THE ACCIDENT OF AUTHORSHIP
It was written deep in the constitution of his spirit that William
Hamilton Gibson was to be a naturalist and an artist. By endowment and
by desire he was marked for that career which made him at once the
observer of nature and her illustrator by pencil and by brush. But the
predestination does not seem so clear in the case of his authorship. It
does not appear to have been so plainly provided in his nature that he
was called to be a writer of books. Here the prophecy could not have
been so surely made--beforehand. Gibson himself used to declare that he
drifted into authorship; that his writing was not premeditated but
accidental. He was not impelled to this mode of expression as he was to
his drawing and his painting and his lecturing. He described to a friend
the manner in which he began to write, and his first attempt at such
work as afterward gave him standing as an author:
“The way in which I drifted into literary work was quite natural, and in
a way this work became imperative if I was to gain a livelihood. I had
my sketch-book and portfolio full of drawings from nature. As a
beginner I could not illustrate, I could only show these specimens,
which would not sell alone by themselves. But there were certain things
in natural history which my sketches did illustrate. This fact suggested
to me the possibility of writing up matter to go with my sketches. In
this way I found entrance into the illustrated publications, and
eventually secured a good hold for myself. But I had never yet had the
remotest idea of becoming a writer. The way in which I happened to take
up more serious writing was through a suggestion of Mr. Henry M. Alden,
the editor of Harper’s Magazine. I returned one summer from a vacation
spent in Washington, Connecticut, and was describing to him my
school-life, telling him little episodes which had been recalled by my
visit to Mr. Gunn. Mr. Alden seemed interested, and when I was done,
said to me, ‘I want you to write that out for the magazine.’ This
suggestion led to an article called ‘Snug Hamlet,’ which to my surprise
and gratification was received when it appeared, with a good deal of
favor. Then Mr. Alden suggested that I prepare an article to go with it,
which, as this had to do with summer, should treat of winter. This, too,
was written, ‘The Winter Idyl.’ Then followed others upon spring and
autumn. With these four sketches I had enough for a book; and ‘Pastoral
Days’ was the result, which proved a great success.”
Such was his introduction to literature. He always regarded it as a
pendant to his other work, something to introduce his sketches, to help
along his art. He never became confused by his various aptitudes, nor
lost sight of his great passion and purpose. He kept the essential
spirit of his life and work quite clear of any entanglement with what
was accidental. He had never expected, never intended to be a writer;
and his success at literary work was a surprise to him, as it was to his
friends. They apparently had never thought of him as a possible author,
and scarcely knew how to take his achievement.
When the press-notices of “Pastoral Days” began to come in, they were
almost unanimous in according to the newly fledged author unstinted
praise for the literary portion of his work. The chorus of appreciation
is almost unbroken; and one feels, through all the perfunctory
graciousness of the reviewers, so hard-pressed at Christmas-tide, a note
of sincerity and real pleasure in the new writer’s production. When one
considers that Gibson the writer was an unknown aspirant for favor, and
that he was competing with Gibson the artist, the reigning favorite
among American illustrators, the success of his literary venture is
really amazing. Repeatedly the book is called “a prose-poem.” “Although
there be no poetry in it, the book in its totality is a most exquisite
poem.” “There is a smooth and tender rhythmic flow in the phrasing, an
affluence of diction which constitute one of the indispensable elements
of poetry, and almost entitle the sketches to be named among the poems
of the language.” One of the most competent critics, in a journal of the
first rank, wrote of his prose:
“William Blake is the most noted poet-artist of this century, but not in
his work is to be found such unity and harmony between what he does as
pictorial and literary artist, as exists in ‘Pastoral Days.’ We have
used the words poet-artist advisedly in connection with Mr. Gibson. He
is above all a poet-artist. Not a poet alone, nor an artist alone, but
the two together, a combination as rare as it is charming.”
