But think not that the splendor of the year is over; for as one leaf
does not make a summer, neither does one fallen leaf make an autumn. The
smallest Sugar-Maples in our streets make a great show as early as the
fifth of October, more than any other trees there. As I look up the Main
Street, they appear like painted screens standing before the houses; yet
many are green. But now, or generally by the seventeenth of October,
when almost all Red Maples, and some White Maples, are bare, the large
Sugar-Maples also are in their glory, glowing with yellow and red, and
show unexpectedly bright and delicate tints. They are remarkable for the
contrast they often afford of deep blushing red on one half and green on
the other. They become at length dense masses of rich yellow with a deep
scarlet blush, or more than blush, on the exposed surfaces. They are the
brightest trees now in the street.
The large ones on our Common are particularly beautiful. A delicate, but
warmer than golden yellow is now the prevailing color, with scarlet
cheeks. Yet, standing on the east side of the Common just before
sundown, when the western light is transmitted through them, I see that
their yellow even, compared with the pale lemon yellow of an Elm close
by, amounts to a scarlet, without noticing the bright scarlet portions.
Generally, they are great regular oval masses of yellow and scarlet. All
the sunny warmth of the season, the Indian summer, seems to be absorbed
in their leaves. The lowest and inmost leaves next the bole are, as
usual, of the most delicate yellow and green, like the complexion of
young men brought up in the house. There is an auction on the Common
to-day, but its red flag is hard to be discerned amid this blaze of
color.
Little did the fathers of the town anticipate this brilliant success,
when they caused to be imported from farther in the country some
straight poles with their tops cut off, which they called Sugar-Maples;
and, as I remember, after they were set out, a neighboring merchant's
clerk, by way of jest, planted beans about them. Those which were then
jestingly called bean-poles are to-day far the most beautiful objects
noticeable in our streets. They are worth all and more than they have
cost,--though one of the selectmen, while setting them out, took the
cold which occasioned his death,--if only because they have filled the
open eyes of children with their rich color unstintedly so many
Octobers. We will not ask them to yield us sugar in the spring, while
they afford us so fair a prospect in the autumn. Wealth in-doors may be
the inheritance of few, but it is equally distributed on the Common. All
children alike can revel in this golden harvest.
Surely trees should be set in our streets with a view to their October
splendor; though I doubt whether this is ever considered by the "Tree
Society." Do you not think it will make some odds to these children that
they were brought up under the Maples? Hundreds of eyes are steadily
drinking in this color, and by these teachers even the truants are
caught and educated the moment they step abroad. Indeed, neither the
truant nor the studious is at present taught color in the schools. These
are instead of the bright colors in apothecaries' shops and city
windows. It is a pity that we have no more _Red_ Maples, and some
Hickories, in our streets as well. Our paint-box is very imperfectly
filled. Instead of, or beside, supplying such paint-boxes as we do, we
might supply these natural colors to the young. Where else will they
study color under greater advantages? What School of Design can vie with
this? Think how much the eyes of painters of all kinds, and of
manufacturers of cloth and paper, and paper-stainers, and countless
others, are to be educated by these autumnal colors. The stationer's
envelopes may be of very various tints, yet not so various as those of
the leaves of a single tree. If you want a different shade or tint of a
particular color, you have only to look farther within or without the
tree or the wood. These leaves are not many dipped in one dye, as at the
dye-house, but they are dyed in light of infinitely various degrees of
strength, and left to set and dry there.
Shall the names of so many of our colors continue to be derived from
those of obscure foreign localities, as Naples yellow, Prussian blue,
raw Sienna, burnt Umber, Gamboge?--(surely the Tyrian purple must have
faded by this time)--or from comparatively trivial articles of
commerce,--chocolate, lemon, coffee, cinnamon, claret?--(shall we
compare our Hickory to a lemon, or a lemon to a Hickory?)--or from ores
and oxides which few ever see? Shall we so often, when describing to our
neighbors the color of something we have seen, refer them, not to some
natural object in our neighborhood, but perchance to a bit of earth
fetched from the other side of the planet, which possibly they may find
at the apothecary's, but which probably neither they nor we ever saw?
Have we not an _earth_ under our feet,--ay, and a sky over our heads? Or
is the last _all_ ultramarine? What do we know of sapphire, amethyst,
emerald, ruby, amber, and the like,--most of us who take these names in
vain? Leave these precious words to cabinet-keepers, virtuosos, and
maids-of-honor,--to the Nabobs, Begums, and Chobdars of Hindostan, or
wherever else. I do not see why, since America and her autumn woods have
been discovered, our leaves should not compete with the precious stones
in giving names to colors; and, indeed, I believe that in course of time
the names of some of our trees and shrubs, as well as flowers, will get
into our popular chromatic nomenclature.
