PS 3521 
 .N25 U6 
 I 1904 
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AUTHOR'S AUTOGRAPH EDITION 
 OF UPLAND PASTURES 
 
 THE EDITION LIMITED TO 
 TWELVE HUNDRED COPIES, 
 OF WHICH ELEVEN HUNDRED 
 ARE FOR SALE. PRINTED 
 ON RUISDAEL HANDMADE 
 PAPER, FROM TYPE 
 AFTERWARDS DISTRIBUTED. 
 
 THIS COPY IS No./././ *Z<^ 
 
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UPLAND PASTURES 
 
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rtiion. 
 
 
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 Copyright, 1904, by 
 PAUL ELDER AND COMPANY 
 Publishers, San Francisco, Cal. 
 
 • C I 
 
V 
 
 
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 to my friend 
 mary curtis richardson 
 this; small volume is 
 affectionately inscribed 
 
CONTENTS 
 
 The Beginnings of Things ------ 3 
 
 Springtime Showers 13 
 
 Where the Bee Sucks 33 
 
 Floral Socialists 33 
 
 Scouring-Weed 45 
 
 Wings of the Morning 55 
 
 An Idyl of the Hills 63 
 
 At the Smithy Door ----- 71 
 
— V 
 
«« I 
 
 Can any man charge God that 
 He hath not given him enough to 
 make his life happy? No, doubt- 
 less; for Nature is content with a 
 little. * * * What would a blind 
 man give to see the pleasant riv- 
 ers, and meadows, and flowers, and 
 fountains, that we have met with? 
 * * * And for most of them, be- 
 cause they be so common, most 
 men forget to pay their praises; 
 but let us not, because it is a sac- 
 rifice so pleasing to Him that made 
 the sun, and us, and still protects 
 us, and gives us flowers, and show- 
 ers, and stomachs, and meat, and 
 content, and leisure to go a-fishing." 
 
 The Compleat Angler. 
 
THE BEGINNINGS OF THINGS 
 
THE BEGINNINGS OF THINGS 
 
 HEN the warm rains succeed 
 "winter's driving dow^npours, 
 and the young grass begins to 
 mantle the meadows with ten- 
 der green, is the time, of all 
 the year, to be out of doors. All 
 the woodsy places are cool and 
 dripping and dim and delicious. A month 
 later they will be not less beautiful, perhaps, 
 but less approachable. The things of Nature 
 grow sophisticated as the season advances. 
 In the early springtime they are frank and 
 confiding, and willingly tell the secrets of 
 their growth to him who asks. They have 
 time, in these first beginnings of things, for 
 friendly sociability: to show their tiny roots 
 and bulbs, and to let us study the delicate, 
 gracious unfoldings of leaf and bud and blos- 
 som. In a few w^eeks they will all be too 
 busy keeping up with the season's swift 
 march, to stop and visit with the even lov- 
 ingest of human friends. 
 
 Do w^e forget, from springtime to spring- 
 time, how lovely will be the year's awaken- 
 ing ? Each winter of our discontent I think 
 that I remember, as my longing imagination 
 looks forward, the tender charm of the spring- 
 time wonder, yet with each recurring year 
 
it comes to me as a ne'w and unkno'svn joy. 
 The whole world seems to welcome the new 
 year-child. Even before the first growths ap- 
 pear there is a hushed awareness throughout 
 Nature that moves the heart to thankfulness 
 and remembered expectation. The hope of 
 springtime comes without stint, and without 
 fail, bringing to each one of us the message 
 his heart is prepared to receive, and quicken- 
 ing our purest, least sordid impulses. The 
 best that is in us seems possible, in the spring- 
 time. Who of us does not then dream that this 
 best will yet gain strength to withstand the 
 heat and drouth of summer's fierce searching? 
 
 We turn to Mother Nature like children 
 who long to be good. The worshiping instinct 
 which lies deep within each soul goes out to 
 her, vesting her with that personality which 
 we have long since pronounced unthinkable 
 when applied to God. There is a suggestion 
 in the situation which is not without a certain 
 saving humor to relieve it from grotesqueness. 
 We are not far from a personal god when we 
 send our souls out in loving contemplation of 
 personified Nature, yet we still go on asking 
 if God is, and if He is Truth. 
 
 Whom do we ask, and why does the ques- 
 tion rise? If God is Truth, He must be uni- 
 
versa! ; and to be perceived by each soul for 
 himself. If, then, I perceive him not, either He 
 is not the truth, or else I am not simple and 
 sincere in desiring the truth. If He is not the 
 truth, do I then desire human persuasion that 
 He is ? Or, if I am not simple and sincere, who 
 can make me so? 
 
 Nature will help us if we turn to her. We 
 have filled our lives so full of complexities and 
 problems that it is well for us to have her 
 annual reminder that, even without our taking 
 thought about it, the real world, that will be 
 here when we, with all our busyness, shall 
 have passed from sight, has renewed itself, 
 and stands bidding us come and find peace. 
 
 For Nature keeps open house for us, and 
 even w^hen we visit her and leave a trail of 
 dust and desolation behind us, like the stupid, 
 imtidy children we are, she only sets herself, 
 with the silent, persistent patience of her age- 
 wise motherhood, to cover and remove it 
 Down in the canyon, this morning, among the 
 trillium, and loosestrife, and wild potato, I foimd 
 the inevitable tin can, left by some picnicker 
 to mar and desecrate the landscape, but now 
 completely filled with soft brown mold, and 
 growing in it a mass of happy green wood- 
 sorreL This is better than going at things 
 
w^ith a broom, gathering them up and remov- 
 ing them from one place to another, which is 
 about as far as ^^re humans have progressed 
 in our science of cleaning up. 
 
 I was glad to welcome the trillium. How 
 one loves its quaint old name of Wake-robin, 
 fitting title for this first harbinger of spring, 
 that comes to us even before the robin's note 
 is heard! Many of our common w^ild flowers 
 have several names, but there is none with 
 such invariably pretty ones as all ages have 
 united in bestowing upon Wake-robin. Birth- 
 root, our forefathers called it, seeing the birth 
 of the new year in its early blossoming, and 
 how many generations have known it as the 
 Trinity-flower! But 'tis best known, I think, 
 as Wake-robin, and the very breath of spring 
 is in the name. 
 
 A member of the great lily family is Wake- 
 robin. It loves damp, shady places, and moist, 
 rich valleys. On the Pacific Coast we do not 
 find the typical Eastern variety, but w^e have 
 a variety of our own, still unmistakably 
 Wake-robin. Its color varies from rich mad- 
 der red to pale pink, sometimes showing al- 
 most w^hite. It grow^s from a thick, tuber-like 
 root, and the calyx has, surrotmding its three 
 red petals and three green sepals, three broad, 
 
mottled green leaves which, for some imao 
 coimtable reason, our florists remove when 
 they offer the flower for sale. A strange 
 whimsy, this. The poor blossoms, thus de- 
 nuded, have a bewildered, self-conscious air, 
 such as may have been worn by the little 
 egg-selling woman of old, who awoke from 
 her nap by the king's highway to find her 
 petticoats shorn. Well may Wake-robin thus 
 question its own identity. It is no longer the 
 trillium of the forest: it is only the trillium 
 of conmaerce, a sad, unlovely object 
 
 A bank where Wake-robin lifts its bonny 
 head is always fair to see. The plant has 
 certain boon companions always sure to be 
 close at hand. The Solomon's seal is one of 
 these, its roots bearing to this day the round 
 marks imagined by the early foresters to be 
 none other than the seal of Sulyman, the son 
 of Daoud, whose seal was the stamp of wis- 
 dom. There is no more exquisite green than 
 the beautiful, shining leaves of this plant, with 
 its tiny white bells of flowers. It has a near 
 relative almost sdways growing near it, that, 
 with singular paucity of imagination, our bot- 
 anists have called "False Solomon's Seal." 
 
 How we reveal our mental habits through 
 this trick we have of falsifying the plants. 
 
We say "false" asphodel, "false" rice, "false" 
 hellebore, "false" spikenard and miterwort, 
 but the falsity is in our own vain imaginings. 
 The plants are as true as the earth that bears 
 them, or the rain and the stmshine that bring 
 them to perfection. The Solomon's seal is one 
 lily, the "false" Solomon's seal another. Man 
 may be false; "perilous Godheads of choos- 
 ing" are his, but the wild things of the woods 
 are true, each in the order of its nature. 
 