Even the “Evening Post” calls them “Mr. Gibson’s four sympathetic,
appreciative, poetically interpretative essays upon the seasons.” And it
puts the question to its readers, “Need we say that this author-artist
is a poet although he writes in prose, or that his text and his pictures
are essentially a poem of the New England year?” But two of his
reviewers--one in the “Utica Morning Herald,” and another in the “Boston
Literary World”--actually cite the same passage in his prose which
“reads with the movement and rhythm of blank verse.” The latter of these
says:
“Mr. Gibson writes with a curious study of rhythmic effect; his whole
book, in fact, might easily have been converted into blank verse,--as
witness this extract from pp. 127-8, which, to help the illusion, we
print in that form:
Silently like thoughts that come and go,
The snowflakes fall each one a gem,
The whitened air conceals all earthly trace,
And leaves to memory the space to fill.
I look upon a blank whereon my fancy paints,
As could no hand of mine, the pictures and the poems
of a boyhood life:
And even as the undertone of a painting, be it warm or cool,
Shall modify or change the color laid upon it,
So this cold and frosty background, through the window,
Transfigures all my thoughts, and forms them into winter
memories, legion like the snow.
Oh, that I could translate for other eyes, the winter
idyl painted there!
I see a living past!
“All this, understand, and the rest of a hundred and fifty and more
pages like it, is sober prose; but it makes one think of
eighteenth-century poetry like Graham’s, which is very good descriptive
poetry by the way.”
Says one enthusiastic critic, speaking first of the make-up of the
volume:
“It is almost too beautiful to read; but with a determination to see
what lay beyond this vision of the beautiful, we commenced to read, and
found the author to be a high-priest of nature. We were led along by the
charming simplicity of the writer, till at last, in midsummer we seemed
to be surrounded by scenes so familiar that we almost suspected that by
some strange mishap the author had misspelled the name of the school of
early days, and had written ‘Snuggery’ for ‘Gunnery.’ How is this?...
“The letter-press of such books is usually a make-weight for the
illustrations; but in this case it is hard to decide which of the two
merits the palm.”
Another speaks of the text of the book, saying:
“Here quite as strikingly as in the designs for illustration is shown
that loving familiarity with all the infinite variations in nature’s
moods and works. Without the pictures altogether, these sketches would
compel admiration as very notable specimens of word-painting.”
It will be news to many of his admirers to know that Gibson’s first book
was published in 1876. It was entitled, “The Complete American Trapper,”
and was published by James Miller, of New York. The book was republished
in 1878 by Bradley & Co., and again in 1880 by Harper Brothers under the
title, “Camp-Life in the Woods; and the Tricks of Trapping and
Trap-Making.” It was written out of the joyous and ample memories of his
youth, supplemented by his reading and intercourse with hunters and
woodsmen. He refers in the preface to his own boyish days, and to “one
autumn in particular which shines out above all the rest; and that was
when his traps were first set, and were the chief source of his
amusement. The adventurous excitement which sped him on in those daily
tramps through the woods, and the
[Illustration: _A Winter Hunt_]
buoyant, exhilarating effect of the exercise, can be realized only by
those who have had the same experience.” This little book, which still
appeals to the juvenile mind,--a new edition was put out as lately as
1899,--has had a singular charm, not only for boys, but for those grown
men who never quite lose the heart of boyhood. Gibson himself brought it
to the notice of Charles A. Dana, of the “New York Sun,” and handed him
a copy to read. The result of that chance courtesy was not a perfunctory
review by a subordinate of the staff. The “chief” himself read it and
wrote an enthusiastic notice of over two columns’ length. The young
author--he was only twenty-six--went to Mr. Beecher for a notice, at the
time he first changed publishers. He wrote this account of the call to
his mother:
“NEW YORK, _July 22, /78_.
