carriage, driven by a boy of perhaps ten years, a son of the farmer from
whose land I was, as it were, gathering the first fruits. We had made
each other's acquaintance the day before, and now, as he surmounted the
hill, he stopped to inquire politely whether I would ride with him. Yes,
I answered, I would gladly be carried into the forest a little way. It
proved a very little way indeed; for the road was heavy from recent
rains, and the poor old hack was so short of breath that he could barely
drag us along, and at every slump of the wheels came to a dead
standstill. "Pity for a horse o'er-driven" soon compelled me to take to
the woods, in spite of the protestations of my charioteer, who assured
me that his steed _could_ trot "like everything," if he only would. It
is an extremely unpatriotic Vermonter, I suspect (I have never yet
discovered him), who will not brag a little over his horse; and I was
rather pleased than otherwise to hear my flaxen-haired friend set forth
the good points of his beast, even while he confessed that the "heaves"
were pretty bad. I was glad, too, to find the youngster in a general way
something of an optimist. When I asked him how long the land had been
cleared, he pointed to one corner of it, and responded, using the
pronoun with perfect _naïveté_, "We cleared up that piece last fall;"
and on my inquiring whether it was not hard work, he replied, in a tone
of absolute satisfaction, "Oh, yes, but you get your pay for it."
Evidently he believed in Green Mountain land, which I thought a very
fortunate circumstance. "Be content with such things as ye have," said
the Apostle; and it is certainly easier to obey the precept if one looks
upon his own things as the best in the world. My youthful philosopher
seemed to consider it altogether natural and reasonable that prosperity,
instead of coming of itself, should have to be earned by the sweat of
the brow. Perhaps the crow and the cherry-tree are equally
unsophisticated. Perhaps, too, men's fates are less uneven than is
sometimes supposed. For I could not help thinking that if this boy
should retain his present view of things, he would pass his days more
happily than many a so-called favorite of fortune.
On my way back to the inn I met an old man from the lowlands, driving
over the mountains for the first time since boyhood. "You have a pretty
good farming country here," he called out cheerily,--"a little rolling."
He took me for a native, and I hope to be forgiven for not disclaiming
the compliment.
As I write, I find myself wondering how my nameless farmer's crop is
prospered. In my corner of the world we have lately been afflicted with
drought. I hope it has been otherwise on his hillside plateau. In my
thought, at all events, his corn is now fully tasseled, and waves in a
pleasant mountain wind, all green and shining.
BEHIND THE EYE.
As what he sees is, so have his thoughts been.--MATTHEW
ARNOLD.
Nothing is seen until it is separated from its surroundings. A man looks
at the landscape, but the tree standing in the middle of the landscape
he does not see until, for the instant at least, he singles it out as
the object of vision. Two men walk the same road; as far as the
bystander can perceive, they have before them the same sights; but let
them be questioned at the end of the journey, and it will appear that
one man saw one set of objects, and his companion another; and the more
diverse the intellectual training and habits of the two travelers, the
greater will be the discrepancy between the two reports.
And what is true of any two men is equally true of any one man at two
different times. To-day he is in a dreamy, reflective mood,--he has been
reading Wordsworth, perhaps,--and when he takes his afternoon saunter
he looks at the bushy hillside, or at the wayside cottage, or down into
the loitering brook, and he sees in them all such pictures as they never
showed him before. Or he is in a matter-of-fact mood, a kind of
stock-market frame of mind; and he looks at everything through
economical spectacles,--as if he had been set to appraise the acres of
meadow or woodland through which he passes. At another time he may have
been reading some book or magazine article written by Mr. John
Burroughs; and although he knows nothing of birds, and can scarcely tell
a crow from a robin (perhaps for this very reason), he is certain to
have tantalizing glimpses of some very strange and wonderful feathered
specimens. They must be rarities, at least, if not absolute novelties;
and likely enough, on getting home, he sits down and writes to Mr.
Burroughs a letter full of gratitude and inquiry,--the gratitude very
pleasant to receive, we may presume, and the inquiries quite impossible
to answer.
