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WHERE TOWN
COUNTRY MEET

Sy

JAMES BUCKHAM

CINCINNATI: JENNINGS AND PYE
NEW YORK: EATON AND MAINS

COPYRIGHT, 1903, BY
JENNINGS AND PYE

MOST of the following sketches appeared
originally in Zioris Herald, of Boston, to
whose editor, Dr. Charles Parkhurst, I wish
to gratefully acknowledge my indebtedness
for encouragement and assistance in the
preparation and publication of this volume.
Thanks are also due to the following period
icals for the privilege of reprinting my work
from their columns : the New York Evening
Post, the Boston Transcript, the Sunday-
School Times, and Forest and Stream.

JAMES BUCKHAM.
, MASS., March 4, 1903.

CONTENTS

PAGE

INDIAN SPRING, . 7

ON THE EDGE OF SPRING, - - - - 16

AN EARLY SPRING WALK, - - - - 23

THE WAKING OF THE FISHES, - - - - 31

IN ANGLING TIME, 39

SOME HERMITS OF THE MARSH, 46

PILGRIMS OF THE NIGHT, 55

OPENING CAMP, 62

BIRDS FROM A SUBURBAN WINDOW, - - 69

BIRD-SONGS INTERPRETED, - - - - 78

THE Music OF BROOKS, 85

A CUP IN .THE HILLS, 91

IN THE HEART OF THE PINES, - - - 99

MIDSUMMER NIGHT SOUNDS, - ... 108

COUNTRY ROADS IN AUGUST, - - - - 116

A DOORSTEP SINGER, 124

5

Contents

PAGE

ALONG THE LILY-PADS, - - - - - 130

SEPTEMBER TRAMPS, 137

THE PATH TO JOE'S POND, - - - 145

A QUEST OF FALL BERRIES, - - - - 152

THE AUTUMN WOOD-PATH, - - - - 162

UP STERLING, - 170

GETTING READY FOR WINTER, - - - 180

BEYOND THE SNOW-PATH, 186

THE RECORD OF THE SNOW, - - - 195

A DAY ON THE CRUST, 204

ON A Fox TRAIL, 212

WINTER WOODSMEN AROUND BOSTON, - - 220

A PNEUMATIC CALENDAR, .... 228

WEATHER COMPETITIONS, .... 236

WHERE TOWN AND
COUNTRY MEET

INDIAN SPRING

SOMETIMES in January, oftener toward
the close of February, there comes to our
winter-bound Northern States a day or two,
perhaps a week, of balmy, springlike
weather, that uncovers the brown earth and
sets the streams a-brawling, and makes one
think that verily old winter's fetters have
been broken. The sun has such a genial,
steady warmth, and the south or southwest
breeze is so soft and caressing and assuring,
that even some premature vegetation starts
up in the sheltered ditches and under the
swampy lee of the woods, unfolding its
tender, vivid green in a few hours, only to

7

Where Town and Country Meet

be smitten by returning cold erelong, and
stretched withering on the frost-hardened
soil.

Were it not for the absence of the wiser
birds, and the unnatural silence of the sunny
air, one might readily mistake this brief In
dian spring for the first week in April ; but,
except for the short, sharp cries or chirps
of the few birds that winter with us, the
feathered world is unresponsive to all this
unseasonable warmth and balminess. There
is no sudden northward migration, no sound
by night from the pilgrims of the air. This
is the surest sign to the rambler that spring
is still a long way off, and he need cherish
no romantic hopes of a season two months
in advance of the calendar. Nevertheless,
no true lover of nature can remain indoors
during Indian spring. He has an irresist
ible longing to go forth and get, at least,
a foretaste, a suggestion, of the April that
is to be. There is actually a spicy pleasure
in cheating himself by appearances, while
all the time shrewdly reserving the knowl
edge that the semblance is not real. It is
much the same kind of pleasure that a
dreamer might have in his dream, were his
8

Indian Spring

subconsciousness strong enough to per
ceive that his adventures were phantasmal
and transitory, and need cause him no anxi
ety or moral distress. Indeed, the impres
sion of tramping through April scenes in
February is distinctly dreamlike, and for
that very reason enchanting. I love to
spend whole days in this deceptive sun
shine, with that ever-present, ghostly con
sciousness of being translated beyond actual
place and time — of being, in fact, a partly-
awake somnambulist in the night of the
year. It gives me a certain shuddering
delight to stand doubtingly in April sun
shine, walled about on every side by cliffs
of winter, like Rasselas in his idyllic val
ley. For to-day, at least, I will live and
think as if spring had actually come — only
the charm of it will be the more delicate
and exciting, because I know (behind my
fancying) that winter has just slipped out
for a moment, and will presently darken the
door and take possession of the house again.
Last year (1899), in Massachusetts at
least, we had our Indian spring in the
middle of January. That week of mild,
sunny weather, beginning with the I5th,

9

Where Town and Country Meet

is still gratefully fresh in the minds of
many of us, no doubt — particularly the
golfers, who were out in force, like re
prieved prisoners, tramping the snowless
turf of the links. On the I7th, with the
thermometer in the 5o's, I took a long walk,
out through Wollaston, toward the Milton
Hills. The warmth of the sun and the soft
ness of the air were simply delicious, and I
could not help pitying all those who were
shut up, on so fine a day, in offices, stores,
and factories.

On the edge of the swamp lying just
west of Wollaston Heights, I startled a
small flock of blue jays, three or four, that
went screaming away into the depths of
the woods. Unless disturbed, the bluejay
is usually silent at this season of the year,
his loud, metallic cry being seldom heard
later than the 1st of December. The flicker,
however, whose voice I presently heard
from a distant pine-tree, is a spring prophet,
and in pleasant weather may be heard blow
ing his bugle over the winter woods, like
a clarion call to the sun. His note at this
season is single, strong, and resonant, with
a reedy quality, something like the tone of
10

Indian Spring

the clarinet. This bird is noticeably shyer
in winter than at any other season, and will
fly long before you can get near him, utter
ing, as he undulates over the woods or fields,
the same strident note that first announced
his presence.

After walking about a mile, I came to a
warm, southward-facing bank, where the
roots of a pine-tree were thrusting up above
the brown earth, like withered limbs that
had thrown off the bedclothing. Glad of
a chance to rest, I sat down on one of the
knees of the old tree, and gratefully in
haled the aromatic, resinous odor that filled
the air. This pine smell is the most dis
tinctive and appealing of wood odors. It
lingers longest in the memory, and is re
vived with the keenest and most affecting
pleasure. How strongly the resinous fra
grance pours forth on a day like this, when
the sun opens wide the pores of the lusty
tree! Roots, trunk, and foliage all exhale
the wholesome odor, and it streams away
on the air, greeting your quickened sense
afar off. Nothing like a whiff of pines to
call up out-door memories! It is the most
distinctive aroma of the woods, a divine
ii

Where Town and Country Meet

exhalation penetrating through the senses
to the inmost soul.

A little distance from where I sat rest
ing on the root of the pine, was a tumble
down, tangled barbed-wire fence, over
grown by the long vines of the trailing
green brier. The strands of wire and the
brier vines were almost indistinguishable,
and it suddenly occurred to me that here
was an instance of the natural association
of type and prototype. Approaching closer,
I was struck by the remarkable resemblance
between the vines and the wire. The latter
was just about the same size as the former,
and bore its clusters of radiating barbs at
precisely the same intervals as the thorns
of the vines. The barbs and the thorns
were arranged similarly, in bunches of three
or four, bristling opposite ways, and of
about the same size, though nature's barbs
were the neater and finer and sharper-
pointed. Surely, I thought, man must have
got his notion of the barbed-wire fence from
nature, and he has followed his model so
closely that, if nature were allowed patents,
the infringement would be ground for legal
action.

12

Indian Spring

Beyond the golf links, on a hillside where
scattered birches and scrub pines were
growing, I came upon a stunted wild apple-
tree, the ground under which was thickly
strewn with frozen and thawed apples. Im
mediately there occurred to me Thoreau's
enthusiastic praise of the spicy cider of
thawed wild apples. Gathering my hands
full of the russet fruit, I sat down upon a
rock to taste this primitive nectar (as Tho-
reau recommends) "in the wind." It was
indeed delicious — not so tart and bitter as
the juice of the wild apple in its sound state,
but distinctly sweetened and ameliorated by
the frost; a kind of spicy wild wine, inno
cent as water, refreshing to the palate, and
wholesome and medicinal to the entire body.
I gathered more and more of the wild
apples, and sucked their cool nectar until my
thirst was slaked. It was a real discovery,
this new winter drink, and I would heartily
pass on Thoreau's recommendation of it to
other ramblers.

I ate my noonday lunch by a spring in
the Blue Hills Reservation, and then kept
on across that vast park toward the Ob
servatory, standing up like a huge excres-

Where Town and Country Meet

cence on the brow of the highest point of
land in sight.

What an extent of wild land is this, on
the borders of Boston, stretching away for
miles to the south and southwest, as remote
and uncultivated as New Hampshire pas
tures (save for an occasional roadway or
placard), and as free to all of the ram
bling tribe! It affords a deep and grate
ful refuge for the birds, and in a few months
now will be thickly peopled by all our native
songsters.

I saw there, on that day in mid- January,
representatives of nearly all our wintering
birds — the chickadees, nuthatches, downy
and hairy woodpeckers, flickers, jays, bunt
ings, winter wrens and pine finches, and,
along the turnpike, some English sparrows.
Indian spring had brought them all out
from the deeper coverts, and set them to
foraging hopefully for food. Their feeble,
tinkling chirps and rustling flight attracted
my attention everywhere, and it was easy to
imagine what a bird garden the Reservation
would be when May came north with her
retinue of songsters.

The only disagreeable feature of ram-

14

Indian Spring

bling in the Reservation is the conscious
espionage of the mounted police, who patrol
the park at all seasons of the year. Of
course, one does not like to have one's
motive suspected while engaged in this de
vout processional or peripatetic worship of
nature. Yet the police are, doubtless, nec
essary to enforce the regulations of the park
commissioners and protect the timber and
wild creatures in the Reservation. One
wishes they might be invisible wardens,
however — visible only to the wrongdoer,
and relentless upon his trail as some four-
footed, or indeed six-footed, Nemesis.

My walk circumscribed a section of coun
try about eight miles in diameter, and was
a fairly good day's work for one pair of
legs. But I would gladly repeat it, should
we have a taste of Indian spring this year.
It furnished me with an inextinguishable
appetite for some days, and at least a week's
supply of keen, swinging energy for work.
I do not know how I could have got better
returns from so small an investment of time
in any other venture.

ON THE EDGE OF SPRING

SOME one has said that expectation is to
realization what flower is to fruit; the first
yields a finer fragrance, the second a more
satisfying sustenance. If this be true — and
to whom does it not commend itself? — how
thankful we should be that we receive, with
most of our blessings, the possibility of both
enjoyments! The coming event casts, not
its shadow, but its brightness, before. (How
many of our proverbs ought to be amended
by restating them from the optimistic
standpoint!)

The expectation of spring is one of the
most delicate and truly fragrant delights
possible to a healthy mind and body. The
genius of the season is itself anticipatory;
its atmosphere is elate, prophetic, suggest
ive, inviting. More than that of any other
season, the charm of spring is elusive and
alluring. It has that fine, spiritual, ungrasp-
able quality that belongs to the best music
16

On the Edge of Spring

and poetry. Spring is the beckoner among
the seasons. We never quite get hold of her
hand, as we do of Summer's, and Autumn's,
and particularly Winter's. Our wooing of
her is ever the delight of pursuit. All her
kisses are blown to us.

To me, the most ethereal and delicious
moment of this pursuit of spring is the
time when, as we say, spring is first "in
the air." The expectation of the new, bud
ding year is never quite so thrilling, so
transporting — Thoreau calls it "exciting" —
as then. That first changing of the air, in
late February and early March, from the
winter quality to the spring quality — have
you not remarked it with all your senses,
and been mysteriously and irresistibly elated
and exalted thereby, as if body and soul
were suddenly set in perfect tune with the
music of the spheres? And that earliest
whiff of the soil — is there any perfume to
compare with it in delicious suggestiveness ?
How it recalls all the sweet youthfulness
of life and nature! As Henry Van Dyke
so charmingly says : "Of all the faculties
of the human mind, memory is the one
that is most easily led by the nose." I

2 I7

Where Town and Country Meet

know of nothing like the smell of the soil
to bring back the zestful, care-free days of
boyhood, and to thrill the soul with inti
mations and prophecies of its own and na
ture's eternal youth.

The edge of spring may be described by
a somewhat wavering and intermittent line
in these North Atlantic States — a line that
extends between the middle of February
and the middle of March. In some seasons
you will encounter it two or three weeks
earlier than in others ; and often during the
same season it will appear and disappear,
and reappear again, like forked lightning
in the night sky. But as a general thing,
the first real and continuous intimations of
spring begin with the last week in February.
Then you will readily detect those sky
changes and air changes and earth changes
that herald the season when, as Words
worth sings:

" The winds come to me from the fields of sleep,
And all the earth is gay."

No sign of spring, at this early date, is
pronounced and positive, but on every hand
are those delicate promises, those thrilling
18

On the Edge of Spring

premonitions, that are so sweet and vital
a part of this most beloved of seasons. This
year (1901) I took my first spring walk on
the I Qth day of February. It was just after
that long-continued period of extremely cold
weather, when for eighteen successive days
the mercury hovered about the zero mark.
The returning warmth of the sun and genial
mildness of the air were especially grate
ful, and I was not surprised to find that
the sudden, sweet promise of spring had
appealed to more legitimate proprietors of
the woods and fields than myself. All wild
life seemed to be astir, that sunny morn
ing. The crows were disporting themselves
high in air, in amatory flights, darting over
and under one another, and uttering those
peculiar cries characteristic of their mating
season. It is almost impossible to describe
these curious love notes of the crow, so odd
and varied are they; but some of them
sounded to me like the strident croaks of
guinea hens. I doubt if there is any North
ern bird that begins its lovemaking and
nestmaking as early as our common crow.
The crow's love song is anything but mu
sical, but it is always sweet to my ears, be-

Where Town and Country Meet

cause it forms a part of the melodic proph
ecy of spring.

I had scarcely entered the woods when
in the crumbling, disintegrating snow I
found the wiry, nervous, wandering tracks
of a ruffed grouse, which had evidently
been abroad that very morning, far earlier
than I, to seek a breakfast of leaves and
berries on the knolls uncovered by the heat
of the sun. I followed the winding trail
for some distance, but finally it so turned,
and doubled, and intertwined with itself,
that I lost my clue and had to give it up.

Everywhere, from the trustworthy record
of the snow, it appeared that the squirrels
had been on the move likewise, passing from
tree to tree with long, joyous leaps, the
vigor of spring already in their veins.
Many rabbit tracks through the thickets
showed where the cotton-tails also had
chased each other, like those black lovers
in midair. All this awakening and new ac
tivity seemed a part of the glad expectation
of spring.

The skunk-cabbage was thrusting its
spear point up through the black loam along
the brook — earliest of all the wild sod-
20

On the Edge of Spring

breakers. I found the alder-buds swelling
beneath their scales, and the catkins of both
alders and willows already visible. There
was bright green cress in the bed of the
brook, and a few spears of green grass
lifted themselves out of the loam in a shel
tered, sunny corner of the swamp. Chick
adees were lisping their faint dee-dee-dee in
the hemlocks; jays were screaming lustily
among the dwarf oaks ; and a yellow-ham
mer sent forth his clarion challenge from
the hillside. Everywhere the decomposing
snow was black with myriads of tiny, sput
tering snow-lice, that darted hither and
thither like sparks out of a fire. Surely,
spring was in the air and underfoot! It
was good to be abroad at the first whisper
of her coming.

Such signs would mean little, if they did
not mean so much. In themselves they
carry little of positive assurance of spring.
But who could receive them, in the full
consciousness of their prophetic significance,
without a thrill of joy that was almost ec
static? They tell us that nature is waking
from her deathlike sleep, that her chains
are crumbling, and that soon she will rise

21

Where Town and Country Meet

up, and fling their fragments into the brooks
and rivers, and start forth to clothe the
world in flowers and whistle up the bird-
songs ! Happy is he who can find time and
heart to stand on the edge of spring, and
listen for the coming of the birds and the
flowers. If he realizes the full sweetness
of anticipation, he will be content to wait
long even for the first spray of pink arbutus
and the first rapture of the robin's vesper
hymn.

22

AN EARLY SPRING WALK

AT noon, yesterday, April 7th, as I was
crossing the town common, I got the first
smell of the soil — that indescribably fresh,
damp odor that thrills all one's nerves as
with the very touch of spring. Here and
there huge snow-banks were still lying, dirty
and ragged, like mammoth cattle that had
"wintered out;" and the light breeze blow
ing from the north had the tang of frost
in it yet. But I could not resist that intox
icating odor of the earth. It waked some
thing in my heart as restless and wild and
undaunted as the sprout of the frost-break
ing crocus, and I perforce dedicated the rest
of the day to the fields and wood-edges.

Immediately after dinner — the New Eng-
lander's good, old-fashioned, noonday din
ner — I was off across the pastures to the
eastward, my rubber boots splashing
through the puddles of snow water that still
sparkled in little hollows of the frost-bound
soil. The sun lay warm and cheery over

23

Where Town and Country Meet

all the landscape, and the breeze had just
enough frost in it to be delicious to the nos
trils, as well as bracing. The song-sparrows
were lifting up their sweet thank-offerings
everywhere, by altars of bush and stone,
and now and then I heard the clarion of the
robin from some neighboring orchard. On
a fence post sat a solitary bluebird, but he
was silent — depressed, apparently, at having
arrived so long before his fellows. It would
be some days yet, I imagined, before I
should hear his jubilant strain.

Straggling crows were drifting south
ward, overhead, scolding me with harsh,
suspicious caws. The crow is the most
"canny" and sophisticated of all our wild
birds. He suspects all mankind, and even
womankind, of carrying guns up their
sleeves, and being banded in a perpetual
league to lay him low. No range, however
long, seems to promise him immunity from
the deadly bullet, and he starts his hoarse
alarmist cry if he spies a human figure a
mile away.

Before I came to the edge of the woods
I was in a glow from exercise, and the
blood coursed in my veins like liquid fire.
24

An Early Spring Walk

It was a part of the natural exhilaration
of all life at the return of the spring. I
feel it distinctly every season — this rejuve
nation and re-enforcement of all my vital
powers and functions. It is as pronounced
with me as with the plants and the trees;
a flooding upward and outward to the very
finger tips and pores of the scalp of the sap
of life; a vernal flood tide of health and
energy and hope and delight in existence.
All animals, I think, feel it more or less,
and all men in proportion as they share
the life of nature and are in sympathy and
communion with her. Farmers, hunters,
boatmen, explorers, surveyors, ramblers —
these out-of-door men know what is meant
by the exaltation and exhilaration of the
spring. They have all felt this rushing ver
nal sap in their veins, and that transporting
thrill, which seems to exude at last in a fine
spray from every extremity. Even up to
old age. such men renew their boyhood every
spring. Their hearts swell within them;
their muscles grow elastic and tireless, so
that they seem to walk on air; their bodies
glow and palpitate, and their spirits respond
to all bird songs and brook music. It is

25

Where Town and Country Meet

the universal, perpetual rejuvenation of the
spring; and so long as we can share it, we
are not old, but still belong to the youth and
enthusiasm and fecundity of nature.

Even so early as the first week in April,
with frost still lingering in the open fields
and snow littering the woods to their very
edges, the first rambler of the season will
find some few hardy wild flowers, either
with half-open buds or in brave full bloom.
I saw, on this crisp April day, even before
I came to the southward-sloping bank be
neath the woods, what looked like a deli
cate mat of ladies' veils, or a gigantic, iri
descent spider's web spread out in the sun,
and knew it to be a densely clustered bed
of the grayish-blue Houstonia, or bluets.
There they trembled in the wind, those ex
quisite frail flowers, like little mouse-ears
raised aloft on swaying stalks. How frag
ile! At a little distance they looked like
a puff of smoke that the wind must pres
ently drive away. And yet they are so
hardy as to survive frosts and even late
snowstorms. I have pulled them out of the
snow, as fresh and unwilted and shining
as the hour they broke the sod. Indeed,
26

An Early Spring Walk

nearly all the early spring flowers are notice
ably delicate in texture and fragile and
dainty in form. The coarser, apparently
stronger, flowers come later. It is one of
those paradoxes of which inscrutable na
ture is so fond. She loves to astonish us
by sending up her whitest lily out of the
black mire, and setting her most fragile,
baby-like flowers on the edge of a snow
bank.

I picked some of the most vividly pink
arbutus blossoms, on this same afternoon,
along the edge of the woods. None so fra
grant and so richly tinted will be found
later. The pure white blossoms predomi
nate as the season advances, larger and
creamier and more cloyingly sweet in per
fume than the pink firstlings, but not so
delicate, so blushingly beautiful, and so
spicily fragrant. I found also a few tiny
golden saucers of cinquefoil, timid and
pinched, as if regretful of having opened
so soon.

Every run I crossed, and every swampy

place under the edge of the woods, had from

two to a dozen of the sharp-pointed, purplish

spathes of the skunk-cabbage thrusting up

27

Where Town and Country Meet

through the wet soil. The hood of the
spathe had, since it first broke the ground
in March, lifted visibly, and the sides ex
panded, bulging outward, so as to reveal
the small, pale clusters of minute flowers,
protected until now by the warm-colored
and tightly-closed blanket of the spathe.

Almost constantly, as I strolled along
the edge of the woods, I could hear the
silvery chimes of the hylas, those tiny
wood-frogs which inhabit the pools and
marshes, and jingle their strings of sleigh-
bells (for the music, at a little distance,
sounds exactly like sleigh-bells) from the
1st of April until the middle of May. There
is no sound, to me, so delightful, so sug
gestive, so characteristic and typical of early
spring, as the chirping of the hylas. It
unites the early and the later season, for
it has a tinkle like the dripping and clash
ing of icicles, and a melodious, flowing
music like released brooks and the voices
of birds. I should feel lost and desolate
without my sleigh-bells in the spring. The
first pipe of the hyla is more delicious to me
than a whisper from Remenyi's violin, and
when there comes an answer, gradually
28

An Early Spring Walk

swelling into an irregular, vibrant chorus,
my heart tastes again, for a little while, the
unnamable ecstasy of childhood, and I can
believe that I am standing once more on the
morning threshold of the world.

Every sight and sound and odor of the
early spring seems to possess a peculiar
significance and charm, such as is revealed
to the lover of nature at no other season of
the year. All reports of the senses teem
with freshness, newness, pungency, promise.

"The year 's at the spring,"

sings Browning; and in that single line he
conveys an almost overwhelming sense of
the fullness of life, hope, joy, energy, cour
age, determination. Just as there is one day
in every month when the sea floods up irre
sistibly and touches its highest tide-mark, so
there is one month in the year when the life
of nature climbs to its maximum, and thrills
the whole world with a sense of vital reple
tion and power. April is the month of all
months to go rambling, for one's health of
body and mind, because it is then we may
embark upon that mysterious flood-tide of
reviving nature, and share the exaltation
29

Where Town and Country Meet

and exhilaration of all organic and sentient
life. Before the grass is green on the hills,
or the mist of early leafage dims the swamp,
take your stout staff, rambler, and go
a-field. Then, though your hair be gray,
you will find yourself wandering blissfully
back to boyhood, and standing again on
some sunrise-hill, with the whole world
swimming in morning gold beneath your
feet.

THE WAKING OF THE FISHES

IT is a pity that so many lovers and stu
dents of nature pay little or no attention to
"the water under the earth." Birds and
flowers are studied with enthusiasm by
thousands, but the animal and vegetable life
of the water — particularly the animal life —
seems to be overlooked or disregarded, as
belonging to a foreign element. This is un
fortunate, because there is so much of rare
and surprising interest in the study of
water-life — so many revelations of the won
ders of God's creation, so many glimpses
into the marvelous resources and adapta
bilities of nature. The life of the water is
not only fascinating in its own body of facts,
but it is full of surprises and suggestions,
now in the way of contrast with the life of
earth and air, and now in curious corre
spondence with it. The study of fishes in
particular is most fascinating; and I do not
know how the mind of a beginner in nature-

31

Where Town and Country Meet

study could be more stimulated and broad
ened than by making a series of observa
tions simultaneously upon fishes and birds.
These two great kingdoms are strangely
alike and yet unlike. Their contrasts and
correspondences are more interesting than
any romance, and there is an endless delight
in discovering and bringing out new points,
both of striking divergence and likeness.

The waking of the fishes in the spring
is a most charming chapter to study in con
nection with the return of the birds. I sup
pose there is scarcely one person in fifty who
knows that many tribes of fishes, as well as
of birds, migrate to warmer waters during
the winter, and return, at the same time with
the birds, to lay eggs and even build nests
as they do. But this is a fact long ago estab
lished by scientists ; and there may be, if we
choose, great delight in knowing and taking
advantage of it.

April is distinctively the month of wak
ing and activity with the fishes, just as it
is with the birds; and from then until the
middle or latter part of May is the time
when both tribes may be studied with the
greatest profit and delight. Any one who
32

The Waking of the Fishes

lives in the vicinity of brooks, rivers, or
ponds, and particularly of streams flowing
into the sea, may be sure of rich returns
from time spent, during the month of April,
in observing the fishes. All waters are then
alive with them, while the great instinct
and necessity of reproduction is stimulating
them to utmost activity, and at the same
time bringing out their most interesting
habits.

Let us glance first at the migratory habits
of some of our commoner fishes, such as
may be found, during the warmer months
of the year, in almost any stream larger than
a rivulet. Do such fish, for instance, as the
perch, the sucker, the sunfish, the bass, the
pike, and the brook trout, ever migrate?
It is the common impression, I am aware,
that they do not, and yet a careful study of
their habits proves them to be what we call,
among the birds, "semi-migrants." That is
to say,- these fishes pass down from the
higher waters of streams to the lower and
warmer waters, and very often into larger
streams or into ponds and lakes, returning
with the waking season in the spring to the
shallower waters, where they breed and

3 33

Where Town and Country Meet

spend the first half of the year — counting
spring as its beginning.

Every country boy knows, for example,
something about the spring migration of
the suckers; and when you see him start
ing out with his "gigging-pole," or his rod
and line, you may be pretty sure that the
suckers are beginning to run up some brook
that he wots of. So it is also with the
brook trout, the gamy and delicious and
highly prized salmo fontinalis,, as your ex
perienced angler well knows. In April the
trout come swarming up the smaller rivers
and streams from which they have migrated
during the winter. They are coming up to
spawn, and to remain until fall, when the
downward pilgrimage again begins. The
well-informed and skillful angler meets
them on their spring migration, when the
law allows him to take them. In the fall,
however, the season is closed legally, osten
sibly because it is spawning time, though as
a matter of fact the spawning of brook trout
takes place about midway between the
spring and fall migrations.

