Silver fields, and other sketches of a farmer-sportsman

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THE LIBRARY

OF

THE UNIVERSITY
OF CALIFORNIA

LOS ANGELES

GIFT

From the Library of

Henry Goldman, Ph.D.

1886-1972

SILVER FIELDS

AND OTHER SKETCHES OF
A FARMER-SPORTSMAN

SILVER FIELDS

AND OTHER SKETCHES OF
A FARMER-SPORTSMAN

BY

ROWLAND E. ROBINSON

Author of ** Uncle Lisha's Shop," " Danvis Folks,"
" In New England Fields and Woods," etc.

BOSTON AND NEW YORK

HOUGHTON MIFFLIN COMPANY

(3tbe flilicrsibc prcej* CambriDge
1921

COPYRIGHT, 1921, BY MARY R. PERKINS
ALL RIGHTS RESERVED

s

52 /

CONTENTS

SILVER FIELDS 3

FOX-HUNTING IN NEW ENGLAND 17

DANVIS FARM LIFE 42

SOBAPSQUA 89

BLACK-BASS-FISHING IN SUNGAHNEETUK 105

ON A GLASS ROOF 124

MERINO SHEEP 141

A LITTLE BEAVER 158

TRAPPING UP LITTLE OTTER 165

THE BOY 182

I. TAKE THE BOY 182

n. THE BOY AND THE GUN 184

HI. THE BOY AND THE ANGLE 186

THE COUNTRY DOCTOR 191

PORTRAITS IN INK 195

I. THE FARMER 195

II. THE TRAPPER 198

III. THE SHOEMAKER 201

IV. THE ANTICIPATOR 203
V. A PROFESSOR OF FISHING 206

SMALL SHOT 209

i. SOME POOR MEN'S RICHES 209

H. THE OLD GUN 212

HI. THE SORROWS OF SPORTSMEN 214

IV. THE GOOSE-KILLERS 217

V. WHY NOT WAIT? 220

NEW ENGLAND FENCES 222

HUNTING THE HONEY-BEE 243

THE VOICES OF THE SEASONS 256

SILVER FIELDS

AND OTHER SKETCHES OF
A FARMER-SPORTSMAN

SILVER FIELDS

AFTER many downfalls of snow by night and day,
everything of lesser height and sheer uprightness
than buildings and trees is buried in universal
whiteness. Sometimes the snow flutters down
and silently alights like immense flocks of birds.
At other times it descends as silently, but like
the continuous falling of a gray veil shutting one
in from all the world lying farther away than his
nearest outbuildings. Another snowfall comes
blown by howling winds in long slants to the earth
and whirled and tossed along the fields blurring
their surface hi a frozen crust.

Then comes a day when the wind quits buffet-
ing the snow from this side and that and stands
still, debating which way it shall blow next, while
the sun burns into the cold blue sky's eastern rim,
runs its short course over the dazzling northern
fields, and burns its way out behind the glorified
western mountains. When the sun is highest the
air bites cheeks and nose and fingers with a sharp
chill, and one feels its teeth gnawing his toes
through his boots if he does not bestir them. At
nightfall the smoke of the chimneys leans toward
the North Star and by the next morning the wind
comes roaring up from the south, armed with

4 SILVER FIELDS

swords and spears of cold that no armor of wool
or fur can ward off, and from every vantage-
ground of ridge and drift stream the white ban-
ners of snow. Then clouds come drifting across
the sky, first a few, then so many that they get
into a jam against some star or mountain some-
where to the northward, and in a few hours all the
blue is clogged with a dull gray mass. As the later
coming legions of the wind arrive, the temper of
their weapons is softened and their keen edge
blunted. The snow loses its crispness and takes
the imprint of a foot like wax.

We have a midwinter thaw, the traditional
January thaw a little belated; and presently it
begins to rain pellets of lead out of the leaden sky,
rain that has none of the pleasant sounds of sum-
mer showers. There is no merry patter on the
snow-covered roof, no lively clatter on intercept-
ing green leaves nor splashes of dimpled pools;
only windows and weather-boards resound to its
sullen beat. When, after some hours of rainfall,
the snow has become softened down to the earth,
so that when one walks in it his tracks show a
gray, compacted slush at the bottom, the wind
lulls and veers to the northward and patches of
blue are opened in the world's low, opaque roof,
windows through which the sun shines upon some
fields and mountain peaks, making them whiter
than the whiteness of snow.

SILVER FIELDS 5

The air grows colder, coming out of the north;
but if the advance of Boreas is slow and cautious,
and he sends before him his light-armed skir-
mishers, the snow is frozen so gradually that it
turns to a crumbly, loose mass, with a thin,
treacherous surface, where nothing much heavier
than a fox, if not as broadly shod as with snow-
shoes, may go without vexatious and most tire-
some labor. If the change of temperature is sharp
and sudden enough to freeze the water held in the
snow before it has time to leach down to the earth,
we are given a crust so firm that it is a delight to
coasters and all walkers and runners on the snow.

It is now no toil but a pleasure to go across lots.
"The longest way round" is not now "the short-
est way home." The fields give better footing
than the highways. The side of the highways is
pleasanter to the feet than the two grooves the
horses and sleighs have worn hi its center in all
their two months' going and coming. There is a
silver stile along every rod of every fence, and you
may walk anywhere over the buried gray wall or
rail fence at your ordinary pace, and sit down to
rest on the top of the stakes where last July, when
the daisies were blowing, the bobolink sang,
higher than you could reach. Can it be that sum-
mer ever blossomed here in these frozen fields?
How long ago it seems; and yet we are not much
older!

6 SILVER FIELDS

When the full moon comes pulsing up behind
the evergreen-crested hill, with the black sil-
houette of a pine slowly sliding down its yellow
disk, trunk, dry limb, and bristling branch clear-
cut against it, and slowly draws toward it the
long blue shadows, it is no time to bide within
doors. In every cold night of the year that gives
many such to us Northern folk we may have fire-
side and lamplight at some price, but not for love
nor money many times in a winter such a night
as this, such warmth out of snow and frost, such
celestial light shed on silver-paved fields. Let
us set our faces toward the moon and trail our
shadows behind us till we lose them among the
shadows of the pines and hemlocks of Shellhouse
Mountain.

Solid and appetizing food is this firm crust for
our feet! How they devour the way with crunch-
ing bites, reminding our teeth of the loaf sugar of
youthful days when the snowy cones, swathed in
the purple paper that our mothers used for the
concoction of dyestuff , tempted us to theft. What
better wine than this still, sharp ah*!

The even, smooth surface of the snow has been
preserved; it is not pitted, nor in places cut into
fleecy texture as the sun and wind of March carves
it sometimes. The dark blue shadows of the tree-
trunks lie clear-edged upon it, not jagged and
toothed as when they fall on grass ground. Every

SILVER FIELDS 7

branch's shadow lies blue-veined upon it, every
mesh of twigs is netted more distinctly there than
the substance is against the sky, the torn bird's
nest and every wind-forgotten leaf are revealed
on the white surface.

A winged phantom startles us gliding across the
silver field just before us, as swift in its flight but
not more noiseless than the great owl it attends.
Owl and shadow dissolve in the distant blue and
white, and presently, when this spirit of the night
has regained his woodland haunt, his hollow,
storm-foreboding hoot is heard resounding through
the dark aisles of the forest.

All sounds are at one with the hour and season.
The snow crust cracks in long but almost imper-
ceptible fissures, the ice settles to the galling level
of the brooks and ponds with a sudden resonant
crash, the frozen trees snap like the ineffectual
primers of an ambushed foe. All are winter's
voices, as ancient as hoary winter's self, that only
emphasize the silence out of which they break.
The jingle of the sleigh-bells along a distant road,
the crunching of our footsteps, and their sharp
short echoes, are the only sounds that betoken
any human presence in all the wide glittering ex-
panse, with its blotches of woodland and dots of
sleeping farmsteads.

We are not the first explorers here. A fox has
left the record of his wanderings, exaggerated like

8 SILVER FIELDS

many another traveler's accounts of himself writ
on a more enduring page than this, for if you will
believe this fellow's tracks made before the thaw,
he was as big as a wolf, and formidable enough to
raise a hue and cry in the township against him.
The hare might be frightened to see the print of
his own pads, now grown as big as the tracks of his
enemy, the lynx. A skunk was warmed up into
such activity as his short legs could compass and
made his mark in the soft snow, unmistakable,
though almost big enough for the track of the
mephitic monster of the Wabanakee legend; the
rows of four footmarks printed diagonally athwart
his course when he cantered abroad from his bur-
row are none but his, whereto is added proof of
his sometime presence in a spicy waft of the air.
The regular parallel dots of the weasel's track
make a great show where he came to the surface
above his regular runway along the buried fence.
He and the fox, though unseen, are as wide awake
this cold night as ever, but they and all later
travelers are modest now, and set down naught
of their journeys.

Can it be that there were giants here so lately
as a month ago when the woodchopper went this
way to his work! Here are his monstrous foot-
prints, albeit the stride is short, and there he set
his huge axe, before which the trees should have
gone down like mullein stalks, and there he set

SILVER FIELDS 9

his caldron of a dinner pail while he lighted his
pipe. How could so small a blaze as that little
burned-out match afforded, ever have fired his
furnace of a pipe! Yet from these dropped frag-
ments of home-grown tobacco, I conclude that
our giant was only an ordinary little Frenchman
whose feet caught the trick of his tongue.

The packed snow resisted the thaw more than
that which lay as it fell, so that beaten paths that
were sunk below the surface are raised causeways
now, a narrow, slippery footing that no one tries
with all this wide pavement to choose from.

Now if we might have the luck to see a fox, how
well his furry form, clad for such weather, so agile,
noiseless, and wild, would fit the scene, and we
ought to see one, for this little basin, rimmed with
the rough hills on the east side and on the others
with low ridges, is a favorite spot with foxes, a
trysting-place at this love-making season and a
hunting-ground in spring, summer, and fall, when
the tall wild grass harbors many field mice. More-
over, Reynard often gets a free lunch here, for
hardly a year goes by that, to save the trouble of
burial, a dead horse or cow is not hauled to this out-
of-the-way spot where foxes, skunks, and crows
find cheap and speedy sepulture for everything
but the bones. It was undoubtedly the bed of a
little pond two or three hundred years ago and the
home of beavers or in some such way, of account

10 SILVER FIELDS

to the Indians, for on the southwest bank are to
be found plenty of flint chips of the old arrow-
makers. Only a little brook trickles through it
now, complaining with a faint, muffled whimper
under its concave glare of shell ice, of its dimin-
ished strength and babbling in a feeble voice of
the days when it brawled bravely over the stones
into the pond all the droughtiest summer through
and tumbled down the rocks below it with in-
cessant clatter.

Hush! ; Stand stock still, breathe softly and
whisper no louder, for there, just out of the shad-
ows of the hill, sits a fox bolt upright and alert.
A stump? Nonsense! No wood nor stone un-
touched by the hand of the most cunning carver
ever had such lifelike form, such expression of
alertness. You can see, if your eyes are sharp
enough, the slight motion of his ears as he pricks
them toward us, as his nose points, for he has
seen or heard, not smelled, us; for the light breeze
sets from him to us, and, I fancy, touches our
nostrils with a faint waft of his pungent odor.
You can see the curve of his back, his fluffy brush
lying along the snow — nearly make out the white
tip of it. The ruddiness of his coat almost shows,
but moonlight is a poor revealer of color; the pines
are not green, as we know they are, but black, and
everything is black or blue, or gray or white.
Now he moves his head a little. He is growing

SILVER FIELDS 11

more and more suspicious and presently will van-
ish like a swift shadow in the shadow of the woods.
Shall we send him off with a shout or try how near
he will let us come? Then step carefully and
slowly. How steadfast he stands, though we have
lessened by half the distance that lay between
us when we first saw him. He must have an ap-
pointment here with the most bewitching vixen
in all fox society, and will not budge till he must.
How does the wise scamp know that our guns are
at home? Or has he not heard or seen us yet, all
his looking and listening being for the coming of
his mistress? Has love made him blind and deaf
to all enemies but the maiden of his heart? Try
with a mouse squeak if he cannot be moved by
an appeal to his stomach. Stock still yet! Con-
found his impudence or his unvulpine stupidity.
Salute him with a yell that shall make the moon-
lit night more hideous to him than the glare of
noon with a hundred hounds baying behind him.
The shadowy hill and the black pines behind us
toss back and forth the echoes of such an infernal
uproar as has not stirred them since Indians and
the "Indian devil" were here. Our fox is para-
lyzed with fright, actually frozen with fear. Let
us rush upon him and secure him before the blood
starts again in his veins. Well, it is a stump after
all ! But were ever mortals played a worse trick by
a real fox?

12 SILVER FIELDS

It is something out of common experience to
go into the woods in the night-time without
stumbling over roots, logs, or bushes and groping
in constant fear of bringing up against a tree. No
danger now of bumping against trees that show
as plainly as in a summer day. The undergrowth
is bent down and snugly packed under the hard
crust, and brush heaps are bridged with it, and
trunks of fallen trees are faintly marked by slight
ridges that one walks over almost without know-
ing it. The partridge could not find his drum-
ming-log now if he wanted it, as he will not for
six weeks to come. Sad is his fate if he was caught
napping under the snow when this crust made,
but that, I think, seldom happens to him, though
often to the poor quail in this region of deep snows.
Sixty years ago quail were not uncommon here
where now a wild turkey would scarcely be a
stranger sight. Such crusts as these have been their
more relentless enemy than guns and snares or
beasts and birds of prey, and have exterminated
them.

The partridge does not harbor under the snow
except in cold, dry weather, though he allows him-
self to be covered by snowfalls. One may often
see the mould of his plump body where he has
lain for hours in his snug bed of down, and rarely
— twice, or thrice in a lifetime, perhaps — one
may have the luck to be startled by his sudden

SILVER FIELDS 13

apparition, bursting from the unsuspected, even
whiteness of the wood's soft carpet. In mild win-
ter weather he is aloft where his food is or is em-
broidering the yielding snow with his pretty foot-
prints. Here is some of his work done a week ago»
now frayed out at the edges by the thaw, but it
has the mark of his own pattern, unmistakable,
even in this moonlight, very different from the
clumsy track of civilized poultry. It runs this way
and that, sometimes doubling on itself, and dis-
appears in the pallid gloom of an evergreen thicket,
where perhaps is his roosting-place.

The floor of the woods is barred and netted with
an intricate maze of blue shadows, here and there
splashed with a great blot of shade where the
branches of a hemlock intercept the moonlight.

How still it is ! Even the harps of the pines are
silent, and our ears are hungry for some other
sound than our own breathing and the crunch of
our footsteps. Imagine them suddenly filled with
the scream of a panther, stealthily creeping on
our track unsuspected, unseen, unheard, till he
splits the silence with his devilish yell. But they
tell us now that the panther is voiceless, and the
tales that thrilled our childhood with an ecstasy
of delightful terror, of our grandfathers being led
into the woods by the catamount's cry, like that
of a woman in distress, were myths — our good
old grandfathers were liars or they were fools,

14 SILVER FIELDS

"brought up in the woods to be scared by owls."
But the panther may be here, for there are pan-
thers in Vermont yet, or at least there was one,
two or three years ago, when on a Thanksgiving
Day two little Green Mountain boys, partridge-
hunting in Barnard, came upon a monster crouch-
ing in a thicket of black growth, and a doughty
grown-up Green Mountain boy killed him at short
range with a well-delivered charge of BB shot.
When I was a boy there was always a panther
prowling about this mountain in huckleberry-
time, guarding the berries for the two or three
old berry-pickers who used to tell us of hearing
his fearful cries. He performed his duty well, as
far as concerned us youngsters. When the berry
season was over he departed and was heard no
more till next summer.

A sheer wall of rock bars our further way up the
mountain in this direction. An ice cascade, silent
as all its surroundings, not the trickle of the small-
est rill of snow water to be heard in its core, veils
a portion of the black steep with dull silver, bur-
nished here and there with a moon-glint.

Let us sound a retreat and set our faces toward
the gray steeps of Split Rock Mount and the piled-
up blue and white Adirondacks, and get back on
the silver fields, brighter than ever now. As we
march abreast of our northward slanting shadows,
with the moon now well up above the world, we

SILVER FIELDS 15

fancy that a part of this northern half of the earth
outshines her.

Silver fields is not a good enough name to-
night for these shining farms, for the creek un-
marked now but by the fringe of wooded banks,
nor for the broad lake quiet under ice and snow,
but never when tossed by autumnal storms so
white as now and scarcely brighter when in the
glare of the summer sun. If you have a newly
minted silver coin in your pocket, cast it before
you and see how dull a dot it is on the surface. It
would hearten a greenbacker to see how poor a
show the precious metal makes to look at, hardly
worth picking up out of acres of brighter riches
that rust doth not corrupt and that shall be stolen
by no meaner thief than the sun, the south wind,
and the rain. The roofs of gray old homesteads
outshine the lights in the windows, and we won-
der if any of the inmates are aware how royally
their houses are tiled. Doubtless not one of them
thinks of it, or, if at all, only as protecting the pine
shingles from the sparks of the rousing winter fires,
or as so much filling for the cistern when the next
thaw comes ; nor, as compared with it, do the
interiors, the low, whitewashed ceilings, rag car-
pets, creaking splint-bottomed chairs and deal
furniture, seem mean to them or unfitting their
fine, perishable covering. For ourselves, we begin
to entertain more kindly thoughts of such indoor

16 SILVER FIELDS

homeliness and desire the comforts of its harboring,
and presently shut ourselves in from the blue sky
and shining moonlit outer world, tired and con-
tent to smoke a restful pipe by the fireside.

FOX-HUNTING IN NEW ENGLAND

IN New England and some of the Northern and
Middle States, the fox is hunted with two or three
hounds, or oftener with only one, the hunter go-
ing on foot and armed with a shot-gun or rifle,
his method being to shoot the fox as it runs before
the hounds. The sport is exciting, invigorating,
and manly, and by its votaries is esteemed the
chief of field sports. The fox is proverbially the
most cunning of beasts, often eluding by his
tricks the most expert hunter and the truest
hounds. Long walks are required, which take one
over many miles of woods, hills, and fields; and this
in fall and winter when the air is always pure
and bracing. I have noticed that many who de-
light to shoot the hare or the deer before the
hounds, are accustomed to scoff at this sport,
which indeed is generally held in contempt by
those who arrogate to themselves the title of "true
sportsmen."

It is difficult to see wherein it is more unsports-
manlike to hunt before hounds an animal of such
self-possession and such varied cunning, that it
is continually putting its pursuers at fault, when
it is sportsmanlike to hunt in like manner animals
who have each, speed failing, only a trick apiece

18 FOX-HUNTING IN NEW ENGLAND

— the hare depending on its doublings to elude
the dogs, the deer on running to water.

The reason 'for this nice distinction lies, per-
haps, in that deference to English usage which
still exists among us. In this case it is most sense-
less, for even if fox-hunting in English fashion were
practicable here, it would not be tolerated by our
farmers, who would never endure the trampling of
their cultivated fields and the destruction of the
fences by a score or more hard-riding horsemen.
But it is not practicable, for no horse could pos-
sibly follow the course of the hounds and fox
among our hills and mountains, where the chase
often leads up declivities to be surmounted only
by the stanchest and most active hounds, and
through thick forests and almost impassable
swamps.

In New England the hunt is for the red fox and
his varieties, the silver and cross foxes. The gray
fox of the South and West is almost, if not quite,
unknown. From the tip of his nose to the root of
his tail, the red fox measures about twenty-eight
or thirty niches, his tail sixteen to eighteen inches
including hah*, and his height at the shoulders
thirteen inches. His long fur and thick, bushy tail
make him look larger and heavier than he is. Of
several specimens which I have weighed, the
largest tipped the beam at twelve pounds; the
least at seven pounds. The general color is yellow-

FOX-HUNTING IN NEW ENGLAND 19

ish red; the outsides of the ears and the fronts of
the legs and feet are black; the chin and usually the
tip of the tail, white; and the tail darker than the
body, most of its hairs being tipped with black.
The eyes are near together and strongly express,
as does the whole head, the alert and cunning na-
ture of the animal.

The cross fox, much scarcer than the red, is
very beautiful. It is thus described by Thompson;
"A blackish stripe passing from the neck down the
back and another crossing it at right angles over
the shoulders; sides, ferruginous, running into
gray on the back; the chin, legs, and under parts of
the body black, with a few hairs tipped with white;
upper side of the tail, gray; under side and parts
of the body adjacent, pale yellow; tail tipped with
white. The cross upon the shoulders is not al-
ways apparent, even in specimens which, from the
fineness of the fur, are acknowledged to be cross
foxes. Size the same as the common fox."

The black or silver fox is so rare in New Eng-
land that to see one is the event of a lifetime.
The variety is as beautiful and valuable as rare.
Its color is sometimes entirely of a shining black,
except the white tip of the tail, but oftener of a
silvery hue, owing to an intermixture of hairs
tipped with white. It has probably always been
uncommon here, for it is said to have been held
in such estimation by the Indians of this region,

20 FOX-HUNTING IN NEW ENGLAND

that a silver fox-skin was equal in value to forty
beaver-skins, and the gift of one was considered
a sacred pledge. One often hears of silver foxes
being seen, but, like the big fish so often lost by
anglers, they almost invariably get away.

Foxes are less rare in settled countries and on
the borders of civilization than in the wilderness,
for, though they find no fewer enemies, they find
more abundant food hi the open fields than in
the forests. The common field mouse is a favor-
ite hi their bill-of-fare; and the farmer's lambs
and the goodwife's geese and turkeys never come
amiss therein. These are all more easily got than
hares or grouse. In justice to Reynard it must be
said, however, that when mice are plenty lambs
and poultry are seldom molested. In times of
scarcity, he takes kindly to beech-nuts in the
fall, and fills himself with grasshoppers and such
small deer in the summer. When these fail — why,
what would you? An honest fox must live.

When not running before the hounds, he is
seldom seen in daytime, except it may be by
some early riser whose sharp eye discerns him in
the dim dawn, moving hi meadow or pasture, or
picking his stealthy way across lots to his home
woods. In these woods he spends his days, sleep-
ing or prowling slyly about in quest of some fool-
ish hare or grouse. Going into the woods without
a dog you might pass within a few yards of him

FOX-HUNTING IN NEW ENGLAND 21

and never suspect that his keen eyes were watch-
ing you, or that the slight rustle of fallen leaves
you heard was caused by his departing footsteps,
as he stole away with a tree between you and him.

It is doubtful if the fox much resorts to his bur-
rows except in great stress of weather and during
the breeding season, or when driven to earth by
relentless pursuit. For the most part, he takes
his hours of ease curled up on some knoll, rock,
or stump, his dense fur defying northern blasts
and the "nipping and eager air" of the coldest
winter night. Shelter from rain or snowstorms he
undoubtedly will take, for he is not overfond of
being bedraggled, though it is certain he will some-
times take to the water and cross a stream with-
out being driven to it.

Reynard goes wooing in February, and travels
far and wide hi search of sweethearts, toying with
every vixen he meets, but faithful to none, for his
love is more fleeting than the tracks he leaves in
the drifting snow. In April the vixen, having set
her house in order by clearing it of rubbish, brings
forth her young — from three to six or more at
a litter. This house is sometimes a burrow in
sandy soil with several entrances; sometimes a
den in the rocks, and sometimes, in old woods, a
hollow log. In four or five weeks the queer little
pug-nosed cubs begin to play about the entrance.
The mother hunts faithfully to provide them food,

22 FOX-HUNTING IN NEW ENGLAND

and may sometimes be seen on her homeward way
with a fringe of field mice hanging from her mouth.
About the entrance to the den may be seen the
wings of domestic poultry, wild ducks and grouse,
and the legs of lambs — the fragments of many
a vulpine feast.

It is a curious fact, and one I have never seen
mentioned in print, that while the cubs are de-
pendent on the mother, a hound will only follow
her for a few minutes. Of the existence of this pro-
vision for the safety of the young foxes I have had
ocular proof, confirmed by the statements of per-
sons whom I believe. In June, 1868, an old vixen
was making sad havoc with one of my neighbors'
lambs, and an old fox-hunter was requested to
take the field in their defense. He proceeded with
his hounds (tolerably good ones) to the woods
where her burrow was known to be, and put the
dogs out. They soon started her and ran her out
of the woods, but greatly to the surprise of the
hunter they returned in a few moments, looking
as shamefaced as whipped curs, with the old fox
following them. Disgusted with the behavior of
his own dogs, he sought the assistance of an
old hound of celebrated qualities, belonging to a
neighbor. She was put out with the other dogs,
with just the same result. The vixen was, at last,
shot while she was chasing the hounds, who then
turned upon her, biting and shaking her as is

FOX-HUNTING IN NEW ENGLAND 23

their wont when a fox is killed before them; but
my friend, the hunter, told me they were as sick
and distressed as ever dogs were after an encoun-
ter with a skunk. About the last of May, 1875,
I witnessed a like incident. A stanch old hound
of my own having accompanied me on a fish-
ing excursion, started a fox hi a piece of woods
where a litter of young were known to be. Anx-
ious to preserve the litter for sport hi the fall, I
hastened to call in the dog. I found him trotting
along with lowered tail, the vixen leisurely trot-
ting not more than five rods hi advance, stopping
every half-minute to bark at him, when he would
stop till she again went on. I called him hi as
easily as if he had been nosing for a mouse, though
under ordinary circumstances it would have re-
quired a vigorous assertion of authority to have
taken him off so hot a scent.

If the life of the vixen is spared and she is not
continually harassed by men or dogs during the
breeding season, she will remain in the same lo-
cality for years, and rear litter after litter there;
perhaps not always inhabiting the same burrow,
but one somewhere within the same piece of woods
or on the same hill. If she is much disturbed, or
if she perceives that her burrow is discovered, she
speedily removes her young to another retreat.
The young foxes continue to haunt the woods
where they were reared for some months after

24 FOX-HUNTING IN NEW ENGLAND

they have ceased to require the care of their
mother, and then disperse. The habits above
mentioned are common to the cross and silver
foxes as well as the red fox.

And now for the hunt. From his helpless baby-
hood in leafless April, Reynard has come, by the
middle of the autumn, to months of discretion and
to a large and increasing capacity for taking care
of himself. The weapons are double-barrel shot-
guns of such weight and caliber as may suit the
individual fancy. A very light gun will not do the
execution at the long range sometimes required,
while, on the other hand, a very heavy one will
become burdensome in the long tramps that may
be necessary; for a man of ordinary strength,
an eight-pound gun will be found quite heavy
enough. It should be of a caliber which will prop-
erly chamber its full charge of, at least, BB shot
— for I hold that the force of lighter shot will be
broken by the thick fur of the fox; indeed I would
suggest still heavier pellets, say BBB, or even A.

Our hounds, not so carefully bred as they
should be, cannot be classed in any particular
breed. They are more like the old Southern fox-
hound, than like the modern English; and for our
purpose are incomparably superior to the latter.
They are not fleet, like him (fleetness here being
objectionable, as will be shown), but of great
endurance, and unsurpassable scenting powers —

FOX-HUNTING IN NEW ENGLAND 25

for they will follow a fox through all his devious
windings and endless devices, from dawn till
dark, through the night and for another day. Our
best dogs are well described by Shakespeare iji
"Midsummer Night's Dream":

"My hounds are bred out of the Spartan kind,
So flew'd, so sanded; and their heads are hung
With ears that sweep away the morning dew;
Crook-kneed, and dew-lapp'd like Thessalian bulls;
Slow in pursuit, but matched in mouth like bells,
Each under each."

Their colors are blue-mottled, with patches of
black and tan or yellow, with tan eye-patches;
white, flecked with yellow, termed by old-time
hunters, "punkin-an'-milk"; white and black and
black and tan, with variations and admixtures of
all these colors. It is an old saying, "that a good
horse cannot be of a bad color"; and the color of
a hound is more a matter of fancy than of excel-
lence. A loud and melodious voice is a most de-
sirable quality, and this many of our native fox-
dogs possess in perfection. A hound with a weak
voice is a constant worry, and one with a discord-
ant voice vexes the ear.

When the game is started the dog should con-
tinually give tongue, so that you (and the fox as
well) may always know just where he is. The
wrinkled brows and foreheads, and long, pendent
ears and flews of many of these dogs, give them an
extremely sad and troubled expression from which

26 FOX-HUNTING IN NEW ENGLAND

one might suppose their lives were "fu' o' sari-
ousness." Perhaps (who knows?) this solemn cast
of visage comes of much pondering on the knavish
tricks of the wily fox, and of schemes for circum-
venting his many artifices. Their tails are not at
all inclined to be bushy, like those of the English
fox-hounds of the present day, but are almost as
slender and clean as the tail of the pointer.

It is the early morning of one of the perfect days
of late October or early November. In the soft
gray light of the growing day the herbage of the
pastures and the aftermath of the meadows are
pearly with frost which is thick and white on
boards and fence-rails. The air is chill, but un-
stirred by the lightest breeze, and if the day keeps
the promise of the morning it will be quite warm
enough for comfortable tramping when the sun is
fairly up. The hounds, called from their straw,
come yawning and limping forth, stiff from the
chase of yesterday, but are electrified with new
life by the sight of the guns. They career about,
sounding bugle-notes that wake the echoes for a
mile around. Reynard at the wood-edge, home-
ward bound from his mousing or poultry-stealing,
is warned that this is to be no holiday for him.
Very likely the hounds are too eager for the hunt
to eat their morning Johnny-cake; if so, let them
have their way — they will gobble it ravenously
enough to-night, if they have the chance.

FOX-HUNTING IN NEW ENGLAND 27

And now, away! across the frosty fields toward
yonder low hill which we dignify with the name of
mountain. No song-birds now welcome the com-
ing day; almost the only sound which breaks the
gray serenity is the clamor of a flock of crows hi
the distant woods, announcing their awakening to
another day of southward journeying, or the chal-
lenge of a cock in a far-off farmyard. As you
hurry across the home pasture, the cows stop
chewing the cud, to stare curiously at hounds and
hunters, and then arise, sighing and stretching,
from their couches on the dry knolls. A flock of
sheep start from their huddled repose and scurry
away, halting at a little distance to snort and
stamp at the rude disturbers of their early medi-
tations. Almost the only signs of life are these
and the upward-crawling smoke of kitchen chim-
neys, where sluggards are just making then* first
preparations for breakfast. Yours has been eaten
this half -hour.

The old dog plods along, with serious and busi-
ness-like air, disdaining and repelling all attempts
of his younger companion to beguile him into any
unseemly gambols; but when you cross the fence
which bounds the pasture lying along the foot of
the hill, where the rank grass, mixed with last
year's growth, is ankle-deep, and where grass
and innumerable stumps and logs afford harbor
for colonies of field mice, you find "there is life

28 FOX-HUNTING IN NEW ENGLAND

in the old dog yet." He halts for an instant and
snuffs the air; draws toward a tuft of grass and
noses it carefully; his sensitive nostrils dilate; his
staid and sober tail begins, not to wag, but to
describe circles; the serious lines of his brow be-
come a frown; he mounts that log and snuffs it
from end to end and back again with studious
care. There has been a fox here, but which way
has he gone? Never fear that the old dog will not
tell you soon, but by what marvelous faculty he
finds it out, who but a dog can tell? Alas! such
niceties of his language are a sealed book to us.
Now his loud, eager snuffing has grown to a sup-
pressed challenge, and every muscle seems strained
to its utmost tension as he leaves the log and
makes a few lopes toward the woods, stops for
an instant as if turned to stone, raises his good
gray muzzle skyward, and awakens all the woods
and hills with his deep, sonorous voice! That way
has Reynard gone, and that bugle-note has per-
haps given him premonition of his doom. This
note has recalled the young dog from his wild
ranging, and he joins his older and wiser com-
panion, without bringing much aid, however, for,
catching the scent, he proclaims his discovery
till long after he has overrun it, now and then
slightly disconcerting the old truth-teller; but the
veteran soon learns to ignore the youngster and
works his way steadily toward the wooded edge

FOX-HUNTING IN NEW ENGLAND 29

of the hill, never increasing his speed nor abating
the carefulness of his scenting. Now his tuneful
notes become more frequent. If you have the
heart of a fox-hunter, they are the sweetest mu-
sic to your ears in all the world. Up the steep
side of the hill he takes his way, the young dog
following, and both giving tongue from time to
time. They slowly work the trail to the top of an
overhanging ledge and, now, there is a hush, but,
almost before the echo of their last notes has died,
forth bursts a wild storm of canine music. Rey-
nard is afoot; or, as we Yankees say, "The fox
is started," and the reeking scent of his recent
footsteps steams hot in the nostrils of his pur-
suers. The hounds are now out of sight, but you
hear every note of their jubilant song as they
describe a small circle beyond the ledge, and then
go northward along the crest of the hill. Their
baying grows fainter and fainter as they bear
away to the farther side, till at last it is almost
drowned by the gurgle of the brook.

Now, get with all speed to "the Notch," which
divides the north from the south hill, for this the
fox will pretty surely cross when he comes back,
if back he comes, after making a turn or two or
three at the north end. On this habit of his, of
running in circles, and in certain runways as he
goes from hill to hill, or from wood to wood, is
founded our method of hunting him. If he "plays "

30 FOX-HUNTING IN NEW ENGLAND

in small circles, encompassing an acre or so, as he
often will for half an hour at a time before a slow
dog, you cautiously work up to leeward of him and
try your chances for a shot. If he encircles the
whole hill or crosses from hill to hill, there are
certain points which every fox, whether stranger
or to this particular woodland born, is likely to take
in his way, but not sure to do so. Having learned
these points by hearsay or experience, you take
your post at the nearest or likeliest one, and
between hope and fear await your opportunity.
Such a place is this Notch, toward which with
hasty steps and beating heart you take your way.
When the fox returns, if he crosses to the south
hill, he will come down that depression between
the ledges which you face; then cross the brook
and come straight in front of you, toward the
wood-road in which you stand, or else turn off to
the right to cross the road and go up that easy
slope to the south hill, or turn to the left and cross
on the other hand. Standing midway between
these points, either is a long gun-shot off, but it is
the best place to post yourself; so here take breath
and steady your nerves.

How still the woods are! The hounds are out
of hearing a mile away. No breeze sighs through
the pines or stirs the fallen leaves. The trickle of
the brook, the penny trumpet of a nuthatch, the
light hammering of a downy woodpecker are the

FOX-HUNTING IN NEW ENGLAND SI

only sounds the strained ear catches. All about
rise the gray tree-trunks; overhead, against the
blue-gray sky is spread their net of branches, with
here and there a tuft of russet and golden and
scarlet leaves caught in its meshes. At your feet
on every side lie the fading and faded leaves, but
bearing still a hundred hues; and through them
rise tufts of green fern, brown stems of infant trees
and withered plants; frost-blackened beech-drops,
spikes of the dull azure berries of the blue cohosh,
and milk-white ones, crimson-stemmed, of the
white cohosh; scarlet clusters of wild turnip ber-
ries; pale asters and slender goldenrod, but all so
harmoniously blended that no one object stands
forth conspicuously. So kindly does Nature screen
her children that in this pervading gray and russet,
beast and bird, blossom and gaudy leaf, may lurk
unnoticed almost at your feet. The rising sun
begins to glorify the tree-tops. And now a red
squirrel startles you, rustling noisily through the
leaves. He scrambles up a tree, and with nervous
twitches of feet and tail snickers and scolds till
you feel almost wicked enough to end his clatter
with a charge of shot. A blue jay has spied you and
comes to upbraid you with his discordant voice.
A party of chickadees draws nigh, flitting close
about and pecking the lichened trunks and
branches almost within arm's length, satisfying
curiosity and hunger together.

32 FOX-HUNTING IN NEW ENGLAND

At last, above the voices of these garrulous vis-
itors, your ear discerns the baying of the hounds,
faint and far away, swelling, dying, swelling, but
surely drawing nearer. Louder rings the "musical
confusion of hounds and echo in conjunction,"
as the dogs break over the hill-top. Now, eyes
and ears, look and listen your sharpest. Bring
the butt of your gun to your shoulder and be
motionless and noiseless as death, for if at two
gun-shots off Reynard sees even the movement of
a hand or a turn of the head, he will put a tree-
trunk between you and him, and vanish altogether
and "leave you there lamenting."

Is that the patter of feet in the dry leaves or
did the sleeping air awake enough to stir them?
Is that the fox? Pshaw! no — only a red squirrel
scurrying along a fallen tree. Is that quick, muffled
thud the drum of a partridge? No, it never reaches
the final roll of his performance. It is only the
beating of your own heart. But now you hear the
unmistakable nervous rustle of Reynard's foot-
steps in the leaves; now bounding with long leaps,
now picking his way; now unheard for an instant
as he halts to listen. A yellow-red spot grows out
of the russet leaves, and that is he, coming straight
toward you. A gun-shot and a half away, he stops
on a knoll and turns halfway around to listen for
the dogs. In awful suspense you wonder if he will
come right on or sheer off and baffle you. But a

FOX-HUNTING IN NEW ENGLAND S3

louder sounding of the charge by his pursuers
sends him onward right toward you. His face is
a study as he gallops leisurely along listening and
plotting. He picks his way for a few yards along
the outcropping stones in the bed of the brook,
and then begins to climb the slope diagonally to-
ward you. He is only fifty yards off when you
raise the muzzle of your gun, drop your cheek to
the stock, and aim a little forward of his nose;
your finger presses the trigger and while the loud
report is rebounding from wood to hill, you peer
anxiously through the hanging smoke to learn
whether you have cause for joy or mortification.
Ah ! there he lies, done to death, despite his speed
and cunning. The old dog follows his every foot-
step to the spot where he lies, stops for a breath
in a half surprise as he comes upon him, then
seizes him by the back, shaking him savagely, and
biting him from shoulders to hips. Let him mouth
his fallen foe to his heart's content, no matter how
he rumples the sleek fur; it is his only recompense
for the faithful service he has so well performed.
And now the young dog comes up and claims his
reward, and be sure this morning's work will go
far toward making him as stanch and true as his
chase-worn leader.