Some men (not many, it is to be hoped) are specialists, and nothing
else. They are absorbed in farming, or in shoemaking, in chemistry, or
in Latin grammar, and have no thought for anything beyond or beside.
Others of us, while there may be two or three subjects toward which we
feel some special drawing, have nevertheless a general interest in
whatever concerns humanity. We are different men on different days.
There is a certain part of the year, say from April to July, when I am
an ornithologist; for the time being, as often as I go out-of-doors, I
have an eye for birds, and, comparatively speaking, for nothing else.
Then comes a season during which my walks all take on a botanical
complexion. I have had my turn at butterflies, also; for one or two
summers I may be said to have seen little else but these winged blossoms
of the air. I know, too, what it means to visit the seashore, and
scarcely to notice the breaking waves because of the shells scattered
along the beach. In short, if I see one thing, I am of necessity blind,
or half-blind, to all beside. There are several men in me, and not more
than one or two of them are ever at the window at once. Formerly, my
enjoyment of nature was altogether reflective, imaginative; in a
passive, unproductive sense, poetical. I delighted in the woods and
fields, the seashore and the lonely road, not for the birds or flowers
to be found there, but for the "serene and blessed mood" into which I
was put by such friendship. Later in life, it transpired, as much to my
surprise as to anybody's else, that I had a bent toward natural history,
as well as toward nature; an inclination to study, as well as to dream
over, the beautiful world about me. I must know the birds apart, and the
trees, and the flowers. A bit of country was no longer a mere landscape,
a picture, but a museum as well. For a time the poet seemed to be dead
within me; and happy as I found myself in my new pursuits, I had fits of
bewailing my former condition. Science and fancy, it appeared, would not
travel hand in hand; if a man must be a botanist, let him bid good-by to
the Muse. Then I fled again to Emerson and Wordsworth, trying to read
the naturalist asleep and reawaken the poet. Happy thought! The two men,
the student and the lover, were still there; and there they remain to
this day. Sometimes one is at the window, sometimes the other.
So it is, undoubtedly, with other people. My fellow-travelers, who hear
me discoursing enthusiastically of vireos and warblers, thrushes and
wrens, whilst they see never a bird, unless it be now and then an
English sparrow or a robin, talk sometimes as if the difference between
us were one of eyesight. They might as well lay it to the window-glass
of our respective houses. It is not the eye that sees, but the man
behind the eye.
As to the comparative advantages and disadvantages of such a division of
interests as I have been describing, there may be room for two opinions.
If distinction be all that the student hungers for, perhaps he cannot
limit himself too strictly; but for myself, I think I should soon tire
of my own society if I were only one man,--a botanist or a chemist, an
artist, or even a poet. I should soon tire of myself, I say; but I might
have said, with equal truth, that I should soon tire of nature; for if I
were only one man, I should see only one aspect of the natural world.
This may explain why it is that some persons must be forever moving from
place to place. If they travel the same road twice or thrice, or even
to the hundredth time, they see only one set of objects. The same man is
always at the window. No wonder they are restless and famished. For my
own part, though I should delight to see new lands and new people, new
birds and new plants, I am nevertheless pretty well contented where I
am. If I take the same walks, I do not see the same things. The botanist
spells the dreamer; and now and then the lover of beauty keeps the
ornithologist in the background till he is thankful to come once more to
the window, though it be only to look at a bluebird or a song sparrow.
How much influence has the will in determining which of these several
tenants of a man's body shall have his turn at sightseeing? It would be
hard to answer definitely. As much, it may be, as a teacher has over his
pupils, or a father over his children; something depends upon the
strength of the governing will, and something upon the tractability of
the pupil. In general, I assume to command. As I start on my ramble I
give out word, as it were, which of the men shall have the front seat.
But there are days when some one of them proves too much both for me
and for his fellows. It is not the botanist's turn, perhaps; but he
takes his seat at the window, notwithstanding, and the ornithologist and
the dreamer must be content to peep at the landscape over his shoulders.
