I was witness to events of a less peaceful character. One day when I

went out to my wood pile, or rather my pile of stumps, I observed two

large ants, the one red, the other much larger, nearly half an inch

long, and black, fiercely contending with one another. Having once got

hold they never let go, but struggled and wrestled and rolled on the

chips incessantly. Looking further, I was surprised to find that the

chips were covered with such combatants, that it was not a _duellum_,

but a _bellum_, a war between two races of ants, the red always pitted

against the black, and frequently two red ones to one black. The legions

of these Myrmidons covered all the hills and vales in my wood yard, and

the ground was already strewn with the dead and dying, both red and

black. It was the only battle which I have ever witnessed, the only

battlefield I ever trod while the battle was raging; internecine war;

the red republicans on the one hand, and the black imperialists on the

other. On every side they were engaged in deadly combat, yet without any

noise that I could hear, and human soldiers never fought so resolutely.

I watched a couple that were fast locked in each other's embraces, in a

little sunny valley amid the chips, now at noonday prepared to fight

till the sun went down, or life went out. The smaller red champion had

fastened himself like a vise to his adversary's front, and through all

the tumblings on that field never for an instant ceased to gnaw at one

of his feelers near the root, having already caused the other to go by

the board; while the stronger black one dashed him from side to side,

and, as I saw on looking nearer, had already divested him of several of

his members. They fought with more pertinacity than bulldogs. Neither

manifested the least disposition to retreat. It was evident that their

battle-cry was "Conquer or die." In the meanwhile there came along a

single red ant on the hillside of this valley, evidently full of

excitement, who either had despatched his foe, or had not yet taken part

in the battle; probably the latter, for he had lost none of his limbs;

whose mother had charged him to return with his shield or upon it. Or

perchance he was some Achilles, who had nourished his wrath apart, and

had now come to avenge or rescue his Patroclus. He saw this unequal

combat from afar--for the blacks were nearly twice the size of the

red--he drew near with rapid pace till he stood on his guard within half

an inch of the combatants; then, watching his opportunity, he sprang

upon the black warrior, and commenced his operations near the root of

his right fore-leg, leaving the foe to select among his own members; and

so there were three united for life, as if a new kind of attraction had

been invented which put all other locks and cements to shame. I should

not have wondered by this time to find that they had their respective

musical bands stationed on some eminent chip, and playing their national

airs the while, to excite the slow and cheer the dying combatants. I was

myself excited somewhat even as if they had been men. The more you think

of it, the less the difference. And certainly there is not the fight

recorded in Concord history, at least, if in the history of America,

that will bear a moment's comparison with this, whether for the numbers

engaged in it, or for the patriotism and heroism displayed. For numbers

and for carnage it was an Austerlitz or Dresden. Concord Fight! Two

killed on the patriots' side, and Luther Blanchard wounded! Why, here

every ant was a Butterick--"Fire! for God's sake, fire!"--and thousands

shared the fate of Davis and Hosmer. There was not one hireling there. I

have no doubt that it was a principle they fought for, as much as our

ancestors, and not to avoid a three-penny tax on their tea; and the

results of this battle will be as important and memorable to those whom

it concerns as those of the battle of Bunker Hill, at least.

I took up the chip on which the three I have particularly described were

struggling, carried it into my house, and placed it under a tumbler on

my window sill, in order to see the issue. Holding a microscope to the

first-mentioned red ant, I saw that, though he was assiduously gnawing

at the near fore-leg of his enemy, having severed his remaining feeler,

his own breast was all torn away, exposing what vitals he had there to

the jaws of the black warrior, whose breastplate was apparently too

thick for him to pierce; and the dark carbuncles of the sufferer's eyes

shone with ferocity such as war only could excite. They struggled half

an hour longer under the tumbler, and when I looked again the black

soldier had severed the heads of his foes from their bodies, and still

living heads were hanging on either side of him like ghastly trophies

at his saddle-bow, still apparently as firmly fastened as ever, and he

was endeavoring with feeble struggles, being without feelers and with

only the remnant of a leg, and I know not how many other wounds, to

divest himself of them; which at length, after half an hour more, he

accomplished. I raised the glass, and he went off over the window sill

in that crippled state. Whether he finally survived that combat, and

spent the remainder of his days in some Hotel des Invalides, I do not

know; but I thought that his industry would not be worth much

thereafter. I never learned which party was victorious, nor the cause of

the war; but I felt for the rest of that day as if I had had my feelings

excited and harrowed by witnessing the struggle, the ferocity and

carnage, of a human battle before my door.

Kirby and Spence tell us that the battles of ants have long been

celebrated and the date of them recorded, though they say that Huber is

the only modern author who appears to have witnessed them. "AEneas

Sylvius," say they, "after giving a very circumstantial account of one

contested with great obstinacy by a great and small species on the trunk

of a pear tree," adds that "'This action was fought in the pontificate

of Eugenius the Fourth, in the presence of Nicholas Pistoriensis, an

eminent lawyer, who related the whole history of the battle with the

greatest fidelity.' A similar engagement between great and small ants is

recorded by Olaus Magnus, in which the small ones, being victorious, are

said to have buried the bodies of their own soldiers, and left those of

their giant enemies a prey to the birds. This event happened previous to

the expulsion of the tyrant Christiern the Second from Sweden." The

battle which I witnessed took place in the Presidency of Polk, five

years before the passage of Webster's Fugitive-Slave Bill.

Many a village Bose, fit only to course a mud-turtle in a victualling

cellar, sported his heavy quarters in the woods, without the knowledge

of his master, and ineffectually smelled at old fox burrows and

woodchucks' holes; led perchance by some slight cur which nimbly

threaded the wood, and might still inspire a natural terror in its

denizens; now far behind his guide, barking like a canine bull toward

some small squirrel which had treed itself for scrutiny, then, cantering

off, bending the bushes with his weight, imagining that he is on the

track of some stray member of the jerbilla family. Once I was surprised

to see a cat walking along the stony shore of the pond, for they rarely

wander so far from home. The surprise was mutual. Nevertheless the most

domestic cat, which has lain on a rug all her days, appears quite at

home in the woods, and, by her sly and stealthy behavior, proves herself

more native there than the regular inhabitants. Once, when berrying, I

met with a cat with young kittens in the woods, quite wild, and they

all, like their mother, had their backs up and were fiercely spitting at

me. A few years before I lived in the woods there was what was called a

"winged cat" in one of the farmhouses in Lincoln nearest the pond, Mr.

Gilian Baker's. When I called to see her in June, 1842, she was gone

a-hunting in the woods, as was her wont (I am not sure whether it was a

male or female, and so use the more common pronoun), but her mistress

told me that she came into the neighborhood a little more than a year

before, in April, and was finally taken into their house; that she was

of a dark brownish gray color, with a white spot on her throat, and

white feet, and had a large bushy tail like a fox; that in the winter

the fur grew thick and flatted out along her sides, forming strips ten

or twelve inches long by two and a half wide, and under her chin like a

muff, the upper side loose, the under matted like felt, and in the

spring these appendages dropped off. They gave me a pair of her "wings,"

which I keep still. There is no appearance of a membrane about them.

Some thought it was part flying-squirrel or some other wild animal,

which is not impossible, for, according to naturalists, prolific hybrids

have been produced by the union of the marten and domestic cat. This

would have been the right kind of cat for me to keep, if I had kept any;

for why should not a poet's cat be winged as well as his horse?

In the fall the loon (_Colymbus glacialis_) came, as usual, to moult and

bathe in the pond, making the woods ring with his wild laughter before I

had risen. At rumor of his arrival all the Milldam sportsmen are on the

alert, in gigs and on foot, two by two and three by three, with patent

rifles and conical balls and spyglasses. They come rustling through the

woods like autumn leaves, at least ten men to one loon. Some station

themselves on this side of the pond, some on that, for the poor bird

cannot be omnipresent; if he dive here he must come up there. But now

the kind October wind rises, rustling the leaves and rippling the

surface of the water, so that no loon can be heard or seen, though his

foes sweep the pond with spyglasses, and make the woods resound with

their discharges. The waves generally rise and dash angrily, taking

sides with all waterfowl, and our sportsmen must beat a retreat to town

and shop and unfinished jobs. But they were too often successful. When I

went to get a pail of water early in the morning I frequently saw this

stately bird sailing out of my cove within a few rods. If I endeavored

to overtake him in a boat, in order to see how he would manoeuvre, he

would dive and be completely lost, so that I did not discover him again

sometimes till the latter part of the day. But I was more than a match

for him on the surface. He commonly went off in a rain.

As I was paddling along the north shore one very calm October afternoon,

for such days especially they settle on to the lakes, like the milkweed

down, having looked in vain over the pond for a loon, suddenly one,

sailing out from the shore toward the middle a few rods in front of me,

set up his wild laugh and betrayed himself. I pursued with a paddle and

he dived, but when he came up I was nearer than before. He dived again,

but I miscalculated the direction he would take, and we were fifty rods

apart when he came to the surface this time, for I had helped to widen

the interval; and again he laughed long and loud, and with more reason

than before.

[Illustration: WATCHING FOR THE LOON]

He manoeuvred so cunningly that I could not get within half a dozen

rods of him. Each time, when he came to the surface, turning his head

this way and that, he coolly surveyed the water and the land, and

apparently chose his course so that he might come up where there was the

widest expanse of water, and at the greatest distance from the boat. It

was surprising how quickly he made up his mind and put his resolve into

execution. He led me at once to the widest part of the pond, and could

not be driven from it. While he was thinking one thing in his brain, I

was endeavoring to divine his thought in mine. It was a pretty game,

played on the smooth surface of the pond, a man against a loon. Suddenly

your adversary's checker disappears beneath the board, and the problem

is to place yours nearest to where his will appear again. Sometimes he

would come up unexpectedly on the opposite side of me, having apparently

passed directly under the boat. So long-winded was he and so

unweariable, that when he had swum furthest he would immediately plunge

again, nevertheless; and then no wit could divine where in the deep

pond, beneath the smooth surface, he might be speeding his way like a

fish, for he had time and ability to visit the bottom of the pond in its

deepest part.

It is said that loons have been caught in the New York lakes eighty feet

beneath the surface, with hooks set for trout--though Walden is deeper

than that. How surprised must the fishes be to see this ungainly visitor

from another sphere speeding his way amid their schools! Yet he appeared

to know his course as surely under water as on the surface, and swam

much faster there. Once or twice I saw a ripple where he approached the

surface, just put his head out to reconnoitre, and instantly dived

again. I found that it was as well for me to rest on my oars and wait

his reappearing as to endeavor to calculate where he would rise; for

again and again, when I was straining my eyes over the surface one way,

I would suddenly be startled by his unearthly laugh behind me. But why,

after displaying so much cunning, did he invariably betray himself the

moment he came up by that loud laugh? Did not his white breast enough

betray him? He was indeed a silly loon, I thought. I could commonly

hear the splash of the water when he came up, and so also detected him.

But after an hour he seemed as fresh as ever, dived as willingly and

swam yet further than at first. It was surprising to see how serenely he

sailed off with unruffled breast when he came to the surface, doing all

the work with his webbed feet beneath. His usual note was this demoniac

laughter, yet somewhat like that of a waterfowl; but occasionally, when

he had balked me most successfully and come up a long way off, he

uttered a long-drawn unearthly howl, probably more like that of a wolf

than any bird; as when a beast puts his muzzle to the ground and

deliberately howls. This was his looming--perhaps the wildest sound that

is ever heard here, making the woods ring far and wide. I concluded that

he laughed in derision of my efforts, confident of his own resources.

