because he disliked to be alone, so do I in my jaunts avoid the highway
whenever it is possible, even in midwinter. What so lonesome as the
presence of people with whom we must not speak, or, worse yet, with whom
we must speak, but only about the weather and like exciting topics! As I
have intimated, however, it is usually the public street or nothing with
me during the cold season. All the more grateful am I, therefore, to
those familiar winter birds, some of whom are sure to bid me good
morning out of the hedges and shade-trees as I go past. Not unlikely a
shrike sits motionless and dumb upon a telegraph wire, or in contrary
mood whistles and chirrups industriously from some tree-top. _He_ is no
angel, that is plain enough; but none the less I am glad to meet him. If
he fails of being lovable, he is at least a study. It is wonderful how
abruptly his whim changes; how disconnected his behavior seems; how
quickly and unexpectedly he can pass from the most perfect quiescence
into a fit of most intense activity. I came upon such a fellow the other
day in crossing the Common, who, just as I espied him, swooped upon a
bunch of sparrows in an elm. He missed his aim, and in half a minute
made a second attempt upon a similar group in another tree. This time he
singled out one of the flock, and took chase after it; but the terrified
creature ducked and turned, and finally got away, whereupon the shrike
betook himself to a perch, and fell to making all manner of
noises,--squeaks, whistles, twitters, and what not,--hopping about
nervously meanwhile. The passers-by all stopped to look at the show
(perhaps because they saw me staring upward), till finally a laborer
yielded to the school-boy instinct and let fly a stone. The scamp was
not greatly frightened by this demonstration, and merely flew to the tip
of one of the tall cotton-woods, where he immediately resumed his vocal
practice.
It ought to be helpful to a man's independence of spirit to fall in
once in a while with such a self-reliant and nonchalant brother. For
one, I wish I were better able to profit by his example. He seems made
for hard times and short rations. Doubtless it is a delusion of the
fancy, but he and winter are so connected in my thought that I can
hardly conceive of him as knowing what summer means, or as caring to
know.
To a person of my tastes it is one of winter's capital recommendations
that it brings its own birds with it, thus affording sundry
ornithological pleasures which otherwise one would be compelled to go
without. The tree-sparrows, for instance, are very good cold-weather
acquaintances of mine. There is nothing peculiarly taking about their
dress or demeanor; but they are steady-going, good-humored, diligent
people, whose presence you may always depend upon. I lately witnessed a
very pretty trick of theirs. It was in the marsh just over the fence
from Beacon Street, where a company of the birds, a dozen perhaps, were
breakfasting off the seeds of evening primrose. Less skillful acrobats
than their neighbors and frequent traveling companions, the red-poll
linnets, it is not easy for them to feed while hanging upon the pods.
So, taking the weeds one by one, they alighted at the very tip, and then
with various twitchings and stampings shook the stalk as violently as
possible, after which they dropped quickly upon the snow to gather up
the results of their labors. As I say, it was an extremely pretty
performance, and by itself would have rewarded me for my morning tramp,
putting me in mind, as it did, of happy hours long since past, when I
climbed into the tops of nut-trees on business of the same sort. One of
the principal uses of friendship, human or other, is this of keeping the
heart young.
I hope I am not lacking in a wholesome disrespect for sentimentality and
affectation; for artificial ecstasies over sunsets and landscapes, birds
and flowers; the fashionable cant of nature-worship, which is enough
almost to seal a true worshiper's lips under a vow of everlasting
silence. But such repugnances belong to the library and the parlor, and
are left behind when a man goes abroad, either by himself or in any
other really good company. For my own part the first lisp of a
chickadee out of a wayside thicket disperses with a breath all such
unhappy and unhallowed recollections. Here is a voice sincere, and the
response is instantaneous and irresistible.
