at the foot of the petals a slight golden glow appears, as if the sun had given it a special ray : — " Oh, the earth's unconscious bosom Such rare colour never knew ! " but the heavens have known it, and here are their translated undulations of light, fascinating our eyes and hearts in the life of a little flower where in the spirit moves with the same infinite power that is exercised as easily in the movement of the universes. The scene of the advent of this de lightful blossom is beautifully presented by Dora Read Goodale : — " All the woodlawn path is broken By warm tints along the way ; And the low and sunny slope Is alive with sudden hope, 74 Walks in New England When there comes the silent token Of an April day — Blue hepatica ! " While thus the summer forerunners appear, proclaiming the message of blossom and growth in the still open woodland and on sunny knolls, see also the willows in flower, the catkins grown dusty with pollen, — see the poplars shaking their tas sels, and the alders and birches and hazels. Now, too, the adder-tongue lily is showing its yellow bells at the edges of sunny woodland, and along the moist banks of meadows. The ferns are un coiling their fronds, the crosiers of the bishop's fern are lifting in benediction over those that shall follow. The leatherwood's golden tassels are lighting the woods with their echoed sunshine, and the buds of the spice bush and hobble-bush are betraying their intentions. A hundred shrubs are swelling their leaf buds and flower buds, and all things are telling of life. All the while, over these growths, the birds are warbling, and scold ing, and the sunshine and showers are making earth over. The sheaths of the elm buds are loosening and the elms grow gold-brown over head ; and what ! can it be that the ruddy sweet florets of red maple are opening? Even so, and beneath at the wood's edge the bloodroot's white calyx spreads purely like a dream of virtue un- Hepatica 75 flawed. All the sweet life of Nature is waking, and the promise of summer is here. Pray, we, that man may awake, too, and emulate such lives as these. 76 IValks in New England These Summer Visitations SUMMER makes hasty brief calls on spring, and not many of them, either, this year. She hurries in at the edge of a northeaster, says howdy, and is gone before we fairly recog nize her. But each time something happens to the face of Nature ; a new lot of flowers take ad vantage of the sunshine and smile at her invita tion ; a new flight of birds suddenly arrives, and at the same time the beetles and the worms and the caterpillars, getting about their own business, provide food for the songsters, thus getting trans lated into a higher order of being, which they could reach in no other way so quickly. This is one of the seasons Hosea Biglow speaks of: — " For half our May's so awfully like Mayn't 'Twould rile a Shaker, or an evrige saint." And yet who would have it otherwise, for the beauty of it ? — the very delays enhance its loveli ness. Things of desire attained are never so sweet in fulfilment ; and May is the charmer because These Summer Visitations 77 she evades us, and leaves us while giving her promise. Were man to manage the progress, we well know how he would do it; everything all at once would be perfect, and run on time, like a railroad. So should we lose this enticing delay, and the grace of surprise would be want ing — that grace which, turning the coign of a ledge, reveals the gay columbine dancing in the light airs : — " With a gypsy beauty free and fine." For now the columbine is happy in the sunny woodland, and its slender roots in the mere dry clefts of the rocks sustain a burden of beauty so rich that one marvels to see such results from a footing that seems so precarious. Just a few root-threads in a rift barely enough to contain them, and here is this wonderful flower, nodding, yellow and red, on its slight, sturdy stem, with its beautiful sunlighted leaves, so perfectly wrought to sustain it. Also the anemones are out in their benign modesty, the rue and the wood anemones, and the pretty star flower their kin. The hepat- ica's season has passed, — it also was once called anemone, and indeed one easily recognizes its kindred in the singular changeable beauty of the rue anemone's satiny petals, besprinkled with sil ver, surrounding its yellow anthered stamens 78 Walks in New England around its five pistils with their starry stigmas. But while the hepatica has gone on to fruit, its twin on wings, the hepatica butterfly, its very counterfeit in blue and lavender colours, still flits through the woodland ways, and seems to be searching for the flower it fellows. This miracu lous creature, the very psyche of the hepatica, still links May to April, and keeps alive the con tinuous sympathy of Nature. Now is the infinite delicacy of the spring merging into summer, and something is lost, day by day, of the subtleties of colour, which yet are magical enough, as the gray birches, the tas- seled poplars, the aspens, the pink or crim son oaks, the bronze tints of hickories and the pendulous sugar maple blooms emphasize the hillsides. Now, too, the sassafras is blossom ing in pale old gold, on the hillsides, and there is in the swamps all the bloom of the dainty cas- sandra, drooping its heathery bells over the edge of the waters. To view any scene in Nature now is to feel the beauty of that slow advance by which in our clime one season melts into another, and hard and fast lines are avoided. There are no such lines in all Nature. The edges of a flower and of a mountain alike indicate something beyond ; the sharp outline is only true of man's structures, and of these, if they get age These Summer Visitations 79 enough, it ceases to be true. Time makes a castle or abbey in England a piece of the land scape ; time more quickly adopts into its age the barns and houses of our countryside. All out lines close up and tone down and soften, till a stone wall or a rail fence becomes as much a part of the landscape as the original rocks or the trees from which the fence-rails were made. And the old houses, — when they were raised in the human pride of their possessors they were intrusive, no doubt ; but now they take their place with dignity as children by adoption. In this there is an analogue of the whole course of Nature; and rightly, for all things are in the scope of the infinite life which pervades all that man is or does, — all that this earth or the universes are and do, which " fills and bounds, connects and equals all." 8o IValks in New England MAY SONG Within her springy copses hid Wakes slowly the dear life of earth, Each blossom as it opes its lid Englories its enchanting birth, — Sweet is the bud, and rich amid The springing green the blossom's worth. The world smiles on the ardent day ; It is the open face of Spring, The faithful tenderness of May, That coaxes all the birds to sing. What gracious heart could fail to say Let all with earth's winged chorus sing ! The Marvelous Beauty of Spring 81 The Marvelous Beauty of the Spring THE singular character of the season has given to the landscape certain unwonted charms, which have been felt even by those unused to close observance of the ways of Nature. Everything has put on an original char acter, from the start out of winter until now that we are on the verge of summer, and yet we linger without remonstrance, for the earth is too beautiful to wish it otherwise. Flowers and leaves, grasses and sedges, the herbs, the shrubs, the vines, the trees, — and with them the birds and bees, butter flies and beetles, — all came swiftly in advance of their customary dates, and it seemed that the glory of the earth was about to rush in upon us like a flood. But then came the conservative delay. We had barely one or two summery days, just enough to give a fillip to the ambitions of the things that grow and bloom and fly and sing, and Nature has gone on in her gentle deliberation with merely warm days and constantly cool nights, and thus the exquisite delicacy of spring has been 82 IValks in New England prolonged, its ideal loveliness preserved, through weeks of unsurpassable beauty, as if to intensify all our love for the " soote season " that Surrey wrote of, and that is so often brief as " the posy of a ring." What these weeks of pause produce we may see now all around us in the woods and fields ; while yet on the higher hills summer is much farther off, and bloom and leafage not yet in large evidence. It is owing largely to the maples that the colours of the spring remain so charmingly fine. Without the maples our woodland and our meadows and pastures, not to speak of our roadsides, would lose much in both spring and fall. The maple is claimed by the Canadas, but New England surely shares their claim of this tree's noble and continu ous beauty. Matthew Arnold, when he visited this country, was more impressed with the great sugar maples before old places in the Berkshire towns than with the elms which are so commonly regarded as special New England glories. To his eye, the English elm was not the inferior of our white elm, but the English maple, he allowed, bore no comparison with these superb trees. He un fortunately never traveled among our hills with that freedom which alone can show truly the characteristics of country, or he would have found the red and white maples also important and ex- The Marvelous Beauty of Spring 83 ceeding. We must realize the exceptional beauty of this fine family, and there is no time better than now, when the early leafage is beginning to swell from its buds in very various tints of red, and the brilliant yellow or crimson keys are still, thanks to the delays of the chill winds, augmenting their splendour. The show of Nature in the woodland stretches around our outlying farm lands is one of ex traordinary beauty. Pause at the gray rail fence, and across a little tract of bushy marsh view the woods encompassing