The black bass is another instance of a
fish that migrates to deeper water late in

34

The Waking of the Fishes

the season; and fishermen through the ice
of ponds and lakes can testify to the great
increase in the number of perch, pickerel,
etc., during the winter, as these fishes come
out from the ponds and creeks to warmer
and more protected depths. And so I think
we may claim that there is a semi-migration
of many of our commoner fishes twice a
year, just as there is of robins, bluejays,
crows, flickers, and other familiar birds,
that do not entirely leave the temperate zone
in their search for a warmer climate in
winter. Here, then, is one pleasing corre
spondence between birds and fishes — that a
certain number of both tribes are limited
or semi-migrants.

A further and more marked correspond
ence may be observed in the case of certain
salt-water fishes, particularly those that
spawn in fresh-water streams — the anad-
romous fishes, so called. These fishes
make extended southward migrations, just
as the majority of birds do, and return at
the same season in the spring — the great
waking and home-returning month of April.
At the same time that the mighty army of
birds is speeding northward, what we might

35

Where Town and Country Meet

call the fleet of the fishes is accompanying
them along the coast ; and we may trace the
progress of the latter by the successive dates
when they ascend the coast streams, begin
ning to do this as early as January in the
Savannah River, and continuing gradually
northward, until the New England Coast
streams receive them in April and early
May. The names of these fresh-water
breeding migrants among the fishes are fa
miliar to nearly all dwellers along the
coast — the herrings, alewives, shad, and
salmon. But hosts of other sea-fishes, that
do not spawn in fresh water, are migratory,
and come northward at the same time with
the birds, only we can not trace their jour-
neyings as exactly as we can those of the
anadromous fishes.

Now let us turn for a moment to that
other curiously bird-like habit of certain
fishes, when they, like the birds, are wak
ing to the joys and responsibilities of family
life; namely, nest-building. The majority
of fishes, to be sure, like some birds, lay
their eggs without providing any nests for
them, but certain species are very particular
about the homes and safeguards of their off-

36

The Waking of the Fishes

spring. The rock bass and the two varieties
of black bass are well-known examples.
These fishes scoop out a hole with their fins
in the bottom of the stream, and then bring
pebbles or small stones to the bowl-like cav
ity, to which the female attaches her spawn,
mounting guard over the nest until the eggs
hatch, which is generally within ten days.
Any offending object dropped upon or near
the nest is promptly and indignantly re
moved.

The sunfish, or "pumpkin seed," also
scoops out a nest in the bottom of the
stream, but does not ballast it with peb
bles. Her nest is large and deep, however,
and built in comparatively still water, where
the unattached eggs are not likely to be car
ried away by the current. The female not
only watches over the eggs till they are
hatched, but drives away every intruder,
even of her own species, that ventures to
approach the spot.

The stickleback's nest, however, is the
most remarkable of all fish nests, most like
a bird's nest, being built of grass and weeds,
fastened together with slime from the fish's
own body. There is a hole entirely through

37

Where Town and Country Meet

the nest, from one side to the other, pro
vided in order that water may constantly
flow over the eggs. In the case of the
stickleback, curiously enough, it is the male
that builds and defends the nest.

The correspondences between bird and
fish life which I have hastily sketched, serve
to show what a fascinating study may be
made of the inhabitants of the water, if one
is willing to devote the necessary time and
attention to the subject. I might mention
other water-tribes besides the fishes whose
life history is full of interest and wonder.
But my object is accomplished, if I have in
any degree induced other students of Nature
to look into those crystal wonder-depths for
themselves, and especially at a time so rich
in all the operations of life, and so fruitful
in disclosures and surprises, as the joyous
month of April.

IN ANGLING TIME

WITH the breaking forth of the buds in
spring there is a certain primitive and in
extinguishable passion that breaks forth in
the hearts of men. It is the well-nigh uni
versal desire to go a-fishing. There is no
other outdoor longing that seems to pos
sess so generally all ages and conditions of
mankind. The savage still survives in most
of us to this gentle degree, that, after the
long semi-hibernation, which even our mod
ern life scarcely modifies, we must needs go
forth at the time when Nature liberates all
her creatures once more, and replenish our
larders, material and immaterial, from the
bounties of lake and stream. Man and
boy — and to a growing extent woman also —
are seized in spring by that deliciously im
perative feeling that it is time to "wet a
line." The "most grave and reverend
senior" puts on an old suit of clothes and
a soft, faded hat, and humbly stoops beside

39

Where Town and Country Meet

the eager boy to gather bait out of the gar
den loam. And then man and boy trudge
off together, rods in hand, with a sense of
such perfect companionship and sympathy
as is worth far more than its weight in
abandoned dignity or forfeited toil.

It is when this temperate zone of ours,
and these rugged landscapes to which most
of us are accustomed, are all pink and white
and fragrant with the blossoms of orchards,
that angling time is at its height. Old fish
ermen say that it is little use to wet a line
for trout until you can smell the apple
blossoms. I have angled for all kinds of
fresh-water fish, from the time when the ice
first went out until the law forbade, but I
have never had any success worth mention
ing (except with the cold-blooded and
phlegmatic sucker) until the fruit-trees were
fully in bloom, and their sweetness was
blown into my face on puffs of air as warm
as a draught from a florist's conservatory.
Not until then does the water of our lakes
and streams lose enough of its winter chill
to wake its inhabitants fairly out of their
torpidity. The trout, generally speaking,
will not rise to a fly until June, nor pay
40

In Angling Time

much attention even to the seductive worm
until the 1st of May. And, to a less marked
degree, other fresh-water fish are sluggish
during the same period. But when those
first spring heats come on, which make
you think that even midsummer will scarcely
bring you a greater desire to "sit in your
bones," then is the halcyon time to go
a-fishing. Then is the time when, if you
are a true angler born and bred, to be
chained down to desk or shop or classroom
will make you actually sick in body as well
as in mind. The angler who reads these
lines will not smile, I am sure, at the con
fession that I once had a serious fit of sick
ness brought on not otherwise than by a
persistently thwarted longing to get to the
woods in angling time. Circumstances were
such that I could not leave my post of duty
even for a day ; but the struggle to smother
my passion was so severe that, after the
witching time had passed, my system col
lapsed, and I was perforce a non-producer
for three months. Three days of fishing
would have saved me three months' time —
the more 's the pity ! It was the being un
able to go at all that laid me low. I appeal

Where Town and Country Meet

not to the uninitiated for sympathy, but
every genuine angler will understand.

Now, then, let us see what a day in ang
ling time is worth. You wake up very early
in the morning to the concert of birds, and
a sweet thrill like that of boyhood's time
runs through you at the thought of the day's
enterprise. You are out of bed at a leap,
and presently slip into that old suit, so com-,
fortable in every wonted fold, so redolent
with pleasant memories. The boy hears,
you — the blessed boy, renewer of your
youth — and soon he, too, is out of dream
land and out of bed, staggering a little, and
with fists dug into his blinking eyes, but
bravely dragging out his old clothes and
hunting for his thick waterproof shoes.

Then, while the smiling helpmate pre
pares an early breakfast, you and the boy
go out to dig worms, and come back with
overflowing bait-boxes and such appetites
as neither of you has displayed for weeks.
Breakfast is a feast, sweetened by expecta
tion; and when it is finished you get your
gear together, whistling, while mother puts
up a generous lunch. Then off you start,
to be gone the whole day ; and as you trudge
42

In Angling Time

down the street, between bird-peopled trees,
it seems somehow as if you had been born
again that morning — as if you had entered
anew into the freshness and sweetness and
young hope of life. Your heart is as light
as the boy's, and they flow together like
two streams from which the separating bar
rier has been broken down.

The walk to the woods is full of pleasant
talk and warm confidences. No father, I
think, has ever quite known his boy until he
has gone fishing with him. Nor has any
boy known his father until they have shared
such companionship. Blessed is the man
whose soul does not become infected with
the senescence of his body! It is a pitiful
fate, I think, for a soul to grow old like
bones and muscles.

Then, when you have come to the stream
in the odorous balsam woods, and the roar
of it drowns all your talk, and you have
little means of communicating thenceforth
save by gestures, you rig your tackle, and
put on a worm, and settle down to the solid
enjoyment of the day. You let the boy go
on ahead down stream, to have the first cast
in the likely holes, and you follow, now

43

Where Town and Country Meet

keeping your absorbed disciple just in sight,
and now losing him for a space around a
bend in the stream. Now and then he holds
up to you, in eloquent silence, some eight
or ten inch prize, gleaming where the sun
sifts down between the young leaves. You
nod and smile, and thank God for the inno
cent mutual joys of life and nature.

Presently, you are absorbed in the strug
gle with a crimson-spotted "pounder" your
self, and by the time you have tired him out
and landed him the boy is too far away to
share your triumph. Perhaps you do not
see him again until an ever-increasing ad
monition beneath the belt slackens his steps,
and you come upon him sitting on a stone
beside a cool brooklet that slips into your
trout stream; and his first audible question
is: "Father, isn't this a pretty good place
to eat our lunch?"

Yes, a wonderfully good place! — though
it is barely eleven o'clock yet. So down
you two sit, side by side on the flat rock,
with the drinking-cup between you, and
prove the inexpressible deliciousness of
home-made sandwiches, doughnuts, and

44

In Angling Time

pie, sauced with the wild hunger of the
woods.

In the middle of the golden afternoon
you un joint your rods, slip them into their
cases, gather some fresh ferns, and sit down
by the stream to wash your trout, count
them, and lay them daintily back in their
bed of ferns. It has been a sweet, happy
day, and you have taken fish enough for a
good meal on the home table, and for grand
father and grandmother, and for Uncle
Ned's folks. Let us be thankful for God's
bounty, and not abuse it. Now for a little
rest and more happy talk by the cool water.
Then we will tramp home by another road
through fresh scenes; and as we near the
village the same birds that sang us forth
with their matins will welcome us sweetly
back with their vespers. What a good
world it is ! How it beats with the heart of
God — if only one listens always as closely
and as lovingly as one does in angling time !

45

SOME HERMITS OF THE MARSH

RETURNING home from a long April
walk, the other day, I heard, as I was plod
ding across a willow-bordered causeway
that crossed a marsh, a sound like one
pumping water from a well with an old-
fashioned, wheezy, wooden pump. There
was no house in sight anywhere, and the
marsh was wide and deserted, yet I instinct
ively looked in the direction of the sound,
half expecting to see some bare-armed coun
try girl pumping a pitcherful of water for
the supper-table, or a thirsty farm laborer,
with one hand over the nozzle of the pump-
spout, bending down to drink the cool
stream that spurted from his ringers. But
in a moment I knew that the deceptive
sound I had heard was made by the bittern,
or "stake-driver," a large, shy, ungainly
bird of the wader family, that tenants re
mote marshes, and seldom shows itself in
the open or upon the wing, unless startled
from its muddy retreat by the gunner or the
46

Some Hermits of the Marsh

mower on the marsh. When thus alarmed,
it rises awkwardly and heavily, craning its
neck in all directions, and uttering a hoarse,
croaking note. The bird is a powerful flyer,
however, when once fairly on the wing. It
often rises to a considerable height, and flies
a long distance before again settling in the
marsh.

The odd, far-sounding note of the bittern,
when undisturbed, has been variously lik
ened by writers on ornithology to the driv
ing of a stake into moist, soft ground — as
the common name of the bird indicates —
to the hollow coughing of an old wooden
pump, and to the rattling stroke of a pair
of loose "pin-oars" on a scow. Like all
bird-sounds, the note represents different
things to different ears, and is hard to de
scribe with exactness. It resembles in a
general way all three of the sounds to which
it is commonly likened, and yet it has a
cadence 'and quality and character of its
own that are quite distinct from any of them.
To me, it always suggests the sound of the
old pump back of my uncle's house in the
country, where I used to spend all my va
cations as a boy. The first hollow, guttural

47

Where Town and Country Meet

a~unkf a-unk, fairly makes me thirsty, and
my fingers itch for the rusted tin dipper that
used to convey such nectar to my parched
lips.

Comparatively little is really known, as
yet, of the habits of what might be called
our "hermit-birds," like the bittern, the rail,
the mud-hen, the Wilson's snipe, the wood
cock, and the whip-poor-will. Most people,
I imagine, even those who are fond of bird-
study, would have to confess that they have
never seen all of these comparatively com
mon birds, alive, in their native haunts.
Some, I am quite sure, would have to admit
that they have never seen one of them.
Even professional ornithologists have found
difficulty in collecting what scientific data
they have concerning these bird hermits.
There is much still to be learned about them,
so that the study of their habits, when pos
sible, is full of fresh interest and stimulus.

I wonder if any bird student who reads
this chapter has ever tried to "stalk" a bit
tern in a marsh, while it was uttering its
peculiar, booming cry? It is a more deli
cate and difficult piece of business by far
than stalking a drumming ruffed grouse in
48

Some Hermits of the Marsh

the woods. You must go very slowly and
noiselessly, advancing only when the bird
is engaged in the all-engrossing task of
"disgorging" its deep-drawn, laborious note,
for the "stake-driver" has a sharp eye as
well as a keen ear, and a neck sufficiently
long to enable him to peer over the top of
the marsh-grass. But, if you have patience
and caution, you may at length trace him
to the spot where he stands in the long
swamp-grass beside some shallow ditch or
muddy pool, watching for tiny frogs, tad
poles, or the fry of fresh-water fish. Here
he will feed all day long, unless disturbed,
uttering occasionally his gulping a-unk,
a-unkj with a visible effort, as if vomiting
it up. Were it not for that advertisement
of his presence, you might live all summer
near the edge of a swamp, and never suspect
that there was such a bird in it.

The rail, another marsh-dweller, is still
more of a hermit and hider than the bit
tern, because he is not only a skulker, but
an entirely silent bird as well. You may
come upon him suddenly, while pushing
through the sedgy border of some fresh
water pond. He will jump up within a

4 49

Where Town and Country Meet

few feet of you, absolutely noiselessly, with
out report of voice or wing, and drift slowly
along over the tops of the reeds like a dead
leaf. Then he will drop down again, with
comical suddenness, and vanish from sight.
His appearance is altogether ghostlike and
eerie. When the reeds have swallowed him
up once more you almost question whether
your senses have not deceived you — whether
you have not seen a shadow instead of a
bird. Yet the rail is very common on our
marshes, especially during the summer. He
arrives late in the spring, breeds with us,
and then returns southward quite early in
the fall. A squat little figure is his, with the
legs set well back, like those of all the
waders. He has an enormous foot, in pro
portion to the size of his body, the long,
spreading toes acting as a kind of mud-
shoe to bear him up and enable him to run
swiftly over the soft slime in which he seeks
his food. His coloring is rather pretty, or
would be, if its variegated shades — green
ish brown above, and ashy blue with white
markings beneath — were more pronounced
and less blurred. In size the rail is a little
smaller than a robin, but being bob-tailed

Some Hermits of the Marsh

and having less spread of wing, it appears
considerably smaller when in flight.

The mud-hen is a cousin of the rail, and
the habits and general appearance of the
two birds are much alike, though the mud-
hen is four or five times the larger. The
mud-hen, with its bluish-black plumage and
thick-set head and neck, reminds one of the
common crow, except that its posterior
anatomy is that of a wader. It is about the
size of a crow, and has a croaking note that
is not unlike a suppressed caw. Often,
when I have been rowing or paddling on
some sluggish stream that winds through
the marshes, I have seen the black, shadowy
figure of the mud-hen appear and disappear
around some grass-grown tussock on the
border of the stream. It is a remarkably
shy bird, and a very swift runner. My dog
has sometimes spied one of them in the
marsh, swum ashore, and taken up its trail
with puppyish eagerness, only to be outrun
and easily evaded by the nimble mud-hen,
so securely at home in the winding, watery
avenues of its natural Venice.

The Wilson's snipe, or English snipe, is
another mysterious hermit of the marsh.

51

Where Town and Country Meet

A beautiful bird he is, too, somewhat re
sembling the woodcock in contour and
plumage, but of slighter build. He arrives
in our northern latitude about the latter part
of April, commonly in flights of from a
score to a hundred birds. The flock settles
down in some large, fresh-water marsh,
pairs off, and begins breeding about the
middle of May. You would never suspect
that there were some hundreds of this choice
and highly prized game-bird in the marsh
lying so silent under the midday sun. But
if you had been on the edge of the marsh
a little before sunrise, you might have heard,
high in air, a most tender, sweet, minor
note, now swelling loud, now dying away,
like the distant sound of a shepherd's whistle
in the Scotch mountains. This is the spring
love-note of the male snipe. The bird utters
it, larklike, high in air, mounting upward
with a spiral flight; and then when he has
voiced the longing of his heart at the very
gate of heaven, he drops down like an arrow
to the side of his mate in the marsh. It is
well worth a long walk before breakfast to
hear this charming, delicate, evanescent
love-note of our most idyllic swamp-hermit.

52

Some Hermits of the Marsh

It begins oftentimes in the gray dawn, be
fore you can see the bird at all; and after
the sun is fairly up you seldom hear it. The
arrow-like drop of the bird, from a height
where he is a mere speck in the sky, is a
beautiful sight. The beholder wonders how,
after all his gyrations, he knows exactly
where to drop in that wilderness of marsh
to reach the side of his listening love.

If you have a pair of rubber boots, and
can endure the severe labor of wading about
in the marsh, you may soon flush one or
a pair of these snipe. They rise with a
hoarse squeak, that suggests the sucking
sound of a boot drawn quickly out of the
mud, and dart away in swift, twisting flight
— "corkscrew," the sportsmen call it — that
is verily like "a streak of lightning in feath
ers." I have seen one of them dodge a hawk
in this way, until the fierce bird of prey gave
up the chase in despair. Gunners are often
foiled by the quick, irregular flight of the
snipe, and find it the hardest of all game-
birds to bring to bag.

The plumage of the snipe is a beautifully
mottled gray and brown, the under parts
several shades lighter than the upper. It

S3

Where Town and Country Meet

is a noticeably graceful bird in form and
action, and by far the most attractive of
all the hermits of the marsh. With the
first frosts in the fall the Wilson's snipe
starts once more upon its semi-yearly pil
grimage, journeying toward the far South
by easy stages, and running as best it can
the gauntlet of fire that meets it all along
the route.

54

PILGRIMS OF THE NIGHT

THE migration of birds is one of the most
puzzling secrets of nature. We know very
little accurately and scientifically about it,
for the excellent reason that the phenomena
of these semi-annual pilgrimages are ex
tremely difficult to observe. Birds as a rule
migrate in the night, and at such a great
height above the surface of the earth that,
even in the brightest moonlight, they are
seldom visible. The only intimations we
have of their passage (save when they cross
the disk of the moon) are the faint, eerie,
swiftly-vanishing notes that float down to us
through the air of a still spring or autumn
night. And even these notes, as a discrim
inating writer on ornithology has pointed
out, are of little help in determining the
species of bird that may be speeding its way
over us at the time, because they are quite
different from the ordinary notes uttered
while these birds are residents of our woods
and fields. Any student of birds who has

55

Where Town and Country Meet

paid much attention to these voices of the
night, in the migrating season, must have
noticed how very much alike in general
character they are — commonly a clear, thin,
elfin whistle, short in duration, and rapidly
repeated, with a sort of unearthly and phan
tom quality, as if the bird uttering it were
in a state of ethereal frenzy, caught away
like a spirit through great gulfs of space,
and crying to its fellows half in fear and
half in rapture.

Many species of birds, especially the
smaller songsters, utter migratory cries
which are practically indistinguishable from
one another. If you happen to be lying
awake on a lowery, still, warmish spring
night (with your window open, I hope, for
no genuine lover of nature is squeamish
about night air), you will very likely hear
many of these elfin voices out of the sky,
beginning faintly, increasing rapidly in vol
ume, and then dying as rapidly away. With
the exception of such large and coarse-
voiced birds as the water-fowl, the cries of
these aerial pilgrims will sound alike to your
ear — the same tremulous, thin, clear, rather
melancholy whistle, with that transcendent
56

Pilgrims of the Night

unearthly quality. This fact has led some
writers to query whether there may not be
a universal migratory call among the birds
of the air, familiar to and understood by all
species of songsters, as a sort of rallying
cry or exchange of greetings — just as men
of all races use salutations that are so much
alike as to be perfectly intelligible every
where.

Be this as it may, we can evidently rely
little upon the migratory cries of birds as
a means of identifying species; and, as I
have said, the flights being chiefly by night,
and at a considerable distance above the sur
face of the earth, it is equally impossible to
identify the various species of migrants by
sight. The only way we can trace the
courses of these flights, in spring and au
tumn, and determine the species of which
they are composed, is to watch for the birds
as they descend to earth in the daytime to
rest and feed, and then compare records
with other observers all along the line.
Even in this way we do not get very accu
rate information of routes and dates of ar
rival, because there is always more or less
confusion arising from the presence of par-

57

Where Town and Country Meet

tial or irregular migrants in various local
ities. Here in Massachusetts, for instance,
we are growing more and more uncertain,
owing to the relaxing severity of our win
ters, whether to class certain familiar birds,
like robins and yellow-hammers and blue-
jays, among the migrants, or not. Cer
tainly, an increasing number of such birds
now remain with us for the greater part, if
not the whole, of every winter ; and we are
at a loss to know whether the robin red
breast that we see on the 1st of March is
the leader of the migratory vanguard, or
only a bird neighbor who has remained with
us, silent and secluded, all winter.

However, there is no doubt that the great
majority of individuals, as well as of spe
cies, among the songsters are still migra
tory ; and the main body of this great army
does not return to us in the spring until
early in May. The first and second weeks
in May are the great "home weeks" for the
birds. Then it is that the welcome tide of
song and bright plumage comes surging
back over our North Atlantic States in one
mighty wave. It would seem, in some local
ities, as if the whole company of birds had
58

Pilgrims of the Night

arrived in a night, and stationed themselves
before dawn in their accustomed places in
the great orchestra, ready to greet the sun
with a glorious burst of song when he
should lift his face above the hills.

In spite of all vicissitudes of weather,
we may look for our little feathered friends
upon almost exactly the same dates, year
after year. I find that my calendar of bird
arrivals varies almost inappreciably from
season to season. I have the robin down
(for Massachusetts) March I5th to 2Oth,
and seldom fail to see or hear several of
them thus early. The bluebirds and song
sparrows come next, March 23d to 28th;
then blackbirds and fox-sparrows, April ist
to 5th. These are the very early comers.
They do not belong to the main body of the
great army, which arrives late in April and
early in May.

I find that the golden robin is the most
punctual -and unvarying of all the migrants
I have observed. His date for Boston and
vicinity is invariably May loth. If that day
is sunny and favorable, I am almost sure to
hear him somewhere in the elms about —
but not before them. The coincidence

59

Where Town and Country Meet

has become so marked as to be almost
amusing.

The list of May arrivals among the song
sters is a long one, and includes, for New
England, the thrushes, wrens, and warblers,
all the swallows and swift tribe, the wood
peckers, phoebe, vireos, golden robins, king
birds, cat-birds, bobolinks, cuckoos, chats,
and finches. Nearly all these birds have
wintered in the Southern States. Some,
however, have gone as far south as Mexico,
and a few to South America and the West
Indies. Some of the very smallest birds
make the longest migratory flights. Thus,
a writer in the Nineteenth Century calls at
tention to a diminutive humming-bird, the
flame-bearer (Selasphorus rufus), which
breeds on the west coast of America as far
north as Alaska and Bering Island, and win
ters in Lower California and Mexico, cov
ering in each migration more than three
thousand miles.

Probably, three-fourths of our New Eng
land birds do not go farther south in the
winter than the northern border of the Gulf
States. Their line of flight has been pretty
definitely traced, in both migrations. It
60

Pilgrims of the Night

follows the Atlantic Coast in a broad belt,
widening as it extends northward in the
spring, and narrowing correspondingly in
the fall. The Mississippi Valley and the
Pacific Coast are the pathways of the other
two great streams of feathered pilgrims, in
the United States. For some unexplained
reason birds always shape the course of their
migrations by large bodies of water — prob
ably because of the guidance which these
afford.

One other curious fact should be men
tioned concerning our migrating songsters,
and that is that the older male birds invari
ably go ahead, the females and younger
birds following somewhat later. The reason
for this has never been satisfactorily deter
mined. We may assume that it is the desire
of the males somehow to "clear the way"
for the females — an expression of that gal-
antry or chivalry so noticeable among birds.
I, for one, should be very loth to believe
that the male birds hasten away first, as
some men undoubtedly do, to have a good
time among themselves before the arrival
of their wives and children!

61

OPENING CAMP

A RED-I^TTER day — May 2Oth. I rode
out to the mouth of the river, and opened
the little green camphouse for the season.
Not that I expect to take up my abode
there — though I have had wild thoughts of
it — or spend under its tarred roof a tenth
part of the busy days yet to come before
midsummer vacation. But the prospect of
a day off now and then, or a night, out on
the edge of those wide, peaceful marshes,
with their vibrant lullabies — how it re
freshes me ! The spin beyond the car-tracks
into the gathering dusk, leaving the garish
lights of the city far behind ; the cool even
ing breeze in one's face; the first fragrant
whiff of the marshes ; the faint glimmer of
the distant lighthouse; the drowsy croak
ing of frogs — what immediate restfulness
in all these things for the lover of nature,
wearied by the strain of city life ! The very
thought of my little green camphouse
62

Opening Camp

brings rest to me in the midst of toil; and
when I can slip away and visit it for a few
hours, during the outdoor season, the respite
is like a dip in the fountain of perpetual
youth.

When I released the brass padlock, and
flung open the door of my little camphouse,
this morning, the whiff of old associations
and delights almost unmanned me — in the
sense, I mean, of setting me back to boy
hood's days, with their rapture and buoy
ancy and light-heartedness. To one who
has never had any associations of the kind,
I suppose, the odor of that tightly-closed
cabin would have seemed offensively musty
and compounded of innumerable rank and
disagreeable smells. But to my discerning
nostrils it was more grateful than the spicy
gales of the Orient. The impact of each
separate odor upon my olfactory nerves
brought a shock of delightful remembrance.
Every tiniest particle of that impalpable
dust, which, scientists tell us, emanates from
things smellable, had some exquisite report
to make to my brain. Ah! the first whiff
of the old camp, when you open it in the
spring! Who can describe it? You must

63

Where Town and Country Meet

be a camper, born and bred, to appreciate
it. Some one has aptly said that the nose
is memory's handle. Surely, nothing brings
back old sensations, feelings, experiences,
with such vividness and poignancy as a lin
gering odor.