“DEAR MOTHER:--
“I sent you the day I wrote this letter, four papers and a
magazine. The magazine is quite well printed and the bird article
has created a regular ‘sensation.’ I hear of it on all sides, hear
people talking about it on the ferry-boats and in restaurants, and
have received many enthusiastic congratulations. The press (those
which have yet spoken) are appreciative, as you see, and there will
be doubtless many more equally commendatory notices. It is a
pleasure unspeakable.
“I have got a little bit of news which I think will please you. You
remember I told you that I thought of getting a line from Mr.
Beecher on my book to be used on a circular. Well, I called upon
him and took my bird proofs with me. He was delighted, even
excited, over them, and manifested the keenest interest in all
pertaining to them, particularly as regarded Mr. Parsons. I told
him all about the thing and he ended up by saying ‘Well, Will, your
progress is simply stupendous. I’m proud of you.’ I then told him
about the change in my book, and he was again delighted at the
mention of Mr. Bradley’s name. He said that I might travel the
world over and would not find a nobler man than Bradley, and the
business push of the firm was second to no other in this or any
other country--that it was a ‘feather in my cap’ to secure such men
as my publishers. I broached the subject of the ‘opinion’ from him,
asking him if he could conscientiously give me about ‘ten words.’
He turned about after a minute’s thought, and penned two pages of
note paper, and such a two pages! The following is a copy:
“‘Why was I born so early? Why did not the messenger angel sent
with me defer his visit to earth until the ‘Complete American
Trapper’ had been published? I even mourn to think of what I was
deprived of in my youth. I can’t imagine a country boy, a real
American boy, who would not go without his dinner for months if in
this way only he could obtain this wonderful boy’s book! And that
parent is hard-hearted, and may even be in dread of I Timothy 5;8,
who will not buy this book for his boys; and for that matter, a man
is a boy until he is fifty years old. I am all the more interested
in the book because Mr. Gibson is one of my boys, brought up under
my eyes in old Plymouth, and by good hard work has deserved
success.
“‘HENRY WARD BEECHER.’
“On the morning after receiving the above I found a letter from Bradley
& Co., in which they remarked that they hoped I would succeed in getting
a word from Mr. Beecher. I sent the notice to them and would like you to
see the letter I got from them in acknowledgment.”
Dr. J. G. Holland was another friend to whom he looked for a word of
approval. He was not quite so sure of his own mind, and wrote in a much
more guarded way. His humane heart was a little troubled about the
effect of the book. In truth, Gibson himself became, in later years,
quite uneasy about it. His own sympathy with animals increased, and his
love for them, as little brothers and sisters of the wood; and he grew
more and more averse to whatever gave them pain. But he rested in the
intent of his book as he describes it explicitly in the preface: “If the
poor victims are to serve no use after their capture, either as food,
or in the furnishing of their plumage or skins for useful purposes, the
sport becomes heartless cruelty, and we do not wish to be understood as
encouraging it under any circumstances.” He would probably have
strengthened that utterance at a later day, and possibly have written
another preface. Dr. Holland’s letter runs thus:
“NEW YORK, _Nov. 7, 1878_.
“DEAR MR. GIBSON:
“I have been looking over your book with an interest mingled of
dread and delight. It is so easy to pervert all these traps of
yours into instruments of cruelty that the book seems almost a
dangerous one. But, after all, what good thing is there that is not
liable to be perverted? The capture of animals for food is entirely
legitimate. The capture of the fur-bearing animals is quite as
proper, while the destruction of those that are dangerous to the
life of men and domestic animals cannot be objected to on any
ground.
“These purposes cover your field, or nearly cover it, and you
certainly have met them with a book which, so far as I know, has no
equal. It is a good book to put in the hands of every boy who is
not so cruel as to deserve to be caught in a trap himself.
“Yours truly,
“J. G. HOLLAND.”
