CHAPTER II. OF GOOD AND EVIL ODOURS
CHAPTER III. FOLLOW YOUR NOSE!
CHAPTER IV. THE GREEN PEOPLE
CHAPTER V. PLACES OF RETIREMENT
CHAPTER VI. NO TRESPASS
CHAPTER VII. LOOK AT THE WORLD!
CHAPTER VIII. A GOOD APPLE
CHAPTER IX. I GO TO THE CITY
CHAPTER X. THE OLD STONE MASON
CHAPTER XI. AN AUCTION OF ANTIQUES
CHAPTER XII. A WOMAN OF FORTY-FIVE
CHAPTER XIII. HIS MAJESTY—BILL RICHARDS
CHAPTER XIV. ON LIVING IN THE COUNTRY
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CHAPTER I.
THE WELL-FLAVOURED EARTH
“Sweet as Eden is the air
And Eden-sweet the ray.
No Paradise is lost for them
Who foot by branching root and stem,
And lightly with the woodland share
The change of night and day.”
For these many years, since I have lived here in the country, I have
had it in my mind to write something about the odour and taste of this
well-flavoured earth. The fact is, both the sense of smell and the
sense of taste; have been shabbily treated in the amiable rivalry of
the senses. Sight and hearing have been the swift and nimble brothers,
and sight especially, the tricky Jacob of the family, is keen upon the
business of seizing the entire inheritance, while smell, like hairy
Esau, comes late to the blessing, hungry from the hills, and willing to
trade its inheritance for a mess of pottage.
I have always had a kind of errant love for the improvident and
adventurous Esaus of the Earth. I think they smell a wilder fragrance
than I do, and taste sweeter things, and I have thought, therefore, of
beginning a kind of fragrant autobiography, a chronicle of all the good
odours and flavours that ever I have had in my life.
As I grow older, a curious feeling comes often to me in the spring, as
it comes this spring more poignantly than ever before, a sense of the
temporariness of all things, the swiftness of life, the sadness of a
beauty that vanishes so soon, and I long to lay hold upon it as it
passes by all the handles that I can. I would not only see it and hear
it, but I would smell it and taste it and touch it, and all with a new
kind of intensity and eagerness.
Harriet says I get more pleasure out of the smell of my supper than I
get out of the supper itself.
“I never need to ring for you,” says she, “but only open the kitchen
door. In a few minutes I’ll see you straighten up, lift your head,
sniff a little, and come straight for the house.”
“The odour of your suppers, Harriet,” I said, “after a day in the
fields, would lure a man out of purgatory.”
My father before me had a singularly keen nose. I remember well when I
was a boy and drove with him in the wild North Country, often through
miles of unbroken forest, how he would sometimes break a long silence,
lift his head with sudden awareness, and say to me:
“David, I smell open fields.”
In a few minutes we were sure to come to a settler’s cabin, a log barn,
or a clearing. Among the free odours of the forest he had caught, afar
off, the common odours of the work of man.
When we were tramping or surveying in that country, I have seen him
stop suddenly, draw in a long breath, and remark:
“Marshes,” or, “A stream yonder.”
Part of this strange keenness of sense, often noted by those who knew
that sturdy old cavalryman, may have been based, as so many of our
talents are, upon a defect. My father gave all the sweet sounds of the
world, the voices of his sons, the songs of his daughters, to help free
the Southern slaves. He was deaf.
It is well known that when one sense is defective the others fly to the
rescue, and my father’s singular development of the sense of smell may
have been due in part to this defect, though I believe it to have been,
to a far larger degree, a native gift. Me had a downright good nose.
All his life long he enjoyed with more than ordinary keenness the odour
of flowers, and would often pick a sprig of wild rose and carry it
along with him in his hand, sniffing at it from time to time, and he
loved the lilac, as I do after him. To ill odours he was not less
sensitive, and was impatient of rats in the barn, and could smell them,
among other odours, the moment the door was opened. He always had a
peculiar sensitiveness to the presence of animals, as of dogs, cats,
muskrats, cattle, horses, and the like, and would speak of them long
before he had seen them or could know that they were about.
