such a pass. If the sun would only shine for half an hour longer I could
reach the brook (I could probably reach it without the sun), and even if
I missed the bridge I could follow the stream out of the woods before
dark. I was not frightened, but I was beginning to tremble lest I should
be. The loss of the path was in itself little to worry about. But what
if I should lose my wits also, as many a man had done in circumstances
no worse, and with consequences most disastrous? Unpleasant stories came
into my head, and I remember repeating to myself more than once (candor
is better than felicity of phrase), "Be careful, now; don't get
rattled!" Then, having thus pulled myself together, as an Englishman
would say, I faced the sun and began "stepping westward," though with no
thought of Wordsworth's poem. A spectator might have suspected that if I
was not "rattled," I was at least not far from it. "Now who is this," he
might have queried,
"whose sore task
Does not divide the Sunday from the week?"
Meanwhile I was, of course, on the lookout for any signs of the missing
path, and after a time I descried in the distance, on one side, what
looked like a patch of bushes growing in the midst of the forest. I made
for it, and, as I expected, found myself once more on the trail. This
time I held it, reached the bridge, crossed it, and, still keeping up my
pace, was presently out in the sunshine of the old farm, startling a
brood of young partridges on the way. Happy birds! _They_ were never
afraid of passing a night in the woods. A most absurd notion! But man,
as he is the strongest of all animals, so is he also the weakest and
most defenseless.
This last reflection is an afterthought, I freely acknowledge. At the
moment I was taken up with the peacefulness of the pastoral scene into
which I had so happily emerged, and was in no mood to envy anybody. How
bright and cheerful the ragworts and buttercups looked, and what sweet
and homelike music the robin made, singing from one of the apple-trees!
The cool north wind wafted the spicy odor of the cinnamon roses to my
nostrils; but--alas for the prosaic fact!--the same cool wind struck
through my saturated garments, bidding me move on. The pessimistic
preacher was right when he said, "Truly the light is sweet, and a
pleasant thing it is for the eyes to behold the sun." I wonder whether
he was ever bewildered in a dark wood. From boyhood I have loved the
forest, with its silence, its shadows, and its deep isolation, but for
the present I had had my fill of such mercies.
As I came out upon the highway, it occurred to me what Emerson says of
Thoreau,--that "he could not bear to hear the sound of his own steps,
and therefore never willingly walked in the road." My own taste, I was
obliged to admit, was somewhat less fastidious. Indeed, my boots,
soaked through and through as they were, made very grateful music
striking along the gravel. And after supper, while walking back and
forth upon the piazza, in all the luxury of slippers and a winter
overcoat, I turned more than once from the glories of the sunset to gaze
upon the black slope of Lafayette, thinking within myself how much less
comfortable I should be up yonder in the depths of the forest, so dark
and wet, without company, without fire, without overcoat, and without
supper. After all, mere animal comfort is not to be despised. Let us be
thankful, I said, for the good things of life, of no matter what grade;
yes, though they be only a change of clothing and a summer hotel.
It was laughable how my quiet ramble had turned out. My friend, the
red-eyed vireo, may or may not have stuck to his text; but if he had
seen me in the midst of my retreat, dashing through the bushes and
clambering over the fallen trees, he certainly never would have guessed
mine. "Consider the lilies," indeed! He was more likely to think of a
familiar Old Testament scripture: "The wicked flee when no man
pursueth."
A PITCH-PINE MEDITATION.
So waved the pine-tree through my thought.
EMERSON.
In outward, every-day affairs, in what we foolishly call real life, man
is a stickler for regularity, a devout believer in the maxim, "Order is
heaven's first law." He sets his house at right angles with the street;
lays out his grounds in the straightest of straight lines, or in the
most undeviating of curves; selects his shade-trees for their trim,
geometrical habit; and, all in all, carries himself as if precision and
conformity were the height of virtue. Yet this same man, when he comes
to deal with pictorial representations, makes up his judgment according
to quite another standard; finding nothing picturesque in tidy gardens
and shaven lawns, discarding without hesitation every well-rounded,
symmetrical tree, delighting in disorder and disproportion, loving a
ruin better than the best appointed palace, and a tumble-down wall
better than the costliest and stanchest of new-laid masonry. It is hard
to know what to think of an inconsistency like this. Why should taste
and principle be thus opposed to each other, as if the same man were
half Philistine, half Bohemian? Can this strong æsthetic preference for
imperfection be based upon some permanent, universal law, or is it only
a passing whim, the fashion of an hour?