The shade of sadness for a moment indulged
over the vigorous life so suddenly ended by your
shot is but a passing cloud on the serene happiness

34 FOX-HUNTING IN NEW ENGLAND

you feel at having acquitted yourself so well. If
you had missed him, it would have been but small
consolation to think the fox was safe. The hounds
having had their just dues in mouthing and shak-
ing, you strip off Reynard's furry coat — for if
English lords may, without disgrace, sell the game
they kill in their battues, surely a humble Yankee
fox-hunter may save and sell the pelt of his fox
without incurring the stigma of "pot-hunter."
At least he may bear home the brush with skin
attached, as a trophy.

But think not thus early nor with such success-
ful issue is every chase to close. This was ended
before the fox had used any other trick for baffling
the hounds but his simplest one of running in
circles. An hour or two later, an old fox, finding
the dogs still holding persistently to all the wind-
ings of his trail, would have sped away to another
hill or wood a mile or so off, and would have
crossed newly ploughed fields, the fresh earth
leaving no tell-tale scent; would have taken to
traveled highways, where dust and the hoofs of
horses and the footsteps of men combine to ob-
literate the traces of his passage; or have trod
gingerly along many lengths of the top rails of a
fence and then have sprung off at right angles
from it to the ground, ten feet away; and then,
perhaps, have run through a flock of sheep, the
strong odor of whose feet blots out the scent of his.

FOX-HUNTING IN NEW ENGLAND 85

These artifices quite bewilder and baffle the young
dog, but only delay the elder who knows of old
the tricks of foxes. Nothing can be more admirable
than the manner of his working as he comes to the
edge of the ploughed field. He wastes no time in
useless pottering among the fresh-turned furrows,
but with rapid lopes skirts their swarded border,
till, at a far corner, his speed slackens as his keen
nose catches the scent again in the damp grass; he
snuffs at it an instant to assure himself, then
sounds a loud, melodious note, and goes on baying
at every lope till the road is reached. Along this
he zigzags till he finds where the fox has left it.
And now comes the puzzling bit of fence. The old
dog thinks the fox has gone through it; he goes
through it himself, but finds no scent there; puz-
zles about rapidly, now trying this side, now that;
at last he bethinks himself of the top, to which he
clambers and there finds the missing trail. But'
his big feet cannot tread the "giddy footing" of
the rail as could Reynard's dainty pads, so down
he goes and tries on either side for the point where
the fox left the fence. Ranging up and down, too
near it to hit the spot where Reynard struck the
ground, he fails to recover the scent, stops —
raises his nose and utters a long, mournful howl,
half vexation, hah* despair. Now he climbs to the
top rail farther on and snuffs it there. "No taint
of a fox's foot is here," so he reasons, "and he must

86 FOX-HUNTING IN NEW ENGLAND

have jumped from the fence between here and
the place where I found it," and acting on this
logical conclusion, he circles widely till he has
picked up the trail once more, and goes merrily
on to the sheep pasture. Here, satisfying himself
of the character of this trick, he adopts the same
plan employed at the ploughed field, and after
a little finds the trail on the other side and follows
it to the hill, but more slowly now, for the fox has
been gone some time; the frost has melted, the
moisture is exhaling and the scent growing cold.

The fox has long since reached the hill and hah*
encircled it, and now hearing the voices of the
hounds so far away and so slowly nearing, has be-
stowed himself on the mossy cushion of a knoll for
rest and cogitation. Here he lies for a half-hour
or more, but always alert and listening while the
dogs draw slowly on, now almost losing the trail
on a dry ledge, now catching it in a moist, propi-
tious hollow, till at last a nearer burst warns poor
sly-boots that he must again up and away. He
may circle about or " play," as we term it, on this
hill, till you have reached a runway on it where
you may get a shot; or, when you have toiled
painfully up the steep western pitch and have just
reached the top, blown, leg-weary, but expectant,
he will, probably, utterly disappoint and exasper-
ate you by leaving this hill and returning to the
one he and you have so lately quitted, yea, he will

FOX-HUNTING IN NEW ENGLAND 37

even intensify the bitterness of your heart by tak-
ing in his way one or two or three points where
you were standing half an hour ago! What is to
be done? He may run for hours now on the hill
where he was started, or he may be back here
again before the hunter can have regained that.
To hesitate may be to lose, may be to gain, the
coveted shot. One must choose as soon as may
be and take his chances. If two persons are hunt-
ing in company, one should keep to this hill, the
other to that, or while on the same hill, or in
the same wood, each to his chosen runway, thus
doubling the chances of a shot.

At last the hounds may be heard baying con-
tinuously in one place, and by this and their pe-
culiar intonation, one may know that the fox,
finding his tricks unavailing, has run to earth, or,
as we have it, "has holed." Guided to his retreat
by the voices of the hounds, you find them there,
by turns baying angrily and impatiently and
tearing away, tooth and nail, the obstructing roots
and earth. If in a sandy or loamy bank, the fox
may, with pick and spade, be dug ignominiously
forth, but this savors strongly of pot-hunting. If
he has taken sanctuary in a rocky den, where pick
and spade avail not, there is nothing for it but to
call the dogs off and try for another fox to-day, or
for this one to-morrow, when he shall have come
forth again. This is the manlier part, in either

38 FOX-HUNTING IN NEW ENGLAND

case for Reynard has fairly baffled you, has run
his course and reached his goal in safety.

Sometimes an old fox, when he hears the first
note of the hounds on the trail he made when he
was mousing under the paling stars, will arise
from his bed and make off at once over dry ledges,
ploughed fields, and sheep pastures, leaving for
the dogs nothing but a cold, puzzling scent, which,
growing fainter as the day advances and the mois-
ture exhales, they are obliged, unwillingly, to aban-
don at last, after hours of slow and painstaking
work. A wise old hound will often, in such cases,
give over trying to work up the uncertain trail,
and guessing at the direction the fox has taken,
push on, running mute, at the top of his speed to
the likeliest piece of woodland, a mile away, per-
haps, and there with loud rejoicings pick up the
trail. When after a whole day's chase, during
which hope and disappointment have often and
rapidly succeeded each other in the hunter's
breast, having followed the fox with untiring zeal
through all the crooks and turns of his devious
course, and unraveled with faultless nose and
the sagacity born of thought and experience his
every trick — the good dogs bring him at the last
moment of the gloaming within range, and by the
shot, taken darkling, Reynard is tumbled dead
among the brown leaves, great is the exultation of
hunter and hound, and great the happiness that

FOX-HUNTING IN NEW ENGLAND 39

fills their hearts. After tramping since early
morning over miles of the likeliest "starting-
places" without finding any trail but cold and
scentless ones made in the early night, and so old
that the dogs cannot work them out, as the hunter
takes his way in the afternoon through some piece
of woodland, his hounds, as discouraged as he,
with drooping tails and increased sorrow in their
sad faces, plodding dejected at heel or ranging
languidly, it is a happy surprise to have them halt.
With raised muzzles and half-closed eyes, they
snuff the air, then draw slowly up wind with ele-
vated noses, till they are lost to sight behind gray
trunks and mossy logs and withered brakes, and
then, with a crashing flourish of trumpets, they
announce that at last a fox has been found, traced
to his lair by a breeze-borne aroma so subtle that
the sense which detects it is a constant marvel. A
fox started so late in the day seems loath to leave
his wood, and is apt to play there till a shot gives
hunter and hounds their reward.

When one sees in the snow the intricate wind-
ings and crossings and recrossings of the trail of
a mousing fox, he can but wonder how any dog
by his nose alone can untangle such a knotted
thread till it shall lead him to the place where the
fox has laid up for the day; yet this a good hound
will unerringly do if the scent has not become too
cold. To see him do this and to follow all his care-

40 FOX-HUNTING IN NEW ENGLAND

ful, sagacious work are in no wise the least of the
pleasures of this sport.

It is a favorite season for fox-hunting when the
first snows have fallen, for though the walking is
not so good, and hounds are often much inclined
to follow the track by sight as well as by smell, the
tell-tale footprints show pretty plainly which way
the fox has gone, how long he has been gone, and
whether it is worth your while to allow the dogs
to follow his trail; and you are enabled to help the
hounds in puzzling places, though a dog of wisdom
and experience seldom needs help, except for the
saving of time. A calm day is always best, and if
warm enough for the snow to pack without being
at all "sposhy," so much the better. Though it is
difficult to "start" a fox during a heavy snowfall,
if you do start him he is pretty certain to "play"
beautifully, seeming to reckon much on the oblit-
eration of his track by the falling snow. At such
times he will often circle an hour in the compass of
two or three acres. Glare ice holds scent scarcely
more than water. This no one knows better than
the fox, and you may be sure he will now profit by
this knowledge if naked ice can be found. He
will also run in the paths of the hare, pick his way
carefully along rocky ridges, which have been
swept bare of snow by the wind, leaving no visible
trace of his passage, and, at times, take to traveled
highways. If the snow is deep and light so that he

FOX-HUNTING IN NEW ENGLAND 41

sinks into it, he will soon, through fatigue or fear
of being caught, take refuge in den or burrow. If
the snow has a crust which bears him, but through
which the heavier hounds break at every step, he
laughs them to scorn as he trips leisurely along at a
tantalizingly short distance before them. Hunting
in such seasons is weary work, and more desirable,
, then, is the solace of book and pipe by the cozy fire-
side, where the hounds lie sleeping and dreaming of
glorious days of sport already past or soon to come.
In winter as in autumn, the sport is invigorat-
ing and exciting, and Nature has, now as ever, her
endless beauties and secrets for him who hath eyes
to behold them. To such they are manifold in all
seasons and he is feasted full, whether from the
bald hill-top he looks forth over a wide expanse of
gorgeous woods and fields, still green under Octo-
ber skies, or sees them brown and sere through
the dim November haze, or spread white and far
with December snows. The truest sportsman is
not a mere skillful butcher, who is quite unsatis-
fied if he returns from the chase without blood upon
his garments, but he who bears home from field and
forest something better than game and peltry and
the triumph of a slayer, and who counts the day not
lost nor ill spent though he can show no trophy of
his skill. The beautiful things seen, the ways of
beasts and birds noted, are what he treasures far
longer than the number of successful shots.

DANVIS FARM LIFE

POETS have sung the delights of the farmer's life
in strains so enchanting that one might wonder
why all the world has not forsaken every other
pursuit and betaken itself to the tilling of the soil.
But the farmer himself, in the unshaded hay-field,
or plodding in the clayey furrow at the tail of his
plough, with a freeholder's right sticking to each
boot, or bending, with aching back, between the
corn-rows, or breasting the winter storms in the
performance of imperative duties, looks at his
life from a different point of view. To him this
life appears as full of toil and care and evil chances
as that of any other toiler. And true it is, the life
of an ordinary farmer is hard, with too little to
soften it — too much of work, too little of play. But
as true is what the poet sang so long ago : " Thrice
happy are the husbandmen if they could but see
their blessings"; for they have independence,
more than any others who by the sweat of the
brow earn their bread, and the pure air of heaven
to breathe, and the blessed privilege of daily com-
munion with nature.

It is not easy for the farmer to see any beauty
in his enemies — the meadows full of daisies, with
which he is forever fighting, or by which he has

DANVIS FARM LIFE 43

been ignominiously conquered; the encroaching
ranks of goldenrods along the borders of his fields,
and the bristling bayonets of those Canadian in-
vaders, the thistles. How few farmers, or other
people for that matter, see in the climbing blushes
of the dawning day, or the gorgeous painting of
its close, or in the perfect day itself, anything but
the foretelling of fair or foul weather; or notice the
ways of any untamed bird or beast, except that
the crows come to pull the corn, the hawks to
catch the chickens, and the foxes to steal the
lambs and turkeys. However, the farmer gen-
erally does feel a thrill of pleasure when, in the
hazy softness of a February or March day, he
hears the caw of the first carrion-seeking, hungry
crow. "The heart of winter is broken." In April
when the fields begin to show a suspicion of com-
ing green and give forth an odor of spring, and
the dingy snowbanks along the fences are daily
dwindling, he welcomes the carol of the first blue-
bird, and is glad to hear the robin utter his rest-
less note from the boughs of the old apple-tree;
and the clear voice of the new-come meadowlark
strikes him as not altogether unmusical; and when
he hears the plaintive cry of the grass-plover he
is sure spring has come. Then he thinks of the
small birds no more till the first blasts of return-
ing winter sweep over the bare trees and frozen
fields, when, all at once, he becomes aware that

44 DANVIS FARM LIFE

the troubadours are gone. He sees that the brave
little chickadee remains faithful to his post, and
feels that his cheery note enlivens a little the
dreariness of winter, as does the reedy piping of the
nuthatch and the voice of the downy, fuller of
life than of music, and the discordant note of the
blue jay, who, clad in a bit of summer sky, loudly
proclaims his presence; but the singers are gone
and the farmer misses them.

Winter is fairly upon us at last, though by such
gradual approaches has it come that we are hardly
aware of its presence, for its white seal is not yet
set upon the earth. Till then we have a feeling
that the fall is not over. The mud of the highways
is turned to stone, the bare gray trees and dun
fields have no semblance of hie in them, and the
dull, cold sky and the black-green pines and hem-
locks look colder than snow. The Thanksgiving
turkey has been disposed of, and the young folks
begin to count the days to Christmas. The old
house has been "banked" for weeks, making the
cellar a rayless dungeon, from which cider and
winter apples are now brought forth to help while
away the long evenings. At no time of the day is
the fire's warmth unwelcome. But no snow has
come except in brief flurries; and the cattle are
out on the meadows in the daytime cropping the
withered aftermath, and the sheep are yet in the
pastures or straying in the bordering woods.

DANVIS FARM LIFE 45

But now comes an afternoon with a breathless
chill in it — "a hard, dull bitterness of cold";
when the gray sky settles down upon the earth,
covering, first, the blue, far-away mountains with
a gray pall, then the nearer, somber hills with a
veil through which their rough outlines show but
dimly, and are quite hidden when the coming
snowfall makes phantoms of the sturdy trees in
the woods hard by. Then roofs and roads and
fence-tops and grassless ground begin slowly to
whiten, and boughs and twigs are traced with a
faint white outline against a gray background, and
the dull yellow of the fields grows paler under the
falling snow, and a flock of snowbirds drifts across
the fading landscape like larger snowflakes. The
nightfall comes early, and going out on the back
stoop you find yourself on a little island in a great
sea of misty whiteness, out of which looms dimly
the dusky barn, with its freight of live-stock,
grain, and hay, the only ship within hail.

Aroused next morning by the stamping feet of
the first risers who have gone forth to explore, we
find that a new world seems to have drifted to us
while we were lying fast anchored to the old chim-
ney. Roofs are heaped and fences coped and trees
are whiter than in May with bloom, with the uni-
versal snow. The great farm-wagon, standing
half hub-deep in it, looks as out of place as if at
sea. The dazed fowls peer wonderingly from the

46 DANVIS FARM LIFE

poultry-house, or, adventuring short trips there-
from, stop bewildered midway in their journey.
Presently the gray objects rising out of the strange
white expanse take on more familiar shapes, and
we recognize the barn, the orchard (though it has
an unsubstantial look, as if the first wind might
blow it away or an hour's warm sunshine melt it),
the well-known trees, the neighbors' houses, the
faint lines of the fences tracing the boundaries of
fields and farms, the woods, and beyond them the
unchanged outlines of wooded hills and the far-
away mountains, but with a new ruggedness in
their sides and with new clearings, till now un-
known, showing forth in white patches on their
slopes. We may take our time, for we shall have
long months in which to get acquainted with this
changed world.

The first day of snow is a busy one. If the snow-
fall is great, there are paths to be shoveled to
the outbuildings, and wagons to be housed, and
sleighs to be got out and made ready, and many
little jobs, put off from time to time, to be at-
tended to. Perhaps there are young cattle, home-
less and unfed in the out-lot, lowing piteously, to
be brought to winter quarters, and sheep to be
brought home from their pasture. Happy are the
boys if to them is allotted this task, for the sheep
are sure to have sought the shelter of the woods,
and in the woods what strange sights may not be

DANVIS FARM LIFE 47

seen! With trousers tied at ankle they trudge
across the white fields, pathless and untracked
save where old Dobbin, scorning barnyard and
shelter, with whitened back and icicled sides, paws
away the snow down to the withered grass which
he crops with as great apparent relish as if it was
the herbage of June.

Across meadow and pasture to the woodland the
youngsters go, and take the old wood-road, now
only a winding streak of white through the gray
of tree-trunks and outcropping rocks, its autumnal
border of asters, goldenrods, and ferns all lain
down to sleep beneath the snow. Here Reynard's
track crosses it, he having gone forth hare- or
partridge-hunting, and so lately passed that the
human nose can almost catch the scent of his foot-
steps— what an ecstatic song the old hound would
sing over it ! Here is the trail of the gray squirrel,
where he scampered from tree to tree — one pair
of little tracks and one pair of larger ones, as if
two-legged animals had made them; and here is
a maze of larger footprints, where the hare's broad
pads have made their faint impress on the snow.
Jays scream overhead and chickadees flit from
tree to tree along the roadside. Now, almost at
their feet, a ruffed grouse breaks forth from his
snowy covering in a little whirlwind of his own
making, and goes off with a startling whir and
clatter through the snow-laden branches, a dusky

48 DANVIS FARM LIFE

meteor. From a near branch in the twilight of a
thicket a great horned owl flies away, noiseless as
a ghost. With so much to interest them the boys
almost forget their errand till they come upon the
faint trail of the sheep. Slowly working this out,
they at last find the flock wandering aimlessly
about nibbling such twigs and withered leaves
as are within their reach. Their sojourn in the
woods, brief as it has been, has given them back
something of the original wildness of their race.
They mistrust man of evil designs against them
when they meet him in the woods, and run from
the sheep-call, "ca-day!" "ca-day!" which in
the open fields would bring them in an eager
throng about the caller. But civilization has made
them dependent, as it has their masters, and they
flee homeward for safety, and the boys follow
them out through the snowy arches of the woods
to the pasture, and so home to the snug quarters
where they are to pass the dead months.

The first foddering is bestowed in the racks, and
all the woolly crew fall to with a will and a busy
snapping of many jaws. And so, at nine in the
morning and at three in the afternoon, are they
to be fed till the pastures are green again in May.

Happier they than the hardy "native" sheep
of their owner's grandfather, which had no shel-
ter but the lee of the stack that they were fed
from in the bleak meadow, pelted by cruel winds

DANVIS FARM LIFE 49

and sometimes so snowed in that they had to
be released from their imprisonment by dint of
much shoveling. This old-time foddering, which
was the fare of all the stock but the horses and
working oxen, though sadly lacking in comfort
for feeder and fed, was very picturesque: the
farmer, in blue-mixed smock-frock of homespun
woolen, pitching down the great forkfuls from the
stack; the kine and sheep crowding and jostling
for the first place on the leeward side, or chasing
wisps of wind-tossed hay down wind; then the
farmer distributing the fodder in little piles, fol-
lowed by all the herd, each thinking (as who does
not?) that what he has not is better than what he
has; the strong making might right; the poor
underling, content to snatch the scant mouthfuls,
overrun by the stronger brethren — all in a busy
throng about the rail pen from which rises the
dun truncated cone of the stack, their only har-
bor in the wide, white sea. A path, to be freshly
broken after every wind or snowfall, leads to the
water-holes, chopped out every morning in the
brook, some furlongs off, whither they wend their
way in lazy lines as the day grows older. But
no one need mourn the passing away of this
old custom; for the later warm stables, sheds,
and barnyards, with their contented and well-
sheltered inmates, are comfortable as well as
picturesque.

50 DANVIS FARM LIFE

A pleasant thing to look upon is an old gray
barn with its clustering sheds, straw-stacks, and
well-fenced yards; in this the cattle taking their
day's outing from the stable; in that the sheep
feeding from their racks or chewing the cud of
contentment, or making frequent trips to the
water-trough in the corner.

Inside is the broad "barn floor," with grain
scaffolds above it, and on one side a great "bay"
filled with hay; on the other, the stable for the
cows; and over this a "mow." In the mysterious
heights above, whose dusty gloom is pierced by
bolts of sunshine, are dimly seen the cobwebbed
rafters and the deserted nests of the swallows.

On this floor, in winter days, the threshers'
flails are beating out the rye with measured throb.
Chanticleer and Partlet and all their folk come
to the wide-open southern doors to pick the scat-
tered kernels, and the cattle "toss their white
horns" in their stanchions and look with wonder
in their soft eyes on this unaccountable pounding
of straw. Then, when the "cave" (as the long pile
of unwinnowed gram on one side the floor is
called) has become so large as to narrow too much
the threshing-room, the fanning-mill is brought
from its corner, and amid clatter and clouds of
dust the gram is "cleaned up" and carried away
to the granary. Here, too, in the early morning
comes the farmer or his man to fodder the cows

DANVIS FARM LIFE 51

by lantern-light, and to milk the "winter cow"
whose meager, foamless "mess" alone now fur-
nishes the household all the milk it has.

The early chores done, breakfast comes when
goodman and goodwife, — as Gervase Markham
delights to style the farmer and his wife, — then*
children and hired folk, all gather about the long
table in the big kitchen, and doughty trencher
men and women prove themselves every one.
The fried pork, or sausages, or beefsteak, — let us
hope not fried, — or cold roast beef, left from
yesterday's dinner, the potatoes, the wheaten and
"rye-'n'-injun" bread, the johnny-cake or buck-
wheat-cakes, the apple-sauce, the milk and the
butter, colored with October's gold, and likely
enough the sugar, are all home-grown; nothing
"boughten" but the tea or coffee and the pepper
and salt.

After breakfast the children, with books and
dinner-pails and "shining morning faces," set out
for school; but not "creeping unwillingly," for
there will be plenty of fun there at "recess" and
nooning, with sleds and snowballing and no end
of outdoor winter games.

The sheep are fed and then some work of the
day begins. Perhaps it is threshing or drawing
wood home or to the market from the " woodlot "
where a man is chopping "by the cord." He is,
likely enough, a light-hearted "Canuck" fresh

52 DANVIS FARM LIFE

from his Canadian home, as yet un-Yankeefied
and unspoiled; garrulous with his droll French-
English; as ready as another to laugh at his own
mistakes; picturesque in his peaked woolen cap
and coarse, oddly fashioned dress of homespun
gray with red-sashed waist and moccasined feet.

A skillful wielder of the axe is he, and, though a
passably loyal subject of a queen, with no whit of
reverence for these ancient monarchs of the forest
which he hews down relentlessly, regardless of
their groans as they topple to their fall. He has
brought an acre or more of the woods' white floor
face to face with the steel-blue winter sky, and all
over the little waste are piled in cords and half-
cords the bodies of the slain kings, about whose
vacant mossed and lichened thrones are heaped
their crowns in ignominious piles. He has a fire,
more for company than for warmth, whereat he
often lights his short, blackened clay pipe and sits
by while he eats his half -frozen dinner and while
the smoke fills the woods about with a blue haze
and a pungent fragrance.

Here, now, comes the farmer, mounted on his
stout sled with its long wood-rack, driving his
steaming horses which he blankets while he makes
his load. He exchanges with the chopper badly
fashioned sentences of very bad French for rat-
tling volleys of no better English, upbraiding him,
perhaps, for piling his wood with bark down, or

DANVIS FARM LIFE 63

for an intermixture of crooked and knotty sticks,
— devices well known to professional choppers for
making piles measure large, — a charge which the
Canadian repels with loud protestations of hon-
esty and frantic gestures, or pretends not to un-
derstand. His sled laden, the farmer leaves the
regicide to his slaughter and wends his creaking
way homeward along the gray-pillared arcade of
the narrow, winding wood-road, whose brushy
border scrapes and clatters against the jagged load
as it passes. This and the muffled tread of the
horses and the creaking of the runners in the snow,
the fainter-growing axe-strokes, and now and
then the booming downfall of a great tree, are the
few sounds that break the winter stillness of the
woods. The partridge looks down on him from its
safe perch in the thick-branched hemlock. A hare
bounds across the road before him, as white and
silent as the snow beneath its feet. An unseen fox
steals away with noiseless footsteps. Driving out
of the sheltering woods into the wind-swept fields,
here through deep-drifted hollows, there over
ridges blown so nearly bare that the bleached grass
rustles above the thin snow, he fares homeward,
or to the well-beaten highway, and by it to the
market in the village or at the railroad.

He is apt to tarry long at the village store, un-
der the plausible pretext of getting thoroughly
warm, and likely enough gossips with neighbors

54 DANVIS FARM LIFE

or cheapens the storekeeper's wares till "chore-
time " draws nigh.

Loads of logs are drawn to the sawmill, a
quaint old structure whose mossy beams have
spanned its swift raceway for half a century or
more. The green ooze of the leaky flume turns the
icicles to spikes of emerald, and the caves beneath
the log dam have crystal portals of fantastic
shapes. Heaps of logs and piles of boards and
slabs environ it on the landward side, and a pleas-
ant odor of freshly cut pine pervades the neigh-
borhood. Its interior is as comfortless in winter
as a hill-top, "cold as a sawmill" being a New
England proverb; and it is often said of one who
leaves outer doors open in cold weather, "Guess
he was brought up in a sawmill, where there
wa'n't no doors." It is a poor lounging-place now
for our farmer, but the dusty gristmill hard by
offers greater attractions. Maybe he has brought
a grist atop of his logs, and has good excuse to
toast his shins by the miller's glowing stove
while he waits the grinding.

On the millpond, alder-fringed and overhung
by lithe-limbed birches, the farmers gather their
ice-crop, one that New England winters never
fail to produce most bountifully. Simpler tools
are used here than are employed by the great ice
companies of the cities. The same cross-cut saw
that cuts the logs with a man at each handle is

DANVIS FARM LIFE 55

used here by one man (one handle being taken
out) for cutting the ice, which is then drawn out
of the water with ordinary ice-tongs and carried
home, a regal freight of a dozen or more great
blocks of crystal at a load.

The hay for market is hauled in bulk to the
large stationary presses on the line of the railroad,
or pressed into bales by portable presses set up at
barns or stacks and the bales then drawn to the
point of delivery. This is the work of fall, winter,
or spring, as the case may be.

The laborious pastime of breaking colts is now
in order and the younger ones are broken to the
halter, the older to harness, often in the shafts
of a primitive sleigh commonly known as a
"jumper," each thill and runner of which is formed
of one tough sapling cut halfway through, with a
wide notch at the point where runner becomes
thill. The boys may take a pull at the long halter
of the stubborn youngster, but a stronger hand
than theirs must give the two-year-old or three-
year-old initiatory lessons in his life of labor.

On Saturdays, when there is no school, the boys
sometimes have a jolly time breaking a pair of
steer calves. A miniature yoke couples the stubby-
horned, pot-bellied little cattle together, and the
boy's sled is their light burden. A runaway of the
baby oxen is not unlikely to occur, but only adds
to the fun of the affair.

56 DANVIS FARM LIFE

In such pursuits the day passes till foddering-
time comes, when the sheep-racks are cleared of
"orts" which are thrown outside the yard for
Dobbin to glean from, and the sheep foddered
afresh from the mow. The cows are stabled and
fed. The clamor of the pigs ceases as then* troughs
are filled with swill. The horses are cared for, the
night's wood carried in, and then with supper
begins the long winter evening.

The bustling hired girl clears the table and
washes the dishes with tremendous clatter, gives
the kitchen its last sweeping for the day, and then,
if she has not dough to knead for the morrow's
baking, makes herself tidy and settles herself com-
fortably to her sewing. The goodwife knits or
sews while she chats with her maid or listens to
the items her goodman reads from the local paper;
the youngsters puzzle with knitted brows over
the sums of to-morrow's 'rithmetic lesson; the
hired man munches apples and smokes his pipe
while he toasts his stockinged feet at the great
cook-stove, beneath which Tray and Tubby snore
and purr in peaceful unison.

Though every farmhouse now has its sitting-
room and parlor, and most a dining-room, the
kitchen continues to be a favorite with farming
folk — a liking probably inherited from our grand-
fathers. In many of their houses this was the only
large room, in which the family lived, and where

DANVIS FARM LIFE 57

all meals "were taken, guests entertained, and
merry-makings held. At one end was the great
fireplace wherein back-log and fore-stick burned,
sending forth warmth and light, intense and bright
over the broad hearth, but growing feebler to-
ward the dim corners where Jack Frost lurked and
grotesque shadows leaped and danced on the wall.
On the crane, suspended by hook or trammel,
hung the big samp-kettle, bubbling and seeth-
ing. The open dresser shone with polished pewter
mug and trencher. Old-fashioned, splint -bottomed
chairs, rude but comfortable, sent their long shad-
ows across the floor.

The tall clock measured the moments with de-
liberate tick. The big wheel and little, the one for
wool, the other for flax; the poles overhead, with
their garniture of winter crooknecks and festoons
of dried apples; the long-barreled flintlock that
had borne its part in Indian fight, at Bennington,
and in many a wolf and bear hunt, hanging with
powder-horn and bullet-pouch against the chim-
ney — all these made up a homely interior far
more picturesque than any to be found in mod-
ern farmhouses. Those who remember old-time
cookery aver that in these degenerate days there
are no johnny-cakes so sweet as those our grand-
mothers baked on a board on the hearth, no roast
meats so juicy as those which slowly turned on
spits before the open fire, nor any brown bread or

58 DANVIS FARM LIFE

baked beans to compare with those which the old
brick ovens and bake-kettles gave forth.

In those old kitchens that have partly with-
stood the march of improvement, the great fire-
place has fallen into disuse. Oftener it has been
torn down, chimney, oven, and all, to make room,
now deemed better than its company, and its
place supplied by the more convenient cook-stove.
The woodwork is painted, the smoke-stained
whitewash is covered by figured wall-paper; and-
irons, crane, pot-hook, and trammel have gone
for old iron; the place of the open dresser is
usurped by a prim closed cupboard; big and little
wheel, relics of an almost lost and forgotten
handicraft, have long since been banished to the
garret. There, too, has gone the ancient clock,
and a short, dapper timepiece, on whose lower
half is a landscape of startling colors, hurries the
hours away with swift loud tick.

Everything has undergone some change; even
the old gun has had its flintlock altered to per-
cussion.

Of all the rooms in our farmhouse, the kitchen
chamber is probably the least changed. Its
veined and blistered whitewashed ceiling, low
sloping at the sides, still bumps unwary heads.
The great trunk that held grandmother's bedding
when she and grandfather, newly wedded, moved
into this, then, wild country, and the sailor great-

DANVIS FARM LIFE 59

uncle's sea-chest, occupy their old corners. The
little fireplace is unchanged and on the chimney
above it hang, as of old, bundles and bags of bone-
set, catnip, sage, summer savory, elder-root, slip-
pery-elm, and no end of roots and herbs for sick
men's tea and well men's seasoning. There are
the same low beds with patchwork covers and by
their side the small squares of rag carpet — little
oases for naked feet in the chill desert of the bare
floor; and the light comes in through the same
little dormer-windows through which it came
seventy years ago. To this dormitory the hired
man betakes himself when his last pipe is smoked,
and soon, in nasal trumpet-blasts, announces his
arrival in the Land of Nod, to which by nine
o'clock or so all the household have followed.

Where do the birds, who brave with us the
rigors of the New England winter, pass the chill
nights, and where find harbor from the pitiless
storms? They are about the house, woodpile, out-
buildings, and orchards all the clear cold days
— downy, nuthatch and chickadee — searching
every nook and cranny of the rough-barked locust
and weather-beaten board and post for their
scanty fare; and blue jay, busy with the frozen
apples or the droppings of the granary. But when
a roaring, raving storm comes down from the
north they vanish. When we face it to go to the
barn to fodder the stock, we do not find them

60 DANVIS FARM LIFE

sheltered there; nor at the morning foddering,
climbing to the dusky mow, do we disturb them
as toward spring or in its early days we do such
poor song-birds, sparrows and robins, as have
been fooled by a few warm days into a too early
coming, to find themselves suddenly encompassed
by such bitter weather as they fled from months
ago. Doubtless the windless thickets of the woods
and the snug hollows of old trees are the shelter of
our little winter friends in such inclement seasons.

One night in the week, it may be, the young
folks all pack off in the big sleigh to the singing-
school in the town-house, where they and some
scores of others combine to murder psalmody and
break the heart of their instructor.

At these gatherings are flirtations and heart-
burnings as well as at the "donation parties,"
which occur once or twice in the winter, when with
kindly meant unkindness the poor minister's
house is taken possession of by old and young,
whose gifts too often but poorly compensate for
the upturning and confusion they have made
with their romping games.

So winter drags its hoary length through dreary
months, with silent snowfall, fierce storm, and
dazzling sunshine. Mows dwindle and stacks dis-
appear, leaving only the empty pens to mark their
place, and cisterns fail, making the hauling of
snow for melting an added task to the boys'

DANVIS FARM LIFE 61

duties. Bucksaw and axe are each day making
shorter the long pile of cordwood and greater the
pile of stovewood.

The traditional "January thaw" comes and sets
all the brooks a-roaring and makes lakes of the
flat meadows, while the south wind blows with a
springlike softness and sighs itself asleep. The
sky clears and the north wind awakes and out-
roars the brooks till it locks them fast again and
turns the flooded meadows to glittering ice-fields
whereon the boys have jolly skating bouts in the
moonlit evenings.

Many another snowfall comes, perhaps, but
every day the sunshine waxes warmer, and the
snow melts slowly off the roofs and becomes
"countersunk" about tree-trunks and mullein-
stalks. The tips of weather-beaten grass appear
above it and the great drifts grow dingy. It be-
comes pleasant to linger for a while in shirt-sleeves
on the sunny side of the barn, listening to the
steady drip of the icicled eaves and the cackling
of hens, and watching the cattle lazily scratching
themselves and chewing their cuds in the genial
warmth.

The first crow comes, and now, if never again
in all the year, his harsh voice has a pleasant
sound. Roads grow " slumpy" and then so nearly
bare that people begin to ponder whether they
shall go forth on runners or wheels.

62 DANVIS FARM LIFE

Some early lambs enter upon their short life,
and knock-kneed calves begin to make the old
barn echo with their bawling and the clatter of
their clumsy gambols. The gray woods take on
the purple tinge of swelling buds. The brooks
resume their merry music. The song-sparrows
come, the bluebird's carol is heard, the first robin
ventures to come exploring, and high overhead
the wild geese are winging their northward way.
Though Jack Frost strives every night to regain
his sway and often for whole days maintains a
foothold, his fortunes slowly wane and spring
comes coyly but surely on.

Her footsteps waken the woodchuck from his
long sleep, and he comes to his door to look about
him, with eyes unaccustomed to the sunlit day.
In the plashy snow of the woods, the raccoon's
track shows that he has wandered from den or
hollow tree. Southern slopes, then broad fields,
grow bare, till all the snow is gone from them but
the soiled drifts in the hollows and along the
fences; in the woods it still lies deep, but coarse-
grained and watery.

The blood of the maples is stirred, and in sugar-
making regions the tapping of the trees is begun.
A warm day following a freezing night sets all
the spouts a-dripping merrily into the bright tin
"tubs," and once or twice a day the oxen and sled
go winding through the woods, hauling a cask to

DANVIS FARM LIFE 63

which the sap is brought from the trees with
buckets and neck-yoke, and then taken to the
sugar-house. This is set, if possible, at the foot of
some hillside or knoll, on which the sled may be
driven so that its burden overtops the great hold-
ers standing beside the boiling-pans within. Into
these holders the sap is discharged through a pipe.
Now the boiling begins, and the thin sap thickens
to rich syrup as it seethes and bubbles in its slow
course from the first pan to the last, while the
woods about are filled with the sweet odor of its
steam.

Following up this scent, and the sounds of merry
chatter, one may come upon a blithe "sugar
party" of young folks, gathered in and about the
sugar-house. In this earliest picnic of the season
the sole refreshment is hot sugar poured on clean
snow, where it cools to a gummy consistency-
known as "waxed" sugar. The duty of the rustic
gallant is to whittle a little maple paddle (which
is held to be the proper implement for sugar-
eating) for his mistress, and to keep her allotted
portion of the snowbank well supplied with the
amber-hued sweet.

In earlier days the sap, caught in rough wooden
troughs, was boiled in a potash-kettle, suspended
by a log-chain from the smaller end of a goodly
sized tree trimmed of its branches and balanced
across a stump. A few rudely piled stones formed

64 DANVIS FARM LIFE

the fireplace, whose chimney was the wide air, and
every veering puff of wind would encloud the red-
shirted sugar-maker in the smoke of his fire and
the steam of his kettle. Kettle, fireplace, and pon-
derous crane had no roofing but the overbranch-
ing trees and the sky above them; the only shelter
of the sugar-makers from rain and "sugar snows"
was a little shanty as rude as an Indian wigwam
in construction and furniture.

The woodpecker sounds his rattling drum-call;
the partridge beats his muffled roll; flocks of
blackbirds gurgle a liquid song, and the hyla tunes
his shrill pipe, while advancing Spring keeps step
to their music, more and more pervading all na-
ture with her soft, mysterious presence.

In the woods the snow has shrunk to the cold
shelter of the ledges, and the arbutus begins to
blossom half-unseen among its dull green and
russet leaves, and liverwort flowers dot the sunny
slopes with tufts of white, and pink, and blue.

Sap-flow and sugar-making slacken, so that a
neighbor finds time to visit another at his sugar-
works, and asks, "Have you heard the frogs?"
Only one "run" of sap after the frogs peep is the
traditional rule. So the frogs having peeped, the
last run comes and sugar-making ends.

A wholesome fragrance is wafted to you on the
damp wind, like and yet unlike the earth-smell
which precedes a shower — the subtile blending of

DANVIS FARM LIFE 65

the exhalations of sodden leaves and quickened
earth, with the faint perfume of the shad trees,
shining white with blossoms, as if snow-laden in
the purple woods, and the willow catkins that
gleam in swamps and along the brimming streams.
It is a purely springlike odor.