Though the sky was by this time overcast, the pond was so smooth that I

could see where he broke the surface when I did not hear him. His white

breast, the stillness of the air, and the smoothness of the water were

all against him. At length, having come up fifty rods off, he uttered

one of those prolonged howls, as if calling on the god of loons to aid

him, and immediately there came a wind from the east and rippled the

surface, and filled the whole air with misty rain, and I was impressed

as if it were the prayer of the loon answered, and his god was angry

with me; and so I left him disappearing far away on the tumultuous

surface.

ODE TO A SKYLARK

_By_ PERCY BYSSHE SHELLEY

NOTE.--There are a few places in the United States where the

skylark has been naturalized, but most of us have never heard it

sing. In Europe, however, and especially in Great Britain, it is

very common; and despite the fact that it is dull of plumage, there

are few birds which are more universally loved. For the song which

it pours forth as it soars upward in spiral curves and floats in

the air is wonderfully sweet and cheerful. Strangely enough, this

bird, which seems to like best to sing when far, far above the

earth, does not refuse to sing when confined in a cage.

Hail to thee, blithe spirit!--

Bird thou never wert--

That from heaven, or near it,

Pourest thy full heart

In profuse strains of unpremeditated art.

Higher still and higher

From the earth thou springest

Like a cloud of fire;

The blue deep thou wingest,

And singing still dost soar, and soaring ever singest.

In the golden lightning

Of the sunken sun,

O'er which clouds are brightening,

Thou dost float and run;

Like an unbodied joy whose race is just begun.

[Illustration: THE SKYLARK]

The pale purple even

Melts around thy flight;

Like a star of heaven

In the broad day-light,

Thou art unseen, but yet I hear thy shrill delight.

Keen as are the arrows

Of that silver sphere

Whose intense lamp narrows

In the white dawn clear,

Until we hardly see, we feel that it is there.

All the earth and air

With thy voice is loud,

As, when night is bare,

From one lonely cloud

The moon rains out her beams, and heaven is overflowed.

What thou art we know not;

What is most like thee?

From rainbow clouds there flow not

Drops so bright to see.

As from thy presence showers a rain of melody.

Like a poet hidden

In the light of thought,

Singing hymns unbidden,

Till the world is wrought

To sympathy with hopes and fears it heeded not;

Like a high-born maiden

In a palace tower,

Soothing her love-laden

Soul in secret hour

With music sweet as love, which overflows her bower:

Like a glowworm golden

In a dell of dew,

Scattering unbeholden

Its aerial hue

Among the flowers and grass, which screen it from the view:

Like a rose embowered

In its own green leaves,

By warm winds deflowered,

Till the scent it gives

Makes faint with too much sweet these heavy-winged thieves.

Sound of vernal showers

On the twinkling grass,

Rain-awakened flowers,

All that ever was

Joyous, and clear, and fresh, thy music doth surpass.

Teach us, sprite or bird,

What sweet thoughts are thine:

I have never heard

Praise of love or wine

That panted forth a flood of rapture so divine.

Chorus Hymenaeal,

Or triumphal chaunt,

Matched with thine would be all

But an empty vaunt,

A thing wherein we feel there is some hidden want.

What objects are the fountains

Of thy happy strain?

What fields, or waves, or mountains?

What shapes of sky or plain?

What love of thine own kind? what ignorance of pain?

With thy clear, keen joyance

Languor cannot be:

Shadow of annoyance

Never came near thee:

Thou lovest; but ne'er knew love's sad satiety.

Waking or asleep,

Thou of death must deem

Things more true and deep

Than we mortals dream,

Or how could thy notes flow in such a crystal stream!

We look before and after,

And pine for what is not;

Our sincerest laughter

With some pain is fraught;

Our sweetest songs are those that tell of saddest thought.

Yet if we could scorn

Hate, and pride, and fear;

If we were things born

Not to shed a tear,

I know not how thy joy we ever should come near.

Better than all measures

Of delightful sound,

Better than all treasures

That in books are found,

Thy skill to poet were, thou scorner of the ground!

Teach me half the gladness

That thy brain must know,

Such harmonious madness

From my lips would flow,

The world should listen then, as I am listening now!

THE POND IN WINTER

_By_ HENRY DAVID THOREAU

After a still winter night I awoke with the impression that some

question had been put to me, which I had been endeavoring in vain to

answer in my sleep, as what--how--when--where? But there was dawning

Nature, in whom all creatures live, looking in at my broad windows with

serene and satisfied face, and no question on _her_ lips. I awoke to an

answered question, to Nature and daylight. The snow lying deep on the

earth dotted with young pines, and the very slope of the hill on which

my house is placed, seemed to say, Forward! Nature puts no question and

answers none which we mortals ask. She has long ago taken her

resolution. "O Prince, our eyes contemplate with admiration and transmit

to the soul the wonderful and varied spectacle of this universe. The

night veils without doubt a part of this glorious creation; but day

comes to reveal to us this great work, which extends from earth even

into the plains of the ether."

[Illustration: KNEELING TO DRINK]

Then to my morning work. First I take an axe and pail and go in search

of water if that be not a dream. After a cold and snowy night it needed

a divining rod to find it. Every winter the liquid and trembling surface

of the pond, which was so sensitive to every breath, and reflected every

light and shadow, becomes solid to the depth of a foot or a foot and a

half, so that it will support the heaviest teams, and perchance the snow

covers it to an equal depth, and it is not to be distinguished from any

level field. Like the marmots in the surrounding hills, it closes its

eyelids and becomes dormant for three months or more. Standing on the

snow-covered plain, as if in a pasture amid the hills, I cut my way

first through a foot of snow, and then a foot of ice, and open a window

under my feet, where, kneeling to drink, I look down into the quiet

parlor of the fishes, pervaded by a softened light as through a window

of ground glass, with its bright sanded floor the same as in summer;

there a perennial waveless serenity reigns as in the amber twilight sky,

corresponding to the cool and even temperament of the inhabitants.

Heaven is under our feet as well as over our heads.

Early in the morning, while all things are crisp with frost, men come

with fishing reels and slender lunch, and let down their fine lines

through the snowy field to take pickerel and perch; wild men, who

instinctively follow other fashions and trust other authorities than

their townsmen, and by their goings and comings stitch towns together in

parts where else they would be ripped. They sit and eat their luncheon

in stout fearnaughts on the dry oak leaves on the shore, as wise in

natural lore as the citizen is in artificial. They never consulted with

books, and know and can tell much less than they have done. The things

which they practice are said not yet to be known. Here is one fishing

for pickerel with grown perch for bait. You look into his pail with

wonder as into a summer pond, as if he kept summer locked up at home, or

knew where she had retreated. How, pray, did he get these in mid-winter?

Oh, he got worms out of rotten logs since the ground froze, and so he

caught them. His life itself passes deeper in Nature than the studies of

naturalist penetrate; himself a subject for the naturalist. The latter

raises the moss and bark gently with his knife in search of insects;

the former lays open logs to their core with his axe, and moss and bark

fly far and wide. He gets his living by barking trees. Such a man has

some right to fish, and I love to see Nature carried out in him. The

perch swallows the grubworm, the pickerel swallows the perch, and the

fisherman swallows the pickerel; and so all the chinks in the scale of

being are filled.

When I strolled around the pond in misty weather I was sometimes amused

by the primitive mode which some ruder fisherman had adopted. He would

perhaps have placed alder branches over the narrow holes in the ice,

which were four or five rods apart and an equal distance from the shore,

and having fastened the end of the line to a stick to prevent its being

pulled through, have passed the slack line over a twig of the alder, a

foot or more above the ice, and tied a dry oak leaf to it, which, being

pulled down, would show when he had a bite. These alders loomed through

the mist at regular intervals as you walked halfway round the pond.

Ah, the pickerel of Walden! when I see them lying on the ice, or in the

well which the fisherman cuts in the ice, making a little hole to admit

the water, I am always surprised by their rare beauty, as if they were

fabulous fishes, they are so foreign to the streets, even to the woods,

foreign as Arabia to our Concord life. They possess a quite dazzling and

transcendent beauty which separates them by a wide interval from the

cadaverous cod and haddock whose fame is trumpeted in our streets. They

are not green like the pines, nor any gray like the stones, nor blue

like the sky; but they have, to my eyes, if possible, yet rarer colors,

like flowers and precious stones, as if they were the pearls, the

animalized _nuclei_ or crystals of the Walden water. They, of course,

are Walden all over and all through; are themselves small Waldens in the

animal kingdom, Waldenses. It is surprising that they are caught

here--that in this deep and capacious spring, far beneath the rattling

teams and chaises and tinkling sleighs that travel the Walden road, this

great gold and emerald fish swims. I never chanced to see its kind in

any market; it would be the cynosure of all eyes there. Easily, with a

few conclusive quirks, they give up their watery ghosts, like a mortal

translated before his time to the thin air of heaven.

[Illustration]

SALMON FISHING

_By_ RUDYARD KIPLING

California and I, crying for salmon, reached Portland, and the

real-estate man to whom I had been intrusted by "Portland" the insurance

man, met us in the street saying that fifteen miles away, across

country, we should come upon a place called Clackamas where we might

perchance find what we desired. And California, his coat-tails flying in

the wind, ran to a livery stable and chartered a wagon and team

forthwith. I could push the wagon about with one hand, so light was its

structure. The team was purely American--that is to say, almost human in

its intelligence and docility. Some one said that the roads were not

good on the way to Clackamas and warned us against smashing the springs.

"Portland," who had watched the preparations, finally reckoned "he'd

come along, too," and under heavenly skies we three companions of a day

set forth; California carefully lashing our rods into the carriage, and

the bystanders overwhelming us with directions as to the sawmills we

were to pass, the ferries we were to cross, and the signposts we were to

seek signs from. Half a mile from this city of fifty thousand souls we

struck (and this must be taken literally), a plank road that would have

been a disgrace to an Irish village.

Then six miles of macadamized road showed us that the team could move. A

railway ran between us and the banks of the Willamette, and another

above us through the mountains. All the land was dotted with small

townships, and the roads were full of farmers in their town wagons,

bunches of tow-haired, boggle-eyed urchins sitting in the hay behind.

The men generally looked like loafers, but their women were all well

dressed. Brown hussar braiding on a tailor-made jacket does not,

however, consort with hay wagons. Then we struck into the woods along

what California called a "_camina reale_,"--a good road,--and Portland a

"fair track." It wound in and out among fire-blackened stumps, under

pine trees, along the corners of log-fences, through hollows which must

be hopeless marsh in winter, and up absurd gradients. But nowhere

throughout its length did I see any evidence of road-making. There was a

track,--you couldn't well get off it,--and it was all you could do to

stay on it. The dust lay a foot thick in the blind ruts, and under the

dust we found bits of planking and bundles of brushwood that sent the

wagon bounding into the air. Sometimes we crashed through bracken; anon

where the blackberries grew rankest we found a lonely little cemetery,

the wooden rails all awry, and the pitiful stumpy headstones nodding

drunkenly at the soft green mulleins. Then with oaths and the sound of

rent underwood a yoke of mighty bulls would swing down a "skid" road,

hauling a forty-foot log along a ready made slide.

