THE CRICKET IN THE WALL--THE MINISTER'S ILLUSTRATION--OLD MEMORIES.
We spent the following day in drifting quietly around the lake,
floating lazily in the little bays, under the shadow of the tall
trees, and lounging upon small islands, gathering the low-bush
whortleberries which grew in abundance upon them. We filled our tin
pails with this delicious fruit for a dessert for our evening meal. On
one of these islands we found indications of its being inhabited by
wood rabbits, and we sent Cullen to the shanty for the dogs to course
them, not however with any intention of capturing them, but to enjoy
the music of the chase, and hear the voices of the hounds echoing over
the water. We landed them upon the island, and began beating for the
game. The hounds understanding that their business was the pursuit of
deer, and having hunted the island over thoroughly, came back to us,
and sat quietly down upon their haunches, as much as to say there was
nothing there worth looking after. But we had seen one of the little
animals that had been roused from its bed by the dogs, and we called
their special attention to the fact by leading them to the spot, and
bidding them to "hunt him up." They understood our meaning, and
started on the trail, with a loud and cheerful cry. For half an hour,
they coursed him round and round the island, making the lake vocal
with their merry music. We might have shot the game they were pursuing
fifty times, but we had no design against its life. The little fellow
did not seem to be greatly alarmed, for we noted him often, when by
doubling he had temporarily thrown off the dogs, squat himself down,
and throw his long ears back in the direction of the sound that had
been pursuing him; and when the dogs straightened upon his trail, and
approached where he sat, he would bound nimbly away among the thick
bushes to double on them again.
We called off the dogs and passed on to float along under the shadow
of the forest trees and the hills, and take an occasional trout by way
of experiment among the broken rocks along the shore. We had
dispatched Cullen to the shanty to prepare dinner for us by six
o'clock, at which hour we were to be at home. Cullen had promised, to
use his own expression, "to spread himself" in the preparation of this
meal, and he kept his promise. On our return, we found a sirloin of
moose roasted to a turn, a stake of bear-meat broiled on the coals, a
stew of jerked venison, and as pleasant a dish of fried trout and pork
as an epicure could desire. Our appetites were keen, and we did ample
justice to his cookery. This was one of the most delightful evenings
that I have ever spent in the northern woods. There was such a calm
resting upon all things, such an impress of repose upon forest and
lake, such a cheerful quiet and serenity all around us, that one could
scarcely refrain from rejoicing aloud in the beauty and the glory of
the hour. As the sun sank to his rest behind the western hills, and
the twilight began to gather in the forest and over the lake, the moon
rose over the eastern high lands, walking with a queenly step up into
the sky, casting a long line of brilliant light across the waters,
showing the shadows of the mountains in bold outline in the depths
below, and paling the stars by her brightness above. We all felt that
we were recruiting in strength so rapidly in these mountain regions,
where the air was so bracing and pure, under the influence of
exercise, simple diet, natural sleep, and the absence of the labors
and cares of business, that we were contented, notwithstanding the
monotony that began to mark our everyday proceedings.
"I have been listening," said Spalding, as we sat upon the rude
benches in front of our camp-fire, indulging in our usual season of
smoking after our meals, "to the song of the crickets in those rude
jams, and they call up sad, yet pleasant memories from the long past;
of the old log house, the quiet fire-place, the crane in the jam, the
great logs blazing upon the hearth of a cold winter evening, the house
dog sleeping quietly in the corner, and the cat nestled confidingly
between his feet. Oh! the days of old! the days of old! These crickets
call back with these memories the circle that gathered around the
hearth of my home, when I was young. Father, mother, brothers,
sisters, playmates, and friends. How quietly some of them grew old and
ripe, and then dropped into the grave. How quietly others stole away
in their youth to the home of the dead, and how the rest have drifted
away on the currents of life and are lost to me in the mists and
shadows of time. Even the home and the hearth are gone; they
'Battled with time and slow decay,'
until at last they were wiped out from the things that are. The song
of the peepers is a pleasant memory, and comes welling up with a
thousand cherished recollections of our vanished youth; but the song
of the cricket that made its home in the jams of the great stone
fire-place is pleasanter, and the memories that come floating back
with his remembered lay are pleasanter still. He was always there. He
was not silent, like the out-door insect, through the spring month and
the cold of winter, piping only in sadness when the still autumnal
evenings close in their brightness and beauty over the earth; but he
sang always, and his chirrup was heard at all seasons. In the winter
the fire on the hearth warmed him; in the summer he had a cool resting
place, and he was cheerful and merry through all the long year. And
this reminds me of an anecdote of a venerable minister, who passed
years ago to his rest. He was a Scotchman, and when preaching to his
own congregation at Salem, in Washington comity, he indulged in broad
Scotch, which to those who were accustomed to it was exceedingly
pleasant. I was a boy then, and was returning with my father from a
visit to Vermont. We stopped over the Sabbath at Salem, and attended
worship in the neat little church of that pleasant village. There were
no railroads in those days. The iron horse had not yet made his
advent, and the scream of the steam whistle had never startled the
echoes that dwell among the gorges of the Green Mountain State. Oh!