On such occasions, it may as well be confessed, I make but a feeble
remonstrance; and for the sufficient reason that I feel small confidence
in my own wisdom. If the flower-lover or the poet must have the hour,
then in all likelihood he ought to have it. So much I concede to the
nature of things. A strong tendency is a strong argument, and of itself
goes far to justify itself. I borrow no trouble on the score of such
compulsions. On the contrary, my lamentations begin when nobody sues for
the place of vision. Such days I have; blank days, days to be dropped
from the calendar; when "those that look out of the windows be
darkened." The fault is not with the world, nor with the eye. The old
preacher had the right of it; it is not the windows that are darkened,
but "those that look out of the windows."
A NOVEMBER CHRONICLE.
I've gathered young spring-leaves, and flowers gay.--KEATS.
I looked forward to the month with peculiar interest, as it was many
years since I had passed a November in the country, and now that it is
over I am moved to publish its praises: partly, as I hope, out of
feelings of gratitude, and partly because it is an agreeable kind of
originality to commend what everybody else has been in the habit of
decrying.
In the first place, then, it was a month of pleasant weather; something
too much of wind and dust (the dust for only the first ten days) being
almost the only drawback. To me, with my prepossessions, it was little
short of marvelous how many of the days were nearly or quite cloudless.
The only snow fell on the 11th. I saw a few flakes in the afternoon,
just enough to be counted, and there must have been another slight
flurry after dark, as the grass showed white in favorable spots early
the next morning. Making allowance for the shortness of the days, I
doubt whether there has been a month during the past year in which a man
could comfortably spend more of his time in out-of-door exercise.
The trees were mostly bare before the end of October, but the apple and
cherry trees still kept their branches green (they are foreigners, and
perhaps have been used to a longer season), and the younger growth of
gray birches lighted up the woodlands with pale yellow. Of course the
oak-leaves were still hanging, also; and for that matter they are
hanging yet, and will be for months to come, let the north wind blow as
it may. I wonder whether their winter rustling sounds as cold in other
ears as in mine. My own feeling is most likely the result of boyish
associations. How often I waded painfully through the forest paths, my
feet and hands half frozen, while these ghosts of summer shivered
sympathetically on every side as they saw me pass! I wonder, too, what
can be the explanation of this unnatural oak-tree habit. The leaves are
dead; why should they not obey the general law,--"ashes to ashes, dust
to dust"? Is our summer too short to ripen them, and so to perfect the
articulation? Whatever its cause, their singular behavior does much to
beautify the landscape; particularly in such a district as mine, where
the rocky hills are, so many of them, covered with young oak forests,
which, especially for the first half of November, before the foliage is
altogether faded, are dressed in subdued shades of maroon, beautiful at
all hours, but touched into positive glory by the level rays of the
afternoon sun.
I began on the very first day of the month to make a list of the plants
found in bloom, and happening, a week afterward, to be in the company of
two experienced botanical collectors, I asked them how many species I
was likely to find. One said thirty. The other, after a little
hesitation, replied, "I don't know, but I shouldn't think you could find
a dozen." Well, it is true that November is not distinctively a floral
month in Massachusetts, but before its thirty days were over I had
catalogued seventy-three species, though for six of these, to be sure,
I have to thank one of the collectors just now mentioned. Indeed, I
found thirty-nine sorts on my first afternoon ramble; and even as late
as the 27th and 28th I counted twelve. All in all, there is little doubt
that at least a hundred kinds of plants were in bloom about me during
the month.
