among the sand-hills, and when we came together again he reported that
he had seen the sparrow. He had happened upon it unobserved, and had
been favored with excellent opportunities for scrutinizing it carefully
through a glass at short range; and being familiar with its appearance
through a study of cabinet specimens, he had no doubt whatever of its
identity. This was within five minutes of our arrival, and naturally we
anticipated no difficulty in finding others; but for two or three hours
we followed the chase in vain. Twice, to be sure, a sparrow of some sort
flew up in front of us, but in both cases it got away without our
obtaining so much as a peep at it. Up and down the beach we went,
exploring the basins and sliding down the smooth, steep hills. Every
step was interesting, but it began to look as if I must go home without
seeing _Ammodramus princeps_. But patience was destined to have its
reward, and just as we were traversing the upper part of the beach for
the last time, I caught a glimpse of a bird skulking in the grass before
us. He had seen us first, and was already on the move, ducking behind
the scattered tufts of beach-grass, crouching and running by turns; but
we got satisfactory observations, nevertheless, and he proved to be,
like the other, an Ipswich sparrow. He did not rise, but finally made
off through the grass without uttering a sound. Then we examined his
footprints, and found them to be, so far as could be made out, the same
as we had been noticing all about among the hills.
Meanwhile, our perambulations had not been in vain. Flocks of snow
buntings were seen here and there, and we spent a long time in watching
a trio of horned larks. These were feeding amid some stranded rubbish,
and apparently felt not the slightest suspicion of the two men who stood
fifteen or twenty feet off, eying their motions. It was too bad they
could not hear our complimentary remarks about their costumes, so
tastefully trimmed with black and yellow. Our loudest exclamations,
however, were called forth by a dense flock of sea-gulls at the distant
end of the beach. How many hundreds there were I should not dare to
guess, but when they rose in a body their white wings really filled the
air, and with the bright sunlight upon them they made, for a landsman, a
spectacle to be remembered.
Altogether it was a high day for two enthusiasts, though no doubt it
would have looked foolish enough to ordinary mortals, our spending
several dollars of money and a whole day of time,--in November, at
that,--all for the sake of ogling a few birds, not one of which we even
attempted to shoot. But what then? Tastes will differ; and as for
enthusiasm, it is worth more than money and learning put together (so I
believe, at least, without having experimented with the other two) as a
producer of happiness. For my own part, I mean to be enthusiastic as
long as possible, foreseeing only too well that high spirits cannot last
forever.
The sand-hills themselves would have repaid all our trouble. Years ago
this land just back of the beach was covered with forest, while at one
end of it was a flourishing farm. Then when man, with his customary
foolishness, cut off the forest, Nature revenged herself by burying his
farm. We did not verify the fact, but according to the published
accounts of the matter it used to be possible to walk over the grave of
an old orchard, and pick here and there an apple from some topmost
branch still jutting out through the sand.
Among the dunes we found abundance of a little red, heath-like plant,
still in full blossom. Neither of us recognized it, but it turned out to
be jointweed (_Polygonum articulatum_), and made a famous addition to my
November flower catalogue.
In connection with all this I ought, perhaps, to say a word about our
Ipswich driver, especially as naturalists are sometimes reprehended for
taking so much interest in all other creatures, and so little in their
fellow-men. As we drew near the beach, which is some five miles from the
town, we began to find the roads quite under water, with the sea still
rising. We remarked the fact, the more as we were to return on foot,
whereupon the man said that the tide was uncommonly high on account of
the heavy rain of the day before! A little afterward, when we came in
sight of a flock of gulls, he gravely informed us that they were "some
kind of ducks"! He had lived by the seashore all his life, I suppose,
and of course felt entirely competent to instruct two innocent cockneys
such as he had in his wagon.
Four days after this I made a trip to Nahant. If _Ammodramus princeps_
was at Ipswich, why should it not be at other similar places? True
enough, I found the birds feeding beside the road that runs along the
beach. I chased them about for an hour or two in a cold high wind, and
stared at them till I was satisfied. They fed much of the time upon the
golden-rods, alighted freely upon the fence-posts (which is what some
writers would lead us never to expect), and often made use of the
regular family _tseep_. Two of them kept persistently together, as if
they were mated. One staggered me by showing a blotch in the middle of
the breast, a mark that none of the published descriptions mention, but
which I have since found exemplified in one of the skins at the Museum
of Comparative Zoölogy, in Cambridge.