the prospect and hiding the horizon, lifting into the sky their myriad boughs and slender twigs, clad in the sweet grace of the young leaves, a miraculous symphony of colour, in tones refined to the ideal of harmonious rela tion. In their midst the light wind weaves its caresses, and they sway and swerve, not in dis turbance, but in response. The sun, partly veiled by the rising vapours of earth, fills all these moving tree-tops with a tender golden radiance, and when it touches a pine's dark masses among the maples and birches and poplars, it lights it suddenly with sparkling silver brilliance. It is the magic of infinite life that fills, that surcharges, the scene ; and Nature to our common eyes transfigures the woodland and the near swamp, and the lifting pasture-sidehill until they take on 84 Walks in New England a character not so much of earth and time as of God and eternity. This is but for a moment in the endless ages, it is a transient glimpse of the unbeginning and unending Spirit, which lives thus and moves thus, and so influences our souls, that are parts of his soul, that we feel our deri vation and know our destiny. Such as we may see betokens and assures what we are and shall be. The foreground of such a view is always as wonderful in beauty, though less impressive, lacking that transfiguration which the zephyrs, the sunlight and the splendid cloud-traversed blue sky lend to the larger and higher view. This foreground may be of a little marsh in which gray birches, poplars, a spruce or two, may add a touch of variety, but in which also the cinnamon ferns are swiftly unrolling their " fiddle- heads/' the skunk cabbage displays its tropical luxuriance of rich green leaves and the rhodora blooms in royal purple modesty among the tufts of strong marsh grasses. Then what should be said about the darlings of the spring, the bluets, the Quaker ladies, which now make edges of pastures, and often whole sidehills, milk-white with their infantile prettiness ? These little blossoms are individually charming, but they are only emphatic in communities, and they never The Marvelous Beauty of Spring 85 lack of adding an element of cheer to the season. Another foreground might be a pasture crowded with the " painted cup," or " Indian paint brush/' which now abounds in grounds a little moist, — as red as a cardinal's robe, but not at all a " cup," while very much recalling the look of a brush dipped into red paint, such as the Indians who once dwelt here were wont to use in adorning their countenances. It is an interesting reminis cence in history, — that old Yankee name. In the marshes, too, is now blooming the yellow lady's slipper, and the crimson moccasin flower in somewhat dryer grounds. Ferns of many species are now rolling out of their curls, which begin beneath the ground. In fine, there is an exhaustless variety of beauty in the woods and fields. Nor shall we wander over the realms of un- trammeled and unneighboured Nature without the inspiration and delight of the birds, most absolute of the gifts of heaven, who live in the air and on the earth alike, and in exuberance of love are now filling all the fields and roadsides with their song. One may see almost all the birds that come here to stay, and not a few of these who will shortly go northward. Orioles, both Baltimore and or chard ; so many sparrows and warblers and fly catchers ; the kingbird and the chimney swift, the 86 IValks in New England barn swallow and the meadow lark ; and not to mention our familiars, the robin, the bluebird and the rest, here is the brown thrasher, whom Yankee farmers have dubbed " the planting-bird," since he arrives at planting time and from the tops of tall trees directs the farmer how to do his work, with volubility and an extraordinary variety of songs, as many as the catbird has, or the mock ingbird himself. cc List the brown thrasher's vernal hymn " — one cannot do otherwise if he be within hearing distance. What endless delight in life, — what joy is life ! However much one may complain of lesser matters, the breath of flying winds on the rocks is enough to make one forget all else. There all the earth seems a mere accident, and one breathes the universal communion. Things as they are in the valleys, where men mould and mismanage them, are forgotten, and for the moment one feels the divine wholeness, the inspiration of God which makes existence bearable, in hope, almost in view, of the infinite liberation. Then one feels that while there are constant and inexorable duties in the vale, and reason enough to fulfil those duties and against escaping from them, — yet there is a refuge which is sure to come, — a freedom which is instinct and char tered in the soul, which may be earned by that The Marvelous Beauty of Spring 87 lower discipline, and can only be forfeited by re bellion against it. This is the lesson of the robins, the grackles and the orioles. Why should we not all learn it? 88 Walks in New England In Mid-May THE swift advances of the summer are depriving us of the tender, delicate, gra cious qualities of the spring. Too sud denly, if not too soon, the full greens of the sum mer are beginning to shade our streets, and those tentative tints of the trees are overtaken and over borne by the full chlorophyll rushing from the earth and drinking in the vapours of the sky. Earth is in haste to be ready for June. The ap ple trees are blossoming, — it is the apple year ; the pears are coming out, the cherries of cultiva tion are going by, but the wild cherries are all in great beauty; the shadblow has shed its light some petals, and now the lilacs are full of fra grance and charm. And a little way out of the city, where the forest remnants exist, where the snow lingered longer and the frosts were slower in loosing hold, the red and sugar maples are now in beautiful bloom, the poplars in their several fellowships are harmonizing the woodland, and the great family of the oaks are adding richer In Mid-May 89 colours of exceeding tenderness. The oaks, with their long patience and prospect, are in no hurry about leafing, as the shorter-lived deciduans are. The scrub oak is now one of the most attractive ornaments of the plain lands, and one resents the name, for while the husbandman may find this oak a scrub, it should be called rather the shrub, or the bush oak, for such is its manner of growth. It is delightful to find a member of the majestic family of the oaks condescending to lesser stature and common fellowship with the wayside willows, the hazels, the alders and the sumachs. In truth, it is only our false notions of importance which make such distinctions ; in Nature all are of equal character and rank. The season of appearance which we call spring has been so cautious, considerate and dilatory that still there lingers on shaded slopes beneath the pines the arbutus ; still the hepatica — flower of April — is in bloom in the woodland; and the skunk cabbage, though now swelling those great green leaves which give it its proper name, has not yet done with the hooded blossoms of the earliest spring. Now are the anemones in bloom, and the first of our lilies, the adder-tongue, is making splendid many a knoll in pasture and meadow. This is one of the flowers that gets civilized out of our parks, as the skunk cabbage 90 IValks in New England does, and as the arbutus does, and indeed almost every wild flower, by the constant meddling of the park improvers. There is no flower more lovely and more delightful than the erythronium — this adder-tongue lily — but it must be let alone. Now the cassandra and the andromeda are bloom ing in the swamps, and all around their borders the magical rosy purple rhodora is aflame, and in the edges of damp woods the gold-thread sends up from its beautiful green vine that runs under ground its bright starry blossoms. The wake- robin and the painted trillium, its fellow, are now opening in the woods ; — the lovely corydalis is in bloom on the mountain, its favourite home the seams in the venerable ledges where the ages have lodged bits of soil ; there is budding the strange and forbidding flowerage of the poison ivy ; and the bright yellow rocket and pretty zizia, the ear liest of the parsleys, are in that stage. Note, too, the strong growth of the plants that are to bear those sturdy democracies, the asters and golden- rods, every apparent flower really a community of equals, and many hundreds of such communi ties gregarious in the fields and by the roadsides, making confederacies of beauty in their later days, when all the delicate graces which live so briefly now are without evidence, and hundreds of others, the riper riches of the summer, have bloomed In Mid- May 91 and are gone. Then comes the season of these honest, social families. The loveliness of spring is that which most surely appeals to all. It is release from captivity, it is rising from death, it is promise and expect ancy, it is hope, immortally beauteous and pre cious, the star of the future dawn gleaming against the blackness of the cloudy past. So for ages since man first rhymed the poets have declared, saying for the rest of us what we cannot so well say for ourselves. But there is also something pathetic and even melancholy in spring, since after all, these charming and cheering tokens are of the moment, and the season's secret burden is evanescence. " Sweet day, so cool, so calm, so bright, Bridal of earth and sky, The dews shall weep thy fall to-night, For thou must die." " Like to the grass that's newly sprung, Or like a tale that's new begun, Or like the bird that's here to-day, Or like the pearled dew of May. Or like an hour, or like a span, Or like the singing of a swan, — E'en such is man, who lives by breath, Is here, now there, in life and death, — The grass it withers, the tale is ended, The bird is flown, the dew's ascended, 92 Walks in New England The hour is short, the span is long, The swan's near death — Man's life is done." More native to spring are these broodings on the brevity of earth than even to autumn, if one considers closely. For much of this sweet prom ise can have no fulfilment ; whereas as the fall draws on apace, and the harvests are made, the fruits brought in, we witness the accomplished re sults of the energy of Nature and the labour of man ; it is achieved, the year's growth and service, and the sustenance of all things and creatures from least to highest won once more from the earth. It is one mood of man to doubt most when most is promised, to question most when most is asserted, to apprehend storm when skies are fair est, and ruin when omens favour. ' Tis this mood, as often as the mood of defeat and discourage ment, which rebukes the aspiring spirit and re duces it to the weary level of the common ground. So in times when out of the winter little by little the sun lifts over the line, and the drifts that cover the highways, — and send travelers out into the fields over rocks and stumps and fences in order to get along at all, — begin to shrink and lay bare the true roads and expose the nature of the make shifts, — then the worry and work are the hardest, and the change is the slowest to come. Yet it always comes. Ah Still Delay /" 93 " A h Still Delay ! Thou Art So Fair ! " THERE is an especial interest in the tardiness of summer, when Nature seems so reluctant to change, so fondly linger ing in the pleasant purlieus of spring. It is as if Nature were feeling that final mood of Faust, when he should say to the passing moment, " Ah still delay ! thou art so fair ! " Often in our clime that mood possesses Nature in the days of ripening forests, when the achievement has de clared itself, when fervour and passion are over, and the reward of repose is sweet. But the de lays of spring are apt to be sour, savage and menacing, — not as now, cool but cheerful and even brilliant, with the beauty of the earth un folding steadily, tenderly, with infinite delight, — the very temperance of luxury. Who has looked upon the wonderful variance, harmonies, gradations of the foliage over streets and roads and mountains, in valleys and beside rivers, — the magic of the increasing and deepen ing shadows of the trees, — the outspringing of 94 IValks in New England the hidden flowers from forest leaves, on pasture hillsides, in green meadows, in dipping swales, in tangled swamps, — who has watched the birds come, creating and enticing beauty as they bring their warbles and songs to join earth and sky in equal praise, — who has noted each new butterfly, and the coming of the dragon flies from the pools, and the burly welcome of the bumble-bee, the piping of the hyla and the chirp of frogs, — who, in fine, has followed the cautious steps of sum mer in the escort of spring, without repeating, over and over, day and day, " Ah still delay ! thou art so fair ! " And yet — what such a one suffers in the ravage of the axe in the forest ! — never more rude and savage than now. The destruction wrought by man is melancholy in a degree to the lover of Nature, even where there is use to follow, but how much more when the mere wantonness of ignorance sweeps away beauty and glory, and there is nothing to make amends. We have in mind a glen on the south side of a mountain. A year ago it was a scene of fairy witchery ; the brook flowing through a bit of rich alluvium, be sprent with adder-tongue lily, trillium, hepatica, anemone, the little early buttercup, and the lovely spot begirt all around with the spice-bush, then in full sweet yellow bloom. It was a place of in- IN THE MIDST OF THE WOODS "Ah Still Delay /" 95 describable beauty ; which robbed the owner of nothing, and gave the visitor who had eyes to see and a soul to enjoy immeasurable pleasure. Why, when the unworthy owner wished to cut the tim ber and cord wood from around this glen, should he not have left the spice-bushes ? They were worth nothing to him ; but a few ignorant chop pers — no more ignorant than he — leveled them, and the lover of beauty cursed him and pitied him at once. It is man, in his partial development, his half-civilization, that knows not how to enjoy his earth, and so destroys it. The Nature-school of the age that began with Wordsworth and continued through Bryant and Thoreau and is so well known in Burroughs and many another — " all can raise the flower now, for all have got the seed," — that it is which has opened the wonder of the manifestation of life in tree and flower and the glory of the scenic beauty of earth to all, without giving them the radical secret of respect. There is no time of the year more marvelous than this border region of the seasons. It cannot but awaken a fresh sense of the miraculous life of earth, even though it be very imperfectly appre hended. When Wordsworth wrote his well- known lines in " Peter Bell " : — 96 Walks in New England " A primrose by a river's brim A yellow primrose was to him, And it was nothing more, — " and further, — " The soft blue sky did never melt Into his heart ; he never felt The witchery of the soft blue sky, — " he appealed to so few that these and like lines were among those which received the most con temptuous mockery of the wits and scholars of the time. They could not possibly understand what the man was driving at. But now there are very few who fail to see what Wordsworth meant, for the spiritual conception of the universe has stolen into the sense of all thinkers or been thrust there by the very remarkable advances of science. That way all the researches of physics and biology tend, and so at last the Wordsworth idea has become a part of thought, and the love of Nature as the very life of the divine spirit is no longer a matter for mockery. Whether in the flower of the field or the star in the sky, God dwells ; and no life can be dissevered from that all-pervading and all-en compassing spirit. Fragrance and Melody 97 Fragrance and Melody EARTH is never more beautiful than when hasty summer riotously rushes upon us, and all the fields and woods are captivated by that only too generous largess of the sun — the air, the bloom, the fragrance, the wings, the songs, the greening and growth, — the ineffable hurry of life that cannot wait, but in ardent desire races through hope and promise and pledge in all its myriad forms to the fruit and fulfilment, the crown and achievement, of the swift season between winter and spring. " Do the duty nearest thee " is a watchword of creation, no more for man alone than for all that we call animal or vegetable or mineral. It is to mistake gravely to assume that humanity alone fails to observe this law because of misleading and perversion. For every blos som or bird there are a multitude that lapse and fail. Life abounds, but lives are lost, in every grade of Nature's work. Unceasing is the in finite Spirit, renewing, developing, ending but to begin again, and in the midst of this swift and a 98 IValks in New England shining season the thrill of that endless vitality stirs the most sluggish pulse. The air is full summer, and the sweet oppres sion of the breeze, shot through by the rising sun, opens the day with myriad perfumes. There is not a flower or fern or unfolding leaf of the woods that does not contribute to the fragrance of the hour. The sweet briar wafts its wild tenderness over the multitude of lesser scents, and a spicy odour from the tasseling black birch follows swift behind. Another touch, and the sweet fern's pervasive scent steals to the nostrils. A little tang of bitterness swings in from the poplar and the tonic willow, and more spice from the sassafras. But while one detects such individual fragrances, be sure that something in the air is due to blos soming hickory and elm and red maple, and the oaks, too, just opening, have their honey, which wild bees love, and many another insect. Then deeper, stronger, more constant than all, wherever they grow, the pines and hemlocks, the cedars and firs and spruces, swell the rich gift of the breeze. And their balsam heightens as the fervour of the day draws on, and the magnetic sun pierces their tossing depths, and the conifers yield of their secret, treasured essences, and thrill the sense beyond all that the rest can do. The flowers that spring and bloom and fade so quickly, THE SAUNTERER'S MOUNTAIN HOME Fragrance and Melody 99 the trees that greet the new season with leafage and grow into hospitable shade, — these are transi tory, but the pines and hemlocks endure and bear from year to year, in all seasons, the promise of eternity. They are commercially nothing but cord wood, or a little timber, but to the lover of Nature they embody the will of everlasting life. To lie upon the side of a wooded ravine, at the edge of the forest, and behold the great trees sway ing and tossing in the warm breeze, bending far east and revolting far west, as each passing gust passes by ; to breathe these odours, and to mark the sunshine swell down the long aisles of the woods or repose in the opening of the field ; to follow the hawk's sailing flight above all the woods and despite the wind ; to watch the labouring crows and hear their social and sagacious conversation ; to hear the curious cry of the scarlet tanager, or the slight, solemn warble of the wood thrush, or the rich and insistent note of the Baltimore oriole, — so noble a note, with its melancholy tone ; — to do this, is to raise the question whether any heaven that can be imagined could be more beautiful than earth. But in truth, the answer is ready enough. In the life beyond, as in this, the soul will seek and find its own. If there are not the particular beauties and charms and associations which have made this life precious and desirable, ioo IValks in New England there will be such others as will meet the demand of each soul in its earthly tabernacle. As our senses delight in these fragrances and songs, and in the wonderful skies, the flowing