The birth-place and parentage of Punch are involved in some doubt,--a

fate he shares with several of the world's other heroes, ancient and

modern. Accounts differ; and as he has not chosen to settle the question

autobiographically, we follow substantially the narrative[4]--that ought

to be true; for, mythical or historical, it appropriately localizes and

fitly circumstances the nativity of the humorist of the age.

In 1841, Mark Lemon, a writer of considerable ability, was the landlord

of the Shakspeare Head, Wych Street, London. A tavern with such a

publican and such a name was, of course, frequented by a circle of wits,

with whom, in the year just mentioned, originated "Punch." Lemon (how

could there be punch without a lemon?) has been the editor from the

outset. From which of the knot of good fellows the bright idea of the

unique journal first emanated does not appear. The paternity has been

ascribed to Douglas Jerrold. Its name might have been suggested by the

place of its birth. If so, it at once lost all associations with the

ladle and the bowl, and received a wider and better interpretation. The

hero of the famous puppet-show was chosen for the typical presiding

genius and sponsor of the novel enterprise. And there is no neater piece

of allegorical writing in our language than the introductory article of

the first number, wherein is exquisitely shadowed forth "the moral" of

the work, "Punch,"--suggestive of that "graver puppetry," the "visual

and oral cheats," "by which mankind are cajoled." Punch, the exemplar of

boldness and philosophic self-control, is the quaint embodiment of the

intention to pursue a higher object than the amusement of thoughtless

crowds,--an intention which has been adhered to with remarkable

fidelity. The first number appeared July 17th, and the serial has lived

over a decade and a half, and grown to the bulk of thirty-four or

thirty-five volumes. It was not, however, built in a day. It knew a

rickety infancy and hours of peril, and owes its rescue from neglect and

starvation, its subsequent and constantly increasing prosperity, to the

enterprising publishers,--Bradbury and Evans,--who nursed and

resuscitated it at the critical moment. Well-known contributors to the

letter-press have been Jerrold, Albert Smith, à Beckett, Hood, and

Thackeray; whilst Henning, Leech, Meadows, Browne, Forrester, Gilbert,

and Doyle have acted as designers. Of these men of letters and art,

Lemon and Leech, it is said, alone remain; some of the others broke off

their connection with the work at different periods, and some have

passed away from earth. Their places have been supplied by the Mayhews,

Tom Taylor, Angus Reach, and Shirley Brooks, and the historical painter,

Tenniel. These changes have mostly been made behind the scenes; the

impersonality of the paper--to speak after the Hibernian style--being

personified by Mr. Punch himself,--ostensibly, by a well-preserved and

well-managed conceit, its sole conductor through all its vicissitudes

and during the whole of its brilliant career. Whatever becomes of

correspondents, Punch never resigns and never dies. The baton never

falls from his grasp. He sits in his arm-chair, the unshaken Master of

the Revels,--though thrones totter, kings abdicate, and revolutions

convulse empires. Troubles may disturb his household; but thereby the

public does not suffer. He still lives,--immortal in his funny and

fascinating idiosyncrasies.

The ingredients of Punch, the instrumentalities by which he has won fame

and victories, are almost too multifarious for enumeration. All the

merry imps which beset Leigh Hunt, when about to compile selections from

the comic poets, belong to Punch's retinue. Doubles of Similes,

Buffooneries of Burlesques, Stalkings of Mock Heroics, Stings in the

Tails of Epigrams, Glances of Innuendoes, Dry Looks of Irony,

Corpulencies of Exaggerations, Ticklings of Mad Fancies, Claps on the

Backs of Horse Plays, Flounderings of Absurdities, Irresistibilities of

Iterations, Significances of Jargons, Wailings of Pretended Woes,

Roarings of Laughter, and Hubbubs of Animal Spirits, all appear, singly

or in companies, to flash, ripple, dance, shoot, effervesce, and

sparkle, in prose and verse, vignettes, sketches, or elaborate pictures,

on the ever-shifting and always entertaining pages of the London

Charivari. Of one prominent form of the exhibition of this inexhaustible

arsenal, namely, _the illustrations_, special notice is to be taken.

These, notwithstanding their oddity, extravagance, and burlesqueness, by

reason of their grace, finish, and good taste, frequently get into the

proximity of the fine arts. This elevation of sportive drawing is mainly

to be put to the credit of manly John Leech,--"the very Dickens of the

pencil." He and his associates have proved that the humorous side of

things may be limned with mirth-provoking truth, and that vices and

follies may be depicted with a vigorous and accurate crayon, without

coarseness or vulgarity, or pandering to depraved sentiments. Herein is

most commendable success. Punch's gallery--with but few, if any

exceptions--may be opened to the purest eyes. In it there is much of

Hogarthian genius, without anything that needs a veil. In alluding to

the agencies of Punch, it would be doing him great injustice to leave

the impression that they are all of a mirthful character. Often is he

tearfully, if at the same time smilingly, pathetic. Seriousness,

certainly, is not his forte, and he is not given to homilies and moral

essays. Usually he gilds homoeopathic pills of wisdom with a thick

coating of humor. Yet, now and then, his vein is an earnest vein, and he

speaks from the abundance of a tender and deeply-moved heart. This is

especially true of some of his poetical effusions, which rank high among

the best fugitive pieces of the times. That Hood's "Song of the Shirt"

was an original contribution to his columns is almost enough of itself

to show that Punch, like some other famous comedians, can start the

silent tear, as well as awaken peals of laughter. And this is but one of

many instances in point that might be cited. In his productions you

often meet golden sentences of soberest counsel, beautiful tributes to

real worth, stirring appeals for the oppressed, and touching eulogies of

the loved and lost.

Thus much of the history and machinery of Punch. His salutary influence

is to be spoken of next. But before venturing upon what may seem

indiscriminate praise, let it be confessed that our hero is not without

his weaknesses. Nothing human is perfect, and Punch is very human. The

good Homer sometimes nods; so doth the good Punch. He does not always

perform equally well,--keep up to his highest level. If he never

entirely disappoints his audience, he fails sometimes to shoot the

brightest arrows of his quiver and hit his mark so as to make the

scintillating splinters fly. Now and then he has been slightly dull,

forgotten himself and his manners, gone too far, got into the wrong box,

missed seizing the auricular appendage of the right pig, run things into

the ground,--blundered as common and uncommon people will. Under these

general charges we must, painful as it is to speak of the errors of a

favorite, enter a few specifications.

The writer of the prospectus, before referred to, seems to have had a

premonitory fear--growing out of his bad treatment of Judy--that Punch

in his new vocation might fail of uniform gentlemanliness towards the

ladies; and time has shown that there were some little grounds for the

apprehension. The droll hunchback's virulent dislike of mothers-in-law

seems the nursed-up wrath of an unhappy personal experience. Vastly

amusing as were the "Caudle Lectures," it is a question whether

excessive indulgence in the luxury of satire upon a prolific theme did

not infuse into them over-bitter exaggeration, not favorable to the

culture of domestic felicity. Did these celebrated curtain-homilies

stand alone, their sharp and unrivalled humor might save Punch from the

censure of being once in a while the least bit of a Bluebeard. But, for

the most gallant gentleman, on the whole, in the United Kingdom, he is

not so invariable in fairness towards the fair as could be wished. The

follies and frivolities of absurd fashions are his proper game; and he

does brave service in hunting them down. Still, his warfare against

crinoline, small bonnets, and other feminine fancies in dress, has been

tiresomely inveterate. Even Mr. Punch had better, as a general rule,

leave the management of the female toilette to those whom it most nearly

concerns. But in his case, the scolding or pouting should not be

inexorable; for in one way he atones amply for all his impertinence. He

paints his young ladies pretty and graceful, being, with all his sly

satire, evidently fond of the sex, the juvenile portion at least.

Surely, a Compliment so uniform and tasteful must more than outweigh his

teasing and banter with the amiable subjects of both.

Of Punch as a local politician we are hardly fair judges, and it may be

a mistaken suspicion that he has occasionally given up to party what was

meant for mankind. With respect to "foreign affairs," we shall be safer

in saying, that, with all his cosmopolitanism, he is a shade or two

John-Bullish. Thanking him for his fraternal cordiality towards

"Jonathan," we must doubt if it will do to trust implicitly his reports

and impressions of men and things across the Channel. That he is more

than half right, however, when lingering remains of insular prejudice

tinge his solicitude to save his native land from entangling alliances,

and keep its free government from striking hands with despotism, we

incline to believe; and we honor him that his loyalty is not mere

adulation, but duly seasoned with the democratic principle that would

have the stability of the throne the people's love,--the people being of

infinitely greater importance than the propping-up or the propagation of

royal houses. In one sad direction Punch's patriotism and humanity, it

seems to us, were wrathful exaggerations, open to graver objection than

yielding unconsciously to a natural bias. In his zeal against terrible

outrages, he forgot that two wrongs never make a right. We refer to his

course on the Indian Revolt. From the way he raised his voice for war,

almost exterminating, and with no quarter, one would think the British

rule in the East had been the rule of Christian love,--that Sepoys and

other subjects had known the reigning power only as patriarchal

kindness,--and so, without excuse, a highly civilized, justly and

tenderly treated people, suddenly, and without provocation, became

rebellious devils, and rebellious only because they were devils. In the

hour of horror-struck indignation, was not Punch too blood-thirsty,

vindictive, unjust, and oblivious to the truth of history, that the

insurgents are poor superstitious heathens, whom a selfish policy may

have kept superstitious and heathenish? True, he was the witness of

broken hearts and desolate hearth-stones at home, and daily heard of

hellish atrocities inflicted on the women and children abroad,--enough

to crush out for the moment every thought but the thought of vengeance.

Yet, even at such a crisis, he should have remembered, that England, in

strict accordance with the stern, unrelenting logic of events, having

sown to the wind, might therefore have reaped the whirlwind. It is among

the mysteries of Providence, that retributive justice, when visiting

nations, often involves innocent victims,--but it is retributive justice

still; and tracing up rightly the chain of causes and effects, it may

be that the tragedies of Delhi and Lucknow are attributable, to say the

least, as much to the avarice of the dominant as to the depravity of the

subjugated race. The bare possibility that this might be the truth a

philosopher like Punch ought not to have overlooked, in the suddenness

and fire of his anger.

Finally, Punch is no ascetic, but quite the reverse. He cannot be

expected, any more than his namesake, the beverage, to go down with the

apostles of temperance. He is a convivialist,--moderately so,--and no

teetotaler. He evidently prefers roast-beef and brown-stout to

bran-bread and cold water, and has gone so far as to sing the praises of

pale-ale. He thinks the laboring classes should have their pot of beer,

if the nobility and gentry are to eat good dinners and take airings in

Hyde Park, on Sundays. He is a Merry Englishman, as to the

stomach,--and, like a Merry Englishman, enjoys good living. There is no

denying this fact; but here is the whole front of his offending.

Remember that he was born at the Shakspeare's Head, and has had a

publican for his right-hand man.

These are defects, it may be; and yet not by its defects are we to judge

of a work of Art. Of that generous and just canon Punch should have the

full benefit. Try him by that, and he has abounding virtues to flood and

conceal with lustrous and far-raying light his exceptional errors. To

brief notices of some of these--regretting the want of room to enlarge

upon them as it would be pleasant to do--we gladly turn.

Punch is to be loved and cherished as the maker of mirth for the

million. Saying this, we do not propose to go into an argument to

excuse, justify, or recommend hilarity for its own sake or its medicinal

effects on overtasked bodies and souls. Desperate attempts have been

made to prove the innocence of fun, and the allowableness of wit and

humor. Assuming or conceding that the jocose elements or capacities of

human nature need apology and defence, very nice distinctions have been

drawn, and very ingenious sophistry employed, to prove that the best of

people may, within certain limits, crack jokes, or laugh at jokes

cracked for them. These efforts to accommodate stern dogmas to that

pleasant stubborn fact in man's constitution, his irresistible craving

for play, and irresistible impulse to laugh at whatever is really

laughable, are about as necessary as would be an essay maintaining the

harmlessness of sunshine. The _fact_ has priority over the dogmas, and

is altogether too strong to need the patronizing special-pleading they

suggest. Instead of going into the metaphysics of the question about the

lawfulness and blamelessness of humor shown or humor relished, suppose

we cut the knot by a delightful illustration of the compatibility of

humor with the highest type of character.