"A day is happily spent that shows me any bird I never saw alive
before." So says Dr. Coues, and he would be a poor ornithologist who
could not echo the sentiment. The Ipswich sparrow was the third such
bird that I had seen during the year without going out of New England,
the other two being the Tennessee warbler and the Philadelphia vireo.
Of the remainder of my November list there is not much to be said.
Robins were very scarce after the first week. My last glimpse of them
was on the 20th, when I saw two. Tree sparrows, snowbirds, chickadees,
kinglets, crows, and jays were oftenest met with, while the shrike,
myrtle warbler, purple finch, and song sparrow were represented by one
individual each. My song sparrow was not seen till the 28th, after I had
given him up. He did not sing (of course he scolded; the song sparrow
can always do that), but the mere sight of him was enough to suggest
thoughts of springtime, especially as he happened to be in the
neighborhood of some Pickering hylas, which were then in full cry for
the only time during the month. Near the end of the month many wild
geese flew over the town, but, thanks to a rebellious tooth (how happy
are the birds in this respect!), I was shut indoors, and knew the fact
only by hearsay. I did, however, see a small flock on the 30th of
October, an exceptionally early date. As it chanced, I was walking at
the time with one of my neighbors, a man more than forty years old, and
he assured me that he had never seen such a thing before.
For music, I one day heard a goldfinch warbling a few strains, and on
the 21st a chickadee repeated his clear phoebe whistle two or three
times. The chickadees are always musical,--there is no need to say that;
but I heard them _sing_ only on this one morning.
Altogether, with the cloudless, mild days, the birds, the tree-frogs,
the butterflies, and the flowers, November did not seem the bleak and
cheerless season it has commonly been painted. Still it was not exactly
like summer. On the last day I saw some very small boys skating on the
Cambridge marshes, and the next morning December showed its hand
promptly, sending the mercury down to within two or three degrees of
zero.
NEW ENGLAND WINTER.
While I enjoy the friendship of the seasons, I trust that
nothing can make life a burden to me.--THOREAU.
Those who will have us all to be studying the Sacred Books of the East,
and other such literature, are given to laying it down as an axiom that
whoever knows only one religion knows none at all,--an assertion, I am
bound to acknowledge, that commends itself to my reason, notwithstanding
the somewhat serious inferences fairly deducible from it touching the
nature and worth of certain convictions of my own, which I have been
wont to look upon as religious. I cannot profess ever to have pried into
the mysteries of any faith except Christianity. So, of course, I do not
understand even that. And the people about me, so far as I can discover,
are all in the same predicament. Yet I would fain believe that we are
not exactly heathen. Some of my neighbors (none too many of them, I
confess) are charitable and devout. They must be pleasing to their
Creator, I say to myself, unless He is hard to please. Sometimes I go so
far as to think that possibly a man may be religious without _knowing_
even his own religion. Let us hope so. Otherwise, we of the laity are
assuredly undone.
And what is true of creeds and churches is true likewise of countries
and climates. We grow wise by comparison of one thing with another, not
by direct and exclusive contemplation of one thing by itself. Human
knowledge is relative, not absolute, and the inveterate stayer at home
is but a poor judge of his own birthplace.
All this I have in lively remembrance as I sit down to record some
impressions of our New England winter. With what propriety do I
discourse upon winter in Massachusetts, having never passed one anywhere
else? Had I spent a portion of my life where roses bloom the year round,
then, to be sure, I might assume to say something to the purpose about
snow and ice.
But if the "tillers of paper" wrote only of such topics as they
possessed full and accurate acquaintance with, how would the Scripture
be fulfilled? "Of making many books" there surely would be an end, and
that speedily. I venture to think, moreover, that a man may never have
set foot beyond the boundaries of his native city, and yet prove a
reasonably competent guide to its streets and by-ways. His information
is circumscribed, but such as it is, it is precise and to the point.