rivers, the sweet springs and the great oceans that we know, so something that corresponds to all these will greet our greater life. With this also comes the assurance that our human loves, our intimate at tachments, will live, — for all souls seek their or dained fellowships, and souls are not, like trees and flowers, bounded by the limits of those things which are but shows and types, and not immortal in essence, as themselves. Now every day hastens some new beauty and grace into light and air. How rapidly they fol low, — there was first the rare yellow violet of the cold brookside, then the common blue violet, — no lovelier flower grows, — and now the yellow wood violet, the lavish white branching violet of the deep woods, the tender sky-blue violet of the forest borders, are out, and the larkspur-leaved violet, with its intense blue, is almost ready to ap pear. The lovely dicentra now peeps from amid its exquisitely cut leaves, the first corydalis blooms on the mountain rocks, the mitre-wort and its cousin Nancy-over-the-ground are in evidence, and the early meadow rue is lifting its misty head. Buttercups and daisy fleabanes are rushing into AT THE ALTAR OF THE HEMLOCK Fragrance and Melody i o i view, in the company of the grass flowers to which they are entitled. Every day some new fern uncurls, and this delightful woodland race, with its many families, makes the forests a constant surprise. Some on the sternest heights, where water is scarce, exploit their graceful beauty, as if, said Thoreau, Nature designed in them to show how wonderful a mere leaf might be; some in the darkest marshes, some on the sunny hills, — everywhere lavish in varied grace and elegance, the finest bred of all vegetable races. Such are the gifts of Nature in this wondrous season. Who does not receive and love them is the poorer for his failure. They are an ines timable part of the training of the soul, — the essential, the only, purpose and meaning of the life of earth. IO2 Walks in New England An Over- Ardent June ON this occasion, much as June is loved, there is a general feeling that she came in with too much of a bounce. What we have largely loved in June has been the shy, sweet, elusive way with which she slips in, so that she usually has been around, coaxing the roses gently, and suggesting buds to the red clover, and so on, until the conviction of her presence steals upon our senses with subtle sweetness as the perfume of the syringas, the wild cherries and the grapes follow on the vanishing lilacs and the azaleas. But she arrived in a hustling fash ion, this year, taking hold as if she were emulous of July, infuriating the thermometer, and making us want to take off our flesh and sit in our bones, as Sydney Smith said. For the first time in a generation, we desired a little more coolness in June's advances. She was too forward, too for cible. Her Amazonian caresses took our breath away, — who wants to make love in such a fever and fret ? In fact, if June would give us the cold An Over- Ardent June 103 shoulder for a bit, we said, we should be relieved. And straightway she gave us just that. Still, let us reflect, when the heated term as saults us, that some odd hundreds of thousands of years ago, where we now broil, the ice-cap rested a mile deep over Massachusetts — which had not yet been thought of and did not know it. It was even deeper than it is now over Green land. That was a climate to talk of in these days. How comfortable it must have been ! — about 250 degrees or less cooler than Sunday's sunshine and 200 degrees cooler than its shade. It is still cool near the Arctic circle. And the Antarctic con tinent is an even grander refrigerator. Butter would never melt there, nor meats spoil ; and there could be no call for ice-cream, soda water or palm-leaf fans. The interesting narrative of Arthur Gordon Pym, as reported by Mr. Poe, is good reading for such a term as the recent. So is Dr. Kane's romantic chronicle of his explora tions, and the history of the Jeannette, not to mention the tales of the various searches for Sir John Franklin's party and the Peary relief ex peditions. It is cool, too, on Kunchin-Jinga, on Popocatepetl and on Cotopaxi. But the snow is not clean on Cotopaxi, — the volcanic dust is too abundant. It is also cold on the moon, but there is no atmosphere at all there, it is said, and even IO4 Walks in New England a little hot June atmosphere is better than none at all, that is, better for a race used to breathing through lungs. Then we might read Kipling, and thank heaven we are not in India. When one fancies himself in that printing office where Kipling met the Man who would be King, or sits with him and the Soldiers Three while Mulvaney, hero that he is, tells tales all night long to keep his comrade from sheer insanity, one feels that there are worse places than New England in a hot June. Or if one likes a change, let him march awhile in the African forest with Stanley, and presently fancy himself going mad as Barttelot did. Or the Death Valley of Arizona is worth contemplating, or Fort Yuma — on leaving which for the infernal regions they say one wants to carry a double out fit of winter clothing. It is all a matter of com parison. When one gets used to it, a temperature in the hundreds is not bad — not positively bad, though it may be superlatively so. On the whole, it has been very pleasant weather. Things grow, though thoughts dwindle, in the presence of heat. It has been delightful to watch the leaves swelling and the full garniture of the trees developing in the sumptuous warmth. The woods are rich in colour and fragrance. Sit for a moment on a broad ledge and gaze down the or r*e UNIVERSITY of THE VIEW THROUGH THE GORGE An Over- Ardent June 105 valleys into the shimmering heat, and the scent of a late azalea draws you to a thicket where it mod estly blossoms, caring not that it is unseen ; or the merest waft of fragrance, like the exhaling spirit of bloom, tells you that there are moccasin-flowers somewhere hidden in the hollow. Then, too, on those ledges, in the fullest glare of the fierce sun light, nods and trembles the graceful corydalis, and the brave mountain fern, the woodsia, springs in cheerful tufts in crevices of the rock, green enough now, but in later summer as dry as the rock itself. Over and over the white clouds float, and from peak to peak and tree to tree in the forest the birds fly, — catbirds and thrushes and finches, now and then a tanager, and many warblers, — and the whole natural earth breathes a symphony of con tent. Not yet the springs have dried from the mountain tops, and one who knows their ways can drop half a hundred feet, or may be a full hundred, to a pool of refreshing water, or to where a rivulet issues beneath the broken rocks, still feeding the mountain growths. The squirrels are full of life, and when one misses their calls and their sharp casual chatter, he can always hear the evidences of humble life in the beetles and ants that roam be neath the leaves and rustle them to dispel the ab solute solitude. These do not mind the heat, and io6 IValks in New England always through the forest roads and openings the breeze strays, cooling itself from the outside heat in the healthful quiet of their depths. If man wearies of the conditions he makes, let him spend an hour or so where Nature continually works to repair his ravages, and harmonize his emotions with the constant charm of her un spoiled beauty. Birds, Insects, Man and Woman 107 Birds, Insects, Man and Woman THE blossoms and leaves of summer are rapidly filling the air with perfume and the day with shade. Over our New England hills and valleys, by the farm-houses and in the villages, the lilacs have crowded close after the cherries, peaches and pears ; they have had their , day of bloom and are setting their fruit. The apples also are gone by, after welcoming the orioles and the robins ; the orioles no more dash sportively amid the orchard masses of blossom, but are already constructing their nests on the pendent boughs of the elms. It is a day of birds, the song sparrows by the roadside and the vesper sparrows by the brooksides, the red-wings in the marshy sedges, the bobolinks in the meadows, and over all the crows, with their wise commentary on our inferior and wicked contrivances which they behold in the fields, ready against the coming of the corn. The night-jar swings over our streets and over farmers' fields with equal vigilance, screaming as it flies, after moths and chafers — for io8 Walks in New England the chafers are now heard buzzing amid the bushes and banging against the panes, — June- bugs, or May-bees — as we call them when they come ahead of time. The gardener unearths every day these curious blundering beetles, whose grubs he will be killing later. The insect hordes are early to arrive and late to depart, — in fact, they are always with us, and it is amazing what a number of them live on the herbage and the sylvan foliage. In the state of Nature all these inchoate races of minor life are kept in subjection by the birds, but since of late years the birds have been slaugh tered by wholesale to make women's hats hideous, the balance is lost, and hence we have plagues of elm beetles, cottony louses, and gypsy and brown- tailed moths. Thousands of varieties of insects have found their proper food on trees from time immemorial, and might continue to do so without reminding us of the plagues of Egypt, were it not for the women who want birds and feathers of birds on their hats. If the wearers of these slaughtered creatures of God, more beautiful and more useful than themselves, could only see how they look to a lover of Nature, or a mere en lightened farmer and fruit raiser, they would surely discard their egrets, their bird-of- Paradise plumes, their wings, and the whole birds so hideously adorn- Birds, Insects, Man and Woman 109 ing their comely heads, and never wear another. Why