The fields of winter wheat and rye, if the snow
has kindly covered them through the bitter
weather, take on a fresher green, and the south-
ern slopes of pasture-lands and the swales show
tinges of it.

The sower is pacing the fall-ploughed ground
to and fro with measured tread, scattering the
seed as he goes, and, after him, team and harrow
scratch the mould. In favored places the ploughs
are going, first streaking, then broadly patching,
the somber fields with the rich hue of freshly
turned sward. Then early potatoes are planted,
gardens made, corn-ground made ready, and
houses unbanked, letting daylight into cellars
once more.

All day long the lamentations of bereaved cows
are heard. "Settings" of milk begin to crowd the
dairy, and churning, that plague of the boy, be-
comes his constant alternate dread and suffering.

As pastures grow green the sheep are "tagged"
and released from their long confinement in shed
and yard. With loud rejoicings they go rushing
along the lane to the pasture, eager for the first

66 DANVIS FARM LIFE

nibble of the unforgotten herbage. Not many
days later the cows are turned out, and the lush
feed turns their pale butter to gold.

Young lambs now claim the farmer's care.
Each day he must visit the flock to see if some
unnatural mother must not be forced to give suck
to her forlorn yeanling, or if some, half dead with
the cold of night or storm, need not be brought
to the kitchen fire to be warmed to life. When
a "lamb-killer" comes, as the cold storms are
called which sometimes occur in May, his arms are
likely enough to be filled with them before he has
made the round of the pasture. Often an or-
phaned or disowned lamb is brought up by hand,
and the "cosset" becomes the pet of the children
and the pest of the household. If Madame Rey-
nard takes a fancy to spring lamb for the provi-
sion of her household she makes sad havoc. Her
depredations must be stopped some way, either by
removing the flock to a safer pasture, or, if her
burrow can be found, by digging out and destroy-
ing her young, leaving her with no family to pro-
vide for or by ending with her own life her free-
booting career. To compass her taking-off, the
farmer repairs with his gun, in the gray of the
morning, to the woodside, from which he enters the
field and, hiding behind a stump to leeward of her
customary line of approach, awaits her coming.
As, on evil deeds intent, she steals cautiously

DANVIS FARM LIFE 67

from the cover of the woods, her faded, ragged,
whitey-yellow fur is in sorry contrast with the
beauty of her dress when days were cold and cares
were light. The farmer imitates the squeak of a
mouse. The sound, though slight, catches her ear
at once, and she draws nearer and nearer the
stump from which it proceeds, stopping fre-
quently to listen, with cocked head, till, when
within short range, she is cut down by a heavy
charge.

In his first days the Merino lamb is one of
the homeliest of young things, pink-nosed, lean,
wrinkled, and lop-eared, and stumbling about in
uncertain fashion on its clumsy, sprawling legs.
But a month or six weeks of life give him prettiness
enough to make amends for the ugliness of his
early infancy. There is no prettier sight to be seen
on the farm than a party of them at play, toward
the close of the day, running in a crowd at the top
of their speed from one knoll to another, then
frisking a moment in graceful gambols, and then
scampering back again, while the staid matrons of
the flock look on in apparent wonder at their antic
sport.

When the ditches are dark green with young
marsh marigolds, " good for greens," it is a pleas-
ant outing on a warm day, for goodwife and chil-
dren to go picking "cowslips," as they are sure to
call them.

68 DANVIS FARM LIFE

A thousand banished birds have come to their
own again. The creak and twitter of the well-be-
loved swallows echo through the half-empty barn.
Robins and phoebes have built their nests; the
advance guard of bobolinks are rollicking in the
meadows where the meadowlark pertly walks,
his conspicuous yellow and black breast belying
his long-drawn "can't-see-me." Orioles flash
among the elm branches where they are weaving
their pensile nests. The purple linnet showers his
song from the tree-top, and far and clear from the
upland pasture comes the wailing cry of the plover.
Chickadee has gone to make his summer home in
woods whose purple gray is sprinkled now with
golden green, and where bath-flowers are bloom-
ing and tender shoots are pushing up through the
matted leaves of last year.

The hickory has given the sign for corn-plant-
ing, for its leaves are as large as a squirrel's ear
(some say, a squirrel's foot). This important labor
having been performed, the grotesque scarecrow
is set at his post, or glittering tins, or twine fes-
tooned from stake to stake, do duty in his stead.

Now there comes a little lull in work betwixt
planting and hoeing during which boys and hired
men assert their right, established by ancient
usage, to take a day to go a-fishing. Those whose
country is blessed with such streams of liquid
crystal steal with careful steps along some trout-

DANVIS FARM LIFE 69

brook whose braided current washes mossy, root-
woven banks, in old woods, gurgling over pebbly
beds and plashing down lichened rocks into pools
where the wary trout lurks under the foam bells, or
slips through alder copses into meadows where it
winds almost hidden by the rank grass that over-
hangs its narrow course.

Our rustic angler uses no nice skill in playing
or landing his fish, but having him well hooked
jerks him forth by main strength of arm and
clumsy pole and line, with a force that sends him,
whether he be perch or bull-pout, or, by lucky
chance, pike-perch or bass, in a curving flight high
overhead, and walloping with a resounding thud
on the grass far behind his captor.

Perhaps all hands go to the nearest seining-
ground, and, buying a haul, stand an eager group
on the sandy beach, joking feebly while they nerv-
ously wait and watch the rippling curve of floats
as the net comes sweeping slowly in, bringing,
maybe, for their half-dollar, only a few worthless
clams and sunfish, or, if fortune favors, maybe a
floundering crowd of big fish, which, strung on a
tough twig, they carry home rejoicing.

The housewife's fowls are conspicuous objects
now about the farmhouse — the anxious, fussy
hens, full of solicitude for their broods, some, well
grown, straying widely from the coop in adven-
turous explorations or in awkward pursuit of in-

70 DANVIS FARM LIFE

sects; some, little balls of down, keeping near the
home threshold and mindful of the maternal call,
while Chanticleer saunters proudly among his
wives and children with no care but to keep an
eye out for those swooping pirates, the hawks.
The ducks waddle away in Indian file to the pond
which they share with the geese; and the turkeys,
silliest of fowls, wander far and wide, an easy prey
to fox or hawk.

Night and morning a persuasive call, "Boss!
boss ! boss ! " invites the calves — those soft-eyed,
sleek-coated, beautiful idiots — to the feeding
stanchion in the corner of their paddock, where
they receive their rations of " skim " milk and
then solace themselves with each other's ears for
the lost maternal udders.

In the placid faces of their mothers, as they
come swinging homeward from the pasture, there
is no sign of bereavement nor of its lightest
recollection. Happy beasts whose pangs of sorrow
kindly Nature so quickly heals !

In the last of the blossom-freighted days of
May is one that each year grows dearer to us.
There is scarcely a graveyard among our hills but
has its little flag, guarding, in sun and shower, the
grave of some soldier. Hither come farmers and
villagers with evergreens and flowers, no one so
thoughtless that he does not bring a spray of plum-
blossoms or cluster of lilacs, no child so poor that

DANVIS FARM LIFE 71

it does not bear bunches of violets and dandelions,
while the mothers rob the cherished house plants
of their bloom and girls bring all the flowers of the
wood.

Far more touching than the long processions
that with music and flags and floral chariot wind
through the great cemeteries of our cities, are the
simple rites of the small scattered groups of coun-
try folks who come to deck with humble flowers
the resting-place of the soldier who was neighbor
or brother or comrade. While the garlands yet are
fresh and fragrant on the graves, Spring blossoms
into the perfect days of June.

He who now braves the onslaughts of the
bloodthirsty mosquito, in the leafy fastnesses of
the June woods, will see, not so many birds as he
may expect to, judging from the throngs in fields
and orchards, but many of those he does see will
be unknown to him if he has not the lore of the
ornithologist and a sharp eye and ear to boot.
However, he will meet old acquaintances, his little
friends the chickadees and the nuthatches, the
commoner woodpeckers and the yellow-bellied,
perhaps. The jays will scold him and the crows
make a pother overhead if he chances in the
neighborhood of their nests, and, likely enough,
he will see fluttering and skulking before him a
brown something — is it beast or bird? — and
some nimble balls of brown and yellow down dis-

72 DANVIS FABM LIFE

appearing under the green leaves of this year or
the dead ones of last, at his very feet, which, after
the first moment of surprise, he knows are a hen-
partridge and her young. Tracing an unmistak-
able half -harsh note to a tree-top he sees the red-
hot glow of a scarlet tanager and knows that his
dull green mate is not far off.

Led by the sound of axe-strokes, falling quicker
and not so strongly as those of the wood-chopper,
he breasts the tangle of broad-leafed hobble-bush
and the clustered bloom of cornels and comes upon
a man busy with axe and spade peeling the hem-
lock logs cut last winter; some shining in the
"chopping" in the whiteness of their fresh naked-
ness, their ancient vestments set up against them
to dry; others, still clad in the furrowed bark,
drilled by the beaks of a thousand woodpeckers and
scratched by the claws of numberless generations
of squirrels. It is one of Nature's mysteries that
these prostrate trunks should feel the thrill of her
renewed life and their sap flow again for a little
while through the severed ducts. If the hand that
now strips them were the same that hewed them
down, one might believe the blood of these dead
trees started afresh at the touch of their mur-
derer.

During the "breathing spell" which comes be-
tween the finishing of spring's and the beginning
of summer's work on the farm, the path-master

DANVIS FARM LIFE 73

warns out the farmers to the performance of the
farce termed, by stretch of courtesy, "road-mend-
ing," which is played regularly twice a year, when
all hands turn out with teams, ploughs, scrapers
and wagons, spades, shovels, and hoes and make
good roads bad and bad roads worse. It is fortu-
nate for those who travel much upon the highways
that these road-menders do so little, playing at
work for a short time, then stopping, leaning on
plough-handle or spade to hold grave.consultation
concerning the ways of doing some part of their
task, or gathering about the water-jug in the
shade of a wayside tree, and spending an uncon-
scionable time in quenching their thirst and light-
ing their pipes and joking or discussing some mat-
ter of neighborhood gossip.

But the young corn is showing in rows of green
across the dark mould that the time for the first
hoeing has come. The long-suffering boy be-
strides old Dobbin and guides him between the
rows while he drags back and forth the plough or
cultivator, held, most likely, by one too apt to
blame the boy for every misstep of the horse which
crushes beyond resurrection a hill of corn. It is
my opinion that to this first odious compulsory
equitation entailed upon the boys of my genera-
tion is due the falling into disuse of equestrianism
in New England. Who that had ever ridden a
horse at snail's pace among the corn-rows in the

74 DANVIS FARM LIFE

lazy days of early summer when he knew he ought
to be catching the fish or hunting the birds' nests
he was dreaming of, instead of being a clothespin
to the thin blanket on Dobbin's sharp back and
the mark of the sharper tongue of the plough-
holder, would ever again of his own free will
mount a horse? I can speak for one. Happily this
particular boy-torture has gone out of fashion;
and in the tillage of hoed crops as hi haymaking
the horse is guided by the man who cultivates or
rakes. After this trio, man, boy, and horse, come
the hoers cutting away at the everlasting and
ever-present weeds, and stirring and mellowing
the soil of the corn or potato hills.

It is likely enough to happen, about these days,
that a farmer, having set about the building of a
barn and the carpenter having got the frame
ready for setting up, invites his neighbors to a
"raising," one of the few "bees" remaining of
those so common and frequent in the earlier days
of interdependence. The young and able-bodied
are promptly on hand, and vie with one another
in deeds of strength and daring, while the old
men, exempt from the warfare of life, sit apart
on a pile of rafters or sleepers, anon giving sage
advice, recounting their youthful exploits, and
contrasting the past with the present; seldom,
albeit, to the great honor of modern times or men.
The labor ended, cakes, pies, cheese, and cider are

DANVIS FARM LIFE 75

served, and these comfortably disposed of, the
jolly company disperse.

One kind of "bee," as these gatherings for mu-
tual help are called, which has only lately gone
out with the oxen, who were the chief actors in it,
was the "drawing bee." A farmer, having cause
to change the site of a barn or other structure,
would, with the carpenter's help, usually in early
spring, but sometimes in the fall, get runners un-
der his building. These were long timbers of some-
thing more than the building's length, cut with
an upward slope at the forward end. Having
properly braced the inside of his barn, to with-
stand the rack of transportation, all his oxen-
owning neighbors were bidden to his aid. The
yokes of oxen were hitched in two "strings," one
to each runner, and, all being ready, were started
off at the word of command, amid a clamor of
"Whoa-hush!" "Whoa-haw!" and "Gee!" ad-
dressed to the Bucks, Broads, Stars, Brindles, and
Brights, who were the motive power, the creaking
of the racked frame and the shrill shouts of the
boys, without whose presence nothing of such
moment ever is, if it ever could be, done.

The barn being safely set in its new place, the
bee ended in feasting and jollification. Now that
oxen have become so scarce it would need the
mustering of a whole county to provide the nec-
essary force. In the old times there were also

76 DANVIS FARM LIFE

"logging bees," and others, which have fallen
into disuse.

After hoeing, the deluge — for the sheep; for
they must be washed preparatory to shearing,
which important event in their and farm life now
draws near. In some pool of a stream, or sheltered
cove of a pond or lake, where the water is hip-
deep, or under the outpouring stream from a
tapped mill-flume, or the farmer's own pond made
for this especial purpose, they suffer this cleansing.

Huddled in a pen they are taken by the catcher
as called for and carried to the washers, and,
passing from their hands, stagger, water-logged
and woe-begone, up the bank to rejoin their drip-
ping comrades, and doubtless pass the hours while
their fleeces are drying in mutual condolement
over man's inhumanity to sheep.

Within a fortnight or so after this comes the
shearing. The farmer engages the service of as
many as he needs of his neighbors and their sons
as are skillful shearers. The barn floor and its
overhanging scaffolds are carefully swept. The
skies are watched for the day and night preceding
the first day of shearing, lest a sudden shower
should wet the sheep, which, if so threatened, must
be got to the shelter of the barn. If this fore-
thought has not been needed in the early morning
of the great day, all the available force is mus-
tered, such farmhands as can be spared from the

DANVIS FARM LIFE 77

milking, the boys roused from their morning nap,
and some helpful, timely coming shearers, to get
the sheep home from the pastures. Them the sun
salutes with his first rays as they encompass the
sheep on the dry knoll where they have slept, and
call and drive them homeward across the pasture
and through the lane to the barnyard.

Who shall tell the waywardness of sheep ! How
they will come to one when not called or wanted,
but will flee from the caller when wanted as if he
were a ravening wolf; how they will peer suspi-
ciously at the gap or gateway through which they
should go, as if on the thither side were lurking
dire perils; or how they will utterly ignore it and
race past it at headlong speed, unheeding the
shaking of salt-dish and the most persuasive
"ca-day," and how surely they will discover the
smallest break in a fence through which they
should not go, and go scrambling through it, or
over a wall, pell-mell, like a charging squadron of
horse, as, if not possessed with the devil himself,
possessed, at least, with the fear that he, or some-
thing more terrible than he to ovine imagination,
will surely take the hindmost. But the patience
with which they endure shearing is a virtue which
covers many of their sins. Seldom struggling
much, though they are held continually in un-
natural positions, on the side with the neck under
the shearer's knee, or on the rump with the neck

78 DANVIS FARM LIFE

bent over his knee or pilloried between his legs.
Surely the sheep was made to be shorn. Fancy
any other domestic animal undergoing the process.
What comes of pig-shearing is proverbial.

From the barn, so silent since foddering ended,
issues now a medley of sounds — the loud bleat-
ing of the ewes, in tones as various as human
voices, and the higher-pitched lamentations of the
lambs, bewailing their short separation, the cas-
tanet-like click of the shears, loud jests and merry
laughter, the outcry of the alarmed swallows
cleaving the upper darkness of the ridge, where
within feather-lined mud walls their treasures he.

Ranged along the floor, each in his allotted
place, are the three, four, or half-dozen or more
shearers, bending each over his sheep, which,
under his skillful hand, shrinks rapidly from um-
ber plumpness to creamy-white thinness, under-
going a change so great that, when released, she
goes leaping forth into the yard, her own lamb
hardly knows her. At his table, with a great reel of
twine at his elbow, is the tier, making each fleece
into a compact bundle. At the stable-door is the
alert catcher, ready with an unshorn sheep as each
shorn one is let go; and these, with a boy to pick
up scattered locks, constitute the working force.

Neighbors drop in to lounge an hour away in
the jolly company, to take a pull at the cider
pitcher, or engage shearers for their own shearing.

DANVIS FARM LIFE 79

The wool buyer makes his rounds, and the boys
come to see the shearing, to get in everybody's
way, and beg cuts of sheep-twine. The farmhouse
affords its best for the shearing dinner, which has
long been an honored festival in New England.

But the cheap wool-gr6wing of the great West
has well-nigh put an end to this industry here.
Flocks have become few and small, and herds
of Alderneys or shorthorns feed where formerly
great flocks of Merinos nibbled the clover. Shep-
herds have turned dairymen. Those who practice
the shearers' craft year by year become scarcer,
and the day seems not far off when this once great
event of our year will live only in the memory of
old men.

The silvery green of the rye-fields, and the
darker green of the winter wheat, and the purple
bloom of the herds' grass, grow billowy under the
soft winds of July with waves that bear presage
of harvesting and haymaking.

In fields red and white with clover and daisy,
the strawberries have ripened, and have drawn a
flavor, the essence of wildness, from the free
clouds that shadowed them, from the songs of the
bobolinks and meadowlarks that hovered over
them, from bumble-bee and skimming swallow,
from the near presence of the nightly prowling
fox — a flavor that no garden fruit possesses. To
pick these is not so much a labor as a pastime for

80 DANVIS FARM LIFE

the women and children who go out to gather
them under such blue skies and amid such bloom
of clover, daisy, and buttercup, and sung to so
cheerily by the jolly bobolink.

About the Fourth of July haying begins. The
rank growth about the barns is hand-mowed, and
the mowing-machine is trundled out from its rust-
ing idleness, and, being tinkered into readiness,
goes jingling and clattering afield, where, having
fairly got at its work, it gnaws down with untiring
tooth its eight or ten acres a day. The incessant
unmodulated "chirr" of this jnodern innovator
has almost banished the ancient music of the
whetted scythe, a sound that for centuries had
been as much a part of haymaking as the fra-
grance of the newmown hay. But its musical voice
cannot save it. The old scythe must go, and we
cannot deny that the noisy usurper is a blessing to
us all in lightening labor, and, not least among us,
to the boy, for whom I cherish a kindly feeling,
and for any softening of whose lot I am thankful.

In the days before mowing-machines, hordes of
Canadian French swarmed over the borders to
work in haying, in crews of two or three, jiggling
southward in their rude carts, drawn by tough,
shaggy little ponies. They were doughty work-
men in the field and at the table; merry-hearted
and honest fellows, too; for, when they departed,
they seldom took, beside their wages, more than

DANVIS FARM LIFE 81

a farming tool or two, or the sheets from their
beds, doubtless as mementoes of their sojourn in
the States. But the Batistes and Antoines and
innumerable Joes and Pierres ' bide on their own
arpents now all the summer through and come to
us no more. If we miss them, with their baggy
trousers and gay sashes, the shuffle of their moc-
casined feet and their sonorous songs that had
always a touch of pathos in them, we do not
mourn for them.

As the cut grass dries under the downright
beams of the summer sun and becomes ready for
the raking, the windrows (always "winrows,"
here) lengthen along the shaven sward as the
horse-rake goes back and forth across the meadow,
and the workmen following with forks soon dot
the fields with cocks if the hay is to wait to-mor-
row's drawing, or with less careful tumbles if it
goes to barn or stack to-day.

Now the wagon comes surmounted by its rat-
tling " hay-riggin'," with the legs of the pitcher
and the unfortunate who "mows away" and
"rakes after" dangling over its side, and the man
who loads, the captain, pilot, and stevedore of this
craft, standing forward driving his horses, for the
oxen and cart, too slow for these hurrying times,
have lumbered into the past. The stalwart pitcher
upheaves the great forkfuls, skillfully bestowed
by the loader, till they have grown into a load

82 DANVIS FARM LIFE

which moves off with ponderous stateliness across
the meadow to the stack or barn. Seen from astern
as it sways and heaves along its way, one might
fancy it an enormous elephant with a Yankee
mahout on its back.

In the middle of the long afternoon is luncheon-
time, when all hands gather in the shade of tree
or stack or barn and fortify themselves with
gingerbread and cheese. Showers interrupt, fore-
shadowed by pearly mountains of "thunder-
heads " that uplift themselves above the more ma-
terial mountains of earth which are soon veiled
with the blue-black film of the coming rain, when
there is bustle in the hay-field, rapid making of
cocks that are no sooner made than blown over by
the rain-gust, and drivers shouting to their teams
hurrying to shelter with their loads. And days
arrive when from morning till night the rain comes
steadily down, stopping all outdoor work. Then
some go a-fishing or to lounge in the village store,
or perhaps all gather in the barn to chat and joke
and doze away the dull hours on the fragrant
hay. Some harvesting intervenes and the cradles
swing in the fields of rye and wheat with graceful
sweep and musical ring. The binders follow and
soon the yellow shocks are ranked along the field
whence they go duly to the barn.

When the night-hawk circles through the eve-
ning sky, now uttering his harsh note, anon plung-

DANVIS FARM LIFE 83

ing downward with a sound like the twanging of
the bass strings of some great instrument, and
the August piper begins his shrill, monotonous
concert, and the long shadows crawl eastward
across the meadows where the rusty-breasted
robins are hopping in quest of supper, the toilworn
farmer looks forth upon his shaven sward with its
shapely stacks all ridered and penned, and upon
the yellow stubble of his shorn grain-fields, and is
glad that the fret and labor of haying and harvest-
ing are over.

Soon the nights have a threat of frost in their
increasing chilliness; birds have done singing and
there is the mournfulness of speedy departure in
their short, business-like notes. The foam of the
buckwheat-fields, upborne on stems of crimson and
gold, is flecked with pale green and brown kernels,
inviting the cradler. The blond tresses of the corn
are grown dark; the yellow kernels begin to show
through the parted husks and the cutting of this
most beautiful of grains begins. The small forest
of maize becomes an Indian village whose wig-
wams are corn-shocks, in whose streets lie yellow
pumpkins with their dark vines trailing among
the pigeon-grass and weeds. The pumpkin, New
England's well-beloved and the golden crown of
her Thanksgiving feast, might be her symbolic
plant, as Old England's rose and Scotland's
thistle are theirs. How the adventurous vine,

84 DANVIS FARM LIFE

rough, prickly, and somewhat coarse, even in its
flowers, wanders forth from its parent hill, through
bordering wilderness of aftermath and over Rocky
Mountains of walls, overcoming all and bearing
golden fruit afar off, yet always holding on to the
old home, Yankee-like, and drawing its sap and
life therefrom !

Whether or not the frost has come to blacken
the leaves of the pumpkins, squashes, and cucum-
bers and to hasten the ripening of the foliage, the
trees are taking on the autumnal colors. The ash
shows the first grape-bloom of its later purple, the
butternut is blotched with yellow, and the leaves
of the hickory are turning to gold; and though the
greenness of the oaks and some of the sugar-
maples and elms still endures, the sumacs along
the walls and the water-maples and pepperidges
in the lowlands are red with the consuming fires of
autumn. The yellow flame of the goldenrods has
burned out and the paler lamps of the asters are
lighted along the fences and woodsides.

The apples are growing too heavy to hold longer
to the parent branch, and, with no warning but the
click of intercepting leaves, tumble, perhaps, on
the head of some unprofitable dreamer even in
practical New England. They are ready for gath-
ering, and the Greenings, Northern Spies, Spitz-
enbergs, Russets, Pomeroys, and Tallman Sweets,
and all whose virtues or pretensions have gained

DANVIS FARM LIFE 85

them a name, are plucked with the care befitting
their honored rank and stored for winter use or
market, while their plebeian kindred, the "com-
mon" or "natural" apples, are unceremoniously
beaten with poles or shaken from their scraggy,
untrimmed boughs and tumbled into the box of the
farm-wagon to go lumbering off to the cider-mill.
This, after its ten or eleven months of musty emp-
tiness and idleness, has now awakened to a short
season of bustle, of grinding and pressing and full-
ness of casks and heaped bins and the fragrance
thereof. Wagons are unloading their freight of
apples and empty barrels, and departing with full
casks after the driver has tested the flavor and
strength of the earliest-made cider. And now at
the cellar hatchway of the farmhouse, the boy
and the new-come cider-barrel may be found in
conjunction with a rye straw for the connecting
link.

The traveling thresher begins to make the round
of the farms and establishes his machine on the
barn floor, whence belch forth, with resounding
din, clouds of dust in which are seen dimly the
forms of the workmen and the laboring horses
climbing an unstable hill whose top they never
reach. Out of the dust-cloud grows a stack of yel-
low straw alongside the gray barn, which it almost
rivals in height and breadth when the threshing
is ended.

86 DANVIS FARM LIFE

About apple-picking time, and for a month or
two after, "apple cuts" or "paring bees" used to
be frequent, when all the young folks of a neighbor-
hood were invited, never slighting the skilled
parer with his machine. After some bushels of
apples were pared, quartered, cored, and strung
for drying, the kitchen was cleared of its rubbish
of cores and skins, and after a feast of "nut-
cakes," pumpkin pies, and cider, the plays began
to the tunes of "Come, Philander, le's be march-
in'," "The needle's eye that doth supply the
thread that runs so true," and "We're marchin'
onwards towards Quebec where the drums are
loud/i/ beatin'," or the fiddle or "'Lisha's" song
of "Tol-liddle, tol-liddle, tol-lo-day, do-day-hum,
do-day-hum, tolli-day," set all feet to jigging
"Twin Sisters," or "French four." These jolly
gatherings, though by many years outliving the
old-fashioned husking bee, have at last fallen into
disuse, and their hearty New England flavor is
poorly supplied by the insipid sociables and
abominable surprise parties that are now in
vogue.

The husking bees, in which girls took a part,
when a red ear was a coveted treasure, are remem-
bered only by the old; but the rollicking parties
of men that gathered to husk in the fields by
moonlight or firelight, or by lantern-light in the
barns that rang again with their songs and noisy

DANVIS FARM LIFE 87

mirth, held a notable place in our farm life till
within a decade or two of years. But they, too,
have passed away, and husking has grown to be
a humdrum, workday labor, though not an un-
pleasant one, whether the spikes of gold are un-
sheathed in the field in the hazy warmth of an
October day, or in the barn when the fall rain is
pattering on the roof and making brown puddles
in the barnyard. In these days the cows are apt
to come late to the milking, for the cow-boy loiters
by the way to fill his pocket with hickory-nuts, or
crack a hatful of butternuts on the big stone,
which, with some small ones for hammers, seem
always to be set under every butternut-tree.

The turkeys wander far and wide grasshopper-
hunting over the meadows, whereon the gossamer
lies so thick that the afternoon sun casts a shim-
mering sunglade across them, and go nutting
along the edge of the woods where the slender
fingers of the beeches are dropping their light
burden of golden leaves and brown mast.

Long, straggling columns of crows are moving
southward by leisurely aerial marches, and at
night and morning the clamor of their noisy en-
campments disturbs the woods. Most of the
summer birds have gone. A few robins, hopping
silently among the tangle of wild grapevines, and
flocks of yellowbirds, clad now in sober garments
and uttering melancholy notes as they glean the

88 DANVIS FARM LIFE

seeds of the frostbitten hemp, are almost the only
ones left. There are no songs of birds now, nor
any flowers but here and there in the pastures an
untimely blooming dandelion, and in the almost
leafless woods the pink blossoms of herb Robert
and the pale yellow flowers of the witch-hazel.

The last potato is dug and stored, the buck-
wheat drawn and threshed, the last pumpkin
housed, and the cattle have begun to receive their
daily allowance of corn-fodder. People begin to
feel a pride in the increasing cold, and compare
weather notes and speculate and prophesy con-
cerning the coming of winter. The old farmhouse
is made ready for winter. Its foundations are
again reinforced with banking, its outside win-
dows and storm-doors are set on their long guard
of the winter weather, and all the sons and daugh-
ters of the old house have gathered from far and
near to hold the New England (now the national)
feast of Thanksgiving, and have dispersed. The
last wedge of wild geese has cloven the cold sky.
There is a wintry roar in the wind-swept hills, and
as the first snowflakes and the last sere leaves
come eddying down together our year of farm life
ends.

SOBAPSQUA

FROM the Vermont mainland in the township of
Charlotte, a long cape, toothed with minor points
and indented with small bays, reaches far west-
ward toward the bald promontory of Split Rock.
The cape is fringed with woods, and terminates in
a bold cliff, crowned with cedars, pines, and de-
ciduous trees.

In it is embalmed the name of a man otherwise
forgotten. No one knows who Thompson was, but
it is probable that he was the first settler here, and
that a scraggy orchard, intergrown with cedars,
and the barely traceable foundations of a house,
were his, and that some crumbling lines of stone
wall mark the divisions of his sterile fields.

Doubtless the poverty of this soil prevented a
succession of occupants and the consequent suc-
cession of names which so many of our points and
bays have undergone. "Thompson's Point" is
not a good name for a noble headland, but it is
better that it should have borne it for a hundred
years than half a dozen that are no more signifi-
cant.

The Waubanakees called it " Kozoapsqua," the
"Long Rocky Point," and the noticeable cleft
promontory opposite "Sobapsqua," the "Pass

90 SOBAPSQUA

through the Rock," names which might well have
been retained, and perhaps would have been if our
pioneer ancestors had not so bitterly hated the
Indians and all that pertained to them. There was
cause enough for this hatred, but one wishes it had
not been carried so far when the poverty of our
ancestors' nomenclature is considered and the few
surviving names of Indian origin remind us how
easily we might have been spared the iteration
of commonplace and vulgar names that cling to
mountain, river, and lake.

Sobapsqua and Kozoapsqua make the gateway
to the broader expanse of water stretching thence
to Canada. It is one through which many mem-
orable expeditions have passed — unrecorded war
parties of Iroquois and Waubanakee, the brave
and devout Champlain on his voyage of discovery
with his Indian allies, the predatory bands of
French and Indians marching over the ice-bound
lake, the armies of France bearing her banners to
victory or trailing them homeward from defeat.
Here passed Rogers and his rangers to wreak
vengeance on those scourges of New England, the
Waubanakees of Saint Francis, and then Am-
herst's army passing from lesser conquests to the
final and crowning victory. A few years later the
little army of Americans went through these por-
tals to its disastrous campaign in Canada, and
the ensuing winter saw Warner and his rangers

SOBAPSQUA 91

march down the frozen lake to the succor of their
hard-pressed brethren; the following summer, the
same brave commander bearing homeward the
feeble remnant of the Northern army.

Here Arnold's flotilla passed on its way to the
bloody battle at Valcour, and here the escaping
vessels were overtaken by Carleton's fleet and the
running fight began which ended at Arnold's Bay.
Through this broad gateway came Burgoyne's un-
returning host. Ticonderoga fell, and henceforth
till the close of the war British warships passed
and repassed in undisputed possession of the lake
whose waters mirrored no flag but the red cross
of England. Then it vanished from them till it
reappeared when Captain Pring's flotilla made it3
unsuccessful assault on Fort Cassin, at the mouth
of the Otter, in which McDonough's unready fleet
lay moored. Next day the Stars and Stripes
flashed past these headlands as the gallant fleet
sailed down the lake to its eventual glorious vic-
tory in Plattsburg Bay.

Thus, for two centuries, such shifting scenes of
war passed in broken succession before these stead-
fast sentinels. Then came the peaceful sails of
commerce, white-winged schooners and sloops, the
single square canvas of Canadian craft; immense
lumber rafts, coaxed slowly northward by sweep
and sail; the first clumsy steamboat, making
tortoise-like progress, followed in a little while

92 SOBAPSQUA

by majestic successors, tearing the still waters
asunder and casting the torn waves against either
rocky shore.

In the later, pleasant days of autumn canoes of
the Waubanakees reappeared, like apparitions of
the old days, rounding the ancient headland, and
making into the great "Bay of the Vessels"
straight for Wonakakatukese, Sungahneetuk or
Paumbowk, the old trapping-grounds of the wild
fathers of these peaceable men, coming now with
no bloodier intent than warfare against the musk-
rats, while their women made baskets and moc-
casins to hawk about the countryside. The oldest
men could repeat the legends of ancient wars
with the Iroquois and knew the old names of
rivers, mountains, and lakes, and still made offer-
ing to Wojahose, the invisible deity of the lake, as
they paddled in awed silence past the lonely rock
wherein dwelt the master of storms.

Fifty years ago some one discovered that the
reefs off Thompson's Point were good fishing-
grounds for pike-perch, and they became a favorite
resort of anglers. To take advantage of the late
and early fishing it was a common custom to camp
on the Point overnight. For the most part the
fishermen camped in primitive fashion. They
slept on beds of cedar twigs under rude shelters of
cedar boughs and cooked their simple fare, with
few utensils, over an open fire. Occasionally a

SOBAPSQUA 93

party brought a tent and lived more luxuriously
under canvas during a longer outing. At last a
goodly guild of honest anglers built an unpreten-
tious but comfortable clubhouse with two rooms
on the ground floor, one of which was kitchen,
dining-room, and living-room, the other a sleeping-
apartment fitted up with two tiers of bunks, which
were supplemented by others in the loft. There
were a cook-stove, a big coffee-pot, kettles, and
more than one capacious frying-pan, also a table
and seats, but the primitive character of a genuine
camp was still maintained. Everything was con-
ducted in a free-and-easy manner, without any
attempt at style or luxurious living.

To supply the demands of the frying-pans and
for sport, which, though dull as watching a runway
for deer, quite satisfied their modest desires, these
men anchored their boats on the reefs and fished
from daybreak to nightfall with the philosophical
patience of honest anglers. When the fish were
biting well there was lively work hauling in the
sixty or one hundred feet of line hand over hand,
with a stout pike-perch and a strong current to
fight against, but when there was a long time be-
tween bites it was dull enough. A stiff cedar pole
with wire guides and a cleat at the butt to wind
the line on was the approved tackle by which the
fish was brought to boat in the briefest possible
time.

94 SOBAPSQUA

If the fishing was not conducted in the finest
style of the art it fulfilled all the requirements
of these anglers, and there were jolly gatherings
around the camp-fire, whether it blazed in the free
air or roared within the rusty iron walls of the stove.

In those days the Point afforded good fox-
hunting, as in days long before when Uncle Bill
Williams and the old Meaches hunted there
with their gaunt, melodious-voiced, old-fashioned
hounds and were succeeded by Uncle Bill's sons,
John Thorpe, and others of a generation of Nim-
rods, who, in turn, have departed to happier
hunting-grounds than these are now.

We who came later had excellent sport, for at
least one litter of foxes was sure to be raised there
every year, and besides these residents transient
visitors were likely enough to be started.

A fox running before hounds would keep a
course conforming to the shore-line and thus make
the circuit of the Point, crossing from one side to
the other near the heads of the two bays, and
would so repeat the circuit till killed, run to earth,
or run off the Point along one or the other shore to
the Cove Woods, McNiell's Point, or the hills.
A single hunter stood a reasonable chance of get-
ting a shot, while if there were two or more, prop-
erly posted, one of these was almost sure of a
chance, though by no means so certain of the fox,
who sometimes safely ran the gantlet of half a

SOBAPSQUA 95

dozen guns and left as many chopfallen hunters,
each excusing himself and blaming the others.

I have painful recollections of being more than
once a member of such an awkward squad, mingled
with pleasanter memories of occasions when for-
tune favored us; but somehow the misadventures
stand forth most prominently. I well remember
one dull-skied November day when I tramped to
the Point with no companion but my old hound
Gabriel, and ranged the woods almost to the end
without finding a track till he came to the old
orchard, I being a little behind him, when he
sounded such a melodious blast of his trumpet as
at once raised my waning hopes and set me all
alert. In a moment he had a fox afoot and going
around the end of the Point from the south side to
the north at a lively rate. There was a bare chance
of my getting over to that side in time to intercept
him, and I tried my best for it, running venire d
terre beside an old wall that crossed the pasture
till I came to the belt of woods above the shore. I
had not time to catch breath before the fox was
seen among the thick shadows of the trees, in
black relief against the light beyond, and I made a
snap shot at him. He tumbled all in a heap into a
clump of cedar-trunks, but before I could get to
him he picked himself up and staggered into a
thicket, whither I followed close at his heels mak-
ing futile snatches at his brush, a foot or so beyond

96 SOBAPSQUA

my reach. Having the advantage of slipping
through intricacies that I floundered against, he
was gaining on me a little, when Gabriel over-
hauled us and pounced upon him with a grip that
took the life out of the poor fox, yet not soon
enough to prevent one vengeful nip in the nose of
his slayer. Gabriel's angelic name came of his
voice, not of his temper, which was so kindled by
this last thrust of his foe that the handsome skin
was in danger of being spoiled before I could get
the fox away from him. When I began taking off
the pelt he curled himself up for a comfortable nap,
but a fresh twinge of his wounded nose suddenly
rekindled his smouldering wrath, and snatching
the fox out of my hands he gave it another violent
shaking, and I had to be severe with him before he
would let me finish.