Though he assure you soberly that the principal thoroughfare of his
tenth-rate town is more magnificent than any in New York or London, you
may none the less depend upon him to pilot you safely out of its most
intricate and bewildering corner. Indeed, he might fairly claim
membership in what is, at present, one of the most flourishing of
intellectual guilds: I mean the sect of the specialists; whose creed is
that one may know something without knowing everything, and who choose
for their motto: Remain ignorant in order that you may learn.
In this half-developed world there is nothing so perfect as to be past a
liability to drawbacks and exceptions. The best of beef is poisonous to
some eaters, and strawberries are an abomination to others; and in like
manner there is no climate, nor any single feature of any climate, but
by some constitutions it will be found unendurable. The earth is to be
populated throughout, so it would appear; and to that end sundry
necessary precautions have been taken against human inertia. A certain
proportion of boys must be born with a propensity for wandering and
adventure; and the most favored spot must not contain within itself all
conceivable advantages. If everybody could stand the rigors of New
England weather, what would become of the rest of the continent?
Unless I misjudge myself, I should soon tire of perpetual summer. Like
the ungrateful Israelites with the manna, my soul would loathe such
light bread. To my provincial mind, as I believe, nothing else could
ever quite take the place of a rotation of the seasons. There should be
rain and shine, cold and heat. A change from good weather to bad, and
back again, is on the whole better than unbroken good weather. Dullness
to set off brightness, night to give relief to the day, such is the wise
order of nature; and I do not account it altogether a token of
depravity that honest people, who love a paradox without knowing it,
find perfection, of no matter how innocent a sort, just a little
wearisome. Therefore, I say, let me have a year made up of well-defined
contrasts; in short, a New England year, of four clearly marked seasons.
It is often alleged, I know, that we really have only three seasons;
that winter leaps into the lap of summer, and spring is nothing but a
myth of the almanac makers. I shall credit this story when I am
convinced of the truth of another statement, equally current and equally
well vouched, that every successive summer is the hottest (or the
coldest) for the last twenty-five years. As there is no subject so much
talked about as the weather, so, almost of course, there is none so much
lied about. Winter claims most of March, as the astronomers give it
leave to do, I believe; but April and May, despite a snow-storm or two
in the former, and a torrid week in the latter, are neither summer nor
winter, but spring; somewhat fickle, it is true, more or less uncertain
of itself, but still retaining its personal identity.
As for our actual winter, it may enhance its value in our eyes if we
take into account that the three other seasons all depend upon it for
their peculiar charms. In the case of spring this dependence is palpable
to every one. Berate as we may its backwardness and deceit, muffle
ourselves never so pettishly against its harsh breath, yea, even deny it
all claim to its own proper title, yet anon it gets the better of our
discontent, and we thank our stars that we have lived to see again the
greening of the grass, and to hear once more the song of a bird. A mild
day in March is like a foretaste of heaven; the first robin seems an
angel; while saxifrage, anemones, and dandelions win kindly notice from
many a matter-of-fact countryman who lets all the June roses go by him
unregarded. It is pleasures of this kind, natural, wholesome, and
universal, that largely make up the total of human happiness. Our
instinct for them only strengthens with age. They are like the "divine
ideas" of Olympian bards,--
"Which always find us young,
And always keep us so."
All this glory of the revival would be wanting but for the previous
months of desolation. The hepatica is not more beautiful than many
another flower, but it takes us when we are hungry for the sight of a
blossom. What can we do? When it peeps out of its bed of withered
leaves, puts off its furs, and opens to the sunlight its little purple
cup, we have no choice but to love it as we cannot love the handsomer
and more fragrant hosts that follow in its train.
And as winter over and gone sets in brighter relief the warmth and
resurrection of springtime, so does the shadow of its approach lend a
real if somewhat indefinable attractiveness to the fall months. The
blooming of the late flowers, the ripening of leaf and fruit, the frosty
air, the flocking of birds, all the thousand signs of the autumnal
season take on a kind of pathetic and solemn interest, as being but
prelusive to the whiteness and deadness so soon to cover the earth.
Indeed, if there were no winter, there could be neither spring nor
autumn; nay, nor any summer. Leave out the snow and ice, and the whole
round year would be metamorphosed; or, rather, the year itself would
pass away, and nothing be left but time.