do they proclaim themselves murderers ? As we listen to the delicious glee of the bobo link over the meadows, to the swift, bright cry of the meadow lark, or the tender sibilation of the red-winged blackbird in the swales, it seems im possible that human beings can possibly think of killing these lovely creatures, or of being accom plices after the fact in their slaughter. The other day, the sun shining ardently over the fields and forests, and drawing delicate veils of moisture from the brooks and swamps, one listening to these wild and gracious utterances of the sole and infinite Spirit could only conceive of the world of Nature as one of harmony. The several grades of life are interdependent and the less developed nurture the higher perpetually. As for man, only he introduces a breach in the order of being, and destroys tree and flower and bird without respect to their offices, despoiling himself the worst of all. And when he is told this and it is proved to him, the moment's greed makes him shut his mind and dismiss considera tion of the subject. Still his ignorant woodchop- pers fell the forest, " clearing " the land, destroy ing the saplings as remorselessly as they cut the trees of timber or of cord wood, and ravaging the whole forest by fire. Still his railroads rush 1 10 IValks in New England through the land, sending out their sparks to set fires that burn over in an hour 25 or 30 acres of young forest and rob him of all their promise. What has man been given reason for ? Appar ently to make a dollar to-day, forgetting that generations are to come after him to whom his dollar will be valueless because long since ex pended, and whom his destruction of the very sources of life has left poor indeed. No, man does not use his reason, with even his self-interest, except for the bare moment. Obloquy has set tled over more than one generation in the history of man for the cause which was expressed in the phrase of the Bourbon society of France before its great Revolution — " After us, the deluge." There is too much of this in even our civilization, though the motto is not avowed. What the earth is to render, what society is to become, when we are gone, — these things are not sufficiently re garded by the present generation. Let us try to escape from these difficult and dispiriting thoughts. Let us leave the city, in these opening days of summer, forget its paved streets and its clouds of black smoke clogging the free air of God, and visit those precincts where yet Nature reigns. It is long ere we reach those unpolluted places. But once among the undis puted tracts, where streets are not yet laid out, Birds, Insects, Man and Woman 1 1 1 there is revival of native and intimate sympathies. The great oaks, so noble a feature of our sur rounding country, are past their period of blos soming, and no longer delight earth with those exquisite variations of colour in the young foliage of these monarchs of the forest, so great a matter of wonder, showing us how consistent is strength with beauty. 'Tis no slight matter that a rugged, robust oak should blossom in graceful tasseling and leaf in exceeding delicacy of pink and buff and cream tints, making the woodland a parterre of rare and fine harmonies, with the maples be hind in their clear, translucent greens, and the somber pines, just lightened by the new bright growth, like thrusts of kindling sunshine. Now beneath these shades the solemn quietude of an infinite, primitive, remote age is gathering, — an age when man was not, and when forests rose in majesty and lived their long lives, and the aged fell and their physical decay nourished their suc cessors. That far gone time renews itself to one who enters these sacred precincts in sympathy with Nature. Here yet the sense of essential life resides, and temporary and conditional living recedes. The spirit of the universe does not desert the forest shades. The ceaseless hurry of our semi-civilization is left behind, and the health ful recovery of repose succeeds. 1 1 2 IValks in New England If that repose may end in what is called death, who quarrels with that in the forest? It is as fruitful and more peaceful than what is called life. After this life has been lived, and we have done what it was allotted us to do, the dismissal is even joyous. In the midst of the odorous cedars and hackmatacks, with many a blossoming shrub around, and the red sweet waters noiselessly mov ing into and from the deep, dark pond, — as the sun sinks behind the forest, and its depths grow dusky, and warm fragrances steal from the flowers whose faces hold the vanishing light though all the bushes are vague, — as the wild, strange waves of delicate colour rise in the sky above the depart ing sun, and the thrush, deep in the wood, sends forth its sweet and thrilling vesper, like the notes of a group of rich organ-pipes springing forth out of the harmonious chords of the great instrument of Nature in its noble largo appassionato, — at such an hour the thought which Whitman has so nobly expressed in President Lincoln's burial hymn may well come to mind. Whitman was no shy recluse of Nature, no wanderer of woods and fields — he was a vivid, robust, hearty adorer of human life in every shape, — there was no limit to his sympathy and fellow ship in all that men do. But it was reserved for such a man as this to express more poignantly Birds, Insects, Man and Woman 1 13 than any man besides the profound and serious sweetness of the teachings of such an hour and scene — embodying all the infinite lesson of our departure : — " Now, while I sat in the day and looked forth, In the close of the day with its light and the fields of spring, and the farmers preparing their crops, In the large unconscious scenery of my land, with its lakes and forests, In the heavenly aerial beauty, after the perturbed winds and storms, Under the arching heavens of the afternoon swift pass ing, and the voices of children and women, The many moving sea-tides, and I saw the ships how they sailed, And the summer approaching with richness, and the fields all busy with labour, And the infinite separate houses, how they all went on, each with its meals and minutia of daily usages, And the streets, how their throbbings throbbed, and the cities pent, — lo, then and there, Falling upon them all and among them all, enveloping me with the rest, Appeared the cloud, appeared the long, black trail, And I knew death, its thought, and the sacred knowledge of death. Then with the knowledge of death as walking one side of me, H 1 1 4 IValks in New England And the thought of death close-walking the other side of me, And I in the middle as with companions, and as holding the hands of companions, I fled forth to the hiding receiving night that talks not, Down to the shores of the water, the path by the swamp in the dimness, To the solemn shadowy cedars and ghostly pines so still. And the singer so shy to the rest received me The gray-brown bird I know received us comrades three, And he sang the carol of death, and a verse for him I love. From deep secluded recesses, From the fragrant cedars and the ghostly pines so still, Came the carol of the bird : Come, lovely and soothing death, Undulate round the world, serenely arriving, In the day, in the night, to all, to each, Sooner or later, delicate death. Praised be the fathomless universe For life and joy and for objects and knowledge curious, And for love, sweet love, — but praise ! praise ! praise ! For the sure-enwinding of cool-enfolding death. Dark mother always gliding near with soft feet, Have none chanted for thee a chant of fullest welcome ? Then I chant it for thee, I glorify thee above all, I bring thee a song that when thou must indeed come, come unfalteringly. Birds, Insects, Man and Woman 1 15 Approach, strong deliveress, When it is so, when thou hast taken them, I joyously sing the dead, Lost in the loving floating ocean of thee, Laved in the flood of thy bliss, O death. From me to thee glad serenades, Dances for thee I propose, saluting thee, adornments and feastings for thee, And the sights of the open landscape and the high-spread sky are fitting, And life and the fields, and the huge and thoughtful night. The night in silence under many a star, The ocean shore and the husky whispering wave whose voice I know, And the soul turning to thee, O vast and well-veiled death, And the body gratefully nestling close to thee. Over the tree-tops I float thee a song, Over the rising and sinking waves, over the myriad fields and the prairies wide, Over the dense-packed cities and all the teeming wharves and ways, I float this carol with joy, with joy to thee, O death." It is not sacrilege to take these wonderful na tive rhythms from their setting, for whether a great or a lesser one depart, the office of separa- 1 1 6 IValks in New England tion is the same. It liberates while it terminates for every child of earth, and one who has not felt this encompassment in the midst of the glo rious charm of Nature has not sounded the depths of his spiritual possession. Nature s Independence Day 1 1 7 Nature s Independence Day THE day was as it should be — intense. Patriotic ardour had an unequal match with the solar, and the spots on the horoscope of the country were less conspicuous than those on the face of the sun. Why should we be asked to worry over petty villainies and wrongs, within so small and transitory a sphere of days, when a storm 50,000 miles across, — larger than two earths stretched out flat the longest way round, — is careering over the vast orb that makes our life and our country's possible ? We are but a speck upon a little ball, in one of the least among myriads of universes, — and why fret on a day that in itself forbids such a temper, and would have us indolent and content? As the Swan of Usk wrote to his friend : — " Why should we Vex at the land's ridiculous miserie ? " Let us go rest and breathe slow, and dream, where trees