I recall once on a wild Northern lake, when we were working along the
shore in a boat, how he stopped suddenly and exclaimed:
“David, do you hear anything?”—for I, a boy, was ears for him in those
wilderness places.
“No, Father. What is it?”
“Indians.”
And, sure enough, in a short time I heard the barking of their dogs and
we came soon upon their camp, where, I remember, they were drying deer
meat upon a frame of poplar poles over an open fire. He told me that
the smoky smell of the Indians, tanned buckskin, parched wild rice, and
the like, were odours that carried far and could not be mistaken.
My father had a big, hooked nose with long, narrow nostrils, I suppose
that this has really nothing to do with the matter, although I have
come, after these many years, to look with a curious interest upon
people’s noses, since I know what a vehicle of delight they often are.
My own nose is nothing to speak of, good enough as noses go—but I think
I inherited from my father something of the power of enjoyment he had
from that sense, though I can never hope to become the accomplished
smeller he was.
I am moved to begin this chronicle because of my joy this morning
early—a May morning!—just after sunrise, when the shadows lay long and
blue to the west and the dew was still on the grass, and I walked in
the pleasant spaces of my garden. It was so still...so still...that
birds afar off could be heard singing, and once through the crystal air
came the voice of a neighbour calling his cows. But the sounds and the
silences, the fair sights of meadow and hill I soon put aside, for the
lilacs were in bloom and the bush-honeysuckles and the strawberries.
Though no movement of the air was perceptible, the lilacs well knew the
way of the wind, for if I stood to the north of them the odour was less
rich and free than to the south, and I thought I might pose as a
prophet of wind and weather upon the basis of this easy magic, and
predict that the breezes of the day would be from the north—as, indeed,
they later appeared to be.
I went from clump to clump of the lilacs testing and comparing them
with great joy and satisfaction. They vary noticeably in odour; the
white varieties being the most delicate, while those tending to deep
purple are the richest. Some of the newer double varieties seem less
fragrant—and I have tested them now many times—than the old-fashioned
single varieties which are nearer the native stock. Here I fancy our
smooth Jacob has been at work, and in the lucrative process of
selection for the eye alone the cunning horticulturist has cheated us
of our rightful heritage of fragrance. I have a mind some time to
practise the art of burbankry or other kind of wizardy upon the old
lilac stock and select for odour alone, securing ravishing original
varieties—indeed, whole new gamuts of fragrance.
I should devise the most animating names for my creations, such as the
Double Delicious, the Air of Arcady, the Sweet Zephyr, and others even
more inviting, which I should enjoy inventing. Though I think surely I
could make my fortune out of this interesting idea, I present it freely
to a scent-hungry world—here it is, gratis!—for I have my time so fully
occupied during all of this and my next two or three lives that I
cannot attend to it.
I have felt the same defect in the cultivated roses. While the odours
are rich, often of cloying sweetness, or even, as in certain white
roses, having a languor as of death, they never for me equal the
fragrance of the wild sweet rose that grows all about these hills, in
old tangled fence rows, in the lee of meadow boulders, or by some
unfrequented roadside. No other odour I know awakens quite such a
feeling—light like a cloud, suggesting free hills, open country, sunny
air; and none surely has, for me, such an after-call. A whiff of the
wild rose will bring back in all the poignancy of sad happiness a train
of ancient memories old faces, old scenes, old loves—and the wild
thoughts I had when a boy. The first week of the wild-rose blooming,
beginning here about the twenty-fifth of June, is always to me a
memorable time.
I was a long time learning how to take hold of nature, and think now
with some sadness of all the life I lost in former years. The
impression the earth gave me was confused: I was as one only half
awake. A fine morning made me dumbly glad, a cool evening, after the
heat of the day, and the work of it, touched my spirit restfully; but I
could have explained neither the one nor the other. Gradually as I
looked about me I began to ask myself, “Why is it that the sight of
these common hills and fields gives me such exquisite delight? And if
it is beauty, why is it beautiful? And if I am so richly rewarded by
mere glimpses, can I not increase my pleasure with longer looks?”