No one will deny the sincerity, earnestness, devotedness, sublime

consecration to duty, of the heroine of the hospitals of Scutari. No one

will dispute the practical piety of the gentle, but fearless, the

tenderhearted, but truly strong-minded woman, who made the lazar-house

her home for months together,--ministered to its sick, miserable, and

ignorant inmates,--put, by the unostentatious exercise of indomitable

faith and unswerving self-sacrifice, the love and humanity of the Gospel

in direct and strongest contrast with the barbarisms of war. No one will

deny or dispute this now. That heroic English maiden, whose shadow, as

it fell on his pillow, the rude soldier kissed with almost idolatrous

gratitude, has won, without thought of seeking it, and without the loss

of a particle of humility and womanly delicacy, the loving admiration of

all Christendom. Well, she

"whose presence honors queenly guests,

Who wears the noblest jewel of her time,

And leaves her race a nobler, in her name,"

shall be the sufficient argument here,--especially as none have paid

finer, more delicate, or truer tributes to her virtue than Punch. In a

recent sketch of her career, accompanying her portrait in the gallery

of noted women, this sentence is given from a descriptive letter:--"Her

general demeanor is quiet and rather reserved; still, I am much

mistaken, if she is not gifted with a very lively sense of the

ridiculous." Here is a delightful, and, we doubt not, true intimation.

Since the springs of pathos lie very near the springs of humor, in the

richest souls, the fair Florence must, in moments of weariness, have

glanced with merry eyes over the pages of Punch, or handed, with smiling

archness, his inimitable numbers to her wan and wounded patients, kindly

to cheat them into momentary forgetfulness of their agonies. If this

were so, who shall say that the use or enjoyment of wit is not as right

as it is natural? None, unless it be the narrowest of bigots,--like

those who objected to this heroic lady's mission of mercy to the East,

because she did not echo their sectarian shibboleths, and would not ask

whether a good nurse were Protestant or Romanist.

We may repeat, therefore, as a prime excellence of Punch, that he is the

maker of mirth for the million. He is mainly engaged in furnishing

titillating amusement,--and he furnishes an article, not only

marketable, but necessary. All work makes Jack a dull boy,--and not

infrequently an unhappy, if not bad boy,--whether Jack be in the pulpit,

the counting-room, the senate-house, or digging potatoes; and what is

true of Jack is equally true of Gill, his sister, sweetheart, or wife.

That Punch every week puts a girdle of smiles round the earth,

interrupts the serious business of thousands by his merry visits, and

with his ludicrous presence delights the drawing-room, cheers the study,

and causes side-shakings in the kitchen,--entitles him to be called a

missionary of good. Grant this,--then allow, on the average, five

minutes of merriment to each reader of each issue of Punch,--then

multiply these 5 minutes by--say 50,000, and this again by 52 weeks, and

this, finally, by 17 years, and thus cipher out, if you have a tolerably

capacious imagination, the amount of happiness which has flowed and

spread, like a river of gladness, through the world, from that

inexhaustible, bubbling, and sparkling fountain, at 85, Fleet Street,

London.

Punch is the advocate of true manliness. Velvet robes and gilded

coronets go for nothing with him, if not worn by muscular integrity; and

fustian is cloth-of-gold, in his eyes, when it covers a stout heart in

the right place. He has no mercy on snobbism, flunkeyism, or dandyism.

He whips smartly the ignoble-noble fops of the

household-troops,--parading them on toy-horses, and making them, with

suicidal irony, deplore the hardships of comrades in the Crimea. He

sneers at the loungers, and the delicate, dissipated _roués_ of the

club-house,--though their names were once worn by renowned ancestors,

and are in the peerage. Fast young men are to him befooled prodigals,

wasting the wealth of life in profitless living. He is not, however, an

anchorite, or hard upon youth. On the contrary, he is an indulgent old

fellow, and too sagacious to expect the wisdom of age from those

sporting their freedom-suits. Still, he has no patience with the foppery

whose whole existence advertises fine clothes, patronizes taverns,

saunters along fashionable promenades, and ogles opera-dancers. In this

connection, his hits at "the rising generation" will be called to mind.

Punch has found out that in England there are no boys now,--only male

babies and precocious men;--no growing up,--only a leap from the cradle,

robe, and trousers to the habiliments and manners of a false manhood.

Punch has found out and frequently illustrates this fact, and furnishes

a series of pictures of Liliputians aping the questionable doings of

their elders. It is observable, however, that he confines these

portraits of precocity chiefly to one sex. Whether this be owing to his

innate delicacy and habitual gallantry, or to the English custom of

keeping little girls--and what we should call large girls also--at home

longer, and under more restraint, than in our republic, we cannot say.

Were he on this side of the Atlantic, he might possibly find occasion to

be less partial in the use of his reproving fun. Young misses seem to be

growing scarce, and young ladies becoming alarmingly numerous. The early

date at which the cry comes for long skirts, parties, balls, and late

hours, for lace, jewelry, and gold watches, threatens to rob our homes

of one of their sweetest charms,--the bright presence of joyous, gentle,

and modest lasses, willing to be happy children for as many years as

their mothers were, on their way to maidenhood and womanhood.

Punch is a reformer,--and of the right type, too; not destructive,

declamatory, vituperative; not a monomaniac, snarly, and

ill-natured,--as if zeal in riding a favorite hobby excused

exclusiveness of soul and any amount of bad temper. He would not

demolish the social system and build on its ruins a new one; being

clearly of the opinion that the growths of ages and the doings of six

thousands of years are to be respected,--that progress means improvement

upon the present, rather than overthrow of the entire past. Calm,

hopeful, cheerful, and patient, he is at the same time bold and

uncompromising, and a bit radical into the bargain. In his own delicious

way, he has been no mean advocate of liberal principles and measures. He

has argued for the repeal of the corn and the modification of the game

laws, the softening of the cruelties of the criminal code, and the fair

administration of law for all orders and conditions of men and women. He

has had no respect for ermine, lawn, or epaulets, in his assaults upon

the monopolies and sinecures of Church and State, circumlocution

offices, nepotism, patronage, purchase, and routine, in army or navy. He

wants the established religion to be religious, not a cover for

aristocratic preferments and dog-in-the-manger laziness,--and government

administered for the whole people, and not merely dealing out

treasury-pap and fat offices for the pensioned few. Punch is loyal,

sings lustily, "God Save the Queen," and stands by the Constitution. He

is a true-born Englishman, and patriotic to the backbone; but none are

too high in place or name for his merciless ridicule and daring wit, if

they countenance oppressive abuses. It is a tall feather in his

fool's-cap, that his fantastic person is a dread to evil-doers on

thrones, in cabinets, and red-tape offices. Crowned tyrants, bold

usurpers, and proud statesmen are sensitive, like other mortals, to

ridicule, and know very well how much easier it is to cannonade

rebellious insurgents than to put down the general laugh, and that the

point of a joke cannot be turned by the point of the bayonet. "Punch"

was seized in Paris on account of the caricature of the "Sphinx," but

after twenty-four hours' consideration the order of confiscation was

rescinded, and the irreverent publication now lies upon the tables of

the reading-rooms. So, iron power is not beyond the reach of the shafts

of wit; once make it ridiculous, and it may continue to lie dreaded, but

will cease to be respected.

Limits permitting, it would be pleasant to refer at length to various

other marked graces of Punch,--such, for example, as his care for true

Art, by exposing to merited contempt the abortions of statuary,

painting, and architecture that come under his accurate eye,--his

concern for good letters, exhibited in fantastic parodies of

affectations, mannerisms, absurdities of plot, and vices of style in

modern poets and novelists,--his "_nil nisi bonum_," and, where there is

no "_bonum_," his silent "_nil_," of the dead, whom when living he

pursued with unrelenting raillery,--his cool, eclectic judgments,

freedom from extremes, and other manifestations of clear-headedness and

refined sentiment, glimmering and shooting through his rollicking

drollery, quick wit, and quiet humor. But we must pass them by, to

emphasize a quality that out-tops and outshines them all,--his humanity.

This is Mr. Punch's specialty, generating his purest fun and

consecrating his versatile talents to highest ends. Wherever he catches

meanness, avarice, selfishness, force, preying upon the humble and the

weak, he is sure to give them hard knocks with his baton, or

home-thrusts with his pen and pencil. His practical kindness is

charmingly comprehensive, too. He speaks for the dumb beast, pleads for

the maltreated brutes of Smithfield Market, craves compassion for

skeleton omnibus-horses, with the same ready sympathy that he fights for

cheated fellow-mortals. In the court of public opinion, he is volunteer

counsel for all in any way defrauded or kept in bondage by pitiless

pride, barbarous policy, thoughtless luxury, or wooden-headed prejudice.

His sound ethics do not admit that the lower law of man's enactment can,

under any circumstances, override or abrogate the higher laws of God.

Consequently, he judges with unbiased, instinctive rectitude, when he

shows up in black and white the Model Republic's criminal anomaly, by

making the African Slave a companion-piece to the Greek Slave, among

"Jonathan's" contributions to the great Crystal Palace Exhibition. In

this same vein of a wide-ranging application of the Golden Rule, he is

ever on the alert to brand inhuman deeds and institutions, wherever

found. You cannot very often hit him with the "_tu quoque_" retort,

insinuate that he lives in a house of glass, or charge him with visiting

his condemnation upon distant iniquities whilst winking at iniquities of

equal magnitude directly under his nose.

Punch is no Mrs. Jellyby, brimful of zeal for Borrio boolas in far-off

Africas, and utterly stolid to disorders and distresses under his own

roof. Proud of the glory, he feels and confesses the shame of England;

and the grinding injustice of her caste-system, aristocracy, and

hierarchy does not escape the lash of his rebuke. He is the friend of

the threadbare curate, performing the larger half of clerical duty and

getting but a tittle of the tithes,--of the weary seamstress, wetting

with midnight tears the costly stuff which must be ready to adorn

heartless rank and fashion at to-morrow's pageant,--of the pale

governess, grudgingly paid her pittance of salary without a kind word to

sweeten the bitterness of a lonely lot. He is the friend even of the

workhouse juveniles, and, as their champion, castigates with cutting

sarcasm and stinging scorn the reverend and honorable guardians, who,

just as, full of hope, they had reached the door of the theatre,

prohibited a band of these wretched orphans from availing of a

kind-hearted manager's invitation to an afternoon performance of "Jack

and the Bean-Stalk." Truly, Punch is more than half right, as, in his

indignation, he declares, "It will go luckily with some four-faced

Christians, if, with the fullest belief in their own right of entry of

paradise, they are not '_stopped at the very doors_'"; and the parson,

in the case, gets but his deserts, when at his lugubrious sham-piety are

hurled stanzas like these:--

"Their little faces beamed with joy

Two miles upon their way,

As they supposed, each girl and boy,

About to see the play.

Their little cheeks with tears were wet,

As _back again_ they went,

Balked by a sanctimonious set,

Led by a Reverend Gent.

"And if such Reverend Gents as he

Could get the upperhand,

Ah, what a hateful tyranny

Would override the land!

That we may never see that time,

Down with the canting crew

That would _out of their pantomime_

Poor little children _do_!"

Punch is the friend of all who are friendless, and, with a generous

spirit of protection, gives credit to whom credit is due, whatever

conventionality, precedent, monopoly, or routine may say to the

contrary. During the Crimean War, he took care of the fame of the

rank-and-file of the army. The dispatches to Downing Street, reporting

the gallantry of titled officers, were more than matched by Punch's

imitative dispatches from the seat of war, setting forth the exploits of

Sergeant O'Brien, Corporal Stout, or Private Gubbins. He saw to it that

those who had the hardest of the fight, the smallest pay, and the

coarsest rations, should not be forgotten in the gazetting of the

heroes. Indeed, our comic friend's fellowship of soul with the humblest

members of the human family is a notable trait; it is so ready, and yet

withal so judicious. It is no part of his philosophy, as already

intimated, violently and rashly to disturb the existing order of things,

and set one class in rebellion against other classes. He simply insists

upon the recognition of the law of mutual dependence all round. This is

observable in his dealing with the vexed question of domestic service.