 There are no complexities or subtiUties 
 about Wake-robin, here by the streamside. 
 You may see it at a glance, for its principles 
 are brief and fundamental, as wise old Marcus 
 Avu-elius bids us let our own be, and yet the 
 plant has had its vicissitudes; has met and 
 solved its problems. Reasoning from analo- 
 gies, time must have been when, like others 
 of its great family, it grew in the water, float- 
 ing out its broad leaves, lolling at ease on the 
 surfaces of swampy, watery places and still 
 ponds. Times changed. Lands rose and wa- 
 ters subsided, and Wake-robin foimd itself in 
 the midst of new conditions. The problem of 
 self-support confronted it, and the plant solved 
 it by diverting from its broad, sustaining sep- 
 als nutriment to enable the long, swaying 
 stem to meet the new demands upon it. It 
 
 8 
 
still loves water and seeks cool, damp woods 
 and deep canyons, growing beside little streams 
 "Where it lifts its face to greet the springtime. 
 It is probably not so big as when it rested 
 luxuriously upon the water, but it is Wake- 
 robin, still, and it does more than summon the 
 birds: it calls each of us back to Nature, bid- 
 ding us keep otu* hearts and souls alive to 
 see, with each renewing of springtime, and to 
 love afresh, the miracles of Nature's redemp- 
 tive force. 
 
SPRINGTIME SHOWERS 
 
SPRINGTIME SHOWERS 
 
 HE beauty of springtime, like 
 the beauty of childhood, is al- 
 ways new. All about me the 
 things of Natiu-e are still in the 
 mystical, subtile tenderness of 
 their young, green growth. The 
 golden days of autumn are full 
 of their own beauty. The gray days of win- 
 ter's mist and fog have theirs, but there is 
 something in the tender blue days of the rainy 
 springtime which sets the heart apraise, and 
 brings out as nothing else can the meanings 
 of leaf and bud, of flower and tree. 
 
 It is raining now. Up above me, on the 
 road, several picnickers who have been caught 
 in this April shower are hurrying to shelter. 
 They look down curiously at me, here under 
 the willow, and I have some misgiving as to 
 whether they are not setting an example 
 that I should follow. But I am sure that it is 
 a great mistake always to know enough to 
 go in when it rains. One may keep snug and 
 dry by such knowledge, but one misses a 
 world of loveliness. There is, after all, a cer- 
 tain selective wisdom in recognizing how de- 
 sirable it is to take the showers as they come. 
 There is something peculiarly tender and 
 loving about an April shower. One is so 
 
 13 
 
fully conscious, even "while the drops are fall- 
 ing, that the sun is shining behind the light 
 clouds. And the drops themselves come down 
 so gently, tentatively offering themselves, as 
 it were, to the welcoming earth — pattering 
 lightly on the leaves, and softly rippling the 
 surface of the little pool under the willows. 
 That is a wonderful sort of comparison the 
 Hebrew poet gives us when he likens the 
 teaching of truth to the small rain upon the 
 tender herb: the showers upon the green 
 grass. 
 
 The young colt in the stall yonder thrusts 
 an eager head over the half-door, and with 
 soft black muzzle in the air stands, open 
 mouthed, to catch the delicious trickle. The 
 cattle on the hills seem glad of the wetting; 
 even the birds have not sought shelter, and 
 why should I? 
 
 I love to watch the leaves of the trees and 
 plants, in the rain. They tell us so many se- 
 crets about the life of which they are a part. 
 Why, for instance, does this pond-lily spread 
 out its broad, pleasant leaves upon the wa- 
 ter's surface, while its cousin, the wild onion, 
 has long, narrow grasslike leaves ? Why do 
 the leaves of the pungent wormwood, here, 
 stand rigidly pointing upwards, while those 
 
 14 
 
of yonder big oak are spread out before the 
 descending rain? 
 
 Watch the wormwood. See how the rain- 
 drops quiver for an instant on the tips of 
 the pinnate leaves, then follow one another 
 in a mad chase down the groove that trav- 
 erses the center of each leaf. Notice that 
 the leaf itself rises from three ridges on the 
 stem of the plant, and that between these 
 ridges lie shallow channels down which the 
 raindrops run to the plant's root. Now, we 
 can tell from these signs what sort of a root 
 the wormwood has. I never pulled one of 
 the plants, but I am sure that if we were to 
 pluck one up we should find it to have a 
 main tap-root, with no branches. All such 
 plants have leaves pointing upwards, and 
 grooved stems, admirably adapted to bring 
 water to the thirsty roots. The beets and the 
 radishes afford us capital examples of this 
 provision. 
 
 This alfileria has another arrangement of 
 leaf, for this same purpose. It is a widely 
 spreading forage-plant, with an absurdly small 
 root It needs a great deal of moisture, and 
 so its stems are thickly set with soft, fuzzy 
 hairs, which catch the water and convey it to 
 the root 
 
 15 
 
Growing all along the bank is the little 
 chickweed, with its tiny white star of a blos- 
 som. If it were not so common we should 
 wax enthusiastic over its beauty, and seek it 
 for our garden borders. This has a running, 
 threadlike root, which receives the raindrops 
 caught by the stem in a single row of tiny 
 hairs along its lower side, and sprinkles them 
 gently down. 
 
 When a plant has a spreading root such 
 as the willow yonder sends down, the leaves 
 spread outward and downward, from base to 
 tip, letting their gathered moisture down upon 
 it. When the plant grows under water its 
 leaves are long and threadlike; for the supply 
 of carbon is limited ; and they divide minutely, 
 that the greatest possible surface may be ex- 
 posed to absorb it. If the stem grows imtil 
 the leaves reach the surface of the water, 
 they broaden and spread out; for here they 
 get an abundant food supply which they may 
 freely appropriate, as none of it need be di- 
 verted to build up a supporting stem. The 
 water affords the leaves ample support. 
 
 The grasses grow in blades for the same 
 reason that the plants growing under water 
 put out slender, threadlike leaves. The air 
 supply would seem abundant, but the grass- 
 
 i6 
 
leaves are many and low-growing plants are 
 numerous. So they divide and subdivide, that 
 greater surface may be presented to the sim- 
 light and the air. In this form the blades are 
 fittest to obtain their necessary food supply and 
 thus to survive. We see this same tendency 
 in the leaves of the eschscholtzia, of the but- 
 tercup and of all the great crowfoot family. 
 
 Across the road stretches a line of locusts, 
 just now in dainty, snowy, fragrant blossom. 
 The individuality of a tree is a constant and 
 delightful fact in Nature. The locust is as 
 unlike the oak or the willow as can well 
 be imagined, yet like them in taking on an 
 added and characteristic loveliness in the rain. 
 How delicately the branches pencil themselves 
 against the blue and silver of the cloudy sky 
 and the dark green of the orchard beyond 
 them! The leaves have such a ptirely inci- 
 dental air. The lines of the tree were, them- 
 selves, lovely enough in their green and mossy 
 wetness to delight the eye. To deck them so 
 laceywise in an openw^ork of leaf and blossom 
 w^as beneficent gratuity on the part of Mother 
 Nature, for the pleasing of her children. 
 
 Down below, where the creek widens, the 
 sycamores have grown to great size. How 
 they help the heart, these gnarly giants, with 
 
 17 
 
the "white patches against the grays and 
 blacks of their rough trunks! How they 
 spread their branches against the sky and 
 beckon and point the beholder upwards! 
 These sylvan prophets bear a promise of 
 good, and demand of every passer-by the 
 query of the wise old stoic: "Who is he that 
 shall hinder thee from being good and 
 simple?" 
 
 Over the rounded hill, stealing softly, in 
 Indian file, through the mist, a row of euca- 
 lyptus trees climb, fringing up the slopes. 
 These ladies of the hilltop have a fashion of 
 growing thus, and in no other position is 
 their delicate, suggestive beauty more appar- 
 ent. The eucalyptus is an original genius 
 among trees, never repeating itself. It stands 
 for endless variety, for strong good cheer, 
 for faith that seeks and reaches and goes on, 
 never wavering. It blesses as w^ell as de- 
 lights its friends. I love its w^onderful, ever- 
 varying leaves, its upreaching, outstretching 
 branches, and the annual surprise of its mys- 
 tic blossoming. Each tree is distinct and 
 individual in its growth, yet every one is 
 typical of the genus. 
 