This done, we set forth hi the homeward direc-
tion along the belt of woods on the north shore.
We had not gone far before Gabriel found a track
that engaged his earnest attention, whereof he
made loud proclamation while it led him across the
wide pasture to the woods of Cedar Point, which is
the southernmost headland of the cape and the
largest piece of woods upon it. In a moment the
woods were filled with quick reverberations of the
hound's melodious voice. Assured that the fox was
afoot and that there was no time to lose, I put my
best foot forward for the corner of a fence which

SOBAPSQUA 97

ran across nearly to the woods and divided the
pasture from a meadow. The desired point was
scarcely reached when I saw the fox break cover, a
tawny dot in the woodside, now growing and grow-
ing into distinctive form as it rapidly drew nearer
along a cowpath that ran close beside the fence.
Now he was not more than two gunshots from me,
the butt of the gun was at my shoulder, my finger
touching the trigger, and I could almost feel this
fellow's pelt in my right pocket comfortably bal-
ancing the one in my left, when a herd of young
cattle discovered him and charging in a mad
stampede drove him through the fence into the
meadow, across which he took a diagonal course,
well out of my range. I fired with a forlorn hope
of crippling him, but only increased the velocity
of the ruddy streak which vanished in an instant
and left the world a blank.

Presently the leaden sky came closer to the earth,
and then became one with it in a dense snowfall,
and muffled in its thick veil Gabriel's trumpet notes
sounded faintly far away, as he pottered over the
blotted scent. The six miles' tramp home was leg-
wearying, as all can testify who have taken so long
a walk in the first snow, but my luck had been good
enough and I should have been satisfied, yet the
vanishing form of that fox stood forth then as it
stands even now in unpleasant distinctness, clearer
than aught else in the day's events.

98 SOBAPSQUA

Immense flocks of ducks used to cruise along
the shores and come out on the shelving rocks,
sometimes in very dangerous places, where am-
bushed gunners lay in wait to rake the huddled
throng with a charge of BB shot. In some cases a
dozen or more were killed by a single discharge.
Frank Brady got eighteen with two barrels. Old
Justin Cyr killed as many with one discharge of
his ancient Queen's arm. This was very unsports-
manlike, and in no wise to be compared with the
exploits of men who kill a hundred ducks on the
wing in a day's shooting and are still unsatisfied.
Our pot-hunters fired but one shot and went home
quite content with the result, and from year to
year there was no noticeable decrease in the num-
bers of waterfowl till the generation of "true
sportsmen" with improved weapons began to
multiply.

It is not to be denied that there is a degree of
excitement in the stealthy approach to a flock of
wary, dusky ducks, or in lying in wait, silent and
motionless, for them to swim within range, mean-
while observing the autumnal beauty of earth and
sky out of the corners of one's eyes, sniffing the
fragrant odor of ripe leaves, and listening to the
pulse of lazy ripples, and undeniably there is a
satisfaction in the successful shot. Nevertheless
it was pot-hunting that one should blush with
shame for having indulged in, yet somehow I do

SOBAPSQUA 99

not, only as the recollection of some inexcusably
bad shot comes back to me.

I am glad I do not know how a man feels after
shooting a hundred ducks that have flown past his
stand or stooped to his decoys in one day. It seems
to me that one should feel remorse rather than
exultation for such a feat.

The beautiful island in the north bay which
was called Birch Island when I first knew it, clad
then with a thick growth of white birch and cedar,
was a beloved resort of ducks, and its secluded
shores were seldom disturbed by gunners. By
change of ownership its name became Yale's, then
Holmes's, and is now Putnam's after the present
owner, who has a handsome summer house there
and has so improved the place that the wild ducks
have forsaken it.

I think this may be the place where the devoted
missionary, Isaac Jogues, ran the gantlet and
suffered other tortures from his savage captors
while he and his fellow-captives were being carried
to the Mohawk country, for though by no means
situated on the southern part of the lake, it is the
southernmost island which answers at all the de-
scription given of the halting-place of the war
party, by Parkman, in his "The Jesuits in North
America " :

"On the eighth day they learned that a large
Iroquois war party, on their way to Canada, were

100 SOBAPSQUA

near at hand; and they soon approached their
camp, on a small island near the southern end of
Lake Champlain. The warriors, two hundred in
number, saluted their victorious countrymen with
volleys from their guns; then, armed with clubs
and thorny sticks, ranged themselves in two lines,
between which the captives were compelled to pass
up the side of a rocky hill. On the way they were
beaten with such fury that Jogues, who was last
in the line, fell powerless, drenched in blood and
half dead. As the chief man among the French
captives, he fared the worst. His hands were
again mangled, and fires applied to his body;
while the Huron chief, Eustache, was subjected to
tortures even more atrocious. When, at night, the
exhausted sufferers tried to rest, the young warriors
came to lacerate their wounds and pull out their
hair and beards."

One can hardly realize that scenes now so
steeped in the serenity of peace should ever have
witnessed such barbarities.

The shores of this island can no longer tempt
me, as they once did years and years ago, to steal
a boat wherewith to get close to the congregation
of ducks assembled in and about them on that
October Sunday. My companion and I broke
two commandments and were not penitent, but
I trust Heaven forgave us, for we were only
boys and returned the boat just as we found it,

SOBAPSQUA 101

and got nine lusty, dusky ducks, half as big as
geese.

John Hough, an old man whose memory ran
back to the last days of deer-hunting here, told me
that the deer, started on Mount Philo, used to run
to water at Thompson's Point, as the lay of the
land would lead one to guess.

Here the relentless slayers of the last deer lay in
wait for their prey, while, faint and far away, the
hound's first notes drifting down the wind-blown
crest of Mount Philo, then swelling to a jangle of
echoes in the nearer woods, the hunted deer
plunged into the lake and the rifle spat out its
spiteful charge, or the long smooth-bore belched
forth its double charge of ball and buckshot, and
the rocky steeps of Sobapsqua, offering life and
safety, faded out of the glazing eyes.

The days of the deer were long ago when the
Point was still a half wilderness, and the days of
the fox and the wild duck are almost fallen into
the past, for the place has become a fashionable
resort, and is populous with deluded people who
imagine themselves to be camping out. In fact,
they live luxuriously in furnished cottages, with
carpets on their floors and cushioned chairs, and
have dinners of divers courses, with napery of
fine linen and service of choice ware. I am told
that they not only undress to go to bed at night,
but that the women-folk actually change their

102 SOBAPSQUA

elegant apparel two or three times during the day.
Poor souls ! little they know of the freedom of real
camp-life, the comfort of one shabby suit that does
service day and night, the disenthrallment from
the care of tableware, and the cleansing of many
utensils from over-neatness and punctilious eti-
quette, but yet not from true politeness.

Scaffolded on mattressed bedsteads over car-
peted floors, how shall they so much as guess what
restful sleep comes to him who lies close to the
bosom of Mother Earth, with naught between but
a blanket and a litter of fragrant cedar twigs?
What poor comradeship must there be among
those who gather around a black stove, compared
with such as encircle the genial blaze of a camp-
fire, and how shall those feel themselves near to
Nature who are shut from the sky and the woods
by wooden walls and roofs?

The best of camp-life is in escaping from the
wearisome burdens of civilization and in some
measure renewing the old relationship with Na-
ture.

The change has been even greater on the other
side of the north bay at Cedar Beach, which has
undergone a change of name as well as of character
since the time when we followed fugitive foxes
from Thompson's Point thither, or made fresh
starts among the vulpine residents of its wild seclu-
sion. It was known as McNiell's Point then, after

SOBAPSQUA 103

its pioneer owner, who established a ferry just
north of it, which was continued by his descendants
with various craft — sloops, horse-boats, and a
natty little steamboat. It was a famous thorough-
fare until the building of the railroad, which revo-
lutionized everything. Then there were no more
great droves of cattle making leisurely progress
toward Boston on the hoof, nor any longer much
faring to and fro across the ferry on the business of
traffic or visiting, and the idle ferryman and the
guestless publican lounged on the rotting wharf in
mutual condolence.

Yet the little wilderness on the Point, seldom
invaded by human kind except the infrequent
woodman, the more infrequent meditative woods
lounger and the hunter, and throbbing in spring-
time with the beat of the partridge's drum, ringing
all summer long with the songs of a multitude of
birds, echoing in the golden days of autumn with
the melody of hounds, still preserved its sylvan
seclusion and kept its homely name, till it was dis-
covered by some "hey due" explorers, who re-
christened it and made it fashionable.

Spick-and-span cottages, even elegant resi-
dences, are built upon its heights; a steamer
comes to it regularly twice a day during the sum-
mer, and the thronged woods are noisy with gay
pleasure-seekers.

It is all spoiled for us old-fashioned camp-

104 SOBAPSQUA

dwellers, but no more, perhaps, than our barbarous
modes would spoil it for these dainty folk. I can
imagine how their sensibilities would be shocked at
the sight of our uncouth living, our lairs of boughs
and blankets, our unnapered table, with the frying-
pan serving for platter and common plate, no less
than our sense of the fitness of things is hurt by
this flaunting of fashion in the face of Nature.

They wonder at our ways, we at theirs, being
unable to understand what they can find in all
that they enjoy to compensate for what we have
lost — the freedom from care and conventionalities
that were ours in these wild corners, when the
click of the croquet ball, the incongruous jingle of
pianos, and the babble of human voices did not
overbear the whispers of the wind in the trees, the
songs of birds and the soft laps of waves on quiet
shores.

BLACK-BASS-FISHING IN
SUNGAHNEETUK

AMONG the Vermont rivers emptying into Lake
Champlain that were once salmon streams, is the
beautiful little river which the Indians named
"Sungahneetuk," the "Fishing-Place River."
The salmon long since ceased to inhabit any of
these, only now and then a straggler being taken
even in the lake. Our Fish Commissioners have
tried to reestablish the salmon in the rivers he
once made famous; but, barred with dams, their
unshaded waters heated and shrunken, thick with
sawdust and the wash of cultivated lands, and
poisoned with chemicals from mills and factories,
they have undergone changes too great to allow
them again to become his home. They are rivers
yet, but not the cool and limpid realms whereof he
was lord paramount in the old days, and it is no
longer worth his while to battle the swift currents
of the Saint Lawrence and run the gantlet of the
Richelieu nets to come to his own again.

In Sungahneetuk and in other streams, his
ancient heritage, he has a smaller yet worthy
successor, almost as game for his size, and ranking
high among food-fishes. Hardy, prolific, armed
defensively with firm scales and a dorsal bristling

106 BASS-FISHING IN SUNGAHNEETUK

with spines, offensively with stout, sharp teeth set
in strong jaws, the black bass holds his own against
changed conditions and aquatic enemies, and owns
no fish of these waters his master, unless it be the
gar-pike, or bill-fish, a fish so invulnerably mailed
and murderously weaponed as to be assailed or
withstood by no other.

Protection has done wonders for the bass, for
all they needed was to be let alone during spawn-
ing-time, and wherever the law has been enforced
they have greatly increased in numbers. Up to
the passage of a protective fish law, in 1874, it had
been the common practice here with all who angled,
either for pleasure or profit, to catch these fish on
their spawning-beds in June. Whoever had eyes
sharp enough to spy out the beds under the tangle
of ripples and knots of foam in the shallows or be-
neath the slow current of the translucent gray-
green depths had only to cast his hook, no matter
how unskillfully masked with a worm, and the
alert parent fish would rush to remove the intruder
from the sacred precincts, seizing it in her mouth
and dropping it well outside the bed, if left to have
her own way with it. But just in the nick of time
the angler came in, and, striking, fastened his fish,
which ten times to one was hauled forth at once by
stout pole and line, without a chance for life, to
spend her strength in useless threshing of the
daisies and clover. It was not always done in this

BASS-FISHING IN SUNGAHNEETUK 107

butcherly manner, but it was done in some way
by almost every one who fished at all, and at best
was a miserable business.

The undiscovered and fruitful beds were few,
the barren and orphaned ones many, and if the
streams had been their only spawning-places the
bass must have been almost exterminated by such
continual persecution. But of the many adven-
turing through stress of nature up the rivers some
would escape, and there were the reefs and bars of
the lake, where others might breed undisturbed by
man, and so, among them all, perpetuate their
race until the day of deliverance.

The bass, having hibernated in the depths dur-
ing the dead months, come on to the spawning-
grounds in May, and shortly after set about mak-
ing their beds, which, when finished, are shallow
concavities, in diameter about twice the length of
the fish, and from the time of completion till the
hatching of the eggs are most vigilantly guarded
and kept scrupulously clean. The eggs, which are
attached to the bottom by a glutinous coating,
are hatched in about two weeks after they are de-
posited. If a pebble or waterlogged chip or twig is
washed onto the bed, it is as quickly removed as is
the hook of the angler, and all animate intruders
are summarily driven off. The infant bass, at
their first hatching, are as black and unpromising
as a swarm of polliwogs in a mud-puddle, but

108 BASS-FISHING IN SUNGAHNEETUK

they soon disperse, and grow rapidly, and early
show their blood, for, long before fall, little fellows
an inch and a hah* in length may be seen chasing
minnows as big as themselves. When the spawning-
season is well over and the law off, the bass have
returned to the lake; but in the few days spent by
them in the stream before spawning and the begin-
ning of the close time, the angler is given a chance
to take them in a perfectly legitimate manner. It
is of one of these days' fishing along this beautiful
stream, that, if not done very scientifically or with
costly tackle, yet was not unfairly done, that I
have to tell.

Sungahneetuk winds its first slender thread
around the ledges of the western slope of the Green
Mountains, but soon gathers to it the strands of
brooks spun out from ponds and swamps and
springs, and in a little while becomes strong enough
for the turning of mills. Many of these of different
kinds are lodged beside it, grinding grist for the
food of men, weaving cloth for then- raiment, sawing
boards for their cradles, shelter, and coffins. These
three kinds of mills are all in a huddle, along with
stores and shoemakers' and blacksmiths' shops, at
Nutting's Curse, the lowest falls now so used, as
if they had drifted down stream and grounded
there, three miles above where the widened stream
is woven into the broad sheet of Champlain.

Half a mile below these mills, on a sunny morn-

BASS-FISHING IN SUNGAHNEETUK 109

ing of a mid-May day, I begin my fishing. The
river has drawn itself from the narrow environ-
ment of hills, and winds among intervales ankle-
deep with young grass, where newly turned-out
kine are feeding greedily and new-come bobolinks
are loudly rejoicing. By a thicket of alders,
broadly margining and overhanging quiet waters,
where foam-bells moulded in the last rapids swing
in the slow eddies, I put my rod together. It is of
hardback, hop hornbeam, ironwood, lever-wood
— well, Ostrya Virginica, a wood which I have long
believed the best of our native trees for rod-mak-
ing — and I have had it made for me by a cunning
workman. It is in three pieces and of unorthodox
length — fifteen feet. The books say eight feet is
the proper length for a bass-rod; but how could
one reach over these alders or the thickets of wil-
lows lower downstream with such a stick? The
slender line is rove through the guides, the hook
with its gut snell bent on, and Monsieur Ruisseau,
sometime since of Canada, comes forward with
the bait-kettle — "minny-pail," we call it. He
dives therein halfway to his elbows more than once
to no purpose, for lively minnows are slippery cus-
tomers, but at last brings out a chub, a three-inch
ingot, half of silver, hah* of brown dross, as tri-
umphantly as if he had landed a salmon, remark-
ing, as he hands it over, "Dar! I'ms got de coss.
He's nice leetly feller, don't it?"

110 BASS-FISHING IN SUNGAHNEETUK

Indeed he is, and I breathe a silent prayer for
him and myself as I impale the little wretch just
forward of the dorsal. May a big bass take him
speedily, and may I be forgiven for my cruelty!
This baiting the hook is the wickedness of fishing
that one is sorry for. Five minutes later one is apt
to be angry with the tortured, gasping wretch be-
cause he does not swim deeper. This one is most
obedient to my wishes, and at once sounds the
depths, where I tenderly cast him just under the
bank at my feet. The slack of the line is slowly
taken up, till I can feel the f aint tug of his laborious
swimming, and with bated breath I watch and
wait to feel the stronger tug of a bass seizing him.
It does not come, and I cast again and again, far
and near, with no stronger responses, till it begins
to grow doubtful whether there are any bass here,
or, at least, any hungry ones.

I lose interest a little in the water, and take time
to note how thickly the dandelions are dotting the
grass and setting in their gold the amethyst tufts
of violets; how the bobolinks are rollicking over
them and the sparrows trilling their happy songs ;
how busy the robins are with their nest-building,
their short play-day already ended; then how all
these marginal thickets of alder and willow are
bent downstream with the stress of the spring
floods, and even the topmost twigs are clothed
with knots of begrimed leaves and looped wisps of

BASS-FISHING IN SUNGAHNEETUK 111

grass of last year's growth. I note, too, the fresh-
water flotsam here stranded, of chips, cobs, slabs,
bits of board, and rails from upstream mills and
farms, with a child's rude toy boat, dismantled and
unhelmed in its wild voyage, grounded on its ant-
hill Ararat, while some little chap among the hills
is yet searching the pebbly shores and, with as
fond, vain hopes as ours, shading his eyes to descry
his small ship sailing back from Spain. Here is a
paddle gone adrift from its boat, and the cover of
a minnow-can, with rusting hasp and hinges still
clinging to it — signs of boatmen and fishermen
in upper waters.

Ruisseau has grown listless too, and for the last
five minutes has given me no advice nor made any
disparaging comments on my rod and line, which
he thinks too slender. When he goes fishing he has
a spar of white cedar for a rod and corresponding
cordage for a line. " Dat 's de way I 'ms feesh in
Canady." He has changed the water in the bait-
kettle, and is taking his ease on the grass, with his
pipe in full blast, the fumes pervading a cubic
acre of May-day air. Suddenly a snap and splash
under the farther bank brings him upright and
alert and recalls me from the borders of dream-
land. "Dar! Dar! Pull off you' line an' trow him
ove' dar," pointing with both hands, one empha-
sized with his black pipe, to the widening circles.

Meekly obedient to my hired master, I make a

112 BASS-FISHING IN SUNGAHNEETUK

long cast, and, as much by luck as skill, deliver my
minnow, now almost at his last gasp, in the middle
of the concentric rings of wavelets. Scarcely has
his fall startled the reflections of bank, bush, and
grass-tuft to livelier dancing, when the surface is
again broken by a sullen seething, in the midst of
which is dimly seen the shining green broadside of
a bass. The time given him for gorging the bait
seems nearer five minutes than the quarter of one
during which the line vibrates with slight jerks and
then tightens with a steady pull as I strike, and an
angry tug tells me that he is fast. Now the line
cuts the water with a tremulous swish, and the rod
bends like a bulrush hi a gale, as the stricken fish
battles upstream in a wide sweep, then shoots to
the surface and three feet into the air, an emerald
rocket, showering pearls and crystals. I do not
know whether I let my "rod straighten" or "pull
him over into the water," but somehow he gets
back there without having rid himself of the
barbed unpleasantness in his jaw, and then makes
a rush downstream, varied with sharp zigzags, end-
ing in another aerial flight as unavailing as the
first. Then he bores his way toward a half-sunken
log, thinking to swim under it and so get a dead
strain on the line; but a steady pull stops him just
short of it. Then he sounds the depths to rub the
hook out on the bottom, for he is a fellow of ex-
pedients; but the spring of the rod lifts him above

BASS-FISHING IN SUNGAHNEETUK 113

this last help. He has exhausted his devices, and
now makes feeble rushes in small circles and zig-
zags and a final nerveless leap not hah* his length
out of water. He has fought valiantly for life and
liberty, but fortune has been against him. After a
few more abortive struggles, he turns up his side to
the sky, and is towed, almost unresistingly, along-
side the bank. Ruisseau lifts him out trium-
phantly, swearing, Catholic though he is, by a
Puritan saint: "Ba John Roger! Dat's de bes'
'snago I have ketch in my remember ! " We test his
weight with our eyes and forefingers, and put it at
four pounds. Fairbanks's and Howe's contrivances
might make it less by a pound or more; but they
are unsatisfactory scales for anglers' use.

The hook is rebaited, and a cast made beside
the sunken log, and quickly answered by a petu-
lant little bite that robs me of a minnow.

"A cossed leetly rock-bass," Ruisseau says, and
advises, "Put a wamm on de hook and ketch 'im
off de water."

But the smallest minnow in the pail captures
him, and the miserable, bony, greedy, watery, big-
mouthed little thief is hauled forth without cere-
mony. How one can praise him for anything but
his moderate beauty, the only virtue he has, is a
wonder to me. The despised sunfish is handsomer,
a better table-fish, and as great a nuisance, yet no
one praises him. Doubtless the rock-bass has left

114 BASS-FISHING IN SUNGAHNEETUK

a half-dozen of his thievish brethren in ambush
behind him, and, rather than bother with them,
I move on.

The next fish that tries to rob me of a bait in-
tended for his betters and is sent grazing for his
tricks is a perch — a far handsomer fellow, in his
bars of gold and dusky green, than the little bass,
and, to my taste, worth a dozen of him on the
table.

So we fare downstream, taking here and there a
bass of the right sort from deep holes, under banks,
and hi mid-channel, and from the slack-water on
the lower side of the boulders, in no particularly
different way from that in which the first was
taken. Some are ingloriously lost: but the bass
should not be grudged their share of the sport,
which must lie in foiling the angler's arts. Besides,
the fish that is hooked and gets away may live to be
caught another day, and for the time of exemption
from creel and pan pay interest of a half-pound or
more: only one is not apt to fancy such uncertain
usury, especially when the fish is of two or three
pounds' present worth.

Thus we come to the lower falls, where in old
times the incoming salmon doubtless paid heavy
tribute to the Indians as they scaled the first ram-
part of ledges that barred their yearly invasion.
This is the last mill-seat on the stream, where not
many years ago the screech of the saw was heard

BASS-FISHING IN SUNGAHNEETUK 115

above the rush of waters. It is silent now, its
occupation gone. A mossy roof, broken and sagged
with the snows of many winters, scantily sheltering
reeling posts, unmoving wheels rotting and rusting
among weeds and sprouts of willows, and a drift of
rotten sawdust, a flume so dry that the sun shines
through it and birds build their nests in it, a
grassy embankment, and a few ice-battered tim-
bers of the dam feebly reaching out against the
flood, are all that are left of the old mill and its
once busy life. A half-dozen mouldering logs that
came too late for sawing represent its unperformed
work, so near did it come to living out its days.
Just below, a little island splits the stream un-
equally, leaving on that side a shallow rapid
scarcely covering the pebbly bottom, on this a
deep current that seethes along its swift and
narrow way. Into the head of this I cast my bait,
and it goes whirling along it, now tossed to the
surface, now tumbled along the bottom. For an
instant the rod bends and jerks as the slack of the
line is taken up by the force of the current, then
curves into a drawn bow from tip to reel with a
strong, sudden pull that makes the line twang like
a bow-string. This is a hungry fellow, who makes
no cat's play with his prey, but gorges it at the first
snap. How lustily he pulls, with the swirling tor-
rent to help him ! If I should lose him, he would
go for a four-pounder at least. Keeping a steady

116 BASS-FISHING IN SUNGAHNEETUK

strain on him, but letting him take a little line off
the reel and piloting him clear of rocks and roots,
I follow him slowly to quieter waters below,
where we fight it out, and the land force is vic-
torious. With the utmost tenderness toward the
scales, he could not be made to tip them at above
two pounds: so I have lost half my fish by saving
him.

The next shallow reach of the winding stream
leads us toward the blue haze of the Adirondacks,
lifted above the tender green of the near woods.
At the next, the shorn slopes and bristling ridge of
our own Mount Philo front us, and another draws
us close to a hillside soft with leafing tamaracks.
None of these reaches give any return for careful
fishing. Then we come to one most promising of
bass, where the deep, slow current slides through
an aisle of overhanging basswoods, elms, and ashes,
and then under a prostrate trunk, with its catch
of driftwood, as promising of fouled hooks, and in
neither respect am I disappointed. My minnow
has hardly struck the water when it is contended
for by three or four hungry bass. In this case the
devil takes the foremost, who in a jiffy gets the
hook fast in his mouth, and, as he darts this way
and that to rid himself of it, is closely followed by
his companions — who knows whether envious,
curious, or sympathizing? A little later two of them
lie with him among the clover. The next cast is

BASS-FISHING IN SUNGAHNEETUK 117

too near the driftwood. The minnow gets among
it, and the hook is snagged. Ruisseau helps me
out of the scrape with some swearing and a possibly
more effective pole, and I suffer no loss but of time,
patience, a hook, and part of a snell. The re-
maining bass can hardly wait for their turn while
I am bending on a new hook and rebaiting. They
come close to the surface, underseeing the opera-
tion, and then in turn they are served out.

The next loop of the stream is cast about a
wooded bank, and in it, on a sandy shallow, is a
swarm of "rock," or "sand pike," handsome little
fellows, with barred sides, the largest among them
not exceeding four inches in length. All are hug-
ging the golden, shimmering bottom, casting their
spawn and milt.

In a deeper rapid three or four large suckers
are heading the swift current, as motionless as if
moored there. A boy, with a noose of brass wire
at the end of a pole, is trying to snare one, for our
suckers are true to then' name, and never bite.
After much slow and careful maneuvering, he gets
it midway inside the noose, and with a vigorous
pull throws it out, and there is a happy boy and a
most unhappy fish.

Presently we come to the wide, deep pool known
as the "Dixon Hole," and under its sheltering
elms eat our lunch and moisten it with Sungah-
neetuk, this year's vintage of mountain snows,

118 BASS-FISHING IN SUNGAHNEETUK

and dry it again with smoke of the Virginian and
the ranker Northern weed, home-grown by Ruis-
seau. The ashes and charred brands of a recent
fishing-fire remind him of his favorite sport, con-
cerning which he discourses: "I'd drudder feesh
fo' bull-pawt as basses." This he does at night, by
the cheerful light of a pine-knot fire, with his spar
of cedar and stout line and big hook baited with a
tangle of worms, and anchored with a ponderous
sinker, the splash of which, when he casts it,
rouses echoes out of the circle of gloom which sur-
rounds him. Sometimes he gets a hundred bull-
pouts and two or three or more eels. "An' de eel
an' de bull-pawt ees de bes' feesh I'ms like, ex-
pectin' shad": by which he means to except the
white fish of the lake, known here as "lake shad."
Ruisseau having reslain his thousands, I resume
actual fishing, and soon behold a monstrous bass,
who lounges leisurely up to inspect my bait and
then turns contemptuously away. He has an eye
upon me through the limpid depths. He is a vet-
eran cruiser of these waters, and knows the tricks
of men — a philosopher who can trace effect back
to cause, from struggling minnow along line and
rod to the guiding hand on shore. Again and again
I tempt him, to no purpose, and then reluctantly
leave him, to try for less sophisticated fish below,
but noting his haunt by a certain bush. A little
later I return, making a wide detour, and, when I

BASS-FISHING IN SUNGAHNEETUK 119

near the marked bush, drop on my hands and
knees, and so get within six feet of the brink with-
out seeing the water or being seen by any of its
denizens, and lightly drop my minnow out of
sight behind the grassy bank. The trick succeeds :
here is a minnow without a man, and the lord of
the pool seizes his tribute at sight and is fast at the
first snap. Then the tough fibers of the lithe rod
are tried to their utmost, first to keep him from
gaining the vantage-ground of some sunken logs
and brush, then to lead him to a clearer field,
when he makes a rush, spinning fifteen yards of
retarded line off the reel, and, with a surging leap,
flies into the air, shakes the hook from his mouth,
and leaves me disconsolate. It is small consolation
to think that I have added to his wisdom and that
he will not dare touch another minnow for a week
— as small as that contained in Ruisseau's "I 'ms
tole you you'll lost him, sartain." Likely enough
before he has forgotten the lesson he will be
dragged ashore in an unlawful seine or smitten
under the fifth rib by a spearer prowling by torch-
light. As ignominious was the death of the last
salmon of this stream, which, tradition says, was
speared by some boys with a pitchfork, a few turns
below here, on a June day sixty years ago.

Slower than the stream flows we follow it where
curling deeps promise fruitfulness of fish, trying
every foot of such water, sometimes rewarded

120 BASS-FISHING IN SUNGAHNEETUK

with the fulfillment, sometimes not, and faster
when the thin, barren current ripples over pebbly
and sandy shoals, shortening now and then our
course a half-mile by a cross-cut of a few rods.

Climbing the two fences of a road and passing
its bridge, and then skirting a wide thicket of
willows, we come to a farm-bridge, beside which an
aged Quakeress is fishing. Perhaps it has been
"borne hi upon her" that she should go a-fishing
to-day: at any rate, she has been "greatly
favored," and shows us with quiet pride a goodly
string of fish tethered under the abutment, con-
spicuous among them the bristling olive backs and
golden-green sides of half a dozen fine bass. Look-
ing upon her placid face, one may well believe
angling a gentle art if it can draw to it such a
saintly devotee. The stream has grown as placid as
she, and now winds voiceless between its willowy
banks, giving no sign of its flow but by some glid-
ing leaf or twig and the arrowy ripples of dipping
branches and mid-stream snags.

Here is a straight reach, hedged on one side
with willows tall and low, interwoven with wild
grapevines, on the other walled with a green bank
topped with a clump of second-growth pines and
hemlocks. Looking back through this vista, we
see the noble peak of Tawabedeewadso, bright with
last winter's snow, shining against the eastern sky.

On the opposite bank I get a glimpse of a rival

BASS-FISHING IN SUNGAHNEETUK 121

fisher stealing warily through the thicket in a coat
now rusty and ragged, though two months ago,
sleek and glossy enough. Without rod, snare, or
spear, the mink is a notable destroyer of fish.
Not so silent is the kingfisher that comes jerking
his way through the air, sending his rattling cry
before him and leaving its echoes clattering far
behind him. Now he hangs as if suspended by a
thread while he scans the water twenty feet be-
neath him. Then the thread breaks, and he drops
headlong, and, almost before the spray of his
plunge has fallen, rises with a little fish on his short
spear.

Here, too, minnows are taken in succession by
some fish biting differently from a bass, but evi-
dently larger than rock-bass or perch. A third
minnow is offered him grudgingly, for frequent
drafts and some deaths occurring in spite of half-
hourly changes of the water have reduced the little
prisoners of the bait-kettle to a dozen. Success has
made him bold, and boldness works his ruin, for
this time he swallows hook and bait. He swims
deeper than the bass, and as stubbornly for a
while, but gives up sooner, and, as he is drawn
gasping alongside the bank, proves to be a fine
pike-perch of two and a half or three pounds'
weight. He is not a frequent navigator so far up
the stream, but is often caught near the mouth in
adjacent Wonakakatuk and in great numbers in the

122 BASS-FISHING IN SUNGAHNEETUK

lake, notably at Kozoapsqua and Sobapsqua. He
is handsome, game, and in every way a good fish.

Again my hook gets foul in a drift of brushwood,
and Ruisseau, wading out to clear it, again lapses
into profanity over his "jim rubbits, half fill of
de creek!" With the Canuck, india-rubber is
always "jim rubbit."

As the stream is drawn to the level of the lake,
its character changes more and more. The sluggish
current sweeps slowly under the double-curved
branches of great water-maples, whose ice-scarred
trunks rise from low banks rank with sedge and
wild grass and sloping backward to wide, marshy
swamps, where we hear bitterns booming, rails
cackling, innumerable frogs piping and croaking,
and the fine, monotonous chime of toads, and
mysterious voices that may be those of birds or of
reptiles supposed to be voiceless. Every stream--
ward-slanting log now has its row of basking
turtles that tumble off at our approach, and the
little green heron launches as clumsily from his
perch in the tall trees and goes flapping before us.
Now our way is barred by an impassable outlet of
the swamp on one side, and here I catch the last
bass of the day.

A swarm of little fish, the biggest not an inch
long, come swimming upstream, a school, yards in
length, hugging our shore. As here and there a
silver side flashes in the sunlight, it is as if a suit

BASS-FISHING IN SUNGAHNEETUK 123

of chain-armor was being drawn through the
water. Now a swift bolt strikes it from beneath,
and a hundred shining links are driven into the
air. In the bubbling swirl beneath the break I see
the brazen mail of a bass, and a few feet upstream
I drop my minnow, a prey far more tempting than
these atoms, and no sooner seen than seized. In
the fight that ensues I have some trouble to lead
him to a fairer field and a proper place for surren-
der, to do which he must be got over a sort of
boom which serves for a water-fence, being a single
pole spanning the stream, in the middle sagging an
inch or two below the surface. Shortening my
line and raising the tip of the rod, I half lift, hah*
drag him over it, and, after some further skirmish-
ing, bring him to shore, and Ruisseau, wading into
the mud halfway to the top of his "jim rubbits"
to rescue him, shows himself an artist, making a
bas-relief in clay.

As I range the result of my day's sport side by
side along the sod, a comely rank of fifteen bass
and one pike-perch, Ruisseau proudly remarks,
"I'ms guess dat ole wimmens ain't beat me, don't
it?"

The sun is burning the low clouds and setting
the western edge of the world on fire, and so, mak-
ing a jail-delivery of our few remaining minnows,
we turn backward on our long shadows and wend
Qur way homeward.

ON A GLASS ROOF

WINTER fishing in Northern latitudes is not the
perfection of the sport of angling. It lacks many
of the things which contribute to make that a fine
art and a delightful pastime. The fine tackle of the
fly-fisher and the skill to handle it properly, the
long-contested and exciting fight between man
and fish, are not for him who goes fishing in winter.
Neither for him is the balmy air that wafts the
odor of blossoms and voices of song-birds and
babble of free streams, nor verdant sward, nor
leafy woods, nor glint of sunlit waters. In fact,
it savors somewhat of the pot; for it is often more
the object to get fish than sport. But any fishing
is better than no fishing; and when we remember
that our fishing-days are growing fewer as the path
behind us grows longer, it behooves us to make the
most of those that are left us. Furthermore, it may
be said in favor of this fishing that in one respect
it excels all others — that is, in the proportion
which the pleasure of getting ready for it bears to
the actual sport. Though there are no flies to be
artistically tied, nor fine rods to be inspected, nor
reels to be oiled, the simple tackle must be over-
hauled and made ready in its way, and proper hooks
and lines provided. If one is to try for pickerel

ON A GLASS ROOF 125

through the ice, he must make his "jacks," or
"tilt-ups," and have them so nicely balanced that
they will give no sign of the struggles of the live
bait, yet rise at the first touch of "Long Face's"
jaws. Over all these preparations one will have a
good time with himself and his thoughts, whether
or not he, at last, gets any result from his pleasant
labors. One must have the provident forethought
to dig his worms in the fall and store them in his
cellar if he intends to go perch-fishing in winter,
and to catch his minnows while the brooks are
open, and keep and feed them in a water-trough or
spring-hole till the winter day that he takes them
pickerel-fishing. One needs not to go far for the bait
for smelt and herring, for the pork-barrel furnishes
that till the first fish of each kind is caught, when
an eye or undercut of the tail of the smelt and a
bit of the chin of the herring are used to lure their
brethren to the upper world, where death and the
frying-pan await them.

I do not know how many times I had promised
to take myself a-fishing the next winter and had
made some preparation toward fulfilling the prom-
ise. More than once I had dug a quart of worms
in the latest pleasant, unfrozen days of fall, and
put them in a big box of earth in the cellar; but
among all the short days of many a long winter
the day wherein to go fishing had never come, and
in spring the worms, their destiny unfulfilled, were

126 ON A GLASS ROOF

set free, to bore to the core of the world if they
chose. I had once laid in a stock of minnows,
caught with mutual pains, of which the only good
I got in winter was in watching and feeding them,
and by June, when I might have used them for
bass-bait, such friendly relations had grown up
between us that I could not find it in my heart
to treat them so cruelly, and so turned them out
in the nearest stream for Nature to deal with as
she would — let them grow to the utmost of min-
nowhood, or feed them to her big fish, or let them
be twitched out by the pin-hooks of her boys. It
was a tough tender-heartedness, I confess — like
turning adrift a kitten one dislikes to kill.

So winter after winter had come and melted
away, adding nothing to my experience, but a little
to my knowledge of winter fishing, got verbally
from old fishermen, and, with that, strength to my
determination that I would some time go. At last
the day came, a March day, with a promise of
spring in the soft sky that endomed the winter
landscape, when I found myself fairly started, well
outfitted with an ice-slick for cutting holes, worms
for perch, fat pork for smelt and herring, and tackle
for all three.

The air was sharp and frosty, though the sun
had got a good hour above the Green Mountains,
— white enough now, — and there was a firm
crust that would bear, which makes the best of

ON A GLASS ROOF 127

walking, as a crust that will not bear makes the
worst. On such good footing, with all my outfit
pocketable but the ice-slick, and that almost as
good shoulder-ballast as a gun, I got on so speedily
that I was soon on the "Crik," a broad and level
roadway to the lake. At the last turn of this I
found a couple of men fishing for pickerel, and
stopped for a little chat with them and to see what
sport they were having. Our conversation was
mostly carried on at long range, fired back and
forth across the ice — for they had a line of holes
cut two rods or so apart for fifty rods along the
channel, and the jack set at the farthest hole was
as likely as any to point skyward and start them
racing to it. Then I, at the farthest upstream hole,
would watch them as they reached the jack,
snatched it up, and quickly overhauled the line,
pulling out sometimes a pickerel, sometimes a
naked hook which the pickerel had got the better
of and robbed of its minnow. They would shout
back the tidings of their luck if good, or roll it back
in a growl if bad, and then come leisurely toward
me till another jack arose to beckon them more
swiftly forward.

As I stooped to examine the fashion of a jack,
the tip of it flew up and nearly bumped my nose,
resenting which I laid hold of it and caught a three-
pound pickerel, or rather the hook caught him,
and I only pulled him out onto the drier side of the

128 ON A GLASS ROOF

ice, for the hook and line and jack and the tor-
tured minnow do most of the fishing. The angler
only baits the hooks and sets them to fishing, while
he watches them and pulls out their catch.

These jacks are two slender pieces of wood,
about fifteen inches long, turning on each other
on a pivot at the middle. When in use the ends of
the under piece rest upon the ice on either side of
the hole. The upper stick, now at right angles
with the under, has its heavier end also resting on
the ice, while the lighter end holds the ten- or
fifteen-foot line, a slight pull on which raises the
butt of the upper stick and signals the alert fisher-
man to it.