The prime trouble of housekeeping comes in frequently for a share of his

attention; and underneath ironical counsels, you may trace, quietly

insinuating itself into graphic sketches, the genial intent fairly to

adjust the relations between life above and life below stairs.

Accordingly, Punch sees no reason why Angelina may have a lover in the

parlor, whilst Bridget's engagement forbids her to entertain a fond

"follower" in the kitchen; and he perversely refuses to see how it can

be right for Miss Julia to listen to the soft nonsense of Captain

Augustus Fitzroy in the drawing-room, and entirely wrong for Molly, the

nursery-maid, to blush at the blunt admiration of the policeman, talking

to her down the area. Punch is independent and original in this respect.

His strange creed seems to be, that human nature _is_ human

nature,--whether, in its feminine department, you robe it in silk or

calico, and, in its male department, button a red coat over the breast

of an officer of the Guards, or put the coarse jerkin on the broad back

of the industrious toilsman. And according to this whimsical belief, he

writes and talks jocosely, but with covert common sense. His warm and

catholic humanity runs up and down the whole social scale with a

clear-sighted equity. His philanthropy is what the word literally

signifies,--the love of man as man, and because he is a man. Without

being an impracticable fanatic, advocating impossible theories, or

theories that can grow into realities only with the gradual progress of

the race,--without indulging in fanciful visions of unapproached

Utopias,--without imagining that all, wherever born and however

nurtured, can reach the same level of wealth and station,--he holds, not

merely that

"Honor and shame from no condition rise,"

but also, be the condition high or low, the worthy occupant of it, by

reason of the common humanity he shares with all above and all beneath

and all around him, has a brother's birthright to brotherly treatment,

to even-handed justice and open-handed charity.

We have taken it for granted that Punch is a household necessity and

familiar friend of our readers; and, resisting as far as possible the

besetting temptation to refer in detail to the many pictorial and

letter-press illustrations of his merits, have spoken of him as "a

representative man,"--the universally acknowledged example of the

legitimate and beneficent uses of the sportive faculties; thus

indirectly claiming for these faculties more than toleration.

The variety in human nature must somehow be brought into unity, and its

diversified, strongly contrasted elements shown to be parts of a

symmetrical and harmonious whole. The philosophy, the religion, which

overlooks or condemns any of these elements, is never satisfactory, and

fails to win sincere belief, because of its felt incompleteness. All men

have an instinctive faith that in God's plan no incontestable facts are

exceptional or needless facts. Science assumes this in regard to the

phenomena of the natural world; and, in its progressive searches,

expects to discover continual proof that all manifestations, however

opposite and contradictory, are parts of one beneficent scheme.

Accordingly, Science starts on its investigations with the conviction

that the storm is as salutary as the sunshine,--that there is utility in

what seems mere luxury,--and that Nature's loveliness and grandeur,

Nature's oddity and grotesqueness, have a substantial value, as well as

Nature's wheat-harvests. Now the same principle is to be recognized in

dealing with things spiritual. It may not be affirmed that anything

appertaining to universal consciousness--spontaneous, irresistible, as

breathing--is of itself base, and therefore to be put away; since so to

do is to question the Creative Wisdom. The work of the Infinite Spirit

must be consistent; and you might as truly charge the bright stars with

malignity as denounce as vile one faculty or capacity of the mind.

Consequently, there is a use for all forms of wit and humor.

Punch represents a genuine phase of human nature,--none the less genuine

because human nature has other and far different phases. That there is a

time to mourn does not prove there is no time to dance. Punch has his

part, and his times to play it, in the melodrama, the mixed comedy and

tragedy, of existence. What we have to do is to see that he interferes

with no other actor's _rôle_, comes upon the stage in fitting scenes,

keeps to the text and the impersonations which right principle and pure

taste assign him. His grimaces are not for the church. He may not sing

his catches when penitent souls are listening to the "Miserere," drop

his torpedo-puns when life's mystery and solemnity are pressed heavily

upon the soul,--be irreverent, profane, or vulgar. He must know and keep

his place. But he should have his place, and have it confessed; and that

place is not quite at the end of the procession of the benefactors of

the race. Punch, as we speak of him now, is but a generic name for

Protean wit and humor, well and wisely employed. As such, let Punch have

his mission; there is ample room for him and his merry doings, without

interfering with soberer agencies. _Let_ him go about tickling mankind;

it does mankind good to be tickled occasionally. Let him broaden

elongated visages; there are many faces that would be improved by

horizontal enlargement, by having the corners of the mouth curved

upward. Let him write and draw "as funny as he can"; there are dull

talking and melancholy pictures in abundance to counterbalance his

pleasantry. Let him amuse the children, relax with jocosity the

sternness of adults, and wreathe into smiles the wrinkles of old age.

Let him, in a word, be a Merry Andrew,--the patron and promoter of

frolicsomeness. To be only this is nothing to his discredit; and to

esteem him for being only this is not to pay respect to a worthless

mountebank.

But Punch is and can be something more than a caterer of sport. Kings,

in the olden time, had their jesters, who, under cover of blunt

witticisms, were permitted, to utter home-truths, which it would have

cost grave counsellors and dependent courtiers their heads to even

whisper. Punch should enjoy a similar immunity in this age,--and society

tolerate his free and smiling speech, when it would thrust out sager

monitors. If it be true that

"Fools rush in where angels fear to tread,"

something like the converse of this saying is also true. Not fools

exactly, but wisdom disguised in the motley of wit, often gains entrance

to ears deaf to angelic voices. There are follies that are to be laughed

out of their silliness and sinfulness. There are tyrants, big and

little, to be dethroned by ridicule. There are offences, proof against

appeals to conscience, that wince and vanish before keen satire. Even as

a well-aimed joke brings back good-humor to an angry mob, or makes mad

and pugnacious bullies cower and slink away from derision harder to

stand than hard knocks,--even so will a quizzical Punch be efficient as

a philanthropist, when sedate exhortations or stern warnings would fail

to move stony insensibility.

As an element in effective literature, a force in the cause of reform,

the qualities Punch personifies have been and are of no slight service.

And herein those qualities have an indefeasible title to regard. Let

there be no vinegar-faced, wholesale denunciation of them, because

sometimes their pranks are wild and overleap the fences of propriety.

Rather let appreciation of their worthiness accompany all reproving

checks upon their extravagances. Let nimble fun, explosive jokes,

festoon-faced humor, the whole tribe of gibes and quirks, every light,

keen, and flashing weapon in the armory of which Punch is the keeper, be

employed to make the world laugh, and put the world's laughter on the

side of all right as against all wrong. If this be not done, the

seriousness of life will darken into gloom, its work become slavish

tasks, and the conflict waged be a terrible conflict between grim

virtues and fiendish vices. If you could shroud the bright skies with

black tempest-clouds, burn to ashes the rainbow-hued flowers, strike

dumb the sweet melodies of the grove, and turn to stagnant pools the

silver streams,--if you could do this, thinking thereby to make earth

more of a paradise, you would be scarcely less insane than if you were

to denounce and banish all

"Quips, and cranks, and wanton wiles,

Nods, and becks, and wreathèd smiles,

Sport, that wrinkled care derides,

And laughter, holding both his sides."

FOOTNOTES:

[Footnote 4: See _Parton's Humorous Poetry_.]

THE SUBJECTIVE OF IT.

Toward the close of a dreamy, tranquil July day, a day made impressive

beyond the possible comprehension of a dweller in civilization by its

sun having risen for us over the unbroken wilderness of the Adirondack,

a mountain-land in each of whose deep valleys lies a blue lake, we, a

party of hunters and recreation-seekers, six beside our guides, lay on

the fir-bough-cushioned floor of our dark camp, passing away the little

remnant of what had been a day of rest to our guides and of delicious

idleness to ourselves. The camp was built on the bold shore of a lake

which yet wants a name worthy its beauty, but which we always, for want

of such a one, call by that which its white discoverer left

it,--Tupper's Lake,--whose waters, the untremulous mirror of the forests

and mountains around and the sky above, gleamed to us only in blue

fragments through the interstices of the leafy veil that intervened. The

forest is unbroken to the water's edge, and even out over the water

itself it stretches its firs and cedars, gray and moss-draped, with here

and there a moisture-loving white-birch, so that from the very shore one

sees only suggestive bits of distance and sky; and from where we were

lying, sky, hills, and the water below were all blue alike, and

undistinguishable alike, glimpses of a world of sunlight, which the

grateful shadow we lay in made delicious to the thought. We were

sheltered right woodsman-like;--our little house of fresh-peeled bark of

spruces, twelve feet by nine, open only to the east, on which side lay

the lake, shielded us from wind and rain, and the huge trees shut around

us so closely that no eye could pierce a pistol-shot into their glades.

There were blue-jays all about us, making the woods ring with their

querulous cries, and a single fish-hawk screamed from the blue overhead,

as he sailed round and round, watching the chances of a supper in the

lake. Between us and the water's edge, and a little to one side of the

path we had bushed out to the shore, was the tent of the guides, and

there they lay asleep, except one who was rubbing up his "man's" rifle,

which had been forgotten the night before when we came in from the hunt,

and so had gathered rust.

Three of our party were sleeping, and the others talked quietly and low,

desultorily, as if the drowsiness had half conquered us too. The

conversation had rambled round from a discussion on the respective

merits of the Sharp's and the Kentucky rifles (consequent on a trial of

skill and rifles which we had had after dinner) to Spiritualism,--led to

this last topic by my relation of some singular experiences I had met in

the way of presentiments and what seemed almost like second-sight,

during a three-months' sojourn in the woods several summers before.

There is something wonderfully exciting to the imagination in the

wilderness, after the first impression of monotony and lonesomeness has

passed away and there comes the necessity to animate this so vacant

world with something. And so the pines lift themselves grimly against

the twilight sky, and the moanings of the woods become full of meaning

and mystery. Living, therefore, summer after summer, as I had done, in

the wilderness, until there is no place in the world which seems so much

like a home to me as a bark camp in the Adirondack, I had come to be

what most people would call morbid, but what I felt to be only sensitive

to the things around, which we never see, but to which we all at times

pay the deference of a tremor of inexplicable fear, a quicker and less

deeply drawn breath, an involuntary turning of the head to see something

which we know we shall not see, yet are glad to find that we do

not,--all which things we laugh at as childish when they have passed,

yet tremble at as readily when they come again. J., who was both poet

and philosopher, singularly clear and cold in his analyses, and at the

same time of so great imaginative power that he could set his creations

at work and then look on and reason out the law of their working as

though they were not his, had wonders to tell which always passed mine

by a degree; his experiences were more various and marvellous than mine,

yet he had a reason for everything, to which I was compelled to defer

without being convinced. "Yes," said he, finally knocking out the ashes

from his meerschaum, as we rose, at the Doctor's suggestion, to take a

row out on the lake while the sun was setting,--"Yes, I believe in

_your_ kind of a 'spiritual world,'--but that it is purely subjective."

I was silenced in a moment;--this single sentence, spoken like the

expression of the experience of a lifetime, produced an effect which all

his logic could not. He had rubbed some talismanic opal, pronouncing the

spirit-compelling sentence engraved thereon, and a new world of doubts

and mysteries, marvels and revelations burst on me. One phase of

existence, which had been hitherto a reality to me, melted away into the

thinness of an uncompleted dream; but as it melted away, there appeared

behind it a whole universe, of which I had never before dreamed. I had

puzzled my brains over the metaphysics of subjectivity and objectivity

and found only words; now I grasped and comprehended the round of the

thing. I looked through the full range of human cognitions, and found,

from beginning to end, a proclamation of the presence of that

arch-magician, Imagination. I had said to myself,--"The universe is

subjective to Deity, objective to me; but if I am his image, what is

that part of me which corresponds to the Creator in Him?" Here I found

myself, at last, the creator of a universe of unsubstantialities, all of

the stuff that dreams are made of, and all alike unconsciously evoked,

whether they were the dreams of sleep or the hauntings of waking hours.