 It is a tree of the wind and the storm. See 
 how those in yonder group sway and cour- 
 
 l8 
 
tesy, bow and beckon, advance and retreat 
 in the light breeze! And the rain does such 
 marvels to them in the way of color, tinting 
 the leaves into wondrous things of glistening 
 black and silver, and bringing out exquisite, 
 evasive greens and browns, reds and rose 
 colors, tender blues and grays, from the trunks 
 and branches. All the things of Nature are 
 for man's use and joy, but perhaps they serve 
 their very highest use when we return God 
 thanks for their beauty. 
 
 Yes, I am sure that there is a wisdom 
 wiser than the prudence w^hich sends us in 
 out of the rain. The flow^ers and the grasses 
 teach us more than has ever been put be- 
 tween the covers of books. The trees bring 
 us the real news of the real world long before 
 they are crushed into pulp and made into the 
 paper on which is printed our morning ser- 
 vice from the scandal-monger and the stock- 
 broker. It w^as heralded as a marvelous tri- 
 umph of modem ingenuity w^hen, the other 
 day, a forest tree was cut down and made 
 into paper on w^hich the news of the w^orld 
 was printed and hawked along the streets 
 within four and one-half hours from the mo- 
 ment when the axe was laid at the root of 
 the tree. Marvelously clever, that, but shall we 
 
 19 
 
ever be wise enough to bring the trees them- 
 selves to the city, instead? If we were but 
 able to read the message they bear, the news- 
 paper might go away into outer darkness, 
 whence it sprang. 
 
 There is a fearful moment of reckoning be- 
 fore us should it ever chance that when all our 
 trees shall have been sacrificed on the altar 
 of the patron-fiend of news, the newspaper 
 supply shall suddenly be cut off and we find 
 ourselves some fine morning, minus our daily 
 tidbits of shame and failure and disaster, left 
 to the companionship of our own thoughts. 
 Dante never imagined a terror like this. 
 
 But the sun has come out again. The rain 
 is over and gone. Only the last treasured 
 drops chase one another along the leaves and 
 down the stems of the plants. Our picnickers 
 are venturing forth. The wet blades of grass 
 sparkle m the sunlight. Over on the bank 
 a ruby-throated hummer is flying back and 
 forth across a tiny stream which patters and 
 splashes against a rock. These morsels of 
 birds love a shower-bath, and this fellow now 
 has one exactly to his mind. The clouds have 
 drifted down the sky and everything seems 
 glad and grateful for "the usefiil trouble of 
 the rain." 
 
 20 
 
WHERE THE BEE SUCKS 
 
WHERE THE BEE SUCKS 
 
 NCE upon a time man conceived 
 the belief that this universe, 
 with its many w^orlds swing- 
 ing through space, was created 
 for him. He fancied that the 
 sun shone by day to warm and 
 vivify him; that the stars of 
 night were none other than lamps to his 
 feet; that the other animals existed to afford 
 him food and clothing — and sport; that the 
 very flowers of the field blossomed and 
 fruited and w^ere beautiful for his gratifica- 
 tion. In fact, man conceived the belief that 
 instead of being the w^ise brother and helper 
 of this creation amidst which he moves, he 
 was the great central pivot upon which all 
 revolves. 
 
 A sorry lesson, surely, for man to read into 
 the broad, open page of Nature's great book. 
 Small w^onder that to him in his meanness 
 its message came as "the painfiil riddle of the 
 earth." But it was the best he could do: it 
 is the best any of us can do until we have 
 learned the great lesson which the ancient 
 Wise One has written out for us — w^hich she 
 wll teach us, in time, through death, if we 
 will not let her teach it through life: the 
 lesson that use is not appropriation; that ap- 
 
 23 
 
propriation sets use to groan and sweat under 
 fardels of evil. 
 
 We are learning this lesson, with a bad 
 grace, like blundering school boys, fumbling 
 at our hornbook, stuttering and stammering 
 over the alphabet of life, the while our minds 
 wander stupidly off to the playthings of our 
 unholy civilization. Perhaps some day we 
 shall spell out a meaning to this riddle which 
 we have made so painful, and with the mean- 
 ing get somewhat of the humility which comes 
 with knowing. But now man does not read 
 the book of Nature to much better purpose 
 than he reads those other volumes, written 
 by himself, and bought by himself, in bulk, to 
 adorn his libraries: portly tomes to which he 
 may point with pride as evidence that at 
 least his shelves hold wisdom, tho' his head 
 may never. 
 
 I use no figure of speech when I say that 
 we may now buy our books in bulk. I saw, 
 only this morning, the advertisement of a 
 large dry goods "emporium" (*tis laces and 
 literature now) wherein is announced for sale 
 the bound volumes of a popular magazine. 
 "Over eight pounds of the choicest reading, 
 boimd in the usual style — olive green!" 
 
 Nature has olive greens, too, in styles usual 
 
 24 
 
and unusual, and she has marvelous messages 
 for her lovers, but she cannot be bought in 
 bulk, nor put upon shelves, nor even carried 
 in the head until she first be received into 
 the heart. A little flaxen-haired girl brought 
 me, this morning, a ptu-e white buttercup on 
 the stem with three yellow ones. 
 
 "See," she said, "here is one buttercup they 
 forgot to paint!" 
 
 I took the flower from her hand. I could 
 not tell her just how it happened that this 
 one perianth was white, but I explained to 
 her something of how the others came to be 
 yellow. What we call a flower is not, usually, 
 the flower at all, but merely its petals. The 
 real flower is the cluster, in the center of the 
 calyx, of pistils and their surrounding pollen- 
 bearing stamens. Away back in the ages 
 when man had not yet developed his aesthetic 
 sense, perhaps even before he had learned to 
 make fire, the primitive flower bore only these 
 pistils and stamens, with a little outer pro- 
 tective whorl of green petals. It was fertilized 
 by the pollen falling upon the pistils. 
 
 But this was not good for the plant Those 
 flowers which in some way became fertilized 
 by pollen from other plants of the same vari- 
 ety, by cross-fertilization, in fact, were healthier 
 
 as 
 
and stronger than those fertilized by their 
 own pollen. In such plants as wind-blown 
 pollen reached, this cross-fertilization was an 
 easy matter, but the buttercup is not one of 
 these. It is forced to rely upon insects for 
 fertilization. So the plant began to secrete a 
 sweet drop at the base of each green petal. 
 Such insects as discovered this nectar and 
 stopped to sip were dusted with the pollen 
 of the plant and carried it to other flowers, 
 where it fertilized the pistils, the insect gath- 
 ering from every blossom a fresh burden of 
 pollen to be carried along on his nectar-seek- 
 ing round. 
 
 This was very good, so far as it went, but 
 the flowers were pale and inconspicuous, and 
 many of them, overlooked by the insects, were 
 never visited. Certain ones, however, owing 
 to accidents or conditions of soil and mois- 
 ture, had the calyx a little larger, or brighter 
 colored than their fellows, and these the 
 insects found. It happened, therefore, if any- 
 thing ever does merely happen, that the flow- 
 ers with bright petals were fertilized, and 
 their descendants were even brighter colored. 
 Thus, in time, the buttercup, by the process 
 which, for lack of a better name, we call nat- 
 ural selection, came to have bright yellow 
 
 26 
 
petals, because these attract the insect best 
 adapted to fertilize it. If man's aesthetic sense 
 is gratified by the flower's beauty, why man 
 is by so much the better off, but that man 
 is pleased by the bright color is not half so 
 important to the buttercup as is the pleasure 
 of a certain little winged beetle which sees the 
 shining golden cup and knows that it means 
 honey. 
 
 In the same way the lupin, yonder, with its 
 pretty blue and white blossoms, has devel- 
 oped its blue petals because it is fertilized by 
 the bees. They seek it as they do other 
 blossoms, not only for honey, but for the pol- 
 len itself, which stands them in place of bread. 
 The very shape of the flower is due to the 
 visits of countless generations of this insect. 
 The bee is the insect best adapted to fertilize 
 the lupin, and when he alights upon the 
 threshold of a blossom his weight draws the 
 low^er petal down, and entering to suck the 
 sweets he gets his head dusted with pollen. 
 If a fly were to gain entrance to the flower, 
 he would carry away no pollen. He is smaller 
 than the bee, and his head could not reach it. 
 So honey-seeking flies alight in vain; their 
 w^eight is not enough to press the calyx open, 
 so they may not enter and drink of its sweets. 
 