Wishing my short-time friends good luck, I left
them racing with their fish and went my way.
Theirs could not be called a high order of sport,
but it is good fun wherewith to stir the dullness of
winter, for one cannot help getting excited in the
game if the fish are biting freely and three or four
jacks are up at once. It is better than toasting
one's shins at the fire on such a day as this.

Presently I was out upon the broad bay of the
lake which the old French explorers named the "Bay
of the Vessels," whether for their own craft, the
birch boats of the Indians, or the vessels of pottery
found here, many fragments of which the lake
even now tosses ashore or exhumes from the banks.
If in either way it would give me one perfect sue-

ON A GLASS ROOF 129

cotash-pot just as it came from the hand of the
Waubanakee squaw that fashioned it, or with the
smutch of camp-fire smoke upon it, I should prize
it above all the old china in the world. But I was
born too late for such a gift, and get only shards.

As I skirted the rugged, silent shore, walking
where last summer I boated, there were traces
enough of the fierce fight that had raged before the
cold subdued the lake and got it safe under hatches.
All the nearest rocks and trees were mantled with
ice, the spray of the last waves hurled ashore by
the north wind, and twenty rods lakeward was a
line of broken cakes, frozen into a jagged barricade,
where the open water made its last stand. All 's
quiet now along Petowbowk, and King Frost
reigns supreme and majestic. But the captive
begins to groan as the sun, his deliverer, climbs
upward and northward. Two months hence he will
be playing tyrant in his turn, buffeting craft, water-
fowl, and shores.

Beyond the first grim headland that clasps the
bay, I saw some steadfast, upright specks, which
I took to be fishermen, and, having faith that they
knew better than I where to fish, made my way
toward them. Coming nearer, some of the specks
proved to be men, while other bigger ones turned
out to be young evergreen trees set in the ice —
better than the men, likely enough, if they had
been left growing, but now only brush-heaps to

ISO ON A GLASS ROOF

break the wind off the smaller specks. An ignoble
use, I thought, to put a lusty young tree to for so
short a time, presently to go drif ting about the lake,
doing no good to even so much as the eye of man.
How much it might have done if the axe had spared
it for a hundred years ! Oh, these cursed hackers
and hewers of trees! Will they never stay their
hands from destroying the beauty and goodness of
the earth?

Every hole already had its man, if not its bush,
and I had to cut one for myself: so, slipping the
thong of the slick over my wrist, I began chiseling,
like a woodpecker mortising a tree for his grub,
only I was boring haphazard, while his feathered
ear or horny nose leads him straight to his prey.
I cannot hear a fish swim, nor smell one till he is
above water or in the frying-pan. But as a grub
might be anywhere in the wood, so might a fish
be anywhere in the water. I began to wonder how
many bushels of crystals one must hew to come to
the water of Petowbowk at this season ; but at last I
struck through to it, and it came to meet me faster
than I wished, before I got the bottom of the hole
big enough to let through the biggest fish I in-
tended to catch.

Then I put a worm on my hook and dropped it
through the scuttle I had made in the glass roof of
the house of the fishes, and invited them up to take
a look at the sky which they had not seen for so

ON A GLASS ROOF 131

many weeks. Sunbeams, moonlight, and rays of
stars had come to them but dimly and distorted
in their recent quiet life; but they seemed satisfied
with it, undisturbed by the tumult of winter storms
and buffeting of waves, and had no desire to see
anything of the world aboveboard.

For an hour I had such exciting sport as fishing
in the well or cistern at home would have afforded,
for not a bite did I get. It made it none the pleas-
anter to see my neighbors hauling out both perch
and smelt, while my bait — tempting enough for
the best of them, I thought — dangled untouched,
if not unnoticed, by even the least minnow. I
began to imagine my luckier or more skillf ul neigh-
bors the fishermen laughing at me, if they were
not too busy with their own affairs, and doubted
not that my nearer neighbors of the nether world
were on the broad grin, peering up at me.

"How many miles has he come just to show
himself to us? And not much to look at at that,
for he is not handsome, neither is he terrible, like
the Canucks who are making such havoc among
our friends over there. Does he look rather green?
Or is it only that we see him through this emerald
water?"

Some such whispers, I fancied, came from below.
I made my line fast to a stick laid across the hole,
and went visiting, for lack of something better to
do, which is a winter custom in these parts.

132 ON A GLASS ROOF

I called first on the nearest fisherman, an ancient
Canuck, so old, I thought, that, being of no use at
home, his grown-up great-grandchildren had sent
him fishing. Here he was valuable, for he had
the gift of his race, and two or three dozen lusty
perch were lying on the ice about him. He kept his
short black pipe continually hi blast when not re-
charging it, smoking home-grown, greenish-black
tobacco twisted into a half-inch rope which must
have been endless, and so rank that I thought the
friends of his youth in Canada might have their
memories of him refreshed with a sniff of it, now
that the south wind was blowing. As he knew as
little English as I French, we had no very sociable
intercourse, and it soon grew rather dull for both
of us. So after a short tarry I moved on to the next
hole, held by a younger Canadian. He had con-
quered the Queen's English, which if he did not
murder outright he treated barbarously. He was
also a conqueror of fish, and many of his victims
lay about him, dead and dying, — perch in mail of
iron and gold, smelt sheathed in silver, and herring
in mother-of-pearl armor of all nacreous hues and
tints.

"You don' ketch no feesh, ain't it?" he cried,
with a grin. "Wai, da's too bad. Ah'm sorry, me."
I doubted his sorrowing much for this, for these
Canucks think all the fish and all the berries belong
to them.

ON A GLASS ROOF 133

"Hah! Dis pooty col'," he said, beating his
breast with his red hands. "'F Ah feesh here
mauch, Ah have haouse. But prob'ly Ah won't,
prob'ly Ah will."

He told me that wherever on the lake his breth-
ren make a business of whiter fishing it is done
mostly in little board huts, which are moved out
upon the ice when it has fairly made for the season,
and hauled ashore before the spring break-up.
In these little houses the fisherman spends his days
and nights, for they are very comfortable, being
banked with snow and furnished with a stove and
bunk. A movable floor-board gives access to the
fishing-hole beneath. This is the hatchway to a
noble common cellar, reaching from Wood Creek
to the Richelieu in length, and in width from Ver-
mont to New York State, stored with plenty of
food and drink of the wholesomest. It must be a
cozy way of fishing, and, I thought, would suit me;
for if, as it seemed, I was to get no fish, I might take
my bad luck comfortably and shut out from prying
eyes — keep it unknown to any but myself and the
fish. My new acquaintance told me much of his
affairs, of his luck in fishing at all seasons, of the
money he had earned in haying and in chopping,
and bragged of his wonderful horse:

"He worse more as hundred dollar. 'F you
want heem go slow, he go slow ' 'F you want heem
go fas', jus' de same! Yas, sir."

134 ON A GLASS ROOF

Of our withered neighbor he said: "He got too
hole. Wen Ah got hole lak heem, Ah been dead
great many year' 'go!"

He used the shortest rod I ever saw employed,
it being only about a foot in length, with a slender
cross-piece more than half as long, to wind up the
line upon when not in use. When he had hooked a
fish he tossed this aside and pulled it out hand over
hand. He said that, besides perch, smelt, and blue-
fish, they occasionally caught a pike-perch, a little
rock-pike, and "de mudder of de eel," as he called
the ling and believed it to be. If this theory will
help settle the vexed question of the generation of
the eel, the scientists are welcome to it, if they will
only give credit therefor to my friend Joseph
Gerard, of Vermont, commonly known as Joe
Gero.

The perch and smelt swim deep for the most
part, and are usually fished for a little off the
bottom. Worms are the best bait for perch; but
after one smelt is caught his eyes are used to lure
his fellows. It is said that these Champlain smelt
do not visit salt water, though they might if they
would; but they have the cucumber smell and
taste of those taken in tide-waters. The salmon
herring, lake herring, or whatever he is who here
bears the name of "bluefish," is a recent comer to
these waters; for, from all I can learn, he was un-
known here till within ten or twelve years. No one

ON A GLASS ROOF 135

can deny that he is a very handsome fish, symmet-
rical in form, and, when first taken from the water,
of beautiful mother-of-pearl hues; but as to his
goodness opinions differ. The flesh is rather soft,
and has its share of bones, but is of rich flavor.
When he bites he comes close to the surface for the
morsel of fat pork or bit of his brother's belly that
is offered him, with a constant, gentle motion.
When he is seen to take the bait, the angler strikes
at once, or it is spit out. He is very shy, perhaps
through being a stranger in strange waters, and
will fly from the fisherman's shadow or sudden
motion.

The ideal angler has quiet ways; and, observing
that my third and last fellow-fisherman — if I
had a right to claim such fellowship — kept to his
post as steadfastly as an Esquimaux to a seal-hole,
never wasting a motion, I was attracted to him.
He proved to be a Waubanakee of Saint Francis,
plying the gentle art here in the warpath of his
ancestors. One fishing here two hundred years
ago would have needed to keep at least one eye
open for something more than fish, but both his
little black ones were intent upon his line. From
our low standpoint the rough, indented shore of
Split Rock Mountain showed only as a straight
ice-line, and it seemed as if a war party might slip
by, unseen, behind the round of the world. Over
there passed many a one, to and fro, in the old days

136 ON A GLASS ROOF

— Iroquois, Waubanakees, and whites; notable
among them, with a bloody page in history, that of
De Sainte-Helene and De Mantet, French and
Indians, creeping like panthers toward doomed
Schenectady, then returning, gorged with blood
and pillage.

This tamed great-grandson of those panthers
looked peaceable and kindly enough, but was at
first as taciturn as his ancestors could have been,
and as slow to be drawn into conversation as the
fish to the companionship which I desired of them;
but, baiting with tobacco and lunch, I at last drew
some talk from him. He told me that he and a few
of his people were wintering in a neighboring vil-
lage, making baskets and bows and arrows. They
found but little sale for these, and, for want of
something better to do, he had come a-fishing.
Years before I had known some of his people, and
through him I learned somewhat of my old ac-
quaintances. One of them was Swasin Tahmont,
who I doubt not was the Tahmunt Swasen of
Thoreau's "Maine Woods." I was surprised to
hear that he had gone to the happy hunting-
grounds by the fire-water way, for when I knew
him he would not touch whiskey and was very
pious. He used to sing hymns to me in Waubana-
kee, and always said grace before his musquash-
meat. Wadso, who many years ago had told me
the Indian names of all these streams, had also

ON A GLASS ROOF 137

gone thither, but by a better path. His father
still lives, the oldest man of his tribe. He com-
manded the Waubanakee warriors at the battle
of Plattsburg. My new acquaintance had fleshed
his war-arrows, having served in a New York regi-
ment in the Civil War, and he looked as if he might
have done good service. I wondered if then any
of the old savagery had been awakened hi him — if
the war-whoop had risen to his lips when his regi-
ment charged, or if he had been tempted to scalp a
fallen foe. I heard of a Caughnawaga in one of
our Vermont regiments who, when reproached for
kicking a wounded rebel, justified himself by say-
ing, "Me 'list, to kill um!" That was setting forth
the truth with unpleasant plainness.

The ice was now whooping like a legion of In-
dians. Its wild, mysterious voice would first be
heard faint and far away, then come rushing to-
ward us swifter than the wind, with increasing
volume of groans and yells, till it seemed as if the
ice was about to yawn beneath us and devour us.
The fish quit biting — as well they might, with a
pother overhead enough to frighten a hungry saint
from his meals. If I had been alone I should have
fled to the shore; but, seeing my companion un-
disturbed by the uproar, I tried to feel at ease.
When I asked him what made this noise, he simply
answered, "The ice." That was reason enough
for him, and he evidently thought it should satisfy

138 ON A GLASS ROOF

me. I asked him if his people had any legend
connected with it, and he answered, with a quiet
laugh, "I've heard some stories 'bout it, but I
guess they wa'n't very true."

After some coaxing, he told me this: "You know
that big rock in the lake off north — Rock Dunder,
you call it? Wai, our people use to call that Woja-
hose — that means 'the forbidder' — 'cause every
time our people pass by it in their canoes, if they
did n't throw some tobacco or corn or something
to it, the big devil that live in it would n't let 'em
go far without a big storm come, and maybe
drowned 'em. He forbid 'em. Wai, bimeby they
got sick of it — s'pose maybe they did n't always
have much corn an' tobacco to throw 'way so —
and the priests all pray their god to make Woja-
hose keep still an' not trouble 'em. After they
prayed a long time, he promised 'em he'd keep
Wojahose from hurtin' on 'em for a spell every
year. So he froze the lake all over tight every
winter for two or three months, and then our
people could go off huntin' and fightin' all over the
lake without payin* Wojahose. That made him
mad, an' every little while he 'd go roarin' round
under the ice, tryin' to git out. But he could n't
do much hurt, only once in a while git a man
through a hole in the ice. That's the way I've
heard some of our old men tell it; but I guess it 's a
story."

ON A GLASS ROOF 139

Wojahose has taken more to French customs of
late years, and feeds now mostly upon horses.
Not a winter passes that he does not swallow a
score or so.

The south wind was blowing softly, and a veil of
summer-like haze had fallen over the rugged steeps
of Split Rock Mountain. At its northern point,
which gives it its name, the sleeping lighthouse
loomed ghostly through it, awaiting the spring
evening when it should again awaken and cast the
glitter of its eye across the released waters. From
behind this promontory suddenly flashed the sail
of an ice-boat, swifter than a puff of wind-blown
smoke, a phantom flying faster than feathered
wings could bear it, and out of sight behind
Thompson's Point almost as soon as we had
seen it.

The mellow baying of a distant hound came to
us, and presently we saw the fox creeping out from
a headland, picking his way along the streaks of
glare ice till he had got a half-mile from shore,
when he put his best foot foremost and headed for
the eastern border of the bay at full speed. When
the hound came to the scentless ice he gave a long
howl of disappointment, then circled and snuffed
in vain, and at last went ashore, stopping now and
then to cast a wistful glance behind him.

The day was on the wane, and home at the other
end of a long walk. I pulled in and wound up my

140 ON A GLASS ROOF

guiltless line, dropping the untouched bait to the
fish or Wojahose, and took the homeward way
along the shore for a mile, and then up the Little
River of Otters, for hundreds of years, as now, the
road of men, fowl, and fish. From it the pickerel-
fishers had departed, and the only tokens of their
recent occupancy were the deserted holes, with
here and there beside one a mangled minnow, a few
pickerel-scales, half -burned matches, and the ashes
of pipes. The deadness of winter brooded over the
lonely icebound stream, and the only sound that
broke the stillness besides the crunching of my
footsteps was the storm-foreboding hoot of a great
horned owl.

I had almost forgotten to say that I bore home a
goodly string of fish, and, as no questions were
asked, I got the credit of catching them. Indeed,
after a few days, it almost seemed to me that I had
caught them.

MERINO SHEEP

THE writer of a recently printed book concerning
Americans of royal descent, and all such Americans
as come near to being so graciously favored, has
neglected to mention certain Americans who are
descended from the pets of the proudest kings and
nobles of the Old World. For there is such a family
here — one so large that it greatly outnumbers all
American descendants of European royal lines,
excepting perhaps those of the Green Isle, almost
as prolific of kings as of Democrats. They carry
their finely clothed, blue-blooded bodies on four
legs, for they are the famous American Merino
sheep.

The Merino sheep originated in Spain, probably
two thousand years ago, from a cross of African
rams with the native ewes, and in course of time
became established as a distinct breed, with such
marked characteristics as to differentiate them
from all other breeds in the world.

Different provinces had their different strains
of Merinos, which were like strawberries in that,
though all were good, some were better than others.
There were also two great divisions — the Trans-
humantes or traveling flocks, and the Estantes
or stationary flocks. The Transhumantes were

142 MERINO SHEEP

considered the best, as they had a right to be; for
their owners were kings, nobles, and rich priests,
and they had the pick of the fatness of the whole
land, being pastured on the southern plains in
winter, and in the spring and summer on the then
fresher herbage of the mountains to the northward,
from which they returned in the fall. For the ac-
commodation of these four or five millions during
their migrations, cultivators of the intervening
land were obliged to leave a road, not less than
ninety yards wide, as well as commons for the feed-
ing of these flocks — a grievous burden to the hus-
bandman, and for which there was little or no
redress. A French writer says: "It was seldom
that proprietors of land made demands when they
sustained damage, thinking it better to suffer than
to contest, when they were assured that the ex-
pense would greatly exceed any compensation they
might recover." A Spanish writer complains in a
memoir addressed to his king, that " the corps of
junadines (the proprietors of flocks) enjoy an enor-
mous power, and have not only engrossed all the
pastures of the kingdom, but have made cultiva-
tors abandon their most fertile lands; thus they
have banished the estantes, ruined agriculture, and
depopulated the country." The Transhumantes
were in flocks of ten thousand, cared for by fifty
shepherds, each with a dog, and under the direc-
tion of a chief. Those who wish to learn more

MERINO SHEEP 143

of the management of these flocks and the life
of their guardians are referred to the interest-
ing essay on "Sheep," by Robert R. Livingston,
printed by order of the Legislature of New York
in 1810.

Of the traveling sheep were the strains known as
Escurials, Guadalupes, Paulars, Infantados, Ne-
grettis, and others, all esteemed for various quali-
ties, and some of whose names have become famil-
iar to American ears. The stationary flocks appear
to have passed away, or at least to have gained no
renown.

The Spanish sheep reached their highest ex-
cellence about the beginning of the nineteenth
century; but during the Peninsular War the best
flocks were destroyed or neglected, and the race
so deteriorated that in 1851 a Vermont breeder
of Merinos, who went to Spain on purpose to see
the sheep of that country, wrote that he did not
see a sheep there for which he would pay freight to
America, and did not believe they had any of pure
blood! But Merinos of pure blood had been
brought into France in the last quarter of the
eighteenth century, and there carefully and judi-
ciously bred. In Saxony they were carefully but
injudiciously bred, everything being sacrificed to
fineness of fleece.

Less than one hundred years ago the sheep of
the United States were the descendants of the

144 MERINO SHEEP

English breeds, mixed and intermixed till they had
lost the distinctive characteristics of their long-
wooled, well-fleshed ancestors, and were known as
"natives" (a name they were as much entitled to
as their owners), being born here of parents who
had not slept or grazed under other skies. For
many generations having little care, their best
shelter hi winter being the stacks their poor fodder
was tossed from, and their fare in summer the
scant grass among the stumps of the clearings and
the shaded herbage of the woods, by the survival of
the fittest they came to be a hardy race, almost as
wild as deer, and almost as well fitted to withstand
the rigors of our climate and to elude capture by
wild beasts or their rightful owners. Indeed, so
much had they recovered the habits of their re-
motest ancestors, that to get up the settler's flock
for washing or shearing, or the draft of a number
for slaughter or sale, was at least a half-day's task,
if not one uncertain of fulfillment. All the farm-
hands, and often the women and children of the
household, were mustered for these herdings, and
likely enough the neighbors had to be called in to
help. The flocks were generally small, and the
coarse, thin, short wool was mostly worked upon
the now bygone hand-cards, spinning-wheels,
and hand-looms for home use. As the clearings
widened, the flocks of sheep grew larger, and wool-
growing for market became an industry of some

MERINO SHEEP 145

importance. The character of the animals and
the quality of their fleeces remained almost un-
changed until the century was a half -score years
old, when the Merinos had become established
here, and the effect of their cross with the natives
began to be manifest.

Perhaps mention should be made here of the
Smith's Island sheep, of unknown origin, but
peculiar to the island from which they took their
name, which lies off the coast of Virginia, and be-
longed, about 1810, to Mr. Custis, Washington's
stepson, who wrote a pamphlet concerning them,
in which he says : "Then* wool is a great deal longer
than the Spanish, in quality vastly superior; the
size and figure of the animal admit of no com-
parison, being highly in favor of the Smith's
Island."

Livingston does not endorse these claims, but
says of the wool: "It is soft, white, and silky, but
neither so fine nor so soft as the Merino wool." If
this breed is not extinct, it never gained much
renown, nor noticeably spread beyond its island
borders. I think Randall does not mention it in
his "Practical Shepherd." There were also the
Otter sheep, said to have originated on some island
on our eastern coast, and whose distinguishing
peculiarity was such extreme shortness of legs that
Livingston says they could not run or jump, and
they even walked with some difficulty. And there

146 MERINO SHEEP

were the Arlington sheep, derived from stock im-
ported by Washington, the male a Persian ram,
the mothers Bakewell ewes. They seem to have
been a valuable breed of long-wooled sheep, but
are now unknown.

The first importation of Merino sheep on record
is that of William Foster, of Boston, who in 1793
brought over three from Spain and gave them to a
friend, who had them killed for mutton, and, if the
sheep were fat, I doubt not found it good, and
wished there was more of it. In 1801 four ram
lambs were sent to the United States by two
French gentlemen. The only one that survived
the passage was owned for several years in New
York, and afterward founded some excellent grade
flocks in Delaware. Randall says of him: "He was
of fine form, weighed one hundred and thirty-eight
pounds, and yielded eight and a hah* pounds of
brook-washed wool, the heaviest fleece borne by
any of the early imported Merinos of which I have
seen any account."

What was then considered fine form would
hardly take that place with our modern breeders,
and the then remarkable weight of wool was not
more than a quarter that of the fleece of many of
the present Americans of the race; these last, how-
ever, not brook- washed nor even rain- washed. The
next year Mr. Livingston, our Minister to France,
sent home two pairs of Merinos from the Govern-

MERINO SHEEP

ment flock of Chdlons, and afterward a ram from
the Rambouillet flocks.

A table given by Livingston in 1810 is interest-
ing in showing the effect of the first cross on the
common or native sheep. The average weight of
the fleeces of a flock of these was three pounds ten
ounces; that of the half-bred Merino offspring, five
pounds one ounce. Similar results came of the
larger importation, in the same year, by Colonel
Humphreys, our Minister to Spain, of twenty-one
rams and seventy ewes, selected from the Infan-
tado family. In 1809 and 1810 Mr. Jarvis, Ameri-
can Consul at Lisbon, bought nearly four thousand
sheep of the confiscated flocks of Spanish nobles,
all of which were shipped to different ports in the
United States, and in those years, and the one
following, from three thousand to five thousand
Spanish Merinos were imported by other persons.
In 1809 and 1810 half-blood Merino wool was sold
for seventy-five cents and full blood for two dol-
lars a pound, and during the War of 1812 the latter
sold for two dollars and fifty cents a pound. Natu-
rally, a Merino fever was engendered, and imported
and American-born rams of the breed were sold for
enormous prices, some of Livingston's ram lambs
for one thousand dollars each. But such a sudden
downfall followed the Peace of Ghent that, before
the end of the year 1815, full-blooded sheep were
sold for one dollar each.

148 MERINO SHEEP

Till 1824 the price of wool continued so low
that, during the intervening years, nearly all the
full-blood Merino flocks were broken up or care-
lessly bred. Then the enactment of a tariff favor-
ing the production of fine wool revived the pros-
trate industry, and unfortunately brought about
the introduction of the miserable Saxon Merinos,
large numbers of which were now imported. In
the breeding of these, everything having been
sacrificed to fineness of wool, the result was a
small, puny animal, bearing two, possibly three,
pounds of very fine, short wool. Such was the
craze for these unworthy favorites of the hour that
almost all owners of Spanish sheep crossed them
with the Saxon, to the serious injury of their flocks.
They held the foremost place in America among
fine-wooled sheep for fifteen or twenty years, and
then went out of favor, and have now quite dis-
appeared, I believe.

The Spanish Merino now came to the front
again, and of them the descendants of the Jarvis
and Humphreys importation were most highly
esteemed. As has been mentioned, the flocks of
Spain had sadly deteriorated, and the American
sheep derived from them in their best days far sur-
passed them, if not their own progenitors.

Wool-growing became the leading industry of
the Green Mountain State. Almost every Ver-
mont farmer was a shepherd, and had his hah*-

MERINO SHEEP 149

hundred or hundreds or thousands of grade sheep
or full bloods dotting the ferny pastures of the
hill country or the broad levels of the Champlain
Valley, rank with English grasses. From old Fort
Dummer to the Canada line one could hardly get
beyond the sound of the sheep's bleat unless he
took to the great woods, and even there he was j
likely enough to hear the intermittent jingle of a
sheep-bell chiming with the songs of the hermit
and wood thrushes, or to meet a flock driven
clattering over the pebbles of a mountain road;
for a mid-wood settler had his little herd of sheep,
to which he gave in summer the freedom of the
woods, and which took — alas for the owner's
crops — the freedom of the meadow and grain
patches, and were sheltered from the chill of win-
ter nights in a frame barn bigger than their mas-
ter's log house.

In June, when the May-yeaned lambs were
skipping hi the sunshine that had warmed the
pools and streams till the bullfrogs had their
voices in tune, the sheep were gathered from the
pastures and driven over the dusty roads to the
pens beside the pools on the tapped mill-flumes
and washed amid a pother of rushing waters,
shouts of laughter of men and boys, and discord-
ant, plaintive bleats of parted ewes and lambs.

A fortnight or so later came the great event of
the shepherd's year, the shearing, for which great

150 MERINO SHEEP

preparation was made within house and barn.
The best the farm afforded must be provided for
the furnishing of the table; for the shearers were
not ordinary farm laborers, but mostly farmers
and farmers' sons, and as well to do as then* em-
ployer, who was likely enough to shear, in his turn,
for them. Whoever possessed the skill of shearing
a sheep thought it not beneath him to ply his well-
paid handicraft in all the country round. For
these the fatted calf was killed and the green peas
and strawberries were picked. The barn floor and
its overhanging scaffolds were carefully swept,
the stables were littered with clean straw, the
wool-bench was set up, and the reel full of twine
was made ready in its place. Those were merry
days in the old gray barns that were not too fine
to have swallows' holes in their gables, moss on
then* shingles, and a fringe of hemp, mayweed,
and smartweed about their jagged underpinning.
There was jesting and the telling of merry tales
from morning till night, and bursts of laughter
that scared the swallows out of the cobwebbed
roof -peak and the sitting hen from her nest hi the
left-over haymow. Neighbors called to get a
taste of the fun and the cider, to see how the flock
"evridged," and to engage hands for their own
shearing. At nooning, after the grand dinner,
while the older men napped on the floor, wool-
bench, or scaffold, with their heads pillowed on

MERINO SHEEP 151

soft places, the young fellows had trials of
strength at "pulling stick" or lifting "stiff legs."
The skillful wool-tier was rarer than the skillful
shearer, and in much demand in his own and
neighboring townships. He tied the fleeces quickly
and compactly, showing the best on the outside,
but with no clod of dirty locks in the middle; for
in those days wool had its place and dirt its place,
but the fleece was not their common place. The
catcher was a humble but not unimportant mem-
ber of the force. He must be alert and with a sheep
ready for each shearer as wanted, and was never
to take up a sheep by the wool, but -with his left
arm underneath, just behind the fore legs, and his
right hand grasping a hind leg. And there was
the boy to pick up locks, discarding the dirty
ones, which were swept outdoors. One's back
aches as he remembers this unpleasant duty of his
boyhood, when he was scoffed by shearers and
scolded by the wool-tier, and often had the added
labor of carrying the wool to its storage. Four-
teen fleeces tied up in a blanket was the load,
which, if they had been of nowadays weight, would
have burdened a strong man; but a five-pound
fleece was a heavy one then. I have never
been present at one of the modern public shear-
ings, which come before the swallows do, while
winter is still skirmishing with spring, and are
celebrated in the local papers; but I doubt if they

152 MERINO SHEEP

are such hearty and enjoyable seasons as the old-
fashioned shearings were.

The wool-buyers scoured the country at or
after shearing-time, and drove their bargains
with the farmers. The small lots of wool were
hauled in bulk to some central point of shipment,
while the larger clips were sacked on the grower's
premises. The sack was suspended through a
hole of its own diameter in an upper floor and
a few fleeces were thrown in, when the packer
lowered himself into it and placed and trod the
wool as it was passed to him till he had trod his
way to the top. Then the sacks were lowered,
sewed, weighed, marked, and went their way to
market.

The "tag-locks" and pulled wool were mostly
worked up in the neighboring small factories into
stocking-yarn, flannel, and blankets for the farm-
er's use, and into the then somewhat famous
"Vermont gray," which was the common cold-
weather outer clothing of New England male
farm-folk. Readers of Thoreau will remember
that he mentions it more than once, and thought
it good enough wear for him. The Yankee farmer
wore it "to mill an' to meetin'," and the young
men of forty years ago were not ashamed to appear
in such sheep's clothing at the paring bee or the
ball.

Vermont, become so famous as a wool-produc-

MERINO SHEEP 153

ing State that English cutlers stamped their best
shears "True Vermonters," presently became
more famous as the nursery of improvement of the
Merino breed, to which object several intelligent
breeders devoted their efforts. By selection of the
best of the animals obtainable, the form of the
sheep was made more robust, the size increased,
and with it the length and thickness of all parts
of the fleece, so that the wool on a sheep's belly
was nearly as long as that on the sides.

French Merinos, so much changed, since the
importations by Livingston, from the fashion of
their Spanish ancestors that they had become a
distinct family, were introduced, and had their
admirers, as had the Silesian Merinos. These
modern French sheep were larger and coarser
than the original Spaniards; the Silesians, smaller
than the French, but handsomer and hardier.

As naturally as in former times, a "Merino
fever" again began to rage; fabulous prices were
paid for sheep, and men mortgaged their farms to
become possessors of a score of full bloods. There
was no registry of flocks, and jockeys sold grade
sheep, numbered, lampblacked, and oiled up to
the desired blackness and greasiness, for full bloods
at prices tenfold beyond their real worth. Grow-
ers ran to the opposite extreme from that to which
they had gone during the Saxon craze, and now so
sacrificed everything to weight of fleece that Ver-

154 MERINO SHEEP

mont wool fell into the evil repute of being filthy
stuff, more grease and dirt than honest fiber. The
tide ebbed again to lowest watermark; again the
inheritors of the blue blood of the Paulars and In-
f antados went to the shambles at the prices paid
for the meanest plebeian natives, and it seemed
as if the sheep-farming of Vermont had got its
death-blow.

Even so had the farming of sheep for wool; for
in the great West a vast region had been opened
wherein sheep could be kept at such a fraction of
the cost entailed in winter-burdened New Eng-
land that there was nothing for the Yankee wool-
grower but to give up the losing fight. So most
shepherds turned dairymen.

But, gifted with a wise foresight, a few owners
of fine flocks kept them and bred them as care-
fully as ever, and in the f ullness of time were richly
rewarded. After a while it became evident that
the flocks of the West could only be kept up to the
desired standard by frequent infusions of the East-
ern blood; and so it has come about that sheep-
breeding in Vermont is a greater, stronger-founded,
and more prosperous industry than ever before.
Each year more and more buyers come from Texas,
California, Colorado, and Australia; and on many
an unpretending Vermont farm, after examination
of points and pedigree, often more carefully kept
than their owner's, the horn-coroneted dons of

MERINO SHEEP 155

the fold change masters at prices rivaling those of
blood horses.

The care given these high-bred, fine-wooled
sheep is a wonderful contrast to the little re-
ceived by flocks in the times when wool-growing
was the chief object of OUT sheep farmers; when,
though sheep had good and abundant food, and
fairly comfortable shelter from cold and storm,
they had nothing more. The lambs were dropped
in May after the ewes were turned out to grass,
and were not looked after oftener than once a day
in fine weather, and got only their mother's milk,
if the ewe was a good milker and was fond enough
of her ungainly yeanling to own it and give it such
care as sheep give their young. Now the dons and
dofias of blue blood have better quarters in winter
than many a poor mortal, in barns so warm that
water will not freeze in them, and are fed grain
and roots as well as hay, and are sheltered from
even soft summer rains, that their raiment may
suffer no loss of color. The lambs are brought
forth when spring has nothing in Vermont of that
season but the name, and are fed with cow's milk,
or put to nurse with coarse-wooled foster-mothers,
more bountiful milkers than Merinos, and have a
man to care for them night and day. The old-time
rams tilted it out on the field of honor, to the sore
bruising of heads and battering of helmets, and
sometimes loss of life. But now rams of a warlike

156 MERINO SHEEP

turn are hooded like falcons, that they may do
no harm to each other and their peaceable com-
rades. A blow might cost their owner a thousand
dollars.

The successful sheep-breeder is up to his knees
in clover, but the eastern wool-grower is on barren
ground. A friend who lives in the heart of the
Vermont sheep-breeding region writes me: "Or-
dinary rams sell for from ten dollars to twenty-
five dollars a head; ordinary ewes for twenty dol-
lars. The highest real price any one has known a
ram to sell for within two years, eleven hundred
dollars; the same for ewes, three hundred dollars.
The wool of these sheep sells for twenty cents a
pound. The wool itself does not pay for growing
in the way in which these sheep are reared and
cared for. The wool is a secondary object; the
bodies are what they are bred for. ... In the way
sheep are kept on the large ranches southwest and
west, the sheep so soon deteriorate that they are
obliged to have thorough-bred rams to keep up
their flocks. This is particularly the case in warm
climates. Nature gets rid of the superfluous cloth-
ing as soon as possible."

It is interesting to compare the portraits of the
best Merinos of eighty years ago with the improved
American Merinos of the present day, and see
what a change has been wrought in the race with-
out change of blood. It is not unlikely that to the

MERINO SHEEP 157

uneducated eye the more natural and picturesque
sheep of the old time would seem more comely
than the bewrinkled, enfolded and aproned prod-
uct of the many years of careful breeding. As a
thing of beauty the modern Merino ram can hardly
be called a success, but there are millions in this
knight of the Golden Fleece.

A LITTLE BEAVER

WHEN you first see the beaver you are likely to
feel that you already have some slight acquaintance
with him, and then, searching your memory, you
will probably find you have been thinking of the
muskrat. Indeed, the animals have many points
of resemblance, and except that the muskrat's
tail is narrower, and longer hi proportion, he is
an excellent miniature portrait of his bigger and
more valuable cousin, the beaver.

The hirsute face of the muskrat, grim with its
small, deep-set eyes and grinning incisors, his
long, brown, shining fur and soft under-coat of
drab, his scaly shanks and webbed feet, his whole
rounded clumsy form make a faithful reproduction
in small of the larger animal. On land both have
the same awkward, waddling gait; in the more con-
genial element both swim with the same rapid,
even stroke, and dive with equal startling, light-
ning-like rapidity. The muskrat builds for a sea-
son's use a neat and comfortable house, but it pro-
vides no entrance, such as there is in the beaver's
domicile, for the carrying in and out of food. The
muskrat does not, like the beaver, lay up a store of
winter food, but lives from paw to mouth. How-
ever, like the beaver's lodge, the muskrat's house

A LITTLE BEAVER 159

has a burrow in the bank, as a retreat for use in
various emergencies.

Among these are the attacks of man and wild
animals, and the rise of water. For the muskrat
has not the sagacity in forecasting the seasons
which many attribute to him. When he builds the
walls of his house thin the winter is as likely as not
to be unusually cold. If he builds his dome low
and squat, the fall floods will probably drive him
to his burrow in the bank; but still the second-
hand prophets do not lose faith in him.

The muskrat is not a builder of dams, but rather
a destroyer of them. He will avail himself of the
ponds they create, but he has so little compre-
hension of their purpose that he will undermine
them with his burrows. Then some fine afternoon
he will awake to find the pond has run away, and
left nothing in its place but a mud flat with a thin
stream meandering through; and he will wonder at
the cause of the disaster. After faring sumptuously
for a few days on the stranded dying mussels, he
will journey in quest of fresh under-water pastures.

As there are hermit beavers, so there are hermit
muskrats, disappointed or misanthropic old fellows,
who seek seclusion from their kind in some remote
pool or small brook. Here the hermit lives in com-
parative safety from his worst enemy, man, gather-
ing generous subsistence in summer from the sedges
of the waterside and the green things of fields, the

160 A LITTLE BEAVER

corn bordering the brook, and the root-crop. But
his solitary life does not exempt him from danger.
When he makes nightly foraging incursions inland
the prowling fox may catch his scent drifting on
the breeze, and come stealthily up-wind upon
him; or the great horned owl may swoop down
out of the silence of the night.

At home the muskrat is not secure from his in-
veterate enemy, the mink, whose slender, snake-
like body finds easy entrance into his burrow.

With winter come short commons, scant glean-
ings of water-plant roots on the bottom, and long
overland tours of exploration, when perhaps a
meal-barrel in a hog-house is discovered, or, by
greater good fortune, secret entry to a cellar is
made, and great store of succulent vegetables come
at. But it is likelier that hunger and thirst neces-
sitate a return to wider waters. The marsh-bor-
dered streams, with then" slow, smooth currents,
their steady rise and fall of water, their broad
meadows of innumerable aquatic plants and great
beds of fat lily-roots, are the proper and appointed
abiding-places of the muskrats. Here is abundant
material for house-building, no current to interfere
with "the building, or to chafe and wear the house
away; and here there is an inexhaustible supply of
vegetable and animal food.

When the waning of summer is calendared by
the bloom of goldenrod and aster on the upland,

A LITTLE BEAVER 161

and when cardinal-flowers and ripened water-
maples kindle rival flames on the inner border of
the marsh, the winter dwelling of the muskrat is
builded unseen in the darkness. Night by night
grows the dome of fresh green rushes, broad-
leaved flags, angular-stalked sedges; and it is
hardly noticeable among the green, rank standing
plants until the thatch has grown dun with curing.
Swift-winged teal alight there, and the great dusky
ducks climb to the housetop for outlook over the
marsh, but rarely except at night is the owner to
be seen. He is both lake-dweller and cave-dweller,
and between his two unlike habitations communi-
cation is had by a hidden path in the tangle of
weeds, a pitfall for the unwary wader of the marsh.
With the completion of the house, a new danger
threatens the builders and then* young family.