[Illustration: SALMON FISHING]

A valley full of wheat and cherry trees succeeded, and halting at a

house we bought ten pound weight of luscious black cherries for

something less than a rupee and got a drink of icy-cold water for

nothing, while the untended team browsed sagaciously by the roadside.

Once we found a wayside camp of horse dealers lounging by a pool, ready

for a sale or a swap, and once two sun-tanned youngsters shot down a

hill on Indian ponies, their full creels banging from their

high-pommeled saddles. They had been fishing, and were our brethren

therefore. We shouted aloud in chorus to scare a wild cat; we squabbled

over the reasons that had led a snake to cross a road; we heaved bits of

bark at a venturesome chipmunk, who was really the little gray squirrel

of India and had come to call on me; we lost our way and got the wagon

so beautifully fixed on a steep road that we had to tie the two

hind-wheels to get it down. Above all, California told tales of Nevada

and Arizona, of lonely nights spent out prospecting, of the slaughter of

deer and the chase of men; of woman, lovely woman, who is a firebrand in

a western city, and leads to the popping of pistols, and of the sudden

changes and chances of fortune, who delights in making the miner or the

lumberman a quadruplicate millionaire, and in "busting" the railroad

king. That was a day to be remembered, and it had only begun when we

drew rein at a tiny farmhouse on the banks of the Clackamas and sought

horse-feed and lodging ere we hastened to the river that broke over a

weir not over a quarter of a mile away.

Imagine a stream seventy yards broad divided by a pebbly island, running

over seductive riffles and swirling into deep, quiet pools where the

good salmon goes to smoke his pipe after meals. Set such a stream amid

fields of breast-high crops surrounded by hills of pine, throw in where

you please quiet water, log-fenced meadows, and a hundred foot bluff to

keep the scenery from growing too monotonous, and you will get some

faint notion of the Clackamas.

Portland had no rod. He held the gaff and the whiskey. California

sniffed, upstream and downstream across the racing water, chose his

ground, and let the gaudy spoon drop in the tail of a riffle. I was

getting my rod together when I heard the joyous shriek of the reel and

the yells of California, and three feet of shining silver leaped into

the air far across the water. The forces were engaged. The salmon tore

up-stream, the tense line cutting the water like a tide-rip behind him,

and the light bamboo bowed to breaking. What happened after I cannot

tell. California swore and prayed, and Portland shouted advice, and I

did all three for what appeared to be half a day, but was in reality a

little over a quarter of an hour, and sullenly our fish came home with

spurts of temper, dashes head-on, and sarabands in the air; but home to

the bank came he, and the remorseless reel gathered up the thread of his

life inch by inch. We landed him in a little bay, and the spring weight

checked him at eleven and a half pounds. Eleven and a half pounds of

fighting salmon! We danced a war dance on the pebbles, and California

caught me around the waist in a hug that went near to breaking my ribs,

while he shouted: "Partner! Partner! This is glory! Now you catch your

fish! Twenty-four years I've waited for this!"

I went into that icy-cold river and made my cast just above a weir, and

all but foul-hooked a blue and black water-snake with a coral mouth who

coiled herself on a stone and hissed maledictions. The next cast--ah,

the pride of it, the regal splendor of it! the thrill that ran down from

finger-tip to toe! The water boiled. He broke for the fly and got it!

There remained enough sense in me to give him all he wanted when he

jumped not once but twenty times before the upstream flight that ran my

line out to the last half-dozen turns, and I saw the nickeled reelbar

glitter under the thinning green coils. My thumb was burned deep when I

strove to stopper the line, but I did not feel it till later, for my

soul was out in the dancing water praying for him to turn ere he took my

tackle away. The prayer was heard. As I bowed back, the butt of the rod

on my left hip-bone and the top joint dipping like unto a weeping

willow, he turned, and I accepted each inch of slack that I could by any

means get in as a favor from on high. There be several sorts of success

in this world that taste well in the moment of enjoyment, but I question

whether the stealthy theft of line from an able-bodied salmon who knows

exactly what you are doing and why you are doing it is not sweeter than

any other victory within human scope. Like California's fish, he ran at

me head-on and leaped against the line, but the Lord gave me two hundred

and fifty pairs of fingers in that hour. The banks and the pine trees

danced dizzily around me, but I only reeled as for life--reeled for

hours, and at the end of the reeling continued to give him the butt

while he sulked in a pool. California was farther up the reach, and with

the corner of my eye I could see him casting with long casts and much

skill. Then he struck, and my fish broke for the weir at the same

instant, and down the reach went California and I, reel answering reel,

even as the morning stars sung together.

The first wild enthusiasm of capture had died away. We were both at work

now in deadly earnest to prevent the lines fouling, to stall off a

downstream rush for deep water just above the weir, and at the same time

to get the fish into the shallow bay downstream that gave the best

practicable landing. Portland bade us both be of good heart, and

volunteered to take the rod from my hands. I would rather have died

among the pebbles than surrender the right to play and land my first

salmon, weight unknown, on an eight-ounce rod. I heard California, at my

ear it seemed, gasping: "He's a fighter from Fightersville, sure!" as

his fish made a fresh break across the stream. I saw Portland fall off a

log fence, break the overhanging bank, and clatter down to the pebbles

all sand and landing net, and I dropped on a log to rest for a moment.

As I drew breath the weary hands slackened their hold, and I forgot to

give him the butt. A wild scutter in the water, a plunge and a break for

the head-waters of the Clackamas was my reward, and the hot toil of

reeling-in with one eye under the water and the other on the top joint

of the rod, was renewed. Worst of all, I was blocking California's path

to the little landing bay aforesaid, and he had to halt and tire his

prize where he was. "The father of all salmon!" he shouted. "For the

love of heaven, get your _trout_ to bank, Johnny Bull." But I could do

no more. Even the insult failed to move me. The rest of the game was

with the salmon. He suffered himself to be drawn, skipping with

pretended delight at getting to the haven where I fain would have him.

Yet no sooner did he feel shoal water under his ponderous belly than he

backed like a torpedo boat, and the snarl of the reel told me that my

labor was in vain. A dozen times at least this happened ere the line

hinted that he had given up the battle and would be towed in. He was

towed. The landing net was useless for one of his size, and I would not

have him gaffed. I stepped into the shallows and heaved him out with a

respectful hand under the gill, for which kindness he battered me about

the legs with his tail, and I felt the strength of him and was proud.

California had taken my place in the shallows, his fish hard held. I was

up on the bank lying full length on the sweet-scented grass, gasping in

company with my first salmon caught, played, and landed on an

eight-ounce rod. My hands were cut and bleeding. I was dripping with

sweat, spangled like harlequin with scales, wet from the waist down,

nose peeled by the sun, but utterly, supremely, and consummately happy.

He, the beauty, the daisy, the darling, my Salmon Bahadur, weighed

twelve pounds, and I had been seven and thirty minutes bringing him to

bank! He had been lightly hooked on the angle of the right jaw, and the

hook had not wearied him. That hour I sat among princes and crowned

heads--greater than them all. Below the bank we heard California

scuffling with his salmon, and swearing Spanish oaths. Portland and I

assisted at the capture, and the fish dragged the spring-balance out by

the roots. It was only constructed to weigh up to fifteen pounds. We

stretched the three fish on the grass,--the eleven-and-a-half, the

twelve, and the fifteen-pounder, and we swore an oath that all who came

after should merely be weighed and put back again.

How shall I tell the glories of that day so that you may be interested?

Again and again did California and I prance down that little reach to

the little bay, each with a salmon in tow, and land him in the shallows.

Then Portland took my rod, and caught some ten-pounders, and my spoon

was carried away by an unknown leviathan. Each fish, for the merits of

the three that had died so gamely, was hastily hooked on the balance and

flung back, Portland recording the weight in a pocketbook, for he was a

real-estate man. Each fish fought for all he was worth, and none more

savagely than the smallest--a game little six-pounder. At the end of six

hours we added up the list. Total: 16 fish, aggregate weight, 142 lbs.

The score in detail runs something like this--it is only interesting to

those concerned: 15, 11-1/2, 12, 10, 9-3/4, 8, and so forth; as I have

said, nothing under six pounds, and three ten-pounders.

Very solemnly and thankfully we put up our rods--it was glory enough for

all time--and returned weeping in each other's arms--weeping tears of

pure joy--to that simple, barelegged family in the packing-case house by

the waterside.

WINTER ANIMALS

_By_ HENRY DAVID THOREAU

When the ponds were firmly frozen, they afforded not only new and

shorter routes to many points, but new views from their surfaces of the

familiar landscape around them. When I crossed Flint's Pond, after it

was covered with snow, though I had often paddled about and skated over

it, it was so unexpectedly wide and so strange that I could think of

nothing but Baffin's Bay. The Lincoln hills rose up around me at the

extremity of a snowy plain, in which I did not remember to have stood

before; and the fishermen, at an indeterminable distance over the ice,

moving slowly about with their wolfish dogs, passed for sealers or

Esquimaux, or in misty weather loomed like fabulous creatures, and I did

not know whether they were giants or pygmies. I took this course when I

went to lecture in Lincoln in the evening, traveling in no road and

passing no house between my hut and the lecture room. In Goose Pond,

which lay in my way, a colony of muskrats dwelt, and raised their cabins

high above the ice, though none could be seen abroad when I crossed it.

Walden, being like the rest usually bare of snow, or with only shallow

and interrupted drifts on it, was my yard, where I could walk freely

when the snow was nearly two feet deep on a level elsewhere and the

villagers were confined to their streets. There, far from the village

street, and, except at very long intervals, from the jingle of sleigh

bells, I slid and skated, as in a vast moose-yard well trodden, overhung

by oak woods and solemn pines bent down with snow or bristling with

icicles.

For sounds in winter nights, and often in winter days, I heard the

forlorn but melodious note of a hooting owl indefinitely far; such a

sound as the frozen earth would yield if struck with a suitable

plectrum, the very _lingua vernacula_ of Walden Wood, and quite familiar

to me at last, though I never saw the bird while it was making it. I

seldom opened my door in a winter evening without hearing; _Hoo hoo hoo,

hoorer hoo_, sounded sonorously, and the first three syllables accented

somewhat like _how der do_; or sometimes _hoo hoo_ only. One night in

the beginning of winter, before the pond froze over, about nine o'clock,

I was startled by the loud honking of a goose, and, stepping to the

door, heard the sound of their wings like a tempest in the woods as they

flew low over my house. They passed over the pond toward Fair Haven,

seemingly deterred from settling by my light, their commodore honking

all the while with a regular beat. Suddenly an unmistakable cat-owl from

very near me, with the most harsh and tremendous voice I ever heard from

any inhabitant of the woods, responded at regular intervals to the

goose, as if determined to expose and disgrace this intruder from

Hudson's Bay by exhibiting a greater compass and volume of voice in a

native, and _boo-hoo_ him out of Concord horizon. "What do you mean by

alarming the citadel at this time of night consecrated to me? Do you

think I am ever caught napping at such an hour, and that I have not got

lungs and a larynx as well as yourself? _Boo-hoo, boo-hoo, boo-hoo!_" It

was one of the most thrilling discords I ever heard. And yet, if you had

a discriminating ear, there were in it the elements of a concord such as

these plains never saw nor heard.