It should not be supposed that Gibson was so confident of himself and
his own resources that he disdained the work and experience and
knowledge of others. He was a good reader and a hard student. The pages
of his books are crowded with passages out of his favorite poets, and
his note-books show the careful husbanding of the fruits of his reading
on all the themes nearest to his heart. Wordsworth, Shelley, Keats, and
Browning, in all that they have seen and sung of nature, were his
authorities often cited, and annotated, and winnowed into his
note-books. The New England poets he knew and loved, and shared all
their honest preference for those home products which so many count
homely and call commonplace because they happen to be common. Thoreau he
knew thoroughly and loved as a master in the great profession of
nature-study; and his references to him are always those of a modest
disciple, his bearing and attitude that of deference and respect.
Hawthorne, too, was one whose subtle and spiritual genius found a
sympathetic and ready interpreter in his own imagination. Darwin he
knew, and all his works which bore upon cross-fertilization had
mastered. When he gave the wonderful talks on flowers and their insect
allies to the townspeople and farmers of Washington, an old “native”
came to him, and in the dialect of old New England said: “Mr. Gibson, do
you mean to tell me thet thet’s whut Darwin’s been tellin’ ’baout?”
“Yes,” was the reply, “that is one of the things he has been talking
about.” “Wal,” was the rejoinder, “I never took no stock in Darwin
afore, but I sh’ll think a heap on him naow.” Indeed, there was, in all
his lectures, the frankest acknowledgment of his indebtedness--of the
common debt of all of us--to those pioneers in this fallow field of
knowledge. He stinted no praise, no honor to their names, and used their
work with hearty acknowledgment. He knew Sprengel, Darwin, Müller, well
and, following their lead into the enchanted and enchanting country of
new knowledge, soon made himself a student at first hand of the things
he had been taught by these great masters.
Gibson was by no means an “easy” writer. His page, as it stands, revised
and corrected, hardly gives a sign of the pains taken to bring it into
smooth and fluent shape. It seems to be a natural, spontaneous
running-on of a mind as sure of its expressions as it is of its
impressions. But the effect was purchased only by the hardest and most
conscientious labor. His “first drafts” show all the experiments he made
in words, phrases, expressions, and construction. Many times the text is
hardly legible, it is so crossed, recrossed, cut, interlined, and
rewritten altogether. If Sheridan’s judgment is to be accepted, that
“easy writing’s curst hard reading,” Gibson comes honestly by his
pleasing style. The patient work of the author has smoothed the way for
the reader. He had both the qualifications which Pope declares
constitute the secret of good writing,--“to know thoroughly what one
writes about, and not to be affected.” And to these he added a third; he
took pains.
In a letter written to Mr. Gunn in 1880, Gibson pours out his heart, as
he always did to his old teacher, and reveals incidentally the spirit in
which he took his literary work, as well as the honest and conscientious
purpose behind it all.
“140 NASSAU ST., N. Y.
“_June 7/80._
“DEAR MR. GUNN:
“If you only knew how much happiness your letters always give me
you would never feel it necessary to accompany them with any
apology whose need exists only in your imagination. There are a
hundred reasons why I value a letter from you more than that of any
other friend in the world, even though it should be all that you
seem to think, in ‘tameness.’ I like your so-called tame letters. I
don’t care how you write, so long as you write when you feel like
it. Your appreciation of my ‘Springtime’ gratifies me more than all
the ‘press’ encomiums put together, for you combine all the
qualifications for the most perfect criticism, both as regards the
question of truthfulness and style. I appreciate your praise, more
than I can tell, albeit I may inwardly feel that it is not
deserved. When I write on the subject of nature, there seems to be
an unseen impulse that guides my hand and fairly overwhelms me with
memories. It is difficult for me to select from the enormous mass
of reminiscences and vivid pictures that crowd upon me. Dates and
figures I cannot remember, but verily it does seem that every bit
of animate or inanimate nature, whether in the form of insect or of
flower, whether subtle tint of bark or lichen, crumpled leaf or
dried and broken twig among the herbage, every one comes up before
me as though by magic spell, and I thank my happy life at the
Gunnery for the inspiration that led to the thoughtful study of the
infinite beauties of nature. How thankful I am that they are
infinite, that so long as I live I shall always find fresh food for
contemplation. I am now in my element and as happy a man as walks
the earth at this moment. My future is without a sign of
disappointment, and so long as I keep convinced of a present lack
of fulfilment of the powers within me, so long am I sure of
progress and happiness as far as my work is concerned. My work is
so full of faults to me, that I am amazed that others do not see
them. So long as I improve I am satisfied and I am greatly
gratified that you consider my latest an improvement on the former
efforts.