I am not yet a convert to the pessimistic doctrine that "all pleasure is
merely relief from pain;" but I gladly believe that pain has its use in
heightening subsequent happiness, and that one man's evil qualities
(mine, for example) may partly atone for themselves by setting off the
amiable characteristics of worthier men around him. It consoles me to
feel that my neighbors seem better to themselves and to each other
because of the abrupt antithesis between their dispositions and mine. It
is better than nothing, if my failure can serve as a background for
their virtuous success. With reverent thankfulness do I acknowledge the
gracious and far-reaching frugality which, by one means and another,
saves even my foolishness and imperfection from running altogether to
waste.
Viewed in this light, as an offset or foil for the remainder of the
year, we may say that the worse the winter is, the better it is. Within
reasonable limits, it can hardly be too long or too rigorous. And just
here, as it appears to me, our New England climate shows most admirably.
Without being unendurably hot or insufferably cold, it does offer us an
abundant contrast. An opposition of one hundred and twenty-five degrees
between January and July ought to be enough, one would say, to impress
even the dullest imagination.
But winter has its positively favorable side, and is not to be passed
off with merely negative compliments; as if it were like a toothache or
a tiresome sermon,--something of which the only good word to be said is,
that it cannot last forever. It is not to be charged as a defect upon
cold weather that some people find it to disagree with them. We might as
well chide the hill for putting a sick man out of breath. It is with
persons as with plants: some are hardy, others not. The date-palm cannot
be made to grow in Massachusetts; but is Massachusetts to blame for the
palm-tree's incapacity? All things of which the specific office is to
promote strength (exercise, food, climate) presuppose a degree of
strength sufficient for their use. So it is with cold weather. Its
proper effect is to brace and invigorate the system; but there must be
vigor to start with. The law is universal: "To him that hath shall be
given."
Enough, then, of apologies and negative considerations. There was never
a good Yankee, of moderately robust health, and under fifty years of
age, that did not welcome cold weather as a friend. Ask the school-boys,
especially such as live in country places, whether summer or winter
brings the greater pleasure. Two to one they will vote for winter. Or
look back over your own childhood, and see whether the sports of
winter-time do not seem, in the retrospect, to have been the very crown
of the year. How vivid my own recollections are! Other seasons had their
own distinctive felicities; the year was full of delights; but we
watched for the first snow-fall and the first ice as eagerly as I now
see elderly and sickly people watching for the first symptoms of summer.
As well as I can remember, winter was never too long nor too cold,
whatever may have been true of a single day now and then, when the old
school-house, with its one small stove, and its eight or ten large
windows, ought, in all reason, to have been condemned as uninhabitable.
But the frolics out-of-doors! It makes the blood tingle even now to
think of them. How brief the days were! How cruel the authority that
kept us in the house after dark, while so many of our mates were still
"sliding down hill" (we knew nothing of "coasting" where I was born), or
skating in the meadow! Childhood in the sunny South must be a very tame
affair, New England youngsters being judges.
Trifles of this kind, if any be moved to call them such, are not to be
sneered out of court. Fifteen years form no small part of a human life,
and whatever helps us to grow up happy contributes in no slight degree
to keep us happy to the end. "When I became a man I put away childish
things"? Yes, it may be; but the very things that I boast of outgrowing
have made me what I am. In truth, when it comes to such a question as
this, I confess to putting more faith in the verdict of healthy children
than in the unanimous theories and groans of whole congresses of
valetudinarians. I am not yet so old nor so feeble but I gaze with
something of my youthful enthusiasm upon the first snow. It quickens my
pulse to see the ponds frozen over, although my skates long since went
out of commission; and I still find comfort in a tramp of five or six
miles, with the path none too good, and the mercury half-way between the
freezing point and zero. I like the buffeting of the north wind, and am
not indisposed once in a while to wrestle with the frost for the
possession of my own ears. Well as I love to loiter, I rejoice also in
weather which makes loitering impossible; which puts new springs into a
man's legs, and sets him spinning over the course whether he will or no.
It will be otherwise with me by and by, I suppose, seeing how my
venerable fellow-citizens are affected, but for the present nothing
renews my physical youth more surely than a low temperature; a fact
which I welcome as evidence that I am not yet going down-hill, however
closely I may be nearing the summit.