I also heard the whooping of the ice in the pond, my great bedfellow in

that part of Concord, as if it were restless in its bed and would fain

turn over, were troubled with flatulency and bad dreams; or I was waked

by the cracking of the ground by the frost, as if some one had driven a

team against my door, and in the morning would find a crack in the earth

a quarter of a mile long and a third of an inch wide.

Sometimes I heard the foxes as they ranged over the snow crust, in

moonlight nights, in search of a partridge or other game, barking

raggedly and demoniacally like forest dogs, as if laboring with some

anxiety, or seeking expression, struggling for light and to be dogs

outright and run freely in the streets; for if we take the ages into our

account, may there not be a civilization going on among brutes as well

as men? They seemed to me to be rudimental, burrowing men, still

standing on their defence, awaiting their transformation. Sometimes one

came near to my window, attracted by my light, barked a vulpine curse at

me, and then retreated.

[Illustration: THE RED SQUIRREL]

Usually the red squirrel (_Sciurus Hudsonius_) waked me in the dawn,

coursing over the roof and up and down the sides of the house, as if

sent out of the woods for this purpose. In the course of the winter I

threw out half a bushel of ears of sweet corn, which had not got ripe,

on to the snow crust by my door, and was amused by watching the motions

of the various animals which were baited by it. In the twilight and the

night the rabbits came regularly and made a hearty meal. All day long

the red squirrels came and went, and afforded me much entertainment by

their manoeuvres. One would approach at first warily through the

shrub-oaks, running over the snow crust by fits and starts like a leaf

blown by the wind, now a few paces this way, with wonderful speed and

waste of energy, making inconceivable haste with his "trotters," as if

it were for a wager, and now as many paces that way, but never getting

on more than half a rod at a time; and then suddenly pausing with a

ludicrous expression and a gratuitous somerset, as if all the eyes in

the universe were fixed on him--for all the motions of a squirrel, even

in the most solitary recesses of the forest, imply spectators as much as

those of a dancing girl--wasting more time in delay and circumspection

than would have sufficed to walk the whole distance--I never saw one

walk--and then suddenly, before you could say Jack Robinson, he would be

in the top of a young pitch-pine, winding up his clock and chiding all

imaginary spectators, soliloquizing and talking to all the universe at

the same time--for no reason that I could ever detect, or he himself was

aware of, I suspect.

At length he would reach the corn, and selecting a suitable ear, brisk

about in the same uncertain trigonometrical way to the topmost stick of

my wood-pile, before my window, where he looked me in the face, and

there sit for hours, supplying himself with a new ear from time to time,

nibbling at first voraciously and throwing the half-naked cobs about;

till at length he grew more dainty still and played with his food,

tasting only the inside of the kernel, and the ear, which was held

balanced over the stick by one paw, slipped from his careless grasp and

fell to the ground, when he would look over at it with a ludicrous

expression of uncertainty, as if suspecting that it had life, with a

mind not made up whether to get it again, or a new one, or be off; now

thinking of corn, then listening to hear what was in the wind. So the

little impudent fellow would waste many an ear in a forenoon; till at

last, seizing some longer and plumper one, considerably bigger than

himself, and skilfully balancing it, he would set out with it to the

woods, like a tiger with a buffalo, by the same zigzag course and

frequent pauses, scratching along with it as if it were too heavy for

him and falling all the while, making its fall a diagonal between a

perpendicular and horizontal, being determined to put it through at any

rate--a singularly frivolous and whimsical fellow--and so he would get

off with it to where he lived, perhaps carry it to the top of a pine

tree forty or fifty rods distant, and I would afterward find the cobs

strewed about the woods in various directions.

At length the jays arrived, whose discordant screams were heard long

before, as they were warily making their approach an eighth of a mile

off; and in a stealthy and sneaking manner they flit from tree to tree,

nearer and nearer, and pick up the kernels which the squirrels have

dropped. Then, sitting on a pitch-pine bough, they attempt to swallow in

their haste a kernel which is too big for their throats and chokes them;

and after great labor they disgorge it, and spend an hour in the

endeavor to crack it by repeated blows with their bills. They were

manifestly thieves, and I had not much respect for them; but the

squirrels, though at first shy, went to work as if they were taking what

was their own.

Meanwhile also came the chickadees in flocks, which, picking up the

crumbs the squirrels had dropped, flew to the nearest twig, and, placing

them under their claws, hammered away at them with their little bills,

as if it were an insect in the bark, till they were sufficiently reduced

for their slender throats. A little flock of these titmice came daily

to pick a dinner out of my wood pile, or the crumbs at my door, with

faint flitting lisping notes, like the tinkling of icicles in the grass,

or else with sprightly _day day day_, or more rarely, in spring-like

days, a wiry summery _phe-be_ from the wood-side. They were so familiar

that at length one alighted on an armful of wood which I was carrying

in, and pecked at the sticks without fear. I once had a sparrow alight

upon my shoulder for a moment while I was hoeing in a village garden,

and I felt that I was more distinguished by that circumstance than I

should have been by any epaulet I could have worn. The squirrels also

grew at last to be quite familiar and occasionally stepped upon my shoe,

when that was the nearest way.

When the ground was not yet quite covered, and again near the end of

winter, when the snow was melted on my south hillside and about my

wood-pile, the partridges came out of the woods morning and evening to

feed there. Whichever side you walk in the woods the partridge bursts

away on whirring wings, jarring the snow from the dry leaves and twigs

on high, which comes sifting down in the sunbeams like golden dust; for

this brave bird is not to be scared by winter. It is frequently covered

up by drifts, and, it is said, "sometimes plunges from on wing into the

soft snow, where it remains concealed for a day or two." I used to start

them in the open land also, where they had come out of the woods at

sunset to "bud" the wild apple trees. They will come regularly every

evening to particular trees, where the cunning sportsman lies in wait

for them, and the distant orchards next the woods suffer thus not a

little. I am glad that the partridge gets fed at any rate. It is

Nature's own bird which lives on buds and diet-drink.

In dark winter mornings, or in short winter afternoons, I sometimes

heard a pack of hounds threading all the woods with hounding cry and

yelp, unable to resist the instinct of the chase, and the note of the

hunting horn at intervals, proving that man was in the rear. The woods

ring again, and yet no fox bursts forth on to the open level of the

pond, nor following pack pursuing their Actaeon. And perhaps at evening I

see the hunters returning with a single brush trailing from their sleigh

for a trophy, seeking their inn. They tell me that if the fox would

remain in the bosom of the frozen earth he would be safe, or if he would

run in a straight line away no foxhound could overtake him; but, having

left his pursuers far behind, he stops to rest and listen till they come

up, and when he runs he circles round to his old haunts, where the

hunters await him. Sometimes, however, he will run upon a wall many

rods, and then leap off far to one side, and he appears to know that

water will not retain his scent. A hunter told me that he once saw a fox

pursued by hounds burst out on to Walden when the ice was covered with

shallow puddles, run part way across, and then return to the same shore.

Ere long the hounds arrived, but here they lost the scent. Sometimes a

pack hunting by themselves would pass my door, and circle round my

house, and yelp and hound without regarding me, as if afflicted by a

species of madness, so that nothing could divert them from the pursuit.

Thus they circle until they fall upon the recent trail of a fox, for a

wise hound will forsake everything else for this. One day a man came to

my hut from Lexington to inquire after his hound that made a large

track, and had been hunting for a week by himself. But I fear that he

was not the wiser for all I told him, for every time I attempted to

answer his questions he interrupted me by asking, "What do you do here?"

He had lost a dog, but found a man.

One old hunter who has a dry tongue, who used to come to bathe in Walden

once every year when the water was warmest, and at such times looked in

upon me, told me that many years ago he took his gun one afternoon and

went out for a cruise in Walden Wood, and as he walked the Wayland road

he heard the cry of hounds approaching, and ere long a fox leaped the

wall into the road, and as quick as thought leaped the other wall out of

the road, and his swift bullet had not touched him. Some way behind came

an old hound and her three pups in full pursuit, hunting on their own

account, and disappeared again in the woods. Later in the afternoon, as

he was resting in the thick woods south of Walden, he heard the voice of

the hounds far over toward Fair Haven still pursuing the fox; and on

they came, their hounding cry which made all the woods ring sounding

nearer and nearer, now from Well Meadow, now from the Baker Farm. For a

long time he stood still and listened to their music, so sweet to a

hunter's ear, when suddenly the fox appeared, threading the solemn

aisles with an easy coursing pace, whose sound was concealed by a

sympathetic rustle of the leaves, swift and still, keeping the ground,

leaving his pursuers far behind; and, leaping upon a rock amid the

woods, he sat erect and listening, with his back to the hunter. For a

moment compassion restrained the latter's arm; but that was a

short-lived mood, and as quick as thought can follow thought his piece

was levelled, and _whang!_--the fox rolling over the rock lay dead on

the ground. The hunter still kept his place and listened to the hounds.

Still on they came, and now the near woods resounded through all their

aisles with their demoniac cry. At length the old hound burst into view

with muzzle to the ground, and snapping the air as if possessed, and ran

directly to the rock; but spying the dead fox she suddenly ceased her

hounding, as if struck dumb with amazement, and walked round and round

him in silence; and one by one her pups arrived, and, like their mother,

were sobered into silence by the mystery. Then the hunter came forward

and stood in their midst, and the mystery was solved. They waited in

silence while he skinned the fox, then followed the brush awhile, and at

length turned off into the woods again. That evening a Weston Squire

came to the Concord hunter's cottage to inquire for his hounds, and told

how for a week they had been hunting on their own account from Weston

woods. The Concord hunter told him what he knew and offered him the

skin; but the other declined it and departed. He did not find his hounds

that night, but the next day learned that they had crossed the river and

put up at a farm-house for the night, whence, having been well fed, they

took their departure early in the morning.

The hunter who told me this could remember one Sam Nutting, who used to

hunt bears on Fair-Haven Ledges, and exchange their skins for rum in

Concord village; who told him, even, that he had seen a moose there.

Nutting had a famous foxhound named Burgoyne,--he pronounced it

Bugine,--which my informant used to borrow. In the "Wast Book" of an old

trader of this town, who was also a captain, townclerk, and

representative, I find the following entry: Jan. 18th, 1742-3, "John

Melven Cr. by 1 Grey Fox 0--2--3;" they are not found here; and in his

ledger, Feb. 7th, 1743, Hezekiah Stratton has credit "by 1/2 a Catt skin

0--1--4-1/2;" of course a wild cat, for Stratton was a sergeant in the

old French war, and would not have got credit for hunting less noble

game. Credit is given for deerskins also, and they were daily sold. One

man still preserves the horns of the last deer that was killed in this

vicinity, and another has told me the particulars of the hunt in which

his uncle was engaged. The hunters were formerly a numerous and merry

crew here. I remember well one gaunt Nimrod who would catch up a leaf by

the road-side and play a strain on it wilder and more melodious, if my

memory serves me, than any hunting horn.

At midnight, when there was a moon, I sometimes met with hounds in my

path prowling about the woods, which would skulk out of my way as if

afraid, and stand silent amid the bushes till I had passed.

