But think not that the splendor of the year is over; for as one leaf
does not make a summer, neither does one falling leaf make an autumn.
The smallest Sugar-Maples in our streets make a great show as early as
the fifth of October, more than any other trees there. As I look up the
Main Street, they appear like painted screens standing before the
houses; yet many are green. But now, or generally by the seventeenth of
October, when almost all Red Maples, and some White Maples, are bare,
the large Sugar-Maples also are in their glory, glowing with yellow and
red, and show unexpectedly bright and delicate tints. They are
remarkable for the contrast they often afford of deep blushing red on
one half and green on the other. They become at length dense masses of
rich yellow with a deep scarlet blush, or more than blush, on the
exposed surfaces. They are the brightest trees now in the street.
The large ones on our Common are particularly beautiful. A delicate,
but warmer than golden yellow is now the prevailing color, with scarlet
cheeks. Yet, standing on the east side of the Common just before
sundown, when the western light is transmitted through them, I see that
their yellow even, compared with the pale lemon yellow of an Elm close
by, amounts to a scarlet, without noticing the bright scarlet portions.
Generally, they are great regular oval masses of yellow and scarlet.
All the sunny warmth of the season, the Indian-summer, seems to be
absorbed in their leaves. The lowest and inmost leaves next the bole
are, as usual, of the most delicate yellow and green, like the
complexion of young men brought up in the house. There is an auction on
the Common to-day, but its red flag is hard to be discerned amid this
blaze of color.
Little did the fathers of the town anticipate this brilliant success,
when they caused to be imported from farther in the country some
straight poles with their tops cut off, which they called Sugar-Maples;
and, as I remember, after they were set out, a neighboring merchant’s
clerk, by way of jest, planted beans about them. Those which were then
jestingly called bean-poles are to-day far the most beautiful objects
noticeable in our streets. They are worth all and more than they have
cost,—though one of the selectmen, while setting them out, took the
cold which occasioned his death,—if only because they have filled the
open eyes of children with their rich color unstintedly so many
Octobers. We will not ask them to yield us sugar in the spring, while
they afford us so fair a prospect in the autumn. Wealth in-doors may be
the inheritance of few, but it is equally distributed on the Common.
All children alike can revel in this golden harvest.
Surely trees should be set in our streets with a view to their October
splendor; though I doubt whether this is ever considered by the “Tree
Society.” Do you not think it will make some odds to these children
that they were brought up under the Maples? Hundreds of eyes are
steadily drinking in this color, and by these teachers even the truants
are caught and educated the moment they step abroad. Indeed, neither
the truant nor the studious is at present taught color in the schools.
These are instead of the bright colors in apothecaries’ shops and city
windows. It is a pity that we have no more _Red_ Maples, and some
Hickories, in our streets as well. Our paint-box is very imperfectly
filled. Instead of, or beside, supplying such paint-boxes as we do, we
might supply these natural colors to the young. Where else will they
study color under greater advantages? What School of Design can vie
with this? Think how much the eyes of painters of all kinds, and of
manufacturers of cloth and paper, and paper-stainers, and countless
others, are to be educated by these autumnal colors. The stationer’s
envelopes may be of very various tints, yet, not so various as those of
the leaves of a single tree. If you want a different shade or tint of a
particular color, you have only to look farther within or without the
tree or the wood. These leaves are not many dipped in one dye, as at
the dye-house, but they are dyed in light of infinitely various degrees
of strength, and left to set and dry there.
Shall the names of so many of our colors continue to be derived from
those of obscure foreign localities, as Naples yellow, Prussian blue,
raw Sienna, burnt Umber, Gamboge?—(surely the Tyrian purple must have
faded by this time),—or from comparatively trivial articles of
commerce,— chocolate, lemon, coffee, cinnamon, claret?—(shall we
compare our Hickory to a lemon, or a lemon to a Hickory?)—or from ores
and oxides which few ever see? Shall we so often, when describing to
our neighbors the color of something we have seen, refer them, not to
some natural object in our neighborhood, but perchance to a bit of
earth fetched from the other side of the planet, which possibly they
may find at the apothecary’s, but which probably neither they nor we
ever saw? Have we not an _earth_ under our feet,—ay, and a sky over our
heads? Or is the last _all_ ultramarine? What do we know of sapphire,
amethyst, emerald, ruby, amber, and the like,—most of us who take these
names in vain? Leave these precious words to cabinet-keepers,
virtuosos, and maids-of-honor,— to the Nabobs, Begums, and Chobdars of
Hindostan, or wherever else. I do not see why, since America and her
autumn woods have been discovered, our leaves should not compete with
the precious stones in giving names to colors; and, indeed, I believe
that in course of time the names of some of our trees and shrubs, as
well as flowers, will get into our popular chromatic nomenclature.
