MY DEAR MR. FIELDS,--I did promise to write an Introduction to these
charming papers but an Introduction,--what is it?--a sort of pilaster,
put upon the face of a building for looks' sake, and usually flat,--very
flat. Sometimes it may be called a caryatid, which is, as I understand
it, a cruel device of architecture, representing a man or a woman,
obliged to hold up upon his or her head or shoulders a structure which
they did not build, and which could stand just as well without as with
them. But an Introduction is more apt to be a pillar, such as one may
see in Baalbec, standing up in the air all alone, with nothing on it,
and with nothing for it to do.
But an Introductory Letter is different. There is in that no formality,
no assumption of function, no awkward propriety or dignity to be
sustained. A letter at the opening of a book may be only a footpath,
leading the curious to a favorable point of observation, and then
leaving them to wander as they will.
Sluggards have been sent to the ant for wisdom; but writers might better
be sent to the spider, not because he works all night, and watches all
day, but because he works unconsciously. He dare not even bring his work
before his own eyes, but keeps it behind him, as if too much knowledge
of what one is doing would spoil the delicacy and modesty of one's work.
Almost all graceful and fanciful work is born like a dream, that comes
noiselessly, and tarries silently, and goes as a bubble bursts. And yet
somewhere work must come in,--real, well-considered work.
Inness (the best American painter of Nature in her moods of real human
feeling) once said, “No man can do anything in art, unless he has
intuitions; but, between whiles, one must work hard in collecting the
materials out of which intuitions are made.” The truth could not be hit
off better. Knowledge is the soil, and intuitions are the flowers which
grow up out of it. The soil must be well enriched and worked.
It is very plain, or will be to those who read these papers, now
gathered up into this book, as into a chariot for a race, that the
author has long employed his eyes, his ears, and his understanding, in
observing and considering the facts of Nature, and in weaving curious
analogies. Being an editor of one of the oldest daily news-papers in New
England, and obliged to fill its columns day after day (as the village
mill is obliged to render every day so many sacks of flour or of meal
to its hungry customers), it naturally occurred to him, “Why not write
something which I myself, as well as my readers, shall enjoy? The
market gives them facts enough; politics, lies enough; art, affectations
enough; criminal news, horrors enough; fashion, more than enough of
vanity upon vanity, and vexation of purse. Why should they not have some
of those wandering and joyous fancies which solace my hours?”
The suggestion ripened into execution. Men and women read, and wanted
more. These garden letters began to blossom every week; and many hands
were glad to gather pleasure from them. A sign it was of wisdom. In our
feverish days it is a sign of health or of convalescence that men love
gentle pleasure, and enjoyments that do not rush or roar, but distill as
the dew.
The love of rural life, the habit of finding enjoyment in familiar
things, that susceptibility to Nature which keeps the nerve gently
thrilled in her homliest nooks and by her commonest sounds, is worth a
thousand fortunes of money, or its equivalents.
Every book which interprets the secret lore of fields and gardens, every
essay that brings men nearer to the understanding of the mysteries which
every tree whispers, every brook murmurs, every weed, even, hints, is
a contribution to the wealth and the happiness of our kind. And if the
lines of the writer shall be traced in quaint characters, and be filled
with a grave humor, or break out at times into merriment, all this will
be no presumption against their wisdom or his goodness. Is the oak less
strong and tough because the mosses and weather-stains stick in all
manner of grotesque sketches along its bark? Now, truly, one may not
learn from this little book either divinity or horticulture; but if he
gets a pure happiness, and a tendency to repeat the happiness from the
simple stores of Nature, he will gain from our friend's garden what Adam
lost in his, and what neither philosophy nor divinity has always been
able to restore.
Wherefore, thanking you for listening to a former letter, which begged
you to consider whether these curious and ingenious papers, that go
winding about like a half-trodden path between the garden and the field,
might not be given in book-form to your million readers, I remain, yours
to command in everything but the writing of an Introduction,