Squirrels and wild mice disputed for my store of nuts. There were scores

of pitch-pines around my house, from one to four inches in diameter,

which had been gnawed by mice the previous winter,--a Norwegian winter

for them, for the snow lay long and deep, and they were obliged to mix

a large proportion of pine bark with their other diet. These trees were

alive and apparently flourishing at midsummer, and many of them had

grown a foot, though completely girdled; but after another winter such

were without exception dead. It is remarkable that a single mouse should

thus be allowed a whole pine tree for its dinner, gnawing round instead

of up and down it; but perhaps it is necessary in order to thin these

trees, which are wont to grow up densely.

The hares (_Lepus Americanus_) were very familiar. One had her form

under my house all winter, separated from me only by the flooring, and

she startled me each morning by her hasty departure when I began to

stir--thump, thump, thump, striking her head against the floor timbers

in her hurry. They used to come round my door at dusk to nibble the

potato parings which I had thrown out, and were so nearly the color of

the ground that they could hardly be distinguished when still. Sometimes

in the twilight I alternately lost and recovered sight of one sitting

motionless under my window. When I opened my door in the evening, off

they would go with a squeak and a bounce. Near at hand they only excited

my pity. One evening one sat by my door two paces from me, at first

trembling with fear, yet unwilling to move; a poor wee thing, lean and

bony, with ragged ears and sharp nose, scant tail and slender paws. It

looked as if Nature no longer contained the breed of nobler bloods, but

stood on her last toes. Its large eyes appeared young and unhealthy,

almost dropsical. I took a step, and lo, away it scudded with an

elastic spring over the snow crust, straightening its body and its limbs

into graceful length, and soon put the forest between me and itself--the

wild free venison, asserting its vigor and the dignity of Nature. Not

without reason was its slenderness. Such then was its nature (_Lepus,

levipes_, lightfoot, some think).

What is a country without rabbits and partridges? They are among the

most simple and indigenous animal products; ancient and venerable

families known to antiquity as to modern times; of the very hue and

substance of Nature, nearest allied to leaves and to the ground--and to

one another; it is either winged or it is legged. It is hardly as if you

had seen a wild creature when a rabbit or a partridge bursts away, only

a natural one, as much to be expected as rustling leaves. The partridge

and the rabbit are still sure to thrive, like true natives of the soil,

whatever revolutions occur. If the forest is cut off, the sprouts and

bushes which spring up afford them concealment, and they become more

numerous than ever. That must be a poor country indeed that does not

support a hare. Our woods teem with them both, and around every swamp

may be seen the partridge or rabbit walk, beset with twiggy fences and

horse-hair snares, which some cow-boy tends.

TREES AND ANTS THAT HELP EACH OTHER[306-1]

_By_ THOMAS BELT

One low tree, very characteristic of the dry savannahs, is a species of

acacia, belonging to the section _Gummiferoe_, with bi-pinnate leaves,

growing to a height of fifteen or twenty feet. The branches and trunk

are covered with strong curved spines, set in pairs, from which it

receives the name of the bull's-horn, they having a very strong

resemblance to the horns of that quadruped. These horns are hollow, and

are tenanted by ants, that make a small hole for their entrance and exit

near one end of the thorn, and also burrow through the partition that

separates the two horns; so that the one entrance serves for both. Here

they rear their young, and in the wet season every one of the thorns is

tenanted, and hundreds of ants are to be seen running about, especially

over the young leaves. If one of these be touched, or a branch shaken,

the little ants swarm out from the hollow thorns, and attack the

aggressor with jaws and sting. They sting severely, raising a little

white lump that does not disappear in less than twenty-four hours.

These ants form a most efficient standing army for the plant, which

prevents not only the mammalia from browsing on the leaves, but delivers

it from the attacks of a much more dangerous enemy--the leaf-cutting

ants. For these services the ants are not only securely housed by the

plant, but are provided with a bountiful supply of food; and to secure

their attendance at the right time and place, this food is so arranged

and distributed as to effect that object with wonderful perfection. The

leaves are bi-pinnate. At the base of each pair of leaflets, on the

midrib, is a crater-formed gland, which, when the leaves are young,

secretes a honey-like liquid. Of this the ants are very fond; they are

constantly running about from one gland to another to sip up the honey

as it is secreted. But this is not all; there is a still more wonderful

provision of more solid food. At the end of each of the small divisions

of the compound leaflet there is, when the leaf first unfolds, a little

yellow fruit-like body united by a point at its base to the end of the

pinnule. Examined through a microscope, this little appendage looks like

a golden pear. When the leaf first unfolds, the little pears are not

quite ripe, and the ants are continually employed going from one to

another, examining them. When an ant finds one sufficiently advanced, it

bites the small point of attachment; then, bending down the fruit-like

body, it breaks it off and bears it away in triumph to the nest. All the

fruit-like bodies do not ripen at once, but successively, so that the

ants are kept about the young leaf for some time after it unfolds. Thus

the young leaves are always guarded by the ants; and no caterpillar or

large animal could attempt to injure them without being attacked by the

little warriors. The fruit-like bodies are about one-twelfth of an inch

long, and are about one-third of the size of the ants; so that the ant

bearing one away is as heavily laden as a man bearing a large bunch of

plantains. I think these facts show that the ants are really kept by the

acacia as a standing army, to protect its leaves from the attacks of

herbivorous mammals and insects.

The bull's-horn thorn does not grow at the mines in the forest, nor are

the small ants attending on them found there. They seem specially

adapted for the tree, and I have seen them nowhere else. Besides the

little ants, I found another ant that lives on these acacias, whose

habits appear to be rather different. It makes the holes of entrance to

the thorns near the centre of one of each pair, and not near the end,

and it is not so active as the other species. It is also rather scarce;

but when it does occur, it occupies the whole tree, to the exclusion of

the other. The glands on the acacia are also frequented by a small

species of wasp. I sowed the seeds of the acacia in my garden, and

reared some young plants. Ants of many kinds were numerous; but none of

them took to the thorns for shelter, nor the glands and fruit-like

bodies for food; for, as I have already mentioned, the species that

attend on the thorns are not found in the forest. The leaf-cutting ants

attacked the young plants, and defoliated them; but I have never seen

any of the trees out on the savannahs that are guarded touched by them,

and have no doubt the acacia is protected from them by its little

warriors. The thorns, when they are first developed, are soft, and

filled with a sweetish, pulpy substance; so that the ant, when it makes

an entrance into them, finds its new house full of food. It hollows this

out, leaving only the hardened shell of the thorn. Strange to say, this

treatment seems to favor the development of the thorn, as it increases

in size, bulging out toward the base; whilst in my plants that were not

touched by the ants, the thorns turned yellow and dried up into dead but

persistent prickles. I am not sure, however, that this may not have been

due to the habitat of the plant not suiting it.

These ants seem to lead the happiest of existences. Protected by their

stings, they fear no foe. Habitations full of food are provided for them

to commence housekeeping with; and cups of nectar and luscious fruits

await them every day. But there is a reverse to the picture. In the dry

season on the plains, the acacias cease to grow. No young leaves are

produced, and the old glands do not secrete honey. Then want and hunger

overtake the ants that have reveled in luxury all the wet season; many

of the thorns are depopulated, and only a few ants live through the

season of scarcity. As soon, however, as the first rains set in, the

trees throw out numerous vigorous shoots, and the ants multiply again

with astonishing rapidity.

Both in Brazil and in Nicaragua I paid much attention to the relation

between the presence of honey-secreting glands on plants, and the

protection the latter secured by the attendance of ants attracted by the

honey. I found many plants so protected; the glands being specially

developed on the young leaves, and on the sepals of the flowers. Besides

the bull's-horn acacias, I, however, only met with two other genera of

plants that furnished the ants with houses, namely, the trumpet tree

and some of the evergreen shrubs; but I have no doubt that there are

many others. The stem of the Cecropia, or trumpet tree, is hollow, and

divided into cells by partitions that extend across the interior of the

hollow trunk. The ants gain access by making a hole from the outside,

and then burrow through the partitions, thus getting the run of the

whole stem. They do not obtain their food directly from the tree, but

keep brown scale insects in the cells, which suck the juices from the

tree, and secrete a honey-like fluid that exudes from a pore on the

back, and is lapped up by the ants. In one cell eggs will be found, in

another grubs, and in a third pupae, all lying loosely. In another cell,

by itself, a queen ant will be found, surrounded by walls made of a

brown waxy-looking substance, along with about a dozen scale insects to

supply her with food. I suppose the eggs are removed as soon as laid,

for I never found any along with the queen ant. If the tree be shaken,

the ants rush out in myriads, and search about for the molester. This

case is not like the last one, where the tree has provided food and

shelter for the ants, but rather one where the ant has taken possession

of the tree, and brought with it the scale insects; but I believe that

its presence must be beneficial. I have cut into some dozens of the

trumpet trees, and never could find one that was not tenanted by ants. I

noticed three different species, all, as far as I know, confined to the

trumpet tree, and all farming scale insects. As in the bull's-horn

thorn, there is never more than one species of ant on the same tree.

In some species of evergreen shrub there is a direct provision of houses

for the ants. In each leaf, at the base of the laminae, the petiole, or

stalk, is furnished with a couple of pouches, divided from each other by

the midrib. Into each of these pouches there is an entrance from the

lower side of the leaf. I noticed them first in Northern Brazil, in the

province of Maranham; and afterwards at Para. Every pouch was occupied

by a nest of small black ants; and if the leaf was shaken ever so

little, they would rush out and scour all over it in search of the

aggressor. I must have tested some hundreds of leaves, and never shook

one without the ants coming out, excepting one sickly-looking plant at

Para. In many of the pouches I noticed the eggs and young ants, and in

some I saw a few dark-colored scale insects or plant lice; but my

attention had not been at that time directed to the latter as supplying

the ants with food, and I did not examine a sufficient number of pouches

to determine whether they were constant occupants of the nests or not;

but my experience since with the trumpet trees would lead me to expect

that they were. If so, we have an instance of two insects and a plant

living together, and all benefited by the companionship. The leaves of

the plant are guarded by the ants; the ants are provided with houses by

the plant, and food by the scale insects and plant lice; and the latter

are effectually protected by the ants in their common habitation.

Amongst the numerous plants that do not provide houses, but attract ants

to their leaves and flower buds by means of glands secreting a

honey-like liquid, are many orchids, and I think all the species of

passion flowers. I had the common red passion flower growing over the

front on my verandah, where it was continually under my notice. It had

honey-secreting glands on its young leaves and on the sepals of the

flower buds. For two years I noticed that the glands were constantly

attended by a small ant, and, night and day, every young leaf and every

flower bud had a few on them. They did not sting, but attacked and bit

my finger when I touched the plant. I have no doubt that the primary

object of these honey-glands was to attract the ants, and keep them

about the most tender and vulnerable parts of the plant, to prevent them

being injured; and I further believe that one of the principal enemies

that they serve to guard against in tropical America is the leaf-cutting

ant, as I have noticed that the latter are very much afraid of the small

black ants.