I stepped into the close, sweltering camp,
threw open shutters and windows, and sat
down on a camp-chair to feast my eyes on
well-remembered objects. There, under the
bunk opposite, stood the old gray chest,
filled with fishing-tackle and other sporting
gear. Already my fingers itched to unlock
it and overhaul its familiar contents. At
the end of the bunk was the table, with its
stained oilcloth covering, sugar-bowl, salt
and pepper grouped in the center, just as I
left them last fall ; and at the farther end the
little kitchen lamp with its olive-green paper
shade.

On the opposite side of the room, in the
corner, were stove and wood-box, the little
stove red with rust, yet sound and ready
for roaring duty at the flash of a match,
the wood-box providently overflowing with
driftwood and fat pine knots. Nearer at
hand was the rude open cupboard, screwed
64

Opening Camp

against the wall, its stout crockery and
plebeian tinware waiting patiently to be put
to service. Overhead, stretched across the
scantling beams, were my fishing-rods, my
canoe, and two canvas cots. A sink, with
a small square mirror hanging over it, com
pleted the general features of this familiar
interior. Is there a camper who does not
recognize the picture and love it ?

My wife drove out from town, about mid-
forenoon, and found me, already grown
ravenous with hunger, washing some pota
toes that had sprouted in the sack. "You
needn't bother with them," she said. "I
have brought a big basketful of lunch.
Shall we eat it now?" There could be but
one interpretation of the eagerness with
which I scrambled for the back end of the
carriage; and presently we were sitting on
the tiny veranda of our camp, discussing
such chicken sandwiches and cold coffee as
only deft- and loving female fingers can pre
pare. The sun shone brightly over the
broad marshes; the breeze was delicious;
and everywhere nature's greens were so
fresh and vivid and intense that one behold
ing them could but feel a twinge of reproach

5 65

Where Town and Country Meet

for all he had ever said in contempt of im
pressionist painters.

My wife, with a woman's first instinct
upon stepping over a threshold, ran her
finger along the table-cover, and daintily
touched the dishes in the cupboard, as we
carried our dirty plates and cups inside.

"Why !" she exclaimed. "Have you been
dusting?"

"No, I have not," I replied. "I never do
such a thing."

"Isn't it strange?" she went on. "There
is n't a particle of dust in camp."

"Dust is something you will not find in
unspoiled nature, my dear," I answered.
"Civilization, roads, cities, are the dust-
breeders. Nature is always tidy. Here, by
the marshes and under the trees, she knows
nothing of dust."

My wife looked at me incredulously. "I
do n't believe it !" she cried, at length. "You
want to get me to say that I should like
to live here all the year round, and then you
would eagerly declare that it should be as
I wish. I know you ! Now you may take
this pail and go down to the river for dish
water."

66

Opening Camp

I took the pail and went, in a kind of
dumb awe at the intuition of women. I
had indeed cherished, that day, wild, ro
mantic dreams of setting up a permanent
domicile in the woods, and riding into town
on my wheel every day, to do business. But
almost any wild notion may be forgiven a
man in the first stages of the annual delir
ium of camp-fever !

I swung a hammock for my wife, in the
afternoon, and she lay there rocking in the
breeze like an oriole in her pendent nest.
But as for me, I could not spend the day
otherwise than in a kind of delicious, aim
less puttering about camp. If I sat down
for a moment, some imperative task not yet
performed was sure to occur to me, and I
was up in an instant to set about it. Yet
what I actually accomplished neither I nor
my wife could definitely declare. The camp
and all its surroundings looked precisely the
same when we left it, late in the afternoon,
as it had when I arrived there, early in the
morning. Yet I had been as busy as a
spring muskrat all day. "Well, never
mind," said my wife, "so long as you are
satisfied."

67

Where Town and Country Meet

"I am satisfied," I declared, stoutly and
truthfully. "I have had a delightful day,
and I haven't been any farther from camp
than the river bank, either. Next time I
come, things will be in shape to do some
thing."

I locked my wheel inside the camp and
rode home with my wife. The marshes
faded away behind, and the city smoke be
gan to stain the sky in front of us.

"After all," said my wife, "without mod
ern civilization and the contrast it affords,
should we thoroughly appreciate nature?"

"No!" I replied, gratefully. "You have
touched the secret of it, my dear. The
brick-front in town is largely responsible
for the charm of the little green camphouse
by the river."

68

BIRDS FROM A SUBURBAN WIN
DOW

MY up-stairs study window overlooks a
narrow strip of unreclaimed land in a sub
urban town, five miles from the heart of a
great city. This little wildwood patch of
mine (I call it mine, though it was sliced
into lots, sold and mortgaged, long ago)
contains about four acres of low, moist land,
grown up to soft maples, birches, and alders.
A real country tangle of blackberry bushes,
buttonwood, and hardback covers the
ground, except where the alders grow along
the brook, and all the year round the birds
find in this snug covert shelter, food and
nesting-places. I can sit at my south win
dow, and, literally, look down into the pri
vate apartments of my feathered neighbors.
It is a rare opportunity for one who loves
to study birds — a privilege which more than
doubles the value of my property to me.

There is hardly a variety of the com
moner and more domesticated birds of the
69

Where Town and Country Meet

North Atlantic seaboard that does not fre
quent my swamp and sing under my win
dow. I have identified nearly every bird
given in Dr. Coues's tables as proper to
this locality, including some of the rarer
wood birds, which I supposed never ven
tured so near the outposts of a large city.
But I have learned that even the shyest
birds will come into our parks and suburbs
if we entice them with the proper natural
conditions. A bit of real wildwood any
where will bring them, but it must be real
wildwood, untrimmed and untraversed by
orderly paths, left just as it was when na
ture abandoned it, in her hasty departure
to a more congenial dwelling, carelessly
overturned, with odds and ends scattered
everywhere. The birds do not care how
close to our houses they come, so long as
we leave them their natural coverts. But
there are conservatives among them, who
will not be bamboozled by man's so-called
improvements upon nature. You could not
get such birds to build their nests in a
shaved and tonsured park, unless you spread
a net over it and imprisoned them there.
Fortunately, nobody has thought it worth
70

Birds from a Suburban Window

while to do anything to "improve" my
swamp. There it lies, in all its unkempt
wildness, drawing the birds from near and
far, for my own and my neighbors' delight.
There has even been some talk among us,
dwellers upon its borders, of buying out
for a song (as we might) the equities and
mortgages and other legal encumbrances
upon those swamp lots, and dedicating our
birds' paradise to nature in perpetuum. I
certainly hope we may some time feel rich
enough to do it.

From my suburban window I have
watched the comings and goings of the
birds now for four years. And there is
not a month in the year when I have not
been richly rewarded for the hours and
moments thus spent. Even in the dead of
winter the sheltered swamp has scarcely
for a single day been untenanted.

I recall, particularly, one very cold Sun
day in January, when there was a regular
flight of half-frozen and half-starved birds
into this cover. Early in the morning, be
fore it was fairly light, I heard the feeble
and disconsolate cawing of half a dozen
crows, from the southeast corner of the

Where Town and Country Meet

swamp. When I rose and looked out I saw
them huddled there, in two trees, as far
away from the cutting edge of the north
west wind as they could get. Every now
and then one or another of them would get
weakly upon the wing, fly a short distance
against the wind, and then return to his
perch — exercising, I suppose, to keep his
blood in circulation. It reminded me of a
cabman, walking to and fro at his stand, and
slapping his hands under his arms. These
crows staid in the grove most of the day,
utterly heedless of passers-by, and com
plained as distinctly as if in words of their
hunger and cold. Their distress was really
pitiful, but there seemed no way of reliev
ing it. In the latter part of the afternoon
the crows took their departure, a sad, sable
company, winging slowly southward.

The sun had not long been up, on this
bitter Sunday morning, when I saw two
hairy woodpeckers, blown or tossed, as it
were, into the swamp by the fierce north
west wind. They wheeled and alighted on
the trunks of two adjoining trees, where
the sun struck on the northeast side. Here,
somewhat protected from the wind, and
72

Birds from a Suburban Window

comforted by the slight warmth of the
sun, they clung, hugging the bark, for an
hour or more. I watched them closely, but
could not see that they made any move
ment whatever after alighting. Neither of
them once struck the tree with his bill. It
was evident that they were there simply
for shelter. I watched them until other ar
rivals diverted my attention. Several times
during the day I saw them in the swamp,
always occupying, or seeking, sheltered
spots on the trunks of the trees.

The next arrival was a blue jay, who
seemed to have more life in him, as he
flew rapidly from tree to tree, springing his
rattle and scolding vigorously. He kept up
his vituperative language for twenty min
utes or so, but finally, as if incensed at the
total apathy of the other birds, flew away,
to agitate elsewhere.

While the jay was still complaining, three
flickers arrived, conspicuous in flight be
cause of their size and their white rumps.
I heard one of them utter his sharp, mock
ing cry (so like a loon's laugh, on a small
scale), as they came dashing into the grove ;
but after they had alighted, at some little

73

Where Town and Country Meet

distance from one another, they kept per
fectly still. I saw one of them, a little
later, make a short flight through the cen
ter of the swamp; but after that I did not
get another glimpse of them. I think, very
likely, they spent some time silently perched
in the trees. The flicker is often very phil
osophical in this respect. He will sit at the
base of a limb and meditate like an owl for
a considerable time. But, if a human being
appears in the vicinity, he utters his note of
alarm and is off.

Besides the birds I have already men
tioned, some snow-buntings and a junco
visited the swamp, that cold Sunday morn
ing, and seemed to find it a comparatively
comfortable spot, remaining for an hour or
more.

Occasionally, during the winter, a tit
mouse busies himself about the edges of
the swamp, hunting for larvae in the bark,
or a purple finch, rarest of visitants, pauses
conspicuously on a bare limb, to debate
whether he will venture any further town-
ward. But the list of winter birds visible
from my window is necessarily small; and
it is not until about the middle of March

74

Birds from a Suburban Window

that my note-book begins to show many
entries devoted to my feathered neighbors.
But some morning in March, just after a
sugar-snow, perhaps, I wake with a thrill
of boyish delight, to hear the sweet, brave,
joyish cadenza of the song-sparrow, rising
from the buttonwood thicket on the other
side of the swamp. I get my field-glass
and search eagerly for the little singer. Ah,
there he is, a little grayish brown patch
among the whitened twigs. How he pours
out his jubilant soul, in tones as clear and
ringing as those of some elfin violinist!
One of the first comers of the bird-choir,
in this section, his cheery song marks, for
me, the real beginning of the bird-year, and
fills me with that ever-fresh, keen, almost
poignant longing, that comes to every na
ture-lover in the spring.

From that time on, my patch of wild-
wood begins to be a veritable bower of
song. Every morning announces some new
arrival, and there is a vivacious musical
hubbub under my window, that reminds me
of the reopening of a girls' school after
the long vacation. Comes robin; comes
scarlet-epauletted blackbird, choking with

75

Where Town and Country Meet

gossip in the alders. The bluebird pro
claims his return in the sweetest song of
all. Then the delicate trilling of the field-
sparrows and vesper-sparrows breaks into
the medley. Then, toward the last of April,
you hear the rich contralto of the brown
thrasher in the depths of the thickening
foliage. At last arrives the final section of
the bird-express, crowded with the gay
singers who make up the chorus — the wrens
and wood-thrushes, the various warblers,
the vireos, the orioles, the catbirds, the
whip-poor-wills, the bobolinks, the pewees,
the yellow-throats, the tanagers, the indigo-
birds, and so many others that one almost
despairs of keeping tally of them all.

Then what a pleasant place to sit, in the
lingering, delicious evenings of May and
June, is my study window, overlooking a
paradise of birds ! I lean back, as the soft,
fragrant breeze steals into the room, and
the feathered choir sings its vesper hymn,
and give myself up to the joy of the love of
nature. What a holy thing it is, this na
ture-love, what a pure, sweet, religious
thing ! You can not put it into a creed, or
even into a psalm; but it lifts you, some-
76

Birds from a Suburban Window

how, until you feel that you are very near
to God, and near to the heart of that which
gives joy to immortal beings. I believe we
shall never know, until it is revealed to us
in the other life, how much the birds — the
innocent, pure singers of the air — have done
to lift humanity above its baser instincts,
and make men more worthy to be called the
sons of God.

77

BIRD-SONGS INTERPRETED

WHEN the bird-choir is in full song, as it
is during May and June, it is interesting
and often perplexing to seek to unravel the
different phrases of melody, and distinguish
them one from another. The beginner in
bird-study will find this a more difficult task
than he imagines. He will be embarrassed
both by the confusion of tongues, the ver
itable Babel of songs, and by the fact that
there are such slight shades of difference
between the songs of several birds of allied
species. The songs of the various sparrows,
for instance, are much alike in general char
acter, and it takes an ear trained to details
to tell which is which. Add to these more
general causes of confusion the fact that
different individuals of the same bird fam
ily often have slight idiosyncrasies and vari
ations of songs, and the difficulty of identi
fying our multitudinous summer songsters
by their notes becomes trebled.

In my own endeavors to name birds from

78

Bird-Songs Interpreted

their songs, I have derived much help from
the somewhat whimsical translations that
have been made by naturalists of various
bird-songs into their corresponding English
phrases. For instance, after reading Mr.
Burroughs's charming description of the
oven-bird or golden-crowned thrush and its
song, I have never had the least difficulty
in naming it from that sweetly intense,
crescendo cry in the summer woods of
"Teacher, teacher, TEACHER !" as if the bird
were appealing with childish insistence to
some prim, unheeding preceptress of a
feathered school.

A boy once asked me : "What is that bird
that sings so much in the summer, and goes,
Rickety-rickety-rickety I"' I identified the
songster at once by the boy's literal render
ing of its phrase, as the Maryland yellow-
throat, and have ever since been unable to
translate its song into any other English
equivalent. So, if you should chance to
catch, some summer, a rapid proclamation
of weak-jointedness in bird language, you
may jot down in your note-book that you
have heard a Maryland yellow-throat.

The other morning I woke up at dawn

79

Where Town and Country Meet

and heard a robin's early carol. The song
presently adjusted itself in my drowsy
brain to an amusing but very expressive
and exactly imitative English jingle, as fol
lows:

"Amelia Chow-chow,
Amelia Chow-chow,
Pretty Amelia,
Pretty Amelia,
Pretty Amelia Chow-chow !"

Now and then the bird varied its song by
reversing the order of phrases. It would
cry with sweet, ringing resonance, "Chow-
chow!" Then there would be a pause, fol
lowed by "Amelia," or "Pretty Amelia."
But the song was always some combination
of the phrases I have named.

I have often tried to make English of the
impassioned, choking melody of the bobo
link, whose flute seems overfull of music, so
that the notes trip over each other's heels as
they rush out. But the bird's language is
too rapid for distinct enunciation in any
tongue. He is like a feathered Demos
thenes with pebbles in his mouth. But,
fortunately, there is no other strain like his
in all frirddom, so that it does not need
80

Bird-Songs Interpreted

translation in order that the bird-student
may know it.

The least flycatcher is another of our
wood-birds whose note there is no mistak
ing. Not much of a singer is he, to be sure,
with his dry, crisp, two-syllabled phrase.
But you may know him, so to speak, by his
destination, since all summer long he an
nounces, with a curiously positive futility,
that he is for Quebec, Quebec — a city he
will never see, since early in October he is
off for a climate very different from that of
Canada.

The red-winged blackbird has a very rich
and positive song, that is easily phrased.
There is a reedlike quality in it, resembling
the tone of a clarinet, and when the bird sits
in the fork of a swaying alder, in some rank
swamp, with his red shoulders flashing in
the sun, and cries, "A romp for me! A romp
for me!" you can not easily mistake his
identity. "But there is often such a chorus
of these gregarious and sociable birds that
the individual notes are quite lost track of,
and you can hear nothing but a rich con
fusion of sounds, like a disorderly assem
blage of contraltos.

6 81

Where Town and Country Meet

The Baltimore oriole has a fine, clear note,
but his song is of little variety. He sits in
an elm-tree, near his pendent nest, where
the hidden female broods her eggs, and re
peats, "Chuckie, chuckle, chuckle" all the
beautiful June day. One wishes those ex
quisite notes could be prolonged into a song
of greater extent and variety. Yet, even in
their persistent monotony they add an in
expressible charm to the soft, fragrant air
and blue skies of early summer.

Our night singer, the whip-poor-will, re
peats a phrase which no one can mistake. I
do not see how any one could imagine other
syllables for it than those which have given
the bird its name. Yet there are certain
elided or obscured syllables in the song that
are distinguishable only when the bird is
singing near at hand — rough breathings, as
it were, which, I find, many students of bird-
language have never heard at all. While
camping in the woods, I have often heard
the whip-poor-will break into song within a
few yards of my lean-to, and have marked
without difficulty the grace-notes in its song.
In its completeness, the whip-poor-will's lay
goes as follows: Whip (ah) -poor-will (ah).
82

Bird-Songs Interpreted

The whip and will are the two accented
notes of the song, and after each of them
the bird seems audibly to catch its breath
in a quick, aspirant ah. The effect, to one
who has never heard it before, is very pe
culiar and interesting.

The white-throated sparrow gets its com
mon name (Peabody bird) from its plain
reiteration of the syllables pea-bod-y. There
are also two slight, initial syllables in the
strain, which one writer on birds likens to
ee-ee, giving in all five syllables to the song
or phrase. The beginner will have little
trouble in naming this sparrow from its
note.

The first note of the bluebird's song cor
responds with the first syllable of its name,
a clear, smooth, open whistle, like b-lo-o-o.
Then there are two shorter syllables, like
al-ly. The song is of singularly sweet qual
ity, but meager. Indeed, many of the birds
which are- accounted our favorite songsters
have really very slight songs. It is the qual
ity rather than the quantity of their vocal
performance that gives them pre-eminence.

Different ears often hear differently, and
I would advise every beginner in bird-study

83

Where Town and Country Meet

to fix the songs of our common birds in his
mind by the English phrases which they
suggest to him rather than to another. It
is remarkable how these odd, often whim
sical, designations will stick in the mind,
and enable a person to recall a bird's name
long after he would otherwise have for
gotten it. This is a kind of mnemonic sys
tem peculiary suited to bird-study; and, in
addition to its usefulness, it affords not a
little entertainment to one who grows skilled
in the translation of bird-language into Eng
lish.

84

THE MUSIC OF BROOKS

THE birds and the brooks are the singers
in God's outdoor temple. Other things
praise God in other ways, — the flowers by
their beauty and fragrance, the trees by their
strength and shelter, the showers by their
refreshing and fructifying power, the winds
by their purifying and seed-scattering min
istries. But the birds and the brooks are
God's singers. This is their special service
and delight.

The birds and their music have had many
loving and sympathetic interpreters. But
it is of the more neglected music of the
brooks that I would ask leave to speak a few
words here.

When I go out into the woods in the
spring or early summer, one of the first
sounds I hear is the dashing or tinkling of
some happy brook; and it always seems to
me as if there were real musical tones, and
a song with living sweetness and meaning
in the sound. To many people, I know,

8s

Where Town and Country Meet

brook-music seems like an unintelligible,
confused babble and murmur, without the
character and distinctness of the songs of
birds. But I doubt if such people have ever
listened very long and intently to the music
of a brook. It is, in a certain sense, a more
classic music than that of birds, — less dis
tinctly phrased, and harder to interpret, but
of deep and significant meaning. Let us sit
down here on the bank, and listen for a few
minutes to the music of this small brook
that chatters over the stones.

Observe, first, how it does repeat, though
with delicate and subtle variations, a certain
musical phrase, — what you might call a
motive or refrain. This phrase is sometimes
prolonged for a minute or two, but it finally
completes itself, and, if you listen closely,
you will hear it beginning over again, run
ning its course with other variations than
before, perhaps, but, in the main, adhering
to its theme, and rounding out the same
musical phrase.

Now, to prove the correctness of my

theory, take two or three large stones, and

drop them into the water where it babbles

loudest, — upon the sounding-board of the

86

The Music of Brooks

brook, as it were. Sit down and listen again.
You will notice that you have changed the
music of the brook, that it is singing a new
phrase, somewhat uncertainly at first, but
gradually becoming definite and fixed, as
the stones settle in place, and the water
catches the keynote of the new obstruction.
How often I have tried this experiment, for
the sake of seeing how many different songs
there are in the heart of a brook! It re
minds me of the changed music of a life, —
a life that meets new obstructions, new fret-
tings, new trials, only to make a new song
out of them.

But you will notice, further, that the
tinkling brook has not only a rhythm, a
metrical phrase, but a melody, due to vari
ations of pitch. The notes run into each
other more confusingly than in the clearly
defined songs of birds; they have more of
the sliding-scale quality, and remind one of
the sweet, slurring, cascading tones of toy
trombones. But there is actual melody in
the music of the brook. It is a light-
hearted, careless, somewhat indefinite song,
like the extemporizing of a boy who whistles
with an overflowing heart, too riotously

Where Town and Country Meet

happy to be tied down to any conventional
music, be it hymn or jig. But it is a song ;
it has rhythm and changing pitch, and runs
its own liquid scale with sweet effect.

You will find a good many different
phrases in this music of water babbling over
stones as you go up or down the brook, but
it is all the same song, — a song of the most
distinct happiness and gratitude and light-
heartedness, a real child-song, like the sweet,
treble humming of a care-free boy or girl.
I think the Master of the temple must love
to hear this child-choir music. It must be
as dear to him as the happy voices of our
children to us.

But come now and listen to the music
of another brook, a larger brook, that goes
foaming down steep rocky stairways, in
mighty columns and rounding cataracts of
water. Its grand voice can be heard far
through the woods, like the roaring of a
great wind.

If the brook that tinkles over pebbles is
the treble among God's singers, this roaring
torrent in the bass. Or, if the former seems
like a delicate-stringed instrument, this is
the mighty organ. It is the grandest voice
88

The Music of Brooks

in nature's woodland worship, that which
gives it dignity and solemnity.

We shall find that we get very different
impressions from this brook-music as we
listen to it attentively. It is a magnificent
rushing or pouring together of many sounds
and meanings. The song of the smaller
brook was a melody. This song is a
crowded harmony, in which the tones are
so many and powerful and difficult to sepa
rate from one another as to produce almost
the effect of discord. It is like the tremen
dous blare of a church organ when all the
stops are out and all the banks locked to
gether and every great sub-bass pipe opened
wide. All these tones of Nature's organ
are in perfect harmony, but the blending of
their highest volumes almost confuses and
bewilders the ear.

Sit here on this bench of rock and listen
to the multitudinous voices of the mountain
brook, as it thunders from shelf to shelf.
At times we seem to hear the shouting of a
great company of men — deep, strong voices,
like those of a crowd cheering or maddened
with anger. Then we hear children calling
to one another, and almost expect to see a

Where Town and Country Meet

merry group of them climbing the ravine.
Again, there will be a sound of wailing and
sobbing in the rush of the stream. But
above all and through all there comes to our
ears the sound as of a lofty, triumphant
chant, a Gloria in Excelsis pealing through
cathedral windows.

This is the most impressive music of
God's outer temple — this grand unison of
the great choir and the great organ. As
often as I hear it I feel anew that Nature
is no less worshipful than man; that there
is a strong religious element in the world
of material things, not dependent upon
man's perception and interpretation, but
vital, independent, and self-sustaining. Na
ture is not only the temple of the divine,
but her own conscious spirit worships
therein, and joins with the spirit of man in
uplifting the voice of praise and thanks
giving to the Father of all.

90

A CUP IN THE HILLS

"THE Giant's Cup" is a crystal pond
about half-way up the side of Saltash Moun
tain. The mountain is the giant, and he
carries his cup at his belt, with a marvelous
dexterity in keeping it always full and never
spilling it over. There are about five acres
of water in the pond (country people always
measure water as well as land by the acre),
and those five liquid acres are "planted,"
not with oats or corn or barley, but with
trout — red-spotted, lusty, toothsome brook
trout, grown to enormous size in the clear,
pure, wholesome waters of the "Cup,"
where an abundance of food comes to them
from the "leaching out" of the shores and
the falling to pieces in the water of decayed
and wormy logs. Ten years ago there was
not a trout in the Giant's Cup, but some
enterprising fishermen in a neighboring vil
lage leased the water and stocked it with
fingerlings; and since then its fame as a
fishing ground has spread far and wide, and

Where Town and Country Meet

greatly esteemed is the privilege of dropping
line and hook in its crystal depths for a day.

I shall never forget a certain June day
spent on the pond with one of the village
fishermen and his thirteen-year-old boy.
The boy was always taken along by his
father as a "mascot," and so thoroughly
established was the old fisherman's faith
in what he called "boy luck," that he told
me he would "almost as soon think of going
without bait as without Ned."

We started before daylight from the vil
lage as, according to time-honored tradition,
one "must get to fishing at sunrise if you
are going to catch them when they are bit
ing." This same strenuous philosophy
seems to extend to all enterprises in the
country, and is, I doubt not, one of the
thorns of the "terrible conscience for labor,"
which a writer ascribes to New Englanders.
That there is any intrinsic value in the day
break philosophy I am inclined to doubt,
however ; for, according to my observation,
there is more nerve-energy lost between the
first peep of day and a reasonable breakfast
hour than is ever regained in practical re
sults.

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A Cup in the Hills

We had breakfast by candle-light, never
theless, and rattled out of the village in my
host's Concord buggy at four o'clock A. M.
by my watch. A seven-mile climb up the
mountain road, during which I alternately
admired and pitied the muscular power and
endurance of our horse, brought us to the
Giant's Cup ; and at half-past five we pushed
the old flat-bottomed boat out from shore
and dropped our lines into the pond.