 27 
 
Yonder on a blossom of the mimulus, the 
 odd-looking monkey-plant, a honeybee just 
 had this same experience. The bumblebee is 
 the only insect large enough to reach the 
 pollen in this blossom, and so its doors will 
 open only to him. Botanists tell us that all 
 this great family, to which belong the various 
 peas blossoms and their cousins, were once 
 five-petaled plants, but natural selection has 
 brought about their present shape, which is 
 an admirable protection against the depreda- 
 tions of small insects who might pillage, but 
 could not fertilize the flowers. Blue is the 
 favorite color of the honeybee, and next to 
 blue he prefers red. So bee blossoms are 
 blue or red. 
 
 Most of our small white flowers are fertil- 
 ized by insects which fly at night. This is the 
 reason why white blossoms are more fragrant 
 than their bright-hued sisters. Bright colors 
 could not be seen at night, but the fragrance 
 of the white flowers, always more noticeable 
 by night than by day, serves the same end — 
 to attract the useful insects. This is an es- 
 sential part of Nature's wonderful plan. The 
 flower lives by giving. 
 
 There is an endless fascination in this 
 page which Nature opens out before us, in 
 
 28 
 
her upland pastures. A wise teacher once 
 told me his experience with a restless, un- 
 manageable boy. "I could do nothing with 
 him," the teacher said, " until I got him inter- 
 ested in field life." One day this boy went 
 off on a holiday tramp, returning the day fol- 
 lowing. His teacher asked him what he had 
 seen, and this is what he remembered of his 
 outing: "I camped in a field for the night," 
 said he, "and I saw a bee light on a poppy 
 and crawl in. The poppy shut up and caught 
 him. Next morning I woke up early and 
 watched, and by and by the poppy opened 
 and the bee came out." 
 
 There are those who might have missed 
 the sacred significance of such a narrative, 
 but that teacher was a very wise man and 
 he knew that the reading lesson given him 
 then was a page from his rough boy*s soul- 
 life, and he conned it with reverent delight. 
 Life together was more real for them both 
 after that day. 
 
 The keener our realization of the human 
 love that is in the flowers, in the trees, in all 
 the w^ild life about us, the richer is our hu- 
 manity, the fuller our reception of life and 
 love, the more thoughtful our use of all the 
 things of Nature becomes. Once I saw an 
 
 29 
 
FLORAL SOCIALISTS 
 
 WAS sitting here beside the 
 stream, watching the bees 
 swarm in and out at the en- 
 trance to their hive, when Her- 
 cules passed by. "Come and 
 watch the bees," I called as he 
 passed. " They are interesting." 
 He stood and studied the busy workers, intent 
 upon the business of their miniature society. 
 " I wonder," he said at last, " if otu* human rea- 
 son shall ever evolve a system half so per- 
 fect as the one that mere instinct has taught 
 these feeble insects." 
 
 As I w^as silent he continued: 
 " Well, at all events, I can learn one lesson 
 from the bees, and be off about my business. 
 If society is ever to be freed from its burdens 
 every soul must do its full duty. One life 
 wasted means a whole world hindered just 
 that much." And Hercules was gone to his 
 labors. How fearful we all are of wasting our 
 lives, yet so rarely fearful for the results of 
 the ceaseless activity with which we crowd 
 them I 
 
 But Hercules' words are full of suggestive- 
 ness. Is our boasted human reason really less 
 adequate to the needs of our life than is what 
 we call instinct, this thing that looks so much 
 
 33 
 
more reasonable than our reason, of the lower 
 orders ? What if, after all, we are making a 
 desperate mistake in supposing that it is this 
 faculty which we call reason which distin- 
 guishes us from the brute creation! 
 
 It is because the bees and the other dumb 
 creatures have nothing more than this meas- 
 ure of reason which we call instinct, that it 
 serves them perfectly. Man has something 
 else, which draws him higher ; which prompts 
 him further. But alas for us! With the des- 
 tiny to live perfectly as human beings, we yet 
 long for the restrictions through which we 
 may live perfectly as the beasts! We seek 
 our lessons from the brutes while the Eternal 
 waits to teach us. We cannot live like the 
 beasts. The divine human spark within us 
 will not let us. We must live higher than 
 they or we shall live lower, for our perfection 
 of order is infinitely higher than theirs, and 
 our failure immeasurably lower than they 
 can sink. 
 
 But we go on, we modern Athenians, seek- 
 ing to ameliorate the conditions we have 
 brought upon society by our own stupid dis- 
 obedience and inhumanity, and only now and 
 then do we have a faint suspicion that our 
 newest thoughts are but mere rephrasings of 
 
 34 
 
ideas old as thought itself. Men get new sets 
 of phrases and dress therein the ideas that 
 underlie the universe. We apply the terms of 
 science to the old faiths and think that we 
 have invented a new religion. We find new 
 names for God Himself, and believe ourselves 
 to have discovered a new life-principle. Lov- 
 ing the neighbor becomes enlightened altruism, 
 and lo, faith is bom anew, with a subtiler 
 power to redeem the world. 
 
 Hercules is a Socialist. He always spells 
 society with a great S, and he declares that 
 in the present state of Society we can take 
 no thought for individuals. "The individual 
 may perish," he says, in moments of elo- 
 quence, "but the integrity of Society must be 
 jealously maintained." 
 
 I wonder, as I sit here watching the bees, 
 whether Society might not, after all, find 
 easement from its ails if each individual of 
 us, myself and Hercules included, should pay 
 strict attention to our individual business of 
 growing; of becoming humanized. Just here 
 at my hand a bee has alighted and is bury- 
 ing its nose in a clover blossom. Here is an 
 example of a life lived only for Society, yet 
 so important is the individual to this highly 
 perfected body social, that I have seen half a 
 
 35 
 
dozen bees, when a laden worker has arrived 
 at the hive openings weighted down, too 
 exhausted to do other than drop, helpless, 
 upon the threshold, rush to its assistance, 
 relieve it of its heavy load and help it to 
 pass within to gather strength for further 
 effort. The strict individualist complains, in 
 turn, of the bees, because they have no indi- 
 vidual life; no existence separate from the 
 hive. But what higher individuality can any 
 creature desire than is comprised and summed 
 up in the divine opportimity to bring his indi- 
 vidual gift to the common store? 
 
 I have picked the clover blossom which 
 the bee just left. Beside it are growing other 
 blossoms, and I gather a couple. They are 
 the veriest wayside weeds — dandelion and 
 dog-fennel — but they are important because 
 they are typical representatives of the largest 
 order in the floral kingdom; an order which, 
 although it was the last to appear in the 
 vegetable world, has outstripped every other 
 and leads them all today. Botanists call it 
 the Composite Order. Its members are really 
 floral socialists, just as Hercules and the rest 
 of us who believe that government is an 
 order of nature, and good for the race, are 
 human socialists, whether we know it or not 
 
 36 
 
But most of us hold a mistaken idea about 
 the relation of the individual to the whole. 
 We are apt to theorize that it is the duty of 
 the individual to keep the whole in order, 
 and a good many of us are fully convinced 
 that the world owes us a living. So it does, 
 and it behooves each one of us to be faithful 
 in discharging his individual share of the 
 aggregate debt. Nature has a whole page 
 about this, in her wonderful volume. 
 
 Take, for instance, this clover. What we 
 call the blossom is, in reality, many blos- 
 soms. Look at the mass under a glass. You 
 will see that the clover head is made up of 
 numerous minute cups in a compact cluster. 
 Each cup is a perfect blossom. As we now 
 see it in the clover it is a tiny tube, but it 
 once possessed five slender petals which are 
 now united. The little pointed scallops rim- 
 ming the cup suggest these petals. Now, the 
 tiny cup is descended from a five-petaled 
 ancestor, growing upon its individual stem 
 and depending upon insects for its fertiliza- 
 tion. The flower was small, however, and 
 many of them must have been overlooked 
 by the insects. But those blossoms which, 
 growing very close together, formed little clus- 
 ters, were more conspicuous than the soli- 
 
 37 
 
tary ones, and were discovered, visited for 
 their honey and incidentally fertilized by 
 the winged freebooters. They bore fruit, and 
 their descendants inherited the social instinct 
 prompting them to draw together that each 
 might give the other its help and coopera- 
 tion in attracting the insects. So, by degrees, 
 the cooperative habit became fixed in the 
 clover, and in many other plants, until the 
 compositse became a botanical fact. 
 