Progress! Progress! I have travelled that same route often since, more
than once within the year, and I flew over in an hour what was the
work of all that cold winter day that brought us at night to that neat
little village of Salem. I thought, as I dashed with a rush over the
road I once travelled so leisurely, how change was written upon
everything; how time and progress had obliterated all the old
landmarks, leaving scarcely anything around which memory could cling.
Well! well! it is so everywhere. All over the world, change,
improvement, progress are the words. The venerable minister, for his
locks were grey, and time had ploughed deep furrows down his cheeks,
and draws palpable lines across his brow, was, as my memory paints
him, the personification of earnestness, sincerity and truth. The text
and the drift of the sermon I have forgotten, save the little fragment
that fixed itself in my memory by the singularity of the figure by
which he illustrated his meaning. He was speaking of the operation of
the Holy Spirit upon the human heart, and how gently it won men from
their sinful ways. He said, 'It was not boisterous, like the rush of
the tempest; it was not fierce, like the lightning; it was not loud,
like the thunder; but it was a still sma' voice, like a wee cricket in
the wa's.' I regard the cricket that chirruped in the wall as an
institution. One of the past to be sure, swept away by the current of
progress, whose course is onward always; over everything, obliterating
everything, hurling the things of today into history, or burying them
in eternal oblivion. In this country there is nothing fixed, nothing
stationary, and never has been since the first white man swung his axe
against the outside forest tree; since the first green field was
opened up to the sunlight from the deep shadows of the old forests
that had stood there, grand, solemn, and boundless since this
world was first thrown from the hand of God. There will be nothing
fixed for centuries to come. The tide of progress will sweep onward in
the future as it has done in the past. Onward is the great watchword
of America, and American institutions; onward and onward, over the
ancient forests; onward, over the log-houses that stood in the van of
civilization; over the great fire-places; over the cricket in the
wall; over the old house dog that slept in the corner; over the loved
faces that clustered around the blazing hearth in the days of our
childhood; over everything primitive, everything, my friends, that you
and I loved, when we were little children, and that comes drifting
along down on the current of memory--bright visions of the returnless
past. Ah, well! it is best that it should be so. It is best that the
world should move on; that there should be no pause, no halting in the
onward march. What are we that the earth should stand still at our
bidding, or pause to contemplate our tears? Dust to dust is the great
law, but so long as a phoenix rises from the ashes of decay, what
right have we to murmur? Time may desolate and destroy, but man can
build up and beautify. True, his works perish as he perishes, but new
works and new men are rising forever to fill, and more than fill, the
vacancies and desolations of the past. Go ahead then, world! Sweep
along, Progress! Mow away, Time! Tear down temple and stronghold;
sweep away the marble palace and log-house! sweep away infancy and
youth, manhood and old age; wipe out old memories, and pass the sponge
over cherished recollections. The energy and the ingenuity of man are
an over-match even for time. From the ruins of the past, from the
desolations of decay, new structures will rise, and a new harvest,
more abundant than the old, will spring up from the stubble over which
Time's sickle has passed. Recuperation is a law stronger than decay,
and it is written all over the face of the earth."