The sun was just coming up over the
glistening woods, and the birds were in full
song. It seemed to me that I had never
heard such a heavenly chorus of praise
going up to God. My rod lay across my
lap, my forefinger "stopping" the line just
above the reel, mechanically awaiting the
tremor which announces that a fish is nos
ing and nibbling the bait, preparatory to
the twanging bite that sets every angler's
nerves a-tingle. But for a time I forgot that
I was fishing. My heart and soul were not
in it, but caught up with the glorious morn
ing hymn of the birds. On one side of the
pond a hermit thrush was pouring out that
inexpressible song whose notes can be lik
ened only to a combination of the violin and

93

Where Town and Country Meet

flute tones — the purity and sweetness of the
one united with the smoothness and richness
of the other. Nearer at hand a brown
thrush was lifting up his less ethereal but
more vivacious and buoyant song, and close
beside him, like a kind of choir-master, a
chewink beat time for all the singers with
his clear, precise double note. A couple of
vireos back in the woods were bidding each
other a loving good morning; a robin (for
there is plenty of robins in the New Eng
land backwoods) was trilling his idyllic
matins from a birch top; and a song spar
row, like a piccolo player, pierced the chorus
through and through with his fine, shrill
cadenzas. Then there were the innumer
able songsters in the background, whose
notes could not be distinguished in the rich
medley — a whole company of trained and
sympathetic accompanists, like the finest
orchestra in the world. Ah ! it was enough
to make one forget even the rare delights
of trout-fishing in a mountain pond girdled
with primeval woods. It was something
worth getting up at three o'clock and rid
ing seven miles through the damp woods to
hear. To me it was ample compensation
94

A Cup in the Hills

for the fact that not a trout nibbled our bait
until broad nine o'clock in the forenoon.

Now be it understood that trout fishing
in a pond is by no means the same thing
as trout fishing in running water. A trout
conforms to his surroundings in many re
spects — coloring, for instance, and motion.
In dark colored water a trout is dark
skinned. In clear water he is paler, more
golden in hue. In quick water a trout is
quick of movement, impulsive, darting. In
continuously still water he grows sluggish,
leisurely, deliberative. Whereas a brook
trout in his native element is the quickest
of all fish to seize a bait, if he is going to
bite at all, in still water he becomes the most
tardy and conservative of the finny tribe.
My host told me that he had sometimes sat
from five o'clock in the morning until five
o'clock in the evening in his boat on the
pond, and then got his first bite, after which
he landed 'eight big trout in succession. So
the reader will see that for a test of the
fisherman's proverbial patience nothing
quite equals pond fishing for brook trout.

We waited, as I said, until nine o'clock
for our first bite ; and then the boy, the mas-

95

Where Town and Country Meet

cot, suddenly caught up his rod, which had
been resting upon the side of the boat, and
"snubbed," as the local fishermen say, with
all his might. Instantly the slender tip of
the rod bent in crescent shape, and the line
began traveling back and forth through the
water with that tremulous, erratic motion
which proclaims to the experienced fisher
man that a big fellow has the hook firmly
bedded in his mouth.

"Pa!" cried the boy. It was the only
word spoken. The veteran calmly drew in
his line and laid his rod across the thwarts.
Then he picked up the landing-net and stood
waiting to see on which side the struggling
trout would consent to be brought up to
the boat. The boy was a cool-headed little
chap, and he played his fish well. Several
times he checked a rush for an adjacent
snag, and once his reel sang out merrily,
as he gave the big trout line enough for a
slanting plunge straight down to the bot
tom. Then, inch by inch, he coaxed his fish
nearer the boat, tiring him out meanwhile,
until we could all see the broad-backed cap
tive sailing near the surface, and now and
then making a feeble effort to dive under
96

A Cup in the Hills

the boat. Suddenly the old fisherman
dipped the landing-net, pushed it under the
trout, and brought him up flopping in the
meshes. A moment later he lay shining
at our feet — a three-pounder and a "jim-
dandy," as the veteran said. Whereat the
boy's face shone like a polished apple, and
he went to pinning a fresh worm on his
hook.

So the sweet, still summer day slipped
by — and we got that one big trout only!
But how richly were we all satisfied! — the
boy because he had caught a "jim-dandy;"
the veteran because his faith in boy-luck
had been vindicated, and by his own boy,
too; and I because I had been all day close
to the heart of nature, had heard the birds
sing, had watched the sun building his
grand arch over the wilderness undimmed
by smoke, had drunk in peace to my soul
and health to my body, and basked in the
stillness where God delights to speak.

We rattled homeward at a lively pace
down the mountain road, the sure-footed
horse having little to do but guide the buggy
and keep the jerking shafts from picking
him up bodily. The boy nestled between

7 97

Where Town and Country Meet

us on the wagon seat, with a far-away look
in his eyes, which sprang, no doubt, from
wondering what his mother would have for
supper. Albeit we had enjoyed an excellent
lunch on the "Cup," my own appetite made
me a sympathetic interpreter of the lad's
silence. The veteran smoked his pipe, drove
with a sure hand, and talked exhaustively
and discerningly of fishing.

"But I do n't know what I shall do when
my boy wears out," he declared at last, pa
thetically. "He 's coming up pretty fast,
and in four or five years won't be worth a
shuck to fish — no more than I be."

Whereupon the boy grinned and thrust
his elbow into the veteran's ribs. "O, pa !"
he cried. And the old man winked at me
over the tattered straw hat that bobbed be
tween us.

IN THE HEART OF THE PINES

WHY is it that one who goes to the woods
in summer almost invariably seeks out the
pines, if there be any in the vicinity, and
enjoys his stroll or his siesta under their
shade, rather than beneath the canopy of
the deciduous trees? There are several ex
cellent reasons for this preference, I think.
The first is, that the pine woods are un
doubtedly cooler in summer than other
woods. Their shade is more profound and
unbroken. The air has a freer circulation
through their lofty and open aisles. Then,
too, the pine is an upland tree, growing by
preference on high or rising ground where
there is naturally more air stirring. Inci
dental to .the greater coolness and better
circulation of the pine woods is their com
parative freedom from insect pests. This is
no slight advantage from the rambler's
standpoint. Again, there is that delicious
aromatic fragrance of the pines, so espe
cially noticeable in hot weather, when the

99

Where Town and Country Meet

resinous juices of the tree ooze out and
trickle down the bark in threads as pellucid
as amber — a fragrance not only grateful to
the sense and full of pleasant associations,
but wholesome and medicinal in the highest
degree. Furthermore, the open character
of the ground in a pine woods is a constant
delight to the rambler. His feet tread upon
a smooth, springy carpet of pine needles,
free from undergrowth, and his eye takes
in wide perspectives of woodland beauty,
ranging down the solemn and stately aisles
of tree-trunks. And who is insensible to
the charm of that exquisite seolian music
of the wind in the pine-branches ? — a music
unequaled by any other forest sound, save,
perhaps, the noble hymn of falling water.
Last, but not least, the pine groves are the
favorite haunts of our woodland songsters
during the summer, and there we may con
fidently expect to see and hear most of the
rarer varieties of wild birds in any vicinity
during a day of quiet observation.

On many accounts, then, the pines are

the ideal summer woods; and the writer

has been well pleased to observe that, in

many localities, especially in New Eng-

100

In the Heart of the Pines

land, these trees are being spared when all
the other trees about them are relentlessly
laid low. In the suburbs about Boston,
for instance, where the nature of the soil
is favorable to pines, you will see scat
tered groves of these dark-foliaged trees
crowning the hill-tops, rising majestically
above the second-growth of oak and birch
clearings, and even shadowing the roofs
of handsome out-of-town residences. The
pines have been spared — and always will
be spared in the residential sections, I
hope — because of their healthfulness and
beauty, the charm of their wind-music, and
the coolness which their shade affords dur
ing the summer months.

But to enjoy a pine woods fully you
must get away from the suburban sec
tions, from the vicinity of cities, to the
real country, where you can find woods
that lie deep and extensive — forests rather
than groves. You must get into the heart
of the aromatic pine wilderness, and spend
a day with its ancient and rightful propri
etors—the birds and squirrels. The best
point of observation will be a knoll or bank,
where you can recline at ease, somewhat
101

Where Town and Country Meet

above the general level, with the branches
of the trees below you nearly on the same
plane with your eyes.

One of the first things you will notice,
perhaps, is the summer nest of the red
squirrel — a large, loosely built structure of
twigs and leaves, among the uppermost
branches of one of our pines. It is nearly
as large as a half-bushel basket, and there
is no attempt whatever at concealment.
In this matter of residence our little friend
chickaree is surely an aristocrat, for he has
both his summer house and his winter
house. This shapeless, loosely woven struc
ture of twigs and leaves is his summer
home — cool and ample; and here he raises
his children and cares for them until they
are old enough to scamper and forage for
themselves. Then, in the fall, the whole
family retires to its snugger winter resi
dence, a hollow tree, where the winter's
provender is laid by in a safe and conven
ient storehouse. At this season of the year
the young are probably hidden away in the
depths of that wic£er-work nest in the pine-
top. Chickaree himself you will no doubt
see and hear, as he sits on a neighboring

102

In the Heart of the Pines

limb scolding you and flirting his tail as he
scolds. But he does not seem very much
alarmed, for it is rarely indeed that any
human being disturbs the red squirrel's
summer residence. Most of the boys sup
pose them to be deserted crows' nests — at
least that was the theory in my boyhood
days — and no one but a boy would care to
investigate the odd clump in the pine-top.
Here comes a little bird that is a great
lover of the pine woods — one of our sweet
est and shyest woodland singers. You al
most need a glass to see him, he is so small
and so incessantly active ; but once get your
eye on him, and you will not forget him,
with his trim shape and pretty marking.
This is the black-throated green warbler
(why can't the ornithologists give him, and
some others of his family, a less involved
and less complicated name?), and if you will
keep perfectly quiet for a few minutes you
will probably hear his sweet, thin, and, it
must be confessed, rather vague and char
acterless song. The shy, restless, and ever-
vanishing little fellow seems like some spirit
of the woods wandering through the
branches of the dark old pines.
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Where Town and Country Meet

Strange as it may seem to those of us
who have learned to think of it as a
domesticated, house-loving bird, the phoebe
is also a familiar inhabitant of the deep
pine woods. The phoebe that builds in
outhouses and under bridges is a corrupted
member of the family, who, like the chim
ney-swift, has been enticed from the ways
of its kind by the seductions of civilization.
The original phoebe is a dweller in the
deepest woods, and there you may still hear
his sweet, plaintive song amid the sound oi
falling water and the soughing of pines.
There is no difference in the physical char
acteristics of the two birds. The only dif
ference is a change of habitat on the part of
the semi-domesticated bird.

That ringing, bell-like song, which al
ways seems to come from a distance, no
matter how near the singer may be, is the
song of the veery. How appropriate to
the "dim religious light" in these solemn
aisles of God's woodland temple! Nearer
at hand, a Maryland yellow-throat is cry
ing, "Trickery, trickery, trickery!" perhaps
over some cuckoo's sly deposit of a found-
104

In the Heart of the Pines

ling egg in the yellow-throat's nest during
the latter's temporary absence.

The black-capped titmouse is still lisping
among the pines — lisping much the same
modest little song that you might have
heard there in January and February, a
monotonous, but sweet, "day-day-day," with
an occasional vivacious variation, as if sud
denly waking from a revery or breaking
into bird-laughter — "chick-a-dee-dee-dee-
dee." It is pleasant to find one of our na
tive songsters which not only stays with us
all the year round, but sings almost the
same song summer and winter. I, for one,
would rather have such modest optimism
all the time, in all weathers and through all
vicissitudes, than ecstatic rapture only when
the sun shines and the winds are soft and
balmy. Chickadee is the consistent Chris
tian among birds ; and if there is any bird-
hereafter, he will surely have his reward.

Do you hear that far-off, throbbing,
drumming sound, that begins with three
or four slow, heavy beats, and then grad
ually increases in rapidity, until its stac
cato almost confuses the ear? That is the

Where Town and Country Meet

drumming of the ruffed grouse, the prince
of the pine woods. He produces the sound
by beating his wings against his inflated
breast, and it is at once a lover's summons
and a challenge — a summons to the hen
grouse, and a challenge to any rival cock
who may be in the vicinity. It is one of
the mysterious sounds of the woods, and
you may hear it from April until mid-
August, which represents the duration of
the breeding season. Was it not Thoreau
who said that no country would seem natu
ral to him without the drumming of the
ruffed grouse ?

Ah! the spell of the deep pine woods —
those etherealized bird songs, never so sweet
and spiritual, it would seem, elsewhere;
the inexpressible, soft, moving music of the
pine-needles themselves in the passing
breeze; the silence that sometimes falls, so
deep and sacred and solemn ; the holy gloom
like that of some vast cathedral; the resin
ous fragrance rich as incense; the smooth,
odorous couch and carpet of brown needles ;
the far-reaching vistas down a hundred
aisles of stately columns! Beautiful and
holy are the pine woods in summer — verily
106

In the Heart of the Pines

a temple fit for the presence of God and for
the soul's communion with him. Let the
nature-lover tread these silent aisles with
reverence, believing that if his heart and
soul are open to the voices of the wilder
ness, they shall bring him some whisper of
that Beneficent Presence who is over all and
in all and throughout all his marvelous cre
ation.

107

MIDSUMMER NIGHT SOUNDS

WHO that loves nature does not find joy
in her amazing vitality and fecundity, her
absolute unconquerableness ? How mysteri
ously and potently she survives, in spite of
the destructive encroachments of man!
How she springs up about his very heels the
moment he turns from trampling on her,
and returns good for evil by covering his
unsightly pathway with the mantle of her
ancient beauty! She follows him back to
his city walls with her luxuriant verdure,
her bird-songs, her inextinguishable wild
life of every kind. Such tenacity of exist
ence! Such cheerful, hopeful, undismayed
clinging to the primal gift of God ! It gives
one fresh courage for all good things, to see
how nature triumphs over every abuse.

In midsummer, especially, the strong vi
tality and enormous fecundity of wild life
reveal themselves on every hand. How rank
the vegetation, how abundant the evidences
of animal and insect life everywhere ! You
108

Midsummer Night Sounds

may live within sound of the bells of a great
city, and yet find yourself fairly submerged
in the midsummer flood-tide of nature.
Brambles and vines and weeds and wild
growths of every kind will riot over your
premises unless you fight them constantly;
four-footed creatures will steal your garden
vegetables and your chickens; and real
country birds will wake you in the morn
ing with as loud and glad a chorus as you
can hear at the end of a mountain road.
I take heart of hope in all this, for it as
sures me that, if I should live to be a hun
dred, I shall not see nature stamped out,
even within the bounds of our most aggress
ive civilization. Massachusetts, the statis
ticians tell us, is the most densely populated
State of the Union, with the single excep
tion of her little New England sister, Rhode
Island. And yet, in the most populous cor
ner of Massachusetts, within ten miles of
the metropolis of Boston, there is an annual
revival of nature that is positively amazing.
I could take the reader to at least a dozen
spots, from all of which the city of Boston
is plainly visible, where, if you do not take
advantage of the highest view-point, you
109

Where Town and Country Meet

might easily be persuaded that you were in
one of the wildest corners of the Maine
woods. Tangles without end, swamps,
beetling rocks, groves of stately pines, rare
birds, unpicked berries, solemn silence, not
a roof anywhere to be seen — these are the
abundant evidences of how nature can hold
her own in the vicinity of not less than a
million human beings.

But, best of all, take some still, hot sum
mer night, and listen for the voices that
prove the unconquerableness of nature, even
on the outskirts of a great city. How
many mysterious sounds float up to your
open window — sounds made by wild crea
tures whose names you do not know, and
whose presence you never suspected!

Have you never been startled, on a hot,
breathless July or August night, by a scream
so loud and harsh and angry in tone that
your fancy flew at once to the panther
stories that delighted your youth, and you
were ready to believe that there was actu
ally a prowling cougar in the swamp be
yond the road? I have heard this wilder
ness-cry in the same moment with a Boston
fire-alarm, and strangely mingling with it.

Midsummer Night Sounds

What was it — that sound so like the angry,
petulant scream of a heat-vexed, half-sick
child ? It was only a tree-toad's night cry,
rough, harsh, and penetrating. You will
seldom hear the sound except on a hot sum
mer night; but once heard, you can never
forget it. I know of nothing quite so harsh
and disagreeable among all the voices of the
wild creatures. It makes a heavy, sultry
summer night seem all the more unendur
able.

Perhaps there comes up to your window,
on some warm midsummer night, a thin,
quavering, plaintive, long-drawn whimper.
"What is that?" you ask. That is the cry
of the predatory skunk. You will hear it
in any locality where there is a hen-roost.
That short-legged night-thief is on his cus
tomary rounds, and the chances are that he
will pounce upon somebody's pet chicken
before morning. Why he should announce
his coming by that tremulous cry I do not
know ; but it is certainly a sweet and melan
choly night-sound. There is something al
most winningly pathetic about it.

The raccoon has a similar night-cry, only
louder and not quite so tremulous. You

ni

Where Town and Country Meet

may hear it often when the corn is milky
in the ear, and the "coons" steal out to
gnaw and trample down the cornstalks, that
they may get at the sweet young kernels in
the husk. The coon-hunt by moonlight,
with a good dog or two, is to the Northern
boy what the 'possum-hunt of song and
story is to his cousin of the South. How
often have I lain, with my companions,
in the warm sand bordering the cornfield,
waiting with dogs in leash until we heard
the rustling of coons in the corn, and that
clear, whistling cry that floats so far over
silent field and woodland. Then a wild rush
up the edge of the corn, a crashing and
clamor of dogs among the stalks, and in a
few minutes we have the coons up a tree,
where we can shoot them at our leisure.

Among the most mysterious sounds of
a summer night is the "booming" of the
night hawk. From far up in the sky a sud
den hollow, rushing sound is heard, continu
ing, perhaps, for a couple of seconds, and
then ceasing as abruptly as it began. This
sound is produced by the night hawk diving
from his lofty poise among the clouds. So
like an arrow does he drop, for hundreds of

112

Midsummer Night Sounds

feet, that the air rushing beneath his hol
lowed wings makes a long, booming sound
like the echo of a cannon's report among
the hills. Again and again have I heard
the night hawks diving in the dusk over the
roofs and steeples of Boston, while I have
been sitting at my open window of a sum
mer evening. This diving and mounting
again, I am inclined to think, is a gyration
of pure physical pleasure, a part of the gen
eral playfulness of nature's wild creatures.
The booming is a pleasant sound echoing
through the hushed air of summer twilight ;
and no doubt many who have never under
stood its cause have listened to it with de
light.

The bittern's ah-unk, ah-unk, is still an
other mysterious and agreeable sound of
midsummer evening. It is like the sound
made by the handle of an old-fashioned
wooden pump, or the blows of an ax driv
ing a stake in the swamp — hence the com
mon name of the bird, "stake-driver."
There are hundreds of bitterns in the
swamps about Canton and Sudbury, just
out of Boston. They are large birds, with
an immense spread of wing, and fairly

8 113

Where Town and Country Meet

startle you when they flop up, clumsily, just
ahead of you, as you are skirting the
marshes.

Both the woodcock and the English snipe,
or Wilson's snipe, have a delicate, mysteri
ous, and beautiful song with which they
accompany their evening flights in spring
and summer. You may hear it often above
the marshes when you can not see the birds
aloft in the twilight. It is a tremulous song,
on a sliding scale from high to low, very
plaintive, tender, and sweet. Indeed, most
of these night songs and sounds have a
plaintive quality and are pitched in a minor
key — very befitting the hour and the associ
ations, it would seem. Many of them are
wholly mysterious, even to those who have
heard them season after season. But for
that very reason, perhaps, they are all the
more affecting and charming. For I am
thoroughly in sympathy with those who
think that too much exact knowledge takes
something of the romance and poetry out
of our acquaintance with nature. There
must be a certain indefiniteness, a certain
hazy quality, in our knowledge of the outer
world — we must not, in a word, know na-
114

Midsummer Night Sounds

ture too well — or we shall miss that elusive
charm which pervades the poetry of Words
worth, for instance. I am not sure but that
we should be more appreciative nature-
lovers if we did not feel obliged to identify
and mentally catalogue every creature and
plant we see and every song or cry we hear.
However, modern nature-study is nothing
if not exact, and if any old-fashioned rhap-
sodist makes a mistake of fact, he may be
pretty sure of getting snapped up before
his words are cold.

There are other night sounds, peculiarly
characteristic of summer, which I should
like to describe, if I could ramble on thus
indefinitely — the loon's wild laughter, for
instance, the fox's sharp bark, easily dis
tinguishable from the shrillest yelp of a dog,
the many odd sounds made by frogs on a
summer night, and the varied hooting of the
owls. But my disconnected chapter is al
ready too long, and I must wait for another
occasion to renew the subject.

COUNTRY ROADS IN AUGUST

a country road, because it is free
as the air, or as navigable waters, to all of
us. You may wander along it all day, with
no danger of being confronted by a tres
pass sign, or ordered out of the grass by
an irate farmer. It is everybody's manor,
everybody's shrubbery and aviary — better
than the fields, too, for plants and birds,
because free to them in the same sense that
it is free to the rambler and the gipsy. The
wild growths of the fields creep under the
fences into the country roads for protection
from the plow, the scythe, and the hoe.
There they are safe, like helpless women
and children who have fled from massacre
to the walls of a bristling town.

In August especially the luxuriance and
tangled beauty of the country road afford
a striking and grateful contrast to the
shorn desolation or nibbled barrenness of
the meadows and pastures on either side.
All the native plants, sheltered and un-
116

Country Roads in August

molested, crowd together in rustling masses
between the roadway and the fence. Rank
and tufted, they toss their plumed heads in
the breeze, grateful that they have been
spared to ripen their fruits and mature their
seeds. Even the fences themselves are over
run with vines, upon which the fruits or
berries already hang in ripening clusters.
Yes, everybody's farm is dear to nature;
and there she gathers, every summer, her
broods of vagabond children, marching
them in long lines of beauty up hill and
down dale, across counties, States, and con
tinents.

In this procession, or rather by its side,
I also love to march during the warm, redo
lent August days, when you can fairly taste
the innocent wild wines in odors of ripen
ing berries, and feel nature's exultation and
delight in emanations from bourgeoning
fruit and pod. Verily, I believe that many
of our most beautiful and familiar native
growths of field and meadow would stand
a fair chance of being exterminated, were
it not for the refuge they find in the coun
try road. Golden-rod, the gentians, elder
berries, tansy, milkweed, primroses, cara-
117

Where Town and Country Meet

way — how they are harried out by the
farmer and driven to cover, as it were, along
the sheltering banks of the roadside! It
pleases me to see how well they are en
abled to hold their own in these strong
holds of the nomads, spite of scythe and
hoe and fire. Something must be left for
beauty's sake, O ye utilitarians! Let us
not sacrifice all to the prose of gain.

A charming expedition for a nature-
lover is to start out very early of an Au
gust morning, before the dew is off the
grass or leaves, and strike into some little-
traveled country road for a day of quiet
exploration and nature study. Take a field-
glass for the birds, and a small haversack
for luncheon and unknown botanical speci
mens. Make no haste, but stop to rest in
the grateful shade as often as your blood
gets heated or your legs weary.

How fresh and cool and fragrant is this
country air in the early morning, while still
saturated with moisture and loaded with the
earthy and vegetable odors which it has
absorbed during the night! Whenever I
feel that I am growing old, I bestir myself
early of a summer morning, and tramp out
118

Country Roads in August

along some woods-edge, where the dew ; is
glistening on the leaves and the brakes hang
heavy and damp over black loam. Then
comes up that magical, entrancing morning
odor of the woods into my nostrils, and,
presto ! I am a boy again, with alder pole in
hand, starting forth to fish the trout-brook
in yonder hollow. That delicious matutinal
woods-odor is the same the world over ; and
you may sate your soul and sense with it,
if you are early enough, along any country
road in August. There is something about
it, I am convinced — even for those in whom
it does not rouse old memories — that is
tonic, rejuvenating, freshening. It is a fluid
elixir of life. You feel, as you breathe it,
good for a hundred-mile tramp, and you
vaguely fear lest the country road shall
dwindle into a squirrel track and run up a
tree long before you are ready to turn
around and come back.

Kven yet, so late in the season as Au
gust, you will find some birds singing along
the country road, especially in the early
morning. There is a peculiar charm about
looking and listening for August birds — be
cause each lingering songster counts for so
119

Where Town and Country Meet

much. The same kind of charm it is that
one finds in looking for flowers under the
snow, or second-crop raspberries in October.
We may call it the charm of the unexpected.

What a delight, for instance, to hear, as
I have heard, the silvery cadenza of a song
sparrow along a country road, late in Au
gust ! How springlike it sounds ! How it
carries you back to the morning of the year !
And then the matins of the robin — that
familiar warble that you hear so constantly
in the spring — how refreshing to listen once
more to the cheery strain, just before robin
redbreast starts on his Southern pilgrimage !

You will find several of the denizens of
the deep woods still in full song — the
thrushes, brown and hermit, the chewink,
the Maryland yellow-throat, two or three
of the vireos, the cuckoo, and the yellow-
hammer. The last two are not distinctly
singers, but their harsher notes are so as
sociated with the woods and upland pas
tures that, to my ear, they have a sweetness
and significance not surpassed by the most
perfect bird-melody.

But the characteristic August bird — the

120

Country Roads in August

one you can hardly think of without asso
ciating him with yellow grainfields and
thistledown and katydids and locusts — is
the little goldfinch, or "yellow-bird." What
flocks of them you will startle into flight
along any tangled country road in August !
Away they go, billowing above the fields,
with that peculiar undulatory flight of theirs
— brilliant black and yellow males, and
sober, greenish-black and yellow females —
singing as they rise and fall on the air with
a cheery chirp that one can never forget
who has once heard it. I always have the
"August feeling" when I hear a goldfinch —
the feeling that summer is almost gone, that
autumn is at the gate, with its harvest-
crowned days and golden, moonlit nights,
and winter only a little way behind, veiled
in whirling snow and sealing the streams
with its icy scepter.

As the goldfinch is the characteristic bird
of August, so the golden-rod is the charac
teristic flower. And how the roadsides
gleam with its barbaric plumes! There is
a splendor, an Oriental richness, about the
golden-rod that is equaled by no other
121

Where Town and Country Meet

flower. It reminds one of the fringes and
tassels of Eastern hangings. How appro
priate its color for the days of blazing suns
and ripening harvests! And then what a
fine foil we have for the yellows of golden-
rod, tansy, and primrose, in the rich purples
of the gentians and ripened elderberries, the
purplish-blue of the wild grapes, and the
pinks of thistle and hardhack !

Ah ! the subtle flavor of those wild grapes
that hide in the shadow of matted vines
along the country road! At home they
would seem sour and astringent, no doubt,
but how they pique and delight the palate
of the thirsty rambler as he plucks and eats
them fresh from the roadside vine! The
bursting elderberries, too, distill what genial
juices, what wholesome new wines, for the
roadside pilgrim!

Happy is he who, with single heart and
soul at peace with God and man, can spend
a whole sunny day in the joy of rambling.
How much to delight him, how much to in
struct him, in the quiet, suggestive ways of
nature ! All that he learns that day will be
at first hand, out of the earliest book ever

122

Country Roads in August

written, and all that he feels will be quick
and fresh from the indwelling heart of Di
vine Love. Nature is a book that all of us
may read, or at least dip into, with infinite
profit. And not the least interesting of her
pages, I think, are those which one may find
scattered along the country roadsides when
the chapter of summer approaches its -finis.