bend over shady waters that cool the 1 1 8 IValks in New England hot winds. For indeed in this very stress and splendour of summer even the light zephyrs are distempered, their wings as it were shriveled, and their lips fevered as they kiss our brows. Only where water is do they revive their sweetness and comfort, and in the deep hearts of pines and hem locks, where they roam like bees in clover, these hot hours, stirring the balsamic odours which the sun coaxes forth, and bestowing them on weary men and women. The holiday is one of Nature's own adoption ; therefore let us withdraw into her generous society, and be at ease. The country is to be served any day and all days, and for the sanity that brings her good service there is no food better than the forest shades afford. Seen from the coverts the very fervours of the sun bestow their aid. Look out upon the fields that faint in the keen rays, and over the meadows of drooping clover, to where — " Far in the fierce sunshine tower the hills." Then the wind comes, tossing the trees, bend ing the grasses, and the clouds swiftly sweep up the sky, dark and threatening. Suddenly an om inous silence falls, — the rush of winds upgath- ered breaks forth upon the heat and scatters all the warm fragrance of the day; man and all creatures haste to shelter; the birds with quick FERNS AND SARSAPARILLAS out u over Then the ing the i dark and th lence t forth u] ranee and hyrs are , and Only 3 and •"ipm- Nature s Independence Day 1 1 9 cries fly to inner haunts they wot of; the trees writhe ; the mighty beast rolls from the thunder cloud that blackens and blots out the sultry sky, and with its swift and yearning rains makes the cool odours of the refreshed earth " forth from far recesses fern scents rush." And with such gracious legacies departs the heated day in the imposing grandeur of the storm. 1 20 Walks in New England Looking Unto the Hills THE earth in our latitude is now at the height of vigorous life. Now is all growth thrifty and spirited ; in the hot days which wilt down poor humanity the great forest trees luxuriate, and show such shining glory of foliage as brings close to the lover of Nature the delight of all this proud vegetation, — the joy of the maples, the elms, the oaks, the beeches, the birches, — the sempiternal pines and hemlocks in the July sun. What luxury is ex pressed in the imperial chestnut, blossoming on all the hills and asserting its lordship over thou sands of acres of woodland ! In the city there are also the European lindens in honeyed bloom, and the catalpas, kcelreuterias, and honeysuckles. It is a season emphatic in its wealth of life. The flowering of the fields and the thickets is less in number and variety than in the spring, but it is gorgeous in colour. The predominance of yellow has begun, and the black-eyed Susans produce concrete sunshine over meadows and pastures. Looking Unto the Hills 1 2 1 The ox-eye daisies company these closely ; amid the tall grasses bloom the gay nodding lilies of orange, and the upright red lilies at the edge of the copse fill the eye with noble flame. The first goldenrods are out, and all the loosestrife family, even to the steironema ; the Canada thistle, as sweet and pretty as if every farmer did not detest it, — the pretty but even more greedy shrubby cinquefoil, and the mulleins are in evidence. But not the yellows alone, — that other hue of the later days is beginning to show itself, — the purple scale of colour, descending from the linaria to the lobelia, in advance of the thistles and vervains, and with the asters and ironweed in prospect ; while yet the daintiest of all the composite, the daisy fleabanes, are profuse in bloom. Every where in forest shades and pasture hillsides, the multitudinous ferns are fruiting in their lavish frondage. All trees and shrubs, in this early sum mer climax, fill the prospect with a sense of high rejoicing in vital warmth and stored moisture. This pervasive and potent sense of life in all the earth takes possession of the senses as one wanders through the wildwood pleasaunces, or re clines upon the breezy mountain-top, content to rest in the embracement of the divine Spirit that utters by its lightest breath all these wondrous and lovely phenomena. Only to look upon the 122 IValks in New England tossing woods in a summer breeze, only to feel the life of the air as it passes, is to be filled with a sacred possession of endless power and grace. So moved the Spirit upon the face of the waters when the firmament was formed above the fogs of the inchoate earth ; so moved that Spirit when the angel was set at the gates of Paradise to forbid forever the access of the sons of Adam. But now we do not care for any Paradise where life was not conditioned by work, — we have a higher world, in which work is the requisite of rest and reward. Let us be thankful that this is so, and that never more may sluggards claim what they have not rightly earned. For what can all the glory of the earth mean to those who have done nothing to justify even their existence among sentient living things ? Nothing is more true than the dictum of the old Scripture : " He that will not work, neither shall he eat." And this is not meant for physical food alone ; but as well for spiritual food, which can not be gained by spiritual indolence, that waits to be fed. Those who desert duty and court pleas ure forfeit all that pertains to the soul, for that requires vast nourishment, which must come from the roots of practical human life, through which the spirit's atmosphere is generated. And it is in the free realm of air, in the wide fields, on the bare Looking Unto the Hills 1 23 rocks that top the hills, beneath the shades of the forest, that these truths are strongly felt. Where fore, as the fervent waves of July beat upon the tired nerves, let us remember the cry of the He brew poet : " I will look unto the hills, whence cometh my help." 1 24 Walks in New England THE BIRDS IN THE THICKETS What voices are these in the thickets ? Why, unless my old eyes are garblers, — Come here, my boy, and look quick ! — it's Touch and go with the warblers, — There — there — there ! on a score or so of the boughlets, Flitting while you are looking, see their sides of red chestnut Gleam for a moment, and now they are still as the owlets Up in the hollowed maple — Speak now ? well, I guess not ! They know their time to talk, and it's not while we're near them, — Unless we grow still and fine, and grow part of their quiet. Well have they reason to hush and hide, and to fear men, Well have they cause every one of our race to shy at, — We that slay their bright kindred to adorn the bonnets of woman, — We that kill them to eat, as does the childish Italian, — How should the dear birds know that any one that is human Differs at all from the tramp or the tatterdemalion ? Clad are they all much alike, methinks, to the bird's eye ; Judged by the bird's keen optics and keener acoustics Enemies must we appear, nor caught is the heard sigh, The Birds in the Thickets 1 25 For that is conveyed away by the devil-on-two-sticks, — He who can show us all up, — the spirit Asmodeus, — He of all others the coldest, unkindest diviner, — Making oneself to oneself at every turn most odious, And without modulation transposing our confident major to minor. Ah yes ! ye birds that flit in the shadowy hemlocks, Ye mountain sparrows, ye chickadees, buntings and jun- cos, Trust us not. Time was that the gemboks, Unsuspecting their imminent need was to shun foes, Came to the call of the hunter, rested their chins on his shoulder, Followed him close as o'er the South African wilds he wandered, Trusted him, till at last, grown meaner, not bolder, The man turned and slew the poor fools, — basely squandered Their fond, silly faith, and their innocent friendship. Trust us not, — why trust me ? Hast not seen such an other Steal carefully on, and rest, — so ! Let the end skip, — I might be that man, — I am that man's brother. Ay, dear little birds in the fir trees, Be shy of me too, though I love ye ; Prudently, cautiously skirt these Thickets that border in birches The forests in summer that grove ye ; Come not too nigh, lest a savage Spring from my silent devotion, 1 26 IValks in New England And, like my kind, I make ravage Of what I love best. That's our notion : If we love, we destroy ; 'tis the record of history. Destroy and despoil and lay desolate, Thus hath man done. O dread Mystery ! Thou whose intent we all guess so late, Thou whose gray hell we all tessellate With the blessings we would give, but cannot, Art thou coldly the high heavens mounting ? Is't even, who ran and who ran not ? Has not character, too, an accounting ? The Spirit speaks — the God's astir, — The speech is brief and strong : " Leave to the lower gods that were Their rustic crowd so long. Leave to old Pan his worshiper Who knows not of thy wrong ; Leave to the maple and the fir The rapture of their song. I breathe through their delicious throats The sacred joy of life ; 'Tis I that utter in their notes That melody arife With beauty of the seven spheres That reach to Paradise, — That melody which he who hears Joins to the singing skies ; And he on very wings of birds In transport of the soul May rise to me, and, lacking words, Know he hath said the whole ! " July Days 127 July Days NATURE holds her most royal state in this month of glowing heat. We yield too thoughtlessly to the fine tyranny of Lowell's muse, glorifying June with so intimate eulogy as the absolute " high tide of the year." June is indeed beautiful, sweet and gracious, and none denies her charm, or disputes that Then, if ever, come perfect days ; Then heaven tries the earth if it be in tune And over it softly her warm ear lays. Whether we look, or whether we listen, We hear life murmur and see it glisten. But now there is no need to try if earth be in tune, for her stately rhythm is perfected, its harmonies written