Whatever we may say of such a problem,--and where one knows nothing, it
is perhaps wisest to say nothing,--we may surely count it an occasion
for thankfulness that a thing so common as imperfection should have at
least its favorable side. Music would soon become tame, if not
intolerable, without here and there a discord; and who knows how stupid
life itself might prove without some slight admixture of evil? From my
study-windows I can see sundry of the newest and most commodious
mansions in town; but I more often look, not at them, but at a certain
dilapidated old house, blackening for want of paint, and fast falling
into decay, but with one big elm before the door. I have no hankerings
to live in it; as a dwelling-place, I should no doubt prefer one of the
more modern establishments; but for an object to look at, give me the
shanty.
Human nature is nothing if not paradoxical. In its eyes everything is
both good and bad; and for my own part, I sometimes wonder whether this
may not be the sum of all wisdom,--to find everything good in its place,
and everything bad out of its place.
Thoughts like these suggest themselves as I look at the pitch-pine,
which, to speak only of such trees as grow within the range of my own
observation, is the one irregular member of the family of cone-bearers.
The white or Weymouth pine, the hemlock, the cedars, the spruces, the
fir, and the larch, these are all, in different ways, of a decidedly
symmetrical turn. Each of them has its own definite plan, and builds
itself up in fastidious conformity therewith, except as untoward outward
conditions may now and then force an individual into some abnormal
peculiarity. And all of them, it need not be said, have the defect of
this quality. They are not without charm, not even the black spruce,
while the Weymouth pine and the hemlock are often of surpassing
magnificence and beauty; but a punctilious adherence to rule must of
necessity be attended with a corresponding absence of freedom and
variety. The pitch-pine, on the other hand, if it works upon any set
scheme, as no doubt it does, has the grace to keep it out of sight. Its
gift is genius rather than talent. It has an air, as genius always has,
of achieving its results without effort or premeditation. Its method is
that of spontaneity; its style, that of the picturesque-homely, so dear
to the artistic temperament. Its whole make-up is consistent with this
germinal or controlling idea. Angular in outline, rough and ragged in
its bole, with its needles stiff and its cones hard and sharp, it makes
no attempt at gracefulness, yet by virtue of its very waywardness it
becomes, as if in spite of itself, more attractive than any of its
relatives.
The Puritans of New England are mostly dead; the last of their spiritual
descendants, we may fear, will soon be dead likewise; but as long as
_Pinus rigida_ covers the sandy knolls of Massachusetts, the sturdy,
uncompromising, independent, economical, indefatigable, all-enduring
spirit of Puritanism will be worthily represented in this its sometime
thriving-place.
For the pitch-pine's noblest qualities are, after all, not artistic, but
moral. Such unalterable contentment, such hardiness and persistency, are
enough to put the stoutest of us to shame. Once give it root, and no
sterility of soil can discourage it. Everything else may succumb, but
it--it and the gray birch--will make shift to live. Like the resin that
exudes from it, having once taken hold, it has no thought of letting go.
It is never "planted by the rivers of water," but all the same its leaf
does not wither. No summer so hot and dry, no winter so cold and wet,
but it keeps its perennial green. What cannot be done in one year may,
perchance, be accomplished in three or four. It spends several seasons
in ripening its fruit. Think of an apple-tree thus patient!
The pitch-pine is beautiful to look at, and "profitable for doctrine,
for reproof, for correction, for instruction in righteousness," but it
would be a shame not to add that it is also most excellent to smell of.
If I am to judge, scarcely any odor wears better than this of growing
turpentine. There is something unmistakably clean and wholesome about
it. The very first whiff savors of salubrity. "The belief in the good
effects of pine forests in cases of phthisis is quite unanimous" (so I
read the other day in a scientific journal), "and the clinical evidence
in favor of their beneficial influence is unquestioned." Who can tell
whether our New England climate, with all its consumptive provocations,
might not be found absolutely unendurable but for the amelioration
furnished by this generously diffused terebinthine prophylactic?