On the third year after I had noticed the attendance of the ants on my

passion flower, I found that the glands were not so well looked after as

before, and soon discovered that a number of scale insects had

established themselves on the stems, and that the ants had in a great

measure transferred their attentions to them. An ant would stand over a

scale insect and stroke it alternately on each side with its antennas,

whereupon every now and then a clear drop of honey would exude from a

pore on the back of the scale insect and be imbibed by the ant. Here it

was clear that the scale insect was competing successfully with the

leaves and sepals for the attendance and protection of the ants, and was

successful either through the fluid it furnished being more attractive

or more abundant. I have, from these facts, been led to the conclusion

that the use of honey-secreting glands in plants is to attract insects

that will protect the flower buds and leaves from being injured by

herbivorous insects and mammals; but I do not mean to infer that this is

the use of all glands, for many of the small appendicular bodies, called

"glands" by botanists, do not secrete honey. The common dog-rose of

England is furnished with glands on the stipules, and in other species

they are more numerous, until in the wild rose of the northern counties

the leaves are thickly edged, and the fruit and sepals covered with

stalked glands. I have only observed the wild roses in the north of

England, but there I have never seen insects attending the glands. These

glands, however, do not secrete honey; but a dark, resinous, sticky

liquid, that probably is useful by being distasteful to both insects and

mammals.

FOOTNOTES:

[306-1] From _The Naturalist in Nicaragua_.

[Illustration]

THE FAMILY OF MICHAEL AROUT[314-1]

_From the French of_ EMILE SOUVESTRE

_September 15th, Eight O'clock._--This morning, while I was arranging my

books, Mother Genevieve came in and brought me the basket of fruit I buy

of her every Sunday. For nearly twenty years that I have lived in this

quarter I have dealt in her little fruit shop. Perhaps I should be

better served elsewhere, but Mother Genevieve has but little custom; to

leave her would do her harm and cause her unnecessary pain. It seems to

me that the length of our acquaintance has made me incur a sort of tacit

obligation to her; my patronage has become her property.

She has put the basket upon my table, and as I wanted her husband, who

is a joiner, to add some shelves to my bookcase, she has gone downstairs

again immediately to send him to me.

At first I did not notice either her looks or the sound of her voice;

but, now that I recall them, it seems to me that she was not as jovial

as usual. Can Mother Genevieve be in trouble about anything?

Poor woman! All her best years were subject to such bitter trials that

she might think she had received her full share already. Were I to live

a hundred years I should never forget the circumstances which first

made her known to me and which obtained her my respect.

It was at the time of my first settling in the faubourg. I had noticed

her empty fruit shop, which nobody came into, and being attracted by its

forsaken appearance I made my little purchases in it. I have always

instinctively preferred the poor shops; there is less choice in them,

but it seems to me that my purchase is a sign of sympathy with a brother

in poverty. These little dealings are almost always an anchor of hope to

those whose very existence is in peril--the only means by which some

orphan gains a livelihood. There the aim of the tradesman is not to

enrich himself, but to live! The purchase you make of him is more than

an exchange--it is a good action.

Mother Genevieve at that time was still young, but had already lost that

fresh bloom of youth which suffering causes to wither so soon among the

poor. Her husband, a clever joiner, gradually left off working to

become, according to the picturesque expression of the workshops, "a

worshipper of Saint Monday." The wages of the week, which was always

reduced to two or three working days, were completely dedicated by him

to the worship of this god of the Barriers,[315-2] and Genevieve was

obliged herself to provide for all the wants of the household.

One evening, when I went to make some trifling purchases of her, I heard

a sound of quarreling in the back shop. There were the voices of several

women, among which I distinguished that of Genevieve, broken by sobs. On

looking further in, I perceived the fruit-woman with a child in her

arms, and kissing it, while a country nurse seemed to be claiming her

wages from her. The poor woman, who without doubt had exhausted every

explanation and every excuse, was crying in silence, and one of her

neighbors was trying in vain to appease the countrywoman. Excited by

that love of money which the evils of a hard peasant life but too well

excuse, and disappointed by the refusal of her expected wages, the nurse

was launching forth in recriminations, threats, and abuse. In spite of

myself, I listened to the quarrel, not daring to interfere, and not

thinking of going away, when Michael Arout appeared at the shop door.

The joiner had just come from the Barrier, where he had passed part of

the day at the public-house. His blouse, without a belt, and untied at

the throat, showed none of the noble stains of work; in his hand he held

his cap, which he had just picked up out of the mud; his hair was in

disorder, his eye fixed, and the pallor of drunkenness in his face. He

came reeling in, looked wildly around him, and called Genevieve.

She heard his voice, gave a start, and rushed into the shop; but at the

sight of the miserable man, who was trying in vain to steady himself,

she pressed the child in her arms and bent over it with tears.

The countrywoman and the neighbor had followed her.

"Come! come! do you intend to pay me, after all?" cried the former in a

rage.

"Ask the master for the money," ironically answered the woman from the

next door, pointing to the joiner, who had just fallen against the

counter.

The countrywoman looked at him.

"Ah! he is the father," returned she. "Well, what idle beggars! not to

have a penny to pay honest people, and get tipsy with wine in that way."

The drunkard raised his head.

"What! what!" stammered he; "who is it that talks of wine? I've had

nothing but brandy! But I am going back again to get some wine! Wife,

give me your money; there are some friends waiting for me at the wine

shop."

Genevieve did not answer; he went round the counter, opened the till,

and began to rummage in it.

"You see where the money of the house goes!" observed the neighbor to

the countrywoman; "how can the poor unhappy woman pay you when he takes

all?"

"Is that my fault?" replied the nurse angrily. "They owe it to me and

somehow or other they must pay me!"

And letting loose her tongue, as those women out of the country do, she

began relating at length all the care she had taken of the child and all

the expense it had been to her. In proportion as she recalled all she

had done, her words seemed to convince her more than ever of her rights

and to increase her anger. The poor mother, who no doubt feared that her

violence would frighten the child, returned into the back shop and put

it into its cradle.

Whether it is that the countrywoman saw in this act a determination to

escape her claims, or that she was blinded by passion, I cannot say;

but she rushed into the next room, where I heard the sounds of

quarreling, with which the cries of the child were soon mingled. The

joiner, who was still rummaging in the till, was startled and raised his

head.

At the same moment Genevieve appeared at the door, holding in her arms

the baby that the countrywoman was trying to tear from her. She ran

toward the counter, and throwing herself behind her husband cried:

"Michael, defend your son!"

The drunken man quickly stood up erect, like one who awakes with a

start.

"My son!" stammered he; "what son?"

His looks fell upon the child; a vague ray of intelligence passed over

his features.

"Robert," resumed he; "it is Robert!"

He tried to steady himself on his feet, that he might take the baby, but

he tottered. The nurse approached him in a rage.

"My money, or I shall take the child away!" cried she. "It is I who have

fed and brought it up: if you don't pay me for what has made it live, it

ought to be the same to you as if it were dead. I shall not go until I

have my due or the baby."

"And what would you do with him?" murmured Genevieve, pressing Robert

against her bosom.

"Take it to the Foundling!" replied the countrywoman harshly; "the

hospital is a better mother than you are, for it pays for the food of

its little ones."

At the word "Foundling," Genevieve had exclaimed aloud in horror. With

her arms wound round her son, whose head she hid in her bosom, and her

two hands spread over him, she had retreated to the wall, and remained

with her back against it, like a lioness defending her young ones. The

neighbor and I contemplated this scene, without knowing how we could

interfere. As for Michael, he looked at us by turns, making a visible

effort to comprehend it all. When his eye rested upon Genevieve and the

child, it lit up with a gleam of pleasure; but when he turned toward us,

he again became stupid and hesitating.

At last, apparently making a prodigious effort, he cried out, "Wait!"

And going to a tub full of water, he plunged his face into it several

times.

Every eye was turned upon him; the countrywoman herself seemed

astonished. At length he raised his dripping head. This ablution had

partly dispelled his drunkenness; he looked at us for a moment, then he

turned to Genevieve, and his face brightened up.

"Robert!" cried he, going up to the child and taking him in his arms.

"Ah! give him me, wife; I must look at him."

The mother seemed to give up his son to him with reluctance, and stayed

before him with her arms extended, as if she feared the child would have

a fall. The nurse began again in her turn to speak, and renewed her

claims, this time threatening to appeal to law. At first Michael

listened to her attentively, and when he comprehended her meaning he

gave the child back to its mother.

"How much do we owe you?" asked he.

[Illustration: "HOW MUCH DO WE OWE YOU?"]

The countrywoman began to reckon up the different expenses, which

amounted to nearly 30 francs. The joiner felt to the bottom of his

pockets, but could find nothing. His forehead became contracted by

frowns; low curses began to escape him. All of a sudden he rummaged in

his breast, drew forth a large watch, and holding it up above his head--

"Here it is--here's your money!" cried he with a joyful laugh; "a watch,

number one! I always said it would keep for a drink on a dry day; but it

is not I who will drink it, but the young one. Ah! ah! ah! go and sell

it for me, neighbor, and if that is not enough, I have my earrings. Eh!

Genevieve, take them off for me; the earrings will square all! They

shall not say you have been disgraced on account of the child--no, not

even if I must pledge a bit of my flesh! My watch, my earrings, and my

ring--get rid of all of them for me at the goldsmith's; pay the woman

and let the little fool go to sleep. Give him me, Genevieve; I will put

him to bed."

And taking the baby from the arms of his mother, he carried him with a

firm step to his cradle.

It was easy to perceive the change which took place in Michael from this

day. He cut all his old drinking acquaintances. He went early every

morning to his work, and returned regularly in the evening to finish the

day with Genevieve and Robert. Very soon he would not leave them at all,

and he hired a place near the fruit shop and worked in it on his own

account.

They would soon have been able to live in comfort, had it not been for

the expenses which the child required. Everything was given up to his

education. He had gone through the regular school training, had studied

mathematics, drawing, and the carpenter's trade, and had only begun to

work a few months ago. Till now, they had been exhausting every resource

which their laborious industry could provide to push him forward in his

business; but, happily, all these exertions had not proved useless; the

seed had brought forth its fruits, and the days of harvest were close

by.

While I was thus recalling these remembrances to my mind, Michael had

come in and was occupied in fixing shelves where they were wanted.

During the time I was writing the notes of my journal, I was also

scrutinizing the joiner.

The excesses of his youth and the labor of his manhood have deeply

marked his face; his hair is thin and gray, his shoulders stooping, his

legs shrunken and slightly bent. There seems a sort of weight in his

whole being. His very features have an expression of sorrow and

despondency. He answered my questions by monosyllables, and like a man

who wishes to avoid conversation. From whence is this dejection, when

one would think he had all he could wish for? I should like to know!

_Ten O'clock._--Michael is just gone downstairs to look for a tool he

has forgotten. I have at last succeeded in drawing from him the secret

of his and Genevieve's sorrow. Their son Robert is the cause of it!

Not that he has turned out ill after all their care--not that he is idle

and dissipated; but both were in hopes he would never leave them any

more. The presence of the young man was to have renewed and made glad

their lives once more; his mother counted the days, his father prepared

everything to receive their dear associate in their toils; and at the

moment when they were thus about to be repaid for all their sacrifices,

Robert had suddenly informed them that he had just engaged himself to a

contractor at Versailles.