It would be a breach of good manners, an inexcusable ingratitude, to
write never so briefly of the New England winter without noting this,
the most engaging and characteristic enlivener of our winter woods; who
revels in snow and ice, and is never lacking in abundant measures of
faith and cheerfulness, enough not only for himself, but for any chance
wayfarer of our own kind. He is every whit as independent as the shrike,
but in how opposite a manner!--with a self-reliance that is never
self-sufficiency, and bravery that offers no suspicion of bravado. Happy
in himself, he is at the same time of a most companionable spirit.
Perfect little philosopher! What a paradise New England would be if all
her inhabitants were like him!
In such a winter climate as ours it is emphatically true that we "know
not what shall be on the morrow." The season is not straitened in its
resources, and caters to all tastes in a way which some may look upon
as fickleness, but which I prefer to regard as catholicity. Its days are
of many types, and it spreads them out before us like a patient
shopkeeper,--as if it recognized in the Yankee a customer hard to suit.
I do not mean to affirm that the weather and I are never at odds; but
all in all, in the long run and theoretically, I approve its methods.
What a humdrum round life would be if nothing ever happened but the
expected! I wonder if there are beings anywhere who have forgotten how
it feels to be surprised. The children of this world, at all events,
were not intended for any such condition of fixity. When there is no
longer anything new _under_ the sun, it will be time to get above it.
Even in so simple and regular a proceeding as a morning walk, one wishes
always to see something new, or failing of that, something old in a new
light; an easy enough task, if one has eyes. For as we cannot drink
twice of the same river, so we cannot twice take the same ramble. I went
over the same course yesterday and to-day; but yesterday's landscape and
sky were different from to-day's. I saw different birds, and had
different thoughts; and after all, the principal part of a walk is what
goes on in the mind. Still, the activities of the intellect are greatly
under the influence of external surroundings, a fact which makes largely
in favor of a varied year like that we have been praising. The
experience of it tends to widen and diversify the thinking of men. In a
smaller degree it answers the same end as travel. For aught I know, it
may possibly have its little share in the onerous task of liberalizing
systems of theology. Who shall say that our New England climate, with
its frequent and extreme contrasts,--what I have called its habit of
catholicity,--may not have had more or less to do with that diffusion of
free thought which has made the home of the Pilgrims the birthplace of
heresies without number? The suggestion is fanciful, perhaps. Let it
pass. Such profundities do not come within my province. Only I must
believe that, even in the matter of weather, it is good for us to be
educated out of bigotry into a large-minded toleration. Hence it is, in
part, that I give my suffrage for our Massachusetts winter, which not
only widens the scope of the year, but contains within itself a variety
wellnigh endless.
I have kept my subject out-of-doors. It is well always to have at least
one point of originality. Let it be mine, in the present instance, that
I have said nothing about the pleasures of the fireside, about long
evenings and drawn curtains. If I were in winter's place, I should not
greatly care to hear people tell how comfortable they could make
themselves by jealously shutting me out. Their speech might be eloquent,
and their language eulogistic; but somehow I should not feel that they
were praising _me_.
A MOUNTAIN-SIDE RAMBLE.
I will go lose myself.--SHAKESPEARE.
There are two sayings of Scripture which to my mind seem peculiarly
appropriate for pleasant Sundays,--"Behold the fowls of the air," and
"Consider the lilies." The first is a morning text, as anybody may see,
while the second is more conveniently practiced upon later in the day,
when the dew is off the grass. With certain of the more esoteric
doctrines of the Bible (the duty of turning the other cheek, for
example, or of selling all that one has and giving to the poor) we may
sometimes be troubled what to do,--unless, like the world in general, we
turn them over to Count Tolstoï and his followers; but such precepts as
I have quoted nobody is likely ever to quarrel with, least of all any
"natural man." For myself, I find them always a comfort, no matter what
my mood or condition, while their observance becomes doubly agreeable
when I am away from home; the thought of beholding a strange species of
fowl, or of considering a new sort of lily, proving even more attractive
than the prospect of listening to a new minister, or, what is somewhat
less probable, of hearing a new sermon.
Thus it was with me, not long ago, when I found myself suddenly left
alone at a small hotel in the Franconia Valley. The day was lowery, as
days in the mountains are apt to be; but when duty goes along with
inclination, a possible sprinkling is no very serious hindrance.