When all is said, however, nothing else about the pitch-pine ever
affects me so deeply as its behavior after man has done his worst upon
it. It would appear to have some vague sense of immortality, some
gropings after a resurrection. The tree was felled in the autumn, and
the trunk cut up ignominiously into cord-wood; but in the spring the
prostrate logs begin to put forth scattered tufts of bright green
leaves,--life still working under the ribs of death,--while the stump,
whether "through the scent of water" I cannot say, is perhaps sending up
fresh shoots,--a piece of _post-mortem_ hopefulness the like of which no
white pine, for all its seemingly greater vitality, was ever known to
exhibit. But leaves and shoots alike come to nothing. If a pitch-pine
die, it shall not live again. The wood's blind impulses, if not false in
themselves, were at least falsely interpreted. Alas! alas! who has not
found it so? What seemed like the prophetic stirrings of a new life were
only the last flickerings of a lamp that was going out.
ESOTERIC PERIPATETICISM.
I walk about; not to and from.--CHARLES LAMB.
Taking a walk is something different from traveling afoot. The latter I
may do when on my way to the cars or the shop; but my neighbor, seeing
me at such times, never says to himself, "Mr. ---- is taking a walk." He
knows I cannot be doing that, so long as I am walking for the sake of
getting somewhere. Even the common people understand that utilitarianism
has nothing to do with the true peripatetic philosophy.
The disciples of this philosophy, the noble fraternity of saunterers,
among whom I modestly enroll myself, are not greatly concerned with any
kind of merely physical activity. They believe that everything has both
a lower and a higher use; and that in the order of evolution the lower
precedes the higher. Time was when walking--going erect on one's hind
limbs--was a rare accomplishment, sufficient of itself to confer
distinction. Little by little this accomplishment became general, and
for this long time now it has been universal; yet even to the present
day it is not quite natural; else why does every human infant still
creep on all-fours till it is taught otherwise? But of all who practise
the art, only here and there a single individual has divined its loftier
use and significance. The rest are still in the materialistic
stage--pedestrians simply. In their view walking is only a convenience,
or perhaps I should say an inconvenience; a cheap device for getting
from one place to another. They resort to it for business, or, it may
be, for health. Of strolling as a means of happiness they have scarcely
so much as heard. They belong to the great and fashionable sect of the
wise and prudent; and from all such the true peripatetic philosophy is
forever hidden. We who are in the secret would gladly publish it if we
could; but by its very nature the doctrine is esoteric.
Whoso would be initiated into its mysteries must first of all learn how
not to be in a hurry. Life is short, it is true, and time is precious;
but a day is worth nothing of itself. It is like money,--good only for
what it will buy. One must not play the miser, even with time. "There is
that withholdeth more than is meet, but it tendeth to poverty." Who does
not know men so penurious of minutes, so everlastingly preoccupied, that
they seldom spend an hour to any good purpose,--confirming the paradox
of Jesus, "He that loveth his life shall lose it"? And between a certain
two sisters, was not the verdict given in favor of the one who (if we
take the other's word for it) was little better than an idler? The
saunterer has laid to heart this lesson. On principle, he devotes a part
of his time to what his virtuous townsmen call doing nothing. "What
profit hath a man of all his labor?" A pertinent inquiry; but I am not
aware that the author of it ever suggested any similar doubt as to the
net results of well-directed idleness. A laborious, painstaking spirit
is commendable in its place; it would go hard with the world to get on
without it; but the fact remains that some of the very best things of
this life--things unseen and (therefore) eternal--are never to be come
at industriously. It is useless to chase them. We can only put
ourselves in their way, and be still. The secret is as old as mysticism
itself: if the vision tarry, wait for it.
Walking, then, as adepts use the word, is not so much a physical as a
spiritual exercise. And if any be disposed to look askance at this form
of expression, as if there were possibly a suggestion of profanity about
it, they will please bethink themselves of an ancient sacred book (to
which, according to some friendly critics, I am strangely fond of
referring), wherein is narrated the history of a man who went out into
the fields at eventide to meditate. _He_ could never have misunderstood
our speech, nor dreamed of its needing justification. And your true
saunterers of the present day, no matter what their creed, are of
Isaac's kin,--devout and imaginative souls, who may now and then be
forced to cry with the Psalmist, "O that I had wings!" but who, in all
ordinary circumstances, are able to _walk_ away and be at rest. Like the
patriarch, they have accustomed their feet to serve them as ministers of
grace.