Every remonstrance and every prayer were useless; he brought forward the

necessity of initiating himself into all the details of an important

contract, the facilities he should have in his new position of improving

himself in his trade, and the hopes he had of turning his knowledge to

advantage. At last, when his mother, having come to the end of her

arguments, began to cry, he hastily kissed her and went away that he

might avoid any further remonstrances.

He had been absent a year, and there was nothing to give them hopes of

his return. His parents hardly saw him once a month, and then he only

stayed a few moments with them.

"I have been punished where I had hoped to be rewarded," Michael said to

me just now. "I had wished for a saving and industrious son, and God has

given me an ambitious and avaricious one! I had always said to myself

that when once he was grown up we should have him always with us, to

recall our youth and to enliven our hearts. His mother was always

thinking of getting him married and having children again to care for.

You know women always will busy themselves about others. As for me, I

thought of him working near my bench and singing his new songs; for he

has learned music and is one of the best singers at the Orpheon. A

dream, sir, truly! Directly the bird was fledged, he took to flight,

and remembers neither father nor mother. Yesterday, for instance, was

the day we expected him; he should have come to supper with us. No

Robert to-day either! He has had some plan to finish, or some bargain to

arrange, and his old parents are put down last in the accounts, after

the customer's and the joiner's work. Ah! if I could have guessed how it

would have turned out! Fool! to have sacrificed my likings and my money,

for nearly twenty years, to the education of a thankless son! Was it for

this I took the trouble to cure myself of drinking, to break with my

friends, to become an example to the neighborhood? The jovial good

fellow has made a goose of himself. Oh! if I had to begin again! No, no!

you see women and children are our bane. They soften our hearts; they

lead us a life of hope and affection; we pass a quarter of our lives in

fostering the growth of a grain of corn which is to be everything to us

in our old age, and when the harvest-time comes--good night, the ear is

empty!"

While he was speaking, Michael's voice became hoarse, his eye fierce,

and his lips quivered. I wished to answer him, but I could only think of

commonplace consolations, and I remained silent. The joiner pretended he

wanted a tool and left me.

Poor father! Ah! I know those moments of temptation when virtue has

failed to reward us and we regret having obeyed her! Who has not felt

this weakness in hours of trial, and who has not uttered, at least once,

the mournful exclamation of Brutus?

But if virtue is only a word, what is there then in life which is true

and real? No, I will not believe that goodness is in vain! It does not

always give the happiness we had hoped for, but it brings some other. In

the world everything is ruled by order and has its proper and necessary

consequences, and virtue cannot be the sole exception to the general

law. If it had been prejudicial to those who practice it, experience

would have avenged them; but experience has, on the contrary, made it

more universal and more holy. We only accuse it of being a faithless

debtor because we demand an immediate payment, and one apparent to our

senses. We always consider life as a fairy tale, in which every good

action must be rewarded by a visible wonder. We do not accept as payment

a peaceful conscience, self-content, or a good name among men--treasures

that are more precious than any other, but the value of which we do not

feel till after we have lost them!

Michael is come back and returned to his work. His son had not yet

arrived.

By telling me of his hopes and his grievous disappointments, he became

excited; he unceasingly went over again the same subject, always adding

something to his griefs. He has just wound up his confidential discourse

by speaking to me of a joiner's business which he had hoped to buy and

work to good account with Robert's help. The present owner had made a

fortune by it, and after thirty years of business he was thinking of

retiring to one of the ornamental cottages in the outskirts of the city,

a usual retreat for the frugal and successful workingman. Michael had

not indeed the 2,000 francs which must be paid down; but perhaps he

could have persuaded Master Benoit to wait. Robert's presence would

have been a security for him, for the young man could not fail to insure

the prosperity of a workshop; besides science and skill, he had the

power of invention and bringing to perfection. His father had discovered

among his drawings a new plan for a staircase, which had occupied his

thoughts for a long time; and he even suspected him of having engaged

himself to the Versailles contractor for the very purpose of executing

it. The youth was tormented by this spirit of invention, and while

devoting his mind to study he had not time to listen to his feelings.

[Illustration: MICHAEL IS COME BACK]

Michael told me all this with a mixed feeling of pride and vexation. I

saw he was proud of the son he was abusing, and that his very pride made

him more sensible of that son's neglect.

_Six O'clock P. M._--I have just finished a happy day. How many events

have happened within a few hours, and what a change for Genevieve and

Michael!

He had just finished fixing the shelves and telling me of his son, while

I laid the cloth for my breakfast.

Suddenly we heard hurried steps in the passage, the door opened, and

Genevieve entered with Robert. The joiner gave a start of joyful

surprise, but he repressed it immediately, as if he wished to keep up

the appearance of displeasure.

The young man did not appear to notice it, but threw himself into his

arms in an open-hearted manner which surprised me. Genevieve, whose face

shone with happiness, seemed to wish to speak, and to restrain herself

with difficulty.

I told Robert I was glad to see him, and he answered me with ease and

civility.

"I expected you yesterday," said Michael Arout rather dryly.

"Forgive me, father," replied the young workman, "but I had business at

St. Germain's. I was not able to come back till it was very late, and

then the master kept me."

The joiner looked at his son sideways, and then took up his hammer

again.

"All right," muttered he in a grumbling tone; "when we are with other

people we must do as they wish; but there are some who would like better

to eat brown bread with their own knife than partridges with the silver

fork of a master."

"And I am one of those, father," replied Robert merrily; "but, as the

proverb says, 'you must shell the peas before you can eat them.' It was

necessary that I should first work in a great workshop--"

"To go on with your plan of the staircase," interrupted Michael,

ironically.

"You must now say M. Raymond's plan, father," replied Robert, smiling.

"Why?"

"Because I have sold it to him."

The joiner, who was planing a board, turned round quickly.

"Sold it!" cried he, with sparkling eyes.

"For the reason that I was not rich enough to give it him."

Michael threw down the board and tool.

"There he is again!" resumed he angrily; "his good genius puts an idea

into his head which would have made him known, and he goes and sells it

to a rich man, who will take all the honor of it himself."

"Well, what harm is there done?" asked Genevieve.

"What harm!" cried the joiner in a passion. "You understand nothing

about it--you are a woman; but he--he knows well that a true workman

never gives up his own inventions for money, no more than a soldier

would give up his cross. That is his glory; he is bound to keep it for

the honor it does him! Ah! thunder! if I had ever made a discovery,

rather than put it up at auction I would have sold one of my eyes! Don't

you see that a new invention is like a child to a workman? He takes care

of it, he makes a way for it in the world, and it is only poor creatures

who sell it."

Robert colored a little.

"You will think differently, father," said he, "when you know why I sold

my plan."

"Yes, and you will thank him for it," added Genevieve, who could no

longer keep silence.

"Never!" replied Michael.

"But, wretched man!" cried she, "he only sold it for our sakes!"

The joiner looked at his wife and son with astonishment. The latter

related how he had entered into a negotiation with Master Benoit, who

had positively refused to sell his business unless one-half of the 2,000

francs were first paid down. It was in the hopes of obtaining this sum

that he had gone to work with the contractor at Versailles; he had had

an opportunity of trying his invention and of finding a purchaser.

Thanks to the money he received for it, he had just concluded the

bargain with Benoit, and had brought his father the key of the new

work-yard.

This explanation was given by the young workman with so much modesty and

simplicity that I was quite affected by it. Genevieve cried; Michael

pressed his son to his heart, and seemed to ask his pardon for having

unjustly accused him.

All was now explained with honor to Robert. The conduct which his

parents had ascribed to indifference really sprang from affection; he

had neither obeyed the voice of ambition nor of avarice, nor even the

nobler inspiration of inventive genius; his whole motive and single aim

had been the happiness of Genevieve and Michael. The day for proving his

gratitude had come, and he had returned them sacrifice for sacrifice!

After the explanation and exclamations of joy were over, all three were

about to leave me; but the cloth being laid, I added three more places,

and kept them to breakfast.

The meal was prolonged: the fare was only tolerable, but the

overflowings of affection made it delicious. Never had I better

understood the unspeakable charm of family love. What calm enjoyment in

that happiness which is always shared with others; in that community of

interests which unites such various feeling; in that association of

existences which forms one single being of so many! What is man without

those home affections which, like so many roots, fix him firmly in the

earth and permit him to imbibe all the juices of life? Energy,

happiness--does it not all come from them? Without family life where

would man learn to love, to associate, to deny himself? A community in

little, is it not this which teaches us how to live in the great one?

Such is the holiness of home, that to express our relation with God we

have been obliged to borrow the words invented for our family life. Men

have named themselves the sons of a heavenly Father!

Ah! let us carefully preserve these chains of domestic union; do not let

us unbind the human sheaf and scatter its ears to all the caprices of

chance and of the winds; but let us rather enlarge this holy law; let us

carry the principles and the habits of home beyond its bounds; and, let

us realize the prayer of the Apostle of the Gentiles when he exclaimed

to the new-born children of Christ:

"Be ye like-minded, having the same love, being of one accord, of one

mind."

FOOTNOTES:

[314-1] This is adapted from _An Attic Philosopher in Paris_.

[315-2] The cheap wine shops of Paris are outside the Barriers, to avoid

the city tax.

ON THE RECEIPT OF MY MOTHER'S PICTURE

_By_ WILLIAM COWPER

INTRODUCTORY NOTE

Before we read this beautiful little poem, let us prepare ourselves by

learning something about the author.

William Cowper, the son of an English clergyman, was born in 1731. He

was a delicate, sensitive little boy whose life was made miserable by

his companions in play and at school. So timid was he that the larger

boys tyrannized over him shamefully, and the smaller ones teased him as

much as they liked. When his mother died, William was but six years old,

and the shrinking little lad was placed in a large boarding school where

the other boys were cruel and heartless. At least, so they seemed to the

frightened newcomer. Probably they were no more cruel and heartless than

most strong and healthy youngsters who are accustomed to give and take

without whimpering. Young Cowper was merely the strange lad whose timid

and hesitating manner seemed to call for discipline. Years afterwards,

still remembering the agony of these years, he wrote of one big boy in

particular.

"His savage treatment of me impressed such a dread of his figure upon my

mind that I well remember of being afraid to lift my eyes up higher

than to his knees, and that I knew him better by his shoe-buckles than

by any other part of his dress."

At ten he was removed to Westminster School, where he made some good

friends. Here, too, he took a more manly stand, played football and

cricket with the other boys, and redeemed himself from some of his

weakness. But he had numerous spells of moodiness and sadness, during

which he hid himself from his fellows and refused to join their plays

even. He was unusually intelligent, distinguished himself in his

studies, and became a favorite with his teachers.

Among his friends here was Warren Hastings, who long years afterwards,

as governor of India, was convicted of cruelty and extortion. Cowper

showed the loyalty of his nature by refusing utterly to believe in the

guilt of his old friend.

William's father wished to make a lawyer of his son, and when the boy

had finished at Westminster he was sent to study law in London. If he

had been unhappy in school, he became even more so now, for there was

nothing in the legal profession to attract him. Instead of reading law

he read literature; instead of writing legal papers he wrote poems and

sketches. Finally, however, he became a lawyer, but he could never bring

himself to practice his profession.