123

A DOORSTEP SINGER

AivMOST every pleasant summer night, as
a boy, I used to hear the mournful but
sweet and tender songs of the whip-poor-
wills from the wooded slopes around my
native town. I learned to love the sound
and to listen for it; and when I left home,
as a young man, and went to the city to
work, one of the things I missed most was
the plaintive lullaby of these singers in the
night. Kven now, if I chance to hear the
note of the whip-poor-will in an alien place,
a feeling of the most intense longing and
homesickness comes over me, and it seems
as if I would give the world just to be back
in my boyhood's attic chamber, watching
the moonlight on the bare, rough walls, and
listening to that voice from the hemlock
hill.

But it was not always at a distance that
I heard the whip-poor-wills in my boyhood
days — or nights, rather. There used to be
124

A Doorstep Singer

one of them, at least, that was far more
neighborly. He would come and sit on the
stone step at the back of the house, and sing
there pretty much all night. Occasionally,
one of the family would get up and try to
drive him away, but in a few minutes he
would be back again, "whipping" as loudly
as ever. Mother used to call him "our
doorstep singer." It was rather disturb
ing, at first, his notes were so loud and pene
trating; but we got used to our little mu
sician after a while, and slept through his
concerts quite unconcernedly. Since then
I have heard of a good many instances of
whip-poor-wills coming to sing on the door
steps of farmhouses. The broad stone step
so often found before the doors of country
houses seems to be a favorite concert-plat
form with this mysterious bird. And how
his loud, whiplike note does ring through
the house on a summer night, when he sets
up his song !

I often used to creep to the window in
the hallway outside my chamber, on moon
light nights, and look down at the little
singer on the doorstep. He seemed like a
mere patch of shadow, as he hugged the

125

Where Town and Country Meet

stone, in his coat of fluffy dull black and
soiled white. He did not stir when he ut
tered his long-drawn note, and I used to
wonder how he could make so much noise
with so little apparent effort. The song was
peculiar, heard so near at hand. There were
two or three guttural or aspirant notes in
it, a kind of gasping or gulping sound, en
tirely unnoticeable when the bird is heard
at a distance. The "whip" and "will" were
real whip-strokes of sound, with a lash and
snap to them that fairly cut the air.

Now and then, in a spirit of boyish mis
chief, I would throw something down at the
bird when he was in the midst of his song,
and it was astonishing and amusing to ob
serve how suddenly and abruptly he would
stop and would dart away before the missile
reached the stone where he sat. I used to
hear others of the family laughing when,
with a half-finished "whip" or "whip-poo,"
the ringing song would stop, like a violin
note when the string breaks.

I must confess that the note of the whip-
poor-will heard close at hand is rather harsh
and disagreeable. It is much more romantic
to listen to the song of this bird when it
126

A Doorstep Singer

comes from the woods a quarter of a mile
away.

Though I roamed the woods a good deal
as a lad, and whip-poor-wills were very
plenty in our vicinity, I never discovered
more than one of their nests, and, doubtless,
would not have found that, if the mother
bird had not darted away from under my
very feet, just in time to prevent my step
ping on her. The nest was a mere hollow
in the leaf-mold of a beech thicket on a
hillside. There was no pretense at nest-
building. The clouded, faintly blotched
eggs, two in number, lay on the bare ground
in the shallow depression made by the
mother bird. I did not touch them, but
hastened away, lest they should grow cold
before the mother ventured to return.

Once I found a dead whip-poor-will in
the woods — shot, probably, by some sports
man who mistook it for a woodcock, as the
flight of these two birds, when disturbed,
is very similar. I was glad of the oppor
tunity to examine the bird minutely, for I
had never seen one closer than our doorstep
singer. The whip-poor-will is one of the
oddest looking of birds — a sort of ragged
127

Where Town and Country Meet

minstrel of the bird-world, mottled all over
with indistinct neutral colors, reddish
brown, grayish black, and dirty white. The
most distinct feature of its plumage is the
white collar that crosses its neck in front.
The mouth is surrounded with hairy bris
tles, which aid the bird in catching and re
taining its insect food. The eyes are very
large and beautiful, as is the case with all
nocturnal birds. The claws are short and
"stubby," and not fitted for perching. A
poet once wrote some beautiful verses on
"The Whip-poor-will," but the editor to
whom he sent them, being somewhat of a
naturalist, returned them with the criticism
that he could not allow the whip-poor-will
to "sway upon a bough" in his magazine,
since the bird never did such a thing in a
state of nature. As a matter of fact, while
the whip-poor-will never does "perch" in
the proper sense of that term, it does some
times alight on fences and large boughs
whose surface is broad enough for the bird
to stand upon without grasping.

I was surprised, on taking the dead whip-
poor-will in hand, to see how large it was.
I carried it home and measured it. Its total
128

A Doorstep Singer

length, from the tip of the bill to the tip of
the tail, was ten inches, and its wing-spread
was a trifle less than thirteen inches.

The whip-poor-will is so retiring in its
habits, and so seldom seen by day, that very
little is known about its ways, even by the
most experienced naturalists. If any one
who reads this chapter has a chance to ob
serve this mysterious bird, and will note its
actions, he may be sure that the information
thus gained will be welcome to any editor
or any writer upon natural history. The
chapters devoted to the whip-poor-will, in
either popular or scientific bird-literature,
are still rather meager.

129

ALONG THE LILY-PADS

UNDER the broad green leaves of the
water-lilies, that fringe the edges of lakes,
ponds, and slow-flowing streams, there
lurks, during the warm months of the year,
that watchful privateer of fishes, the true
pike (Esox lucius) , more commonly and in
correctly called pickerel. The real pickerel
is a smaller, less distinctly, and brilliantly
marked fish, of a dull greenish hue. It fre
quents the same waters and lurking places
as the pike, and is, perhaps, equally vora
cious and gamy; but its inferior size and
strength and duller markings make it seem
less of a prize to the keen fisherman, who
casts his minnow or his troll into the dark,
still-flowing water. In rivers and large
creeks the pike seems to exceed in numbers
his smaller and weaker cousin, the pickerel ;
but where the stream is only a few yards
wide, and flows between reedy borders, in
130

Along the Lily-Pads

low-lying meadows, very seldom does the
angler add one of the great spotted pike
to his catch. His string or creel will be
made up chiefly of the greenish grass-pick
erel, ranging from a quarter of a pound to
two pounds in weight, with, probably, a
welcome sprinkling of large perch, which
take the troll almost as readily as the pick
erel itself.

There are two methods of fishing for pike
and pickerel. One is to troll from a boat,
rowed or paddled slowly and cautiously
along the edges of the weeds and lily-pads,
with a trailing line of from forty to eighty
feet in length, to which is attached a polished
metal spoon and gang of hooks. The other
is the method of fishing from land. The
angler walks leisurely along, at a little dis
tance from the bank of the stream, so as to
be out of sight, and casts his troll or bait
with a rod. For small streams, where the
use of a boat would be impracticable, fish
ing from the land is, of course, the only
method; and some anglers, of active bodily
habits, prefer it even for lake or river fish
ing, as being, on the whole, a more skillful

Where Town and Country Meet

and sportsman-like method, furnishing both
greater variety of sport and superior phys
ical exercise.

But on a lazy summer day there certainly
is a fitness and charm about fishing at one's
ease from a boat along the lily-pads, waiting
with a pleasant anticipatory thrill for the
tug on the line that announces the strike of
pike or pickerel — a charm that one misses
if tramping along the bank in the sweltering
sun. Even if the angler serves as his own
oarsman, facing the stern, with the line
gripped in his teeth, the exercise is neces
sarily so gentle and almost dreamily dally
ing, as to seem little more than a rhythmic
swaying of the body, in harmony with the
languid pulsations of air stealing over the
meadows. The old and accustomed fisher
man, by a kind of instinct or clairvoyance,
divines the windings of the stream, and
urges his craft noiselessly along, keeping
always just outside the fringing weeds and
lilies, that his hooks may not foul in them.
Even the novice finds that an occasional
quick, sidewise glance enables him to keep
his bearings, and he soon acquires the art
of feeling his way along, while his attention
132

Along the Lily-Pads

is concentrated chiefly on the taut line that
throbs and vibrates in his teeth.

The angler who has never fished with his
teeth has missed a certain subtle, keen re
finement of nerve-excitation that must be
experienced to be appreciated. There is an
exquisite delicacy and minuteness of report
constantly flashing over the nerves to the
brain. Every throb and quiver of the spin
ning spoon, every slightest obstacle it en
counters on its way, the swing of the strain
ing line across a bend in the stream, the
impact of a reed or lily-stem along which it
drags for a moment, the slight snap of the
merest tendril caught by a hook, and the leap
of the spoon as it is released, the very rush
of the pike or pickerel from his hiding-place,
and the preliminary shock of contact with
the hooks ere the sudden tremendous tug of
the strike itself — all these submarine secrets
are telegraphed to the angler's brain through
the delicate, sensitive nerves of the jaw,
while he sits expectant, with his fifty feet
of line between his teeth. I have heard it
said that sometimes a fisherman loses a tooth
when a monster pike grabs his hooks; but,
if so, the man must either be asleep or of the

Where Town and Country Meet

dullest and most phlegmatic nervous temper
ament, for I have never known an instance
when there was not ample warning, from the
initial contact of the fish with the spoon or
minnow, for catching the line with the hand
in season to meet the tug and surge of the
strike.

Some fishermen use a very short, thick
rod in trolling alone from a boat, laying the
rod with the butt under one thwart and the
tip over another, or holding it between the
legs. I have also seen anglers carry the line
at the tip of a small stick, about six inches
long, which they held in one hand as they
rowed. But it has always seemed to me that
this method must impart an uneven and er
ratic motion to the spoon, and also make it
liable to sink and foul.

The ideal trolling-ground is a small, deep,
rather sluggish river, winding through low
meadows, with now and then a lofty decid
uous grove, deep with shade and coolness,
or a wooded ridge thrusting down to the
water's edge and breaking the quiet of the
lowland scenery with a picturesque bluff or
cliff. There is an indescribable charm about
winding in and out, to and fro, with the sin-

Along the Lily-Pads

uous meanderings of such a stream; the
scenery constantly changing, and yet pre
serving a sort of panoramic unity and con
tinuity ; sunlight alternating with shadow on
the still-flowing waters; the song of some
hidden veery or sparrow coming to us out
of the cool gloom as we drift along the
woods; and in the broad sunlight beyond,
the silence of shimmering meadows and the
grateful touch of the breeze that brings to
us the fragrance of new-mown hay.

Of such things as these, as well as the
thrill and stimulus of healthful sport, is
the angler's joy compounded. The secret
of it all lies in being close to nature's heart,
with something concrete, definite, and uni
versally attractive to draw one and hold one
there. Fishing is but half, and perhaps the
lesser half, of the fisherman's delight. It is
nature's mothering of him that makes him
so childlike content. He casts his hooks
for bass and trout and pickerel, and nature
slyly and lovingly fixes to them the roses of
the sunset, the diamonds of the morning
dew, the invisible fragrances of the air, the
sweetest sights and sounds and odors of the
great outdoor world — all those things that

Where Town and Country Meet

every normal man loves as his primal herit
age. We go out and row a boat, or cast a
troll, along the lily-pads, and whether the
fish bite or not, with what a basketful and
heartful of outdoor treasure we return!
Be the layer at the bottom ever so thin, that
which generous nature adds to our catch
overfills the creel.

136

SEPTEMBER TRAMPS

WHEN the first frost sharpens the air,
then come new zest and vigor into the blood.
The lover of nature no longer cares to lie
on his back and watch the birds and the
clouds. The horizontal has lost its charm
for him, and he is eager for the perpendic
ular — the progressively perpendicular.
Nothing will satisfy him now but a good,
vigorous tramp. He must stretch his legs
over hill and dale for hours at a time, re
joicing in the fresh energy breathed in
sparkling air after a hoar-frost has whitened
the grass.

Give me a crisp September morning for
a tramp — none of those listless days while
summer still lingers in the lap of fall, but
one of those electric mornings after the first
great change in the atmosphere that comes
with the breaking of summer's backbone.
It may be toward the last of September, or
it may be at the very beginning of the month
— seasons differ; but some time during Sep-

137

Where Town and Country Meet

tember will come the first ideal morning to
put on one's walking-shoes and start off for
an all-day's tramp. Nothing less would ap
pease that keen craving in your blood. The
miles must ring beneath your walking-stick.
It is a joy just to leave them behind you.

Everywhere there is delight for the eye.
Nature has already begun her marvelous
frescoing and tessellating process in the
leaves of the trees and the herbage of mead
ows and marshes. From now until the last
of October we shall dwell in the finest art-
gallery that was ever opened under the sky.
No human brush could possibly create, or
even imitate, the splendor of these autumn
colors. Take them either in the mass, or in
particular and detailed effects, and they are
as immensely superior to anything art can
produce as sunlight is superior to lamp
light. Take a single autumn leaf — the first
red oriflamme of this maple, for instance —
and study the texture of the coloring, the
marvelously delicate gradation of shades,
the richness and gloss of what we might
call its color-bloom (something no human
painting ever attains to), and the seeming
transparency of the pigment. Put it under
138

September Tramps

the microscope — what beauty still! Youf
painter's leaf would be all coarse blotch and
daub. And then imagine what the land
scape is going to be a couple of weeks hence
— a grand kaleidoscope of sunsets and rain
bows. And this is nature's art-gallery that
men abandon in September for the tawdry
effects of city "exhibitions !" Nature would
have admitted them free, and given them a
catalogue, and invited them to an oxygen-
party to boot !

If you want mountain views, you must
choose a cool September morning after a
heavy rain. The atmosphere of no other
month can be washed so crystal-clean. It
has seemed to me often to have a peculiarly
magnifying effect, as if all that sparkling
gulf of air that lies between you and the dis
tant object were a vast, polished lens, con
caved just right to make for you a cosmical
telescope. I shall never forget the joy, the
rapture, of some of those September moun
tain-climbs of my boyhood, when, in rugged
Vermont, I scaled some familiar peak with
my companions, after a night's rain, and be
held, as it seemed to me, all the kingdoms of
the earth and their glory spread out before

Where Town and Country Meet

my far-ranging vision. Montreal — ninety
miles away — clearly visible from Mansfield,
yes, even from Cobble Hill! The grand,
ghostlike company of the Presidential
Range in New Hampshire marching before
me as I stood on the great cliff of Gamers
Hump — what revelations for a boy who had
never been forty miles away from home!
Ah! those September mountain tramps,
when the wine of the autumn air and the
magnetism of frost sang together in my
veins, and the heart of youth was so light
that it seemed to buoy up the body like
wings! That was the kind of Emersonian
freedom and footlooseness that does indeed
make the pomp of emperors seem ridiculous.
One is not much disposed to observe
minutely, I think, on a September tramp.
The last of the birds and the last of the
flowers may challenge a somewhat languid
interest, but for my own part I like to take
things in the mass, in the aggregate, when
nature's long season of emphasized individ
ualism is on the wane. For months we na
ture-lovers have been burdening our brains
and note-books with observations of con
crete life in a thousand different forms. In-
140

September Tramps

numerable birds, flowers, insects, trees,
plants, and four-footed creatures have con
fronted us at every step and stimulated curi
osity and study. Now the birds have mostly
departed, the flowers are a few and sedate
company, the insects are frost-killed or
driven into retirement, and I for one am
tired of particularizing, and am glad to go
back for a time to those free, buoyant,
youthful impressions of nature as a whole.
Instead of pulling to pieces single flowers
I want to let my eye range over a whole
living field of them, assembled in a carpet
of purple and gold. I do not care to ask
their names. I simply want them to make
an impression of beauty and harmony and
joy upon my spirit. I find a distinct relief
in not following up every bird-twitter to
some thicket to learn what bird is hiding
there. The few songs the birds are still
singing I will enjoy as psalms of gratitude,
not as public exhibitions demanding some
sort of analysis and criticism.

It is because of this larger and freer

mood that I always look forward to my

September tramps with special delight. I

think then is the time when any man or

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Where Town and Country Meet

woman with a native vein of poetry is
likely to get more inspiration out of na
ture than at any other season — simply
because the foreground of this subordinate
life is not so bewilderingly crowded, and
there is more opportunity and more invita
tion to seek the large impression of nature
— the tout ensemble. That is the impression
out of which religious feeling rises. If we
are seeking God in nature, we shall not find
him so readily by analysis as by synthesis;
not by minute study of individuals and par
ticulars, but by free, joyous acceptance of
the effect of nature as a whole. So, I think,
we shall be justified in leaving our note
books at home in September, and just aban
doning ourselves to the influence of nature
upon the spirit. Something better may come
out of that than the discovery of a new plant
or the identification of a long-sought bird.
In closing, let me "come down a peg,"
as the saying is, and make a few practical
suggestions to the tramper simply as a
tramper. It is a very different thing from
strolling about for an hour or two in the
summer woods, this starting off for a vigor
ous, leg-stretching, fifteen-or-twenty-mile,
142

September Tramps

all-day tramp. The first two or three jaunts
will be terribly wearying. But do not get
discouraged. The system soon grows
toughened to such work. I have known
semi-invalids, who at home were exhausted
by a walk of a mile, to start on a trip into
the backwoods and come out thinking noth
ing of fifteen miles a day, with a full back-
load of camp supplies. There is nothing
dangerous about muscle-weariness so long
as it does not amount to exhaustion. Keep
on tramping, and you will soon gain the
strength to tramp as far as you please.

Foot-gear is a very important matter with
the pedestrian. If you start out improperly
shod, and get seriously footsore in the be
ginning, it will be all up with you for the
season. My plan is to wear the thickest
winter socks as a sort of cushion for the
feet, no matter what the season may be, and
a pair of common-sense, well-broken shoes
— shoes that I have spent months judiciously
adapting to my feet. It is a labor of love,
as well as of wisdom, to break in a pair of
fall walking-shoes during the summer. You
should begin with them as early as the mid
dle of July, and then by the ist of September

Where Town and Country Meet

they will be as fine as silk to the feet, and if
they were shoes of good quality to begin
with, will last you all the fall for hard
usage. Then have them tapped, and heeled,
and they will be as good as new — better, be
cause already broken — for your spring
tramps.

Wear light but warm clothing for fall
tramps — never an overcoat, which is as
much of an abomination for a pedestrian as
rubber boots for a swimmer. A sweater is
the ideal heat-conserving garment. That,
with a comparatively light coat, will be suf
ficient for September tramps. Later on ex
change the ordinary coat for a reefer or
leather jacket.

These are commonplace hints, to be sure,
but, as experience teaches me, of the great
est value. A fly can spoil your delicate
ointment, and a sore heel or toe can dispel
any amount of poetry and ideal enjoyment.
And since the Pegasus of the rambler must
always be "shank's mare," it behooves him
to see to it that his steed is well shod and
harnessed.

144

THE PATH TO JOE'S POND

IT is first a road, a winding, clambering,
stony mountain road; but long before it
reaches Joe's Pond it dwindles into a foot
path, skirting the ridges, diving into the hol
low to cross the brook, and sometimes mak
ing a dash at a ledge and going up over the
top of it like a squirrel. Every foot of the
way, from the edge of the village to the
forest-circled pond, is a delight to the na
ture-lover with sound legs and lungs. A
long, sweet, quiet walk it is, with the grand
old hills before one, and the lovely valley
behind — like going up the steps of God's
temple with an offering of gladness and
gratitude in one's heart.

To begin with, we cross the river by way
of the open bridge, and look down at the
wild water foaming between the rocks, as
it leaps over the shoulder of the village into
the mill-pond. Then up the valley, past
scattered farms, with old Baldtop glistening
in front of us, and all about him the lesser

10 145

Where Town and Country Meet

hills like a group of half-grown children.
The crisp autumn air invades our blood,
and the damp smell of alders and black loam
and decaying ferns refreshes the sense and
fills the mind with a thousand sweet asso
ciations of bygone days. A blue jay utters
his clear, metallic cry — that characteristic
fall note — and memories of boyish nutting
trips and squirrel hunts rush over us with a
longing sweetness that is almost pain. See,
there is the same old fence, zigzagging up
the hill, where we used to head off the
"grays" in their excursions from the sugar-
grove to the cornfield; and the gnarled oak
is still standing, half-way up the slope,
around which we wound such circles of ex
citement, as with aching necks we peered
for some sign of the frightened squirrel
curled in a bunch among the topmost leaves.
There ! — do you hear the rattling roar of the
old musket, as it hurls a handful of shot
through the tree-tops ? We Ve hit him ! —
and down he comes, clinging and bumping,
to strike the hard pasture turf with a thud —
dead as a stone.

Above the lonely farms the way to Joe's
Pond becomes a logging-road, rough with
146

The Path to Joe's Pond

rotting "corduroy/' deeply rutted by the
groaning wheels of the lumber wagons, and
rolling and uneven as a path at sea. On the
drier ridges we find the little round hollows
where the dust-loving partridges have wal
lowed in the soil, leaving a feather here and
there, or the etching of a spread wing to
mark some sudden flight. And once in a
while we hear a grouse boom away into the
deep woods, so far ahead that we can not
get even a gray glimpse of him. How shy
these game-birds are getting, nowadays!
Why, when we were boys, they would walk
across the path like chickens in front of us,
and then flop up into a neighboring tree,
to look down at us and ask with their beady
eyes, "Boys, where 's your pole? Why
do n't you get one and knock us off ?" The
breechloader and the stealthy setter have
been at work in these woods since the old
days, and .the birds have slowly learned wis
dom. Now their education seems about
complete, and it will take a crafty sports
man indeed to get within shooting distance
of them.

Deeper and deeper into the woods plunges
the old logging road. Now we have passed

Where Town and Country Meet

the last piles of cord-wood, cut and stacked
so long ago that they are crumbling to the
very center with decay. How much of
man's labor lost, how much of nature's beau
tiful garment wasted, in these lonely moun
tain wood-lots, where the Yankee farmer,
with his inexorable conscience for work,
toils through dull winter days, only to ac
cumulate more of the fruits of labor than
the world accessible to him can use, and so
to leave good oak and birch and maple logs
for the rains to rot and the worms to bur
row! Everywhere, on all roads to Joe's
Pond, or whose pond soever, deep in the
woods of these remote mountain farms, we
find the decaying woodpile, a monument to
man's wasteful use or misuse of the boun
ties of nature. And meanwhile the brook
that waters the meadow and the pasture
dwindles in August to a sickly thread, and
in April pours its sudden thunderous flood
into the valley, devouring all in its path, a
roaring, revengeful, merciless fiend. Such
are nature's penalties for the improvident
mowing down of mountain forests.

Beyond the last moldering woodpile we
must travel single file, for now we are fairly
148

The Path to Joe's Pond

in the path to Joe's Pond. The wheel-tracks
have been choked out by brush, and only a
spongy, noiseless, winding footway leads up
the slope toward the little sheet of water
nestling among the hills. There is nothing
utilitarian about this path. It is the trail of
the fisherman and the rambler. The hands
that blazed it and the feet that have beaten
it out were no slaves to traffic or gain.
Theirs was an enterprise of pure idealism.
For the inextinguishable love of nature, for
the satisfaction of an inward craving as old
as the race, have they made this path into
the heart of the woods, and gone to and
fro in it. All who journey to Joe's Pond
go in the same spirit — the romantic spirit
of the old, free nature-life.

Impelled by that spirit, we are winding
in- and out among the solemn firs and
hemlocks, treading the springy moss and
mold of the ancient forest. No path is so
easy to the foot, so stimulating to the mus
cles, as a good trail through the woods.
The firm cushion of centuries of leaf-mold
springs beneath every step, and the silence
and smoothness of the path make walking
seem like a kind of gliding or semi-flying.
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Where Town and Country Meet

The cool shadow of the woods, the pure,
resinous, bracing air, and anon the music
of some cascading brook, all speed the
tramper on his way and make even the steep
mountain-side an exhilaration and refresh
ment.

Such is the path to Joe's Pond ; and were
it not for the sudden, crystal beauty of the
water, bursting upon the vision like a dia
mond set about with emeralds, one would
sorely regret the ending of the trail on the
lonely shore of the pond. But what can one
desire to do, save to sink down on the mossy
bank where the path ends, and gaze and
gaze and drink one's soul full of the beauty
of that sleeping lakelet in the hills, with
Baldtop and the rest of the giants standing
over its cradle in perpetual guardianship?
Beyond is all a tangled and knotted wilder
ness, where one must fairly hew his way
through fallen timber and interlacing thick
ets. But what does one care, since he has
come safely and easily to Joe's Pond? He
wishes to go no farther. Enough to linger
there all the beautiful, silent September
day, looking down upon mirrored woods
and mountains, and looking up to shining

The Path to Joe's Pond

peaks and sky. If it be in season for the
trout, of which there are none like those
in Joe's Pond, one may venture out on
every man's raft, if he will, and cast his
fly across that perfect mirror. But whether
the trout rise or not, he will be well con
tent. For he has come from far to tread
the path through the woods. He belongs
to the brotherhood of those to whom na
ture is all-sufficient.

A QUEST OF FALL BERRIES

YESTERDAY I went berrying — not for any
gratification of the palate or replenishment
of the larder, for the time is late October,
and the common edible berries are gone by.
I went to gather a bunch of autumn bloom ;
for the wild berries are the flowers of the
fall, many of them as brilliant in color and
beautiful in arrangement as the spring and
summer blossoms whose children they are.
In October and early November the autumn
woods and swamps and clearings are bright
with patches of color, more conspicuous
often than the clusters of flowers which
caught the eye so pleasantly in May and
June. You can hardly enter the woods or
brush-grown clearings anywhere without
being enticed on every hand by the sparkle
of berries, red, yellow, purple, ivory-white,
blue, black, brown, and orange. The reds
predominate, and on all sides you see their
elfin bonfires burning, some low down and
half hidden, others like beacons blazing high

A Quest of Fall Berries

and clear. Autumn, with its frost-painted
leaves and bright berries, has vastly more
splendor of color than flowery June itself.
The fragrance is lacking, to be sure; but
for the pleasure of the eye give me a fall
morning, after the first sharp frost. Then
indeed one thanks God for the priceless
privilege of sight.

My course led me first up a ragged slope,
covered with low bushes and dotted with
piles of brush. Half way up the hill I came
upon the small, dark blue berry of the
Solomon's seal, drooping gracefully from its
delicately curved flower-stalk. The Solo
mon's seal is a plant that loves the shade,
but it also loves and clings to the spots
where its vigorous roots have established
themselves, and will often linger in sunny
clearings for years after the woods have
been cut away.