in, and the great symphony fills every sense with the rich burden of its adagio. The height and rest of summer are not found in the day of cherry and horse-chestnut blossoms ; it is in July, when the sun is fervid and strong and the winds both cordial and vigorous, that Nature re- 128 Walks in New England poses in her splendid wealth. There is now a complete sense of comfort and joy in power, and nourishment of beauty, and liberal welcome, such as no other season equals. The meadows or the hills whose daisied grasses or tall grains roll their waves of light and shade before the hurrying winds ; the deep, cool shaded woods where the ferns spread their profuse fronds ; the prodigal roses and the linden-bloom loved of bees, even the mere city's shaded streets and shaven lawns, utter the same thought of endless resource and liberal bestowal. The advance of a perfect July day is like noth ing else so nearly as a musical work by a fine ar tist, — a Mendelssohn concerto, or a Mozart sonata, for instance. There begins to steal upon the lesser stars a dimness, yet it is still the starry night that fills the vault immense ; then a pearly gray grows at the edge of the east, and the robins, earliest of birds, begin to call in sharp, quick notes; the gray grows whiter, and delicate sea-shell tints in imperceptible gradations rise in the sky ; a faint streak of cloud absorbs them, and then suddenly lights into flame ; the birds are all awake now, and full of twittering talk, with little music in the trees, though the wood-birds have yet their songs to sing ; the sun is near ; his ruddy disk cuts the bright horizon line, and in an instant springs ra- July Days 1 29 diantly forth, " rejoicing as a strong man to run a race;" dawn is lost in day. For hours yet there are dewy grasses to sparkle with hues of the rainbow ; the maples keep the sweet morning breeze in their leafy harbours ; the hearts of the roses are cool, and the bees are in the poppies and petunias, and busy at the clover, before the fervours of the noon have come, and the earth is lapt in light. Then a myriad insects are leaping and darting, humming and shrilling their strident happiness ; the click-clack of the mower and the tedder sounds over the fields, and the new-mown hay crowds the air with warm high fragrance ; the earth is the captive of the sun, and David's words are in our ears, when he says : " His going forth is from the end of the heaven and his circuit unto the end of it ; and there is nothing hid from the heat thereof." Yet there is health in the heat ; the air is clear and sweet and full of life, and when the evening returns with dewy coolness, the lone evening star is revealed golden and tender above the vanished sun ; the afterglow mounts high in its white, celestial bene diction, and as all trace of day departs, " stars arise, and the night is holy." i 130 Walks in N^ England The Electric Storm YET upon the hush of the elements breaks in the electric storm. There are more terrible manifestations of the elemental forces, as when a tornado sweeps across the land, or a tidal wave engulfs a city, or an earthquake or volcanic eruption destroys the habitations of men and the supposed stability of mountains, or a typhoon sweeps across the ocean and tosses a great ship with its human freight as a bubble. These are more terrible, because so escapeless. But the emotion of awe is swallowed up in terror, and with it, if any other feeling arise, it is that of revolt and anger, that man should so be taken advantage of, helpless and resourceless as he must be in the concourse and conspiracy of elements. To awaken in its sublime reach the grand spirit ual feeling truly known as awe, that small impulse of pygmy resentment must be stilled, must be absent, — nothing must remain except what the prophet felt when on the mount before the Lord he heard and beheld him pass by, — " a still, small The Electric Storm 131 voice," after the mountains had been rent and the rocks broken in pieces, and the pause had come. There was the moment of awe, when all the weight of the world fell on the prophet's shoul ders, and the God spake to him, in the unearthly silence that ensued. Nothing else that we experience in the yearly course is so wonderful and inexplicable as the thunderstorm, — as it is still called, by metonymy, placing the effect for the cause. The splendour of such a storm from the coign of a commanding hill, looking over miles of mountains and valleys, is something inexpressible in language. To view it aright, and know its magnificence, one must see it through, from its long upgathering over roods and square miles of territory, with its brood ing echoes of thunder from flashes that are mere streaks of gentle light ; to the moment when the fringes of the shower descend and the flashes grow brighter, and the response is swifter ; to the cru cial, living instant when crashes all the air, and every hill echoes back, so soon after the flash that no common watch can register the elapsing fragment of a second. Here, when heaven and earth seem to clash in one tremendous utterance of unity, is the splendid thrill of the electric storm. Attuned to this infinitely glorious music, what, 132 Walks in New England for the moment, seem all the inventions of men ? But this is not a permanent thought — in another moment the great separation is plain, and there is not a true comparison between man and the immenser elements. To say this is not to say anything of the exceeding brilliant beauty of the electric discharges as they chart themselves on the clouds in their immediate descent or assent or in terchange, — so incessant, sometimes, that all the heavens seem ablaze with wandering currents, making crosses and curves and circles, and mighty zigzags, with colours of violet and red, gold and fire yellow, and multitudinous other tints, or hues, across and within the deep-bosomed blue-gray clouds. It is in vain to picture the scene. Few ever remain out of cover beneath the skies to wit ness it. These storms are the crowning glories of July, — the visible and audible presence of God as he walks in his garden of the universe. A Seasonable Divagation 133 A Seasonable Divagation IN the bright blazing heat of July, this penulti mate year of the century, it is more than ever an escape that one makes when he leaves the city for mountain, lake or seashore. There is more to escape from than for a whole generation past. Thrust aside the city, forget the telegraph and the newspaper ; under God's free sky, breathing vital air, in touch with the wholesome earth, come into community with the original state of man, amid the healing ele ments that have not heard of war or known of greed. Be there balsam or brine in the air that we seek, it refreshes the jaded nerves of the denizen of cities, worn upon by contact with his kind until life itself is ajar with noise and noisomeness, and has become indeed like " a tale told by an idiot, full of sound and fury, signifying nothing." The old earth receives her children with the same uncaring aspect ; emotionless it accepts our love ; without passion it responds to our fever ; we 134 Walks in New England grow calm and sane. Over all this wide " gannet's bath " ply the winds of the east, as before man set foot on the wild shores of America ; over the great sweeping hills rush the western winds with the tang of the north filling them now and again, as when no man had sought a northwest passage for commerce or thought to discover the north pole. These at least are yet untouched by the transient race of man. And what wonderful gifts are these the winds bring over the salt foam and the great wilder nesses, — gifts of new living force and fresh de light, which sooth our frayed and fretted sensa tions, and bring to us healing and heartsome purpose. They are indeed no less than the voice of God walking in the garden in the cool of the day. ' Tis all the cool of the day for the spirit that formed this scene of earth, and is not bound by our petty limitations. We measure everything by our own small yardstick — we time what is done by our yo-year clocks, and remember not what Jesus said to us all, as he looked forth over the hills of Judea, and noted the lilies and the birds, and rebukingly said : " Shall he not much more clothe you, O ye of little faith?" And we know that we shall yet be clothed upon in the home that is to come in beauty equal to that of the earth which is our present habitation. A Seasonable Divagation 135 The summer splendour and enchantment is at its fill of perfection. The hayfield fragrance is subtly interwoven with the currents of air, and the sun draws forth as well the balsamic odours of the pines and hemlocks and spruces. He who dwells in a mountain region where such trees grow is more richly furnished with the breath of health than any other. The yellow pines that abound on the plain are a great constituent of our health, and so fast as they are destroyed by the invasion of the houses, the atmosphere deteriorates. They cannot combat the soft coal smoke which hangs over all the valley. But this is the way of the world ; the opportunity of money-getting fouls all the air of the valleys, and to the hills or the shore one must fly to escape this pollution. Faugh ! Let us get out of it for a moment and make for the mountains — " whence cometh my help," said David the psalmist. There is nothing more wonderful for us than the hill country westward, where as yet only farmers live and where still a few villages with their home industries exist, if they do not flourish. If things were healthy, these industries should be prosperous, and the whole country round about would be happier, — as it was a generation ago. It was a most attractive sight, one of the little old-time villages, set in a valley still high in the 136 IValks in New England hills, where a shop, making churns, or drums, or tool-handles, or cheese-boxes, or axes, or cloth, or yarn, centered