The mink and the owl have harassed the nightly
labors and waylaid the lop-eared youngsters who
made short excursions from the paternal roof;
but now of a dew-silvered morning a knotted wisp
of sedge or rushes or a patch of birch bark calls
your attention to a "tally-stick," which secures a
cruel trap. This has been set perhaps in the crumb-
littered feed-bed outside the house, or even in the
darkness of the inner chamber, to which the trapper
has gained access by removing a bit of the wall,
now neatly replaced.

Only spendthrift trappers follow this wasteful

162 A LITTLE BEAVER

practice, but they carry it on in fall and winter,
especially in the latter season, when the ice facili-
tates travel over the marsh.

At these seasons men go quietly among the
muskrat-houses, armed with one-tined spears,
which they drive with such accuracy that they
rarely fail to strike the inner chamber and almost
always impale one victim, and oftener two.

The direst calamity that can befall the muskrat
occurs when, at a low stage of water, extremely
cold weather freezes the marsh to the bottom and
cuts the animals off from the supply of aquatic
roots. Whole families starve in the houses; a few
dig their way to the outer world and wander far
and wide over the snowy waste in quest of food, per-
haps to find some meager fare, but more probably
to perish by starvation or violence. In their eager
quest for water, they sometimes gnaw through
lead pipes, and so work a deal of mischief.

But there are always some who survive all the
dangers that beset them, and see the beauty of
spring again unfold upon the earth. Then the sun-
lit, open water invites them to freedom and boun-
teous fare, and their untenanted houses go adrift,
in wrack and ruin, on the wide overflow of the
spring flood. The scattered remnant of survivors
coast along the low shores in quest of mates, whin-
ing a plaintive call as they ply their noiseless pad-
dles. A traveler tells of hearing a cry which he mis-

A LITTLE BEAVER 163

took for that of a baby, but discovered to be the
plaint of a tame beaver, which was being abused
by some Indian children. So we may conclude
that the muskrat and beaver have another point of
resemblance in their voices.

Having found mates, as have the garrulous
blackbirds in the trees above them, the ducks
splashing into the water beside them, and the
bitterns making nuptial rejoicing from drowsy
sun-bathed coves, they begin to increase and mul-
tiply their kind. In a few favoring seasons the
marshes are again populous with furry inhabitants,
and the conical huts are thick along the border
of the channel in autumn. It is wonderful how
through all the years the muskrats maintain their
numbers, for they are not sagacious or shy of man;
indeed, they frequently establish themselves in
close neighborhood to him, and make little at-
tempt at concealment. They blunder carelessly
into traps, and do not understand the danger signal
of human scent.

A writer on natural history tells us, in illustra-
tion of these animals' sagacity, that in swimming
from place to place to escape detection they will
cover their heads with a green twig held in their
mouths. As a matter of fact, however, this is sim-
ply their mode of carrying food to then* burrows,
and usually their burdens do not conceal their
heads at all, but trail beside or behind them.

164 A LITTLE BEAVER

When alarmed, the muskrat dives quick as a
flash, and swims far and well under water before
breaking the surface for air; and this seems to be
his only idea of escaping from danger.

The secret of the persistent holding out of the
muskrat against the persecution of natural enemies
and the relentless pursuit by man lies in its fecun-
dity, its hardiness, its easy adaptation to changed
conditions, and the abundance of food supplied by
every stream in which water-plants grow and the
fresh-water mussel lives. Long may the tribe en-
dure to give a touch of wild life to our tamed
streams.

TRAPPING UP LITTLE OTTER

MUCH talking of old times is one of the signs of old
age, as common an accompaniment of it as gray
hairs, toothless jaws, dimmed eyes, and stiffened
joints, though a far pleasanter one. The weary
mind clings more tenaciously to pleasant memories
of youth than to fleeting, trivial incidents of yes-
terday. The old man longs to live them over again
in story, and his tongue would fain be wagging.
To that end he must have an audience. Young
folks will serve if interested to hear of the days
when the woods were populous with game, and the
clear, shaded streams swarmed with fish that were
not always lost. Better by far is some old com-
rade, a good listener, yet breaking in now and then
with a reminder of some half-f orgotten incident of
the happy, care-free days. An old friend, an old
pipe and an open fire — happy combination to
bring out talk of old times.

" Do you remember the spring we went to Bur-
ton's Pond? " a familiar voice asks out of the cloud
of tobacco smoke. Yes, and how we were enticed
there by the marvelous tales told of swarms of
muskrats, told us by one without regard for truth,
when we were looking about for trapping-grounds.
We could trap up Little Otter as far as it would

166 TRAPPING UP LITTLE OTTER

float our boats, and then carry them over to the
pond, make a camp there, and trap for a week, and
then come home to enjoy our fortunes at leisure.
Besides the money that was in it, there would be
lots of fun, and so, having gained parental con-
sent and parental aid in the shape of provisions —
for, though grown-up, we were not of age — we
three set forth on our expedition in two boats.

We embarked a little above the second falls,
Joe and I in his boat, and By in his, paddling and
poling at a leisurely rate, setting a trap at every
likely sign, whether burrow, feed-bed, or nightly
haunted log or tussock, and so on, as far as could
be properly gone over next day. On the way up
each boat kept its allotted side, never intruding on
the other, but on the downstream course it was
"go as you please," as fast as current and paddle
would bear us, with an eye out for a chance shot at
a swimming rat. The trapping here, when water
rose and fell several inches in the course of the day
and night, was very different from that in the
marshy lower creek, where there was little varia-
tion in the rise and fall of the sluggish current, and
a trap remained nearly at the same depth at which
it was set.

Next morning we voyaged upstream again, tak-
ing up traps and catch till we reached the end of
yesterday's voyage, where we began setting until
we came to rapids so swift and rough that we had

TRAPPING UP LITTLE OTTER 167

all we could do to make headway. Then slack-
water and "sign" for a few more traps up to the
torn water of Dover Rapids, the busy scene of
many manufactures in old times, all deserted now
and silent but for the rush of the rapids and the
roar of the cataract, no vestige left but a rusted
shaft, a broken wheel, a grass-grown embankment
— memorials of departed industries and dead
hopes.

We lugged and dragged our boats and cargoes
around the falls and launched them again in slack
water, reaching in lazy loops to the site of the old
Boston Iron Company's forges. A little below it
we rounded a long bend half encircling the Old
Indian Garden, where they say was an Indian
cornfield. There was a more authentic memorial
of times almost as old in the venerable tree, living
and standing with a deep notch cut in it with the
plain marks of a beaver's teeth. An old man, a
son of the first settler at this place, told me that
the last trout of Little Otter were caught here, and
were plenty enough in his father's day, but I never
found any one old enough to remember seeing a
beaver. Hard by on the flats of Mud Creek was
a great haunt of these animals, long ago trapped
to extermination by Iroquois and Waubanakee
and adventurous white fur-hunters. The levels
were flooded by dams that can still be traced, and
ditching the alluvial soil brings to light a pave-

168 TRAPPING UP LITTLE OTTER

ment of peeled sticks, the tooth-marks as distinct
as when first made, but crumbling to pieces after
brief exposure.

Here, where the old company's throbbing ham-
mers incessantly shook the forest sixty years ago,
a roaring rapid compelled another toilsome carry,
happily the last awaiting us in these waters. Now
it was easy navigating the slow current. The
meadows on a level with our eyes were growing
green in the pleasant April weather that touched
us with the comfortable indolence of spring fever,
as it seemed to touch the crow lazily hunting grubs
on the broad intervale, and the blackbirds oozing
a gurgle of melody and discord from the elms
above us*

A woodchuck waddling along the bank pros-
pecting for the earliest clover fools us into stalking
him for a muskrat until he takes alarm and scurries
into his burrow with a derisive whistle. We came
head to head above the banks of a bend with
a great blue heron that sprang to flight with a
startled croak, and frightened a pair of dusky
ducks, startling us in turn with sudden splash
and flutter, and taking new fright at the sight of
our boats. Doubtless the pair were in quest of a
secluded summer home where they might rear
their annual brood of ducklings in peace, and we
hoped our brief intrusion might not change their
plans, which gave promise of sport the coming fall.

TRAPPING UP LITTLE OTTER 169

When the well-named hillock, Hedgehog Hill,
bristled far behind us, the creek narrowed to a
channel that barely gave passage to our boats, and
our voyage came to an end where a short bridge
spanned it.

A team met us, and loading our boats on to the
wagon went lumbering and bumping over the
rough-dried clay highway toward our destination.
Happily escaping shipwreck on this dried sea of
mud, we came to a bright little torrent of cascades
and rapids, which we rightly guessed to be the
outlet of our pond, then saw the gable of a sawmill
peeping over the top of the hill, and then came to
its hospitable door, the whole open side gaping a
welcome to customers and their logs. Even so long
ago the old-fashioned "up-and-down" sawmill had
been almost entirely superseded by the modern
circular saw, and we lingered a little while to re-
fresh our earliest recollections with watching the
automatic movements of this relic of old times. It
was as interesting to us, grown up, if not so
wonderful to us, as when callow urchins, to see the
keen saw gnawing its gradual way steadily through
the log, tossing up jets of sawdust till the carriage
tripped the gate lever, and the machinery creaked
to a slow halt; then, hi obedience to the push of a
lever, the carriage trundled the log back to its
first position, the leaping saw attacked it, and
again gnawed through it. What a wonder it must

170 TRAPPING UP LITTLE OTTER

have been when it came to push aside the clumsy
old pit saw and its two attendants, the name of one
of whom, the pitman, was fitly appropriated by
one of its parts!

We were not looking at the mill all this while
without more than half an eye to the pond, nor
without some disappointment. There it lay, clear
and bright in the April sun, but sorely disfigured
by the dead, drowned trees that stood around and
knee-deep in it, and among which its upper end
was lost, for it was an artificial pond, made by
throwing a dam across a wooded dell, and so of
course killing all the flooded trees. Some were
evergreens and some deciduous, and all were ugly
in dead nakedness. Beyond, we could hear the
brook brawling its way down the mountain, a
stream once populous with trout and not yet
quite fishless, so a kingfisher proclaimed, mapping
an aerial tracing of its course, with continuous
clatter. Some bunches of driftweed lodged among
tree trunks that might be debris of ruined muskrat
houses, and a modest display of sign on a floating
log gave evidence of the presence of muskrats. A
clumsy scow with a broken trap and a tally stick
lying in the bottom, grounded on the bank near the
bulkhead of the flume, showed a rival at hand.

Pulling our boats into the water, we began ex-
ploring the pond, keeping an eye out for a good
place for a camp. The shores were low and damp,

TRAPPING UP LITTLE OTTER 171

and we could not see anywhere from the water a
place at all to our liking. We found promising
places for a few traps, and having set them became
aware that it was time to search in earnest for a
night's lodging. The sawyer gave us a flat refusal
when we asked for a chance to spread our buffalo
skins on the kitchen floor. Evidently he did not
look kindly upon our invasion of his domain,
though we had been told that no one trapped here
and the rats were going to waste, dying of old age.
However, he afterward came to be on trading
terms, furnishing us with some articles that we
found ourselves in need of. Among them I re-
member some dip candles which were the most re-
markable triumphs of the chandler's art we had
ever seen. We called them self-supporting wicks,
for it was a marvel how a limp, loosely twisted
cotton cord could stand with such a thin casing of
tallow. But they fitted our kind of sconce — a
split stick — much better than larger ones would
have done. We were making up our minds to be
thankful for tramps' quarters if we could find a
hospitable haymow; but just then we fell in with a
cousin of By's, whose family lived in the neighbor-
hood, and having heard of our presence there had
sent him in search of us to invite us home. It was
all right for By to accept the proffered hospitality
of his relatives, but Joe and I were strangers, and
it was rather awkward to crowd ourselves in. But

hunger and weariness overcame our scruples, and
our hospitable entertainers soon made us forget
we were strangers wearing mud-stained clothes.
In the course of the evening chat around the
kitchen stove we were told of a tenantless log
house in the neighborhood of the pond that might
serve our purpose as a camp if we could get the
consent of its owner.

Accordingly, the next morning I was delegated
to interview him. I found him at work in an ad-
jacent field, a man with a pleasant face that prom-
ised a favorable answer, which was cheerfully given
when he was assured that we had no evil designs
on the community. The old house had one room,
doorless and windowless, and without a fireplace,
though there was a chimney built from the cham-
ber floor with a pipe hole in the bottom for the ac-
commodation of a stove. We set to work to make
the most of this by building a primitive fireplace,
consisting of a quantity of clay mud spread di-
rectly beneath the chimney and covered with flat
stones embedded in it to bring them to an even
surface. Upon this we could make enough fire to
do a little very plain cooking, afford a little warmth
and a great deal of smoke, some of which crawled
up the chimney after the room was completely
filled. During the smokiest progress of building the
fire we lay prone upon the floor, breathing a little
and weeping much until the worst was over and

TRAPPING UP LITTLE OTTER 173

we could crouch around our hearthstones to frizzle
a slice of salt pork or warm ourselves.

We had the luck to find a two-inch plank on the
premises, which we set edgewise in a corner at a
proper distance from one wall, then filled the space
with straw purchased of the sawyer, and spreading
the buffalo skins on top we were furnished with a
luxurious bed. The door being gone, we boarded
up its place permanently, using the window hole
for ingress and egress, tacking up some boards to
keep out the weather when we were in for the night.

Our arrangements for beginning housekeeping
being completed, we made the first round of our
traps. The result was not encouraging; the water
had risen with the shutting down of the mill gate,
covering almost every trap so deep that they were
untouched. We made allowance for this rise when
resetting, and had better luck, but were at no
time overburdened with skinning and stretching
skins, for the place was not overstocked with rats,
and we had convincing proof that toll was regu-
larly taken out of our light catch. The navigation
was a continual vexation by reason of stumps just
under water, on which a boat would snag itself
with a graceful ease that was the poetry of motion,
and pivot thereon in exasperating response to our
futile efforts to get her off with the bottom out of
sounding by paddle or oar, and nothing within
reach to push against.

174 TRAPPING UP LITTLE OTTER

When we got there, there was pleasant seclu-
sion at the upper end of the pond, paled hi by the
ragged gray trees, where the shallow water was
fretted by the ripples of the incoming brook, whose
silvern babble came from the mountain dell along
with the boisterous cackle of a log-cock. Some tiny
minnows, which it pleased us to believe were trout,
flashed to and fro across the golden-barred bottom,
as the basking frogs cut short their lazy croaking
and splashed into the water at our approach.

There was no resisting the spell of the indolent
atmosphere that the April sun distilled, and step-
ping ashore we went back out of the desolation of
drowned trees to living woods and loafed our fill
on moss-cushioned logs. When the day and what
we called its work were done, and the long shadows
widened into twilight, we climbed in at our win-
dow, nailed up the boards behind us, illuminated
our quarters with a couple of the sawyer's dips,
"one to see the other by," Joe said, and lighted a
fire on the hearth. After enduring a half-hour of
smoky torment, we were rewarded with a bed of
coals, over which we roasted some choice quarters
of the most carefully dressed muskrats, or frizzled
slices of salt pork, and if inclined to extreme luxury,
toasted our brown bread. With sharp-set appetites
and raw onions for sauce, we would not have ex-
changed our supper for the President's.

After it the pipes and quiet enjoyment of smoke

TRAPPING UP LITTLE OTTER 175

that was not torment, and a recapitulation of the
day's fun and vexations, of which the first formed
the greater part, and then yawning to bed and
sound sleep — always but once.

A warm south wind blew a thick covering of
clouds over the sky, that grew thicker and more
lowering and portentous of a long rain storm. The
threatening weather sent us to our quarters early,
for our poor facilities for drying wet clothes made
us dread a wetting. We were scarcely housed
before the first drops fell in an intermittent pat-
ter, quickly increasing to a wind-blown downpour
that made us thankful for the sound roof over us.
From end to end of the eaves a broad cataract fell
and ran in a noisy, rushing brook to join another
larger one in the highway ditch.

I could imagine the women of former households
sallying forth on such occasions to put in order the
always-delayed corner barrel to catch water for an
infrequent washing, then scurrying in bedraggled
and dripping, while the lazy men folk unconcern-
edly smoked by the greasy stove.

One could tell by the looks of the place, though
so long uninhabited, that such was the class of
its tenants. The marks of shiftlessness and dis-
comfort were indelibly set upon it. Not even a
stunted cherry tree nor sprawling unpruned cur-
rant bush grew near; no dry stalks of chance-sown
poppy, pink or f our-o'-clock betokened the former

176 TRAPPING UP LITTLE OTTER

presence of a posy bed; and what was once by cour-
tesy called a garden was a waste of dry weed stalks,
pitted with scars of old potato hills.

As we peeped out across it through the crannies
of the logs, we saw the columns of scud sweeping
across the blank gray background from south to
north, then change the direction of their march to
the east until we heard the slanted drift of rain
beating against the western gable. The air began
to have a creeping chilliness upon which our smoky
fire made as little impression as the glow of our
pipes, and it grew more creepy and benumbing
when the rain beat on the northern slant of the roof
and then subsided to the slushy splash of wet snow.
At last we were driven to the poverty-stricken
extremity of going to bed to keep warm, when Joe
declared that his back "felt as if he was list'nin*
to a good scarey panther story when the critter 's
jest goin' to jump," and I am sure mine was as if
the panther was in the chamber.

For awhile we dozed in a half -comfortable state,
but the cold increased beyond the capacity of our
buffaloes and straw to ward off, while the north
wind shrieked with a keener blast after every lull.
We spent the dreary night in turning over and
over, giving one side a chance to thaw a little
while the other slowly froze. We needed no alarm
to get us up in the morning, but were up when the
first level rays of the sun shining from a clear sky

TRAPPING UP LITTLE OTTER 177

came through the crevices of the logs. It shone
upon a tranquil, frozen world. The windless woods
and crisp, dun herbage, just sprinkled with snow
of the storm's finale, glittered as if set with in-
numerable gems.

We crawled out into the sunlight and tried to
absorb some of it, apparently with less success
than a brave little song sparrow that sang his
cheery lay from the top of a fence stake. We were
not quite in the mood of singing, though we man-
aged to crack some jokes over the night's misery,
and counted it a part of the fun of our trip.

It was dismal work going the rounds of the traps,
breaking ice to get to some, resetting in the icy
water and getting little for our trouble, as the
night's flood raised the water beyond our ordinary
calculations.

A few days later the catch became so light that
we decided to leave, and so engaging a team to
transport our boats to the head of navigation, we
bade farewell to our humble abode and Burton's
Pond — a long farewell, for I never saw either
again, and both have long since departed this
world. We were probably the last tenants of the
old house, which not long after went to the wood
pile and the sawmill, and when the mill had de-
voured all the available woods in its neighborhood
it was abandoned, the dam went to ruin and the
pond ran away. Where it was a little brook crawls

178 TRAPPING UP LITTLE OTTER

among new alder thickets, and if a muskrat dwells
there, it is only some solitary hermit who has
wandered far from his fellows in search of a safer
and quieter retreat.

I have heard of the place two or three times
in connection with enormous blacksnakes which
were seen there by people passing on the highway.
A friend of mine killed one which measured eight
feet in length. I do not know whether these
snakes were the common water snake which is fre-
quent in all our waters, though rarely so large, or
the blacksnake common enough south of us, but
almost unknown here. Fortunately for our peace
of mind, Burton's Pond had not gained a snaky
reputation at the time of our brief sojourn, hi
which case it might have been briefer.

Getting our boats afloat at the place of our pre-
vious debarkation, with nothing to detain us, we
voyaged merrily down the narrow stream, now
with newly turned-out kine staring at the strange
apparition of bodiless human heads gliding past,
now disturbing again our old acquaintances —
the heron, the ducks and the woodchucks — and
so after a little to the head of the long rapids above
the old forge of the Boston Company. Joe and I
ran our boat ashore without a thought of running
the rapids, for though they were smooth enough
at the head, white water showed below and there
was an ominous roar that threatened danger. By

TRAPPING UP LITTLE OTTER 179

came dashing past, answering to OUT earnest re-
monstrances that "He'd risk it," and shot into the
swift, smooth water like an arrow.

I watched him a moment, and then, as he seemed
to be getting through safely, went about setting a
mink trap in what looked to be a likely place in
the base of a hollow tree. When not long so en-
gaged, I was startled by a loud outcry of distress,
" Rowlan* ! Come quick ! Come quick ! " and tear-
ing along the bank at the best pace my long legs
would compass, I presently discovered our too
adventurous comrade perched on top of a big
boulder in the middle of the roaring current, hold-
ing aloft hi one hand his dinner pail, in the other
his precious bundle of furs, while just below lay
his capsized boat, jammed fast against a rock, and
gun, traps, and hatchet somewhere at the bottom.
Joe arrived directly, and on finding that our friend
was unhurt and no great harm done, we could not
withhold a hearty laugh at the funny figure he
cut with his carefully preserved treasures. We
helped him ashore with them, and soon fished up
the gun, traps, and other cargo, but our united
efforts could not budge the boat an mch, nor could
it be done until the creek had fallen considerably.

As there was no telling when a team would come
for boats and traps, we insured the safety of the
latter by caching them with a skill that would do
no discredit to a Rocky Mountain trapper. We

removed a circular sod and excavated the earth
to a sufficient depth, carrying away the loose dirt
and throwing it in the creek, so that when the pit
was done its precincts were as neat as a chipmunk's
dooryard. Then the traps were closely packed in
it, the sod adjusted in its original place so nicely
that nothing but the searchlight of a thunderbolt
could have revealed what was hidden there.

I once saw where a lightning stroke unearthed a
log chain that had lain buried at the foot of a tree
for unknown years, the electric current furrowing
the turf and laying bare every contortion of the
chain from end to end, just as it had been dropped
from some careless hand.

Our traps were buried, our trapping ended, to
little purpose save living very close to Nature and
primitive life, sometimes almost to the verge of
discomfort, though scarcely counted so by us. We
fed on the coarsest fare with the zest of healthy ap-
petites, slept soundly on the rudest beds, were sun-
tanned and smoke-tanned to the color and odor of
Indian-tanned buckskin, were unkempt and be-
grimed to the wonder and disgust of the good home
folk who could not understand what we could find
that was pleasant in such a life. We knew, if we
could not tell them.

Good souls, they never thought of their an-
cestors living far harder lives but yesterday in the

TRAPPING UP LITTLE OTTER 181

world's age, only the hardiest surviving and pre-
serving the vigor to perpetuate their race, nor
did the good souls ever think the race would be
none the worse now for a judicious infusion of old
leaven of rough living. Some wisely do so; some
foolishly play at it, because it is the fashion. I
never could see what good or satisfaction there i
can be in camping out in an elegantly furnished
house, where you are expected to dress for the
luxuriously served dinner of several courses, and
gossip, lawn tennis and golf are the chief recrea-
tions; or perchance a young lady catches a fish or
fires a rule in the direction of a target, she cele-
brates the unique event with a pretty squeal.
There is nothing of the wholesomeness of true
camp life in it all, none of its freedom from con-
ventionalities, of the invention of makeshifts, no
living close to the heart of nature.

Well, there are no more of the happy, care-free
days of camping out for us three comrades — one
sleeping his long sleep under the sumacs in the old
burying ground; one other is a man of affairs, too
busy to go camping; and the other bed-ridden,
shut in from the bright and beautiful world by a
wall of perpetual night. What wonder that he
loves to babble of the days when the joy of be-
holding the beauty of the world was his. For him
is only the inward sight to read the pages of mem-
ory whereon the record of things seen long ago is
written in the story of youth.

THE BOY

I. TAKE THE BOY

IT is a hopeful indication for the future of field
sports that in several recent papers by sportsmen
the boy accompanies the father in his recreations,
to the pleasure and advantage of both.

The graybeard thrills with the delight of long-
ago youth if his boy shows a quick eye and wit and
a hand prompt to obey both. He is as pleased and
proud as the youngster himself, if the son gets
bird, beast, or fish skillfully and honorably. With
this quick imitator by his side, he grows punctil-
ious in observing every law laid down by man or by
nature concerning the game he seeks, that he may
teach by his practice a reverence for such laws
and an obedience to them. The "pocket pistol,"
too, is left behind, if it ever before was thought an
essential part of the refreshments.

From too great familiarity, or from the oppress-
ing cares that added years often lay upon the elder
(and that will not stay behind), if unaccompanied
by this quick observer, he would pass unnoticed
many objects of interest and beauty — here a wood
duck preened her plumage and left a many-hued
feather on the log for token; a water lily, late
blooming, gleams under an overhanging water

THE BOY 183

maple; a hawk circles the far-off hilltop; or on a
yellow birch a vireo has swung her birch-bark
basket; a fox has left a chicken's bone or turkey's
feather on the gray rock where he feasted the
night before; a woodcock has twice bored the black
mud by the wood road bridge.

To the boy such companionship brings number-
less benefits. One of the best is the surprised feel-
ing swelling his breast and beaming in his face of
the comradeship implied.

He learns so pleasantly safe and legitimate
methods of sportsmanship, that he will not forget
to practice them in coming years. For him there
will be no careless handling of the gun, no fool-
hardy feat attempted on the water, no fingerlings
in his creel nor unlawful game in his bag.

He learns to love the woods, as by his father's
side he steals silently over their sunny slopes to
surprise a partridge; or as he stands by him, with
finger on trigger and heart in throat, under birch
or hemlock in October sunshine, listening to the
nearing bugles of the hounds. So, in like manner,
he loves the grass-bordered brook, from whose
pools the trout leaps to his father's skillful cast,
and the broader streams, where bass and salmon
play. And mingled with this love of nature and
her healthful recreations, there grows a stronger
filial affection, not likely to grow less as the years
increase.

184 THE BOY

II. THE BOY AND THE GUN

THE boy, bless his heart, is closer to Nature than
the man. He is a savage in civilized attire; he steals
and lies without a blush of shame, persecutes and
domineers, and delights in noise and destruction,
and will do and dare anything to satisfy his un-
tamed cravings. To make an uproar and kill
something nothing quite so well serves him as
gunpowder, and for its employment nothing
serves him so well as the gun.

Boys have grown particular of these later years,
as have the grown-up savages on the frontier, and
must have breech-loaders and "ca'tridges"; but
when we graybeards were boys any tube of iron
with a lock and stock was a prize. No matter how
it missed fire, kicked or scattered, when it did go
off you felt it as well as heard it, and it would
sometimes kill a chipmunk or a robin, and so
frighten a woodchuck that after one shotted salute
from it he would keep his hole for half a day. What
a big Injun was the boy who owned or had bor-
rowed such a gun, and how all the other boys
gathered about him to watch the mysterious proc-
ess of loading. What a wise fellow was this to
know that he must first put in the powder, and how
much of it, and on top of it a wad of tow or wasp-
nest or newspaper, and then the death-dealing
pellets of precious shot poured out of a vial, and

THE BOY 185

then more wadding. Then came the grand final
art of priming. It was thrilling to see him place a
G.D. cap between his teeth while he covered the
box and returned it to his pocket, then cock the
piece and put the cap on the nipple. What if his
thumb should slip from the striker as he eased it
down! Sometimes it did, and then what a delight-
ful scare if nothing worse; what shame for the
unskillful engineer amid the jeers of the envious,
gunless crowd.

But nowadays, alas, almost any boy may have
a gun, and only he is enviable who has the best.
Well, if he will only use his dangerous toy as he
should, let him have it, for the sporting instinct is
strong in the young savage. And who for pure
love of it is such a naturalist? Is it not he who
notes the first comers of spring, meets the chip-
munk and the woodchuck at their thresholds when
they first come forth from their winter sleep; finds
the earliest birds' nests, and knows where the
squirrels breed? The sportsman who enjoys his
sport most is he who loves nature best; and who
of all the guild enjoys his day with the gun with
greater zest than the boy?

Yes, let the boy have his gun, a sound, well-
made one, but teach him how to use it — carefully,
temperately, humanely. Always as if it were
loaded, never out of season, nor too often in sea-
son, and never for mere love of slaughter.

186 THE BOY

III. THE BOY AND THE ANGLE

NOT solely for the scientific angler with his eight-
ounce rod, silken line, and flies cunningly fashioned
to resemble no living thing, are all and the chief est
delights of the gentle pastime. There is one of
humble estate in the brotherhood of the angle who
makes no pretensions to skill, and uses the most
uncouth and coarsest tackle, to whom it yields
supremest enjoyment. He never cast a fly, and
knows no " green drake " but him of the duck pond,
no "doctor" but the village practitioner who gives
him an occasional nauseous dose, no "professor"
but the "deestrict" schoolmaster, and if he ever
heard of a split bamboo, thinks a split pole must
be a poor stick to catch fish with. He wants no
reel to wind hi his fish with, but "yanks" them
out and lands them high and dry and safe from
return to the flood, casting them the length of
pole and line behind him. This is, of course, our
young and unsophisticated friend, the boy of the
country, he who remains a boy till he has grown
big enough to go a-fishing, and perhaps never be-
comes a young gentleman, but keeps a boy's heart
within him, and a boy's ways until he becomes a
man. He does not always wear a torn hat, nor
always trousers in which he feels most at ease if
sitting down when big girls are about, nor does he
always go barefoot from spring till fall, though he

THE BOY 187

likes to give his naked soles a taste of the soil for a
few days when he has seen the necessary seventeen
butterflies.

Furthermore, we do not claim for him, nor does
he for himself , that he can catch more fish than
the scientific angler; but how he loves to go a-
fishin', and how he enjoys it all, from the prepara-
tive beginning to the very end! What happiness is
his in the cutting of the pole in the always-pleas-
ant woods, where many a sapling is critically
scanned and many a one laid low before the right
and foreordained one is found; and in the buying
of the ten-cent line and half dozen beautiful blue
fish-hooks, selected with much deliberation from
the tempting array in the showcase of the country
store. How continually is he full of anticipation of
sport from the moment he begins digging his bait;
each big worm unearthed and going into the leaky
coffee-pot promises a fish, and as he hurries across
the fields to the stream he cannot stop even to
look for a bird's nest, though sparrow, bobolink,
and meadow lark start from almost at his feet.
Nor hardly can he halt to disentangle his hook and
line from the fence or bush they are seen to catch
in, for he knows the fish are waiting for him. Then
out of breath beside the stream he impales a lively
worm, spits on it, not so much for luck as in def-
erence to time-honored usage, gets his line straight
out behind him, and sends it with a whiz and a re-

188 THE BOY

sounding "plung!" of the two-ounce sinker far
out into the waters, and waits for a bite with what
patience a boy can muster. Presently perhaps the
expected thrill runs up his angle to his hands and
through all his nerves, the tip of the pole nods,
then bows low to the flood, and by no "turn of the
wrist," but by main strength and by one and the
same motion he hooks his victim and tears it from
its watery hold. So swiftly has it made its curved
flight over his head, unseen but as a dissolving
streak, that he knows not till he has rushed to
where it is kicking the grass whether his prize is a
green-and-golden-barred perch, a gaudy-mottled
pumpkin-seed, a silvery shiner or an ugly but
toothsome bullpout, gritting his wide jaws when
his horns do him no good, though they may yet do
his captor a mischief.

Whatever it may be, he gloats over it as much
as any man over his well-fought trout or bass, and
straightway runs to cut a forked wand whereon
to string it, and takes care that it be long enough
to hold many another. If the fish do not bite he
sets his pole in a crotched stick and lets it fish for
itself while he explores the shore and catches a
"mud turcle," "almost" kills a "mush rat" or
scares himself with a big water snake.

Returning to his pole, perhaps he finds the
tip under water and tugs out a writhing eel, the
wild fun and horror, and the abominable, all-

THE BOY 189

pervading sliminess of whose final capture makes
memorable the hour and the day thereof. Perhaps
a hungry and not too fastidious pickerel or pike-
perch or bass may gorge the worm-indued hook
and be hauled ashore, and then the measure of the
boy's glory is filled and the capacity of his trousers
to contain him tried to the utmost.

Though he goes home with a beggarly account
of small fry dangling at the end of his withe, he is
unabashed, if not proud, and hopeful for another
day. But if it is strung so full that his arms ache
with lugging it, what pride fills his heart as he dis-
plays his fish ! Till they are eaten and digested he
ceases to be a "no-account boy." He cleans them
and enjoys it. Every scale is a cent, bright from
the mint, and he catches each fish over again as
he takes it up. He recognizes his worms in their
maws. When they are cooked, whoever tasted
fish so good?

The boy is no more a contemplative angler than
he is a gentle one, and he does not of choice go
fishing alone. He would rather go with the re-
nowned old fisherman of the neighborhood and
learn something of the mysteries of his art, but
that worthy does not overmuch desire the com-
panionship of youthful anglers. So perforce the
young fisherman goes with another boy and has
some one to "holler" to, compare notes with,
and enter into rivalry with, and he can say with

190 THE BOY

truth, when he gets home, "Me and Jim ketched
twenty ! " though he forgets to add that Jim caught
nineteen of them. Wherefore not? Do not his
biggers and betters brag of scores which would not
have been made if their guides and oarsmen had
not fished?

Alack, for the bygone days ! When May comes
with south winds and soft skies and the green
fields are dotted with the gold of dandelions and
patched with the blue of violets, and the bobo-
links are riotous with song over them, who would
not be a boy again just for one day to go a-fishing?

THE COUNTRY DOCTOR1

OUT at all hours of day and night, pelted by storms
of rain and storms of snow, chilled by bitter cold
of winter and scorched by downright beams of the
summer sun, our country doctor leads a hard and
wearing life. He rides over roads now heavy with
mire, now blocked with snow, now choking with
dust. With body so overworked and mind per-
plexed by difficult cases and the worry of un-
reasoning and exacting patients, it is a wonder how
he preserves health and strength without his own
physic, or maintains a cheerful spirit, yet he does
both.

In an obscure corner of his office you may dis-
cover a gun, a rod and a box of fishing tackle,
none too carefully kept, yet all serviceable and
ready for use in their season; and these constitute
his private medicine chest, with judicious draughts
wherefrom he preserves the health and vigor of
body and mind.

Sometimes when you meet him on his way to
visit a distant patient of the continually ailing sort,
the gun shares with him the narrow seat of the
sulky, unskillfully masked under a blanket, or the
red case rests between his knees, and you guess his
1 Dr. Willard of Yergennes.

192 THE COUNTRY DOCTOR

intention of stealing an hour's shooting in some
patch of roadside woods, or as much fishing in the
stream that intersects his route. The entire days of
such recreation that fall to his lot, lie far apart in
the year.

It often happens when a day of freedom has ap-
parently come, it slips away from him into the un-
certainties of the future. Shells are loaded over
night, the gun cleaned and oiled, or the rod put in
order, tackle overhauled, flies arranged or bait
secured. He falls asleep with a prayer for an
auspicious morrow, to dream pleasant dreams of
frost -painted woodlands or waters rippled by the
south wind's breath and shadowless beneath a
clouded sky. The slow dawn brings an answer to
his prayer, and his dreams seem about to material-
ize into tangible realities. His horse is at the door,
his gun or rod in hand, his heart is light with
the thought of throwing physic to the dogs for a
day, when in rushes a messenger with an urgent
call to some serious case.

In an instant the promised day of recreation is
changed to one of wearing toil and anxiety. He
meets the disappointment with a cheerful face
and takes up the scarcely dropped burden of care
without a murmur. Indeed he has grown so ac-
customed to such miscarriage of his plans that he
is least disappointed when most so, and hope
deferred does not make his stout heart sick.

THE COUNTRY DOCTOR 193

He comes home weary and worn at night, but
drops in at the shoemaker's and refreshes himself
with a half hour's chat of reminiscent or pro-
spective shooting or fishing. He finds the musty
atmosphere of the cobbler's den congenial, and his
visits are so frequent that the neighbors have
ceased to ask him if the shoemaker is ailing. The
mending of bodies and the mending of soles, not-
withstanding their dissimilarity, seems to bring
the practitioners of the two arts into an affinity
which leads both to field sports and scientific pur-
suits more than any other professors and crafts-
men.

When at last a day arrives that leaves the doctor
free to practice the lighter arts of recreation, with
what zest for them and entire abandonment of
weightier duties he enters upon them. The facul-
ties sharpened in his regular profession are keen in
the pursuit of these, and sensitive to every touch
of nature. He enjoys to the utmost her beauties,
discovers her secrets, and acquaints himself with
the lives of her children, the wood folk and water
folk whom he loves, that have grown dearer
through continual longing and rare opportunity.

Far apart in the years of his professional life he
breaks the links of the lengthening chain, and es-
capes into the great woods beyond the recall by
night-bell, messenger, or telegram. His comrades
tell how he revels in his brief season of liberty,

194 THE COUNTRY DOCTOR

when he is the life of the party, the ready deviser
of expedients, the inventor of camp conveniences,
the closest observer of nature, the keenest and yet
the gentlest of sportsmen.

He is the better doctor for being a good sports-
man, and his patients have no cause to blame him
for deserting them, for he brings back to their serv-
ice a clearer brain, firmer nerves, and a stronger
body.

PORTRAITS IN INK

I. THE FARMER

A FARMER finds his best recreation in the woods
and waters, with gun and rod, in the few respites
that are given him from the toil whereby he con-
quers a livelihood from the soil.

There is a break in the dull round of labor when
planting is done and hoeing time not yet come,
when he goes a-fishing after his own fashion, and
he deems the day the less ill spent if he bring home
a catch that serves to break the monotonous fare
of a farmer's table. Then there are days in haying
when he follows the time-honored advice, "When
it rains too hard to work, go a-fishing," for he can-
not choose his days, only make the most of such as
come to him. The day laborers that he hires have
a freer choice than he, between work and pastime,
and while he toils in the sun, he sees the gentleman
angler and the market-fisherman plying their rods
on his own stream, and hears the guns untimely
thinning the broods of woodcock in his own alder
copses.

Of a summer Sunday he strolls out to the wood-
side pasture and watches a fox and her cubs at
play about the threshold of their underground
home, or if he fears the raid of some bounty-

196 PORTRAITS IN INK

hunter or vengeful poultry breeder, he gives the
vixen an unmistakable hint to move to safer quar-
ters. If her Thanksgiving antedates his by two
months or more, he overlooks the mistake in the
calendar and forgives the venal sin for the sake
of future sport and possible expiation in the days
of the sere and yellow leaf, days that shall bring
more leisure to himself and freedom to the old
hound, now yawning and whining in the leash at
home.