 In other words, the individuals formed a 
 body social of their own, growing from a 
 compact cluster from a common stem, each 
 giving and receiving, constantly, its use and 
 share in the common life. The many-petaled 
 flowers found it inconvenient to arrange them- 
 selves in the composite order, and so, as we 
 see in the clover, the petals have pressed 
 closely together and united to form a tube- 
 shaped flower, and as the tubular form is 
 best adapted to receive fertilization by the 
 bee, which insect is the most useful to the 
 clover blossom, that form has been perpetu- 
 ated in this plant. 
 
 Thus by the simple process of each indi- 
 vidual giving itself to the common life, the 
 mutual protection and development of the 
 whole, this order of plants has become the 
 
 38 
 
largest in the floral kingdom. The compos- 
 itae have circled the globe. They fill our hot- 
 houses and flourish in our gardens; they 
 greet us by the dusty road, and in the sum- 
 mer woods. The lovely golden-rods, the sturdy 
 asters, the aristocratic chrysanthemums, the 
 dainty daisies all belong to this great order. 
 So does helianthus, the big, beaming sun- 
 flower. 
 
 It is quite true that each blossom of the 
 compositae has given its life to the race. But 
 what if, after all, life with our fellows is a 
 giving instead of the receiving we are wont 
 to think it? What if, after all, the true out- 
 look upon Society will one day show us that 
 our neighbor is put here that we may have the 
 great, the inestimable joy of living for him? 
 
 All matter is made up of molecules. Sci- 
 ence tells us, and there is another Voice as 
 of One having Authority, which tells us that 
 God hath made of one blood all nations of 
 men for to dwell upon the face of the earth. 
 We humans are but larger molecules in the 
 body social. We live only in so far as the 
 common life flows through us. We move 
 freely, in our places, and by a wonderful pro- 
 vision of Divine Wisdom we cannot give one 
 another that which is really and unmistak- 
 
 39 
 
ably our own. No human thought, even, ever 
 traveled a straight course from one human 
 soul to another and was received exactly as 
 it was sent. We live our lives each within 
 the molecular envelope of his individual body, 
 and we can no more mix, in reality, than the 
 molecules mix. We live only in the flux and 
 reflux ot the Life of all, and only as we pass 
 this on have power to receive. 
 
 It is when life is fullest that we turn to 
 our fellows. Those of us who are true know 
 that then we need them most, and so our 
 real drawings together are in order that we 
 may give. We know this, in that secret part 
 of us where lies what most of us call our 
 human weakness, but we are faithless to the 
 knowledge, and choose to live on a lower 
 plane, within that outer circle which we call 
 knowing. We profess that we come together 
 to receive, but who of us does not know the 
 emptiness of death which lies in such com- 
 ing? We are all a little better than this. In 
 secret we know that it is more blessed to 
 give than to receive, but we are ashamed of 
 our knowledge. 
 
 We are less simple and true than the dan- 
 delion, the dog-fennel and the sweet-clover 
 here in the grass. The small, common blos- 
 
 40 
 
soms grow so cheerily one is glad to come 
 back to them. It is true that not one wee 
 tube or strap or head in any cluster could 
 have much life outside the aggregate blos- 
 som, but the integrity and perfection of each 
 is an essential factor in the integrity and 
 perfection of the whole. The tiny single 
 flower that I can pull from this dandelion 
 seems but an insignificant speck, but, by and 
 by, could it have been let alone, it would, its 
 ripeness and perfection attained, have taken 
 to itself wings and sailed fluffily off upon the 
 breeze to renew its life, perhaps a thousand 
 miles from here. Seeing it float through the 
 air, a poet might have found it a theme for a 
 sonnet ; a scientist might have seen universal 
 law embodied in its structure, or a seer have 
 reasoned from it to Life Eternal. 
 
 Yet, but for the cooperation of its fellows 
 in the body floral, it could not have lived 
 any more than, save for its fellows, what we 
 know as the dandelion could have lived. 
 
 The law of cooperation, like all of Nature's 
 laws, makes for rightness and fitness all 
 along the line. Nature teaches us, with ever- 
 repeated emphasis, the lesson of interdepend- 
 ence of kind. The isolated being is, every- 
 where, the comparatively helpless being. The 
 
 41 
 
tree growing by itself in the open field often 
 attains to more symmetrical perfection and 
 beauty than the tree in the crowded forest, 
 but woodsmen tell us that the forest tree 
 makes the better timber. 
 
 We must live with and for our fellows, 
 but he does this best who, in the quiet order 
 of the common life, opens widest his soul to 
 the Source thereof, and growing to the full 
 stature of a man helps on to perfection the 
 composite flower of our human civilization. 
 
 42 
 
SCOURING-WEED 
 
co-ji:*:o:tQO:mzm^Qr£m7mLOljm:-to 
 
 SCOURING 
 
 WEED 
 
 *o. 
 
 
 HE little spring here gushes 
 up and sweeps away along 
 a stony bed overgrown with 
 brakes and tares. On its mar- 
 gin, amid a tangle of wild 
 blackberry, I have come upon 
 a forest of scouring-rush. It is 
 a quaint growth. I love to put my face close 
 to the earth and, looking through the rushes' 
 green stems, to fancy myself a wee brownie, 
 wandering among a dense wilderness of pines. 
 The development of the miniature trees is an 
 interesting process. First the ground is cov- 
 ered with slender brown fingers thrusting up 
 through the soil. These grow rapidly, and in 
 a few days spread out their brief, verticillate 
 branches to the breeze, as proudly as any 
 great tree might do. Here is a tiny finger 
 just pointing upward; yonder towers the giant 
 of the liliputian forest, fully half a foot high. 
 " Scouring- weed," says the farmer, contempt- 
 uously, "they ain't no good. Some call 'em 
 horsetail." 
 
 In fact the queer, witchy little things have 
 a number of names: candle-rush, scouring- 
 rush, horsetail, and their own proper appella- 
 tion, equisitum. I have gathered a number 
 of the little trees, and they lie side by side in 
 
 45 
 
upheaval, some cataclysm of nature such as 
 we find everywhere recorded in her rocky 
 book. The land rose or sank, and the rocks 
 and debris of the sea floor were thrown upon 
 the decaying vegetation. It was pressed and 
 compressed beneath this weight. The fronds 
 of the huge ferns; the tall stems of the giant 
 rushes; the monstrous club-mosses, massed 
 together, and the primeval forest became a 
 peat-bog. Still greater pressure — a longer 
 lapse of aeons, and the peat became coal. 
 
 We burn them now, in our grates, the 
 progenitors of these feeble things lying here, 
 limply, in my palm. Is it not a wonderful 
 history the frail thing has? A degenerate 
 stock, botanists call it. So are its cousins the 
 ferns degenerate, with no botanical Nordau 
 to sound warning against them. But degen- 
 erates though they all are, they have still the 
 spirit of the pioneer. They dwell in the out- 
 posts of vegetable civilization. We do not 
 find them flourishing where Nature is in her 
 gentlest moods. Once, down in the crater of 
 an active volcano, half a mile from any soil, 
 growing from a sulphur-stained black-lava 
 floor, I found a clump of waving green ferns, 
 as high as my head, spreading out their 
 broad fronds as though to cover and hide the 
 
 48 
 
terrible nakedness of the unfinished earth. A 
 thousand years from now a grain-field may 
 spread where now those frail green plumes 
 have just begun their gracious work. 
 
 The clothing of the earth and the cleans- 
 ing of the air were the tasks the giant rushes 
 helped to perform for the young world. Dur- 
 ing the process the rank gases of the atmos- 
 phere were gradually stored up within their 
 great stems. Liberated, now, in our grates 
 and retorts they give us heat and light. The 
 atmosphere become purer, the earth grown 
 cool and life-sustaining, new growths ap- 
 peared. All the conditions were improved, 
 but the improvement meant death to the big 
 rush. It was starving. 
 