“I have just finished a set of drawings for an article to complete
the series. It is an ‘Autumn Reverie,’ to appear in October. The
drawings are better I think than ‘Springtime.’ The article is yet
unborn but exists in chaos in my brain, an immense tangle in which
at present it seems impossible to find the loose end. But I shall
get hold of it in a few days and it will reel off all right I
suppose. This literary work was a strange result of circumstances.
I can thank the Gunnery for this also, for it was only after
narrating my happy experience at Washington that I was urged to
write it up. The article was a success and of course another
followed and another, each apparently an improvement, until now I
find my literary work at a premium....
“When it comes to extended landscapes I would rather paint them on
larger surfaces than a few inches. Don’t count too much on my
‘climbing.’ I have not written much yet. You may yet have the
chance, but not if I know it. I have been utterly amazed at the
ignorance shown by the people (who are supposed to be writing from
the ‘inspiration of Nature’) both in their anachronisms and in
their wild ideas about our fauna. Thus in September ‘Harper’s’ will
appear five large drawings by me illustrating a poem written by
some fellow who you would imagine was fresh from England with his
skylarks and fieldfares, etc. I called the attention of the editor
to it, but I suppose it will go in all the same. My portfolios are
full of sketches and studies and notes thereon as to dates, etc.
In writing haphazard I fall into many errors, but I let no
manuscript leave my hands carelessly prepared. I have been
criticised on my ‘coltsfoot,’ some thinking only _Tussilago
Farfara_, whereas I used the ‘common’ name in our section for the
_Asarum Canadense_. So also with my partridge, I knew better; but
should I have alluded to a ‘ruffed grouse’ in Sandy Hook, they
would have thought I was talking Latin!”
There is an interesting letter, much prized by Gibson, in which his old
friend gave him such unstinted praise as seldom comes from so exacting a
critic in the field in which the young man was at work. Mr. Gunn wrote
him:
“GUNNERY, WASHINGTON, CONN.
“_Sunday, June 6th, 11 P.M._
“MY DEAR WILLIE:
“I have thought of you 7 times every day, ever since the
publication of your beautiful Idyll of Spring. You expected me to
write; but I cannot do that even now. Everything that I think and
much more everything that I think on paper, seems so flat and
unworthy to be written. Other men seem content to write and say
little, or little to the purpose. The fact is, Willie, there are
few men who know the spring. They know a little about it, a few
flowers, a few birds, a few showers, a few facts and phenomena--but
I don’t know any artists, poets, or other men but you and John
Burroughs that know it all. I don’t see how or when you
[Illustration: _Springtime_
_From a Painting_]
learned it all. I have never met a man that knew so much of the real
life of Nature as I know myself--and how did you come to see and hear it
all? I remember it now that you recall it to me--I even thought one
night in my bed, that I had detected a slip in your chronology. I
thought you had delayed the flower which you euphoniously denominate the
‘Swamp Cabbage’ till too late a day. I looked in the morning in the
Magazine and there it was promptly ready in the wild days of March. I
venture to say that no poet has before been so true to nature as you
have been. I thought no man except John Burroughs had seen or heard so
much in the woods as I am wont to see; but lo! one of my own boys has
seen with keener eyes, has heard with more acute ears, and has had
genius and taste to tell it all in words, and to paint it all with a
magic brush. Other men don’t know which most to admire in you, the
artist or the naturalist. Well I don’t; but who before has described
spring without a blunder? They draw a nightingale where I heard a
whippoorwill, or they set Venus to glow in the east on a summer evening.