But of much more importance than a knowledge of the names and
distinctions of color is the joy and exhilaration which these colored
leaves excite. Already these brilliant trees throughout the street,
without any more variety, are at least equal to an annual festival and
holiday, or a week of such. These are cheap and innocent gala-days,
celebrated by one and all without the aid of committees or marshals,
such a show as may safely be licensed, not attracting gamblers or
rum-sellers, nor requiring any special police to keep the peace. And
poor indeed must be that New-England village's October which has not the
Maple in its streets. This October festival costs no powder, nor ringing
of bells, but every tree is a living liberty-pole on which a thousand
bright flags are waving.
No wonder that we must have our annual Cattle-Show, and Fall Training,
and perhaps Cornwallis, our September Courts, and the like. Nature
herself holds her annual fair in October, not only in the streets, but
in every hollow and on every hill-side. When lately we looked into that
Red-Maple swamp all a-blaze,--where the trees were clothed in their
vestures of most dazzling tints, did it not suggest a thousand gypsies
beneath,--a race capable of wild delight,--or even the fabled fawns,
satyrs, and wood-nymphs come back to earth? Or was it only a
congregation of wearied wood-choppers, or of proprietors come to inspect
their lots, that we thought of? Or, earlier still, when we paddled on
the river through that fine-grained September air, did there not appear
to be something new going on under the sparkling surface of the stream,
a shaking of props, at least, so that we made haste in order to be up in
time? Did not the rows of yellowing Willows and Button-Bushes on each
side seem like rows of booths, under which, perhaps, some fluviatile
egg-pop equally yellow was effervescing? Did not all these suggest that
man's spirits should rise as high as Nature's,--should hang out their
flag, and the routine of his life be interrupted by an analogous
expression of joy and hilarity?
No annual training or muster of soldiery, no celebration with its scarfs
and banners, could import into the town a hundredth part of the annual
splendor of our October. We have only to set the trees, or let them
stand, and Nature will find the colored drapery,--flags of all her
nations, some of whose private signals hardly the botanist can
read,--while we walk under the triumphal arches of the Elms. Leave it to
Nature to appoint the days, whether the same as in neighboring States or
not, and let the clergy read her proclamations, if they can understand
them. Behold what a brilliant drapery is her Woodbine flag! What
public-spirited merchant, think you, has contributed this part of the
show? There is no handsomer shingling and paint than this vine, at
present covering a whole side of some houses. I do not believe that the
Ivy _never sear_ is comparable to it. No wonder it has been extensively
introduced into London. Let us have a good many Maples and Hickories and
Scarlet Oaks, then, I say. Blaze away! Shall that dirty roll of bunting
in the gun-house be all the colors a village can display? A village is
not complete, unless it have these trees to mark the season in it. They
are important, like the town-clock. A village that has them not will not
be found to work well. It has a screw loose, an essential part is
wanting. Let us have Willows for spring, Elms for summer, Maples and
Walnuts and Tupeloes for autumn, Evergreens for winter, and Oaks for all
seasons. What is a gallery in a house to a gallery in the streets, which
every market-man rides through, whether he will or not? Of course, there
is not a picture-gallery in the country which would be worth so much to
us as is the western view at sunset under the Elms of our main street.
They are the frame to a picture which is daily painted behind them. An
avenue of Elms as large as our largest and three miles long would seem
to lead to some admirable place, though only C---- were at the end of
it.
A village needs these innocent stimulants of bright and cheering
prospects to keep off melancholy and superstition. Show me two villages,
one embowered in trees and blazing with all the glories of October, the
other a merely trivial and treeless waste, or with only a single tree or
two for suicides, and I shall be sure that in the latter will be found
the most starved and bigoted religionists and the most desperate
drinkers. Every wash-tub and milk-can and gravestone will be exposed.
The inhabitants will disappear abruptly behind their barns and houses,
like desert Arabs amid their rocks, and I shall look to see spears in
their hands. They will be ready to accept the most barren and forlorn
doctrine,--as that the world is speedily coming to an end, or has
already got to it, or that they themselves are turned wrong side
outward. They will perchance crack their dry joints at one another and
call it a spiritual communication.
But to confine ourselves to the Maples. What if we were to take half as
much pains in protecting them as we do in setting them out,--not
stupidly tie our horses to our dahlia-stems?
What meant the fathers by establishing this _perfectly living_
institution before the church,--this institution which needs no
repairing nor repainting, which is continually enlarged and repaired by
its growth? Surely they
"Wrought in a sad sincerity;
Themselves from God they could not free;
They planted better than they knew;--
The conscious trees to beauty grew."
Verily these Maples are cheap preachers, permanently settled, which
preach their half-century, and century, ay, and century-and-a-half
sermons, with constantly increasing unction and influence, ministering
to many generations of men; and the least we can do is to supply them
with suitable colleagues as they grow infirm.