Not far from the bed of Solomon's seal, I
stumbled on a patch of hobble-bush, strag
gling over the ground and reproducing its
short, thick roots at every few feet — a ver
itable net and trap for the unwary pedes
trian. Its bright coral berries, however, be
trayed it to me, and with a handful of them

Where Town and Country Meet

I imparted the first dash of bright color
to my basket of nature's jewels. Before I
reached the top of the slope I had added
also a cluster of the queerly-shaped, almost
oblong, scarlet berries of the barberry, one
of the commonest of our New England
shrubs, though not, I believe, indigenous.

On the edge of the woods above the clear
ing, in a little depression where water had
settled early in the summer and left the
ground moist and soft, I found a fringe of
chokeberry, thickly clustered with very dark
maroon-colored berries, shaped like tiny
pears. I do not remember that I ever saw
a shade of color exactly corresponding to
that of the fruit of the chokeberry. It is
indescribable — dark maroon being the near
est approach I can make to definition. The
milliners and dressmakers ought to adopt
the shade and give it a name — as they have
done in other instances where the botanist
is their debtor.

I had scarcely pushed my way into the
woods when, on a bank shaded by pines and
hemlocks, the familiar, delicate tracery of
the partridge-vine caught my eye, its per
ennially green necklace strung with scat-

A Quest of Fall Berries

tered scarlet berries, a favorite fruit of the
ruffed grouse and bob-white, as its name
implies. I added a string of partridge ber
ries to my collection, and picked a few to
eat, chiefly tempted by the looks of the
berry, for it is dry and insipid enough, com
pared with its pungent cousin, the winter-
green berry. The absence of moisture in the
partridge-berry makes it a good "keeper,"
and it is worth noting that not infrequently
the berries of one season will be found
mingled with those of the previous season
that have kept their color and soundness all
through the twelvemonth.

There is nothing more beautiful in the
dark, deep woods than a clear, pure, ivory-
white berry, like the creeping snowberry.
I found an abundance of these shy creepers
in a swampy spot overshadowed by tama
racks. The snowberry is not a common
plant, because it requires certain conditions
of soil, shade, moisture, etc., that are not
often found in combination. But where it
does grow it grows plentifully, and in the
autumn scatters its ivory berries over the
ground like little snowballs. Very pleasing
to the palate, also, are these pretty berries,

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Where Town and Country Meet

with a taste somewhat like that of the win-
tergreen berry, though less aromatic. I
gathered a good sized bunch of the vines, for
one does not find many white berries in a
ramble, and they add a delicate beauty to
one's collection that is very desirable.

A large proportion of the swamp-loving
shrubs and plants are berry-bearers. There,
for instance, is that popular little preacher,
jack-in-the-pulpit. I doubt if it is commonly
known by those who are fond of this plant
when in flower that it justifies itself by
producing fruits quite equal to its spring
time promise, and thereby proclaims itself
superior to many an exhorter from a more
pretentious pulpit. The brilliant scarlet ber
ries of jack-in-the-pulpit make one of the
prettiest bits of color to be found in the
autumn woods. They are thickly packed
together on the fleshy spike, and form a
perfect mass of crimson under the hoodlike
spathe.

The dwarf cornel is a swamp shrub that
bears a bright red berry of edible and nour
ishing quality. The poison sumach has a
rather inconspicuous, whitish berry, ar
ranged in small clusters. The common

156

A Quest of Fall Berries

elder, though not strictly a swamp plant,
loves low ground, and is oftenest found in
cleared spots formerly mucky and swampy,
where it lifts its dark purple, umbrella-like
clusters of berries higher often than a man's
head.

Everybody in our Eastern States is famil
iar with the common bog cranberry, that
grows so readily and profusely along the
New England seacoast in particular, wher
ever a piece of low-lying, waste land is
sufficiently flooded or irrigated. During my
walk I found a flourishing cranberry marsh
in the very heart of the woods, the circular
bed lying exposed to the sky like the bed of
some pond long since dried up. If that was
not its origin, most likely the spot was a
cultivated cranberry bog in years gone by,
before the woods had sprung up on the de
serted farm. The common American cran
berry, however, grows wild all over New
England, and is mentioned by early writers
as one of our native plants.

Skirting the swamp, I climbed a ridge
beyond, that was all ablaze with the crimson
plumes of the common or staghorn sumach,
each plume a compacted cone of small,

Where Town and Country Meet

round, hairy berries, pleasantly sour and
acrid to the taste, and perfectly harmless.
Was there ever a boy who did not love to
chew the mouth-puckering sprays of the
red sumach and flood his much-enduring
stomach with the acrid juice? I picked
four of the Brilliant cones for my autumn
nosegay. Then, descending the other slope
of the ridge, I stopped by the tumble
down stone wall that skirted a mountain
road, to gather a few of the thick black clus
ters of wild sarsaparilla berries brushing the
stones. A little farther along the wall I found
some bearberry bushes, a trailing shrub
with evergreen leaves. There were but few
berries on the low bushes, but these were a
beautiful, clear, almost transparent red, and
so pleasant in taste that one can readily ap
preciate the relish with which, in good old
times, bears were said to devour them.

Climbing over the wall into the grass-
grown road, I followed the faint wheel-
tracks down into a little hollow where a
brook crossed the road. On both sides of
the stream the stone wall was covered with
the twining, vinelike stems of the bitter
sweet, heavily fruited with deep orange

158

A Quest of Fall Berries

pods, whose curling edges revealed the scar
let seeds within. Intermingled with the
stems of bittersweet, but climbing higher,
and spreading even over the top of the sur
rounding thicket, were the vines of the
moonseed, holding their scattered blue-black
berries in small, loose clusters. I was pleas
antly surprised to find the bunchberry
growing close to the water's edge, just over
the wall, and pushed my way through the
vines to gather a handful of the pretty red
berries, so like coral beads.

I found hawthorn and dogwood bushes
growing by the sides of the road, soon after
I left the brook. I was glad to get the beau
tiful light blue berries of the dogwood, so
unlike any I had yet found ; and the scarlet-
spattered sprays of hawthorn made a fine
display on top of the basket.

I found one other white berry during my
ramble--the white baneberry, not as clear
and transparent in color as the snowberry,
nor as solidly white, as it is marked by a
single obscure, cloudy spot near one end.
But it is beautifully oval in shape, and hangs
from the parent shrub in feathery clusters
that delight the eye.

Where Town and Country Meet

Altogether the prettiest of the many red
berries in my basket were the delicate clus
ters of the mountain holly, which I discov
ered, just as I was about to leave the moun
tain road, in a thicket some rods ahead.
The mountain holly is a small shrub with
very light gray, almost white, bark. Its ber
ries are borne in thick clusters, and are of
the most vivid, clear, coral-like color, so
bright and smooth that when you hold them
up to the eye they seem almost transparent.

On my way home I added to my collection
of red berries the fruit of the black alder,
some clusters of red-berried elder, and a
pretty little red berry speckled with purple
— the berry of the false Solomon's seal. Of
wintergreen berries, of course, I found a
plenty also. Other purple or purplish ber
ries gathered were those of the pokeweed
and Indian cucumber-root. Only one kind
of yellow berry rewarded my search, and
that was the ground-cherry, which grows on
a thick-branched, spreading plant, almost a
shrub in size, and is curiously protected by a
kind of loose envelope.

My ramble took me over a piece of coun
try less than four miles square, yet I find
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A Quest of Fall Berries

that I gathered about thirty different vari
eties of berries, all of them beautiful, either
in color, form, or arrangement, and all
worthy to be called, in the truest and most
appropriate sense, the jewels which nature
has made to adorn her ripened beauty as the
time of its fading draws near.

ii 161

THE AUTUMN WOOD-PATH

THE woods are never so full of interest
and fascination as when the first frosts have
touched the leaves, and purified the crisp,
nipping air, and filled the forest with that
expectant hush that follows the insect-hum
and bird-music of summer. Then, as one
walks along the quiet wood-path, he expe
riences again something of the vanished
child-sense of fairyland. The forest aisles
are full of mystery; the glint of sunshine
in near-by glades and the flicker of falling
golden leaves mingle like fact and fancy;
and in the hush and glimmer and beauty of
the scene one expects to see anything, from
fairies dancing on the moss, to princes and
princesses riding suddenly across the path,
with plumes and jewels and jingling bri
dles. An enchanted place is the October
wood. You wonder at the change that has
come over it since the thrush and the vireo
and the warbler packed their flutes and
started slowly and silently southward.
162

The Autumn Wood-Path

Strange how grateful it is to the ear, some
times, not to hear the birds singing! But
it is because you have heard them singing
all summer long that you can be pleased
with October's silence. The sweetest song
needs silence after it to fill the measure of
its delight.

But the autumn woods have the bird cries,
though not the bird songs. You will not
have walked far along the wood-path before
you are startled by that feathered alarmist,
the blue jay. He hears you, or rather di
vines you, afar off, and makes the woods
ring with his hoarse scream of warning. By
and by you see him, plunging from tree to
tree in short, scolding flights, absurdly in
dignant that you should have invaded his
privacy, even so long after the nesting sea
son is over. His is the cry that you will
oftenest hear in the woods from now until
snow flies. It is one of trie audible acces
sories of an autumn walk; and though the
jay's voice is essentially harsh, I have
learned to love it because of its associations.
This bird has two distinct cries — you could
never call them songs, either in quality or
variety of sound. One is the penetrating,
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Where Town and Country Meet

far-sounding, raucous scream that he uses
when doing self-imposed sentinel duty; the
other is a thin, short, metallic cry that
sounds in the distance like the ringing of a
small hammer on a blacksmith's anvil. The
latter sound is almost musical, and, with its
associations, soon grows to be inexpressibly
pleasing to one who loves to ramble at all
seasons of the year.

Another autumn bird cry, harsh in itself,
but softened by surroundings and associ
ations, is that of the crow — a restless bird
always, but more than ever so when frosty
weather has set in and pilgrimages, both
long and short, are in order. He labors over
the woods on heavy wing, cawing gruffly as
he goes, without apparent reason unless it
be to express his troubled and dissatisfied
state of mind. Perhaps he is thinking of the
hard times ahead — though heaven knows
times are always hard enough for a hearty
eater, with such thievish and forbidden
tastes as his! No doubt his stomach is
empty now, and he knows not where nor
how to fill it.

Strangely enough, the almost domesti
cated robin, that has nested in the apple-tree
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The Autumn Wood-Path

close to the house, and cheered us all sum
mer with its flutelike morning and evening
song, becomes in October one of the wildest
and most suspicious of birds, retiring to the
deep woods and adding its sharp, suspicious,
chirping cry to that of the blue jay and the
crow. I have seen whole flocks of robins,
in October, miles within the heart of an up
land forest, where you scarcely ever find
them during the spring and summer. Shy,
suspicious creatures they are now, taking
to wing with great swiftness and clamor be
fore the rambler gets even within gun-range
of them — as if he would care to shoot such
plebeian game if he could ! But, like bobo
link, who becomes the pot-hunter's reed-
bird in winter, robin seems to aspire to the
dignity of becoming a game-bird as soon as
the shooting-season opens, doubtless quite
ignorant of the fact that nearly all our
Northern States by a special law protect his
russet body from destruction.

As the wood-path climbs a dry, sun-baked
ridge, we come to a succession of little round
hollows, shallow pits in the powdery loam,
where that genuine and royal game-bird, the
ruffed grouse, has lain, like a roadside hen,

165

Where Town and Country Meet

dusting itself in the sun. A pretty sight it
must have been — the large, grayish bird,
with its alert, trim head and bright eyes
always watchful, tossing the dust with vig
orous flirts of the wing far up over its back,
and nestling and shifting round and round in
the warm hollow. I have seen hundreds of
such dusting-holes in my rambles through
the woods, but only once have I beheld a
ruffed grouse actually dusting itself as I
have described. It was at noon of a hot
September day, and I was lying in the shade
beside the wood-path, when the cautious bird
stole out for its midday bath. It was a hen
grouse, trim in body and graceful and quick
in every movement. I lay motionless, watch
ing her, for nearly fifteen minutes. Then a
dog barked at the foot of the ridge, and the
grouse was gone in an instant, leaving a few
soft feathers swirling down into the dust.
How large a part of the life and interest
of the woods centers in the birds! Every
true nature-lover speaks of them first and
chiefly when describing his outdoor ram
bles. Yet there are other creatures and
things that win the attention of a rambler
by the autumn wood-path. He notes the
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The Autumn Wood-Path

nibbled shoots of birch and alder, where the
rabbit or hare has browsed them by the
light of the moon ; for these little animals
are both night-feeders, shy, big-eyed and
big-eared, secretive and cautious, as be
hooves such tender, toothsome creatures, the
chosen prey of man and beast.

Here, where the path dips down beside
the brook, is a wet, flat stone, just aban
doned by a muskrat (I heard his splash as
I drew near) that was nibbling a wild par
snip. It would be useless to look for his
hole, for it is well hidden under the bank,
beneath the surface of the water, and slants
upward to some dry, grass-lined nest above
the water-line.

A little farther along I catch a glimpse of
the dark, slim, lithe body of an otter, glid
ing rapidly over the stones to a deep pool, in
which he vanishes. No doubt he has been
fishing, in his quiet, patient way, lying by
the water's edge, ready to pounce with claws
and teeth upon any unwary trout or minnow
that ventured too near.

It is curious how averse a fox is to wet
ting even the soles of his dainty feet! I
was walking along this same brook, one Oc-
167

Where Town and Country Meet

tober afternoon — this time with gun in hand
— when a fox came trotting unsuspiciously
down to the tip of a little point of land
around which the brook bent like a silver
triangle. He looked up and saw me as I
was creeping down towards the base of the
triangle, though still not quite within gun-
range. The fox might easily have escaped
me and saved his life by plunging through
the shallow brook and up the opposite bank
into a hemlock thicket. But rather than wet
his feet he turned and came scurrying back
along the water's edge, as far from me as he
could get. It was a fatal bit of squeamish-
ness on his part, for it brought the hand
some fellow within range of my gun. I
have a rug of his skin under my desk now.
I would like to say a word about the flow
ers one may find, even in October, along the
wood-path and scattered over the upland
pastures; but already my chapter grows
overlong. I may simply name a few of the
blossoms I picked, last fall, between the 1st
of October and the 5th of November —
fringed gentian, purple aster, golden-rod,
blue toad-flax, fall dandelion, Canada violet,
spurge, common yarrow, white alder, trum-
168

The Autumn Wood-Path

pet-weed, witch-hazel, moth mullein, knot-
weed, thorn-apple, and ladies' tresses.

The autumn wood-path, if you follow it
far enough up the hills, comes to an end in
a mountain pasture, surrounded by a tum
ble-down rail fence. And here we may fitly
leave it, swallowed up in brakes and rasp
berry bushes. Nobody now living knows
where it originally ended — perhaps at some
old-time logging-camp far up beneath the
shadow of Tahawus's peak, or perhaps it
was part of an Indian trail that never
stopped until it had connected Albany with
the Algonkin villages on Lake Champlain.

169

UP STERLING

IT was six o'clock of a clear October
morning, succeeding three days of rain,
when I set forth, "as the crow flies," for
Sterling Mountain. I had long planned
making a direct assault upon the giant,
instead of going six miles around by way
of "White Rocks" for the benefit of a doubt
ful trail. The thickly wooded mountain
towered before me, seemingly less than
three miles away, on the other side of the
narrow valley. I thought I could easily
make the base of it in an hour, or an hour
and a half at the longest. But I failed to
take into my reckoning the deceptiveness
of distance when one is looking across coun
try to the hills. Especially on a clear day
the mountains look as if you could touch
them, if your arm were only a little
longer. You laugh at the notion of spend
ing all day in making a trip by carriage to
this or that locally famous hill. You think
you could do it, afoot, between supper and
170

Up Sterling

bedtime. But you generally live to try it
and be undeceived.

My plan was to cross the river by a cer
tain fallen tree which I had discovered on
my last fishing excursion, strike directly
over the wooded ridge beyond, then cross
the great clearing visible from the village
cemetery, and plunge into the wide fringe
of woods around Sterling's base. From
that point I would trust for direction to the
rise of the land and my compass. When I
reached the mountain itself, it would simply
be a scramble, I admitted, for it was evident,
even from a distance, that Sterling on the
northeast side was decidedly "straight up."

The tree that bridged the river for me
had been blown down during a September
thunderstorm. It lay directly across the
channel, leaving about twenty feet of shal
low water to be waded, after one was com
pelled to • slide from its tapering trunk into
the stream. However, I count no mountain
excursion complete — or for that matter pos
sible — without wet feet, and was perfectly
willing to comply with this condition at the
outset.

Scarcely had I crossed the river when my
171

Where Town and Country Meet

difficulties and perplexities began. The
wooded ridge, which from the easy outlook
of the village seemed like the mere threshold
of my enterprise, proved to be a mountain
of some consequence in itself, steep, tangled,
and pathless. I was more than an hour in
toiling up over its declivity and getting
down into the woods on the other side. And
even then I should have lost my way, had
I not stopped to consult my compass every
few minutes. For the first time I began to
reflect on the wisdom of that whimsical but
entirely credible saying, "The longest way
around is the shortest way there."

However, I knew that, if I kept deter
minedly westward, I must come out at
length in the big clearing visible from the
slopes on the other side of the river. Once
there, I should be in sight of the mountain
again, and able to get my bearings. So I
plunged on, compass in hand, wading
through mossy bog-holes, climbing logs,
battling with thickets, till I heard, far ahead,
the welcome sound of a cow-bell. That
meant either a clearing or a path to a clear
ing, and I struck out with new courage
in the direction of the sound. Presently the
172

Up Sterling

woods lighted up ahead in that peculiar
way which betokens open country beyond.
It is wonderful how far some practiced eyes
can detect this dawning of the open, as it
were. I have known woodsmen who could
"intuit" a clearing half a mile away ; and if
you ask them how, they will say, "Don't
you see how the woods lighten up in that
direction?"

Fortunately, the cow with the bell kept
moving, so that by following the jangle I
soon came where she was feeding in a
little glade by a brook. From here there
was a well-defined cow-path leading west
ward. I struck into it, and in ten min
utes reached the big clearing which I had
seen from the village. The clearing con
tained, perhaps, a dozen upland farms.
Small buildings were scattered here and
there, and I could see a road climbing the
western slope. It was a remote settlement,
but thrifty, I thought, as I marked the
barns bursting with hay, the sheep and cat
tle scattered over the fields, and the big
squares of harvested grain, showing, by the
semi-circles in the stubble, that it had been
mowed with the old-fashioned "cradle."

Where Town and Country Meet

Sterling loomed directly ahead of me, its
long ridge bristling with pines and firs, and
its knoblike peak brushed by fleecy clouds.
I debated whether, even now, I would not
swerve to the left and make for the "White
Rocks," where there is said to be a faint
trail leading up the ridge to the peak. How
ever, the thirst for adventure was not yet
quite abated in me, and I decided to keep
on as I had planned, straight up the pathless
side of the mountain.

I followed the road across the clearing,
until I reached the point where I thought
I ought to strike into the woods. Then,
leaving the last trace of civilization behind
me, I took a final "range" of the peak with
my compass, and plunged into Sterling's
broad belt of forest.

For the first mile or two the ascent was
gradual and easy. The woods, too, were
more open and free from bogs and tangles.
I walked with freedom, and felt a certain
exhilaration in the relief from little physical
worries and annoyances. The morning was
rapidly passing, and I began to feel a sen
sation of agreeable vacuity under the belt —
174

Up Sterling

agreeable because of the consciousness of
an excellent lunch in my haversack, pre
pared by loving hands for just such an
emergency.

An ice-cold brook, trickling over a ledge,
decided the matter, and, though it was but
eleven o'clock, I flung off my haversack
and sank down on the mossy bank at the
foot of the ledge to eat my lunch. That
was a royal half-hour! With my drink
ing cup at my side, replenished often from
the crystal cold brook, and my dainty but
abundant lunch spread out on a snowy nap
kin before me, I reclined at ease, refreshing
my inner man of the flesh with viands fit
for a king, and my still more inner man of
the spirit with the beauty of that unspoiled
mountain forest, the low twittering of Oc
tober birds, and the silvery tinkle of the
brook.

While I was eating, a red squirrel came
hitching down the trunk of a tree, and
stopped on the stub of a broken limb to
bark and scold at me. He was scarcely
six feet away, and I playfully threw a bit
of egg-shell at him. He disappeared with

Where Town and Country Meet

chattering indignation, but presently re
turned and carried away the egg-shell in
his mouth.

Up and forward again. And now began
the real labor and difficulty of my enter
prise. The ground began to rise abruptly.
Ledges confronted me, some of which I
had to skirt for a considerable distance be
fore I was able to climb them. I soon
realized that I was on the steep north
eastern flank of Sterling, with a hard
climb between me and the ridge that led
up to the peak. But there was encourage
ment in the thought that I was fairly
grappling with the mountain at last, that
I had reached it by the air-line route, as I
planned, and was adventuring where, per
haps, no white man's foot had ever trod
before.

The character of the woods changed, as
I progressed, from an admixture of hard
and soft wood trees to wholly evergreen.
Somber, thick-growing firs, pines, and
cedars shut out the light and hemmed me
in more and more closely. These were the
trees which, as I had noticed from a dis-
176

Up Sterling

tance, gave the slope and ridge of Sterling
such a dark and bristling aspect. They
were not large — not more than thirty feet
high on the average — but sturdy, large-
limbed, and thickly set, good types of moun
tain trees, which always give the impression
of tremendous vitality and endurance —
rooted among the everlasting rocks for more
than a century's vigorous life.

On and up I clambered, sometimes
squeezing through a narrow cleft in a ledge
and scaling the treacherous pathway of
broken rock within, sometimes drawing my
self up a steep slope by overhanging boughs
or shrubs, sometimes digging toes and fin
gers into the mold threaded with rootlets
of underbrush, and struggling on hands and
knees up to a vantage-ground where I could
rest and catch my breath. I was thankful
that it was too late in the season for tor
menting mosquitoes and black flies, though
the aggravating, invisible midges still tor
tured me with their burning bites. How
ever, these pests do not drive one crazy,
like a swarm of shrill-humming mosquitoes.
If I had tried to scale that tangled slope in

12 177

Where Town and Country Meet

early July, I verily believe I should have
perished from the venom of the insects that
abound in such spots.

It was just half-past two o'clock when
I finally dragged myself up to the top of
the ridge, utterly exhausted and out of
breath. It was the hardest climb I had
ever attempted, and I promised myself that
I should not undertake another of the same
kind very soon. There is sufficient satis
faction in doing such a thing once in an
active life, I think. I could have gone
around by the "White Rocks" and up the
trail, with a mere fraction of the labor of
my more direct route. "Choose the long
way around," is a pretty good motto for
mountain-climbers.

It was easy enough following the ridge
up to the peak of the mountain. There
was a faint path leading in and out among
the rocks and the sinewy trunks of the
stunted trees. Wonderful — is it not? — how
a disused path will persist for decades in
these mountain woods! On the summit
of Sterling I lay down for an hour's rest,
with my back against a rock. The view
was grand, the rest delicious! I do not

178

Up Sterling

know which of them was better worth my ex
penditure of time and strength. On the one
side the White Mountains, on the other side
the neighboring peaks of the Green Moun
tain range nearer at hand — all lay spread
before me like a gigantic map. The air was
clear as a bell. I could see, with my field-
glass, to the utmost limit of unobstructed
human vision. It was a grand sweep for a
lonely, pigmy human being, with the sense of
his own littleness and weakness emphasized
by aching legs and back. But there I was,
and there was the glorious world beneath
my feet, and the unsearchable sky above my
head. I forgot that I was tired; I forgot
that there was a nine-mile homeward tramp
awaiting me. For an hour I lay on the peak
of Sterling, in exaltation of spirit and body.
Then I got up, gave a last look north, east,
west, and south, rubbed myself, and walked
slowly down the ridge toward the "White
Rocks."

179

GETTING READY FOR WINTER

THERE are two periods in the rounding
of the year, in temperate zones, that are dis
tinctively periods of preparation. One of
them comes in the early spring, and may be
called the period of preparation for fecund
ity, or reproduction. The other comes in
the late fall, and is the period of preparation
for struggle with environment. This an
nual struggle is a serious and strenuous
necessity, and nature approaches it with
evident reluctance and soberness of spirit
and demeanor. There is something more
than pure imagination or reflected human
sentiment in the impression we get, in the
late fall, of nature's all-enveloping sadness.
Bryant only put into enduring words the
actual mood of the outdoor world in No
vember, when he sang, —

"The melancholy days are come, the saddest of
the year."

Nature confronts her long, hard struggle
1 80

Getting Ready for Winter

with the fierce storms and deadly cold of
winter bravely, yet soberly. She sets dili
gently about making her preparations, yet
the face she bends over her task is anxious
and clouded. The least imaginative and
least sensitive person can not fail to detect
the sadness of the November atmosphere.
It is as plain as the expression of any human
face. You may see it stamped upon the
skies, and the trees, and the waters, and the
dun stretches of withered pasture. You
may feel it in the glooming hush of the air,
these short, overcast days, or hear it in the
moan of tree-tossing winds, or the sobbing
of cold rains in the night. No, it is not
man's mood that nature reflects in the twi
light months of the year ; for man is not so
depressed ; he has no such strenuous strug
gle to make with winter cold, science and
art having come to his assistance, in ad
dition to. all the resources of nature with
which he started out. But dear old Mother
Earth must still fight her environment with
savage and primitive desperation. No won
der she is depressed, as she sits patching her
familiar suit of armor once more. It is her
mood that man reflects when he goes abroad
181

Where Town and Country Meet

for his rambles over frozen November
ground.

And yet, though nature dreads the win
ter struggle, she knows that it is wholesome
for her. She knows, in the main, it will
be a victory for her most vital forms; and
that whatever perishes is simply so much
of the weaker stuff of the physical creation
tested, condemned, and swept out of the
path of higher evolution. Natural selection
is cruel to the isolated unit, but how kind
to the associated whole ! How it raises the
average of all life, by providing for the
unit-to-be a more vigorous parentage and
a less vitiated environment! Yes, the hard
places are wholesome places, in the end, for
all life, physical or spiritual. God has writ
ten this fact very plainly throughout his uni
verse, and he holds to it with an inflexible
love that men sometimes call Fate. Yet I
think we shall not always spell Fate with
the same four letters.