Besides, a fortnight of "catching weather" had brought me into a state
of something like philosophical indifference. I must be reckoned either
with the just or with the unjust,--so I had come to reason,--and of
course must expect now and then to be rained on. Accordingly, after
dinner I tucked my faithful umbrella under my arm, and started up the
Notch road.
I had in view a quiet, meditative ramble, in harmony with the spirit of
the day, and could think of nothing more to the purpose than a visit to
a pair of deserted farms, out in the woods on the mountain-side. The
lonesome fields and the crumbling houses would touch my imagination, and
perhaps chasten my spirit. Thither would I go, and "consider the
lilies." I am never much of a literalist,--except when a strict
construction favors the argument,--and in the present instance it did
not strike me as at all essential that I should find any specimens of
the genus _Lilium_. One of the humbler representatives of the great and
noble family of the _Liliaceæ_--the pretty clintonia, now a little out
of season, or even the Indian cucumber-root--would come fairly within
the spirit of the text; while, if worst came to worst, there would
certainly be no scarcity of grass, itself nothing but a kind of
degenerate lily, if some recent theories may be trusted.
I followed the highway for a mile or two, and then took a wood-road (a
"cart-path" I should call it, if I dared to speak in my own tongue
wherein I was born) running into the forest on the left. This brought me
before long to a "pair of bars," over which I clambered into a grassy
field, the first of the two ancient clearings I had come out to see. The
scanty acres must have been wrested from the encompassing forest at no
small cost of patience and hard labor; and after all, they had proved
not to pay for their tillage. A waste of energy, as things now looked;
but who is to judge of such matters? It is not given to every man to see
the work of his hands established. A good many of us, I suspect, might
be thankful to know that anything we have ever done would be found
worthy of mention fifty years hence, though the mention were only by way
of pointing a moral.
The old barn was long ago blown down, and as I mounted the fence a
woodchuck went scampering out of sight among the timbers. The place was
not entirely uninhabited, as it seemed, in spite of appearances: and as
I turned toward the house, the door of which stood uninvitingly open,
there sat a second woodchuck in the doorway, facing me, intent and
motionless, full of wonderment, no doubt, at the unspeakable
impertinence of such an intrusion. I was glad to see _him_, at any rate,
and made haste to tell him so; greeting him in the rather unceremonious
language wherewith the now famous titmouse is said to have addressed
our foremost American gentleman and philosopher:--
"Good day, good sir!
Fine afternoon, old passenger!
Happy to meet you in these places."
But the churlish fellow had no notion of doing the honors, and by the
time I had advanced two or three paces he whisked about and vanished
inside the door. "Well done!" I thought. "Great is evolution. Woodchucks
used to be cave-dwellers, but they are getting to live above ground,
like the rest of us. So does history repeat itself. Who knows how soon
they may be putting up cottages on their own account?" Perhaps I gave
the creature more credit than really belonged to him. I followed him
into the house, but he was nowhere to be seen, and it is not unlikely
that he lived in a cave, after all. Nearly half the flooring had rotted
away, and there was nothing to hinder his getting into the cellar. He
may have taken the old farmhouse as a convenient portico for his burrow,
a sort of storm-porch, as it were. In his eyes this may be the final end
and aim, the teleological purpose, of all such board-and-shingle
edifices. Mr. Ruskin seems to hold that a house falls short of its
highest usefulness until it has become a ruin; and who knows but
woodchucks may be of the same opinion?
This particular house was in two parts, one of them considerably more
ancient than the other. This older portion it was, of which the floor
had so badly (or so well) fallen into decay; while the ceiling, as if in
a spirit of emulation, had settled till it described almost a semicircle
of convexity. To look at it, one felt as if the law of gravity were
actually being imposed upon.
