A SURPRISE--A SERENADE--A VISIT FROM STRANGERS--AN
INVITATION TO BREAKFAST--A FASHIONABLE HOUR AND A
BOUNTIFUL BILL OF FARE.
The evening was calm, and the lake slept in stirless beauty before us.
The shadows of the mountains reached far out from the shore, lieing
like a dark mantle upon the surface of the waters, above and beneath
which the stars twinkled and glowed like the bright eyes of seraphs
looking down from the arches above, and up from the depths below. The
moon in her brightness sailed majestically up into the sky, throwing
her silver light across the bosom of the lake; millions of fireflies
flashed their tiny torches along the reedy shore; the solemn voices of
the night birds came from out the forest; the call of the raccoon and
the answer, the hooting of the owl, and the low murmur of the leaves,
stirred by the light breeze that moved lazily among the tree-tops, old
familiar music to us, were heard. This latter sound is always heard,
even in the stillest and calmest nights. There may be no ripple upon
the water; it may be moveless and smooth as a mirror, no breath of air
may sweep across its surface, and yet in the old forest among the
tree-tops, there is always that low ceaseless murmur, a soft
whispering as if the spirits of the woods were holding, in hushed
voices, communion together. We had retired for the night under the
cover of our tents. My companion had sunk into slumber, and I was just
in that dreamy state, half sleeping and half awake, which constitutes
the very paradise of repose, when there came drifting across the lake
the faint and far off strains of music, which, to my seeming, exceeded
in sweetness anything I had ever heard. They came so soft and
melodious, floating so gently over the water, and dying away so
quietly in the old woods, that I could scarce persuade myself of their
reality. For a while I lay luxuriating as in the delusion of a
pleasant dream, as though the melody that was abroad on the air was
the voices of angels chanting their lullaby into the charmed ear of
the sleeper. Presently, Smith raised his head, supporting his cheek
upon his hand, his elbow resting upon the ground, and after listening
for a moment, opened his eyes in bewilderment exclaiming, as he looked
in utter astonishment about him, "What, in the name of all that is
mysterious, is that?"
Spalding and the Doctor followed, and their amazement was equalled
only by their admiration when
"Oft in the stilly night"
came stealing in matchless harmony over the water, "A serenade from
the Naiads, by Jupiter!" exclaimed Smith.
"A concert, by the Genii of the waters!" cried the
Doctor.
"Hush!" said Spalding, "we are trespassing upon fairy
domain; the spirits of these old woods, these mountains and
rock-bound lakes, are abroad, and well may they carol in
their joyousness in a night like this."
In a little while the music changed, and
"Come o'er the moonlight sea"
came swelling over the lake. And again it changed and
"Come mariner down in the deep with me"
went gently and swiftly abroad on the air. The music
ceased for a moment, and then two manly voices, of great
depth and power, came floating to our ears to the words:
"'Farewell! Farewell! To thee, Araby's daughter,'
Thus warbled a Perl, beneath the deep sea,
'No pearl ever lay under Onan's dark water,
More pure in its shell than thy spirit in thee.'"
"That's flesh and blood, at least," exclaimed the Doctor, "and I
propose to ascertain who are treating as to this charming serenade in
the stillness of midnight."
We went down to the margin of the lake, and a few rods from the shore
lay a little craft like our own, in which were seated two gentlemen,
the one with a flute and the other with a violin. They had seen our
campfire from their shanty on the other side of the lake, and had
crossed over to surprise us with the melody of human music. And
pleasantly indeed it sounded in the stillness and repose of that
summer night in that wild region. The echoes that dwell among those
old forests, those hills and beautiful lakes, had never been startled
from their slumbers by such sounds before, and right merrily they
carried them from hill to hill, and through the old woods, and over
the calm surface of that sleeping lake, and with a joyousness, too,
that told how welcome they were among those wild and primeval things.