It is beautiful, to me, to note the thor
oughness, fidelity, and exquisite adaptation
of means to end with which nature, in our
short Northern clime, makes her preparation
for winter. She is bound to save, at any
182

Getting Ready for Winter

rate, all physical life worth saving, and firm
in her faith that she can do so. Observe,
for instance, how she safeguards the trees.
First, she strips them of encumbering and
storm-holding foliage — that which pros
trates or snaps so many noble trees in sum
mer hurricanes. Then she gradually stops
the flow of the sap, so that as the cold in
creases the veins of the tree are drained,
and it presents no point of attack for frost.
At the same time the soft outer layer of
new wood, just underneath the bark, hard
ens and forms, as it were, an inner coat of
mail, a cuirass, to stop the spear of the cold.
When you hear a tree crack in a sharp win
ter night, you may know that something has
obstructed the complete draining of sap from
its veins, and a drop or two somewhere has
frozen and split the restraining fibers.

But nature does not stop with the faith
ful safeguarding of the parent life of the
tree. She makes armor and clothing for
its embryonic buds as well — thick, hard,
overlapping scales (from which men got
their first notion of armor, perhaps), a
glutinous, waxy exudation, and sometimes
an inner lining of woolly down, like a

Where Town and Country Meet

mouse's fur. Thus does nature trebly swad
dle the young life which is the hope of the
future.

Turning now to the animal creation, note
how nature doubles the coats of her chil
dren as winter draws near. The fur-bearers,
in addition to the longer hairs of their jack
ets, produce a new and shorter and softer
growth of hair lying close to the skin — a
sort of undershirt, re-enforcing their heavier
outer garment. With many of them, also,
the color of the fur changes from brown or
red to white, to correspond with the snow,
and render them less conspicuous objects of
prey. White, also, is a poorer conductor
and dissipater of bodily heat than darker
colors. Birds receive an inner coat of down
on the approach of winter, and other
changes take place in such of them as never
migrate. The ruffed grouse, for instance,
undergoes a broadening and indenting of
the toes, by which it is enabled to walk on
the snowdrifts and dig away the snow in
search of food.

An almost unlimited number of curious
and interesting adaptations of this sort
might be cited, to show how carefully and
184

Getting Ready for Winter

thoroughly nature prepares her children
for their winter struggle. But this is a
study to which I must refer my readers as
a charming employment for fall and early
winter rambles. The observing eye will
find instances of this winter dressmaking,
or tailoring, or armoring, on every hand.
Nature will be found as busy in November
as in April — perhaps more so, if we could
count all her shifts and stitches. She has
such a large family to tide over the winter !
And, like all children, some of them will be
careless and heedless in spite of all she
can do.

BEYOND THE SNOW-PATH

HERE the hard-trodden snow-path of the
woodchoppers comes to an end, in a clear
ing littered with chips and surrounded by
piles of brush and cordwood. Beyond, the
snow lies deep and unbroken. Striking into
the wintry woods from here would be like
taking a cold plunge-bath. I stand, unde
cided, in a little forest arena or circus,
where the woodchoppers have stamped the
snow while eating their frozen lunch. I
have no snowshoes — indeed, I may as well
confess that no amount of practice has en
abled me to make any practical use of them.
Their broad, snow-gathering blades have
always proved, to me, an encumbrance and
stumbling-block. And yet it is enough to
make a man weaken, at the outset, across
the hips and in the small of the back, to
think of wallowing without snowshoes
through two feet and a half of soft snow
on the level. What shall I do? Turn
around and go back to the beaten highway ?
186

Beyond the Snow-Path

And thereby forego all possibility of dis
covering the hidden secrets of the winter
woods? No! I will make the plunge. I
will dare so great a labor. Though I may
be able to penetrate the woods but a short
distance beyond the clearing, I may find,
in that trackless, undiscovered country, all,
and more, than I seek. It is worth trying,
anyway.

I strap my trousers tightly inside my
high overshoes, and stride out into the white
waste, sinking at every step above my knees.
It is almost as hard work as wading through
so much water, and the unnatural motion of
throwing the knee so high, and lifting the
body upward and forward, when the foot
finds a resting-place, soon makes the back
and thigh muscles ache desperately. I have
known hunters who could keep up this rock
ing, camel-like motion all day, following a
deer's or. bear's trail, when the brushy,
tangled nature of the country rendered the
use of snowshoes both troublesome and dan
gerous to a man with a loaded gun in his
hand. All physical feats, at least, seem to
become possible by long practice and grad
ual induration of the muscular system —

Where Town and Country Meet

even digging all day in a ditch, as Irish
laborers do. But the sedentary man who
tries his hand, or foot, at them can scarcely
comprehend how muscles become so tireless.
I am especially desirous, on this crisp,
midwinter day, to hear what songs or chirps
we may expect from the few forest birds
that linger with us, in these Northern States,
throughout the cold weather. The piece of
woodland I am traversing is well sheltered
on three sides by hills, and is chiefly com
posed of thick clumps of evergreens, inter
spersed with more open patches of birch,
beech, and maple, forming in all an excel
lent winter resort for the birds. And yet
one might pass by such a piece of woodland,
on a traveled road, and hear not a single
bird-voice, though there were numbers of
birds sheltered among the evergreens. My
experience has been that these winter birds,
as a rule, have to be disturbed or startled
in some way before they will make their
presence known by any vocal sign. None
of them has a sustained song, and few utter
more than a dry, pinched chirp or two, or
a raucous scream, as the blue jay, when dis
turbed in their winter retreats. One or two
188

Beyond the Snow-Path

species, however, do give utterance to a brief
musical phrase, the black-cap titmouse, or
chickadee, for instance; and, more notably
still, the winter wren, though the latter bird
is comparatively rare, and its exquisite and
copious winter song is not often heard north
of Pennsylvania or Southern New York.

As I flounder along through the snow,
I am soon greeted by five or six lively chick
adees, that dart out of the evergreens with
loud chirps, one after another, as if in sport
ive pursuit. Then the whole flock flits along
from clump to clump of hemlocks, attending
me as if for company's sake, and all the
while keeping up that cheery three-syllabled
chirping phrase by way of conversation.
An old hunter told me that, if you will fol
low these birds, they will lead you to the
spot where some ruffed grouse is hiding in
the thicket or the snow, and so give you a
shot at game which you might otherwise
have failed to find. I suspect, however, that
the old hunter's experience was a mere mat
ter of chance or coincidence, having no more
basis of certainty than this, that chickadees
and ruffed grouse frequent the same kind of
cover in winter — the thickest evergreen
189

Where Town and Country Meet

clumps — and in following the smaller bird
you are actually led to the best spots for
discovering the larger, if there are any
ruffed grouse thereabouts.

Yonder is a blue jay, screaming at me
from the lower branches of a birch, at a
safe distance, even supposing I had a gun
concealed anywhere about me. I fancy that
there is a note of scornful amusement, as
well as petulant query, in his scolding cry,
as if it really tickled him to see a man so
foot-tied and absurdly hampered, toiling and
panting through the woods, when the roads
of the air were as free and smooth and de
lightful as ever. His laugh has the ring
of superiority in it, but no kindly good
humor. Now he is off, in full retreat, show
ing the white bars in his tail, and taunting
all the while, like a vituperative but cow
ardly cur. I like the blue jay least of all our
birds, summer or winter. He is a scolder
from first to last, always imputing the worst
motives to every human being who ven
tures into the woods, and proclaiming his
suspicions loudly to the whole feathered
community.

Soon after bidding the jay good riddance,
190

Beyond the Snow-Path

I fall in with that silent but beautiful winter
resident of our Northern woods, the wax-
wing, or cedar-bird. The tiny red knobs
at the extremities of the wing and tail feath
ers of this bird suggest umbrella-ribs with
their tips covered with sealing-wax. Wax-
wing, so far as my experience goes, is quite
dumb, a sort of Quaker bird in the woods,
still waiting to be moved by the spirit of
song. He has this peculiarity, which, I
think, belongs to no other bird, that he can
adjust his stomach at will to either a purely
vegetable or meat diet. When the cherries
ripen, he lives on nothing else so long as
he can get them ; but the rest of the time his
food is entirely insectivorous.

While I am resting on the top of an old
rail fence that runs through the heart of the
woods, a white-breasted nuthatch bobs
around the trunk of a pine-tree, scarcely six
feet away; and, utterly oblivious or careless
of my presence, runs diligently up and down
the rough bark, seeking for larvae or for
hibernating insects. The nuthatch is the
most insouciant, absorbed, and heedless of
danger of all the feathered tribe. Either he
does not fear man, or else he is so utterly
191

Where Town and Country Meet

taken up with the serious business of life
as to be quite unaware of his presence. I
have almost taken them in my hand from
the trunks of trees, when they were search
ing for food. Their chirp is a curious,
amusing, dry sort of soliloquy, that reminds
me of a very busy person talking to himself
while at work, or singing a low, monotonous
snatch of song. The bird's note is flat and
metallic, like a diminutive duck-quack. I
can not help smiling whenever I run across
the unconscious, bustling little body, so
loquaciously intent upon its perennial house-
cleaning.

While slowly making my way up a low
ridge, covered with nothing but pines — and
very good ones, too, considering how this
tree is harried by the woodcutters — I sur
prise a bird that I little thought to find in
this section, though it is said to be plentiful
during the winter in Canada — the pine finch
or pine siskin, an olive-backed bird, with a
breast of smoky, dingy white. I get but
a glimpse of it, as it pauses for a moment
on a pine branch overhead, and then flies
silently and swiftly away. It has a song
during the breeding season, I believe — or
192

Beyond the Snow-Path

what passes for a song — but is silent during
the rest of the year.

A pine grossbeak catches my eye, as I
begin to swing around in a circle toward
the woodchopper's path again, and soon
afterward a genuine robin redbreast, bravely
wintering near his summer nest. The hon
est chatter of my orchard friend sounds most
grateful to the ear, though he is terribly
suspicious of me now, and scurries away
the moment I come in sight of him. He
too would have remained entirely silent, this
sharp winter day, had I not chanced to dis
turb him.

The soft, plaintive chirp of a kinglet ar
rests my attention, but I try in vain to dis
cover the bird, which is doubtless well hid
den in some adjacent thicket, and quite
escapes the searchlight swing of my field-
glass. I am by this time too tired to wade
about and- dislodge him; and besides, there
would be little gained by it, after identify
ing the bird by his chirp.

As I reach the clearing once more, I am
surprised and delighted to find a flock of
snow-buntings in possession of it, perched
by dozens in the brush-piles. Pretty little

Where Town and Country Meet

fellows are these buntings, with their black
heads and throats, white breasts streaked
with black, dusky wings, bright yellow bills,
and coal-black legs and feet. Away they go
in a rustling bunch, as I step into the clear
ing, their infinitesimal chirp sounding like
a chorus of tiny fifes. I wonder what
brought them here into the woods, since
they are commonly frequenters of the weedy
pastures and the cleared hillsides ? Perhaps
some crumbs from the woodchoppers' lunch,
long since scattered, and detected by these
little foragers of the air, heaven knows how.
But surely, if any creatures need omniscient
senses to guide them to sustenance in this
wilderness of snow, it is the delicate and
tender and timid birds.

194

THE RECORD OF THE SNOW

UNTIL the snow comes the book of nature
lacks an index. You may walk for days in
succession through familiar fields and woods
without suspecting the existence all about
you of scores of timid wild creatures, whose
habit is to sleep by day, or who retreat noise
lessly at your approach to places of cunning
concealment. It is marvelous at what a dis
tance the slight vibration of the ground
under the human foot can be detected by the
delicate, fear-quickened senses of the little
inhabitants of the woods and fields. I some
times fancy that they can hear me coming
almost as far away as a boy can hear a train
of cars when he kneels down and lays his
ear to the rails. If, therefore, you live in a
thickly settled part of the country, where the
wild creatures are few in number and con
stantly harassed and terrified, you will be
apt to think — until the snow comes — that
your neighborhood is entirely deserted by
the wilder small birds and animals. You

'95

Where Town and Country Meet

never see them when you take your rambles,
nor is there any evidence to the unaccus
tomed eye that they have been there before
you.

As a matter of fact, however, these sub
urban and much traversed sections of coun
try are still peopled, as a rule, by a goodly
number of their former small inhabitants.
As a proof of this fact, take a walk two or
three days after the first considerable snow
fall of the winter. You will be astonished
to find that this apparently soundless and
motionless wilderness, this little desert of
scrub oaks and pines, is fairly populous with
small and active folk, who have plainly re
corded their goings and comings on the soft,
white surface of the snow. Your supposedly
blank book proves to be a volume of most
varied and interesting contents, of which a
comprehensive index lies before you. In all
directions you behold the telltale, wander
ing pathways of birds, squirrels, foxes,
skunks, and mice. In certain spots it would
almost seem as if there had been a carnival,
a sort of winter fair or congress of sports,
to which all the wood-folk of that section
had flocked, so numerous and varied and
196

The Record of the Snow

intricately interlaced are the tracks of the
birds and foor-footed creatures. Such a
medley of claws and paws ! See, here is the
path made by a whole bevy of quail, as they
crossed the little clearing, "bunched" and
huddled together, so that their entire track
is scarcely six inches wide. The snow is
trodden into a kind of fine lacework where
they passed. They were probably on the
run, as the quail seldom moves about at all
save in a perpetual fright and haste after
the breeding season is over. It is wonder
ful, for instance, how fast they will run be
fore a trailing dog, keeping him on a con
stant crouching, gliding trot for fifteen or
twenty minutes, before he finally overtakes
them along the hot scent and "points" them
or puts them to flight. These birds were
not pursued, but they were running, as may
be seen from the occasional scrape of an ex
tended and balancing wing, and the length
of the stride, where one of the bevy has for
a moment strayed a little out of the file.
I suppose no sportsman would think it worth
while to go gunning in these well-scoured
woods, so near the factories and the back
yards of the little houses where the oper-
197

Where Town and Country Meet

atives live; yet it would be no small sport
to locate that bevy of birds with a good dog,
scatter them in these fairly open scrub oak
patches, and try a few stirring shots upon
the wing, as the singles and doubles whirred
away through the winter sunshine.

A fox has been across the bit of clearing,
too — possibly in pursuit of the quail, as his
delicate, clear-cut track parallels theirs.
Think of a fox prowling about within a bow
shot of the outermost factory of a city of
one hundred thousand inhabitants ! not com
ing there by venturesome chance, but dwell
ing in the vicinity the year round, safely
and snugly housed beneath some splintered
ledge of rocks. He has this distinct reward
of his temerity, that there are, as it were,
two strings to his gastronomical bow — the
wild creatures of his natural domain, and
the henyards and chicken-coops of the mill-
hands, under the very shadow of the en
croaching brushwood. One good, fat hen
will go as far as six quail or forty mice, be
it remembered, and one such catch means
two or three days of plenty and ease for
Reynard in his burrow under the rocks.

You may know a fox trail in the snow by
198

The Record of the Snow

its linear exactness. Every footprint is di
rectly in front of the preceding, as if Rey
nard walked simply on two legs, set in the
middle of his body, behind and before.
How he manages to keep four feet so per
petually in line is a mystery. It must be
with the same cunning, conscious intent as
the Indian, who also makes as narrow and
linear and inconspicuous trail as possible
through the winter woods, and if he has oc
casion to come back that way, returns in his
own footsteps, and so simply reverses the
record.

In strong contrast with the cramped and
timorous track of the quail is the bold, free,
snow-scattering stride of a solitary old
ruffed grouse cock, who, confident in his
years of survival, has been abroad this very
morning, and has Hut recently crossed the
clearing, at right angles to the quail, as the
freshness- of his track shows. He does not
proceed long in a straight line, but zigzags
from bush to bush, and tuft to tuft, either
for variety and amusement, or in search of
food. He moves with freedom and bold
ness, but travels slowly and with many lei
surely pauses. If we should follow his devi-
199

Where Town and Country Meet

ous trail for fifty rods or so, no doubt we
should hear him burst into thunderous flight
far ahead and out of sight, for he is too old
and experienced a bird to be caught within
gun-range of a man, whether the man come
stealing on like a hunter or not. Once let
a ruffed grouse attain to years of discretion
— say two or three of them — and I will trust
him, particularly if he be a male bird, to
outwit the sportsman in any locality. So
far as guns and dogs are concerned, he will
survive to a ripe old age; but I am not so
sure of his ability to contend against the
meager nourishment afforded by much-
trodden, cleared, and stripped suburban
woods, where scarcely a berry or any wild
fruit ripens, that is not already marked and
appropriated in advance by some factory
boy or girl.

Everywhere among these scrub oaks and
pines the white carpet of the woods is intri
cately patterned and traced by the tracks
of the long-tailed wood mouse and the
hardy, cold-defying red squirrel. Here and
there you will see a little brown-mouthed
burrow in the snow, where some squirrel has
mined for a pine cone, dragged it up, and
200

The Record of the Snow

devoured the edible part on the spot, scatter
ing the coffee-colored chips about him as
he eats. Chipmunks, apparently, do not ven
ture forth in the winter, unless some unusu
ally warm and springlike day rouses them
from their nap and calls them forth for a
bit of lunch to tide them over until April,
but the red squirrel is abroad at all seasons
and in all weathers. I have seem him break
fasting in the hemlocks, when the thermom
eter registered ten degrees below zero, and
often in a driving snowstorm his welcom
ing, cheery chatter would startle me as I
plunged through some evergreen clump,
head down against the storm, on my home
ward way.

For a greater part of the winter the short-
legged skunk continues his diligent, preda
tory wading through the snow. You will
find plenty of his dotlike tracks in these
suburban- woods. He is a mighty hunter,
and a mightily persevering one, despite his
dumpy, Dutch build and abbreviated legs.
In the snow his trail looks like a succession
of black-spotted dice cubes, laid side by side,
so short and positive and ploddingly repe
titious are his steps. It seems ridiculous

2OI

Where Town and Country Meet

that such a creature can toil through the
woods, and seize such swift prey as part
ridges and rabbits. Yet he does it, by virtue
of his marvelously keen senses, the silence
and stealthiness of his approach, and the
lightning-like quickness with which he
makes his final spring. The skunk is the
snake among mammals, silent, slow-gliding,
quick as lightning in the fateful stroke, and
inexorable and relentless both in pursuit and
capture.

We are fortunate if we find any report of
the rabbit or hare in this snow record. Be
tween the hunters and the foxes and the
boys with their snares and traps, there is
little chance for these delicate and savory
creatures to survive. Perhaps, however, we
may find where the last hare in the woods
has leaped timorously across the moonlight
on his broad, furred snowshoes. What a
conspicuous trail he leaves — each padded
hindfoot half as broad as a man's hand. But
how he can skim over the surface of the
snow, while other, smaller-footed creatures
sink and flounder in it! If he escapes his
many winter enemies, he may thank his
snowshoes and his protective gift of speed.
202

The Record of the Snow

Some day, however, when he is dozing in
his form, under the genial warmth of the
midday sun, a prowling skunk, driven forth
in the daylight by hunger, will creep up and
get him by the tender throat. And then,
alas ! there will no longer be a last hare in
the woods.

203

A DAY ON THE CRUST

THE; January thaw of 1887, followed by
three days of intense and bitter cold, made
possible for me a certain experience to
which I look forward, each winter, as
eagerly as the New England boy to Jack
Frost's first skimming over of his favorite
pond. We had been having snowstorm
after snowstorm, until the earth was
blanketed more than three feet deep on a
level, and those who ventured out on snow-
shoes had to look carefully for the tops of
the fences lest they should trip over them.
Then came the thaw, and after it the big
freeze, leaving us with a crust that would
hold up an ox everywhere except in the
woods.

After a long embargo by deep and heavy
snow, I know of nothing that so stirs the
pulses of an out-door lover as the prospect
of a grand all-day's walk on the crust. It
is like a parole of a prisoner of war, per
mitted, on his honor, to go home and eat
204

A Day on the Crust

his Christmas dinner. Advocates of snow-
shoes may claim what they please ; I know,
and every tramper knows, that carrying
and operating these obstructions is hard,
heavy, nerve-wearing work, not to be com
pared in physical effect with the light-
footed joy of tramping over elastic ground,
or striding across miles of gleaming, noise
less crust. The snowshoe is an occasional
convenience, . but not a source of habitual
pleasure. I speak advisedly and from ex
perience. There are a hardy and, I am
tempted to say, bigoted few, who will stretch
their elephantine trails across our snow-
fields every winter, and count it sport; but
the fact that their number does not increase
from year to year is sufficient proof that
the sport requires qualifications, mental and
muscular, not vouchsafed to the majority
of those who enjoy out-of-door sports.

But if- walking over, or through, soft
snow is the most laborious form of pedes-
trianism known to mankind, a walk upon
hard snow is positively unequaled for ease,
exhilaration, and healthful delight. It is
really next to becoming a Mercury pro
temp ore and having wings under one's feet.
205

Where Town and Country Meet

No marble floor was ever so inviting to
the feet, or as easing and stimulating to the
muscles, as a far-stretching expanse of crust
under a blue winter sky. It is so crisp and
electric under foot, so full of spring and
elasticity, so graspable and firm, with just
enough friction in its surface to hold the
foot from slipping and yet not detain it.
Everywhere it undulates and sparkles be
fore one, free from all abrupt inequalities,
curving over the fences, and sweeping down
into deep hollows like a petrified cataract.
You may speed along with swinging stride,
fearless of stumbling — over stumps, bushes,
bowlders, over frozen brooks and marshes
no longer treacherous, your whole body
glowing with exercise, and your soul drink
ing in the strange crystalline beauty of the
snow-bound world.

January 21, 1887, was a memorable day
in the chronicles of my crust-walks. To
begin with, the crust was unusually thick
and hard, making it possible to penetrate
on its surface deep into the woods, and
enabling me to explore familiar haunts that
I remembered visiting before only in snow-
less tramps. Then the day was perfect —
206

A Day on the Crust

sky clear and blue as June's, and temper
ature just crisp enough to make the blood
spin, without nipping ears and fingers. Un
like most winter days, this January day re
mained cloudless from morning till night,
and the sunshine had a genial and prophetic
brightness that thrilled one's heart with a
faint intimation of spring. On the whole,
it was such a day, outwardly, as one is
tempted to mark with a red star in one's
calendar, as memorable simply because of
its charm of weather.

I left my house at eight o'clock in the
morning, and struck out like a man re
lieved of all physical limitations whatso
ever. Fences being everywhere obliterated,
all my neighbors' back yards were as free
to me as my own, and I forged away to the
eastward over melon-patches, corn-fields,
and vineyards that, only a few months be
fore, were as sacredly guarded as the tombs
of Egyptian kings. Then I climbed the
broad, white ridge behind the town, and
with a parting look at clustered roofs and
scattered spires, swung over the crest and
down the eastern slope into a wilderness
of woods.

207

Where Town and Country Meet

Here I soon found traces of some inhab
itants with whom I am tolerably well ac
quainted, and who never seem surprised to
meet me at any season of the year. The red
squirrel had been chopping up pine-cones
at his front door, and had left the chips lying
about, for all the world like a woodcutter's
litter. I saw several places where he had
tried to scratch or gnaw through the thick
crust, but it had proved too much of a task
for him, and he had climbed a tree to see
if he could find another lodged pine-cone.
At length I heard him barking vigorously,
and soon saw the flirt of his tail in a hem
lock-tree across the hollow. He scolded me
till I was out of sight; for I presume he
held me in some way to blame for the fact
that nature had temporarily locked up his
provision cellar and carried off the key.

As I walked dryshod up the bed of a
buried brook, my old friend, the ruffed
grouse (the farmer boy's "pa'tridge")
sprang up on thundering wings from a
clump of sumachs. I turned aside to in
vestigate, and found that the poor bird had
been driven by hunger to make a meal off
the astringent sumach berries, their purple
208

A Day on the Crust

crumbs being scattered here and there over
the snow. After January 1st the sports
man may be sure that it is dangerous to
shoot and eat the ruffed grouse, for in the
latter part of winter its food consists largely
of buds and berries that embitter and poison
its flesh.

When I came to the river I found the
winter lodges of the muskrats all domed
and shining with the crust. Some of them
looked larger than a haycock under the
mass of snow that had piled upon them.
I cut a stout stick, broke down through the
crust to the top of one of them, and rapped
sharply on the roof. Immediately after
ward I heard a faint splash, as the rats in
the lodge dived from their warm beds into
the icy waters of the river.

For two miles I followed the snow-cov
ered bed of the river. It was better and
more novel than skating. Then I branched
off to the north, threading my way through
the big swamp known as the "Dug-way,"
and had the good fortune to see a hare tak
ing a nap in the sun under the roots of an
upturned stump. He heard me about the
same time that I saw him, and was off with

14 209

Where Town and Country Meet

noiseless bounds. This was the first time
I had ever been able to cross the Dug-way
swamp on the crust without breaking
through.

Noon found me at the base of Saltash
Mountain; and there I lay down on the
crust and ate my lunch beside the bowl of
a crystal spring, deep down as a little well
in its marbled hollow.

Swinging around in a wide circle to the
westward, I then crossed the intervale
marshes, now smooth and hard as a tes
sellated floor. In the distance I saw a fox
nosing and digging about the tops of some
buried tussocks. The hungry fellow knew
all too well that there were fat mice housed
beneath, but I doubt if he broke his fast
on them.

Late in the afternoon I caught sight once
more of the steeples of the town, rosy with
the setting sun. The glow seemed a part
of my own being, so full of physical exal
tation was my whole body, after fifteen miles
of glorious tramping on the roof of the
snow. I was not the least bit tired — not
perceptibly so, at any rate — and my blood
coursed in my veins with full, warm cur-
210

A Day on the Crust

rents. It was an outdoor's experience to
be remembered with delight and gratitude —
a red-letter day, such as goes into the jour
nal of a nature-lover with something like
a heavenly aroma clinging about it, a fore
taste of the rapture possible for us when
spirit and body shall at last be in perfect
and eternal accord.

211

ON A FOX TRAIL

SOMETHING of the same charm that lures
the explorer and the pioneer is experienced
by the lover of outdoor life in following
the trail of a fox through snow-covered
country. I like to trace an unknown brook
to its headwaters, or follow a grass-grown
road until it fades away, perhaps, in some
distant upland pasture, or "dwindles into
a squirrel track and runs up a tree." Such
an excursion smacks of adventure and of
constantly renewed surprise. Expectation
is on tiptoe with every step ; one is sure of
something fresh and new all the way. But
best of all, I love to be the first one to follow
a fox's road — after the fox himself. He
not only leads you through a succession of
the choicest bits of natural scenery, full of
unexpected peeps into nature's most hidden
corners, but makes interesting surprises for
you in the report of his own adventures, so
vividly recorded in the snow.