Winter does us the honor to assume that we are not weaklings. Summer may
coddle and flatter, but cold weather is no sentimentalist. Its kindest
and tenderest mood has something of a stoical severity about it. It lays
its finger without mercy on our most vulnerable and sensitive spots.
But withal, as I have said, if we really possess any reserved strength,
it knows how to bring it out and make the most of it. What a fullness of
vitality do we suddenly develop as we come into close quarters with this
well-intentioned but rough and ready antagonist! In fine, winter is one
of those rare and invaluable friends of whom Emerson speaks, who enable
us to do what we can. To its good offices it is largely attributable, no
doubt, that in the long run the inhabitants of temperate regions have
always been too powerful for their rivals within the tropics. Frigidity
is like poverty, a blessing to those who can bear it.
Winter in New England is not a time for gathering flowers out-of-doors,
though, taking the years together, there is no month of the twelve
wherein one may not pick a few blossoms even in Massachusetts; but if it
effaces one set of pictures, it paints for us another; and a wise and
liberal taste will reckon itself a debtor to both. To say nothing of the
half-dozen mornings on which every tree and bush is arrayed in all the
splendor of diamonds, or the other half-dozen when they bow themselves
under masses of new-fallen snow,--making no account of such exceptional
pageants, which, indeed, are often so destructive as to lose much of
their glory in the eyes of provident spectators,--I, for my own part,
find a beauty in the very commonest of winter landscapes. Let the ground
be altogether white, or altogether brown, or let it be covered so thinly
that the grass-blades show dark above the snow; in any case, white or
brown, or white _and_ brown, to me it is all beautiful; beautiful in
itself, and also by contrast with the greenness before and after; while,
as for the trees, I like them so well in their state of undress that I
question sometimes whether their leafy garments do not conceal more
loveliness than they confer. We are grateful, of course, to pines and
spruces; but what if all trees were evergreen? A questionable
improvement, surely. No; suggestive and solemn as the falling of the
leaves must ever be to us who read our own destiny in the annual
parable, it would be sadder still if there were no such alternation, no
diversity, but only one monotonous year on year of changeless verdure.
Winter beauty, such as I have been hinting at, is not far to seek,
whether by townsman or rustic. Bostonians have only to cross the
Mill-Dam,--a rather too fashionable promenade, it is true, but even here
one may be tolerably certain of elbow-room on a January morning. Often
have I taken this road to health and happiness, waxing enthusiastic as I
have proceeded, admiring the snow-bound scene with a fervor which the
most opulent of summer landscapes seldom excites; and, pushing on with
increasing exhilaration, have brought up at last on Corey Hill, where
the inquisitive north-wind has very likely abbreviated my stay, but has
never yet spoiled my rapture at the wonderful white world underneath.
Economy has its pleasures, it is said, for all healthily constituted
minds. We like, all of us, to make much out of little; to do a notable
piece of work with ordinary tools; to treat a meagre and commonplace
theme in such a manner that whoever begins to read has no alternative
but to finish; to tempt an epicure with the daintiest of repasts out of
the simplest and fewest of every-day materials; to paint a picture
which has nothing in it, but compels the eye; in a word, to demonstrate
to others, and not less to ourselves, that the secret of success lies in
the man and not in the stuff. It is good, once in a while, to take
advantage of a disadvantage to show what we can do.
On the same principle we are glad to find ourselves, if only not too
often, in unpropitious circumstances. Otherwise how should we ever make
proof of our philosophy? It heightens my confidence in the goodness at
the heart of things to see how, as if by instinct, men of sound natures
inevitably right the scale in seasons of loss and scarcity. If half the
fortune disappears, the other half straightway doubles in value. Faith
easily puts aside calculation, and proves, off-hand, that a part is
equal to the whole.
Thus it is with me as a lover of out-door life, and especially as a
field student of ornithology. At no time of the year does the fellowship
of the birds afford me keener enjoyment than in the dead of winter. In
June one may see them everywhere, and hear them at all hours; a few more
or a few less are nothing to make account of; but in January the sight
of a single brown creeper is sufficient to brighten the day, and the
twittering of half a dozen goldfinches is like the music of angels.