I tried longer looks both at nature and at the friendly human creatures
all about me. I stopped often in the garden where I was working, or
loitered a moment in the fields, or sat down by the roadside, and
thought intently what it was that so perfectly and wonderfully
surrounded me; and thus I came to have some knowledge of the Great
Secret. It was, after all, a simple matter, as such matters usually are
when we penetrate them, and consisted merely in shutting out all other
impressions, feelings, thoughts, and concentrating the full energy of
the attention upon what it was that I saw or heard at that instant.
At one moment I would let in all the sounds of the earth, at another
all the sights. So we practise the hand at one time, the foot at
another, or learn how to sit or to walk, and so acquire new grace for
the whole body. Should we do less in acquiring grace for the spirit? It
will astonish one who has not tried it how full the world is of sounds
commonly unheard, and of sights commonly unseen, but in their nature,
like the smallest blossoms, of a curious perfection and beauty.
Out of this practice grew presently, and as it seems to me
instinctively, for I cannot now remember the exact time of its
beginning, a habit of repeating under my breath, or even aloud, and in
a kind of singsong voice, fragmentary words and sentences describing
what it was that I saw or felt at the moment, as, for example:
“The pink blossoms of the wild crab-apple trees I see from the hill....
The reedy song of the wood thrush among the thickets of the wild
cherry.... The scent of peach leaves, the odour of new-turned soil in
the black fields.... The red of the maples in the marsh, the white of
apple trees in bloom.... I cannot find Him out—nor know why I am
here....”
Some form of expression, however crude, seemed to reenforce and
intensify the gatherings of the senses; and these words, afterward
remembered, or even written down in the little book I sometimes carried
in my pocket, seemed to awaken echoes, however faint, of the exaltation
of that moment in the woods or fields, and enabled me to live twice
where formerly I had been able to live but once.
It was by this simple process of concentrating upon what I saw or heard
that I increased immeasurably my own joy of my garden and fields and
the hills and marshes all about. A little later, for I was a slow
learner, I began to practise the same method with the sense of smell,
and still later with the sense of taste. I said to myself, “I will no
longer permit the avid and eager eye to steal away my whole attention.
I will learn to enjoy more completely all the varied wonders of the
earth.”
So I tried deliberately shutting the doorways of both sight and
hearing, and centring the industry of my spirit upon the flavours of
the earth. I tested each odour narrowly, compared it well with
remembered odours, and often turned the impression I had into such poor
words as I could command.
What a new and wonderful world opened to me then! My takings of nature
increased tenfold, a hundredfold, and I came to a new acquaintance with
my own garden, my own hills, and all the roads and fields around
about—and even the town took on strange new meanings for me. I cannot
explain it rightly, but it was as though I had found a new earth here
within the old one, but more spacious and beautiful than any I had
known before. I have thought, often and often, that this world we live
in so dumbly, so carelessly, would be more glorious than the tinsel
heaven of the poets if only we knew how to lay hold upon it, if only we
could win that complete command of our own lives which is the end of
our being.
At first, as I said, I stopped my work, or loitered as I walked, in
order to see, or hear, or smell—and do so still, for I have entered
only the antechamber of the treasure-house; but as I learned better the
modest technic of these arts I found that the practice of them went
well with the common tasks of the garden or farm, especially with those
that were more or less monotonous, like cultivating corn, hoeing
potatoes, and the like.