Having called my record a chronicle, I should be guilty of an almost
wanton disregard of scriptural models if I did not fill it largely with
names, and accordingly I do not hesitate to subjoin a full list of these
my November flowers; omitting Latin titles,--somewhat unwillingly, I
confess,--except where the vernacular is wanting altogether, or else is
more than commonly ambiguous:--creeping buttercup, tall buttercup, field
larkspur, celandine, pale corydalis, hedge mustard, shepherd's-purse,
wild peppergrass, sea-rocket, wild radish, common blue violet, bird-foot
violet, pansy, Deptford pink, common chickweed, larger mouse-ear
chickweed, sand spurrey, knawel, common mallow, herb-robert, storksbill,
red clover, alsyke, white clover, white sweet clover, black medick,
white avens, common cinque-foil, silvery cinque-foil, witch-hazel,
common evening-primrose, smaller evening-primrose, carrot, blue-stemmed
golden-rod, white golden-rod (or silvery-rod), seaside golden-rod,
_Solidago juncea_, _Solidago rugosa_, dusty golden-rod, early
golden-rod, corymbed aster, wavy-leaved aster, heart-leaved aster,
many-flowered aster, _Aster vimineus_, _Aster diffusus_, New York aster,
_Aster puniceus_, narrow-leaved aster, flea-bane, horse-weed,
everlasting, cudweed, cone-flower, mayweed, yarrow, tansy, groundsel,
burdock, Canada thistle, fall dandelion, common dandelion, sow thistle,
Indian tobacco, bell-flower (_Campanula rapunculoides_), fringed
gentian, wild toad-flax, butter and eggs, self-heal, motherwort,
jointweed, doorweed, and ladies' tresses (_Spiranthes cernua_).
Here, then, we have seventy-three species, all but one of which
(_Spiranthes cernua_) are of the class of exogens. Twenty-two orders are
represented, the great autumnal family of the _Compositæ_ naturally
taking the lead, with thirty species (sixteen of them asters and
golden-rods), while the mustard, pink, and pulse families come next,
with five species each. The large and hardy heath family is wanting
altogether. Out of the whole number about forty-three are indigenous.
Witch-hazel is the only shrub, and, as might have been expected, there
is no climbing plant.
In setting down such a list one feels it a pity that so few of the
golden-rods and asters have any specific designation in English. Under
this feeling, I have presumed myself to name two of the golden-rods,
_Solidago Canadensis_ and _Solidago nemoralis_. With us, at all events,
the former is the first of its genus to blossom, and may appropriately
enough wear the title of early golden-rod, while the latter must have
been noticed by everybody for its peculiar grayish, "dusty-miller"
foliage. It has, moreover, an exceptional right to a vernacular name,
being both one of the commonest and one of the showiest of our roadside
weeds. Till something better is proposed, therefore, let us call it the
dusty golden-rod.
It must in fairness be acknowledged that I did not stand upon the
quality of my specimens. Many of them were nothing but accidental and
not very reputable-looking laggards; but in November, especially if one
is making a list, a blossom is a blossom. The greater part of the asters
and golden-rods, I think, were plants that had been broken down by one
means or another, and now, at this late day, had put forth a few stunted
sprays. The narrow-leaved aster (_Aster linariifolius_) seemed
peculiarly out of season, and was represented by only two heads, but
these sufficed to bring the mouth-filling name into my catalogue. Of the
two species of native violets I saw but a single blossom each. My pansy
(common enough in gardens, and blooming well into December) was, of
course, found by the roadside, and the larkspur likewise, as I made
nothing of any but wild plants.
At this time of the year one must not expect to pick flowers anywhere
and everywhere, and a majority of all my seventy-three species (perhaps
as many as two thirds) were found only in one or more of three
particular places. The first of these was along a newly laid-out road
through a tract of woodland; the second was a sheltered wayside nook
between high banks; and the third was at the seashore. At this last
place, on the 8th of the month, I came unexpectedly upon a field fairly
yellow with fall dandelions and silvery cinque-foils, and affording also
my only specimens of burdock, Canada thistle, cone-flower, and the
smaller evening-primrose; in addition to which were the many-flowered
aster, yarrow, red clover, and sow thistle. In truth, the grassy
hillside was quite like a garden, although there was no apparent reason
why it should be so favored. The larger evening-primrose, of which I saw
two stalks, one of them bearing six or eight blossoms, was growing among
the rocks just below the edge of the cliff, in company with abundance of
sow thistle, all perfectly fresh; while along the gravelly edge of the
bank, just above them, was the groundsel (_Senecio vulgaris_), looking
as bright and thrifty as if it had been the first of August instead of
near the middle of November.