At one time he was given a clerkship, but in preparation for it he was

asked to take an examination before the bar at the House of Lords. Here

his old nervousness and timidity overpowered him, and he failed to

appear; in fact, he ran away, planning to kill himself, but at the last

moment his courage again failed him. After this, his mind gave way, and

he was for a time in an asylum. In fact, at intervals thereafter, he had

attacks of despondency and moodiness, of fear and discouragement, which

showed how seriously his mind was affected.

So far this is not a very attractive picture; but it is one side of the

great poet's character. That there was another we knew, for he made the

most loyal friends, who opened their homes to him and were ever willing

to care for him.

At one time he was engaged to be married, but an attack of insanity

prevented the union, though it did not destroy the ardent friendship of

the lovers. Cowper could never wholly throw off the fear of the future.

"Day and night," he once wrote, "I was upon the rack, lying down in

horror and rising up in despair."

His most attached friends, the Unwins, were deeply religious people, and

at their house Cowper spent his happiest years. It was a great shock to

him when Mr. Unwin was thrown from a horse and killed. From that time a

succession of kind friends aided him, watched him through his periods of

despair and provided for his simple wants. He was passionately fond of

pets, and was happiest in caring for his rabbits, cats and other

animals. He liked gardening, too, and spent a great deal of energy upon

his plants.

Cowper was one of the finest correspondents that ever wrote, and his

graceful and humorous letters are still read with pleasure by all who

know them. Strangely enough, his gloominess rarely found its way into

his poetry, which often was highly amusing, as you know who have read

_John Gilpin_. _The Task_ is his greatest poem, though there are many

short ones of great beauty.

Cowper was sincere and honest, and used good judgment in everything that

did not concern himself. Occasionally he became dissatisfied with the

style of poetry then most popular, because it was written so strictly

according to rule and because heart and nature were all forgotten. What

he wrote was different; putting his truthful eyes on birds and flowers,

on fine scenery and on noble men and women, he wrote exactly as he saw,

and let his fine sentiment and loving heart find gracious expression.

The result was that he led the way for Wordsworth, the greater man, who

brought our poetry back from the bonds of formality and made it

beautiful, sincere and true.

The final years of Cowper were sad ones. Mrs. Unwin was stricken with

paralysis, and the poet repaid her years of care and protection by an

unfailing attention that lasted till she died. It is said that after the

one heart-breaking cry he uttered when he saw her dead body, he never

again mentioned her name, though he lived for four years. His end came

peacefully enough, in April, 1800.

When Cowper was fifty-six years old his cousin sent to him from Norfolk

a picture of his mother, who had then been dead for half a century. How

vivid a recollection of her loving care remained to the saddened man may

be seen in the poem.

MY MOTHER'S PICTURE

OUT OF NORFOLK, THE GIFT OF MY COUSIN, ANN BODHAM

O that those lips had language! Life has passed

With me but roughly since I heard thee last.

Those lips are thine,--thy own sweet smile I see,

The same that oft in childhood solaced me;

Voice only fails, else how distinct they say,

"Grieve not, my child; chase all thy fears away!"

The meek intelligence of those dear eyes

(Blest be the art that can immortalize,--

The art that baffles time's tyrannic claim

To quench it!) here shines on me still the same.

Faithful remembrancer of one so dear!

O welcome guest, though unexpected here!

Who bid'st me honor with an artless song,

Affectionate, a mother lost so long.

I will obey,--not willingly alone.

But gladly, as[335-1] the precept were her own;

And, while that face renews my filial grief,

Fancy shall weave a charm for my relief,--

Shall steep me in Elysian[335-2] revery,

A momentary dream that thou art she.

[Illustration: "MY MOTHER!"]

My mother! when I learned that thou wast dead,

Say, wast thou conscious of the tears I shed?

Hovered thy spirit o'er thy sorrowing son,--

Wretch even then, life's journey just begun?

Perhaps thou gavest me, though unfelt, a kiss;

Perhaps a tear, if souls can weep in bliss--

Ah, that maternal smile! it answers--Yes.

I heard the bell tolled on thy burial day;

I saw the hearse that bore thee slow away;

And, turning from my nursery window, drew

A long, long sigh, and wept a last adieu!

But was it such?--It was.--Where thou art gone

Adieus and farewells are a sound unknown;

May I but meet thee on that peaceful shore,

The parting word shall pass my lips no more.

Thy maidens, grieved themselves at my concern,

Oft gave me promise of thy quick return;

What ardently I wished I long believed,

And, disappointed still, was still deceived,--

By expectation every day beguiled,

Dupe of to-morrow even from a child.

Thus many a sad to-morrow came and went,

Till, all my stock of infant sorrow spent,

I learned at last submission to my lot;

But, though I less deplored thee, ne'er forgot.

Where once we dwelt our name is heard no more;

Children not thine have trod my nursery floor;

And where the gardener Robin, day by day,

Drew me to school along the public way,

Delighted with my bauble coach, and wrapt

In scarlet mantle warm, and velvet capped,

'Tis now become a history little known,

That once we call'd the pastoral house[337-3] our own.

Shortlived possession! but the record fair,

That memory keeps of all thy kindness there,

Still outlives many a storm, that has effaced

A thousand other themes less deeply traced.

Thy nightly visits to my chamber made,

That thou mightst know me safe and warmly laid;

Thy morning bounties ere I left my home,

The biscuit, or confectionery plum;

The fragrant waters on my cheeks bestow'd

By thy own hand, till fresh they shone and glow'd;

All this, and more endearing still than all,

Thy constant flow of love, that knew no fall,

Ne'er roughen'd by those cataracts and breaks,

That humour[338-4] interposed too often makes;

All this still legible in memory's page,

And still to be so to my latest age,

Adds joy to duty, makes me glad to pay

Such honours to thee as my numbers[338-5] may;

Perhaps a frail memorial, but sincere,

Not scorn'd in Heaven, though little noticed here.

Could Time, his flight reversed, restore the hours,

When, playing with thy vesture's tissued[338-6] flowers,

The violet, the pink, the jessamine,

I prick'd them into paper with a pin,[338-7]

(And thou wast happier than myself the while--

Wouldst softly speak, and stroke my head and smile,)--

Could those few pleasant days again appear,

Might one wish bring them, would I wish them here?

I would not trust my heart,--the dear delight

Seems so to be desired, perhaps I might.

But no,--what here we call our life is such,

So little to be loved, and thou so much,

That I should ill requite thee to constrain

Thy unbound spirit into bounds again.

Thou--as a gallant bark, from Albion's[339-8] coast,

(The storms all weathered and the ocean crossed,)

Shoots into port at some well-havened isle,

Where spices breathe and brighter seasons smile;

There sits quiescent on the floods, that show

Her beauteous form reflected clear below,

While airs impregnated with incense play

Around her, fanning light her streamers gay,--

So thou, with sails how swift! hast reached the shore

"Where tempests never beat nor billows roar":

And thy loved consort[339-9] on the dangerous tide

Of life long since has anchored by thy side.

But me,[339-10] scarce hoping to attain the rest,

Always from port withheld, always distressed,--

Me[339-10] howling blasts drive devious, tempest-tossed,

Sails ripped, seams opening wide, and compass lost;[339-11]

And day by day some current's thwarting force

Sets me more distant from a prosperous course.

Yet O, the thought that thou art safe, and he!--[339-12]

That thought is joy, arrive what may to me.

My boast is not that I deduce my birth

From loins enthroned,[339-13] and rulers of the earth;

But higher far my proud pretensions rise,--

The son of parents passed into the skies.

And now, farewell!--Time, unrevoked,[340-14] has run

His wonted course; yet what I wished is done.

By contemplation's help, not sought in vain,

I seem to have lived my childhood o'er again,--

To have renewed the joys that once were mine,

Without the sin of violating thine;

And, while the wings of fancy still are free,

And I can view this mimic show of thee,

Time has but half succeeded in his theft,--

Thyself removed, thy power to soothe me left.

FOOTNOTES:

[335-1] As _though_ the request were her own.

[335-2] The Elysian Fields were the blessed lands of beauty and joy to

which the Greeks hoped to go at their death.

[337-3] The _pastoral house_ means the rectory, the home of the

clergyman.

[338-4] _Humour_ here means _temper_.

[338-5] _Numbers_ is used for _poetic measures; poetry_.

[338-6] _Tissued_ is a poetic word for _variegated_.

[338-7] He pricked into paper with a pin the outlines of the variegated

forms of violets, pinks and jessamine that decorated his mother's dress.

[339-8] _England's._ The old name Albion, which means _white_, is still

used in poetry. Just how the name originated no one knows. Perhaps it

alluded to the white chalk cliffs of England which the Gauls could see.

[339-9] Cowper's father died in 1756; his mother in 1737.

[339-10] _Me_ is repeated for emphasis; it is the object of _drive_:

"Howling blasts drive me out of the straight line," is what the lines

mean.

[339-11] Cowper was too strongly conscious of his weakness and his

difference from other men. He wrote in a letter to a friend, "Certainly

I am not an absolute fool, but I have more weaknesses than the greatest

of all the fools I can recollect at present. In short, if I was as fit

for the next world as I am unfit for this,--and God forbid I should

speak of it in vanity,--I would not change conditions with any saint in

Christendom."

[339-12] "That thou art safe, and that he is safe."

[339-13] Cowper descended from ancient and high lineage on both sides.

THOSE EVENING BELLS

_By_ THOMAS MOORE

Those evening bells! those evening bells.

How many a tale their music tells,

Of youth, and home, and that sweet time

When last I heard their soothing chime!

Those joyous hours are passed away;

And many a heart that once was gay,

Within the tomb now darkly dwells,

And hears no more those evening bells.

And so 'twill be when I am gone--

That tuneful peal will still ring on;

While other bards shall walk these dells,

And sing your praise, sweet evening bells.

FOOTNOTES:

[340-14] _Unrevoked_ means _not called back_.

ANNABEL LEE

_By_ EDGAR ALLAN POE

It was many and many a year ago,

In a kingdom by the sea,

That a maiden lived, whom you may know

By the name of Annabel Lee;

And this maiden she lived with no other thought

Than to love, and be loved by me.

I was a child and she was a child,

In this kingdom by the sea;

But we loved with a love that was more than love,

I and my Annabel Lee,--

With a love that the winged seraphs of heaven

Coveted her and me.

And this was the reason that long ago,

In this kingdom by the sea,

A wind blew out of a cloud, chilling

My beautiful Annabel Lee;

So that her highborn kinsmen came,

And bore her away from me,

To shut her up in a sepulchre,

In this kingdom by the sea.

The angels, not so happy in heaven,

Went envying her and me.

Yes! that was the reason (as all men know)

In this kingdom by the sea,

That the wind came out of the cloud by night,

Chilling and killing my Annabel Lee.

[Illustration: IN HER SEPULCHRE THERE BY THE SEA]

But our love it was stronger by far than the love

Of those who were older than we,

Of many far wiser than we;

And neither the angels in heaven above,

Nor the demons down under the sea,

Can ever dissever my soul from the soul

Of the beautiful Annabel Lee.

For the moon never beams without bringing me dreams

Of the beautiful Annabel Lee,

And the stars never rise but I feel the bright eyes

Of the beautiful Annabel Lee.

And so, all the night-tide I lie down by the side

Of my darling, my darling, my life, and my bride,

In her sepulchre there by the sea,

In her tomb by the sounding sea.

THE THREE FISHERS

_By_ CHARLES KINGSLEY