I grew bewildered as the thought loomed up in its eternal significance,

and a thousand facts and phenomena, which had been standing in the

darkness around my little circle of vision, burst into light and

recognition, as though they had been waiting beyond the outer verge for

the magic words. J. had spoken them.

Silent, almost for the moment unconscious of external things, in the

intense exaltation of thought and feeling, I walked down to the shore.

Taking the lightest and fleetest of our boats, we pushed off on the

perfectly tranquil water. There was no flaw in the mirror which gave us

a duplicated world. Line for line, tint for tint, the noble mountain

that lifts itself at the east, robed in primeval forest to its very

summit, and now suffused with rosy light from the sun, already hidden

from us by a low ridge in the west, was reproduced in the void below us.

The shadow of the western ridge began to climb the opposite bluffs of

the lake shore. We pulled well out into the lake and lay on our oars. If

anything was said, I do not remember it. I was as one who had just heard

words from the dead, and hears as prattle all the sounds of common life.

My eyes, my ears, were opened anew to Nature, and it seemed even as if

some new sense had been given me. I felt, as I never felt before, the

cool gloom of the shadow creep up, ridge after ridge, towards the

solitary peak, irresistibly and triumphantly encroaching on the light,

which fought back towards the summit, where it must yield at last. It

drew back over ravines and gorges, over the wildernesses of unbroken

firs which covered all the upper portion of the mountain, deepening its

rose-tint and gaining in intensity what it lost in expanse,--diminished

to a handbreadth, to a point, and, flickering an instant, went out,

leaving in the whole range of vision no speck of sunlight to relieve the

wilderness of shadowy gloom. I had come under a spell,--for, often as I

had seen the sun set in the mountains and over the lakes, I had never

before felt as I now felt, that I was a part in the landscape, and that

it was something more to me than rocks and trees. The sunlight had died

on it. J. took up the oars and our silently-moving boat broke the glassy

surface again. All around us no distinction was visible between the

landscape above and that below, no water-line could be found; and to the

west, where the sky was still glowing and golden, with faint bands of

crimson cirrus swept across the deep and tremulous blue, growing purple

as the sun sank lower, we could distinguish nothing in the landscape.

Neither sound nor motion of animate or inanimate thing disturbed the

scene, save that of the oars, with the long lines of blue which ran off

from the wake of the boat into the mystery closing behind us. A

rifle-shot rang out from the landing and rolled in multitudinous echoes

around the lake, dying away in faintest thunders and murmurings from the

ravines on the side of the mountain. It was the call to supper, and we

pulled back to the light of the fire, which was now glimmering through

the trees from the front of the camp.

Supper over, the smokers lighted their pipes and a rambling conversation

began on the sights and sounds of the day. For my own part, unable to

quiet the uneasy questioning which possessed me, I wandered down to the

shore and took a seat in the stern of one of the boats, which, hauled

part of their length upon the sandy beach, reached out some distance

among the lily-pads which covered the shallow water, and whose folded

flowers dotted the surface, the white points alone visible. The uneasy

question still stirred within me; and now, looking towards the

northwest, where the sky yet glowed faintly with twilight, a long line

of pines, gaunt and humanesque, as no tree but our northern white-pine

is, was relieved in massy blackness against the golden gray, like a long

procession of giants. They were in groups of two and three, with now and

then an isolated one, stretching along the horizon, losing themselves in

the gloom of the mountains at the north. The weirdness of the scene

caught my excited imagination in an instant, and I became conscious of

two mental phenomena. The first was an impression of motion in the

trees, which, whimsical as it was, I had not the slightest power to

dispel. I trembled from head to foot under the consciousness of this

supernatural vitality. My rational faculties were as clear as ever they

had been, and I understood perfectly that the semblance of motion was

owing to two characteristics of the white-pine, namely,--that it follows

the shores of the lakes in lines, rarely growing back at any distance

from the water, except when it follows, in the same orderly

arrangement, the rocky ridges,--and that, from its height above all

other forest-trees, it catches the full force of the prevalent winds,

which here are from the west, and consequently leans slightly to the

east, much as a person leans in walking. These traits of the tree

explained entirely the phenomenon; yet the knowledge of them had not the

slightest effect to undeceive my imagination. I was awe-struck, as

though the phantoms of some antediluvian race had arisen from the

valleys of the Adirondack and were marching in silence to their old

fanes on the mountain-tops. I cowered in the boat under an absolute

chill of nervous apprehension.--The second phenomenon was, that I heard

_mentally_ a voice which said distinctly these words,-"The procession of

the Anakim!"--and at the same time I became conscious of some

disembodied spiritual being standing near me, as we are sometimes aware

of the presence of a friend without having seen him. Every one

accustomed to solitary thought has probably recognized this kind of

mental action, and speculated on the strange duality of Nature implied

in it. The spiritualists call it "impressional communication," and

abandon themselves to its vagaries in the belief that it is really the

speech of angels; men of thought find in it a mystery of mental

organization, and avail themselves of it under the direction of their

reason. I at present speculated with the philosophers; but my

imagination, siding with the spiritualists, assured me that some one

spoke to me, and reason was silenced. I sat still as long as I could

endure it, alone, and then crept back, trembling, to the camp,--feeling

quiet only when surrounded by the rest of the party.

My attendant dæmon did not leave me, I found; for now I heard the

question asked, half-tauntingly,--"Subjective or objective?"

I asked myself, in reply,--"Am I mad or sane?"

"Quite sane, but with your eyes opened to something new!" was the

instantaneous reply.

On such expeditions, men get back to the primitive usages and conditions

of humanity. We had arisen at daybreak; darkness brought the disposition

to rest. We arranged ourselves side by side on the couch of balsam and

cedar boughs which the guides had spread on the ground of the camp, our

feet to the fire, and all but myself soon slept. I lay a long time,

excited, looking out through the open front of the camp at the stars

which shone in through the trees, and even they seemed partakers of my

new state of existence, and twinkled consciously and confidentially, as

to one who shared the secret of their own existence and purposes. The

pine-trees overhead had an added tone in their meanings, and indeed

everything, as I regarded it, seemed to manifest a new life, to become

identified with me: Nature and I had all things in common. I slept, at

length,--a strange kind of sleep; for when the guides awoke me, in the

full daylight, I was conscious of some one having talked with me through

the night.

In broad day, with my companions, and in motion, the influences of the

previous evening seemed to withdraw themselves to a remote

distance,--yet I was aware of their awaiting me when I should be

unoccupied. The day was as brilliant, as tranquil as its predecessor,

and the council decided that it should be devoted to a "drive," for we

had eaten the last of our venison for breakfast. The party were assigned

their places at those points of the lake where the deer would be most

likely to take the water, while my guide, Steve M----, and myself went

up Bog River, to start him. The river, a dark, sluggish stream, about

fifty feet wide, the channel by which the Mud Lakes and Little Tupper's

Lake, with its connected lakes and ponds, empty into Tupper's Lake, is a

favorite feeding-ground with the deer, whose breakfast is made on the

leaves of the _Nuphar lutea_ which edge the stream. We surprised one,

swimming around amongst the leaves, snatching here and there the

choicest of them, and when he turned to go out and rose in the water,

as his feet touched bottom, I gave him a ball without fatal effect, and

landing, we put Carlo on the track, which was marked by occasional drops

and clots of blood, and hearing him well off into the woods, and in that

furious and deep bay which indicates close pursuit, we went back to our

boat and paddled upstream to a run-way Steve knew of, where the deer

sometimes crossed the river. We pushed the boat into the overhanging

alders which fringe the banks, leaning out into and over the water, and

listened to the far-off bay of the hound. It died away and was entirely

lost for a few minutes, and then came into hearing from the nearer side

of the ridge, which lay back from the river a hundred rods or so, and I

cocked my rifle while Steve silently pushed the boat out of the bushes,

ready for a start, if the deer should "water." The baying receded again,

and this time in the direction of the lake. The blood we had found on

the trail was the bright, red, frothy blood which showed that the ball

had passed through the lungs, and, as we knew that the deer would not

run long before watering, we were sure that this would be his last turn

and that he was making in earnest for the lake, where some of the boats

would certainly catch him.

The excitement of the hunt had brought me back to a natural state of

feeling, and now, as I lay in the stern of the boat, drifting slowly

down-stream, and looked up into the hazy blue sky, in the whole expanse

of which appeared no fragment of cloud, and the softened sunshine

penetrated both soul and body, while the brain, lulled into lethargy by

the unbroken silence and monotony of forest around, lost every trace of

its midsummer madness,--I looked back to the state of the last evening

as to a curious dream. I asked myself wherein it differed from a dream,

and instantly my dæmon replied, "In no wise." The instant reply

surprised me, without startling me from my lethargy. I responded, as a

matter of course, "But if no more than a dream, it amounts to nothing."

It answered me, "But when a man dreams wide awake?" I pondered an

instant, and it went on: "And how do you know that dreams are nothing?

They are real while they last, and your waking life is no more; you wake

to one and sleep to the other. Which is the real, and which the false?

since you assume that one is false." I only asked myself again the

eternal question, "Objective or subjective?" and the dæmon made no

further suggestion. At this instant we heard the report of a gun from

the lake. "That's the Doctor's shot-gun," said Steve, and pulled

energetically down-stream; for we knew, that, if the Doctor had fired,

the deer had come in,--and if he had missed the first shot, he had a

second barrel, which we should have heard from.

Among the most charming cascades in the world is certainly that which

Bog River makes where it falls into Tupper's Lake. Its amber water,

black in the deep channel above the fall, dividing into several small

streams, slips with a plunge of, it may be, six feet over the granite

rocks, into a broad, deep pool, round which tall pines stand, and over

which two or three delicate-leaved white-birches lean, from which basin

the waters plunge in the final foamy rush of thirty or forty feet over

the irregularly broken ledge which makes the bold shore of the lake.

Between the two points of rock which confine the stream is thrown a

bridge, part of the military road from the Mohawk settlements to those

on the St. Lawrence, built during the war of 1812. On this bridge I

waited until Steve had carried the boat around, when we reëmbarked for

the camp.

Arriving at the landing, we found two of the guides dressing the

Doctor's deer, and the others preparing for dinner. As night came on my

excitement returned, and I remained in the camp while the others went

out on the lake,--not from fear of such an experience as I had the night

before, for I enjoyed the wild emotions, as one enjoys the raging of the

sea around the rocks he stands on, with a kind of tremulous

apprehension,--but to see what effect the camp would produce on the

state of feeling which I had begun to look at as something normal in my

mental development. The rest of the party had gone out in two boats, and

three of the guides, taking another, went on an excursion of their own;

the two remaining, having cleared the supper-things away and lighted

their pipes, were engaged in their tent, playing _old sledge_ by the

light of a single candle. There was a race out on the lake, and a

far-off merriment, with an occasional halloo, like a suggestion of a

busy world somewhere, but all so softened and toned down that it did not

jar on my tranquillity. There was a crackling fire of green logs as

large as the guides could lift and lay on, and they simmered in the

blaze, and lit up the surrounding tree-trunks and the overhanging

foliage, and faintly explored the recesses of the forest beyond. I lay

on the blankets, and near to me seemed to sit my dæmon, ready to be

questioned.

At this instant there came a doubt of the theological position of my

ghostly _vis-a-vis_, and I abruptly thought the question, "Who are you?"

"Nobody," replied the dæmon, oracularly.

This I knew in one sense to be true; and I replied, "But you know what I

mean. Don't trifle. Of what nature is your personality?"

"Do you think," it replied, "that personality is necessary to existence?

We are spirit."

"But wherein, save in the having or not having a body, do you differ

from me?"

"In all the consequences of that difference."

"Very well,--go on."

"Don't you see that without your circumstances you are only half a

being?--that you are shaped by the action and reaction between your own

mind and surrounding things, and that the body is the only medium of

this action and reaction? Do you not see that without this there would

have been no consciousness of self, and consequently neither

individuality nor personality? Remove those circumstances by removing

the body, and do you not remove personality?"

"But," said I, "you certainly have individuality, and wherein does that

differ from personality?"