After listening to their music for half an hour, we invited our new
friends ashore. We found them to be two young gentlemen from
Philadelphia, who had just graduated at one of the Eastern colleges,
and who had concluded to spend a month among these mountains and
lakes, before entering upon the study of the profession to which they
were to devote themselves. They had been close friends from their
childhood, and room-mates during their collegiate course. They had
cultivated their taste for music, until few mere amateurs could equal
their skill upon their respective instruments, or in harmony of voice.
They were highly intelligent and courteous gentlemen, and if their
future shall equal the promise of the present, they will make their
mark in the world. We accepted, at parting, their invitation to
breakfast with them on the morrow, and at one o'clock they left us to
return to their shanty over the lake. We sent one of our boatmen to
row them home; and as they started across the water, they treated us
to a concert to which it was pleasant to listen. There is something
surpassingly sweet in the music of the flute and violin in the hands
of skillful performers; and yet, to my thinking, it falls far short of
the melody of the human voice. I have listened to some of the most
celebrated singers, and of the most distinguished performers, but it
appears to me now, that I never, on any other occasion, heard the
melody of the human voice, or instrumental music half so enchanting,
as that which came floating over the lake on that calm summer night.
There was a volume and compass about it which can never be reached in
a concert room. It was not loud, but it seemed to fill all the air
with its sweetness. It came over the senses like a pleasant dream, as
it went swelling up to the hills that skirted the lake, floating away
over the water, and dying away in lengthened cadence in the old
forests. Every other sound was hushed; the voices of the night-birds
were stilled; even the frogs along the shore suspended their
bellowing, and all nature seemed listening to the new harmony that
thus fell like enchantment upon the repose of midnight. The music grew
fainter and fainter as it receded, until only an occasional strain,
wavy and dream-like, came creeping like the voice of a spirit over the
water, and then it was lost in the distance. The frogs resumed their
roaring, the night-birds lifted up their voices; the raccoon called to
his fellow, and was answered away off in the forest; the pile-driver
hammered away at his stake, the old owl hooted solemnly from his
perch, and we retired to our tents to talk over the romance of our
serenade, and to dream of Ole Bull and the Swedish Nightingale.
The morning broke bright and balmy. A pleasant breeze swept lazily
over the lake, lifting the thin mist that hung like a veil of gauze
above the water. We left our tents standing, and crossed over to the
shanty of our friends of the previous evening to breakfast. We found
them living like princes. Their two boatmen had built them a log
shanty; open in front, and covered with bark so as to be impervious to
the rain, while within was a luxurious bed of boughs. Around the
campfire were benches of hewn slabs, and a table of the same material.
A few rods from the door a beautiful spring came bubbling up into a
little basin of pure white sand, the water of which was limpid and
cold almost as ice-water. They had been here for a week, hunting and
fishing. They had employed their leisure in jerking the venison they
had taken, of which they had some four or five bushels, and which they
intended to take home with them, to serve, together with the skins of
the deer they had slain, as trophies of their success.
They received us cordially, and we sat down to a breakfast, which, for
variety, at least, rivalled the elaborate preparations of the Astor or
the St. Nicholas; albeit, the cookery, as an abstract fact, might have
been of the simplest. We had venison-steak, pork, ham, jerked venison
stew, fresh trout, broiled partridge, cold roast duck, a fricassee of
wood rabbits, and broiled pigeon upon our table, coming in courses,
or piled up helter-skelter on great platters of birch bark, some on
tin plates, and now and then a choice bit on a chip! We had coffee,
and tea, and the purest of spring water, by way of beverage, and truth
compels me to admit, that under the advice of the Doctor, a drop or
two of Old Cognac may have been added by way of relish, or to temper
the effect of a hearty meal upon the delicate stomachs of some of the
guests. We were exceedingly fashionable in our time for breakfasting
this morning, and it was eleven o'clock before we rose from table. The
sun was travelling through a cloudless sky, and his brightness lay
like a mantle of glory upon the water, while his heat gave to the deep
shadows of the old trees, whose long arms with their clustering
foliage were interlocked above us, a peculiar charm. The description
which we gave of the beautiful lake we had left the day before, the
story of the moose and the bear we had killed, together with our
quit-claim of the shanty we had, inhabited, brought our friends to the
conclusion to drift that way for a week or so.
