No matter how tightly the body may be chained to the wheel of daily
duties, the spirit is free, if it so pleases, to cancel space and to
bear itself away from noise and vexation into the secret places of the
mountains. Well it is for him who labors early and late at the desk, if
his soul can thus spread its wings and soar to deep forests, clear
lakes, and rugged mountain peaks, drawing from memory, imagination, and
sweet forecast, something to inspire itself to patient action, and
something to strengthen the heart in its wish to do its appointed task
manfully. As these bright October days slip by and my wheel of daily
duties spins round and round in that granite prison called University
Hall, my memory takes me back to fair Chocorua. I remember the 6th of
October in the year 1884. The sun struggled through soft gray clouds and
gazed upon a world of magical opposites. Every maple in a hundred
townships blazed with scarlet or gold; yet soft and cold, wrapping the
earth from Chocorua’s horn to the sand at the lake shore, the first snow
of autumn sparkled in the rays of the rising sun. Skies of blue, forests
of fire, fields of snow,—those were the delights of that matchless
October dawning.
If the wheel grows too noisy I come back from these visions to my desk
and its papers, and open dozens of letters from all over our broad
country, from Europe, Japan, Mexico, and from distant India, whence some
Harvard soldier of the Cross writes to ask tidings of his _alma mater_.
In his day every John knew every William, and the roll of the University
never climbed beyond the hundreds. Now the questioner at my side wonders
how near we shall come to having three thousand students this year;
while the prophet declares that in five years or less Harvard will have
distanced Cambridge and Oxford, and become the greatest English-speaking
University in the world. Even now her students do not all speak English.
Aside from the scores of American youths who hear only light-weight
silver dollar English at home, and who learn little that is better at
school, there are many who come to Harvard from far-away foreign homes.
The tall Bulgarian with his dark eyes full of poetry and fire; the
patient Russian Jew, exiled from a cruel land, and struggling night and
day to win an education and a fortune in the home of the free; the
dashing young Norwegian, with winning, deferential manners and a light
in his blue eyes which speaks of his own glaciers and dark fjords; the
gifted Japanese, absorbing philosophy or science with such readiness as
to make his slower American competitor blush with shame; the angular
Armenian, with his keen, thin face and nervous hands; the self-possessed
Costa Rican, the moody Icelander and his taciturn but clear-headed
neighbor from Newfoundland,—all are beside me taking turns with their
American fellow-students in hurrying my wheel until the day is done.
[Illustration: CROWLANDS, FORMERLY THE OLD DOE FARM]
When the day is done, and pale sunset colors lie in the sky behind the
witching iron tracery in the great western gateway, my soul goes
northward again into that other October when the early snow melted, and
the winds blew in the fair Chocorua land. I go back to a gusty afternoon
when we rowed our boat the length of the lakes and landed upon the
silent shore of the old Doe farm. It was our first visit to the white
sand of that beach, to the little footpath leading upward through the
orchard, and to the tumble-down cottage with its huge chimney, in which
the swifts had found no smoke for twenty long years. Our first
visit,—yet now the anchor of life is so strongly fixed on that shore,
and the family fairies so firmly domiciled on that hearth, that our
first voyage of discovery seems as far off as the time when “Kit
Colombus sailed from the Papal See.”
We wandered through the rooms of the cottage, peeped at the sky through
the cracks in its roof, noted the pewee’s nest on the wainscoting in the
east room, and whirled the old flax-wheel which stood in the dark attic.
Then, passing the ancient maples behind the great barn, we strolled on
and on through the pastures until a faint path led us to the lonely lake
among the dingles, almost at the foot of Chocorua. Softly descending the
steep path to the edge of the green water, we saw five black ducks rise
from the lake and fly from us over the oaks. The rush of their wings is
in my ears to this day, and my eyes recall the clouds which loomed over
the peak and swept down upon the lake, bringing much cold wind and a
little rain. From the storm-clouds a small hawk came circling down
towards the troubled water and tossing birches. As he soared above us,
seemingly protesting against our coming into the charmed vale, I shot
him. The strong wings gave one spasmodic beat, the fierce head fell
forward, and the body shot downward and struck the sand at our feet. We
had claimed dominion by force of arms, and when we next saw the lake, it
was ours in law.
The wheel turns fastest in the University prison house when pale boys
and gaunt young men come to me with confidences of their life-long hope
to come to fair Harvard, of mothers’ sacrifices, and fathers’ toil, of
the parson’s chiding against the influence of the non-sectarian college,
and the schoolmaster’s prophecy that Cambridge will be all proud looks
and cold hearts, and finally of their own determination to work their
way through, no matter what the cost in comfort and energy. It is the
same soul-stirring story, whether it speaks from the butternut-colored
coat from Georgia, the coarse gray homespun from Cape Breton, or the
shiny, long-tailed black frock from Nebraska. Beseeching, honest, or
searching eyes look straight into the heart, and the heart would not be
good for much if it did not grow warmer under their scrutiny. Generally
all except the least useful and adaptable of such men find ways of
earning much of that which is needed to keep them decently clad and
safely fed during their years of study; but it is anxious work starting
them on self-support, and helping them to drive away homesickness.
There is a feeling of gritting sand and the lack of oil in the wheel
when purse-proud, over-dressed, loud-voiced, tired-eyed youths drift to
me in their attempts to escape parts of their college duties. They have
come from shoddy homes to mix shoddy with the honest stuff of Harvard
life. It would be better for them, for us, and for all their associates,
if they never set foot on scholastic ground. Still they serve as a foil
to the noble-hearted men of wealth who are the glory of a college,—men
who are strong in their willingness to aid others, pure in heart, active
in body, loyal to the ideals of the University.
