Produced by Al Haines
UNDER THE TREES AND ELSEWHERE
BY
HAMILTON WRIGHT MABIE
NEW YORK: PUBLISHED BY
DODD, MEAD AND COMPANY
MDCCCCIV
Copyright, 1891 and 1893
BY DODD, MEAD AND COMPANY
All rights reserved
TO
MY FRIENDS IN ARDEN
C. B. Y.
AND
M. Y. W.
Contents
CHAPTER
I. AN APRIL DAY
II. UNDER THE APPLE BOUGHS
III. ALONG THE ROAD--I
IV. ALONG THE ROAD--II
V. THE OPEN FIELDS
VI. EARTH AND SKY
VII. THE MYSTERY OF NIGHT
VIII. OFF SHORE
IX. A MOUNTAIN RIVULET
X. THE EARLIEST INSIGHTS
XI. THE HEART OF THE WOODS
XII. BESIDE THE RIVER
XIII. AT THE SPRING
XIV. ON THE HEIGHTS
XV. UNDER COLLEGE ELMS
XVI. A SUMMER MORNING
XVII. A SUMMER NOON
XVIII. EVENTIDE
XIX. THE TURN OF THE TIDE
XX. A MEMORY OF SUMMER
XXI. IN THE FOREST OF ARDEN, I-XI
XXII. AN UNDISCOVERED ISLAND, I-VI
Under the Trees and Elsewhere
Chapter I
An April Day
My study has been a dull place of late; even the open fire, which still
lingers on the hearth, has failed to exorcise a certain gray and weary
spirit which has somehow taken possession of the premises. As I was
thinking this morning about the best way of ejecting this unwelcome
inmate, it suddenly occurred to me that for some time past my study has
been simply a workshop; the fire has been lighted early and burned
late, the windows have been closed to keep out all disturbing sounds,
and the pile of manuscript on the table has steadily grown higher and
higher. "After all," I said to myself, "it is I that ought to be
ejected." Acting on this conclusion, and without waiting for the
service of process of formal dislodgment, I have let the fire go out,
opened the windows, locked the door, and put myself into the hands of
my old friend, Nature, for refreshment and society. I find that I have
come a little prematurely, although my welcome has been even warmer
than it would have been later.
"This is what I like," my old friend seemed to say. "You have not
waited until I have set my house in order and embellished my grounds.
You have come because you love me even more than my surroundings. I
have a good many friends who know me only from May to October: the rest
of the year they give me cold glances of surprised recognition, or they
pass me by without so much as a look. Their ardent devotion in summer
fills me with a deep disdain; their admiration for great masses of
colour, for high, striking effects, and for the general lavishness and
prodigality of my passing mood, betrays their lack of discernment,
their defect of taste, and their slight acquaintance with myself. I
should much prefer that they would leave my woods and fields untrodden,
and not disturb my mountain solitudes with their ignorant and vulgar
raptures. The people who really know me and love me seek me oftener at
other seasons, when I am more at leisure, and can bid them to a more
intimate companionship. They come to understand my finer moods and
deeper secrets of beauty; the elusive loveliness which I leave behind
me to lure on my true friends through the late autumn, they find and
follow with the eye and heart of love; the rare and splendid aspects in
which I often discover my presence in midwinter they enjoy all the more
because I have withdrawn myself from the gaze of the crowd; and the
first faint touches of colour and soft breathings of life, which
announce my return in the early spring, they greet with the deep joy of
true lovers. Those only who discern the beauty of branches from which
I have stripped the leaves to uncover their exquisite outline and
symmetry, who can look over bare fields and into the faded copse and
find there the elusive beauty which hides in soft tones and low
colours, are my true friends; all others are either pretenders or
distant acquaintances."
I was not at all surprised to hear my old friend express sentiments so
utterly at variance with those held by many people who lay claim to her
friendship; in fact, they are sentiments which I find every year
becoming more and more my own convictions. In every gallery of
paintings you will find the untrained about the pictures on which the
artist has lavished the highest colours from his palette; those whose
taste for art has had direction and culture will look for very
different effects in the works which attract them. It is among the
rich and varied low colours of this season, in wood and field, that a
true lover of nature detects some of her rarest touches of loveliness;
the low western sun, falling athwart the bare boughs and striking a
kind of subdued bloom into the brown hill-tops and across the furze and
heather, sometimes reveals a hidden charm in the landscape which one
seeks in vain when skies are softer and the green roof has been
stretched over the woodland ways. In fact, one can hardly lay claim to
any intimacy with Nature until he loves her best when she discards her
royalty, and, like Cinderella, clad only in the cast-off garments of
sunnier days, she crouches before the ashes of the faded year. The
test of friendship is its fidelity when every charm of fortune and
environment has been swept away, and the bare, undraped character alone
remains; if love still holds steadfast, and the joy of companionship
survives in such an hour, the fellowship becomes a beautiful prophecy
of immortality. To all professions of love Nature applies this
infallible test with a kind of divine impartiality. With the first
note of the bluebird, under the brief flush of an April sky, her
alluring invitation goes forth to the world; day by day she deepens the
blue of her summer skies and fills them with those buoyant clouds that
float like dreams across the vision of the waking day; night after
night she touches the stars with a softer radiance, and breathes upon
her roses so that they are eager for the dawn, that they may lay their
hearts open to her gaze; the forests take on more and more the lavish
mood of the summer, until they have buried their great trunks in
perpetual shade. The splendid pageant moves on, gathering its votaries
as it passes from one marvellous change to another; and yet the
Mistress of the Revels is nowhere visible. The crowds press from point
to point, peering into the depths of the woods and watching stealthily
where the torrent breaks from its dungeon in the hills, and leaps, mad
with joy, in the new-found liberty of light and motion; but not a
flutter of her garment betrays to the keenest eye the Presence which is
the soul of all this visible, moving scene.
And now there is a subtle change in the air; premonitions of death
begin to thrust themselves in the midst of the revelry; there is a
brief hush, a sudden glow of splendour, and lo! the pageant is
seemingly at an end. The crowd linger a little, gather a few faded
leaves, and depart; a few--a very few--wait. Now that the throngs have
vanished and the revelry is over, they are conscious of a deep,
pervading quietude; these are days when something touches them with a
sense of near and sacred fellowship; Nature has cast aside her gifts,
and given herself. For there is a something behind the glory of
summer, and they only have entered into real communion with Nature who
have learned to separate her from all her miracles of power and beauty;
who have come to understand that she lives apart from the singing of
birds, the blossoming of flowers, and the waving of branches heavy with
leaves.
The Greeks saw some things clearly without seeing them deeply; they
interpreted through a beautiful mythology all the external phenomena of
Nature. The people of the farther East, on the other hand, saw more
obscurely, but far more deeply; they looked less at the visible things
which Nature held out to them, and more into the mysteries of her
hidden processes, her silent but universal mutations; the subtle
vanishings and reappearings of her presence; they seemed to hear the
mighty loom on which the seasons are woven, to feel through some
primitive but forgotten kinship the throes of the birth-hour, the
vigils of suffering, and the agonies of death. Was there not in such
an attitude toward Nature a hint of the only real fellowship with her?