Perhaps my most surprising bit of good luck was the finding of the
Deptford pink. Of this, for some inscrutable reason, one plant still
remained green and showed several rosy blossoms, while all its fellows,
far and near, were long since bleached and dead. Fortune has her
favorites, even among pinks. The frail-looking, early-blooming
corydalis (we have few plants that appear less able to bear exposure)
was in excellent condition up to the very end of the month, though the
one patch then explored was destitute of flowers. These were as pretty
as could be--prettier even than in May, I thought--on the 16th, and no
doubt might have been found on the 30th, with careful search. The little
geranium known as herb-robert is a neighbor of the corydalis, and, like
it, stands the cold remarkably well. Its reddening, finely cut leaves
were fresh and flourishing, but though I often looked for its flowers, I
found only one during the entire month. The storksbill, its less known
cousin, does not grow within my limits, but came to me from Essex
County, through the kindness of a friend, being one of the six species
contributed by her, as I have before mentioned.
The hardiness of some of these late bloomers is surprising. It is now
the 2d of December, and yesterday the temperature fell about thirty
degrees below the freezing-point, yet I notice shepherd's-purse,
peppergrass, chickweed, and knawel still bearing fresh-looking flowers.
Nor are they the only plants that seem thus impervious to cold. The
prostrate young St. John's-wort shoots, for instance, all uncovered and
delicate as they are, appear not to know that winter with all its rigors
is upon them.
It was impossible not to sympathize admiringly with some of my belated
asters and golden-rods. Their perseverance was truly pathetic. They had
been hindered, but they meant to finish their appointed task,
nevertheless, in spite of short days and cold weather. I have especially
in mind a plant of _Solidago juncea_. The species is normally one of the
earliest, following hard upon _Solidago Canadensis_, but for some reason
this particular specimen did not begin to flower till after the first
heavy frosts. Indeed, when I first noticed it, the stem leaves were
already frost-bitten; yet it kept on putting forth blossoms for at least
a fortnight. Whatever may be true of the lilies of the field, this
golden-rod was certainly a toiler, and of the most persistent sort.
Early in the month the large and hardy Antiopa butterflies were still
not uncommon in the woods, and on the 3d--a delightful, summer-like
day, in which I made a pilgrimage to Walden--I observed a single
clouded-sulphur (Philodice), looking none the worse for the low
temperature of the night before, when the smaller ponds had frozen over
for the first time.
Of course I kept account of the birds as well as of the flowers, but the
number, both of individuals and of species, proved to be surprisingly
small, the total list being as follows:--great black-backed gull,
American herring gull, ruffed grouse, downy woodpecker, flicker, blue
jay, crow, horned lark, purple finch, red crossbill, goldfinch, snow
bunting, Ipswich sparrow, white-throated sparrow, tree sparrow,
snowbird, song sparrow, fox sparrow, Northern shrike, myrtle warbler,
brown creeper, white-breasted nuthatch, chickadee, golden-crowned
kinglet, and robin. Here are only twenty-five species; a meagre
catalogue, which might have been longer, it is true, but for the
patriotism or prejudice (who will presume always to decide between these
two feelings, one of them so given to counterfeiting the other?) which
would not allow me to piece it out with the name of that all too
numerous parasite, the so-called English sparrow.
My best ornithological day was the 17th, which, with a friend
like-minded, I passed at Ipswich Beach. The special object of our search
was the Ipswich sparrow, a bird unknown to science until 1868, when it
was discovered at this very place by Mr. Maynard. Since then it has been
found to be a regular fall and winter visitant along the Atlantic coast,
passing at least as far south as New Jersey. It is a mystery how the
creature could so long have escaped detection. One cannot help querying
whether there can be another case like it. Who knows? Science, even in
its flourishing modern estate, falls a trifle short of omniscience.