One reason that the wheel of duty turns hard is to be found in the
multitude of human atoms pressing against it. The present system of
college government was well adapted for the management of five or six
hundred men, for it is an easy task for an officer of keen sympathies
and a good memory to carry even more than six hundred men in his mind,
and to know their faces, names, and general record. Now that the six
hundred have become two thousand, and the same system is applied, each
officer being expected to know something of every student, the memory
gives way, interest weakens, and discipline through acquaintance becomes
impossible. Here and there individual students stand out conspicuously
and become well-known figures in the crowd; but it is more likely to be
through their success in football than in their studies. The man who
attains “Grade A” in all his studies may be dull-eyed and dingy; but the
half-back on the university eleven cannot fail to have in him some of
the qualities of the hero.
On the football field of a Saturday afternoon I am less likely to let my
thoughts wander away to Chocorua than when at my desk. Something akin to
the wild north wind seems surging down old Jarvis when the crimson
rush-line guards its bunch of ball-carriers as they fly round the left
end, blocking, interfering, sweeping down opposing arms, hurling
themselves against crouching tacklers, and finally falling across the
line for the triumphant touchdown. That Chocorua north wind is as
irresistible in its way, when in October it hurls itself from the
mountains and lashes the lake till foam flies in white masses over the
crests of the breaking waves. Such winds often arise suddenly, and in a
moment change the placid water, full of its reflections of gay forest
and lofty peak, into a turbulent mass of waves. I well remember a soft,
hazy morning when we rowed a heavy flat-bottomed boat to the northern
end of the lake, returning about noon. When in the middle of the pond,
the wind caught us, and, turning the boat sideways, drove it towards a
shallow cove lined with boulders. Every wave dashed spray and water over
the gunwales, and the most vigorous rowing availed nothing against the
furious wind. It was not until I could jump overboard in the shoal water
and push the boat before me out of the wind that I really regained the
mastery of it.
About the middle of October a vast regiment of birds passes over the
Bearcamp valley. On the 13th of October, 1889, I counted and recognized
488 birds. Of these, 173 were crows, flying from the northeast towards
the southwest in two great flocks. They passed far above the forests,
many of them being much above the tops of the highest mountains. On the
same day I counted 143 juncos, which were peppered all over fields,
roads, small thickets, pasture bushes, and woods of small height.
Wherever we strolled the little cowled heads turned to watch us, or the
white V-shaped tail-feathers flashed as the juncos flew from us. The
white-throated sparrows were almost always with them, coming, I doubt
not, from the same breeding-grounds, and bent upon reaching the same
winter-quarters, or havens even farther south than those which juncos
like. Now and then a white-crowned sparrow is to be seen among flocks of
this kind. Those who watch for them are apt to see many white-throats,
which they try to persuade themselves are the rarer species, but when
the eye at last rests upon a white-crown there is no doubting his
identity.
The golden-crested kinglets were present in great numbers on the same
13th of October, 1889, and as they passed through the evergreens they
accomplished a marvelous amount of effective house-cleaning. With them
or near them chickadees, red nuthatches, white nuthatches, and brown
creepers took part in the keen inspection of the trees, and woe came to
the insect which fell under their eyes.
Among the other birds which I recorded that day were robins, a hermit
thrush, bluebirds, yellow-rumped warblers, solitary vireos, a flock of
thirty-five goldfinches, a good many sparrows of various kinds, blue
jays, one or two kinds of woodpeckers, several hawks, and a flock of
black ducks. They formed the rear guard of the grand army, and as the
leaves rustled down over them it was easy to imagine snowflakes
gathering in the northern clouds and waiting for a summons to begin
their soft descent upon the abandoned earth.
Bird voices sometimes mingle with the hum and roar of my duty-wheel.
Opposite my office window are two tall pine-trees, almost the only
evergreens in the college yard. These trees swarm with the alien
sparrows, whose clamor at times is almost deafening. Better three months
of utter silence than such bird music as this. Each year, as autumn
deepens into winter, I watch the immigrant sparrow to see whether he is
not learning that migration southward in the season of snow is wise and
comfortable. He does wander somewhat, already, when food fails, and it
will not be strange if, as years pass, he should acquire by sympathetic
vibration something of the swing of the migratory pendulum.
When I walk slowly home from my office past Christ Church and the silent
field of quaintly lettered stones, past the old elm within whose shade
Washington took command of the Colonial army, and past Cotton Mather’s
gold chanticleer holding high his ancient head against the rosy
afterglow, I seem to see beyond all these things the crouching lion of
Chocorua. Waking or dreaming, the outline of that peak is always stamped
upon my northern horizon, and the north is the point to which my face
turns as surely as does the needle, whenever my face, like the needle,
is left to settle its direction in accordance with its controlling
affinities. In these October days the picture of Chocorua which haunts
me is not a summer picture. Far from it. In it the leaves are falling,
drifting down like snow, birds are silent, nervous, always on the alert
for danger; new ledges show upon the mountain-sides, new vistas have
opened through the forests, and spots which, when behind their August
leaf mantles seemed dark and secret, are now as open as the day. The
brooks are more noisy, and easily seen, the grouse fly afar off; if one
wishes a flower he must pluck the witch-hazel or let the bitter yarrow
or the last clusters of goldenrod and asters satisfy him. Nature seems
preoccupied and inclined to tell the visitor to see what he wants, and
to take what he can find, but to let her alone.