But of much more importance than a knowledge of the names and
distinctions of color is the joy and exhilaration which these colored
leaves excite. Already these brilliant trees throughout the street,
without any more variety, are at least equal to an annual festival and
holiday, or a week of such. These are cheap and innocent gala-days,
celebrated by one and all without the aid of committees or marshals,
such a show as may safely be licensed, not attracting gamblers or
rum-sellers, not requiring any special police to keep the peace. And
poor indeed must be that New-England village’s October which has not
the Maple in its streets. This October festival costs no powder, nor
ringing of bells, but every tree is a living liberty-pole on which a
thousand bright flags are waving.
No wonder that we must have our annual Cattle-Show, and Fall Training,
and perhaps Cornwallis, our September Courts, and the like. Nature
herself holds her annual fair in October, not only in the streets, but
in every hollow and on every hill-side. When lately we looked into that
Red-Maple swamp all ablaze, where the trees were clothed in their
vestures of most dazzling tints, did it not suggest a thousand gypsies
beneath,—a race capable of wild delight,—or even the fabled fawns,
satyrs, and wood-nymphs come back to earth? Or was it only a
congregation of wearied wood-choppers, or of proprietors come to
inspect their lots, that we thought of? Or, earlier still, when we
paddled on the river through that fine-grained September air, did there
not appear to be something new going on under the sparkling surface of
the stream, a shaking of props, at least, so that we made haste in
order to be up in time? Did not the rows of yellowing Willows and
Button-Bushes on each side seem like rows of booths, under which,
perhaps, some fluviatile egg-pop equally yellow was effervescing? Did
not all these suggest that man’s spirits should rise as high as
Nature’s,—should hang out their flag, and the routine of his life be
interrupted by an analogous expression of joy and hilarity?
No annual training or muster of soldiery, no celebration with its
scarfs and banners, could import into the town a hundredth part of the
annual splendor of our October. We have only to set the trees, or let
them stand, and Nature will find the colored drapery,—flags of all her
nations, some of whose private signals hardly the botanist can
read,—while we walk under the triumphal arches of the Elms. Leave it to
Nature to appoint the days, whether the same as in neighboring States
or not, and let the clergy read her proclamations, if they can
understand them. Behold what a brilliant drapery is her Woodbine flag!
What public-spirited merchant, think you, has contributed this part of
the show? There is no handsomer shingling and paint than this vine, at
present covering a whole side of some houses. I do not believe that the
Ivy _never sere_ is comparable to it. No wonder it has been extensively
introduced into London. Let us have a good many Maples and Hickories
and Scarlet Oaks, then, I say. Blaze away! Shall that dirty roll of
bunting in the gun-house be all the colors a village can display? A
village is not complete unless it have these trees to mark the season
in it. They are important, like the town-clock. A village that has them
not will not be found to work well. It has a screw loose, an essential
part is wanting. Let us have Willows for spring, Elms for summer,
Maples and Walnuts and Tupeloes for autumn, Evergreens for winter, and
Oaks for all seasons. What is a gallery in a house to a gallery in the
streets, which every market-man rides through, whether he will or not?
Of course, there is not a picture-gallery in the country which would be
worth so much to us as is the western view at sunset under the Elms of
our main street. They are the frame to a picture which is daily painted
behind them. An avenue of Elms as large as our largest and three miles
long would seem to lead to some admirable place, though only C—— were
at the end of it.
A village needs these innocent stimulants of bright and cheering
prospects to keep off melancholy and superstition. Show me two
villages, one embowered in trees and blazing with all the glories of
October, the other a merely trivial and treeless waste, or with only a
single tree or two for suicides, and I shall be sure that in the latter
will be found the most starved and bigoted religionists and the most
desperate drinkers. Every washtub and milkcan and gravestone will be
exposed. The inhabitants will disappear abruptly behind their barns and
houses, like desert Arabs amid their rocks, and I shall look to see
spears in their hands. They will be ready to accept the most barren and
forlorn doctrine,—as that the world is speedily coming to an end, or
has already got to it, or that they themselves are turned wrong side
outward. They will perchance crack their dry joints at one another and
call it a spiritual communication.
But to confine ourselves to the Maples. What if we were to take half as
much pains in protecting them as we do in setting them out,—not
stupidly tie our horses to our dahlia-stems?
What meant the fathers by establishing this _perfectly living_
institution before the church,—this institution which needs no
repairing nor repainting, which is continually enlarged and repaired by
its growth? Surely they
“Wrought in a sad sincerity;
Themselves from God they could not free;
They _planted_ better than they knew;—
The conscious _trees_ to beauty grew.”
Verily these Maples are cheap preachers, permanently settled, which
preach their half-century, and century, ay, and century-and-a-half
sermons, with constantly increasing unction and influence, ministering
to many generations of men; and the least we can do is to supply them
with suitable colleagues as they grow infirm.