I have not detected a slip. And what an old fool I was to keep pencils
away from you, when you were born with a whole magazine of them. I
cannot write. I ought not to have begun. I think ‘Spring’ by far the
richer article of the two--full of the nicest touches both with pencil
and with pen--and you are a dear good fellow, and so is your wife. God
bless you both. Go and see Abbie at 36 Garden Place.
“Yours,
“F. W. GUNN.”
To this Gibson made speedy answer, giving full absolution and much more:
“Do not chide yourself for keeping the pencils from me, for it is not
true. You never did--you tried, but gave it up. When you were wont to
say every few minutes in school ‘Gibson, what are you doing?’ I used to
answer, withdrawing my eyes from the window ‘Nothing, sir.’ You never
dreamed of the true amount of thinking that was going on within my
cranium. Lazy as I seemed to be, I was never idle in my mind and I can
see now the flickering light and shade among the leaves of the old
school-house maples--see the squirming caterpillar dangling from his
silken thread, swinging in the summer breeze.
“The white-faced wasp upon the window-sill is as distinct to me now as
if he crawled upon this paper. These and a thousand more I recall, and
even the first glimpse of the first day of my happy life at Washington
comes up before me with a freshness in decided contrast to the memories
of the later years. You well remember ‘Amy’s Grotto’ in the pasture lot.
You took me to see it and my eyes were wide open also in those early
days. Little thing, as it was, it has impressed itself upon my memory
as indelibly as anything in my entire life? I recall its every sprig of
green and hear the tuneful drops in the limpid pool.
“Where then did I learn it all, except from your own dear self in the
happiest season of my life? You it was who turned my thoughts towards
nature, and inspired the desire in me to follow up the study. If I have
lived to see the day when you are ‘proud of me’ or when I can in any way
contribute to your pleasure as a meagre return for the many years of
happiness you have given me, I have not lived in vain, for this very
desire has been a factor in the ends and aims of my ambition.
“Whew! Talk of letters! Don’t you ever say another word about your
letters. A page of your handwriting acts like a talisman that conjures
up a host of reminiscences, and sets my pen and thoughts going like a
saw mill; and here it is six o’clock, and my wife told me to be home by
that time, as we are both going to call upon Mrs. Gunn this evening by
appointment. Gracious! and only to think that I haven’t got a moment to
spare to dot my i’s and cross my t’s, nor send it to the binders. I hope
you will be able to make it all out. I’ll page it for you anyhow.
“Good bye, with much love from
“Your old boy
“W. HAMILTON GIBSON.
“Alias WILLIE.”
The chief sources of the interest of his literary work appear in those
lines. He had something to say; and he said it in his own way. There are
no better recipes than those for concocting a lasting success in
literature.
His style was, like all good style, the outcome of his spirit. He had a
marvelous power of telling because he had such exceptional power of
seeing. In the passage describing the night stroll in the woods, he
fills the mind with the mystery of the outward scene, and makes it seem,
without any sense of undue artifice, just the setting for the mysterious
transaction which ensues between the primrose and the moth.
“Our misty primrose dell is fast lighting its pale lamps in the
twilight. One by one they flash out in the gloom as if obedient to the
hovering touch of some Ariel unseen--or is it the bright response to the
firefly’s flitting torch? The sun has long sunk beneath the hill. And
now, when the impenetrable dusk has deepened round about, involving all,
where but a moment since all was visible, this shadowy dell has
forgotten the sunset, and knows a twilight all its own, independent of
the fading glow of the sky. It was a sleepy nook by day, where it is now
all life and vigilance; it was dark and still at noon, where it is now
bright and murmurous. The ‘delicious secret’ is now whispered abroad,
and where in all the mystic alchemy of odors or attars shall you find
such a witching fragrance as this which is here borne on the diaphanous
tide of the jealous gliding mist, and fills the air with its sweet
enchantment--the stilly night’s own spirit guised in perfume? Yonder
bright cluster, deep within the recess of the alders, how it glows!