It must have marked an epoch in the history of the household, this
doubling of its quarters. Things were looking well with the man. His
crops were good, his family increasing; his wife had begun to find the
house uncomfortably small; they could afford to enlarge it. Hence this
addition, this "new part," as no doubt they were in the habit of calling
it, with pardonable satisfaction. It was more substantially built than
the original dwelling, and possessed, what I dare say its mistress had
set her heart upon, one plastered room. The "new part"! How ironical
the words sounded, as I repeated them to myself! If things would only
stay new, or if it were men's houses only that grew old!
The people who lived here had little occasion to hang their walls with
pictures. When they wanted something to look at, they had but to go to
the window and gaze upon the upper slopes of Mount Lafayette and Mount
Cannon, rising in beauty beyond the intervening forest. But every New
England woman must have a bit of flower garden, no matter what her
surroundings; and even here I was glad to notice, just in front of the
door, a clump of cinnamon rose-bushes, all uncared for, of course, but
flourishing as in a kind of immortal youth (this old-fashioned rose must
be one of Time's favorites), and just now bright with blossoms. For
sentiment's sake I plucked one, thinking of the hands that did the same
years ago, and ere this, in all likelihood, were under the sod;
thinking, too, of other hands, long, long vanished, and of a white
rose-bush that used to stand beside another door.
On both sides of the house were apple-trees, a few of them still in
good trim, but the greater number decrepit after years of buffeting by
mountain storms. A phoebe sat quietly on the ridge-pole, and a chipper
was singing from the orchard. What knew they of time, or of time's
mutations? The house might grow old,--the house and the trees; but if
the same misfortune ever befalls phoebes and sparrows, we are,
fortunately, none the wiser. To human eyes they are always young and
fresh, like the buttercups that bespangled the grass before me, or like
the sun that shone brightly upon the tranquil scene.
Turning away from the house and the grassy field about it, I got over a
stone wall into a pasture fast growing up to wood: spruces, white pines,
red pines, paper birches, and larches, with a profusion of meadow-sweet
sprinkled everywhere among them. A nervous flicker started at my
approach, stopped for an instant to reconnoitre, and then made off in
haste. A hermit thrush was singing, and the bird that is called the
"preacher"--who takes no summer vacation, but holds forth in "God's
first temple" for the seven days of every week--was delivering his
homily with all earnestness. He _must_ preach, it seemed, whether men
would hear or forbear. He had already announced his text, but I could
not certainly make out what it was. "Here we have no continuing city,"
perhaps; or it might have been, "Vanity of vanities, saith the Preacher,
all is vanity." It should have been one of these, or so I thought; but,
as all church-goers must have observed, the connection between text and
sermon is sometimes more or less recondite, and once in a while, like
the doctrine of the sermon itself, requires to be taken on faith. In the
present instance, indeed, as no doubt in many others, the pew was quite
as likely to be at fault as the pulpit. The red-eye's eloquence was
never very persuasive to my ear. Its short sentences, its tiresome
upward inflections, its everlasting repetitiousness, and its sharp,
querulous tone long since became to me an old story; and I have always
thought that whoever dubbed this vireo the "preacher" could have had no
very exalted opinion of the clergy.
I stayed not to listen, therefore, but kept on through the wood, while a
purple finch pitched a tune on one side of the path (he appeared to
feel no compunctions about interrupting the red-eye's exhortation), and
a squirrel sprung his rattle on the other; and presently I came to the
second farm: a large clearing, bounded by the forest on all hands, but
after these many years still yielding a very respectable hay-crop (so
does the good that men do live after them), and with a house and barn
still standing at the lower end. I reached the house just in time to
escape a shower, making an enforced obeisance as I entered. It was but
the ghost of a dwelling,--the door off its hinges, and no glass in the
four small windows; but it had a substantial quality about it,
notwithstanding, as a not very tall man was liable at any moment to be
reminded should he carry himself a trifle too proudly under the big
unhewn timbers. It is better to stoop than to bump your head, they
seemed to be saying. Hither came no tourists but the rabbits; and they,
it was plain, were not so much tourists as permanent residents. As I
looked at the blank walls and door-posts, after a fortnight's experience
among the mountains, I felt grateful at the sight of boards on which
Brown of Boston and Smith of Smithfield had not yet inscribed their
illustrious names. I had left the city in search of rest and seclusion.