When haying and harvesting are over, he robs
less exacting labor of an occasional day to prowl
along a willowy stream beloved of wood duck or
to crawl in the sedgy borders of the haunts of
dusky duck and teal, or he makes his stealthy way
in the constant shade of wood roads and forest
by-paths and ferny margins of the woods, where
the yet unbroken flocks of grouse are likely to
be, and if he stalks two or three wary birds and
brings them to pocket from tree or ground, or from
the air by rare chance, or gets one raking shot at a
logful of sleeping wood ducks, or into a huddle of
shy duskies, or a passing flock of swift-winged teal,
he counts it a good day's sport, with tangible and
sufficient proof thereof. But if he has none of the
rewards, the fatigues of the day are rest from toil
and care, and so not unrequited.

In the later days of the year, when woods are in
the fading gray of autumn, or winter has overlaid

PORTRAITS IN INK 197

the russet with white, he ranges upland and low-
land with hound and gun, hunting foxes, matching
his knowledge against their cunning, and he is
thankful to be the winner, but not cast down if
he is the loser in the game. If he kills the fox, he
thriftily saves the skin, and prizes it the more if it
is prime and marketable.

He is friendly and generous to sportsmen who
meet him in a like spirit, but not over-hospitable
to such who only make a convenience of him, his
home and hunting grounds. The first sportsman
in the land does not observe close seasons more re-
ligiously than this jealous guardian of nesting and
immature birds, of fox cubs and all young fur-
bearers, yet he will not be converted to the belief
that it is unsportsmanlike or unfair, in proper
season, to shoot a fox before hounds, or stalk a
sitting grouse, or catch a trout with a worm, all
of which he does, not only without compunction
but with absolute satisfaction.

He is a close and intelligent observer of nature,
and freely imparts to congenial listeners what he
learns of her secrets; but concerning his love of her
he is as reticent as of the love of his sweetheart.
For all expression in words, you would imagine
that her infinitude of beauties are displayed in
vain to him in all moods and seasons, yet his tell-
tale face informs you how they satisfy his soul
and fill his heart with unwritten, wordless poetry.

198 PORTRAITS IN INK

II. THE TRAPPER

BILL, the trapper, is a figure so out of place in the
midst of the civilization that has swept away for-
ests and game, that you almost wonder if he is not
an Indian who happened to be born with a white
skin, fair hair and blue eyes, or a pioneer hunter
who drank at the fountain of youth in middle age
and so has been preserved since the old wild days
when the unmeasured wilderness stretched out into
unknown lands and sheltered countless game. He
has many of their traits, many of the qualifications
that would fit him to live their lives amid their be-
fitting surroundings; and is as out of place as they
would be in this latter-day tameness of men and
nature.

His tall, spare form, full of inert vigor and
strength, clad in garments that befit his calling
and that bear odorous witness of it, shacking
leisurely among restless, busy men, on whose in-
cessant bustle he casts wondering eyes alert
through all their dreaminess, is as incongruous
here as would be a becurled dandy in the heart of
the wilderness.

He has that instinct, or sixth sense, possessed by
few except Indians and dumb animals, which en-
ables him to make his way to any desired point
without any apparent guidance, though, save of
dark night, he has little use for it in these narrow

PORTRAITS IN INK 199

and many pathed woodlands. He treads their
rustling carpet as silently as a panther, the sere
leaves do not stir, nor the dry twigs snap beneath
his feet and the bent boughs sway to their places
behind him without a sound. You are not aware of
his coming till he appears before you like an ap-
parition, nor of his going but as you watch him
like one dissolving in the shadows of the woods.

His casual glances discover things which are not
revealed to directed gaze, and he translates rec-
ords that you cannot read. Where you see only a
knot or wisp of brown leaves, he discovers the bird
under the grouse's disguise of movelessness; on
what is to you only a blank page, he reads the
story of some remote or recent presence or pas-
sage.

He knows every kind of tree and its varieties,
all the medicinal and poisonous plants by odd and
homely names that often have a tang of folk lore
or hint of forgotten use; and it is as instructive as
a professor's discourse on natural history to hear
him talk of the habits of wild things, for all his
quaint superstitions concern some of them. You
could find no arguments to shake his firm belief
that eels are generated in mussels or that skunks
have power to absorb their own spent effluence, nor
do you care to.

He would not kill a nesting partridge or trap an
unprime fur-bearer, yet he holds all legislative

200 PORTRAITS IN INK

protection of game and fish to be an infringement
on his rights, and is as cunning as a fox in persist-
ent violation of all such statutes. All wild things
are his by natural inheritance, and what does a
week or month matter, and whose affair is it if he
desires fish, flesh, or fowl to-day?

He is somewhat conceited and boastful and en-
vious of another's renown in his craft, to be fore-
most in which is his highest ambition. You confess
it is a poor ambition to be most skillful in a trade
that is obsolete and unrequited. With a slightly
different bent, with one omitted trait, he would
have had a higher aim and have been an Audubon
or Thoreau, performing useful if ill-paid work,
making a name honorably remembered.

As he is what he is, he slouches into old age and
down to his last sod-roofed shanty, a shiftless, lazy,
good-natured, disreputable old trapper, hunter
and fisherman, and only by a few will he be kindly
and briefly remembered.

Yet as you see him stealing through the second
growth woods, tame and puny successors of the
wild, majestic forests, or plying the noiseless pad-
dle of his skiff in the nakedness of a shrunken
stream, he is so like a lingering spirit of the old
days that you are thankful for the picturesque
figure which gives one touch of remote half-savage
past to the commonplace present.

PORTRAITS IN INK 201

III. THE SHOEMAKER

THE old shoemaker, grizzled, unkempt, slovenly
clad, warped with many years over last and lap-
stone, is a cheerful philosopher as he labors or
meditates in his untidy shop.

There among the clutter of leather scraps, worn
footgear and lasts, with the battered old gun in
the corner beside the worn rod whose term of
service is still extended by many bonds of waxed
ends, you may sit at your ease or your peril on
the rough little counter or on one of the hah* dozen
rickety chairs, weak but hospitable even in the
decrepitude of age. You will find genial compan-
ionship and get more useful information in an
hour spent with this unassuming craftsman than
in a day with more pretentious sportsmen.

It is not altogether greed for fish and game that
entices him abroad in the few days wherein are
conjoined an allurement of propitious weather
and slackness of work. He admits with a laugh at
himself, that he killed nothing in his last day's
outing, but asserts that he had nevertheless a
right good time. He got a fortnight's kinks out
of his back and shoulders, a heartening smell of the
woods, a feast of fresh air, and caught some of the
wood folk at a new trick or uttering a heretofore
unheard or unrecognized note, or he has seen some
strange freak of nature. If you are interested, he

202 PORTRAITS IN INK

imparts to you his small discoveries, a poor but
hospitable host sharing his meager fare with a
hungry wayfarer.

You may find him just returned from a stolen
half-day's excursion, rejoicing over a lucky shot,
never claiming it to be more, and he relates with
the particulars of circumstance and place, the
finding of his grouse and how he brought it down,
as it whirred and clattered almost unseen in the
haze of brush. When you desire a sight of the
finest bird he ever killed, he bashfully confesses
that he left it at a sick neighbor's on his way home
(a mile out of it though), but as he knew the sick
man would not care he stuck one of the tail feathers
in his hat, and this he displays with great satis-
faction. He sticks it up on the wall beside the
dried head of a big bass and the plumy tail of a
gray squirrel, and you know by the far-away look
in his eyes that it will need but a glance at these
when the days of toil are long unbroken to conjure
up the pleasant, restful loneliness of the woods, the
glint of clear waters and the music of their voices.

He does not consort much with men in his out-
ings, but of choice with boys, whom he delights to
instruct in woodcraft and the mysteries of the
gentle art. He baits the small boys' hooks with
infinite care and unhooks the horned pouts and
thorny-backed perch for them, untangles lines
and recovers snagged hooks for them; he mends the

PORTRAITS IN INK 203

big boys, tackle, is uncle to them all and rejoices in
their luck as if it were his own.

As you listen to his kindly and interested dis-
course concerning the wild world and its sports
that he so unaffectedly loves, and look at the
homely, genial face in setting of grizzled hair and
beard, beaming with genuine enthusiasm, you
realize that it needs something more than learned
talk of high-bred dogs, fine guns and fancy tackle,
or the possession of them, to make a true sports-
man, for here is one in patched raiment and leather
apron, who scarcely knows a pointer from a setter,
nor ever owned a high-priced gun or rod, and yet
is a true sportsman in the best sense of that
abused title, for he is an ardent lover of honest
sport, appreciating something in its achievements
beyond skillful slaughter and the making of heavy
scores. Is it not a privilege to have the confidence
of this honest man and to associate with this sim-
ple and enthusiastic lover of nature?

IV. THE ANTICIPATOR

IF all sportsmen were like our harmless friend,
game might live a quiet life and die of old age,
while its human enemies were getting ready for a
campaign against it.

Even though it makes you impatient, you can-
not help being amused by the fuss of his constant
preparation, nor fail to be warmed by his steady

204 PORTRAITS IN INK

enthusiasm that burns on and on like a slow-
match, which never fires the mine of action.

What careful selection of guns, what labor of
tinkering and cleaning them, what cautious pur-
chasing of a new one and endless testing of its
qualities, what thoughtful study of ammunition
and close measurement of charges, what nice ad-
justment of all appurtenances go on while the
season draws near, endures and is gone.

Then at once with unabated zeal he begins
planning for the next, and refurnishing his equip-
ments, targeting his guns, wearing them out with
innocuous use. So his year passes hi a round of
pleasant anticipation and free of vain regret.

Once in its course, perhaps, he is betrayed into
going shooting while yet unready. Your report of
the abundance of squirrels, his favorite game, in
your neighborhood, gets the prompt response of a
promise to come in a day or two for a raid on them.
During the week or a fortnight that await its ful-
fillment the woods are overrun by a horde of gun-
ners, and every squirrel is killed or made alive to
its own safety.

At last, late in the afternoon of the last day,
your friend arrives with a wagon load of guns and
equipments, whereof nine tenths are quite un-
necessary. When he has made a studious selection
from his embarrassment of riches, you go forth
with him hi the propitious last hour of sunlight.

PORTRAITS IN INK 205

You are so fortunate as to accomplish stealthy
approach to a squirrel that, unconscious of danger,
sits rasping a nut on a hickory branch, and as a
courteous host should, you signal your guest to
take the easy shot.

Slowly unlimbering his gun from under his arm,
while he calculates the distance, he cautiously
raises the weapon to its deadly aim. You hold
your breath hi expectancy breathless; but if you
held it till he fired, you would have no further use
for it.

A busy spider runs out to the steadfast muzzle
and cables it to the ground with a silver thread.
The squirrel turns his nut, hah* eaten, to begin on
the other side, and suddenly becomes aware of
enemies. Down drops the nut with raspings of
shuck and shell, and up goes the squirrel behind
the sheltering trunk, then out upon the further
branches, and so goes plunging and scampering
through upper byways in swift retreat to the heart
of the woods.

Without lowering his gun, the dilatory marks-
man turns an almost triumphant face toward you,
as who should say, " If he had not moved his fate
was sealed."

He never risks a shot at running or flying game.
You would as soon think of an oyster snatching
its prey as of him shooting on the wing. If his
game will not wait, it may go unscathed.

206 PORTRAITS IN INK

When the delayed opportunity arrives, he is as
little exalted by success as cast down by failure,
and calmly accepts good fortune with quiet thank-
fulness.

Whether he bears home a light or heavy bag, he
seems never to be weighted with the burden of
disappointment nor to be troubled with jealousy,
while you can but envy his constant pleasure of
anticipation, his sure enjoyment of participation.

Happy old man, long may he potter in endless
preparation, long continue his meandering in the
woods, a rarely harmful foe to all their denizens.

V. A PROFESSOR OF FISHING

WHENEVER you may chance to visit his haunts, in
almost all weathers and seasons, you are likely
to meet the old fisherman, wearing dilapidated
clothes and bearing unconventional equipments.
Robins are not yet mating, nor the plovers call-
ing in the tawny grass lands, before he is stealing
along the brimming trout brooks, or is discovered
on the flood-invaded river bank, in sun and shower
and flurry of sugar-snow, so silent and so seldom
moving, that the uninterrupted purr of the frogs
arises from the drift of dead water-weeds close be-
side him, and the turtles bask undisturbed on the
nearest log, the muskrat swims beneath the stead-
fast slant of his pole, and the wild duck whistles
past him in unerring flight.

PORTRAITS IN INK 207

He is alert for the first sharp-set trout and
tempts the hungry perch and bullhead with the
earliest worm. No flies are looped about his
shapeless, battered hat, no fly-book hi his pocket,
for he scorns all such gimcracks as he does reel and
jointed rod.

A pole that only nature has had a hand in mak-
ing, save in trimming, is good enough for him, and
so is an honest bait that in no wise deceives but hi
concealing a hook.

Only when it comes to trolling has he departed
from the ancient usage of pork rind and red flannel
and become a late convert to modern metallic
lures.

All day long, with the stout line held in his
teeth, he trails the fluttering spoon along marshy
margins and rocky shores, impelling his craft with
slow oars or dextrous paddle, lazily laborious,
always expectant, never excited by good luck, nor
ever cast down by bad.

He fishes solely for fish, never for sport. In
spearing and netting suckers when they come up
stream to spawn and in hauling his seine when
the law allows it, he has as much sport as in an-
gling. If the pickerel, perch, and smelt bite well,
he apparently enjoys ice-fishing, with its cold and
desolate environment, quite as much as casting
his bait in open waters under softer skies.

He wastes no time on the fine arts of the craft,

208 PORTRAITS IN INK

but brings each fast-hooked fish to boat or grass
with short shrift, whether it be plebeian pickerel,
eel, and pout, or patrician trout and bass.

Despise him not in the day of small things, for
out of the abundance of his store many a light creel
has become heavy, and blank scores been made
reputable, to the credit of rods and flies quite in-
nocent of piscine blood. Also, it is well to remem-
ber that if he is somewhat greedy, there are those
no less so, who profess to be truer anglers than he.

If he is touched by the fine and subtle influences
of nature, if he rejoices hi the gladness of the birds,
the beauty of the flowers, the greenness of woods
and fields, the babble of waters, the glory of dawn
and sunset, he makes no sign. Yet he is a close ob-
server of what concerns his business, wise in the
manners and moods of fishes, and whoever studies
nature in any of her ways must in some sort be her
lover.

He has the quamtness and originality that
flavor men who live much by themselves and think
their own thoughts, and if you approach him with-
out assumption of superiority, you will find him
an entertaining and profitable companion.

SMALL SHOT

i. SOME POOR MEN'S RICHES

THERE are many who have inherited the hunting
instinct and were born too late to find game enough
in the region of their birth to make hunting worth
while for the game that can be got by the most
persistent seeking, and who have not inherited
wealth, nor the faculty of acquiring it, so that they
may go for a week, month, or year, to places where
game is still abundant. Some of these sometimes
wonder whether this inheritance, come down to
them through a thousand generations from wild
ancestors, is not under such conditions an entailed
ill-fortune, a wholesome desire, given without the
opportunity of satisfying it, a purse of gold that
one must always carry but never spend.

Most assuredly it is an unprofitable dower if it
leads one to too continual pursuit of what at best
he can get but little of, mere game. But if it takes
him to the woods and fields for that reasonable
share of recreation which belongs of right to all,
rather than to questionable pastimes among ill-
assorted associates, then it is something to be
thankful for. With a gun to excuse his day's out-
ing he goes forth. His wits are sharpened to find
the haunts of the infrequent woodcock or quail or

210 SMALL SHOT

grouse, that should rightfully be in the swamp, or
field, or copse that of old their tribes possessed.
All these places he must search, and study how
changed conditions have wrought changes in the
habits of the few survivors. The wits of these, too,
are sharpened. The woodcock does not wait till
the dog's nose is almost above him before he springs
up with a twittering whistle, but flushes wild, and
alights afar off. The scant bevy of quail goes off
out of gunshot in a gray flurry to the mazes of the
woods. The ruffed grouse tarries not to cry "quit!
quit ! " nor strut along the dim aisles of his wood-
land sanctuary, but hurtles away unseen, almost
out of ear shot. If by good luck one of these falls
to the unaccustomed aim, if a woodcock tumbles
in a shower of leaves to the ferny carpet of the
swamp, if a quail drops to the earth out of a whiff of
feathers, if a grouse slants from his arrowy flight
and strikes with a fluttering thud upon the fallen
leaves, or a woodduck, started from a willowy bend
of the river, splashes back into it before the powder
smoke has unveiled him, the heart is warmed with
a thrill of the satisfaction of well-doing.

Without even this appeasing of the sportsman's
gentle bloodthirst, there is more and better to be
got of a day's wandering with the helping bur-
den of a gun. The companionship of Nature, the
eavesdropping and spying to catch her secrets, the
studying of the ways of all the little wood people,

SMALL SHOT 211

not worth, or inestimably more than worth, pow-
der and shot. Who has ever heard the last word
the jay has to tell him in her many voices? Who
has tired of visiting with the chickadees, or of
watching the nuthatches creeping headlong down
the mossy tree trunks, or the squirrels' saucy
tricks, or the ways of strange woods plants grow-
ing and blowing and seeding, and the odd freaks of
trees' growths, and no end of things that he would
never have heard or seen if it had not been for this
wooden and iron excuse that he lugs about with
him? Thanks be to its first inventor, in spite of all
the woeful mischief it has wrought. How many
happy days it has gone to the making of, from boy-
hood to old age, in the lives of those who love it.
What a comfort is the ownership of a good gun,
though one seldom shoots it. What a pleasure its
owner has hi those seasons when it cannot be
otherwise used, in putting it in order for the days
fondly looked forward to — days when the woods
have put on then* last and bravest attire of the
year — days when they have cast it off and all
the landscape is veiled in the gray haze of Indian
summer, and days when all the fields and frozen
waters are white with the first snows and the wild
music of the hounds stirs the woods.

When these days have come and gone and win-
ter winds are howling, who so much as he, born to
the love of field sports with small opportunity of

212 SMALL SHOT

enjoying them, delights to read by his cheerful
fireside what others more fortunate have written
of their outings, and to share with them in spirit
the happy hours in camps by wild lakes, the tramps
in primeval forests, and hunting tours in far-away
lands that he may never see.

II. THE OLD GUN

IT is not to be denied that there is great satisfac-
tion in being the owner of a fine new gun. The
perfect result of the handicraft of a master of the
art of gunmaking; a piece so nicely balanced that
it will almost take the line of flight of the swiftest
flying bird of its own mere motion; all its parts so
neatly fitted that a spider's web inserted might
cause a jam; its polished and gracefully turned
stock, the chosen bit of many a goodly tree; the
variegated barrels almost as beautiful to look upon
in their regular irregularity as a golden and purple
barred sunset sky, or the shimmer of a rippled
lake. It is a delight to the eye to see, to the hand to
hold, a satisfaction to the soul to feel that one is
the possessor of such a weapon. And yet, like
riches, and like love, it has its cares, anxieties, and
jealousies. One dislikes to be caught in the rain
with such a gun in its untarnished beauty, or to
take it out under threatening skies, or to breast
haphazard blackberry briars with it in hand; to
leave it at night uncleaned, though the day's

SMALL SHOT 213

tramp has been a weary one, and all one's muscles
and bones cry out for rest. One's richer neighbor
may have a costlier gun, hence a pang of unchris-
tian envy, and the breaking of a holy command-
ment, all for a stock and a bit of iron.

Not these frets and worries and ungodly heart-
burnings are felt by him whose only weaponly
possession is an ancient muzzle-loader, the barrels
whereof halfway from breech to muzzle are worn
bare of their first and only browning, with stock
battered, scratched, and bruised, locks rickety and
inviting irrigation. The rains may fall upon it
and brambles scratch it, and it be none the worse
for looks or use. Its owner may hang it on its hooks
at night, with barrels foul and dully blushing
with a film of rust; and sup with slow comfort,
and then betake himself to dreamless sleep, un-
troubled by thought of duty unperformed.

What happy memories are awakened by the sight
and touch of the old gun, with which one's first
woodcock and snipe, wild duck and grouse were
brought down. The very alder brake, and bog,
river bend, and russet and green bit of beech and
hemlock woodland rises before him, each the
scene of a first glorious triumph in autumns long
ago, and each in apparition almost as real as then,
though all are changed or passed away. This bruise
of the stock and dent in the barrel were got in a
tumble over a ledge when you were rushing for a

214 SMALL SHOT

runway, and you remember how your heart tum-
bled at the time, and it aches and burns yet with
the fall it got, and the recollection of lost oppor-
tunity.

For use the old gun is as good as it was then —
though its owner is not, and as for looks, he has
none the better of it. Maybe there were those who
used it before him, old hunters of the by-gone days
when caplocks first came in and game was plenty;
over whose tough old bones the grass has grown
and withered, and the snow lain for many a year,
and who are now remembered more by the guns
they carried than by their gravestones. For the
sights their now faded eyes beheld, for a chance at
the game their guns brought down, what would one
not give? The old gun is a link that holds one to
the past. Let us not despise it, though it is of a
fashion of other days — though it is rusted and
battered and its maker's name worn off and for-
gotten, it has that in it more enduring than iron,
that which no new gun can have, no matter how
handsome or good.

III. THE SORROWS OF SPORTSMEN

EVEN so happy a man as he who disports himself
with rod and gun has his sorrows, as has the less
favored mortal whose pleasure lies in walks out-
side of quiet woods and afar from pleasant waters.
Of the sportsman's vexations may be mentioned

SMALL SHOT 215

many pertaining to things inanimate and animate.
Of the first class are kinking lines, ill- working reels,
non-exploding caps and primers, sticking shells,
un-sticking wads, and no end of such perverse
belongings to the angler's and gunner's outfit, as
well as those which come in his way, as twigs, logs,
bogs, cold water under foot and pouring from over
head, to switch, tangle, trip, bemire, and soak him.
Of animate things, how will all the insects of the
air and earth combine to torture him, and how will
the very objects of his pursuit forsake all the laws
and rules laid down by nature and custom, and
thwart his skillfulest endeavors to possess them.

But all these are nothing to the vexation and
sorrow wrought unto his soul by his brother man.
There are those counted honest in ordinary affairs
of life who will poach in close times and rob their
honester fellows of that which enriches not them
and makes these others poor indeed — in the loss
of time and satisfaction of reasonable desires.
And there are also law-makers who put pig's heads
on their shoulders when they come to making
laws for the protection of fish and game, though
they bear the levelest of brains when matters of
valuation and taxation are concerned.

Yet these are vexations of the spirit which one
happy day of sport may lift, as north wind and
sunshine the fog from the landscape. But when he,
who has not been by his favorite stream since the

216 SMALL SHOT

year-ago summer when birds and fields welcomed
him with song and holiday attire, now finds the
banks laid bare by the axe, and the stream turned
away by some scientific agriculturist who hates
willows and crooked waterways; when he, who has
not visited copse and wood with dog and gun since
last year's leaves were gaudy or sere, goes out to-
day to find the alders he had come to think his own,
only brush heaps and clusters of stubby stumps;
his worshiped hemlocks and pines, his lithe birches
and widespread beeches, and bee-inviting dog-
woods, only saw logs and piles of cord wood lying in
state among lopped branches and fluffy plumes of
fire-weed, his heart grows sick with a climbing
sorrow that will not down. How suddenly has his
goodly heritage passed from him. A year ago he
had more good of it than the one who held the deed
of the land, though he got naught tangible there-
from but a half-filled creel or a few brace of birds.
Yet how full was fed his starved spirit that so long
had craved the blessed food that Nature gives to
those who love her.

The worst of it is, that if he prays, or curses, or
weeps, he cannot change it. By and by over this
waste may be heard the "lovely laughter of the
wind-swept wheat" and the hum of bees, which
have come here to gather sweets from clover, but
never again will brood over it the solemn quiet of
the old woods, nor grouse cleave the shadows of

SMALL SHOT 217

great trees, nor woodcock thrid the mazes of the
brake, nor trout swim in the shade of the willows.
This is the heaviest grief that comes to the man
who uses rod and gun, or to him who hunts with-
out a gun. Yet some good may come of it, for
thereby he may learn to pity his red brother, who
loved all these things and suffered greater loss in
their passing from his possession.

IV. THE GOOSE-KILLERS

THE fable of the youth who killed the goose that
laid every day a golden egg for him, has been told
by tongue and print so often and for so many years
that every one must have heard or read it, but it
would seem that few had profited by it when year
after year so many go on killing the geese that lay
eggs of gold for them. It is no great matter of won-
der that the thoughtless and purely selfish should
do so foolish a thing, but it is almost past account-
ing for that those who are forecasting and prudent
in the general affairs of life should be so blind to
their interest.

When the wild geese come honking along the
April sky, and wild ducks tarry a little on their
journey in waters just unsealed, and snipe drop
down on the thawing marshes to rest and feed,
and flocks of shore birds skirt the long coast, all on
their way to summer homes to lay eggs that would
be golden in golden autumn, the goose-killer is in

218 SMALL SHOT

wait for them all along their thoroughfare at every
halting place, greedy for the most, craving the last
of them. Then when he has wrought what havoc
he can, though not the half he would, and the
frightened survivors of the harried flocks of mi-
grants have gone their way to the savage but kinder
far North, he amuses his bloodthirst awhile with
spawning bass and trout fry too small to wear a
visible spot, and boasts shamelessly of the num-
bers he has caught.

Presently the woodcock is hatched and able to
fly and so is the young grouse, and the half -grown
plover is making short flights across the fields where
it was born, and the goose-killer is in his glory now,
for he can smell powder and taste warm blood
again. It matters little to him what the husbanded
chances of the future might bring. He counts a
tough morsel to-day better than a tender feast to-
morrow. A lean waterfowl in spring, an untimely
taken fish, a half-grown woodcock, or grouse or
plover in summer time are more to him than the
dozen or score of each that might be hatched from
the golden egg, and might be taken by and by in
their proper season — by some one else, perhaps.
Aye, there's the rub that brings upon the world
the calamity of the goose-killer's existence and
evil deeds. He must have what he will to-day, lest
some one get more to-morrow, though there be
nothing left for any one to-morrow.

SMALL SHOT 219

If there were no hounding of deer, the world
might come to an end before he could boast of
killing one, he, meanwhile, eating his own heart
with bitter sauce of envy, beholding the skillful
hunter kill his stag often by fair and sportsman-
like methods. What is it to him that there should
be no deer in all the woods twenty years hence,
so that he to-day clubs to death one suckling
doe?

Nor is this so-called sportsman the only goose-
killer whose wrongdoing makes us all suffer. For
his and the milliners' profit and the barbarous
ornamentation of women's head-dress, another
ruthlessly slays the harmless and useful beautiful
birds, to the world's loss of song and beauty and
goodness. The farmer and the lumberman strip
mountain and swamp of forest growth for a little
present gain and the world's irreparable loss, the
loss of copious springs and streams, and loss by
disastrous floods. A few greedy speculators com-
bine to spoil the nation's park for their own selfish
gain, shameless, unscrupulous; and the nation
looks on almost unconcerned, with but here and
there a voice lifted in condemnation of the out-
rageous scheme of destruction.

So the ceaseless warfare against nature goes
on, till one is almost ready to despair that the race
of goose-killers shall be removed from the face of
the earth till the last goose that lays an egg of

220 SMALL SHOT

gold shall be killed; that the destroyer shall pass
away only when there is nothing left for him to
destroy.

V. WHY NOT WAIT ?

WE have come to the frayed end of another win-
ter. The earth's white carpet is worn to shreds,
and Nature is making ready to weave her a new
one of green, with all sorts of flower patterns that
ought not to "fail to please the most fastidious."
Some of the bluebirds have escaped the guns and
snares of the milliners' collectors, and are with us
again, the return of the robin has been announced,
and the song sparrow is tuning up his pipe for the
spring concerts. The crystal hatches will soon be
off the streams, and the fishes will once more get a
look at the sky, and at the angler, who is now be-
ginning to overhaul his tackle in anticipation of
the opening day of the season.

The ducks and geese and snipe and shore-birds
will presently be on their way to northern breed-
ing-grounds, and too many sportsmen are making
ready to give them a most inhospitable greeting as
they pass or tarry for a few days of rest. Too many
sportsmen will be ready with the old and poor
excuse for this wrongdoing, "If I do not shoot
them, some one else will/' which is worth nothing,
for it is not at all certain that some one else will
kill the bird that you spare, and that it will not go

SMALL SHOT 221

safely to its breeding ground and return to pay
tenfold interest in the fall for the lease of life you
have given it. You would recoil with horror from
the thought of killing a doe heavy with young, for
you are an honorable and conscientious sports-
man. And yet, all the females of these birds of
passage are carrying eggs more or less developed,
the hope of the abundant continuation of their
species. And your example is worth something, as
every man's is, yours perhaps worth far more than
another's. If you did not get shooting in the spring,
it is not unlikely that some one else would stay at
home, simply because you did.

Another excuse and a no better one is, " If we do
not shoot ducks and geese and snipe in spring, we
shall have no shooting till summer woodcock
shooting comes," which ought not to come at all.
Why not wait till autumn for sport worth having,
and concerning which one need have no qualms of
conscience? Is not sport, like love, "the sweeter
for the trial and delay?"

Let the gun rest for a few months longer, and
then when the steel bhie skies of autumn endome
the bluer waters and the varied hues of frost-
painted woods and russet marshes, you shall reap
your reward if it is no more than the consciousness
of having faithfully done your duty. It is some-
times nobler sportsmanship to spare than to kill.
Assuredly it is so at this season.

NEW ENGLAND FENCES

A QUESTION of the future, that troubles the mind
of the farmer more than almost any other is,
What are we to do for fences? The wood-hungry
iron horse is eating away the forests greedily and
rapidly, and our people are ready to feed him to
his fill for a paltry present fee, apparently learning
no wisdom from the follies of our forest-destroy-
ing ancestors, but carrying on the same old, sense-
less, and indiscriminate warfare against trees
wherever found, and seldom planting any except
fruit-trees and a few shade-trees.

And, alas ! no just retribution seems to overtake
these evil-doers, except that most speculating de-
foresters go to the bad pecuniarily, but the curse
descends on the sorrowing lovers of trees, and will
fall on our children and our children's children, —
the curse of a withered and wasted land, of hills
made barren, of dried-up springs and shrunken
streams.

It seems probable that a generation not far re-
moved from this will see the last of the rail fences,
those time-honored barriers of NewEngland fields,
too generous of timber to be kept up in a land
barren of forests. The board fence will endure
longer, but will pass away at last, and after it,

NEW ENGLAND FENCES 223

what? Where stone walls are, they may continue
to be, and where there are stones enough there may
be more stone walls, but all New England is not so
bountifully supplied in this respect as parts of it
that I have heard of, where if one buys an acre
of land, he must buy another to pile the stones of
the first acre on. In some of our alluvial lands it is
hard to find stones enough for the corner supports
of rail fences. The hedge, except for ornamenta-
tion in a small way, does not, somehow, seem to
take kindly to us, or we to it; at least, I have never
seen one of any great length, nor one flourishing
much, that was intended to be a barrier against
stock. If ever so thrifty for a while, is it not likely
that the pestiferous field-mice, which are becoming
plentier every year, as their enemies, the foxes,
skunks, hawks, owls, and crows grow fewer, would
destroy them in the first winter of deep snow?
Great hopes were entertained of the wire fence at
one time, but it has proved to be a delusion and
indeed a snare. Some are temporizing with fate,
or barely surrendering, by taking away the fences
where grain fields or meadows border the highway.
To me it is not pleasant to have the ancient boun-
daries of the road removed, over which kindly-
spared trees have so long stood guard, and along
whose sides black-raspberry bushes have sprung
up and looped their inverted festoons of wine-
colored stems and green leaves with silver linings,

S24 NEW ENGLAND FENCES

bearing racemes of fruit that the sauntering school-
boy lingers to gather. And far from pleasant is it to
drive cattle or sheep along such unfenced ways,
which they are certain to stray from, and exhaust
the breath and patience of him who drives them
and endeavors to keep them within the unmarked
bounds; moreover, it gives the country a common
look in more than one sense, as if nothing were
worth keeping in or out. It will be a sad day for
the advertiser of patent nostrums, when the road
fence of broad, brush-inviting boards ceases to
exist, and if we did not know that his evil genius
would be certain to devise some blazoning of his
balms, liniments, and bitters, quite as odious as
this, we should be almost ready to say, away with
this temptation. That was a happy device of one
of OUT farmers, who turned the tables on the im-
pudent advertiser, by knocking the boards off
and then nailing them on again with the letters
facing the field. The cattle stared a little at first
at Ridgeway's Ready Restorative, but never took
any.

However, it is not my purpose to speculate con-
cerning the fences of the future, nor to devise
means for impounding the fields of posterity, but
rather to make some record of such fences as we
now have, and some that have already passed
away.

The old settlers, when they had brought a

NEW ENGLAND FENCES 225

patch of the earth face to face with the sun, and
had sown their scanty seed therein, fenced it about
with poles, a flimsy-looking barricade in the
shadow of the lofty palisade of ancient trees that
walled the "betterments," but sufficient to keep
the few wood-ranging cattle out of the field whose
green of springing gram was dotted and blotched
with blackened stumps and log-heaps. The pole
fence was laid after the same fashion of a rail fence,
only the poles were longer than rail-cuts. There
were also cross-staked pole fences, in which the
fence was laid straight, each pole being upheld by
two stakes crossing the one beneath, their lower
ends being driven into the ground. This and the
brush fence, though the earliest of our fences, have
not yet passed away. That the last has not, one
may find to his sorrow, when, coming to its length-
wise-laid abatis in the woodland, he attempts to
cross it. If he achieve it with a whole skin and un-
rent garments, he is a fortunate man, and if with
an unruffled temper, he is certainly a good-natured
one. According to an unwritten law, it is said that
a lawful brush fence must be a rod wide, with no
specification as to its height. You will think a less
width enough, when you have made the passage of
one. Coming to it, you are likely to start from its
shelter a hare who has made his form there; or a
ruffed grouse hurtles away from beside it, where
she has been dusting her feathers in the powdery

226 NEW ENGLAND FENCES

remains of an old log; or you may catch glimpses
of a brown wood wren silently exploring the maze
of prostrate branches. These are the fence viewers
of the woodlot.

To build or pile a brush fence, such small trees
as stand along its line are lopped down, but not
severed from the stump, and made to fall length-
wise of the fence; enough more trees are brought to
it to give it the width and height required. Many
of the lopped ones live and, then* wounds healing,
they grow to be vigorous trees, then* fantastic
forms marking the course of the old brush fence
long after it has passed from the memory of man.
I remember a noted one which stood by the road-
side till an ambitious owner of a city lot bought it
and had it removed to his urban patch, where it
soon died. It was a lusty white oak, a foot or so
in diameter at the ground, three feet above which
the main trunk turned at a right angle and grew
horizontally for about ten feet, and along this part
were thrown up, at regular intervals, five perfect
smaller trunks, each branching into a symmetrical
head. It was the finest tree of such a strange
growth that I ever saw, and if it had grown in a
congenial human atmosphere, doubtless would
have flourished for a hundred years or more, and
likely enough, have become world-renowned. It
was sold for five dollars ! No wonder it died !

The log fence was a structure of more substance

NEW ENGLAND FENCES 227

than either the pole or the brush fence, but be-
longed to the same period of plentifulness, even
cumbersomeness, of timber. The great logs, gen-
erally pine, were laid straight, overlapping a little
at the ends, on which were placed horizontally
the short cross-pieces, which upheld the logs next
above. These fences were usually built three logs
high and formed a very solid wooden wall, but at a
lavish expense of material, for one of the logs sawn
into boards would have fenced several times the
length of the three. I remember but one, or rather
the remains of one, for it was only a reddish and
gray line of mouldering logs when I first knew it,
with here and there a sturdy trunk still bravely
holding out against decay, gray with the weather
beating of fifty years, and adorned with a coral-
like moss bearing scarlet spores.

From behind the log and brush fences, the prowl-
ing Indian ambushed the backwoodsman as he
tilled his field, or reconnoitered the lonely cabin
before he fell upon its defenseless inmates. Through
or over these old-time fences, the bear pushed or
clambered to his feast of "corn in the milk" or
perhaps to his death, if he blundered against a
harmless-looking bark string and pulled the trigger
of a spring-gun, whose heavy charge of ball and
buck-shot put an end to his predatory career.