fanned by numerous feathery wings, it glimmers in the dark like a
phosphorescent aureole--verily as though some merry will-o’-the-wisp,
tired of his dancing, had perched him there, while other luminous spires
rise above the mist, or here and there hover in lambent banks beyond,
or, like those throbbing fires beneath the ocean surge, illume the fog
with half-smothered halo. This lustrous tuft at our elbow! Let us turn
our lantern upon it. Its nightly whorl of lamps is already lit, save one
or two that have escaped our fairy in his rounds, but not for long, for
the green veil of this sunset bud is now rent from base to tip. The
confined folded petals are pressing hard for their release. In a moment
more, with an audible impulse, the green apex bursts asunder, and the
four freed sepals slowly reflex against the hollow tube of the flower,
while the lustrous corolla shakes out its folds, saluting the air with
its virgin breath.
“The slender stamens now explore the gloom, and hang their festoons of
webby pollen across their tips. None too soon, for even now a silvery
moth circles about the blossom, and settles among the outstretched
filaments, sipping the nectar in tremulous content. But he carries a
precious token as he hies away, a golden necklace, perhaps, and with it
a message to yonder blossom among the alders, and thus until the dawn,
his rounds directed with a deep design of which he is an innocent
instrument, but which insures a perpetual paradise of primroses for
future sippers like himself.”
The reader feels the pure delight he takes in the beauty of bird-and
flower-forms; and there is no stinting of phrases in his determination
to convey some sense of them to those who, “having eyes, see not.” He is
as accurate as Audubon and as poetic as Lowell in his description of the
rose-breasted grosbeak and his rich song.
“Hark, from the apple-tree in the field below, that note so full and
ripe and mellow! ‘A robin,’ say you? No; nor an oriole. There is a
distinct individuality in that song, which, while suggesting both these
birds, still differentiates it in many respects as the superior to
either, as though from a fuller throat, a more ample vocal source. It is
one of the rarest, choicest voices among all our feathered songsters, in
_timbre_ and volume surpassing the thrush, and in these qualities
unequaled, I think, by any of our birds. Listen to the overflowing
measure of its melody! How comparatively few the notes, and yet how
telling!--no single tone lost, no superficial intricacies. Sensuous, and
suffused with color, it is like a rich, pulpy, luscious, pink-cheeked
tropic fruit rendered into sound. Such would seem the irresistible
figure as I listen with closed eyes to the swelling notes--a figure
entirely independent of, though certainly sustained in, the
ornithological form pictured in the song, sitting quietly on an upper
twig, with full plump breast as carmine-cheeked as the autumn apples now
promised in the swelling blossom calyxes among which it so quietly
nestles. I can see the jetty head, and quills splashed with silvery
white, and the intervals of song seem spanned with rosy light as pure as
the prism released from those upraised wings as the singer preens his
plumage with ivory bill. This is the rose-breasted grosbeak, with his
overflowing cup, his pastoral cornucopia, his musical horn of plenty.”
There is something about the description of the piping of the frogs in
the distant marsh which brings tears to the eye of him who reads it with
a hundred boyhood memories to make it real. This is the passage which
excited the admiration of the critic in the “Saturday Review,” and led
him to say: “People must be strangely constituted who do not enjoy such
pages as Mr. Gibson has presented to us here. It is not merely that he
writes well, though he possesses a style that is full of felicities, but
the subject itself is irresistibly fascinating.”