"Possibly you commit two mistakes," replied the dæmon. "As to the

distinction, it is one with a difference. You are personal to yourself,

individual to others; and we, though individual to you, may be still

impersonal. If spirit takes form from having something to act on, the

fact that we act on you is sufficient, so far as you are concerned, to

cause an individuality."

I hesitated, puzzled.

It went on: "Don't you see that the inertia of spirit is motion, as that

of matter is rest? Now compare this universal spirit to a river flowing

tranquilly, and which in itself gives no evidence of motion, save when

it meets with some inert point of resistance. This point of resistance

has the effect of action in itself, and you attribute to _it_ all the

eddies and ripples produced. You _must_ see that your own immobility is

the cause of the phenomena of life which give you your apparent

existence;--our individuality to you may be just as much the effect of

your personality; you find us only responsive to your own mental state."

I was conscious of a sophistry somewhere, but could not, for the life of

me, detect it. I thought of the Tempter; I almost feared to listen to

another word; but the dæmon seemed so fair, so rational, and, above all,

so confident of truth, that I could not entertain my fears.

"But," said I, finally, "if my personality is owing to my physical

circumstances, to my body and its immobility, what is the body itself

owing to?"

"All physical or organic existence is owing to the antagonism between

certain particles of matter, fixed and resistant, and the all-pervading,

ever-flowing spirit; the different inertiæ conflict, and end by

combining in an organic being, since neither can be annihilated or

transmuted. Perhaps we can tell you, by-and-by, how this antagonism

commences; at present, you would scarcely be able to comprehend it

clearly."

This I felt, for I was already getting confused with the questions that

occurred to me as to the relations between spirit and matter.

I asked once more, "Have you never been personal, as I am?--have you

never had a body and a name?"

"Perhaps," was the reply,--"but it must have been long since; and the

trifling circumstances which you call life, with all their direct and

recognizable effects, pass away so soon, that it is impossible to recall

anything of it. There seems a kind of consciousness when we have

something to act against, as against your mind at the present moment;

but as to name, and all that kind of distinctiveness, what is the use of

it where there is no possibility of confusion or mistake as to identity?

We have said that we are spirit; and when we say that spirit is one and

matter one, we have gone behind personal identity."

"But," asked I, "am I to lose my individual existence,--to become

finally merged in a universal impersonality? What, then, is the object

of life?"

"You see the plants and animals all around you growing up and passing

away,--each entering its little orbit, and sweeping through this sphere

of cognizance back again to the same mystery it emerged from; you never

ask the question as to them, but for yourself you are anxious. If you

had not been, would creation have been any less creation?--if you cease,

will it not still be as great? Truly, though, your mistake is one of too

little, not of too much. You assume that the animals become nothing;

but, truly, nothing dies. The very crystals into which all the so-called

primitive substances are formed, and which are the first forms of

organization, have a spirit in them; for they obey something which

inhabits and organizes them. If you could decompose the crystal, would

you annihilate the soul which organized it? The plant absorbs the

crystal, and it becomes a part of a higher organization, which could no

more exist without its soul; and if the plant is cut down and cast into

the oven, is the organic impulse food for the flames? You, the animal,

do but exist through the absorption of these vegetable substances, and

why should you not obey the analogical law of absorption and

aggregation? You killed a deer to-day;--the flesh you will appropriate

to supply the wants of your own material organization; but the life, the

spirit which made that flesh a deer, in obedience to which that shell of

external appearance is moulded,--you missed that. You can trace the body

in its metamorphoses; but for this impalpable, active, and only real

part of the being,--it were folly to suppose it more perishable, more

evanescent, than the matter of which it was master. And why should not

you, as well as the deer, go back into the great Life from which you

came? As to a purpose in creation, why should there be any other than

that which existence always shows,--that of existing?"

I now began to notice that all the leading ideas which the dæmon offered

were put in the form of questions, as if from a cautious

non-committalism, or as if it dared not in so many words say that they

were the absolute truth. I felt that there was another side to the

matter, and was confident that I should detect the sophistry of the

dæmon; but then I did not feel able to carry the conversation farther,

and was sensible of a readiness on the part of my interlocutor to cease.

I wondered at this, and if it implied weariness on its part, when it was

replied,--"We answer to your own mind; of course, when that ceases to

act, there ceases to be reaction." I cried out in my own mind, in utter

bewilderment,--"Objective or subjective?" and ceased my questionings.

The camp-fire glowed splendidly through the overhanging branches and

foliage, and I longed for a revel of light. I asked the guides to make a

"blaze," and, after a minute's delay and an ejaculation of "_Game, to

your high, low, jack_," they emerged from the tent and in a few minutes

had cut down several small dead spruces and piled the tops on the fire,

which flashed up through the pitchy, inflammable mass, and we had a

pyrotechnical display which startled the birds, that had gone to rest in

the assurance of night, into a confused activity and clamor. The heat

penetrated the camp and gave me a drowsiness which my disturbed repose

of the night before rendered extremely grateful, and when the rest of

the party returned from their row, I was asleep.

It was determined, the next morning, in council, to move; and one of the

guides having informed us of a newly-opened carry, by which we could

cross from Little Tupper's Lake, ten miles above us, directly to Forked

Lake, and thence following the usual route down the Raquette River and

through Long Lake, we could reach Martin's on Saranac Lake without

retracing our steps, except over the short distance from the Raquette

through the Saranac Lakes,--after breakfast, we hurriedly packed up our

traps and were off as early as might be. It is hard boating up the Bog

River, and hard work both for guides and tourists. All the boats and

baggage had to be carried three miles, on the backs of the guides, and,

help them as much as we could, the day had drawn nearly to its close

before we were fairly embarked on Little Tupper's, and we had then

nearly ten miles to go before reaching Constable's Camp, where we were

to stop for the night. I worked hard all day, but in a kind of dream, as

if the dead weight I carried with weariness were only the phantom of

something, and I were a fantasy carrying it;--the actual had become

visionary, and my imaginings nudged me and jostled me almost off the

path of reason. But I had no time for a _séance_ with my dæmon. The next

day I devoted with the guides to bushing out the carry across to Forked

Lake, about three and a half miles, through perfectly pathless woods;

for we found Sam's statements as to the carry being chopped out entirely

false; only a blazed line existed; so all the guides, except one, set to

work with myself bushing and chopping out, while the other guide and the

rest of the party spent the day in hunting. At the close of the day we

had completed nearly two miles of the path, and returned to Constable's

Camp to sleep. The next day we succeeded in getting the boats and

baggage through to Bottle Pond, two and a half miles, and the whole

party camped on the carry,--the guides anathematizing Sam, whose advice

had led us on this road. The next afternoon found us afloat on Forked

Lake, weary and glad to be in the sunlight on blue water again. Hard

work and the excitement of responsibility in engineering our road-making

operations had kept my visitor from dream-land away, and as we paddled

leisurely down the beautiful lake,--one of the few yet untouched by the

lumbermen,--I felt a healthier tone of mind than I had known since we

had entered the woods. As we ran out of one of the deep bays which

constitute a large portion of the lake, into the principal sheet of

water, one of the most perfectly beautiful mountain-views I have ever

seen burst upon us. We looked down the lake to its outlet, five miles,

between banks covered with tall pines, and far away in the hazy

atmosphere a chain of blue peaks raised themselves sharp-edged against

the sky. One singularly-shaped summit, far to the south, attracted my

attention, and I was about to ask its name, when Steve called out, with

the air of one who communicates something of more than ordinary

significance,--"Blue Mountain!" The name, Steve's manner, and I know not

what of mysterious cause, gave to the place a strange importance. I felt

a new and unaccountable attraction to the mountain. Some enchantment

seemed to be casting its glamour over me from that distance even. There

was thenceforward no goal for my wanderings but the Blue Mountain. It is

a solitary peak, one of the southernmost of the Adirondacks, of a very

quaint form, and lies in a circlet of lakes, three of which in a chain

are named from the mountain. The way by which the mountain is reached is

through these lakes, and their outlet, which empties into Raquette Lake.

I had determined to remain in the woods some weeks, and now concluded to

return, as soon as I had seen the rest of the party on their way home,

and take up quarters on Raquette Lake for the rest of my stay.

That night we camped at the foot of Forked Lake, and not one of the

party will ever forget the thunder-storm that burst on us in our

woods-encampment among the tall pines, two of which, near us, were

struck by the lightning. I tried in vain, when we were quiet for the

night, to get some information on the subject of my attraction to the

Blue Mountain. My dæmon appeared remote and made no responses. It seemed

as if, knowing my resolution to stay alone there, it had resolved to be

silent until I was without any cause for interruption of our colloquies.

Save the consciousness of its remote attendance, I felt no recurrence of

my past experience, until, having seen my friends on the road to

civilization again, I left Martin's with Steve and Carlo for my quarters

on the Raquette. We hurried back up the river as fast as four strong

arms could propel our light boat, and resting, the second night, at

Wilbur's, on Raquette Lake, I the next morning selected a site for a

camp, where we built a neat little bark-house, proof against all

discomforts of an elemental character, and that night I rested under my

own roof, squatter though I was. The dæmon seemed in no haste to renew

our former intimate intercourse,--for what reason I could not divine;

but a few days after my settling, days spent in exploring and planning,

it resumed suddenly its functions. It came to me out on the lake, where

I had paddled to enjoy the starlight in the delicious evening, when the

sky was filled with luminous vapor, through which the stars struggled

dimly, and in which the landscape was almost as clearly visible as by

moonlight.

"Well!" said I, familiarly, as I felt it take its place by my side, "you

have come back."

"_Come back!_" it replied; "will you never get beyond your miserable

ideas of space, and learn that there is no separation but that of

feeling, no nearness but that of sympathy? If you had cared enough for

us, we should have been with you constantly."

I was anxious to get to the subject of present interest, and did not

stop to discuss a point which, in one, and the highest sense, I

admitted.

"What," I asked, "was that impulse which urged me to go to the Blue

Mountain? Shall I find there anything supernatural?"

"_Anything supernatural?_ What is there above Nature, or outside of it?"

"But nothing is without cause; and for an emotion so strong as I

experienced, on the sight of those mountains, there must have been one."

"Very likely! if you go after it, you will find it. You probably expect

to find some beautiful enchantress keeping her court on the

mountain-top, and a suite of fairies."

I started, for, absurd as it may seem, that very idea, half-formed,

undeveloped from very shame at my superstition, had rested in my mind.

"And," said I, at a loss what to say, "are there no such things

possible?"

"All things are possible to the imagination."

"To create?"

"Most certainly! Is not creation the act of bringing into existence? and

does not your Hamlet exist as immortally as your Shakspeare? The only

true existence, is it not that of the Idea? Have you not seen the pines

transfigured?"

"And if I imagined a race of fairies inhabiting the Blue Mountain,

should I find them?"

"If you _imagined_ them, yes! But the imagination is not voluntary; it

works to supply a necessity; its function is creation, and creation is

needed only to fill a vacuum. The wild Arab, feeling his own

insignificance, and comprehending the necessity for a Creating Power,

finds between himself and that Power, which to him, as to you the other

day, assumes a personality, an immense distance, and fills the space

with a race half divine, half human. It was the necessity for the fairy

which created the fairy. You do not feel the same distance between

yourself and a Creator, and so you do not call into existence a creative

race of the same character; but has not your own imagination furnished

you with images to which you may give your reverence? It may be that you

diminish that distance by degrading the Great First Cause to an image of

your personality, and so are not so wise as the Arab, who at once admits

it to be unattainable. Each man shapes that which he looks up to by his

desires or fears, and these in their turn are the results of his degree

of development."

"But God, is not He the Supreme Creator?"

"Is it not as we said, that you measure the Supreme by yourself? Can you

not comprehend a supreme law, an order which controls all things?"

In my meditations this doubt had often presented itself to me, and I had

as often put it resolutely aside; but now to hear it urged on me in this

way from this mysterious presence troubled me, and I shrank from further

discussion of the topic. I earnestly desired a fuller knowledge of the

nature of my colloquist.

"Tell me," said I, "do you not take cognizance of my personality?--do

you read my past and my future?"