 It could not find food in the thin air. Its 
 roots could not suck up enough moisture to 
 sustain life^ It became smaller and smaller. 
 Flowers and seeds it had never borne. It 
 now gave up its leaves. Between every two 
 whorls of branches on the scouring-rush we 
 find a little brown, toothed sheath encircling 
 the stem. In the days of the plant's pros- 
 perity each of these teeth was a leaf, but now 
 the rush can maintain no such extravagance 
 as leaves, so there remain only these poor sur- 
 vivals. The stem is hollow, and is divided, 
 
 49 
 
between the whorls of branches, into closed 
 sections, or joints. It has also an outer ring 
 of hollow tubes, through which moisture is 
 drawn up from the soil, to feed the branches. 
 The rush is a little higher order of creation 
 than the fern, but it is a cryptogram; that is 
 a plant never bearing true seeds, but propa- 
 gating by spores. 
 
 And so, fallen upon hard lines, chilled, 
 stunted by the cold, but having a brief span 
 of life when the spring rains have made the 
 earth wet and warm, and before the summer 
 heat has come to wither it, we have our 
 scouring-rush only a few inches high. And 
 this branched stem which we see is not fer- 
 tile. It is enough for it to support its wav- 
 ing green feather. The fertile stems are not 
 branched. They appear above the earth, pale 
 and shrinking; put forth no branches, but live 
 a brief season, develop their spores and dis- 
 appear. 
 
 The growth of the scouring-rush seems to 
 me to show something beautiful, as well as 
 interesting. There is a certain light-hearted 
 gaiety in the waving, tree-like thing, which 
 makes one forget that it is a degenerate stock, 
 and doomed to destruction. Still a little work 
 remains for it to do: still some waste places 
 
 50 
 
and miasmatic bogs to be cleansed and puri- 
 fied, and so the little rush grows on, the merest 
 shadow of its once opulent self. I am sure 
 that the last horsetail to be seen on earth 
 will grow just as breezily, as greenly and as 
 cheerily as any now waving in this make- 
 believe enchsmted forest at my feet And who 
 knows what may be the fate of that which 
 was the real life of that ancient plant — the 
 forces of light and heat set free in our furnaces 
 and forges, to begin, again, their office of min- 
 istering use ? 
 
 Did the giant rush die? Does anything 
 die? Ages have seen the rushes fall and pass 
 from sight, to wake to glorious light in the 
 leaping flames. We see, each year, leaves fall 
 and turn to mold from which other life-forms 
 spring. There will be other poppies, next 
 year, where yonder orange-red blossoms nod 
 in the breeze. The waving grain, already 
 headed out and bowing under its burden of 
 rain-drops, was but a few months since a mere 
 handful of dry kernels. They were cast upon 
 the ground, and they died, if that tossing sea of 
 green is death. We see these things recurring 
 upon every side of us, yet we still go up and 
 down the earth demanding of prophet, priest 
 and poet: "If a man die shall he live again?'* 
 
 51 
 
A far cry from the little sprigs of scouring- 
 rush in my hand ? But Life is a far cry, from 
 Everlasting through Eternity, and who shall 
 say, of the least of these, its manifestations, 
 " It is no good ? " 
 
 52 
 
WINGS OF THE MORNING 
 
WINGS OF THE MORNING 
 
 OWN among the watercresses, 
 an hour ago, stud5dng the move- 
 ments of a mammoth slug, I 
 was startled by a shadow fall- 
 ing directly across my hands. 
 At the same moment there was 
 an excited fliury and scurrying 
 to shelter, among a tuneful mob of song- 
 sparrows who, all unmindful of my presence, 
 were teetering close beside me upon the tall 
 mustard stsdks which swayed beneath their 
 weight. Looking upward I saw, between me 
 and the sun, a pigeon-hawk soaring on motion- 
 less wings in the freedom of the upper air. 
 I watched him with a joy holding no drop 
 of envy, as he circled widely against the 
 sky, rising, falling, swerving, returning, with 
 scarcely a dip of the strong, outstretched 
 wings. High though he poised, my thought 
 could reach him; strong though his flight, my 
 fancy could follow and outstrip him. He, high 
 above the mountain-tops, gazed downward to 
 the earth. His thoughts, his desires were 
 here. To materialize them he mounted the 
 air. With my feet upon the earth, with no 
 palpable pinions wherewith to climb the ether, 
 yet had I moments of being, more truly than 
 he, a creattu-e of the sky. 
 
 55 
 
Something of this passed through my brain 
 as I "watched the circling hawk. Once, with 
 a flash of his strong wings, he made a down- 
 ward turn and, swift and still, he dropped 
 earthward. Then, as if frustrated in what- 
 ever had been his design, he wheeled again 
 and climbed as swiftly up the air. I like that 
 phrase as describing the flight of a bird. It 
 is so literally what the creature does. A bird 
 is not superior to gravitation. But for that 
 force he would be the helpless victim of every 
 little breeze, like a balloon, which is unable 
 to shape a course or to do anything but float 
 helplessly before the wind. The balloon floats 
 because it is lighter than the air, but the air 
 which the bird displaces is lighter than he, 
 and he only moves in it by virtue of his 
 ability to extract from it, by the motion of his 
 wings, sufficient recoil to propel himself for- 
 ward. He rises, as do we humans, by means 
 of that which resists him. I love to watch 
 the sea-gulls. They fly so perfectly, and seem 
 anxious to give us lessons in aerial naviga- 
 tion as they dip and whirl and call about the 
 steamers, on the bay. Their wings are so 
 easy to study while in action. The first joint, 
 to where the wing bends back and outward, 
 is strong and compact, cup-shaped underneath. 
 
 56 
 
The second joint tapers. The feathers are 
 long and do not overlap so closely as do those 
 of the first joint, and at the free ends they 
 spread out and turn upwards. The upper 
 surface of the wing is convex, the lower sur- 
 face concave. In flying the wings are thrown 
 forward and downward. Flying is not a flap- 
 ping of the wings up and down, and if a bird 
 w^ere to strike its wings backward and down- 
 ward, as its manner of flight is so often pic- 
 tured, it would turn a forward somersault in 
 the air. 
 
 Structurally the wing of a bird is a screw. 
 It twists in opposite directions during the up 
 and down strokes, and describes a figure of 8 
 in the air. The bird throws its wings for- 
 wards and downwards. The air is forced back 
 and compressed in the cup-shaped hollows of 
 the wings, and these latter, by the recoil thus 
 obtained, drag the body forward. This resist- 
 ance of the air is absolutely essential to flight. 
 We who think that, but for the buffetings of 
 hard fate, we, too, might soar high and fly free 
 in the upper realm of endeavor, should watch 
 the efforts of the birds in a calm. We shall 
 scarcely see them flying. If impelled, by neces- 
 sity, to flight, the process is a most laborious 
 one. There being no resisting wind on which 
 
 57 
 
to climb (birds always fly against the wind) 
 the climber must, by the rapid action of his 
 wings, establish a recoil which will send him 
 along. Watch the little mud-hen, flying close 
 to the surface of the water, ready to dive the 
 instant its timidity takes fright. Its wings 
 vibrate swiftly, unceasingly; for it rarely rises 
 high enough above the water to have advan- 
 tage of the air currents. For it there are no 
 long, soaring sweeps through the air ; no free- 
 dom from the labors of its cautious flight. It 
 is a very spendthrift of effort because of the 
 timidity which never lets it rise to the sustain- 
 ing forces just above its head. To climb the 
 sky is not for him who hugs cover. 
 
 To fly! the very thought sets the nerves 
 atingle. It is a joy to be afloat, "with a wet 
 sheet and a flowing sea and a wind that fol- 
 lows fast." It is a joy to be on the back of a 
 swiftly running horse, with the wind rushing 
 away from your face as you ride, bearing 
 every care from your brain. But to traverse 
 the air — to fly I This j oy we long for : we have 
 an indisputable, an inalienable right to long 
 for it. 
 