For the time, in the presence of Nature herself, I would gladly have
forgotten the very existence of my all-too-famous countrymen; and I
rejoiced accordingly to have found one lonely spot to which their
restless feet had not yet penetrated. Tall grass grew untrodden quite up
to the door-sill; raspberry vines thrust their arms in at the pane-less
windows; there was neither paint nor plastering; and the tiny cupboard
was so bare that it set my irreverent fancy to quoting Mother Goose in
the midst of my most serious moralizings.
The owner of this farm, like his neighbor, had planted an apple orchard,
and his wife a patch of cinnamon roses; and, not to treat one better
than another, I picked a rose here also. There is no lover of flowers
but likes to have his garden noticed, and the good housewife would have
been pleased, I knew, could she have seen me looking carefully for her
handsomest and sweetest bud.
By this time the shower was over, and a song-sparrow was giving thanks.
I might never have another opportunity to follow up an old forest path,
of which I had heard vague reports as leading from this point to the
railway. "It starts from the upper corner of the farm," my informant had
said. To the upper corner I went, therefore, through the rank, wet
grass. But I found no sign of what I was looking for, and with some
heartfelt but unreportable soliloquizings, to the effect that a
countryman's directions, like dreams, are always to be read backwards, I
started straight down toward the lower corner, saying to myself that I
ought to have had the wit to take that course in the beginning. Sure
enough, the path was there, badly overgrown with bushes and young trees,
but still traceable. A few rods, and I came to the brook. The bridge was
mostly gone, as I had been forewarned it probably would be, but a single
big log answered a foot passenger's requirements. Once across the
bridge, however, I could discover no sign of a trail. But what of that?
The sun was shining; I had only to keep it at my back, and I was sure
to bring up at the railroad. So I set out, and for a while traveled on
bravely. Then I began to bethink myself that I was not going up-hill
quite so fast as it seemed I ought to be doing. Was I really approaching
the railway, after all? Or had I started in a wrong direction (being in
the woods at the time), and was I heading along the mountain-side in
such a course that I might walk all night, and all the while be only
plunging deeper and deeper into the forest? The suggestion was not
pleasurable. If I could only see the mountain! But the thick foliage put
that out of the question.
After a short debate with myself I concluded to be prudent, and make my
way back to the brook while I still had the sun to guide me; for I now
called to mind the showeriness of the day, and the strong likelihood
that the sky might at any moment be overcast. Even as things were, there
was no assurance that I might not strike the brook at some distance from
the bridge, and so at some distance from the trail, with no means of
determining whether it was above or below me. I began my retreat, and
pretty soon, luckily or unluckily,--I am not yet certain which,--in
some unaccountable manner my feet found themselves again in the path.
Now, then, I would carry out my original intention, and I turned
straight about. For a while the path held clear. Then it was blocked by
a big tree that had toppled into it lengthwise. I must go round the
obstruction, and pick up the trail at the other end. But the trail would
not be picked up. It had faded out or run into the ground. Finally, when
I was just on the point of owning myself beaten, my eyes all at once
fell upon it, running along before me. A second experience of the same
kind set me thinking how long it would take to go a mile or two at this
rate (it was already half past four o'clock), even if I did not in the
end lose my way altogether. But I kept on till I was stopped, not by a
single windfall, but by a tangle of half a dozen. This time I hunted for
a continuation of the path on the further side till I was out of
patience, and then determined to be done with the foolish business, and
go back by the way I had come. A very sensible resolve, but when I came
to put it into execution it turned out to be too late. The path was
lost entirely. I must fall back upon the sun; and if the truth is to be
told, I commenced feeling slightly uncomfortable. The bushes were wet;
my clothing was drenched; I had neither compass nor matches; it
certainly would be anything but agreeable to spend the night in the
forest.