The air is just as full of good sights and good odours for the worker
as for the idler, and it depends only upon the awareness, the
aliveness, of our own spirits whether we toil like dumb animals or
bless our labouring hours with the beauty of life. Such enjoyment and a
growing command of our surroundings are possible, after a little
practice, without taking much of that time we call so valuable and
waste so sinfully. “I haven’t time,” says the farmer, the banker, the
professor, with a kind of disdain for the spirit of life, when, as a
matter of fact, he has all the time there is, all that anybody has—to
wit, _this_ moment, this great and golden moment!—but knows not how to
employ it. He creeps when he might walk, walks when he might run, runs
when he might fly—and lives like a woodchuck in the dark body of
himself.
Why, there are men in this valley who scout the idea that farming,
carpentry, merchantry, are anything but drudgery, defend all the evils
known to humankind with the argument that “a man must live,” and laugh
at any one who sees beauty or charm in being here, in working with the
hands, or, indeed, in just living! While they think of themselves
cannily as “practical” men, I think them the most impractical men I
know, for in a world full of boundless riches they remain obstinately
poor. They are unwilling to invest even a few of their dollars unearned
in the real wealth of the earth. For it is only the sense of the spirit
of life, whether in nature or in other human beings, that lifts men
above the beasts and curiously leads them to God, who is the spirit
both of beauty and of friendliness. I say truly, having now reached the
point in my life where it seems to me I care only for writing that
which is most deeply true for me, that I rarely walk in my garden or
upon the hills of an evening without thinking of God. It is in my
garden that all things become clearer to me, even that miracle whereby
one who has offended may still see God; and this I think a wonderful
thing. In my garden I understand dimly why evil is in the world, and in
my garden learn how transitory it is.
Just now I have come in from work, and will note freshly one of the
best odours I have had to-day. As I was working in the corn, a lazy
breeze blew across the meadows from the west, and after loitering a
moment among the blackberry bushes sought me out where I was busiest.
Do you know the scent of the blackberry? Almost all the year round it
is a treasure-house of odours, even when the leaves first come out; but
it reaches crescendo in blossom time when, indeed, I like it least, for
being too strong. It has a curious fragrance, once well called by a
poet “the hot scent of the brier,” and aromatically hot it is and sharp
like the briers themselves. At times I do not like it at all, for it
gives me a kind of faintness, while at other times, as to-day, it fills
me with a strange sense of pleasure as though it were the very breath
of the spicy earth. It is also a rare friend of the sun, for the hotter
and brighter the day, the hotter and sharper the scent of the brier.
Many of the commonest and least noticed of plants, flowers, trees,
possess a truly fragrant personality if once we begin to know them. I
had an adventure in my own orchard, only this spring, and made a fine
new acquaintance in a quarter least of all expected. I had started down
the lane through the garden one morning in the most ordinary way, with
no thought of any special experience, when I suddenly caught a whiff of
pure delight that stopped me short.
“What now can _that_ be?” and I thought to myself that nature had
played some new prank on me.
I turned into the orchard, following my nose. It was not the peach
buds, nor the plums, nor the cherries, nor yet the beautiful new
coloured leaves of the grape, nor anything I could see along the grassy
margin of the pasture. There were other odours all about, old friends
of mine, but this was some shy and pleasing stranger come venturing
upon my land.
A moment later I discovered a patch of low green verdure upon the
ground, and dismissed it scornfully as one of my ancient enemies. But
it is this way with enemies, once we come to know them, they often turn
out to have a fragrance that is kindly.
Well, this particular fierce enemy was a patch of chickweed. Chickweed!
Invader of the garden, cossack of the orchard! I discovered, however,
that it was in full bloom and covered with small, star-like white
blossoms.
“Well, now,” said I, “are you the guilty rascal?”
So I knelt there and took my delight of it and a rare, delicate good
odour it was. For several days afterward I would not dig out the patch,
for I said to myself, “What a cheerful claim it makes these early days,
when most of the earth is still cold and dead, for a bit of
immortality.”
The bees knew the secret already, and the hens and the blackbirds! And
I thought it no loss, but really a new and valuable pleasure, to divert
my path down the lane for several days that I might enjoy more fully
this new odour, and make a clear acquaintance with something fine upon
the earth I had not known before.
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