“A plaintive piping trill now breaks the impressive stillness. Again and
again I hear the little lonely voice vibrating through the low-lying
mist. It is only a little frog in some far-off marsh; but what a sweet
sense of sadness is awakened by that lowly melody! How its weird minor
key, with its magic touch, unlocks the treasures of the heart. Only the
peeping of a frog; but where in all the varied voices of the night,
where, even among the great chorus of nature’s sweetest music, is there
another song so lulling in its dreamy melody, so full of that emotive
charm which quickens the human heart? How often in the vague spring
twilight have I yielded to the strange, fascinating melancholy awakened
by the frog’s low murmur at the water’s edge! How many times have I
lingered near some swampy roadside bog, and let these little wizards
weave their mystic spell about my willing senses, while the very air
seemed to quiver in the fulness of their song! I remember the tangle of
tall and withered rushes, through whose mysterious depths the eye in
vain would strive to penetrate at the sound of some faint splash or
ripple, or perhaps at the quaint, high-keyed note of some little
isolated hermit, piping in his somber solitude. I recall the first
glimpse of the rising moon, as its great golden face peered out at me
from over the distant hill, enclosing half the summit against its broad
and luminous surface. Slowly and steadily it seemed to steal into view,
until, risen in all its fulness, I caught its image in the trembling
ripples at the edge of the soggy pool, where
[Illustration: _Lake Waramaug_
_From a Painting_]
the palpitating water responded to the frog’s low, tremulous monotone.”
He loves a swamp, and is repeatedly telling of its charm, which he
celebrates in a brief paragraph that swings through the whole cycle of
the natural year, and finds a new theme to celebrate for every month.
“I know of no other place in which the progress of the year is so
readily traced as in these swampy fallow lands. They are a living
calendar, not merely of the seasons alone, but of every month
successively; and its record is almost unmistakably disclosed. It is
whispered in the fragrant breath of flowers, and of the aromatic herbage
you crush beneath your feet. It floats about on filmy wings of
dragon-fly and butterfly, or glistens in the air on silky seeds. It
skips upon the surface of the water, or swims among the weeds beneath;
and is noised about in myriads of telltale songs among the reeds and
sedges. The swallows and the starlings proclaim it in their flight, and
the very absence of these living features is as eloquent as life itself.
Even in the simple story of the leaf, the bud, the blossom, and the
downy seed, it is told as plainly as though written in prosaic words and
strewn among the herbage.
“In the early, blustering days of March, there is a stir beneath the
thawing ground, and the swamp cabbage-root sends up a well protected
scout to explore among the bogs; but so dismal are the tidings which he
brings, that for weeks no other venturing sprout dares lift its head. He
braves alone the stormy month--the solitary sign of spring, save,
perhaps, the lengthening of the alder catkins that loosen in the wind.
April woos the yellow cowslips into bloom along the water’s edge, and
the golden willow twigs shake out their perfumed tassels. In May the
prickly carex blossoms among the tussocks, and the calamus buds burst
forth among their flat, green blades. June is heralded on right and left
by the unfurling of blue-flags, and the eyebright blue winks and blinks
as it awakens in the dazzling July sun.
“Then follows brimful August, with the summer’s consummation of
luxuriance and bloom; with flowers in dense profusion in bouquets of
iron-weed and thoroughworts, of cardinal flowers and fragrant clethra,
with their host of blossoming companions. The milkweed pods fray out
their early floss upon September breezes, and the blue petals of the
gentian first unfold their fringes. October overwhelms us with the
friendly tokens of bur-marigolds and bidens; while its thickets of
black-alder lose their autumn verdure, and leave November with a
“burning bush” of scarlet berries hitherto half-hidden in the leafage.
Now, too, the copses of witch-hazel bedeck themselves, and are yellow
with their tiny ribbons. December’s name is written in wreaths of snow
upon the withered stalks of slender weeds and rushes, which soon lie
bent and broken in the lap of January, crushed beneath their winter
weight. And in the fulfilment of the cycle, February sees the swelling
buds of willow, with their restless pussies eager for the spring, half
creeping from their winter cells.”