After these early fences came the rail fence, as
it is known in New England, or the snake fence,

228 NEW ENGLAND FENCES

as it is sometimes called from the slight resem-
blance of its zig-zag line to the course of a serpent,
or the Virginia fence, perhaps because the Old
Dominion was the mother of it as of presidents,
but more likely for no better reason than that the
common deer is named the Virginia deer, or that
no end of quadrupeds and birds and plants, having
their home as much in the United States as in the
British Provinces, bear the title of Canodensis. But
rail, snake, or Virginia, at any rate it is truly
American, and probably has enclosed and does yet
enclose more acres of our land than any other fence.
But one seldom sees nowadays a new rail fence, or
rather a fence of new rails, and we shall never have
another wise and kindly railsplitter to rule over us;
and no more new pine rails, shining like gold in
the sun, and spicing the ah* with their terebmthine
perfume. The noble pine has become too rare
and valuable to be put to such base use. One may
catch the white gleam of a new ash rail, or short-
lived bass-wood, among the gray of the original
fence, a patch of new stuff in the old garment,
but not often the sheen of a whole fence of such
freshly riven material. Some one has called the
rail fence ugly or hideous. Truly, it must be con-
fessed, the newly laid rail fence is not a thing of
beauty, any more than is any other new thing that
is fashioned by man and intended to stand out of
doors. The most tastefully modeled house looks

NEW ENGLAND FENCES 229

out of place in the landscape till it has gained the
perfect fellowship of its natural surroundings, has
steeped itself in sunshine and storm, and become
saturated with nature, is weather-stained, and has
flecks of moss and lichen on its shingles and its
underpinning, and can stand not altogether shame-
faced in the presence of the old trees and world-old
rocks and earth about it. So our fence must have
settled to its place, its bottom rails have become
almost one with the earth and all its others, its
stakes and caps cemented together with mosses
and enwrapped with vines, and so weather-beaten
and crated with lichens that not a sliver can be
taken from it and not be missed. Then is it beauti-
ful, and looks as much a part of nature as the trees
that shadow it, and the berry bushes and weeds
that grow along it, and the stones that were pitched
into its corners thirty years ago, to be gotten out
of the way. Then the chipmunk takes the hollow
rails for his house and stores his food therein,
robins build then- nests in the jutting corners and
the wary crow is not afraid to light on it. What
sheltering arms half enclose its angles, where storm-
blown autumn leaves find their rest, and moulder
to the dust of earth, covering the seeds of berries
that the birds have dropped there — seeds which
quicken and grow and border the fence with a
thicket of berry bushes. Seeds of maples and birch
and bass-wood, driven here by the winds of win-

230 NEW ENGLAND FENCES

ters long past, have lodged and sprouted, and have
been kindly nursed till they have grown from
tender shoots to storm-defying trees; there are
clumps of sumacs also, with their fuzzy twigs and
fern-like leaves and "bobs" of dusky crimson.
Here violets bloom, and wind-flowers toss on their
slender stems in the breath of May; and in sum-
mer the pink spikes of the willow herb overtop
the upper rails, and the mass of the goldenrod's
bloom lies like a drift of gold along the edge of
the field.

The children who have not had a rail fence to
play beside have been deprived of one abundant
source of happiness, for every corner is a play-
house, only needing a roof, which hah* a dozen
bits of board will furnish, to complete it. Then
they are so easy to climb and so pleasant to sit
upon, when there is a flat top-rail; and when a
bird's nest is found, it can be looked into so easily;
and it is such jolly fun to chase a red squirrel
and see him go tacking along the top rails; and
there are such chances for berry-picking beside it.
In winter, there are no snow-drifts so good to
play on as those that form in regular waves along
the rail fence, their crests running at right angles
from the out-corners, their troughs from the inner
ones. I am sorry for those children of the future
who will have no rail fences to play about.

The board fence is quite as ugly as the rail

NEW ENGLAND FENCES 231

fence when new, perhaps more so, for it is more
prim and more glaring, as there is no alternation
of light and shade in its straight line. But age im-
proves its appearance also, and when the kindly
touch of nature has been laid upon it, and has
slanted a post here and warped a board there, and
given it her weather-mark, and sealed it with her
broad seal of gray-green and black lichens, by
which time weeds and bushes have grown in its
shelter, it is very picturesque. Its prevailing gray
has a multitude of shades; the varied weather-
stains of the wood, the lichens, the shags of moss
and their shadows, and some touches of more
decided color, as the yellowish-green mould that
gathers on some of the boards, the brown knots and
rust-streaks from nail-heads, patches of green
moss on the tops of posts, and here and there the
hah* — or less — of a circle, chafed by a swaying
weed or branch to the color of the unstained wood.
The woodpecker drills the decaying posts, and
bluebird and wren make their nest in the hollow
ones. There is often a ditch -beside it, in which
cowslips grow, and cat-tails and pussy-willows,
akin only in name; on its edge horse-tails and wild
grass, and higher up on the bank a tangle of hazel,
wild mulberry, gooseberry and raspberry bushes,
with a lesser undergrowth of ferns and poison ivy.
The field and song sparrows hide their nests in
its slope, and if the ditch is constantly and suffi-

232 NEW ENGLAND FENCES

ciently supplied with water, sometimes the musk-
rat burrows there, and you may see his clumsy
tracks in the mud and the cleanly cut bits of the
wild grass roots he has fed upon. Here, too, the
hyla holds his earliest spring concerts.

All this applies only to the plain, unpretend-
ing fence, built simply for the division of fields,
without any attempt at ornament. Nature has as
slow and painful a labor to bring to her com-
panionship the painted crib that encloses the
skimpy dooryard of a staring, white, new — or
modernized — farmhouse, as she has to subdue
the glare of the house itself; but she will accom-
plish it in her own good time, — the sooner if
aided by a little wholesome unthrift of an owner
who allows his paint-brushes to dry in their pots.

The fence which is half wall and half board has
a homely, rural look, as has the low wall topped
with rails, resting on cross-stakes slanted athwart
the wall, or the ends resting in rough mortises cut
in posts that are built into the wall, which is as
much of a "post and rail" fence as we often find
in northern New England. A new fence of either
kind is rarely seen nowadays in our part of the
country, and both may be classed among those
which are passing away.

Of all fences, the most enduring and the most
satisfying to the eye is the stone wall. If its
foundation is well laid, it may last as long as the

NEW ENGLAND FENCES 233

world — which, indeed, it may slowly sink into;
or the accumulating layers of earth may in years
cover it; but it will still be a wall — a grassy ridge
with a core of stone. A wall soon gets rid of its
new look. It is not propped up on the earth, but
has its foundations in it; mosses and lichens take
quickly and kindly to it, and grass and weeds
grow out of its lower crevices, mullein and brakes
and the bulby stalks of goldenrod spring up beside
it. Black-raspberry bushes loop along it, over it,
and stretch out from it, clumps of sweet elders
shade its sides, and their broad cymes of blossoms,
and later, clusters of blackberries, beloved of
robins and school-boys, bend over it. When the
stones of which it is built are gathered from the
fields, as they generally are, they are of infinite
variety, brought from the Far North by glaciers,
washed up by the waves of ancient seas, and
tumbled down to the lower lands from the over-
hanging ledges: lumps of gray granite and gneiss,
and dull-red blocks of sandstone, fragments of
blue limestone, and only a geologist knows how
many others, mostly with smooth-worn sides
and rounded corners and edges. All together,
they make a line of beautifully variegated color
and of light and shade. One old wall that I know
of has been a rich mine for a brood of callow
geologists, who have pecked it and overhauled it
and looked and talked most wisely over its stones,

234 NEW ENGLAND FENCES

and called them names hard enough to break
their stony hearts.

At the building of the wall, what bending and
straining of stalwart backs and muscles; what
shouting to oxen — for it would seem the ox can be
driven only by sheer strength of lungs; what rude
engineering to span the rivulet; what roaring of
blasts, when stones were too large to be moved in
whole, and the boys had the noise and smoke and
excitement of a Fourth-of-July celebration with-
out a penny's expense, but alas! with no ginger-
bread nor spruce beer. Then, too, what republics
were convulsed when the great stones, under-
neath which a multitude of ants had founded
their commonwealth, were pried up, and what her-
mits were disturbed when the newts were made to
face the daylight, and earwigs and beetles forced to
scurry away to new hiding-places! But when the
wall was fairly built, the commonwealths and her-
mitages were reestablished beneath it, more se-
cure and undisturbed than ever.

The woodchuck takes the stone wall for his
castle, and through its loopholes whistles defiance
to the dogs who besiege him, but woe be to him if
the boys join in the assault. They make a breach
in his stronghold through which the dogs can
reach him, or throw him a "slip-a-noose" into
which he hooks his long teeth and is hauled forth
to death. The weasel frequents a wall of this

NEW ENGLAND FENCES 235

kind, and there is hardly a fissure in its whole
length through which his lithe, snake-like body
cannot pass. You may now perhaps see his eyes
peering out of a hole in the wall, so bright you
might mistake them for dewdrops on a spider's
web, or see him stealing to his lair with a field
mouse in his mouth. In spring, summer, and fall,
nature clothes this little hunter in russet, but in
winter he has a furry coat almost as white as
snow, with only a black tip to his tail by which to
know himself in the wintry waste. The chipmunk,
too, haunts the wall, and the red squirrel finds in
it handy hiding-places into which to retreat, when
from the topmost stone he has jeered and snickered
at the passer-by beyond all patience.

Long after our people had begun to tire of mow-
ing and ploughing about the great pine stumps,
whose pitchy roots nothing but fire would destroy,
and when the land had become too valuable to
be cumbered by them, some timely genius arose
and invented the stump puller and the stump
fence. This fence withstands the tooth of time as
long as the red-cedar posts, of which the boy said
he knew they would last a hundred years, for his
father had tried 'em lots of times; and now many
fields of our old pine-bearing lands are bounded
by these stumps, like barricades of mighty antlers.
These old roots have a hold on the past, for in
their day they have spread themselves in the un-

236 NEW ENGLAND FENCES

sunned mould of the primeval forest, whereon no
man trod but the wild Abenaki, nor any tamed
thing; have had in turn for then* owners swarthy
sagamores, sceptered kings and rude backwoods-
men. Would they had life enough left in them
to tell then* story!

There is variety enough in the writhed and
fantastic forms of the roots, but they are slow to
don any covering of moss and lichens over their
whity-gray, and so they have a bald, almost
skeleton-like appearance. But when creeping
plants — the woodbine, the wild grape, and the
clematis — grow over the stump fence, it is very
beautiful. The woodbine suits it best, and hi
summer converts it into a wall of dark green, in
autumn into one of crimson, and in winter drapes
it gracefully with its slender vines.

This fence has plenty of nooks for berry bushes,
milk-weeds, goldenrods, and asters to grow in,
which they speedily do and, as a return, help to
hide its nakedness. Nor does it lack tenants, for
the robin builds on it, and the bluebird makes
its nest in its hollow prongs, as the wrens used to,
before they so unaccountably deserted us. The
chipmunk finds snug cells in the stumps, wood-
chucks and skunks burrow beneath it, and it
harbors multitudes of field mice.

In the neighborhood of sawmills, fencing a bit
of the road and the sawyer's garden patch, but

NEW ENGLAND FENCES 237

seldom elsewhere, is seen a fence made of slabs from
the mill, one end of each slab resting on the
ground, the other upheld by cross stakes. It is
not an enduring fence, and always looks too new
to be as picturesque in color as it is in form. The
common name of this fence is quite suggestive of
the perils that threaten whoever tries to clamber
over it, and he who has tried it once will skirt it a
furlong rather than try it again. The sawyer's
melons and apples would be safe enough inside it
if there were no boys, — but what fence is boy-
proof?

Of all fences, none is so simple as the water
fence, only a pole spanning the stream, perhaps
fastened at the larger end by a stout link and
staple to a great water-maple, ash or buttonwood-
tree, a mooring to hold it from going adrift when
the floods sweep down. If the stream is shallow,
it has a central support, a big stone that happens
to be hi the right place, or lacking this, a pier
made like a great bench; if deep, the middle of
the pole sags into the water and the upper current
ripples over it. On it the turtle basks; here the
wood-duck sits and sleeps or preens his handsome
feathers in the sun, and the kingfisher watches for
his fare of minnows, and the lithe mink and the
clumsy muskrat rest upon it. Neighbor's cattle
bathe in and sip the common stream, and lazily
fight their common enemies, the fly and the mos-

238 NEW ENGLAND FENCES

quito, and for all we know compare the merits of
their owners and respective pastures.

The fences of interval lands cannot be called
water fences, although during spring and fall
freshets they divide only wastes of water, across
which they show merely as streaks of gray, or, as
they are too apt to do, go drifting piecemeal down
stream with the strong current. Then the owners
go cruising over the flooded fields in quest of their
rails and boards, finding some stranded on shores
a long way from their proper place, some lodged
in the lower branches and crotches of trees and in
thickets of button-bushes, and some afloat, —
losing many that go to the gam of some riparian
freeholder further down the stream, but by the
same chance getting perhaps as many as they
lose.

I have seen a very peculiar fence in the slate
region of Vermont, made of slabs of slate, set in
the earth like a continuous row of closely planted
headstones. It might give a nervous person a
shudder, as if the stones were waiting for him to
lie down in their lee for the final, inevitable sleep,
with nothing left to be done but the stone-cutter
to come and lie on the other side the fence.

The least of fences, excepting the toy fences
that impound the make-believe herds of country
children, are the little pickets of slivers that
guard the melon and cucumber hills from the

NEW ENGLAND FENCES 239

claws of chanticleer and partlet. These are as
certain signs of the sure establishment of spring as
the cry of the upland plover. They maintain
their post until early summer, when, if they have
held their own against bugs, the vines have grown
strong enough to take care of themselves and be-
gin to wander, and the yellow blossoms meet the
bumble-bee halfway.

The "line fence," of whatever material, may
generally be known by the trees left growing along
it, living landmarks, safer to be trusted than
stones and dead wood, and showing that, as little
as our people value trees, they have more faith in
them than in each other. The burning and fall of
the "corner hemlock," on which was carved in
1762 the numbers of four lots, brought dismay to
four land-owners. The old corner has lost its
mooring, and has drifted a rod or two away.

What heart-burnings and contentions have
there not been concerning line fences, feuds last-
ing through generations, engendered by their
divergence a few feet to the right or left, or by
the question as to whom belonged the keeping up
of this part or that ! When the heads of some rural
households were at pitchforks' points, a son and
daughter were like enough to fall into the old way,
namely, love, and Juliet Brown steals forth in the
moonlight to meet Romeo Jones, and they bill and
coo across the parents' bone of contention, hi the

240 NEW ENGLAND FENCES

shadow of the guardian trees. If I were to write the
story of their love, it should turn at length into
smooth courses, and have no sorrowful ending —
no departure of the lover, nor pining away of the
lass, but at last their bridal bells should say:

"Life is sweeter, love is dearer,
For the trial and delay ";

and the two farms should become one, and nothing
remain of the old fence but the trees where the
lovers met, and under which then* children and
then* children's children should play.

The ways through and over our fences are few
and simple. The bar-way (in Yankeeland "a pair
of bars") seems to belong to the stone wall, rail
and stump fences; though the balanced gate, with
its long top bar pivoted on a post and loaded with
a big stone at one end, the other dropping into a
notch in the other post for a fastening, is often
used to bar the roadways through them. The more
pretending board fence has its more carefully
made gate, swinging on iron hinges and fastened
with a hook. Sometimes its posts are connected
high overhead by a cross beam, — a "gallows
gate," — past which one would think the mur-
derer must steal with terror as he skulks along in
the gloaming.

The sound of letting down the bars is a familiar
one to New England ears, and after the five or

NEW ENGLAND FENCES 241

six resonant wooden clangs, one listens to hear
the cow-boy lift up his voice, or the farmer call his
sheep. The rail fence is a stile all along its length,
and so is a stone wall, though a stone or so is apt to
tumble down if you clamber over it in an unaccus-
tomed place. The footpath runs right over the
rail fence, as easy to be seen in the polishing of the
top rail as in the trodden sward. On some much-
frequented ways "across lots" as to a spring, a
slanted plank on either side the fence affords a
comfortable passage, and down its pleasant in-
cline a boy can no more walk than his marbles
could. Let no one feel too proud to crawl through
a stump fence, but be humbly thankful if he can
find a hole that will give him passage. A bird can
go over one very comfortably, and likewise over
a brush fence, and this last nothing without wings
can do; man and every beast larger than a squirrel
must wade through it, unless they have the luck
to come to a pole-barway in it.

A chapter might be written of fence breakers
and leapers; of wickedly wise cows who unhook
gates and toss off rails almost as handily as if they
were human; of sheep who find holes that escape
the eyes of their owners, and go through them with
a flourish of trumpets like a victorious army that
has breached the walls of a city; of horses who, in
spite of pokes, take fences like trained steeple-
chasers, and another chapter of fence walkers,

242 NEW ENGLAND FENCES

too, — for the rail fence and stone wall are con-
venient highways for the squirrel whereon to
pass from nut-tree and cornfield to storehouse
and home, and for puss to pick her dainty way,
dry-footed, to and from her mousing and bird-
poaching in the fields; the coon walks there, and
Reynard makes them a link in the chain of his
subtle devices.

One cannot help thinking of the possibility that,
by and by, high farming may become universal,
and soiling may become the common practice of
farmers, and that then the building and keeping
up of fences will end with the need of them, and
the boundaries of farms be marked only by iron
posts or stone pillars; then the old landmarks of
gray fences, with their trees and shrubs and flower-
ing weeds, will have passed away and no herds of
kine or flocks of sheep dot the fields; and then,
besides men and teams, there will be no living
thing larger than a bird in the wide landscape.
The prospect of such a time goes, with many
other things, to reconcile one to the thought, that
before that day his eyes will be closed in a sleep
which such changed scenes will not trouble.

HUNTING THE HONEY-BEE

THE honey-bee came to America with civilization,
— probably with the Pilgrims. Such industrious
and thrifty little people, withal so warlike upon
occasion, and sometimes without, were likely to
find favor with the pious fathers, who themselves
possessed and valued these traits. After getting
some foothold in their new home, they would have
had a hive or two of real English bees brought
over in some small tub of a ship, tossed and buffeted
across the wintry seas.

How the home feeling came back to the Puritan
housewife when the little house of straw, built hi
England, was duly set on its bench, and in the first
warm days of the early spring its inmates awoke to
find themselves in a wild, strange land, and buzzed
forth to experiment on the sap of the maple logs in
the woodpile. How sweet to her homesick heart
.' then* familiar drowsy hum, and how sad the mem-
ories they awakened of the fields of daisies and
violets and blooming hedgerows in the loved Eng-
land never to be seen again.

There was rejoicing in the straw house when
the willow catkins in the swamp and along the
brooksides turned from silver to gold, and a happy
bee must she have been who first found the ar-

244 HUNTING THE HONEY-BEE

butus in its hiding-place among the dead leaves,
and the clusters of liverwort nodding above their
purple-green leaves in the April wind, and the
light drift of shad-blows that gleamed in the gray
woods. Here were treasures worth forsaking even
England to gather. Later she found the colum-
bine, drooping over the ledge, heavy with sweets
unattainable, and was fooled with the empty
chalice of the bath-flower and with violets, blue as
those of her own home, but scentless as spring-
water.

Catching the spirit of their masters, some of
the bees set then* light sails and ventured far into
the great, mysterious forest, and, founding col-
onies in hollow trees, began a life of independence.
Their hoarded sweets became known to the bears
and the Indians, no one knows how, or to which
first. Perhaps the first swarm that flew wild
hived itself inside a tree which was the winter
home of a bear, who, climbing to his retreat when
the first snows had powdered the green of the hem-
locks and the russet floor of the woods, and back-
ing down to his nest, found his way impeded by
shelves of comb, filled with luscious sweetness the
like of which no New England bear had ever be-
fore tasted — something to make his paws more
savory sucking through the long months. Then
the Indian, tracing him to his lair, secured a
double prize — a fat bear, and something sweeter

HUNTING THE HONEY-BEE 245

than maple sap or sugar. There is a tradition that
an Indian wizard was feasted on bread and honey,
and strong water sweetened with honey, by the
wife of a Puritan magistrate, to the great satis-
faction of the inner red man. Learning whence
the lucent syrup came, he told the bees such tales
of the flowers of the forest, blooming from the
sunny days of mid-April till into the depth of
winter (for he bethought him that the sapless
yellow blossoms of his own witch-hazel would in
some sort bear out his word), that all the young
swarms betook themselves to the wild woods and
made their home therein. Another legend is that
the wizard, in some way learning the secret of the
bees, took on the semblance of their queen, and
led a swarm into the woods, where he established
it in a hollow tree, and so began the generation of
wild bees.

However it came about, swarms of bees now
and then lapsed into the primitive ways of life
that their remote ancestors held, and have con-
tinued to do so down to these times, and will,
when the freak takes them, utterly refuse to be
charmed or terrified into abiding with then* owners
by any banging of pans or blowing of horns.

No one knows who our first bee-hunter was,
whether black bear, red Indian, or white hunter,
but the bear or the Indian was likeliest to become
such. Bruin's keen nose was his guide to the prize,

246 HUNTING THE HONEY-BEE

the Indian's sharp eyes and woodcraft his, and the
white man improved on the primitive ways by the
invention of the bee-box and the science of cross-
lining.

Bee-trees are sometimes found by accident, as
when the bees, having been beguiled untimely
forth by the warmth of the February or March
sunbeams, are benumbed on exposure to the chill
outer air and fall helpless and conspicuous on the
snow at the tree's foot; or when in more genial
days the in-going or out-coming of the busy in-
mates betrays then* home to some hunter of larger
game, or searcher for a particular kind or fashion
of a timber tree. Well do I remember how Uncle
Key,1 veteran of our then last war, first master of
our post-office, and most obliging of station-
agents, discovered a great bee-tree on the side of
the "New Road" 2 as it truly was then, and as it
is and always will be called, I suppose, though its
venerable projectors have long been laid to rest.
Alert to profit by his discovery, Uncle Key called
to his aid a couple of stout fellows, and with axes
and vessels to hold a hundredweight or more of
honey, he went to reap his reward. The tree was a
monster; what an ocean of honey it might hold!
There was no way in which it could be felled but
right across the road, and there at last it lay,

1 Uncle Key = Joshua Locke.
* New Road = Greenbush Road.

HUNTING THE HONEY-BEE 247

after much sweating of brows and lusty plying of
axes — a barrier impassable to teams, athwart
the commonwealth's highway, and nothing in it
but a nest of yellow-jackets ! Another who suffered
a like disappointment and a cruel stinging to boot,
when asked, by one aware of the facts, "if he had
got much honey," answered, as he rubbed open
his swollen eyelids: "No, we didn't git much
honey, but we broke up their cussed haunt."
There was a degree of consolation in this.

I do not like the bee-hunter as a bee-hunter,
for he is a ruthless and lawless slayer of old trees.
I cherish an abiding hatred of one who cut the
last of the great buttonwoods on Sungahnee's
bank. Think of his lopping down a tree whose
broad leaves had dotted with shadow the passing
canoes of Abenakis, in whose wide shade salmon
swam and wild swans preened their snowy plum-
age in the old days, — and for a paltry pailful of
honey! I hope the price of his ill-gotten spoils
burned his fingers and his pocket, and was spent
to no purpose; that the honey he ate turned to
acid in his maw and vexed his ulterior with gripes
and colic; and I wish the bleaching bones of the
murdered tree might arise nightly and confront
him as a fearful ghost. Its roots were not in my
soil, but its lordly branches grew in the free air
which is as much mine as any man's, and when
they were laid low I was done a grievous and ir-

248 HUNTING THE HONEY-BEE

reparable wrong. A good and thoughtful man has
such a tender feeling for trees and the rights of
other men that he will think twice before he cuts
even a sapling for his real need. I abhor those
murdering fellows who think no more of taking
the life of a tree a century or two old than they
would of killing a man.

Nevertheless, I have good friends who are bee-
hunters, chief among them one x who knows
enough of Nature's secrets to make the reputation
of two or three naturalists. The successful issue
of a bee-hunt gives the toil a veritable sweetening,
but I think my friend is successful even when un-
successful, and that there is something sweeter to
him in the quest than in the finding of a well-filled
bee-tree.

Our bee-hunter chooses August and September
for his labor, or pastime, whichever it may be
called, and he can hardly find a pleasanter day
for it than one of those which August sometimes
brings us in its later weeks — days that give us a
foretaste of September's best, but are fuller of
blossoms than they will be, though there are not
enough flowers in the woods to keep the wild bees
busy there. The sky is of purest blue, and across
it a few clear-edged clouds, fleeces of silver and
pearl, slowly drift before a fresh northerly breeze,
and their swifter shadows drift across the ripening
1 Joe Birkett.

HUNTING THE HONEY-BEE 249

landscape — now darkening the green of meadow
and pasture land, now the yellow of the stubble
fields, and now flooding the light and shade of the
woods with universal shadow. There is a whole-
some coolness in the shade, and not too fervent
warmth in the sunshine for one to bask comfortably
therein if he will.

The bee-hunter is burdened with but few im-
plements in his chase: first of all, a "bee-box,"
six inches or so hi length and a little less in width
and height, with a hinged lid in which is set a
small square of glass; midway between this and the
bottom is a slide dividing the box into two com-
partments, the lower one holding a piece of honey-
comb partly filled when in use with a thin syrup of
white sugar and water. There is also an axe, or,
perhaps, no larger cutting tool than a jack-knife;
sometimes a compass, and, if he be of a feeding
turn of stomach, a dinner-pail. So equipped, he
takes the field, seeking his small quarry along
wood-side meadow fences, whose stakes and top
rails alone show above a flowery tangle of golden-
rod, asters, and willow herb; in pastures that
border the woods, dotted with these and thorny
clumps of bull-thistles and the dark-green sedge
and wild grass of the swales, overtopped by the
dull white blossoms of boneset, pierced by clustered
purple spikes of vervain, and here and there
ablaze with the fire of the cardinal-flower.

250 HUNTING THE HONEY-BEE

Carefully looking over the flowers as he goes
slowly along, among the bumble-bees and wasps
that are gathering from them then* slender stores
of present food his quick eye discovers a honey-
bee alight on the upright tassel of a thistle, or
sucking a medicated sweet from the bitter flower
of the boneset, or stealing the fairy's draught from
the little tankard of the wild balsam, or working a
placer of goldenrod, or exploring a constellation
of asters; and stealthily slipping the open box
under her, he claps the cover down, and has her a
fast prisoner. Now he darkens her cell by covering
the glass with his hand till she has buzzed away
her wrath and astonishment and settles on the bit
of comb which, before catching her, the hunter
had placed on the slide. Seeing through the little
skylight that she is making the best of the situa-
tion and is contentedly filling herself with the
plentiful fare provided, he sets the box on a
stump, boulder, or fence (if either be at hand — if
not, he drives a triple-forked stake, or piles a few
"chunks" for the purpose), and, opening the lid,
sits or stands at a little distance, awaiting the out-
coming of the bee.

This takes place in five minutes or so, when,
having freighted herself, she takes whig and rises a
few feet, circles rapidly till she has her bearings,
and then sails swiftly homeward. What compass
does she carry in her little head to guide her so

HUNTING THE HONEY-BEE 251

truly? The hunter takes no great pains to get her
course this first trip. He places the comb on the
closed lid of the box, replenishes its cells from a
vial of syrup, lights his pipe, and disposes himself
comfortably to watch the return of his sometime
captive. The length of time he has to wait for
this depends partly on the distance the bee has to
go and partly on the wealth of her swarm, the
members of a swarm with a scanty store of honey
working faster than those of a rich one.

But soon or late she comes humming back, and,
beating about a little, finds the lure and settles
upon it, fills herself, rises, circles, and is away
again. Now the hunter tries his best to catch her
course, and it needs a quick and practiced eye to
follow the brown speck as it gyrates wildly over-
head for a moment and then darts away on the
"bee-line," straight and swift as an arrow. Some-
times he gets rid of the uncomfortable twisting of
the neck which such rapid eye-following requires
when sitting or standing, by lying on his back near
the box.

The bee has told her people of the easily gotten
nectar, and, when next returning, brings a com-
panion with her, and at each return perhaps an-
other, till, maybe, a dozen are busy about the
comb, and, as each flies homeward, the hunter
strives to get its line of flight. Having this line
pretty well established, if their journeys are evi-

252 HUNTING THE HONEY-BEE

dently short he follows it into the wood, and per-
haps has the luck of finding the tree in a few min-
utes.

Our bee-hunter has no helpful bird, as the Afri-
can bee-hunter has, to lead him by voice and flight
to the hidden sweets, but must depend altogether
on his own sharp eyes and skill. He takes little
note of anything unconnected with his quest as he
pushes through the brushwood and briers, and
tramples the ferns under foot. The pack of half-
grown grouse that go whirring away from his very
feet may startle him with the suddenness of their
uprising, but further than this he notices them as
little as he does the jays that scold him or the
squirrels that jeer at him, but holds right onward,
his eye climbing every tree on the line that gives
sign of hollow-heartedness, searching every foot
of its length for the knot-hole, woodpecker's bor-
ing, or crevice which may be the gate of the bee's
castle. Finding this, he takes formal possession by
right of discovery, and hoists his flag on the walls,
or, to be more exact, carves his initials on the
bark.

If the bees are long hi going and coming, he re-
moves the comb to the bottom of the box, and,
when some of the bees have settled on it, closes the
lid. Then he jars the box till the bees rise to the
top, when he shuts them off from the comb by
closing the slide. This is to prevent them from

HUNTING THE HONEY-BEE 253

besmearing themselves with the syrup while being
"moved up on the line," which is now to be done.

The hunter strikes into the woods at a smart
pace, but carefully keeping his course and nurs-
ing his box tenderly under his arm. So going for
twenty, thirty, forty, or more rods, but not too far,
in some convenient little opening or clearing, if he
comes to it, he "sets up" again and lets the bees
on the comb, where they fill themselves and go and
come as before. My bee-hunting friend tells me
if the box has been unwittingly carried beyond
then* home, somehow the bees fail to find it again,
as they do if it is set up very near the tree on the
side it was approached. In the last case they prob-
ably overfly it, but both failures seem strange in
such wise little folk.

"Cross-lining" is done by setting up at some
little distance from the line already established,
and getting a new one. Where this intersects the
old, there, of course, the bee-tree is, but it is not
the easiest thing in the world to find even then, for
there may be a dozen trees about this not very
well-defined point, each of which is likely enough,
as looks go, to be the particular one.

A couple of our bee-hunters had looked long
for a tree on their line when one of them, backing
up against a great basswood to rest, was stung
midway between his head and his heels, that part
of his person happening to block the entrance, so

254 HUNTING THE HONEY-BEE

low that it had been overlooked, to what proved to
be an eighty-pound bee-tree. My particular bee-
hunter was puzzled by a swarm this season which
he found at last in a fallen tree, and so was saved
the labor of much chopping.

Like other mortals, the bee-hunter has his dis-
appointments, as when the bees that he has lined
through woods and across fields for a whole day,
perhaps, or even longer, lead him at last to the
sheltered hives of some farmhouse; or more than
this, when, having found his tree and put his mark
upon it, he goes at the first opportunity to cut it
and finds that he has been forestalled by some
freebooter, who has left him only the fallen tree,
some fragments of empty comb, and the forlorn
survivors of the harried swarm.

When the stronghold of the bees is sapped by
the hunter's axe and topples down, in many cases
the garrison appears to be so overwhelmed by the
calamity as to offer little or no resistance; but often
the doughty little amazons fight so bravely for
home and honey, that their assailants are obliged
to smother them with a "smudge" of dead leaves
or straw before they can secure then- booty.

The honey of the woods, though apt to be some-
what dirty, from the manner in which it is ob-
tained, is thought by many to be better than the
honey of the hives. I never knew one who loved
the woods much that did not find wild meat more

HUNTING THE HONEY-BEE 255

toothsome than tame; and such may easily believe
that this honey holds something of the aroma of
the wild flowers from which it is so largely gathered
and has caught a woodsy flavor from its wild sur-
roundings.

THE VOICES OF THE SEASONS

ONE threatened with the loss of sight very nat-
urally begins to reckon how far his other senses may
be depended upon to acquaint him of what may
be going on about him. If he is a lover of nature,
a close or only an ordinary observer of it, he will be
assured, as he recalls its voices, that if he were de-
prived of all senses but that of hearing, this one
sense would inform him of the presence of each
season if it did not apprize him of its coming.

The caw of returning crows, the swelling rush of
unbound brooks, the nightly, monotonous, rasp-
ing note of the Acadian owl, would tell him cer-
tainly of the coming of spring. He would know by
the crackling croak of the frogs, the hyla's shrill
chime, the diffusive ringing of the toads, by the
beat and roll of the ruffed grouse's muffled drum,
and by the querulous whistle of the woodchuck
warmed to new vitality, that the soft breath of
spring was filling the earth with lif e, that the squir-
rel cups were blossoming in sunny woodside nooks,
buds of arbutus beginning to blush under their
rusty leaves on southern slopes of woodland ledges,
and willow catkins were yellowing the swamps.

In sweetest fashion of all, the birds would tell
the story. Indeed, if he had ever noted their com-

THE VOICES OF THE SEASONS 257

ing, he might now almost name the day of the
month when he heard the twitter of the first
swallow, the flicker's heartening cackle, the jingle
of the bobolink's song, the swell and fall of the
plover's wail.

The wind would stir the new leaves to tell him
they were out, and the patter of the rain upon
them would strengthen then* testimony with a
sound unmistakably different from its leaden pelt-
ing of naked boughs and dead fields. The busy
hum of bees overhead would tell of the blossoming
of fruit trees, when the pendulous flowers of the
locust were sweetest, and when, in July, the tiny
bells of the basswood knolled perfume to call all
the bees to the woods.

He would know when summer burned hottest by
that very voice of heat, the shrill cry of the cicada,
and by the troubled notes of parent birds, anx-
iously watching the first adventures of their
chirping young in a world rimmed by a wider
horizon than the brink of the nest, and at night-
fall, by the crickets, creaking in full chorus with
earnest, tireless monotony.

A little later would be heard the click of ripe
apples through the leaves and their rebounding
thuds upon the ground; at dusk, the screech owl
shivering out his gruesome cry in the old orchard
as if he "for all his feathers was a-cold" with the
chill of the first autumnal evenings; and from

lonely woods would come the similarly quavering
but more guttural, wilder and more lonesome call
of the raccoon.

The absence of the earlier migrants would as
noticeably mark the season as the hail and fare-
well of others passing southward hi the night-
time; the startled chuckle of the plover, with
hardly a hint in it of his springtime wail; the
scaipe of the snipe; the woodcock's whistle; the
bittern's squawk, voicing all his ungainliness; the
quick, sibilant beat of wild ducks' wings; and the
note of many a winged traveler whose identity can
only be guessed at. One may know when October
days have come by the gentle alighting of falling
leaves, the incessant nut-rasping of the squirrels,
the busy stir and low, absorbed notes of the jays
in the beeches, the irregular patter of dropping
mast, the chipmunk's clucking good-bye to the
outer world, and an occasional clamor suddenly
uprising from a great army of crows on its winged
retreat to more hospitable climes.

Too soon one hears the scurry of wind-blown
leaves along the earth and the clash of naked
branches, the purr of the first snow falling on
frozen grass and dry leaves and its light beat on
roof and pane. The latest migrating wild geese
announce their passage with a musical confusion
of clarion notes, and jays, hairy and downy wood-
peckers, nuthatches and chickadees come from

THE VOICES OF THE SEASONS 259

the woods and abide near the habitations of men,
each with well-known note making one aware of
his presence. With the snow come great flocks of
snow buntings, late familiars of the Esquimau and
Lap, the white bear and the reindeer, and all the
animate and inanimate savagery of the frozen
north. Their creaking twitter reminds one of
the creak and tinkle of moving ice, their voice a
voice of winter, unmistakable though faint.

There are winter days, or hours in winter days,
when one's ears might make him believe that night
was brooding over the earth, so hushed are all
the voices of nature in a silence deeper than per-
vades even any night of spring, summer, or fall, for
the silence of such a night will now and then be
broken by bisect, reptile, or nocturnal bird, or
nightly prowling beast, or be emphasized by the
low murmur of a distant stream. But now, not a
bird note nor stir of withered leaf, nor smothered
plaint of ice-bound brook, no sound of anything,
animate or inanimate, disturbs the deathlike
quietude which as unequivocally if not as im-
periously, as his voices, proclaim the absolute
sovereignty of winter. The sullen roar of the
winds in leafless woods, the hiss of driving snow,
the crack and shiver of ice may be heard in early
spring and late fall, but this dead stillness is a sole
prerogative of the stern king's reign.

When an unseasonable rain falls on the snow,

260 THE VOICES OF THE SEASONS

freezing as it falls, there is presently a hollow rattle
of drops on the new-made crust, and every ice-
sheathed branch and twig creaks and tinkles in
the wind till the trees drop showers of gems that
you can almost hear the glitter of. Sometimes
when one sets foot on such a crust it seems as if
the whole surface of a great field sank slightly, with
a sudden resentful crash at the crunch of the first
footfall. One's first impression is that he has
sprung some immense natural trap, and he holds
his breath for an instant in dazed expectation of
catastrophe. Another characteristic sound of
whiter is the settling of "shell ice," when after a
great thaw and flood, followed by sudden cold
weather, the new ice falls to the level of the sub-
siding waters. It drops with startling suddenness,
but with a prolonged musical ring very different
from the short, flat crack of snow crust, while
splinters of the broken edges slide down the sloped
border and far across the lowered level, jingling
and clinking as they glide like scattered handf uls
of silver coin.

In the neighborhood of great frozen lakes is often
heard one of the wildest sounds of winter and the
most unearthly, the booming of the ice, caused by
its cracking or by its contracting and expanding,
or, as some maintain, by air beneath it. At first a
thin, tortured cry arises, faint and far away,
growing louder in swift approach, rising at times

THE VOICES OF THE SEASONS 261

almost to a yell, and mingled with hollow groans,
now suddenly ceasing for an instant, now as sud-
denly bursting forth, then falling and dying away
in such a wail as it began, far off in the direction
opposite to that from whence it arose. It is as if
tormented spirits were fleeing through the air,
fleeter than the wind, as invisible, with voices as
pervasive.

The sharp, clear, resonant crack of trees under
stress of severest cold, like the breaking of an
over-strained cord, and the duller snapping of
house timbers, tell of still starlit nights, when the
whiskers of the wandering fox are silvered with
his breath. In such nights the great horned owl
hoots a prophecy of storm. Its fulfillment is
heard in a gusty south wind driving a pelting slant
of rain against weatherboards and windows and
upon the snow till the rush of free brooks falls
upon the ear once more.

The outlawed crow proclaims his return to such
scant forage as the bare fields may yield. The
great owl's least cousin sharpens his invisible saw
in the softer-breathing evenings. Some morning
the first robin pipes his greeting, then from high
overhead floats down the heavenly carol of the
bluebird, the song sparrow sings blithely again
and phoebe calls, and we know, though we only
hear of it from them, that spring is here once more.

THE END

CAMBRIDGE . MASSACHUSETTS
U . S . A

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