"Your past and future are contained in your present. Who can analyze

what you are can see the things which made you such; for effect contains

its cause;--to see the future, it needs only to know the laws which

govern all things. It is a simple problem: you being given, with the

inevitable tendencies to which you are subject, the result is your

future; the flight of one of your rifle-balls cannot be calculated with

greater certainty."

"But how shall we know those laws?" said I.

"You contain them all, for you are the result of them; and they are

always the same,--not one code for your beginning, and another for your

continuance. Man is the complete embodiment of all the laws thus far

developed, and you have only to know yourself to know the history of

creation."

This I could not gainsay, and my mind, wearied, declined to ask further.

I returned to camp and went to sleep.

Several days passed without any remarkable progress in my knowledge of

this strange being, though I found myself growing more and more

sensitive to the presence of it each day; and at the same time the

incomprehensible sympathy with Nature, for I know not what else to call

it, seemed growing stronger and more startling in the effects it

produced on the landscape. The influence was no longer confined to

twilight, but made noon-day mystical; and I began to hear strange sounds

and words spoken by disembodied voices,--not like that of my dæmon, but

unaccompanied by any feeling of personal presence connected therewith.

It seemed as if the vibrations shaped themselves into words, some of

them of singular significance. I heard my name called, and the strangest

laughs on the lake at night. My dæmon seemed averse to answering any

questions on the topic of these illusions. The only reply was,--"You

would be wiser, not knowing too much."

Ere many days of this solitary life had passed, I found my whole

existence taken up by my fantasies. I determined to make my excursion to

the Blue Mountain, and, sending Steve down to the post-office, a

three-days' journey, I took the boat, with Carlo and my rifle, and

pushed off. The outlet of the Blue Mountain Lakes is like all the

Adirondack streams, dark and shut in by forest, which scarcely permits

landing anywhere. Now and then a log fallen into the water compels the

voyager to get out and lift his boat over; then a shallow rapid must be

dragged over; and when the stream is clear of obstruction, it is too

narrow for any mode of propulsion but poling or paddling.

I had worked several weary hours, and the sun had passed the meridian,

when I emerged from the forest into a wild, swampy flat,--"wild meadow,"

the guides call it,--through which the stream wound, and around which

was a growth of tall larches backed by pines. Where the brook seemed to

reënter the wood on the opposite side, stood two immense pines, like

sentinels, and such they became to me; and they looked grim and

threatening, with their huge arms reaching over the gateway. I drew my

boat up on the boggy shore at the foot of a solitary tamarack, into

which I climbed as high as I could to look over the wood beyond.

Never shall I forget what I saw from that swaying look-out. Before me

was the mountain, perhaps five miles away, covered with dense forest to

within a few hundred feet of the summit, which showed bare rock with

firs clinging in the clefts and on the tables, and which was crowned by

a walled city, the parapet of whose walls cut with a sharp, straight

line against the sky, and beyond showed spire and turret and the tops of

tall trees. The walls must have been at least a hundred and fifty feet

high, and I could see here and there between the group of firs traces of

a road coming down the mountain-side. And I heard one of those mocking

voices say, "The city of silence!"--nothing more. I felt strongly

tempted to start on a flight through the air towards the city, and why I

did not launch forth on the impulse I know not. My blood rushed through

my veins with maddest energy, and my brain seemed to have been replaced

by some ethereal substance, and to be capable of floating me off as if

it were a balloon. Yet I clung and looked, my whole soul in my eyes, and

had no thought of losing the spectacle for an instant, even were it to

reach the city itself. The glorious glamour of that place and moment,

who can comprehend it? The wind swung my tree-top to and fro, and I

climbed up until the tree bent with my weight like a twig under a

bird's.

Presently I heard bells and strains of music, as though all the military

bands in the city were coming together on the walls; and the sounds rose

and fell with the wind,--one moment entirely lost, another full and

triumphant. Then I heard the sound of hunting-horns and the baying of a

pack of hounds, deep-mouthed, as if a hunting-party were coming down the

mountain-side. Nearer and nearer they came, and I heard merry laughing

and shouting as they swept through the valley. I feared for a moment

that they would find me there, and drive me, intruding, from the

enchanted land.

But I must fathom the mystery, let what would come. I descended the

tree, and when I had reached the boat again I found the whole thing

changed. I understood that my city was only granite and fir-trees, and

my music only the wind in the tree-tops. The reaction was sickening; the

sunshine seemed dull and cold after the lost glory of that enchantment.

The Blue Mountain was reached, its destiny fulfilled for me, and I

returned to my camp, sick at heart, as one who has had a dear illusion

dispelled.

The next day my mind was unusually calm and clear. I asked my dæmon what

was the meaning of the enchantment of yesterday.

"It was a freak of your imagination," it replied.

"But what is this imagination, then, which, being a faculty of my own,

yet masters my reason?"

"Not at all a faculty, but your very highest self, your own life in

creative activity. Your reason _is_ a faculty, and is subordinate to the

purposes of your imagination. If, instead of regarding imagination as a

pendant to your mental organization, you take it for what it is, a

function, and the noblest one your mind knows, you will see at once why

it is that it works unconsciously, just as you live unconsciously and

involuntarily. Men set their reason and feeling to subdue what they

consider a treacherous element in themselves; they succeed only in

dwarfing their natures, and imagination is inert while reason controls;

but when reason rests in sleep, and you cease to live to the external

world, imagination resumes its normal power. You dream;--it is only the

revival of that which you smother when you are awake. You consider the

sights and sounds of yesterday follies; you reason;--imagination

demonstrates its power by overturning your reason and deceiving your

very senses."

"You speak of its creations; I understand this in a certain sense; but

if these were such, should not they have permanence? and can anything

created perish?"

"Nonsense! what will these trees be tomorrow? and the rocks you sit on,

are they not changing to vegetation under you? The only creation is that

of ideas; things are thin shadows. If man is not creative, he is still

undeveloped."

"But is not such an assumption trenching on the supremacy of God?" I

asked.

"What do you understand by 'God?'"

"An infinitely wise and loving Controller of events, of course," I

replied.

"Did you ever find any one whose ideas on the subject agreed with

yours?"

"Not entirely."

"Then your God is not the same as the God of other men; from the

Fee-Jeean to the Christian there is a wide range. Of course there is a

first great principle of life; but this personality you all worship, is

it not a creation?"

I now felt this to be the great point of the demon's urging; it recurred

too often not to be designed. Led on by the sophistry of my tempter, I

had floated unconsciously to this issue, practically admitting all; but

when this suggestion stood completely unclothed before me, my soul rose

in horror at the abyss before it. For an instant all was chaos, and the

very order of Nature seemed disorder. Life and light vanished from the

face of the earth; my night made all things dead and dark. A universe

without a God! Creation seemed to me for that moment but a galvanized

corse. What my emotions were no human being who has not felt them can

conceive. My first impulse was to suicide; with the next I cried from

the depths of my despair, "God deliver me from the body of this death!"

It was but a moment,--and there came, in the place of the cold

questioning voice of my dæmon, one of ineffable music, repeating words

familiar to me from childhood, words linked to everything loved and

lovely in my past:--"Ye believe in God, believe also in me." The hot

tears for another moment blotted out the world from sight. I said once

more to the questioner, "Now who _are_ you?"

"Your own doubts," was the reply; and it seemed as if only I spoke to

myself.

Since that day I have never reasoned with my doubts, never doubted my

imagination.

ALL'S WELL.

Sweet-voicèd Hope, thy fine discourse

Foretold not half life's good to me;

Thy painter, Fancy, hath not force

To show how sweet it is to be!

Thy witching dream

And pictured scheme

To match the fact still want the power;

Thy promise brave

From birth to grave

Life's boon may beggar in an hour.

Ask and receive,--'tis sweetly said;

Yet what to plead for know I not;

For Wish is worsted, Hope o'ersped,

And aye to thanks returns my thought.

If I would pray,

I've nought to say

But this, that God may be God still;

For Him to live

Is still to give,

And sweeter than my wish his will.

O wealth of life beyond all bound!

Eternity each moment given!

What plummet may the Present sound?

Who promises a _future_ heaven?

Or glad, or grieved,

Oppressed, relieved,

In blackest night, or brightest day,

Still pours the flood

Of golden good,

And more than heartfull fills me aye.

My wealth is common; I possess

No petty province, but the whole;

What's mine alone is mine far less

Than treasure shared by every soul.

Talk not of store,

Millions or more,--

Of values which the purse may hold,--

But this divine!

I own the mine

Whose grains outweigh a planet's gold.

I have a stake in every star,

In every beam that fills the day;

All hearts of men my coffers are,

My ores arterial tides convey;

The fields, the skies,

And sweet replies

Of thought to thought are my gold-dust,--

The oaks, the brooks,

And speaking looks

Of lovers' faith and friendship's trust.

Life's youngest tides joy-brimming flow

For him who lives above all years,

Who all-immortal makes the Now,

And is not ta'en in Time's arrears:

His life's a hymn

The seraphim

Might hark to hear or help to sing,

And to his soul

The boundless whole

Its bounty all doth daily bring.

"All mine is thine," the sky-soul saith;

"The wealth I am, must thou become:

Richer and richer, breath by breath,--

Immortal gain, immortal room!"

And since all his

Mine also is,

Life's gift outruns my fancies far,

And drowns the dream

In larger stream,

As morning drinks the morning-star.

THE BIRDS OF THE PASTURE AND FOREST.

He who has always lived in the city or its suburbs, who has seldom

visited the interior except for purposes of trade, and whose walks have

not often extended beyond those roads which are bordered on each side by

shops and dwelling-houses, may never have heard the birds that form the

subject of this sketch. These are the birds of the pasture and

forest,--those shy, melodious warblers, who sing only in the ancient

haunts of the Dryads, and of those nymphs who waited upon Diana in her

hunting-excursions, but who are now recognized only by the beautiful

plants which, with unseen hands, they rear in the former abodes of the

celestial huntress. These birds have not probably multiplied, like the

familiar birds, with the increase of human population and the extension

of agriculture. They were perhaps as numerous in the days of King Philip

as they are now. Though they do not shun mankind, they keep aloof from

cultivated grounds, living chiefly in the deep wood or on the edge of

the forest, and in the bushy pasture.

There is a peculiar wildness in the songs of this class of birds, that

awakens a delightful mood of mind, similar to that which is excited by

reading the figurative lyrics of a romantic age. This feeling is,

undoubtedly, to a certain extent, the effect of association. Having

always heard their notes in rude, wild, and wooded places, they never

fail to bring this kind of scenery vividly before the imagination, and

their voices affect us like the sounds of mountain-streams. There is a

little Sparrow which I often hear about the shores of unfrequented

ponds, and in their untrodden islets, and never in any other situations.

The sound of his voice, therefore, always enhances the sensation of rude

solitude with which I contemplate this wild and desolate scenery. We

often see him perched upon a dead tree that stands in the water, a few

rods from the shore, apparently watching our angling operations from his

leafless perch, where he sings so sweetly, that the very desolation of

the scene borrows a charm from his voice that renders every object

delightful. This bird I believe to be the _Fringilla palustris_ of

Wilson.

It is certain that the notes of the solitary birds, compared with those

of the Robin and Linnet, excite a different class of sensations. I can

imagine that there is a similar difference in the flavors of a cherry

and a cranberry. If the former is sweeter, the latter has a spicy zest

that is peculiar to what we call natural fruit. The effect is the same,

however, whether it be attributable to some intrinsic quality, or to

association, which is indeed the source of some of the most delightful

emotions of the human soul.

Nature has made all her scenes, and the sights and sounds that

accompany them, more lovely, by causing them to be respectively

suggestive of a certain class of sensations. The birds of the pasture

and forest are not frequent enough in cultivated places to be associated

with the garden or village inclosure. Nature has confined particular

birds and animals to certain localities, and thereby adds a poetic and a

picturesque attraction to their features. There are also certain flowers

that cannot be cultivated in the garden, as if they were designed for

the exclusive adornment of those secluded arbors which the spade and the

plough have never profaned. Here flowers grow which are too holy for

culture, and birds sing whose voices were never heard in the cage of the

voluptuary, and whose tones inspire us with a sense of freedom known

only to those who often retire from the world, to live in religious

communion with Nature.