 To what heights may we rise ? This, after 
 all, is the question which concerns us. Sordid, 
 creeping wights that we are, constantly refer- 
 
 58 
 
ring our heavenward aspiration to the desire 
 of the mortal, we still 
 
 To man propose this test — 
 Thy body, at its best, 
 How far can that project thy soul on its lone way 7 
 
 Our very protests, our kicking against the 
 pricks which would incite us to higher effort, 
 are but our blind fear, lest, after all, they 
 should not mean flight. We are afraid of our 
 moments of faith; ashamed of our aspiring 
 impulses, the upward impulses which have 
 throbbed through all life since the world was 
 bom. We send forward our souls to see if 
 haply they may find God, while we remain 
 behind to weigh and test their evidence when 
 they return to us— if they ever do return, 
 hugging the surface the while, lest a sustain- 
 ing breath of spiritual force lift us clean above 
 the safe shelter into which we may dive alto- 
 gether should our returning souls bring back 
 news of the meanings of life, scaring us to 
 cover, after all, by the thought that we, our- 
 selves, are heaven and hell. 
 
 Usually we are content to grovel. We trav- 
 erse our little round and declare it to be 
 destiny. We prate of the limitations of our 
 htunanity, forgetful of that humanity's limit- 
 less capacity to receive. With insincere self- 
 
 59 
 
abasement we declare ourselves to be worms 
 of the dust, and the spirits of light who look 
 upon us may readily believe our assertions. 
 But there are moments when the scales fall 
 from our eyes. We get fleeting glimpses, then, 
 of the meaning and the end of our human 
 nature. We know that it is in the skies. We 
 know that w^e have ourselves fashioned the 
 chain that binds us to earth. We know that 
 we were made for flight, and we know that we 
 know all this ! 
 
 Still afar in the sky the hawk soars, with 
 downward gaze seeking his desire. Still, tho* 
 my feet are upon the earth, my spirit fares 
 upward in its flight toward its desire, above 
 and beyond the strong-winged bird's farther- 
 est flight ! 
 
 60 
 
AN IDYL OF THE HILLS 
 
\ 
 
AN IDYL 
 
 rs?: 
 
 \£ 
 
 OF THE HILLS 
 
 WONDER whether the restless 
 ^ impulse which send city folk 
 hillward in the springtime is 
 not a part of the Divine Plan 
 which would lead us aU to lift 
 our eyes to the hills whence 
 our help cometh. They flock 
 up here, the city folk, during these first spring 
 days, to eat their luncheons by the roadside 
 and to fill their hands with the poppies and 
 wild hyacinth, the blue-eyed grass and pim- 
 pernel that everywhere dot the young mead- 
 ows* glowing green. 
 
 I hear, at nightfall, mothers' voices calling 
 the little ones to prepare for home-going, and 
 I love to see the contented parties go wander- 
 ing down, the tiniest tired climber usually 
 sound asleep in his father's arms, with the 
 stm's last rays caressing the small face. It is 
 good for them to be here. There is, in the 
 dvunbest of us, a faint stirring of recognition 
 that the hope and promise of life are in the 
 young year. This love of the childhood of 
 things is the best thing our human nature 
 knows : the best because there is in it the least 
 of self. It is a different thing from the love of 
 new beginnings. It is not new beginnings, 
 but first principles the soul seeks, now, and 
 
 63 
 
so we climb the hills, as naturally as the 
 daisies look upward, leaving behind us the 
 pitiful aims that end in self and belong to the 
 dead level. 
 
 In the springtime love awakens, bom anew 
 in the green wonder of the season's childhood. 
 Yonder where the road climbs the hill the 
 sunlight is sifting in long bars" through the 
 eucalyptus trees, making a brown and golden 
 ladder all along the way. In everything is the 
 fresh, tender suggestion of a Sunday after- 
 noon in springtime. The air is full of the 
 scent of swamp-willow and laurel, and the 
 breath of feeding cattle on the hills. 
 
 By the roadside He and She walk shyly 
 apart. They could scarcely clasp hands across 
 the space which separates them, yet one see- 
 ing them knows that their hearts are close 
 together. The blue sky arches over them ; the 
 soft clouds pass lightly above their heads ; the 
 sunbeams bring brighter rounds for the brown 
 and golden ladder his feet and hers tread 
 lightly. They are palpably "of the people." 
 Her hands are roughened and red from toil. 
 His shoulders are bent by the early bearing of 
 heavy burdens. Neither He nor She is over 
 twenty years old, and they are poor, as some 
 count riches, but to them, together, has come 
 
 64 
 
the sweetness of life, and He and She are walk- 
 ing on the heights. 
 
 Yesterday they were hut a boy and a girl, 
 but today He to her is Manhood; She, to him, 
 is Womanhood, and in this great human wil- 
 derness they have reached out and found each 
 other. Could anything be more wonderful than 
 this? Could anything exceed in beauty this 
 secret of theirs which he who runs may read 
 in every line of their illumined faces? Stu- 
 dents versed in the'ologies: sociologists, phi- 
 lanthropists, economists and progressionists of 
 every sort, we know all that you would say. 
 We have heard your arguments time and 
 again. We have listened to your statistics 
 and watched the shaking of your head over 
 these unions of the poor. But the wisdom of 
 life is wiser than men, else He and She would 
 do well to listen to you instead of walking 
 together here on the hill road. They do not 
 know these things which we are seeking to 
 reduce to what we call social science; and 
 if they should know them, what then? Are 
 they not of more value than many sparrows ? 
 
 The afternoon shadows lengthen. Home- 
 going groups are beginning the long descent. 
 The voices of little children calling to one 
 another ring silverly over the hillside. He and 
 
 65 
 
She are not hastening. They have loitered 
 along to 'where a bend in the road affords a 
 wide outlook upon the city below, the gleam- 
 ing bay, the white-w^inged ships coming in 
 through the Golden Gate, the distant hills. In 
 her hand are some poppies which he gathered. 
 Down to the w^estern horizon sinks the sun. 
 The gold has faded from the road, leaving it a 
 winding ribbon of gray. The crests of the hills 
 and the gently swelling uplands are flooded 
 w^ith crimson Hght. It touches the eucalyptus 
 trees into glory and flames in splendor along 
 the western sky. It lights her face and his as 
 they stand transformed before each other. 
 They do not know that the crimson light has 
 made them beautiful. They think the beauty 
 each sees is the other's, a part of their won- 
 derful discovery, and who shall say that either 
 is w^rong? It is w^e who are blind, and not 
 love. Indeed, love, alone, sees clearly. Exter- 
 nal, temporal conditions have made his body 
 less than noble; have crossed his face with 
 dull, heavy lines. They have narrowed her 
 mental horizon and imprisoned her soul in a 
 poor little cage, but He and She are held 
 above these, now. They have been touched 
 by the finger of God, and have seen each 
 other's beauty, the beauty which is their 
 
 66 
 
jsiiM: V ■si.iwrmmr 
 
 AN IDYL OF THE HILLS 
 
 human right ; which once seen is never, again, 
 'Wholly lost. 
 
 The crimson has faded to rose, the rose to 
 wonderful green, the green has turned to 
 white. The early moon has come out to 
 light the hill. Hand in hand they are passing 
 down the road. Hand in hand they are going 
 through life, toiling together, bearing together 
 the burdens Fate brings to them. They know 
 not what these may be. It is not given 
 them to know the future, or by taking 
 thought to lighten its ills or explain the 
 blunders that have heaped these up. They 
 have no strength or power, but to them has 
 been given love. 
 
 Will love be theirs when Spring is gone 
 and the summer drouth is upon them; when 
 Autumn's harvest time has passed them 
 by and Winter's breath has chilled their 
 blood? Will love be theirs when, hand in 
 hand, in the uncertain white light, they jour- 
 ney down the hill of life? The cynic smiles 
 at the question. The scientist deprecates it. 
 Philanthropist and sociologist shake their 
 heads. Let it pass. Love is theirs now. 
 The universe is theirs, for each to each is 
 universal. The Life of the universe is in 
 them, and in the shimmering radiance which 
 
 67 
 
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 R E 
 
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 LAND PAST 
 
 ^t^> 
 
 3^::s3gs::s: 
 
 lights the way, silvering the city and making 
 long, shining paths across the distant water, 
 they are walking down the hill road. 
 
 68 
 
AT THE SMITHY DOOR 
 
AT THE SMITHY DOOR 
 
 E3fe 
 
 HE sunlight pours in through 
 the wide door of the smithy 
 and lights up the hlack walls 
 and rafters, the shining anvil, 
 the invalid vehicles, the broken 
 wheels and half- wheels, axles, 
 ploughshares, and old iron scat- 
 tered about, and the forge, with its smolder- 
 ing fire, its tall chimney and wheezy bellows. 
 The delight of nature and the joy of hand- 
 craft have met in this place. 
 