It was amusing to hear Smith relate the manner of capturing the bear,
the glory of which achievement he had won by the tossing up of a
dollar; how he had started out alone in one of the boats with his
rifle to look into a little bay half a mile below the shanty, where be
left the rest of us sleeping after dinner; and how, as he was floating
along under the shadow of the hills, at the base of a wall of rocks
some forty feet high, rising straight up from the water, he heard
something walking just over the precipice; and how he picked up his
rifle that lay in the bottom of the boat, to be ready for any
emergency; and then how astonished he was to see a great black bear
walk out into view along the edge of the rocks above, and how
carefully he sighted him; and how, at the crack of his rifle, the
animal came tumbling down the cliff, and how quick he reloaded and
gave trim a settler in the shape of a second bullet; and how he
tugged, and strained, and lifted to get him into the boat, and how
astonished we all were when he returned with his prize to camp. While
relating this wonderful achievement, he winked at the Doctor, as much
as to say, "fair play; remember our compact; stand by me now." And the
Doctor did stand by him, boldly endorsing, with a gravity that was
refreshing, every invention of Smith's prolific imagination, on the
subject of his slaughtering the bear.
We left our new friends in the afternoon; they to start in the morning
for our old camping-ground on the lake above, and we down the stream
on our retreat from the wilderness. We came back to our tents, after
securing a string of trout from the mouth of the little stream across
the bay. Our evening meal was over, and we sat around our campfire
just as the sun was hiding himself behind the western highlands, when,
from a little hollow in the forest behind us, and but a short way off,
we heard the call of a raccoon. Martin started over the ridge with the
dogs, and in five minutes he hallooed to us to come with our rifles
for he had the animal "treed," and ready to be brought down at "a
moment's warning." We went over to where he was, and sure enough, away
up in the top of a tall birch, sat his coonship, looking quietly down
upon the dogs that were baying at the foot of the tree.
"Gentlemen," said Spalding, "we will not all fire at this animal as we
did at Smith's bear. One bullet is enough for him, and if he gets down
among us, I think six men will be a match for one 'coon,' so we need
not be inhuman through a sense of danger. Whose shot shall he be?"
"I move that Spalding have the first shot," said Smith; and the motion
was carried.
"Do I understand you, gentlemen," Spalding inquired, adjusting
himself, as if preparing to bring down the game, "that I am to have
this first shot, and that no one is to fire until I have taken a fair
shot at him?"
We all answered, "Yes."
"Are you perfectly agreed in this, and do you all pledge yourselves to
abide the compact?" Spalding inquired again, bringing his rifle to a
present, and looking up at the game.
"All agreed," we answered, with one voice.
"Very well, gentlemen," said Spalding, shouldering his rifle, "there's
one life saved anyhow. That animal up there has been in great peril,
but he's safe now. I don't intend to fire at him sooner than ten
o'clock to-morrow, and if I understand our arrangements, we leave
here in the morning at six."
"Sold, by Moses!" exclaimed Martin, as he broke out into a roar that
you might have heard a mile; "I thought the Judge meant something, by
the time he wasted in talkin' and gettin' ready to shoot."
"Spalding," inquired Smith, "do you expect us to keep this compact?"
"Of course I do," he replied; "did any of us peach when you opened so
rich in the matter of your bear? Did any one break his compact with
you on that subject? Absolve us from our agreement about the bear, and
you may take my shot at that animal up in the tree."
"I wasn't born yesterday," Smith replied, "and I can't afford to
exchange the glory of killing the bear in my own way, and baring three
responsible endorsers, for the honor of shooting a coon. Gentlemen,"
he continued, "I move that that coon be permitted to take his own time
to descend from his perch up in the tree-top there;" and the motion
was carried unanimously.