"Deepening his voice with deepening of the night."
It is in this mystical hour that you will hear the most celestial and
entrancing of all bird-notes, the songs of the thrushes,--the hermit,
and the wood-thrush, and the veery. Sometimes, but not often, you will
see the singers. I remember once, at the close of a beautiful day's
fishing on the Swiftwater, I came out, just after sunset, into a little
open space in an elbow of the stream. It was still early spring, and the
leaves were tiny. On the top of a small sumac, not thirty feet away
from me, sat a veery. I could see the pointed spots upon his breast, the
swelling of his white throat, and the sparkle of his eyes, as he poured
his whole heart into a long liquid chant, the clear notes rising and
falling, echoing and interlacing in endless curves of sound,
"Orb within orb, intricate, wonderful."
Other bird-songs can be translated into words, but not this. There is no
interpretation. It is music,--as Sidney Lanier defines it,--
"Love in search of a word."
But it is not only to the real life of birds and flowers that the little
rivers introduce you. They lead you often into familiarity with human
nature in undress, rejoicing in the liberty of old clothes, or of none
at all. People do not mince along the banks of streams in patent-leather
shoes or crepitating silks. Corduroy and home-spun and flannel are the
stuffs that suit this region; and the frequenters of these paths go
their natural gaits, in calf-skin or rubber boots, or bare-footed. The
girdle of conventionality is laid aside, and the skirts rise with the
spirits.
A stream that flows through a country of upland farms will show you many
a pretty bit of genre painting. Here is the laundry-pool at the foot of
the kitchen garden, and the tubs are set upon a few planks close to the
water, and the farmer's daughters, with bare arms and gowns tucked up,
are wringing out the clothes. Do you remember what happened to Ralph
Peden in The Lilac Sunbonnet when he came on a scene like this? He
tumbled at once into love with Winsome Charteris,--and far over his
head.
And what a pleasant thing it is to see a little country lad riding one
of the plough-horses to water, thumping his naked heels against the ribs
of his stolid steed, and pulling hard on the halter as if it were the
bridle of Bucephalus! Or perhaps it is a riotous company of boys that
have come down to the old swimming-hole, and are now splashing and
gambolling through the water like a drove of white seals very much
sun-burned. You had hoped to catch a goodly trout in that hole, but what
of that? The sight of a harmless hour of mirth is better than a fish,
any day.
Possibly you will overtake another fisherman on the stream. It may be
one of those fabulous countrymen, with long cedar poles and bed-cord
lines, who are commonly reported to catch such enormous strings of fish,
but who rarely, so far as my observation goes, do anything more than
fill their pockets with fingerlings. The trained angler, who uses the
finest tackle, and drops his fly on the water as accurately as Henry
James places a word in a story, is the man who takes the most and the
largest fish in the long run. Perhaps the fisherman ahead of you is such
an one,--a man whom you have known in town as a lawyer or a doctor,
a merchant or a preacher, going about his business in the hideous
respectability of a high silk hat and a long black coat. How good it
is to see him now in the freedom of a flannel shirt and a broad-brimmed
gray felt with flies stuck around the band.
In Professor John Wilson's Essays Critical and Imaginative, there is a
brilliant description of a bishop fishing, which I am sure is drawn from
the life: "Thus a bishop, sans wig and petticoat, in a hairy cap, black
jacket, corduroy breeches and leathern leggins, creel on back and rod in
hand, sallying from his palace, impatient to reach a famous salmon-cast
ere the sun leave his cloud, . . . appears not only a pillar of his
church, but of his kind, and in such a costume is manifestly on the high
road to Canterbury and the Kingdom-Come." I have had the good luck to
see quite a number of bishops, parochial and diocesan, in that style,
and the vision has always dissolved my doubts in regard to the validity
of their claim to the true apostolic succession.
Men's "little ways" are usually more interesting, and often more
instructive than their grand manners. When they are off guard, they
frequently show to better advantage than when they are on parade. I get
more pleasure out of Boswell's Johnson than I do out of Rasselas or
The Rambler. The Little Flowers of St. Francis appear to me far more
precious than the most learned German and French analyses of his
character. There is a passage in Jonathan Edwards' Personal Narrative,
about a certain walk that he took in the fields near his father's house,
and the blossoming of the flowers in the spring, which I would not
exchange for the whole of his dissertation On the Freedom of the Will.