When the flowers of early summer are gone, and the graceful neottia is

seen in the meadows, extending its spiral clusters among the nodding

grasses,--when the purple orchis is glowing in the wet grounds, and the

roadsides are gleaming with the yellow blossoms of the hypericum, the

merry voice of the Bobolink has ceased, and many other familiar birds

have become almost silent. At this time, if we stroll away from the farm

and the orchard into more retired and wooded haunts, we may hear, at all

times of the day and at frequent intervals, the pensive and melodious

notes of the Wood-Sparrow, who sings as if he were delighted at being

left almost alone to warble and complain to the benevolent deities of

the grove. He who in his youth has made frequent visits to these

pleasant and solitary places, and wished that he could live and love

forever among the wild-roses, the blushing azaleas, the red

summer-lilies, and the thousands of beautiful and sweet-scented flowers

that spring up among the various spicy and fruit-bearing shrubs which

unite to form a genuine huckleberry-pasture,--he only knows the

unspeakable delights which are awakened by the sweet, simple notes of

this little warbler.

The Wood-Sparrow (_Fringilla pusilla_) is somewhat less than a Canary,

with a chestnut-colored crown; above of a grayish brown hue, and dusky

white beneath. Though he does not seem to be a shy bird, I have never

seen him in cultivated grounds, and the inmates of solitary cottages

alone are privileged to hear his notes from their windows. He loves the

hills which are half covered with young pines, viburnums, cornels, and

huckleberry-bushes, and feeds upon the seeds of grasses and wild

lettuce, with occasional repasts of insects and berries.

His notes are sweet and plaintive, seldom consisting of more than one

strain. He commences slowly, as if repeating the syllable, _de de de de

de de d' d' d' d' d' d' d' r' r' r'_,--increasing in rapidity, and at

the same time rising as it were by semi-tones, or chromatically, to

about a major fourth on the scale. In midsummer, when this bird is most

musical, he occasionally lengthens his song by alternately ascending and

descending, interposing a few chirping notes between the ascending and

descending series. The song loses a part of its simplicity, and, as it

seems to me, is not improved by this variation.

While listening to the notes of the Wood-Sparrow, we are continually

saluted by the agreeable, though less musical song of the Chewink, or

Ground-Robin,--a bird that frequents similar places. This is a very

beautiful bird, elegantly spotted with white, red, and black,--the

female being of a bright bay color where the male is red. Every rambler

knows him, not only by his plumage and his peculiar note, but also by

his singular habit of lurking about among the bushes, appearing and

disappearing like a squirrel, and watching all our movements. Though he

does not avoid our company, it is with difficulty that a marksman can

obtain a good aim at him, so rapidly does he change his position among

the leaves and branches. In this habit he resembles the Wren. While we

are watching his motions, he pauses in his song, and utters that

peculiar note of complaint from which he has derived his name,

_Chewink_, though the sound he utters is more like _chewee_, accenting

the second syllable.

The Chewink (_Fringilla erythrophthalma_) is a very constant singer

during four months of the year, from the middle of April. He is very

untiring in his lays, seldom resting for any considerable time from

morning till night, being never weary in rain or in sunshine, or at

noon-day in the hottest weather of the season. His song consists of two

long notes, the first about a third above the second, and the last part

is made up of several rapidly uttered notes about one tone below the

first note.

There is an expression of great cheerfulness in these notes; but music,

like poetry, must be somewhat plaintive in its character, to take strong

hold of the feelings. I have never known a person to be affected by

these notes as by those of the Wood-Sparrow. While engaged in singing,

the Chewink is usually perched on the lower branch of a tree, near the

edge of a wood, or on the top of a tall bush. He is a true forest-bird,

and builds his nest in the thickets that conceal the boundaries of the

wood.

The notes of the Chewink and his general appearance and habits are well

calculated to render him conspicuous, and they cause him to be always

noticed and remembered. Our birds are like our men of genius. As in the

literary world there is a description of talent that must be discovered

and pointed out by an observing few, before the great mass can

understand it or even know its existence,--so the sweetest songsters of

the wood are unknown to the mass of the community, while many very

ordinary performers, whose talents are conspicuous, are universally

known and admired.

As we advance into the wood, if it be near mid-day, or before the

decline of the sun, the notes of two small birds will be sure to attract

our attention. These notes are very similar, and as slender and piercing

as the chirp of a grasshopper, being distinguished from the latter only

by a different and more pleasing modulation. The birds to which I refer

are the Red Start (_Muscicapa ruticilla_) and the Speckled Creeper

(_Sylvia varia_). The first is the more rarely seen of the two, being a

bird of the deep forest, and shunning observation by hiding himself in

the most obscure parts of the wood. In general appearance, and in the

color of his plumage, he bears a resemblance to the Ground-Robin, though

not more than half his size. He lives entirely on insects, catching them

while they are flying in the air.

His song is similar to that of the Summer Yellow-Bird, so common in our

gardens among the fruit-trees, but it is more shrill and feeble. The

Creeper's song does not differ from it more than the songs of different

individuals of the same species may differ. This bird may be seen

creeping like a Woodpecker around the branches of trees, feeding upon

the grubs and insects that are lodged upon the bark. He often leaves the

forest, and may be seen busily searching the trees in the orchard and

garden. The restless activity of the birds of this species affords a

proof of the countless myriads of insects that must be destroyed by them

in the course of one season,--insects which, if not kept in check by

these and other small birds, would multiply to such an extreme as to

render the earth uninhabitable by man.

While listening with close attention to the slender notes of either of

the last-named birds, often hardly audible amidst the din of

grasshoppers, the rustling of leaves, and the sighing of winds among the

tall oaken boughs, suddenly the wood resounds with a loud, shrill song,

like the sharpest notes of the Canary. The bird that startles one with

this vociferous note is the Oven-Bird, (_Turdus aurocapillus_), or

Golden-Crowned Thrush. It is the smallest of the Thrushes, is confined

exclusively to the wood, and when singing is particularly partial to

noon-day. There is no melody in his song. He begins rather low,

increasing in loudness as he proceeds, until the last notes are so loud

as to seem almost in our immediate presence. He might be supposed to

utter His words, _I see_, _I see_, _I see_, etc.,--emphasizing the first

word, and repeating the words six or eight times, louder and louder with

each repetition. No other bird equals this little Thrush in the emphasis

with which he delivers his brief communication. His notes are associated

with summer noon-days in the deep woods, and, when bursting upon the ear

in the silence of noon, they disperse all melancholy thoughts, and

inspire one with a vivid consciousness of life.

The most remarkable thing connected with the history of this bird is his

oven-shaped nest. It is commonly placed on the ground, under a knoll of

moss or a tuft of grass and bushes, and is formed almost entirely of

long grass neatly woven. It is covered with a roof of the same

materials, and a round opening is made at the side, for the bird's

entrance. The nest is so ingeniously covered with grass and disguised

with the appearance of the general surface around it, that it is very

seldom discovered. The Cow-Bunting, however, is able to find it, and

often selects it as a depository for its own eggs.

Those who are addicted to rambling in pursuit of natural curiosities may

have observed that pine-woods are remarkable for certain collections of

mosses which have cushioned a projecting rock or the decayed stump of a

tree. When weary with heat and exercise, it is delightful to sit down

upon one of these green velveted couches and take note of the objects

immediately around us. We are then prepared to hear the least sound that

invades our retreat. Some of the sweetest notes ever uttered in the wood

are distinctly heard only at such times; for when we are passing over

the rustling leaves, the noise made by our progress interferes with the

perfect recognition of all delicate sounds. It was when thus reclining,

after half a day's search for flowers, under the grateful shade of a

pine-tree, now watching the white clouds that sent a brighter day-beam

into these dark recesses, as they passed luminously overhead, and then

noting the peculiar mapping of the grounds underneath the wood,

diversified with mosses in swelling knolls, little islets of fern, and

parterres of ginsengs and Solomon's-seals,--in one of these cloisters of

the forest, I was first greeted by the pensive note of the Green

Warbler, as he seemed to titter in supplicatory tones, very slowly

modulated, "Hear me, Saint Theresa!" This strain, as I have observed

many times since, is, at certain hours, repeated constantly for ten

minutes at a time, and it is one of those melodious sounds that seem to

belong exclusively to solitude.

The Green Warbler (_Sylvia virens_) is a small bird, and though his

notes may be familiar to all who have been accustomed to strolling in

the woods, the species is not numerous in Massachusetts, the greater

number retiring farther north in the breeding-season. Nuttall remarks in

reference to this bird, "His simple, rather drawling, and somewhat

plaintive song, uttered at short intervals, resembled the syllables '_te

dé teritscá_, sometimes _te derisca_, pronounced pretty loud and slow,

and the tones proceeded from high to low. In the intervals, he was

perpetually busied in catching small cynips, and other kinds of

flies,--keeping up a smart snapping of his bill, almost similar to the

noise made by knocking pebbles together." There is a plaintive

expression in this musical supplication, that is apparent to all who

hear it, no less than if the bird were truly offering prayers to some

tutelary deity. It is difficult, in many cases, to determine why a

certain combination of sounds should affect one with an emotion of

sadness, while another, under the same circumstances, produces a feeling

of joy. This is a part of the philosophy of music which has not been

explained.

While treating of the Sylvias, I must not omit to notice one of the most

important of the tribe, and one with which almost everybody is

acquainted,--the Maryland Yellow-Throat (_Sylvia trichas_). This species

is quite common and familiar. He is most frequently seen in a

willow-grove that borders a stream, or in the shrubbery of moist and low

grounds. The angler is greeted by his notes on the rushy borders of a

pond, and the botanist listens to them when hunting for those

rose-plants that hide themselves under dripping rocks in some wooded

ravine. The song of the Yellow-Throat resembles that of the Warbling

Vireo, delivered with somewhat more precision, as if he were saying, _I

see you_, _I see you_, _I see you_. His notes are simply lively and

agreeable; there is nothing plaintive about them. The bird, however, is

very attractive in his appearance, being of a bright olive-color above,

with a yellow throat and breast, and a black band extending from the

nostrils over the eye. This black band and the yellow throat are the

marks by which he is most easily identified. The Yellow-Throat remains

tuneful till near the last week in August.

But if we leave the wood while those above described are the only

singing-birds we have heard, we have either returned too soon, or we did

not penetrate deeply enough into the forest. The Wood-Sparrow prepared

our ears for a concert more delightful than the Red Start or the

Yellow-Throat are capable of presenting, and we have spent our time

almost in vain, if we have not heard the song of the Wood-Thrush

(_Turdus melodus_). His notes are not startling or conspicuous; some

dull ears might not hear them, though poured forth only a few rods

distant, if their attention were not directed to them. Yet they are

loud, liquid, and sonorous, and they fail to attract attention only on

account of the long pauses between the different strains. We must link

all these strains together to enjoy the full pleasure which the song of

this bird is capable of affording, though any single strain alone is

sufficient to entitle the bird to considerable reputation as a songster.

The song of the Wood-Thrush consists of about eight or ten different

strains, each of considerable length. After each strain the bird makes a

pause of about three or four seconds. I think the effect of this sylvan

music is somewhat diminished by the length of the pauses or rests. It

may be said, however, that during each pause our susceptibility is

increased, and we are thus prepared to be more deeply affected by the

next notes. Whether the one or the other opinion be correct, it is

certain that any one who stops to listen to this bird will become

spellbound, and deaf to almost every other sound in the grove, as if his

ears were enchained to the song of the Siren.

The Wood-Thrush sings at almost all hours of the day, though seldom

after sunset. He delights in a dusky retreat, and is evidently inspired

by solitude, singing no less in gloomy weather than in sunshine. Late in

August, when other birds have mostly become silent, he is sometimes the

only songster in the wood. There is a liquid sound in his tones that

slightly resembles that of a glassichord; though in some parts of the

country he has received the name of Fife-Bird, from the clearness of his

intonations. By many persons this species is called the Hermit-Thrush.