It must be a bad day indeed when, on retreating to the woods or the
fields, we find it impossible to leave the wearisome world--yes, and our
more wearisome selves, also--behind us. As a rule, this result is not
the better attained by quickening the gait. We may allow for exceptions,
of course, cases in which a counter-excitement may peradventure be of
use; but most often it is better to seek quietness of heart at a quiet
pace; to steal away from our persecutors, rather than to invite pursuit
by too evident a purpose of escape. The lazy motion is of itself a kind
of spiritual sedative. As we proceed, gazing idly at the sky, or with
our attention caught by some wayside flower or passing bird, the mind
grows placid, and, like smooth water, receives into itself the image of
heaven. What a benediction of repose falls upon us sometimes from an old
tree, as we pass under it! So self-poised it seems; so alive, and yet so
still! It was planted here before we were born. It will be green and
flourishing long after we are dead. In it we may behold a perfect
illustration of the dignity and peace of a life undeviatingly obedient
to law,--the law of its own being; never in haste, never at a loss, but
in every fibre doing, day by day, its appropriate work. Sunshine and
rain, heat and cold, calm and storm,--all minister to its necessities.
It has only to stand in its place and grow; happy in spring-time, with
its buds and leaves; happy in autumn, with its fruit; happy, too, in
winter,--repining not when forced to wait through months of bareness and
dearth for the touch of returning warmth. Enviable tree! As we
contemplate it, we feel ourselves rebuked, and, at the same time,
comforted. We, also, will be still, and let the life that is in us work
itself out to the appointed end.
The seeing eye is a gift so unusual that whoever accustoms himself to
watch what passes around him in the natural world is sure to be often
entertained by the remarks, complimentary and otherwise, which such an
idiosyncrasy calls forth. Some of his neighbors pity him as a
ne'er-do-well, while others devoutly attribute to him a sort of
superhuman faculty. If only _they_ had such eyes! But, alas! they go
into the woods, and they see nothing. Meanwhile the object of their envy
knows well enough that his own vision is but rudimentary. He catches a
glimpse now and then,--nothing more. Like his neighbors, he, too, prays
for sight. Sooner or later, however, he discovers that it is a blessing
to be able on occasion to leave one's scientific senses at home. For
here, again, surprising as it may seem, it is necessary to be on our
guard against a superserviceable activity. There are times when we go
out-of-doors, not after information, but in quest of a mood. Then we
must not be over-observant. Nature is coy; she appreciates the
difference between an inquisitor and a lover. The curious have their
reward, no doubt, but her best gifts are reserved for suitors of a more
sympathetic turn. And unless it be here and there some creature
altogether devoid of poetic sensibility, some "fingering slave,"--
"One who would peep and botanize
Upon his mother's grave,"--
unless it be such a person as this, too poor to be conscious of his own
poverty, there can be no enthusiastic student of natural history but has
found out for himself the truth and importance of the paradoxical
caution now suggested. One may become so zealous a botanist as almost to
cease to be a man. The shifting panorama of the heavens and the earth no
longer appeals to him. He is now a specialist, and go where he will, he
sees nothing but specimens. Or he may give himself up to ornithology,
till eye and ear grow so abnormally sensitive that not a bird can move
or twitter but he is instantly aware of it. He _must_ attend, whether he
will or no. So long as this servitude lasts, it is idle to go afield in
pursuit of joys "high and aloof," such as formerly awaited him in
lonesome places. Better betake himself to city streets or a darkened
room. For myself, I thankfully bear testimony that when I have been thus
under the tyranny of my own senses I have found no more certain means of
temporary deliverance than to walk in the early evening. Indeed, I have
been ready, many a time, to exclaim with Wordsworth,--
"Hail, Twilight, sovereign of one peaceful hour!"
