_There was a place we sometimes visited to see the trout_
I suppose about the most beautiful thing in life is novelty. In it is
the chief charm of youth and travel and honeymoons. I will not say it is
the most valuable thing there is, and it is likely to be about the most
transient. But while it lasts it is precious, and inspiring beyond
words.
No other autumn could ever be quite like that first one of our new
possession, none could ever have the halo and the bloom of novelty that
made us revel in all the things we could do and moved us to undertake
them all. Days to come would be more peaceful and abundantly satisfying,
happier, even, in the fullness of accomplishment, but never again would
we know quite the thrill that each day brought during our first golden
September at Brook Ridge.
To begin with, it was September, and golden. The rains of August had
ceased and their lavish abundance had filled brook and river and left
the world a garden of wild aster and goldenrod, with red apples swinging
from the trees, massed umbels of dark elderberries, and pink and purple
grapes ripening in the sun. Our satisfaction with everything was
unbounded. A New England farm, with its brook and springs and gray walls
and odd corners, seemed to us, of all possessions, the most desirable.
We took long walks through our quiet woods where there were hickory and
chestnut trees, and oaks and hemlocks, and slender white birches that
were like beautiful spirits, and tall maples, and even apple-trees, wild
seedlings, planted by the birds, but thrifty and bearing. We had never
seen that in the West. The fruit was not very tender, but well flavored
and made delicious sauce.
"Why, it must be the Garden of Eden," we said, "if the apple-tree grows
wild!"
We carried baskets and gathered in infinite variety. Apples,
hickory-nuts, berries, mushrooms--especially mushrooms, for we were fond
of them and had carefully acquainted ourselves with the deadly kinds.
Those, by the way, are all that one needs to know. All the others may be
eaten. Some of them may taste like gall and wormwood, or living and
enduring fire, and an occasional specimen may make the experimenter feel
briefly unwell, but if he will acquaint himself with the virulent
amanita varieties, and shun them, he will not die--not from poison. I do
not guarantee against indigestion.
We would bring home as many as seventeen sorts of those edible
toadstools, beautiful things in creamy white, brown, purple, yellow,
coral, and vivid scarlet, and get out our _Book of a Thousand Kinds_,
and patiently identify them, tasting for the flavor and sometimes
getting a hot one or a bitter one, but often putting as many as a dozen
kinds into the chafing-dish. Even if the result was occasionally a bit
"woodsy" as to savor, we did not mind much, not in those days of
novelty, though Elizabeth did once think she felt a "little dizzy" after
an unusually large collection, and I had a qualm or two myself. But when
we looked up and found that mushroom poison does not begin to destroy
for several hours, we fell to discussing other matters, and did not
remember our slight inconvenience until long after we should have been
dead, by the book limitation.
There was a gap in the stone wall where we passed from our land into
Westbury's, and beyond it an open place that was a mushroom-garden.
Green and purple russulas grew there as if they had been planted, beds
of coral-hued "Tom Thumbs" that were like strawberries, and a big,
bitter variety of boletus, worthless but beautiful, having the size and
appearance of a pie--a meringue pie, well browned. A path led to another
garden where in a hidden nook we one day discovered a quantity of
chanterelles that were like wonderful black morning-glories. It was
duskily shaded there, and through the flickering green we noticed a
vivid, red spot that was like a flame. We pushed out to it and came upon
a tiny, silent brook slipping through a bed of cowslip and water-arum,
and at its margin a scarlet cardinal-flower, burning a star upon the
afternoon.
[Illustration]
There was a place which we sometimes visited to see the trout. You
crossed the bean-lot and came to a little secluded land where there were
slim cedars and grass and asters and goldenrod, a spot so still and
unvisited that it was like a valley that one might find in a dream. Our
brook flowed through it and in one place there was a quiet pool and an
overhanging rock. Willows and alders sheltered it, and if you slipped
through without noise and lay very still, you were pretty sure to see a
school of trout, for it was their favorite haunt. Once we counted
twenty-two there, lying head up-stream, gently fanning their tails and
white-edged fins. They were a handsome lot, ranging in size from eight
to twelve inches, and we would not have parted with them for the cost of
the farm.
[Illustration]
The "precious ones" joined in some of these excursions, but our
diversions were too tame for them, as a rule. Wading, racing up and
down, tumbling on the hay, with now and then a book in the shade, was
more to their liking. When the two older ones had gone to school and the
Joy was with us alone, she invented plays of her own, plays in which a
capering horse--that is to say, herself--had the star part. Once I found
her sitting by a tub of water, sailing a wonderful boat in it--one that
she had made for herself, out of a chip and a nail, using a stone for a
hammer. She wore one of the antique bonnets brought down from the attic,
and seemed lost in contemplation of her handiwork. Without her noticing,
I made a photograph. How it carries me back, to-day.
I have mentioned our varied undertakings. When wild grapes ripened on
the roadside walls--the big, fragrant wild grapes of New England--we
made a real business of gathering them. They were in endless quantity,
three colors--pink, purple, and white--and their rich odor betrayed
them. Placing some stones in the brook one afternoon, I became conscious
of a thick wave of that sweet perfume, and, looking up, discovered a
natural trellis of clusters just above my head. I don't know how many
bushels we gathered in all, or how many quarts of jelly and jam and
sweet wine we made. I found in the attic, which we named our "Swiss
Family Robinson," because it was provided with everything we needed, an
old pair of "pressers," and squeezed out grape juice and elderberry
juice and blackberry juice, while Elizabeth stirred and boiled and put
away, for we were New England farmers now, and were going to do all the
things, and have preserves and nuts and apples laid away for winter. How
we worked--played, I mean, for with novelty one does not work, but
becomes a child again, and plays. And the more toys we can find, and the
longer we can make each one last, the happier and better and younger we
shall be.
[Illustration]