The Veery (_Turdus Wilsonii_) has many habits like those of the

Wood-Thrush, and some similarity of song. He is about the size of a

Blue-Bird, and resembles the Red Thrush, except that the brown of his

back is slightly tinged with olive. He arrives early in May, and is

first heard to sing during some part of the second week of that month,

when the sons of the Bobolink commences. He is not one of our familiar

birds; and unless we live in close proximity to a wood that is haunted

by a stream, we shall never hear his voice from our doors or windows. He

sings neither in the orchard, nor the garden, nor in the suburbs of the

city. He shuns the exhibitions of art, and reserves his wild notes for

those who frequent the inner sanctuary of the groves. All who have once

become familiar with his song await his arrival with impatience, and

take note of his silence in midsummer with regret. Until this little

bird has arrived, I always feel as an audience do at a concert, before

the chief singer has made her appearance, while the other performers are

vainly endeavoring to soothe them by their inferior attempts.

This bird is more retiring than any other important singing-bird, except

the Wood-Thrush,--being heard only in solitary groves, and usually in

the vicinity of a pond or stream. Here, especially after sunset, he

pours forth his brilliant and melancholy strains with a peculiar

cadence, and fills the whole forest with sound. It seems as if the

echoes were delimited with his notes, and took pleasure in passing them

round with multiplied reverberations. I am confident this bird refrains

from singing when others are the most vocal, from the pleasure he feels

in listening either to his own notes, or to the melodious responses

which others of his own kindred repeat in different parts of the wood.

Hence he chooses the dusk of evening for his vocal hour, when the little

chirping birds are mostly silent, that their voices may not interrupt

his chant. At this hour, during a period of nine or ten weeks, he charms

the evening with his strains, and often prolongs them in still weather

till after dusk, and whispers them sweetly into the ear of night.

No bird of his size has more strength of voice; but his song, though

loud, is modulated with such a sweet and flowing cadence, that it comes

to the ear with all the mellowness of the softest warbling. It would be

difficult to describe his song. It seems at first to be wanting in

variety. I was long of this opinion, though I was puzzled to account for

its pleasing and extraordinary effect on the mind of the listener. The

song of the Veery consists of five distinct strains or bars. They might,

perhaps, be represented on the musical staff, by commencing the first

note on D above the staff and sliding down with a trill to C, one fifth

below. The second, third, fourth, and fifth bars are repetitions of the

first, except that each commences and ends a few tones lower than the

preceding.

Were we to attempt to perform these notes with an instrument adapted to

the purpose, we should probably fail, from the difficulty of imitating

the peculiar trilling of the notes, and the liquid ventriloquial sounds

at the conclusion of each strain. The whole is warbled in such a manner

as to produce upon the ear the effect of harmony. It seems as if we

heard two or three concordant notes at the same moment. I have never

noticed this effect in the song of any other bird. I should judge that

it might be produced by the rapid descent from the commencing note of

each strain to the last note about a fourth or fifth below, the latter

being heard simultaneously with the reverberation of the first note.

Another remarkable quality of the song is a union of brilliancy and

plaintiveness. The first effect is produced by the commencing notes of

each strain, which are sudden and on a high key; the second, by the

graceful chromatic slide to the termination, which is inimitable and

exceedingly solemn. I have sometimes thought that a part of the

delightful influence of these notes might be attributable to the

cloistered situations from which they were delivered. But I have

occasionally heard them while the bird was singing from a tree in an

open field, when they were equally pleasing and impressive. I am not

peculiar in my admiration of this little songster. I have observed that

people who are strangers to the woods, and to the notes of birds, are

always attracted by the song of the Veery.

In my early days, when I was at school, I boarded in a house near a

grove that was vocal with these Thrushes; and it was then I learned to

love their song more than any other sound in Nature, and above the

finest strains of artificial music. Since that time I have lived in

town, apart from their sylvan retreats, which I have visited only during

my hours of leisure; but I have seldom failed, each returning year, to

make frequent visits to the wood to listen to their notes, which cause

full half the pleasure I derive from a summer-evening walk. If in any

year I fail to hear the song of the Veery, I feel a painful sense of

regret, as when I have missed an opportunity to see an absent friend,

during a periodical visit.

The Veery is not one of our latest singers. His notes are not often

heard after the middle of July.

We should not be obliged to penetrate the wood to learn the habits of

another Thrush, not so remarkable for his musical powers as interesting

on account of his manners. I allude to the Cat-Bird, (_Turdus felivox_,)

well known from his disagreeable habit of mewing like a kitten. He is

most frequently seen on the edge of a wood, among the bushes that have

come up, as it were, to hide its baldness and to harmonize it with the

plain. He is usually attached to low, moist, and retired situations,

though he is often very familiar in his habits. His nest of dry sticks

is sometimes woven into a currant-bush in a garden that adjoins a wood,

and his quaint voice may be heard there as in his own solitary haunts.

The Cat-Bird is not an inveterate singer, and never seems to make music

his employment, though at any hour of the day, from dawn until dusk in

the evening, he may be heard occasionally singing and complaining.

Though I have been all my life familiar with the notes and manners of

the Cat-Bird, I have not yet been able to discover that he is a mocker.

He seems to me to have a definite song, unlike that of any other bird,

except the Red Mavis,--not made up of parts of the songs of other birds,

but as unique and original as that of the Song-Sparrow or the Robin. In

the songs of all birds we may detect occasional strains that resemble

parts of the song of some other species; but the Cat-Bird gives no more

of these imitations than we might reasonably regard as accidental. The

modulation of his song is somewhat similar to that of the Red Thrush,

and it is sometimes difficult to determine, at first, when the bird is

out of sight, whether we are listening to the one or the other; but

after a few seconds, we detect one of those quaint turns that

distinguish the notes of the Cat-Bird. I never yet mistook the note of

the Cat-Bird for that of any species except the Red Thrush. The truth

is, that the Thrushes, though delightful songsters, possess inferior

powers of execution, and cannot equal the Finches in their capacity of

learning and performing the notes of other birds. Even the Mocking-Bird,

as compared with many other species, is a very imperfect imitator of any

notes which are difficult of execution.

The mewing note of the Cat-Bird, from which his name is derived, has

been the occasion of many misfortunes to his species, causing them to

share a portion of that contempt which almost every human being feels

towards the feline race, and that contempt has been followed by

persecution. The Cat-Bird has always been proscribed by the New England

farmers, who from the first settlement of the country have entertained a

prejudice against many of the most useful birds. The Robin and a few

diminutive Fly-Catchers are almost the only exceptions. But the Robin is

now in danger of proscription. Within a few years past, the

horticulturists, who are unwilling lo lose their cherries for the

general benefit of agriculture, have made an effort to obtain an edict

of outlawry against him, accusing him of being entirely useless to the

farmer and the gardener. Their efforts have caused the friends of the

Robin to examine his claims to protection, and the result of their

investigations is demonstrative proof that the Robin is among the most

useful birds in existence. The Cat-Bird and other Thrushes are similar

in their habits of feeding and in their services to agriculture.

The Red Mavis (_Turdus rufus_) has many habits similar to those of the

Cat-Bird, but he is not partial to low grounds. He is one of the most

remarkable of the American birds, and is generally considered the finest

songster in the New England forest. Nuttall says, "He is inferior only

to the Mocking-Bird in musical talent"; but I should question his

inferiority. He is superior to the Mocking-Bird in variety, and is

surpassed by him only in the intonation of some of his notes. But no

person is ever tired of listening to the Red Mavis, who constantly

varies his song, while the Mocking-Bird tires us with his repetitions,

which are often continued to a ludicrous extreme.

It is unfortunate that our ornithologists should, in any cases, have

adopted the disagreeable names which our singularly unpoetical

countrymen have given to the birds. The little Hair-Bird, for example,

is called the "Chipping-Sparrow," as if he were in the habit of making

chips, like the Carpenter-Bird; and the Red Thrush is called the

"Thrasher," which is a low corruption of Thrush, and would signify that

the bird had some peculiar habit of _threshing_ with his wings. The word

"chipping," when used for "chirping," is incorrect English; and

"thrasher" is incorrect in point of fact. No such names should find

sanction in books. Let us repudiate the name of "Thrasher" for the Red

Thrush, as we would repudiate any other solecism.

The Red Mavis, or Thrush, is most musical in the early part of the

season, when he first arrives, or in the month of May; the Veery is most

vocal in June, and the Wood-Thrush in July; the Cat-Bird begins early

and sings late, and fills out with his quaint notes the remainder of the

singing season, after the others have become silent. When one is in a

thoughtful mood, the songs of the Wood-Thrush and the Veery surpass all

others on their delightful influence; and when I am strolling in the

solitary pastures, it seems to me that nothing can exceed the simple

melody of the Wood-Sparrow. But without claiming for the Red Thrush any

remarkable power of exciting poetic inspiration, his song in the open

field has a charm for all ears, and can be appreciated by the dullest of

minds. Without singing badly, he pleases the millions. He sings

occasionally at all hours of the day, and, when employed in singing,

devotes himself entirely to song, with evident enthusiasm.

It would be difficult, either by word or by note, to give one who has

never heard the song of the Red Thrush a correct idea of it. This bird

is not a rapid singer. His performances seem to be a sort of

_recitative_, often resembling spoken words, rather than musical notes,

many of which are short and guttural. He seldom whistles clearly, like

the Robin, but he produces a charming variety of tone and modulation.

Thoreau, in one of his quaint descriptions, gives an off-hand sketch of

the bird, which I will quote:--"Near at hand, upon the topmost spray of

a birch, sings the Brown Thrasher, or Red Mavis, as some love to call

him,--all the morning glad of your society, that would find out another

farmer's field, if yours were not here. While you are planting the seed,

he cries,--'Drop it, drop it,--cover it up, cover it up,--pull it up,

pull it up, pull it up.'"

We have now left the forest and are approaching the cultivated grounds,

under the shade of those fully expanded trees which have grown without

restraint in the open field. Here as well as in the wood we find the

Pewee, or Phoebe. (_Muscicapa nunciola_,) one of our most common and

interesting birds. He seems to court solitude, and his peculiar note

harmonizes well with his obscure and shady retreats. He sits for the

most part in the shade, catching his feast of insects without any noise,

merely flitting from his perch, seizing his prey, and then resuming his

station. This movement is performed in the most graceful manner, and he

often turns a somerset, or appears to do so, if the insect at first

evades his pursuit,--and he seldom fails in capturing it. All this is

done in silence, for he is no singer. The only sounds he utters are an

occasional clicking cherup, and now and then, with a plaintive cadence,

he seems to speak the word _pewee_. As the male and female bird cannot

be readily distinguished, I have not been able to determine whether this

sound is uttered by both sexes, or by the male alone.

So plainly expressive of sadness is this peculiar note, that it is

difficult to believe that the little being that utters it can be free

from sorrow. Certainly he can have no congeniality of feeling with the

sprightly Bobolink. Perhaps, with the rest of his species, he represents

only the fragment of a superior race, which, according to the

metempsychosis, have fallen from their original importance, and this

melancholy note is but the partial utterance of sorrow that still

lingers in their breasts after the occasion of it is forgotten.

Though a shy and retiring bird, the Pewee is known to almost every

person, on account of its remarkable note. Like the swallow, he builds

his nest under a sheltering roof or rock, and it is often fixed upon a

beam or plank under a bridge that crosses a small stream. Near this

place he takes his station, on the branch of a tree or the top of a

fence, and sits patiently waiting for every moth, chafer, or butterfly

that passes along. Fortunately, there are no prejudices existing in the

community against this bird that provoke men to destroy him. As he is

known to feed entirely on insects, he cannot be suspected of doing

mischief on the farm or in the garden, and is considered worthy of

protection.

I would remark in this place, that the Fly-Catchers and Swallows, and a

few other species that enjoy an immunity in our land, would, though

multiplied to infinity, perform only those offices which are assigned

them by Nature. It is a vain hope that leads one to believe, while he is

engaged in exterminating a certain species of small birds, that their

places can be supplied and their services performed by other species

which are allowed to multiply to excess. The preservation of every

species of indigenous birds is the only means that can prevent the

over-multiplication of injurious insects.