Go forth some crisp midwinter morning
212

On a Fox Trail

after a recent fall of snow, and take a tramp
over the hills beyond the town. If the snow
is deep enough for snowshoes or ski, so
much the better; you will have the pleasure
of foxtrailing and snowshoeing to boot.
I venture to say that you will not have
tramped far beyond that zone of civilization
represented by the outmost hen roosts be
fore you will come upon the wiry trail of
a fox. Indeed, it will probably be the first
indication of wild life you encounter. The
fox is the most traveled of prowlers, and
will often cover from fifteen to twenty miles
in a night, searching for something to stay
his perpetually empty stomach. He does
most of his foraging at night — not all of it,
as some writers assume, for I have fre
quently seen him nosing about in the day
time. But as a rule his long hunting trips
are taken under cover of darkness, and he
spends the day napping, with occasional
brief foraging excursions between naps.

This slender, dainty, inconspicuous trail,
upon which we have chanced, was evidently
made last night, while the fox was out hunt
ing for his breakfast. It leads us first
toward town again, and is soon boldly skirt-
213

Where Town and Country Meet

ing the fences and outbuildings of the town
dwellers, as if Reynard were hopeful at least
of getting a sniff of plump, huddling poultry
through the chinks of the henhouse. Two
or three times we find where he has stopped
and raised himself on his hind legs, with his
forepaws up against a barn or hennery,
hungrily sniffing at the toothsome fowls
within. But he soon drops down again and
trots disconsolately on his way, convinced
by long experience that a fox has nothing
to hope for from a modern henhouse. Yet
almost every night he is attracted to it like
a moth to a candle, and wastes much valu
able time at the outset by courting the im
possible.

At length, however, he leads away again
toward the open fields, and we follow his
straightening trail until we come to a pas
ture full of rotting stumps and logs. Here
the fox has paused to dig for mice in the
decayed stumps and under the logs. We
sincerely hope that the poor fellow has
picked up a mouthful, at least, to strengthen
him for his midnight work, though there is
no evidence of any tragedy among the mice.
The fox has visited nearly all the likeliest
214

On a Fox Trail

stumps, and the snow is covered with the
chips and punk which he has torn out with
teeth and claws. He must have spent an
hour in this quest, for the snow is every
where traced with his zigzag paths. But at
last he gets off again toward the woods,
as we discover by making a detour on the
other side of the stumpy pasture.

For a quarter of a mile his track repre
sents the shortest distance between two
points. See how carefully he places one
foot in front of another, so as to make the
narrowest and least conspicuous trail pos
sible. The Indian must have learned this
trick from the fox, I think. It is an evi
dence of the same keen, crafty disposition.

Now we are in the woods, with the fox
track winding in devious, looplike curves
among the underbrush, bending toward
every snow-covered bush or evergreen
clump where a grouse or rabbit or huddled
bevy of quail might be dozing. How softly
and noiselessly those dainty, padded feet
must have fallen in the feathery snow ! No
chance of any creature's overhearing Rey
nard, as he comes drifting through the
woods with that peculiar, buoyant, floating

2I5

Where Town and Country Meet

motion of his kind. Other senses must warn
of his coming, if his quarry escapes.

And escape it does, in almost every in
stance, as the snow record proves. Only
once or twice in my winter walks have I
found any indication of a rabbit or grouse
or quail caught napping and captured by a
fox. The smaller woodland creatures seem
to be possessed of an extra sense, a sort of
intuitive detector of approaching peril, that
warns them, even when they are sound
asleep, of the presence of their natural de
stroyers. There seems to be a tiny alarm
clock in their brains, or a gong of nerves,
with sensitive filaments cast off in all direc
tions, which detect in a mysterious way the
prowler's approach and set the clapper
a-striking.

See where this ruffed grouse was lying
in a bowl-shaped cavity of snow, the sides
of which, softened by the warmth of the
bird's body, have now frozen to crystalline
hardness. When the fox was still twenty
feet away, as you see by his sudden leap,
the sleeping grouse waked up and sprang
from its couch. Observe where the first
stroke of the strong wings beat down and
216

On a Fox Trail

scattered the snow. How plainly you can
see on one side the imprint of the wing-
tips! The bird flushed directly out of its
snow-saucer. There was no time to get a
running start. The fox may have been in
the air at the same time with the grouse.
Time and again I have seen in the snow the
evidence of such a marvelous escape. The
fox rarely captures a grouse, though he
comes so tantalizingly near it that it must
make him grate his teeth with exasperation.

Our prowler did not get as near to this
bevy of quail as he did to the grouse. You
see where he began his jumps. The quail
were standing in a close-packed circle, tails
in and heads out. That is the way the cun
ning little fellows always sleep, presenting
a cordon of watchfulness to an intruder
who might approach from any direction.
Their united intuition of danger detected
Reynard before he was barely in sight by
moonlight, and with a whisk and a whirr
they were off together like eddying dead
leaves.

We fancy there is a dejected look in the
fox's trail, as it leads us again through the
woods with its dotlike footsteps. Here we
217

Where Town and Country Meet

wind down the bank of a most picturesque
ravine, with a half-frozen brook tinkling at
the bottom. Who but a fox would have
guided us to such a charmingly wild, remote
spot ? Just beyond the rocky walls approach
each other, and almost shut the brook in
between them. There is just room along
the left bank for us to follow the fox trail
up the gorge. We must remember this spot
next summer — if we can ever find it again
without the fox.

Higher and higher through the ascending
valleys and over the spruce-clad ridges the
fox trail leads us, till we are fairly on the
broad shoulder of Saltash Mountain. Pres
ently we come out on a bare ridge just
below the summit, and get a grand, sweep
ing view of snow-covered landscape,
bounded by the lordly Adirondacks on the
west. Here we must let the fox trail cool,
while we sit down and eat our lunch and
drink in the magnificent prospect.

As we rise to continue our way over the
ridge, down whose opposite slope the fox
trail disappears, a moving speck appears
against the snow-covered side of a stone
wall, nearly two miles away in a field at the
218

On a Fox Trail

foot of the mountain. The smallest dark-
colored object in that vast, dazzling expanse
of snow is almost startlingly conspicuous.
We bring a fieldglass to bear upon the
speck — and behold! it develops into our
wandering fox. He has just finished his
long hunt, and is pawing the snow from
a flat rock on top of the wall, where he ex
pects to lie down and take his mid-day nap
in the sun. We take turns watching him
until he has made his bed, turned about five
or six times like a dog preparing to lie down
in a cold spot, and curled himself up with
his great bushy tail wrapped around him
like a blanket. There, at the end of his
devious trail, we will let him lie, undis
turbed, hoping that by this time his hungry
stomach has been filled, and that he will
enjoy pleasant dreams until darkness again
sets him wandering over the white world.

219

WINTER WOODSMEN AROUND
BOSTON

winter long the sound of the ax
rings in the frozen New England woods;
for the ax is about the only tool of his
trade that the industrious farmer can use,
from December until April. Every morn
ing you may see him driving his team
toward the woods, or himself plodding
along solitary in the sled-track, ax on shoul
der, while the sun is still level with the
tree-tops, and the hoar-frost is gleaming like
diamond dust on the old rail-fence. There
is a certain gipsy charm about this daily
going to the woods and living under the
tent of the trees, in touch with the mys
teries and the secrets of nature. The farmer
becomes, for the time, a woodsman, a pio
neer, an adventurer, and the wild life in
him revives, as if it had been merely
drugged by more prosaic toil, and now
starts up at the breath of the woods, keen,
eager, zestful, and quick to all the sights

220

Winter Woodsmen Around Boston

and sounds and odors and feelings that
moved his ancestors in primitive and ad
venturous days. The man of the fields and
the barns and the fireside is now a man
of the woods once more, Indian-like in
thought and action and habit. His step
seems lighter and more stealthy, in the twi
light of the trees, and his eye glances about
him, more alert, suspicious, and penetrat
ing. The ax in his hand is the only type
of surviving civilization, and even that he
handles as if it were gun or bow, shift
ing it from shoulder to hand and from hand
to shoulder, as he walks, and often pausing
to lean upon it, while at work, and listen
like a hunter expecting his game. I have
frequently come upon the wood-chopper in
my winter walks, and, unobserved, seen
him stooping to taste the partridge berry,
or drag the trailing ground-pine, like a
frost-bound rope, from under the snow. I
have seen him stand motionless as a pine
trunk, sniffing the air, and seeming to catch
from afar some hint of the primitive life
from which civilization has not yet com
pletely weaned him. Again, I have seen
him bending over the prints of the hare's
221

Where Town and Country Meet

snowshoes in a tangled thicket, or, leaving
his ax, creep upon a treed partridge, and
perchance, by much tiresome craning of the
neck, get a glimpse of her sitting on a
hemlock limb, cunningly hugged against
the trunk of the tree. That mere sight of
the bird is as good to him as wine, and he
goes back to his work with a glowing heart
and fingers that itch for a gun.

Every farm, no matter how near the city,
has, commonly, its well-husbanded wood-lot,
that yields each winter some harvest of
firewood and pleasant occupation to the
farmer. Within five miles of the gilded
dome of the Statehouse in Boston, I have
found woodchoppers at work, apparently as
remote and unspoiled by culture as in the
backwoods of Maine. Last year I came
upon a log camp in a hollow of the woods in
Jamaica Plain, inhabited by four men, who
were lumbering there, within sound of the
Boston clocks, and belted all about by lines
of electric railway. A little brook trickled
under a corduroy bridge in front of their
door, and there on a rude bench they sat,
in the early twilight, smoking their pipes,

222

Winter Woodsmen Around Boston

and looking up at the evening star, as they
might have watched it over the shoulder of
Katahdin, or where the moon strikes white
on the great bare bluff of Monadnock.

There is something peculiarly grateful, to
a lover of nature and the country, in these
survivals of the primitive and rural under
the very eaves of great cities. It is a re
freshing evidence of the persistency and
fecundity of nature. After all, the thor
oughly artificial man, with his refinements
and elaborate appurtenances, seems only an
interloper. The country still ostracizes the
city, and seems ever on the point of oust
ing it altogether, and taking complete pos
session of the land again. A little way from
the close-packed suburban houses, the
birches and oaks are rapidly covering the
gashed knolls, and overshadowing the un
inhabited "avenues" laid out by premature
speculators in real estate. Who knows but,
in a few years, there will be some profitable
lumbering done in Roxbury and Dorchester
and Somerville, as now in Jamaica Plain
and Quincy? Perhaps the sound of the
ax may again penetrate to the Statehouse
223

Where Town and Country Meet

itself, and some farmer-legislator be able to
keep tally of his wood-pile, in the pauses of
public deliberation.

What rambler does not love the sound of
the ax, in spite of the fact that it is all
the time robbing him of his best-loved do
main ? When I enter the crisp woods, on a
midwinter day, and hear its cheerful, ring
ing stroke pervading all the air, like the
tap, tap of a great woodpecker, I feel a
thrill of sympathy and companionship with
the sturdy man, in felt leggings and flan
nel shirt, who is hewing out the chips some
where yonder with his bright blade. The
whole wood echoes with his firm strokes,
and I seem to hear the comfortable, as
pirant ah, ah, with which he registers each
blow into the heart of the tree. It is hard
to trace him out, for the sound seems to
come from everywhere; but at length, try
ing this way and that, and stopping to meas
ure the growing or diminishing volume of
the sound, as one stalks a drumming par
tridge, I get his direction, and soon catch
a gleam of his ax through the trees. As I
approach, he willingly stops his work to
chat with me, and I find, as I trusted, that
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Winter Woodsmen Around Boston

there is some real bond of brotherhood and
sympathy between us — as indeed there must
always be between two men who meet in
the woods, else they would not have met
there.

He tells me that he is hired by Mr. So-
and-so, and has been at work on this "chop
ping" now for two months, daily; always
working alone, and lunching by himself
in the woods at noon. He has felled and
split and piled about thirty cords, and be
gins to experience a distinct pride in this
broad amphitheater among the trees, which
he has made with his own hands. He is
paid by the "job" — two dollars for every
cord split and piled; and he will average a
cord in two days. It is poorly paid work,
but then he gets his board and lodging
thrown in, and thinks it right that he
should be paid by the job, because other
wise he might be tempted to laziness, alone
there in the woods. He shows me his ax,
proud of its sharpness, and tells me how he
uses it to make reasonably sure that the tree
shall fall as he wishes. The last few strokes,
after the tree begins to crack and sway,
are like the knocking away of the blocks

15 225

Where Town and Country Meet

when a vessel is to be launched. He never
runs when a tree is falling, but stands close
by the trunk, and looks up, so that in an
instant he may step this way or that, if the
top leans in another direction than he ex
pected.

He told me that he had no need of a
watch to give him the time of day, because
he clearly heard every hour struck by the
big, deep bell of the town clock in Nepon-
set, and on the other side the Quincy clocks
kept him apprised, unless the wind blew too
strongly from the north.

Here he worked in sight of the steeples
of Boston, cording wood that had been
growing there for generations — a true
woodsman, with his lunch wrapped in brown
paper, and no better acquainted with books,
or even saloons, than a young farmer in the
valley of the Penobscot.

After I left him I climbed a hill near by,
and saw the thousand plumes of smoke
waving over New England's capital, and
marveled at the contrast. Here indeed was
the country besieging the city, and well
intrenched in her outposts yet. The ring
of the rural ax mingled with the clang of
226

Winter Woodsmen Around Boston

the metropolitan fire bells. At my back was
a man cording wood, every noon eating his
lunch out of brown paper, and washing it
down with brown water from a swamp-
draining brook. At my feet lay a city of six
hundred thousand inhabitants, one of the
greatest sea marts on the American Atlantic
Coast, spreading its roofs and spires as far
as the eye could reach, and wearing its great
industrial cap of smoke like a giant at the
forge. Where is the invisible line drawn
between city and country? At what point
in my walk do I cease to be metropolitan
and become rural? What a strange and
striking and delightful contrast of environ
ments! — not to be found elsewhere in the
world, perhaps, than about New England's
fortunately situated and beautiful capital.

227

A PNEUMATIC CALENDAR

As I SIT indoors, this fiercely cold Decem
ber day, and listen to that peculiar moaning
and crying of a sharp midwinter wind, the
same mood comes over me that I have
known again and again, in the time of na
ture's testing and pleading — a mood of sym
pathy and longing unspeakable, akin to
tears — and I say to myself : "Ah ! the crying
of that winter wind. I should know what
season it is, if I were waking up, with eyes
still closed, from a century's sleep."

Have you never noticed it — how the
sound of the wind betrays the season, and
sometimes even the month, of the year?
You may sit in the same room from Jan
uary to December, with the air-currents
striking the same house-angles, flowing
through the same branches of near-by trees,
sweeping over the same fields or up the
same slope, and yet what different wind-
voices and wind-messages you will hear, as
228

A Pneumatic Calendar

the weeks and months follow one another
through the calendar of the year!

One may observe the same phenomenon
out-of-doors, but not quite so distinctly or
completely as in the house, because the
house adds its own peculiar resonances and
resistances, the harpstrings of its timbers,
to the music of the wind. You have another
instrument in your orchestra, another voice
— and a leading voice — in your chorus, when
you listen indoors to the vast symphonies
of the air.

Here in this little upstairs workshop of
mine, where I have sat in listening mood
through many days and seasons, the wind
has become an old and trusty news-carrier
to me. He sweeps about the house and taps
at my shutter, and I am told in a moment
all I wish to know about the world I love
best — the sincere world of nature. He tells
me now, on this edge of coldest midwinter,
that nature is crying, begging to be let out
of the stocks of the frost, pleading, weary
ing, for spring. I have never heard that
distinct, almost human, moaning of the wind
at any other time. It begins about Christ
mas, and lasts until the 1st of February,
229

Where Town and Country Meet

or perhaps a week longer, according as the
season is backward or advanced.

Then, suddenly, my pneumatic messenger
comes to the window with a fresh bit of
news, or at least the likeliest of rumors. The
February wind ceases to moan and cry. Na
ture has felt a strange, involuntary stirring
in her prisoned members, and suddenly the
air becomes full of questioning. The Feb
ruary wind is distinctly interrogative. Its
voice has a rising inflection. It brings you
a rumor, yet with the accent of conviction,
as one may put a question in such a way
as to expect and admit of but a single an
swer.

The first premonition of spring is a subtle
tone of the wind — perhaps the most subtle
of any; yet a trained and attentive ear can
hardly miss or mistake it. I find that I
have a different mood, at once, when the
February wind begins to blow. Its first
whispering may come in the middle of
the night, waking me for gladness. I feel
like one reprieved. The tension is gone;
my spirits are unbent once more and at
ease. The wind tells me that nature, who
has not stirred a muscle now for more than
230

A Pneumatic Calendar

a month, is not frozen to the heart, but
feels a little faintest pulse-beat, and sends
instant news of it to her friends.

Almost any one may notice, I am sure,
a difference between the sounds of the two
winter winds — for there are two, as I
have indicated. The first wind is pain
fully sharp and strained, and seems pitched
in a minor key. The second is rounder and
fuller and more resonant, with a certain
robust quality, and rings out plainly in a
major key.

The March wind, we might say, is the
answer to the February wind's hopeful ques
tion, the absolute and jubilant confirmation
of its rumor. The March wind is the most
positive of all winds in the pneumatic cal
endar, and no one questions his ability to
identify it, no matter under what circum
stances it may be heard. He is a messenger,
this March wind, who rides bareback and
standing a string of a hundred horses, and
sweeps more marvelously around the ring
of the world than any spangled equestrian
around his circle of sawdust. The roar of
his passage and his hearty, reasssuring shout
make the house rock; and when he is off
231

Where Town and Country Meet

again you can hear him telling his good
news in the next town.

April brings another voice to my win
dow — a feminine voice now, with the child-
tone still lingering in it. No wind in all
the calendar is quite so soft as the April
wind — when it is soft. But it has a queru
lous tone sometimes, and comes beating the
window as with impatient child-hands. It
is a moody wind, with all the changeable-
ness of a child's temperament. It can cry
and it can laugh; and there is nothing
sweeter or more delicious in all the gamut
of nature-sounds than the rustling laughter
of an April wind among the first tender
green leaves. Once listen with all your soul
to its laughing or its crying, and you can
never mistake the voice of the wind that
blows in the month of showers.

May and June have the same sweet, con
stant, gentle, unvarying winds — feminine
voices, but no longer childish, querulous,
nor uncertain; voices that hint of the ripe
ness, the poise, and stability of womanhood.
These winds make low, even sounds about
your casement, and in the trees, and over
the grass, all day long. They express na-
232

A Pneumatic Calendar

ture's utter contentment and peace. They
bring me news of God's love for his world
and his ever-reminding presence in it.

July and August are almost windless
months. You must listen closely for your
pneumatic news-bringer then, save when
storm-breeding heats goad him to fury. He
has little news now, save to whisper across
your open casement that all is well with
the fruit-bearing earth. Yet is not the whis
per of the midsummer wind as distinct a
voice, to those who hear it, as any in the
pneumatic calendar? It surely is to me. I
could never mistake its sound, and certainly
not its touch. That evanescent whisper,
that warm, soft touch upon the cheek — who
could mistake them for any other wind's
that blows ?

The September wind is bland and yet
firm. There is a return of masculinity in
its tone. If it were not for this quality,
one might mistake the sound of it for that
of the May- June wind. It rustles the leaves
a little more roughly ; it strikes, in its occa
sionally boisterous moods, a more ringing
note out of the house-timbers. Sometimes
there is a faint wail in it, as if of half-

233

Where Town and Country Meet

defined regret or momentary foreboding.
But on the whole it is a cheerfully sober
and somewhat quiet wind, that one loves
to listen to while at work in a sunny room.

October's wind is the most uniformly sad
of all. It blows in irregular puffs, scatter
ing handfuls of golden leaves with every
sigh, and sometimes shakes your window
with an almost fierce and morose protest
against the inevitable. I must confess that
I like the October wind least of all. It is
too petulant, too rebellious, too fitful. It is
the voice of nature's first unreasoning, un-
chastened revolt against her annual testing
and renewal.

With November comes a braver and saner
wind, whose sound I like right well. It
is the voice of nature's penitential mood,
strong, sincere, and sweet. It roars through
the trees, and strips them unhesitatingly of
their faded leaves — not plucking them off
in little reluctant, petulant handfuls, as did
October's gusts. It rattles your casement,
and tells you unequivocally and even cheer
fully that nature is making ready for her
winter struggle, and that you must promptly
234

A Pneumatic Calendar

get in your coal and put on your weather
strips.

So have I been dreaming of all the winds
in the year, while I sit listening to the moan
of this December weather. Every date in
my pneumatic calendar has been checked
off. Have they not strange, subtle voices,
these messengers of the air? Yet I trust
that other interpreters than I have heard the
same unfeigned messages, and have caught
somewhat of that inner meaning of which
Alice Gary hints in her beautiful lines :

" Softly among the limbs,

Turning the leaves of hymns,
I heard the winds, and asked if God were there.
No voice replied, but while I listening stood,
Sweet peace made holy hushes through the wood."

235

WEATHER COMPETITIONS

IT is a piece of that delicious wit, which
flavors so much of James Russell Lowell's
writing, when he alludes, in "My Garden
Acquaintance," to the meteorological am
bitions with which country people are so apt
to be bitten — how each aspires to be hotter
and colder, to have been more deeply
snowed-up, to have more trees and larger
blown down, than his neighbors. But I
question whether Mr. Lowell should have
limited this delight in weather competitions
to country people ; for is it not with a certain
thrill of exultation that a city man opens
his newspaper on a bitter cold morning,
and reads that the mercury in his own
metropolis shrank lower by a degree or
two, at midnight, than in any other great
city in the land? That was a distinct
triumph which warms his heart with local
pride, and in consideration of which he is
quite content to have his ears and his nose
uncomfortably pinched as he hurries out to

236

Weather Competitions

catch his car. Indeed, I have often won
dered why newspapers publish this contem
poraneous weather news at all — which
everybody must know as quickly as the
editors — if not as a sort of local challenge,
a clarion cock-a-doodle-doo, as much as to
say : "Ho, all ye worthy contemporaries, and
inferior communities everywhere ! Observe
how we are freezing [or roasting]. Note
the extremity of our temperature, and be
duly humbled in spirit !" Americans, at any
rate, will undergo great discomfort and in
convenience, as regards the weather, in the
most cheerful and even jubilant frame of
mind, provided they can feel that they have
outdone, meteorologically, any rival com
munity. And this local weather pride is
fully as marked, I am sure, in cities as in
the country.

But the country dweller, nevertheless, has
more to be proud of, in respect to weather,
than the city dweller. He can boast of ex-
tremer meteorological phenomena, and more
of them, than the metropolitan. And being
denied many other sources of local pride
in which city folk rejoice, he naturally and
properly makes much of his weather. It is

237

Where Town and Country Meet

right that he should have, as it were, a prior
and superior claim upon all sorts of meteor
ological marvels. It does my heart good to
read, in country newspapers, in the dead of
winter or the height of summer, those long,
complacent paragraphs in which the editor,
and his correspondents from all outlying
hamlets and corners, chronicle the notable
feats of the weather of the week. There is
an unction and a deep, sweet, unenvious
satisfaction about this class of literature, that
endear to me at all seasons the columns of
the country weekly. The news may be old —
a week old, perhaps, when it reaches the
outermost country subscriber — but it is none
the less engrossing to all. The farmer,
whose ear was frozen, very likely, three
hours before the editor awoke to the con
sciousness that the morning of the day on
which he penned his item was cold, will
sit and pore over the news most absorbedly,
five days later, in the midst of such a thaw
that the plow would cut a furrow as easily
as in April. It delights him as the record
of a local condition which was, in a measure,
unsurpassed and unprecedented — since last
January, at any rate. It was an event, in a

238

Weather Competitions

state of affairs where most events in the
round of the year come with one of the four
winds, or are telegraphed by lightning, or
heralded by the drums of the rain.

Yes, we shall have to admit that to the
country, in the main, belongs the epochal
phenomena of the weather. We must still
go to the remote hill-towns for all our me
teorological records and extraordinary hap
penings, with the single exception of sum
mer heat. In that respect, indeed, the city
excels, but it is by virtue of abnormal con
ditions, through which man artificially in
tensifies a phenomenon of nature. A hot
wave raises the temperature of New York
City from five to ten degrees above that of
the surrounding country; but it is an ad
ventitious supremacy, due to intercepted
air, heated bricks, and blistering pavement.
In no fair weather competitions would such
conditions be allowed. Let the temperature
rise or fall on its own merits, I say. And it
is to the credit of the average metropolitan
that he scorns to accept his mercurial ad
vantage, in summer, as any legitimate tri
umph over his country neighbor.

But it is to the country that we must

239

Where Town and Country Meet

turn for fullest zest in those weather com
petitions that are distinctively nature's own
— the great snows and blows ; the cold that
splits the trunks of trees in the night with a
crack like a pistol shot; the tremendous
thunderstorms, when all the blackened day
is tremulous with diffused electricity, and
balls of fire dart hither and thither, and the
incessant roll of the thunder is broken only
by reverberating crash upon crash; the
floods, sweeping away farmhouses, and
barns, and chicken coops unwillingly navi
gated by cats; the earthquake shocks — un
noticed in the city's roar and jar — that break
windows and old-time crockery, and send
country women flying outdoors in terror.
These are events in which the competitive
American spirit may fitly exult — fit to be
chronicled in country papers, and pasted
into scrapbooks, and recalled from season
to season with unwearied local pride.

I suppose I shall never forget the glory
of being once snowed-up in a Vermont
farmhouse, and having to help cut a way
out, literally after the fashion of Whittier's
snow-bound country boys. It was such a
triumph over those of my own family who
240

Weather Competition*

remained in the city during the holidays,
and reported a snowfall of six inches, with
three days' resultant slush and slime ! How
easy it is for one who has passed through
such an experience as Whittier's poem de
scribes to appreciate the zest of weather
competitions between country people, in dif
ferent States, communities, farms! One
never forgets nor ceases to boast of being
snowed-up to the eaves, or half-drowned in
a freshet, or knocked down by a thunderbolt
that struck only thirty feet away, or miracu
lously preserved in a tornado that uprooted
great trees all about. Such meteorological
ambitions and rivalries are, after all, keener
and grander and more wholesome sources
of excitement than any we have invented
for the stimulus of the city dweller. They
have in them an element of the cosmical and
stupendous; they are signs of a Divine
Presence in nature; and when one pictures
such forces contending one against another,
he must feel as if he were witnessing in
some sort a battle of the ancient gods.

16 241