the activities of a community to which the surrounding farmers contributed their custom and whence they shipped their prod uce. Those which still exist are not what they were, yet they still add to the pleasure of a country life. The mail comes in twice a day in the sum mer, once a day in the winter ; there is enough to draw thither the farmers to swap stories at the village store ; and such a village is one of the centers of the world. For the newspaper comes there, and all of the people get the news, although not all of them buy the newspapers. But why do we linger in the world in this way ? It is now as it was when Wordsworth wrote : — " The world is too much with us : late and soon, Getting and spending, we lay waste our powers ; Little we see in Nature that is ours ; We have given our hearts away, a sordid boon ! The sea that bares her bosom to the moon, The winds that will be howling at all hours, And are up-gathered now, like sleeping flowers, For this, for everything, we are out of tune ; It moves us not. Great God ! I'd rather be A pagan, suckled in a creed outworn, So might I, standing on this pleasant lea, A Seasonable Divagation 137 Have glimpses that would make me less forlorn ; Have sight of Proteus rising from the sea, Or hear old Triton blow his wreathed horn." The world is too much with us — yea, indeed. Oh, to meet face to face with Freedom on the heights, where she dwells, free-eyed, full-bosomed, forthright and faithful ! What is all the mischief of men when one stands on a mountain summit, and surveys vast billows of hills swelling around him, north, south, east and west ; and descries the Catskills and Greylock, Haystack, Monadnoc, and even little Mount Tom, through the defile of the Westfield river, and the Dome of the Taconics, with multitudes of hills unnamed and unknown, but forest-clad and glorious in green, with chestnuts blossoming, oaks glistening, birches shining, hemlocks, pines, spruces and balsams darkling, and hackmatacks gayly dancing ! Here in truth one feels free of human ills, for here is that immitigable spirit, the freedom of God's life, filling all the air. There is then, we find, something stronger, more masterly, more beautiful, more encom passing, more enduring, more holy and purifying, than all that we children of Adam have done. It was done before one of our race had been born out of the slow evolved forms of life, before right and wrong had become differentiated with the 138 IValks in New England growth of conscience in the latest of evolutions. God here reigns in an earlier expression, and teaches his latest born children that they have multitudinous steps yet to take to reach his reign of calm and power, in which he reposes, and gives us so the opportunity to repose in faith and hope. The Height of Summer 139 The Height of Summer NOW summer is at her midmost fervour and splendour. For a moment she pauses in the glory of full foliage, the ripening of grasses and grains, the drifting fragrances of first harvests and the firs whose resinous sap is drained by the ardent sun and richly distilled within the air, — she pauses and contemplates what she has done. Over the hills sweep her wild western breezes and the forests murmur gratefully ; in the valley brood her heats, and her dews rise and the thrushes sing and there is peace ; on the plains the rye nods and the corn-blades wave and the cattle lie beneath the trees at the pasture edge in the noontide, and are content. All the earth has changed since summer came. No faint scents of tiny violets or brave arbutus are hers ; after the lilacs and thesyringas followed the roses, and all the air was full of their sumptuous fragrance ; then the grapes joined their wine. All the sweetness of the azalea and the clethra is forgotten now, and even the roses are a memory, save where in the secluded 140 IValks in New England swamps Rosa Carolina brightens the whole circuit of the cedars and hackmatacks. The fragrances of the hills and vales are those of the elderblow and the honeysuckles. Clovers are no longer sending their honeyed perfume over many an acre ; their time is past, and the mowings only offer the nostrils the pleasant wholesome scent of hay, with now and then a delicious intensity where the sweet grass has been cut with the rest. Haying is the business of the farmer, and the weather has been kind to him. It is true that the great New England crop brings lower prices than might be wished, but if its exchange value is less, its use value is as great as ever, — it will raise the farmer's beef, it will give the farmer's milk, and butter and cheese will be produced as richly as if the crop as it's mowed were worth $20 a ton. And to us who look at the earth as a place of beauty this is merely a side issue. There is a rich profusion of wayside bloom now, and it is noteworthy that on every hand the tone that marks the turn of the year toward the fall is prevalent in field lilies and rudbeckia, and the first golden-rod of July is beginning to prophecy that combination of the golden-rods and asters which are in fact the flowers of fall. Meantime there are scores of lesser flowers that lighten the way side. The cleavers are sending up their clamber- BLACKBERRYING The Height of Summer 141 ing stems, that clutch by the fine little spines un der their leaves and pointing down along their stems, and so climb up in the midst of other plants, and fairly " cleave " their way to sunlight. Some of these cleavers are lovely in their delicate pale flowering, as well as attractive in the starry arrangement of their leaves. The rich crimson flowers of the thimble-berry or Scotch-cap abound in the mountain thickets. The bittersweet is in blossom, and in the woods the two twin flowers, Linnaea and Mitchella, and the creeping snow- berry in dark recesses. Also many an orchid is out, and Venus's looking-glass is seen, — so ex travagantly misnamed. Of course the hearty yarrow is busy on the roadsides and in the yards, and the ground-nut's pink blossoms are swinging from the shrubs they climb over. The Indian- pipe is lifting its curious flower, a piece of sculp ture that perishes, but as well worth the artist's use as the acanthus. Thus Nature is full of joy in these days of heat — good days, wherein life is embodied and pursued with constant energy. Now when summer reigns so royally, the mountains and the seaside are rivals in their at tractions. The winds that sweep the mountain tops are not like those that come up from the sea, bringing the strengthening breath of the brine, the breath that has blown over the waves of the 142 Walks in New England globe, and has in it Cathay and Ceylon and Araby the Blest and so many other realms of tradition and poesy. For though we know all the regions of the earth and their peoples, and there are no secrets hidden from us of a sophisticated genera tion, to whom all things have become common, yet there lingers in the salt air a fascination that knowledge and reason does not destroy, and that adds to its physical impact an element that be longs to past romance. Past in certain phases, but living in other lines ; for the ocean is always the home of infinite power ; swept over though it is by thousands of the petty craft of men, it is still untamed and strange, and its tragedies are numerous enough and better known than they were of old. On some cliff above the broad Atlantic, with nothing between one and the shores of Spain, there still comes to the ear the mystic song of the sailor that Count Arnaldos heard, and asked in vain to be taught : — " In each sail that skims the horizon, In each landward blowing breeze, I behold the stately galley, Hear those mournful melodies, Till my soul is full of longing For the secret of the sea." Yet Thoreau thought the secret of the sea was better caught on land : — The Height of Summer 143 u The middle sea contains no crimson dulse, Its deeper waves cast up no pearls to view, But on the shore my hand is on its pulse, And I converse with many a shipwrecked crew." In these days, when everybody makes the ocean voyage, the truth ought to be known. The Spanish ballad says that the sailor answered to Count Arnaldos : — " Only those who brave its dangers Comprehend its mystery." And perhaps the reason why the hills are more dear to so many who love Nature is that their mystery, as profound as that of the sea, is more near and more free of apprehension. Not that Nature is ever truly in sympathy with man's moods, but that we are in her very bosom, sensi bly nurtured by her abundant life and intimate with her very heart-beats. She is not sympathetic with man, but man may glide into her great flood and current of divine power, and feel himself borne on in endless vigour to a broader and most wondrous order of development, where all that is beautiful here will have a transcendent renewal and spiritual exaltation. 144 Walks in New England In the Dog-Days : 1 898 THE dog-days have been so long with us, — beginning at a most unconscionably early date, before Sirius was in the as cendant — that recognition of their presence seems belated. It would seem that in sympathy with our soldiers in the tropics, we had taken on some of the aspects of the rainy season of those lati tudes, and were enabled thereby to share, even if in a very small degree, the discomforts and dis couragements of their climatic differences. But as soon as we speak the words, the foolish notion vanishes, the slender resemblance disappears. It is a wetter season than usual; we have malaria fever, the humidity clogs our veins and our di gestions, but we are not having our physical vi tality lowered to the point where collapse follows and the rest of life threatens to be a struggle with a broken constitution. That is the prospect be fore our soldiers, and the thought of it makes us feel as if mere enjoyment of active labour here were something of an affront to the men whose LtllLlloLu. ' i ntain peaks ; - .ngland