Then the eye has no temptation to busy itself with petty details; "day's
mutable distinctions" are removed from sight, and the mind is left
undistracted to rise, if it can, into communion with the spirit of the
scene.
After all, it is next to nothing we are able to tell of the pleasures of
such fellowship. We cannot define them to ourselves,--though they are
"felt in the blood and felt along the heart,"--much less to another.
Least of all need we attempt to explain them to any Philistine; the
walls of whose house are likely enough hung with "chromos," but who
stares at you for a fool or a sentimentalist (which comes, perhaps, to
nearly the same thing), when he catches you standing still before one of
Nature's pictures. How shall one blest with a feeling for the woods put
into language the delight he experiences in sauntering along their shady
aisles? He enjoys the stillness, the sense of seclusion, the flicker of
sunlight and shadow, the rustle of leaves, the insect's hum, the passing
of the chance butterfly, the chirp of the bird, or its full-voiced song,
the tracery of lichens on rock and tree, the tuft of ferns, the carpet
of moss, the brightness of blossom and fruit,--all the numberless sights
and sounds of the forest; but it is not any of these, nor all of them
together, that make the glory of the place. It is the wood--and this is
something more than the sum of all its parts--which lays hold upon him,
taking him, as it were, out of the world and out of himself. Let
practical people sneer, and the industrious frown; we who retain our
relish for these natural and innocent felicities may well enough be
indifferent to neighborly comments. Whatever worldlings may think, the
hour is not wasted that brings with it tranquillity of mind and an
uplifting of the heart. We seem to be going nowhere and looking for
nothing? Yes; but one may be glad to visit the Land of Beulah, though he
have no special errand thither. Who ever saw a child but was fond of an
idle hour in the woods? And for my part, while, I have with me the
children (and the dogs and the poets) I count myself in excellent
company; for the time, at least, I can do without what is vulgarly
esteemed good society. A man to whom a holiday affords no pleasure is
already as good as dead; nothing will save him but to be born again. We
have heard of convicts so wonted to prison cells that they could feel
at home nowhere else; and we have known men of business whose feet, when
they stopped going the regular humdrum round, knew no other course to
take but to steer straight for the grave. It behooves us to heed the
warning of such examples, and now and then to be idle betimes, lest the
capacity for idleness be extirpated by disuse.
The practice of sauntering may especially be recommended as a corrective
of the modern vice of continual reading. For too many of us it has come
to be well-nigh impossible to sit down by ourselves without turning
round instinctively in search of a book or a newspaper. The habit
indicates a vacancy of mind, a morbid intellectual restlessness, and may
not inaptly be compared with that incessant delirious activity which
those who are familiar with death-bed scenes know so well as a symptom
of approaching dissolution. Possibly the two cases are not in all
respects analogous. Books are an inestimable boon; let me never be
without the best of them, both old and new. Still, one would fain have
an occasional thought of one's own, even though, as the common saying
is, it be nothing to speak of. Meditation is an old-fashioned exercise;
the very word is coming to have an almost archaic sound; but neither the
word nor the thing will altogether pass into forgetfulness so long as
the race of saunterers--the spiritual descendants of Isaac--continue to
inherit the earth.
There is little danger that the lives of any of us will be too solitary
or lived at too leisurely a rate. The world grows busier and busier.
Those whose passion for Nature is strongest and most deep-seated are
driven to withhold from her all but the odds and ends of the day. We
rebel sometimes; the yoke grows unendurable; come what may, we will be
quit of it; but the existing order of things proves too strong for us,
and anon we settle back into the old bondage. And perhaps it is better
so. Even the most simple and natural delights are best appreciated when
rarely and briefly enjoyed. So I persuade myself that, all in all, it is
good for me to have only one or two hours a day for the woods. Human
nature is weak; who knows but I might grow lazy, were I my own master?
At least, "the fine point of seldom pleasure" would be blunted.
The ideal plan would include two walks: one in the morning for
observation, with every sense alert; the other toward night, for a mood
of "wise passiveness," wherein Nature should be left free to have her
own way with the heart and the imagination. Then the laureate's prayer
might be fulfilled:--
"Let knowledge grow from more to more,
But more of reverence in us dwell;
That mind and soul, according well,
May make one music, as before."