 One may step from the back door directly 
 down to the stream, which is here wide and 
 shallow, with gravelly banks, overhung by 
 great sycamores and oaks. From time to time 
 the small wild life of the woods overflows into 
 the shop. A brown towhee just hopped across 
 the threshold and pecked, tentatively, among 
 the scattered hoof-parings on the floor. A but- 
 terfly, ^with widespread wings of black-and- 
 white-and-orange, rests on the long sweep of 
 the bellows. A huge, patient farm-horse, with 
 crested neck and heavily feathered fetlock 
 joints, looks around in mild interest, as the 
 smith, with his long tongs, draws a big iron 
 shoe from the fire and starts the anvil cho- 
 rus ringing accompaniment to a shower of 
 sparks. 
 
 71 
 
The little brown bird takes flight at the 
 sound of the first blow, although she had 
 apparently been unconscious of the horse's 
 restless movements, or the heavy stamping of 
 his feet. The horse himself might be par- 
 doned a small degree of nervousness, over the 
 clangor and the blaze, but he shows no fear. 
 What faithful, friendly toilers for man these 
 big, narrow-brained creatures are, with their 
 mild eyes and enormous strength ! They seem 
 to have no knowledge of that strength, save 
 as it serves man ; no will save to do his bid- 
 ding. 
 
 The craftsman here at the smithy is a 
 French Canadian, who learned his trade as a 
 youth in a little village of his country, where 
 the blacksmith was the town oracle on all 
 matters temporal, and the village priest kept 
 watch and guard over the things of the spirit. 
 He is superstitious at the same time that he 
 is shrewd, but simple and straightforward, 
 taking pride in his work, loving the animals 
 he shoes and dealing fairly with all men. 
 
 "You better had let me correct that bolt," 
 he says, scanning the light cart of a stranger 
 who has driven up to ask the way to the 
 next village. "He may lose when you are 
 away far off. I correct him in just one 
 
 7a 
 
instant." He suits the action to the word 
 and then smiles at the idea of taking pay 
 for a thing like that. "There was nothing 
 broke. I just correct him. He might break; 
 might never hurt; you better be all right." 
 Such is his idea of loving the neighbor. 
 
 The smith would be filled with amaze 
 could he know how admirable he is as he 
 deftly fashions the shoe upon his anvil. 
 There is something in manual skill which 
 delights the sincerest depths in each of us. 
 Who does not feel a certain warm pleasure 
 in watching things making? I used daily to 
 pass a window where a potter sat working 
 at his wheel, making little bean-pots. His 
 seemed as trivial a task as one could imag- 
 ine, yet he was never without an audience. 
 Workingmen paused to consider their fellow 
 at his craft. Women lingered to watch the 
 unfamiliar sight Street urchins htmg, fas- 
 cinated, about the window, but the greater 
 part of the loiterers were business men, 
 wholesale merchants of the quarter, grave 
 bankers, brokers, lawyers, men whose brains 
 were constantly busy with large affairs. 
 These could seldom pass the place without 
 stopping to gaze at the whirling wheel and 
 the slender, skilful fingers manipulating the 
 
 73 
 
clay with a deftness that was a joy to 
 behold. 
 
 The pleasure which comes from handi- 
 craft is fundamental. Note how quiet even 
 a young child becomes if he can but watch 
 something doing. The human hand is fash- 
 ioned for constructing, as well as for grasp- 
 ing, but we are likely to forget this, and to 
 suffer through the forgetting, in the hurry 
 and scramble of our modern, machine-made 
 world. We need a return to first principles; 
 to the thoughtfiilness, the delicacy, the sim- 
 plicity which come from doing work in which 
 head and hand act together. It is not wholly 
 a fad, though there is danger that it may 
 become one, the modem turning of so many 
 people to hand-work, and to the work of 
 olden time, for beauty of line and of struc- 
 ture. Consciously or unconsciously, we come 
 back to hand-craft as we come back to the 
 soil, for the renewal of purpose and of 
 strength. 
 
 It is not, however, because it is old, or 
 primarily, because it is hand-wrought, that a 
 thing made by man has beauty. We can 
 create ugliness with our hands; we are doing 
 it in these days, constructing things useless 
 and false, for the mere sake of construction, 
 
 74 
 
missing wholly the principles of use and 
 honesty. In early days, when a man wrought, 
 in whatever fabric, he made things as a man 
 might, with straightforwardness, until they 
 served his purpose. He ornamented his struc- 
 ture, too, as he could, but gave no thought to 
 the construction of ornament. Thus the old 
 things, things crude and common if you will, 
 have a beauty all their own, because they 
 are frankly what human craft could attain 
 to. Their sturdy simplicity of line appeals 
 to what is best in us. We call their designs 
 quaint, and prate of artistic values, and of 
 aesthetics, but it is really their honesty which 
 touches us, and that which is honest in us 
 stirs to response. Machine-made stufT is so 
 often cheap and meretricious, not because of 
 its mechanical lifelessness, but because it at- 
 tempts too much. The certainty of mechan- 
 ical effort has tempted us to artistic sin. The 
 result is such ugliness and hatefulness as are 
 the inevitable accompaniments of all sin. 
 
 I own a rough gray mug of commonest 
 clay — the simplest thing in the way of a 
 vessel that the human hand can make, 
 whirled out from a wheel and finished with 
 a handle of clay, thick and clumsy, pinched 
 up from the lump and pressed on; but in 
 
 75 
 
shaping this handle the craftsman drew his 
 thumb and fingers down its length and fash- 
 ioned it into a curve that fits to the hand 
 like a familiar glove. It lies in the bent 
 fingers with the comfort of a caress, and 
 the thumb falls into place on its top, just 
 where the potter's thumb pressed and per- 
 fected his work. The marks of thumb and 
 fingers are plainly visible in the clay, and I 
 never take the cup from its hook without a 
 feeling of pleasure. The sense of kinship in 
 that human touch makes the rough fabric 
 lovely. Looking at it the user realizes that 
 so his own hand would have lingered and 
 pressed, had the cup been his work. What 
 some one has called "the imperfection of 
 human effort" becomes the perfection of 
 human sympathy. 
 
 The sounds fi*om the woods mingle pleas- 
 antly with the clangor of hammer upon anvil, 
 and the shuffling, restless movements of the 
 farm-horse. Going out through the little rear 
 door the conditions are reversed; the sounds 
 from the smithy ring silverly above the run- 
 ning of the water, the breathing of the soft 
 wind in the trees, and the peevish, incessant 
 call for food, of young birds. The stream is 
 as transparent as glass, and small fresh- water 
 
 76 
 
crabs go skittering along on the gravelly 
 bottom. 
 
 The canyon is full of peace and beauty, and 
 still with the alert stillness of an afternoon in 
 the full springtide. The perfume of fruit- 
 blossoms fills the air, and the whole world 
 thrills with ineffable meaning, like an angelic 
 word. The big farm-horse has been shod 
 and is now tied outside the smithy. His 
 owner w^ill presently come and lead him 
 home. The golden afternoon is wearing to a 
 close. The sun is hidden behind the hills as 
 the smith secures his rough, battened door by 
 thrusting a padlock through a staple on the 
 outside, shaking it to see that it is secure ere 
 he takes his way homeward through the 
 canyon. I hear him humming a bit of song 
 as he goes. Why should he not sing ? What 
 said the gentle sage of Vailima of the essen- 
 tials to happiness ? " To earn a little ; to spend 
 a little less; to be kind; to be honest; to 
 have a few friends." Then, as one walks 
 home through the early springtime evening 
 nature's own chorus takes up the song and 
 rounds it to completion. 
 
 tofC. 
 
 77 
 
THIS EDITION OT UPLAND PASTURES WAS DONE 
 FOR MESSRS. PAUL ELDER AND COMPANY AT THE 
 TOMOYE PRESS, SAN FRANCISCO, IN THE YEAR 
 NINETEEN HUNDRED & FOUR. NO OTHER EDITION 
 WILL BE PRINTED FROM THE TYPE USED HEREIN. 
 
X 
 
y 
 
SEP 26 1904