And the very best thing of Charles Darwin's that I know is a bit from a
letter to his wife: "At last I fell asleep," says he, "on the grass, and
awoke with a chorus of birds singing around me, and squirrels running
up the tree, and some woodpeckers laughing; and it was as pleasant and
rural a scene as ever I saw; and I did not care one penny how any of the
birds or beasts had been formed."
Little rivers have small responsibilities. They are not expected to bear
huge navies on their breast or supply a hundred-thousand horse-power to
the factories of a monstrous town. Neither do you come to them hoping
to draw out Leviathan with a hook. It is enough if they run a harmless,
amiable course, and keep the groves and fields green and fresh along
their banks, and offer a happy alternation of nimble rapids and quiet
pools,
"With here and there a lusty trout,
And here and there a grayling."
When you set out to explore one of these minor streams in your canoe,
you have no intention of epoch-making discoveries, or thrilling and
world-famous adventures. You float placidly down the long stillwaters,
and make your way patiently through the tangle of fallen trees that
block the stream, and run the smaller falls, and carry your boat
around the larger ones, with no loftier ambition than to reach a good
camp-ground before dark and to pass the intervening hours pleasantly,
"without offence to God or man." It is an agreeable and advantageous
frame of mind for one who has done his fair share of work in the world,
and is not inclined to grumble at his wages. There are few moods in
which we are more susceptible of gentle instruction; and I suspect there
are many tempers and attitudes, often called virtuous, in which the
human spirit appears to less advantage in the sight of Heaven.
It is not required of every man and woman to be, or to do, something
great; most of us must content ourselves with taking small parts in
the chorus. Shall we have no little lyrics because Homer and Dante have
written epics? And because we have heard the great organ at Freiburg,
shall the sound of Kathi's zither in the alpine hut please us no more?
Even those who have greatness thrust upon them will do well to lay the
burden down now and then, and congratulate themselves that they are not
altogether answerable for the conduct of the universe, or at least not
all the time. "I reckon," said a cowboy to me one day, as we were riding
through the Bad Lands of Dakota, "there's some one bigger than me,
running this outfit. He can 'tend to it well enough, while I smoke my
pipe after the round-up."
There is such a thing as taking ourselves and the world too seriously,
or at any rate too anxiously. Half of the secular unrest and dismal,
profane sadness of modern society comes from the vain idea that every
man is bound to be a critic of life, and to let no day pass without
finding some fault with the general order of things, or projecting
some plan for its improvement. And the other half comes from the greedy
notion that a man's life does consist, after all, in the abundance
of the things that he possesses, and that it is somehow or other more
respectable and pious to be always at work making a larger living, than
it is to lie on your back in the green pastures and beside the still
waters, and thank God that you are alive.
Come, then, my gentle reader, (for by this time you have discovered that
this chapter is only a preface in disguise,--a declaration of principles
or the want of them, an apology or a defence, as you choose to take it,)
and if we are agreed, let us walk together; but if not, let us part here
with out ill-will.
You shall not be deceived in this book. It is nothing but a handful of
rustic variations on the old tune of "Rest and be thankful," a record
of unconventional travel, a pilgrim's scrip with a few bits of blue-sky
philosophy in it. There is, so far as I know, very little useful
information and absolutely no criticism of the universe to be found
in this volume. So if you are what Izaak Walton calls "a severe,
sour-complexioned man," you would better carry it back to the
bookseller, and get your money again, if he will give it to you, and go
your way rejoicing after your own melancholy fashion.
But if you care for plain pleasures, and informal company, and friendly
observations on men and things, (and a few true fish-stories,) then
perhaps you may find something here not unworthy your perusal. And so
I wish that your winter fire may burn clear and bright while you read
these pages; and that the summer days may be fair, and the fish may rise
merrily to your fly, whenever you follow one of these little rivers.
1895.