\VALJCS ri 
 NEW ENGLAND 
 
 CHARLES GOODRICH WHITING 
 
LIBRARY 
 
 OF THE 
 
 UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA. 
 
 
in jliieto 
 
Give to me the gospel of the fields and woods, 
 The sermons written in the book of books ; 
 The sweet communion of the things of earth 
 Fresh with the warm baptism of the sun ; 
 Give me the offertory of bud and bloom, 
 The perfect caroling of happy birds ; 
 Give me the creed of one of God s fair days 
 Wrought in the beauty of its loveliness ; 
 And then the benediction of the stars, 
 His eloquent ministers of the night. 
 
 Ravenscroft. 
 
o . J . e 
 UNIV- SITY 
 
 - & 
 
Walks In 
 
 New England 
 
 BY 
 
 Charles Goodrich Whiting 
 
 Author of 
 
 " The Saunterer " 
 With Illustrations from Photographs 
 
 Published by JOHN LANE 
 
 == Che Bodley Read ===== 
 
 LONDON AND NEW YORK 
 
 M CMIII 
 
Copyright by 
 
 John Lane 
 
 1903 
 
 Edition Published 
 April 1903 
 
 Printed by T. Morey & Son 
 Greenfield Mass. U. S. A. 
 
>/ 
 
 VJ 72- 
 
 TO 
 
 SOLOMON STEBBINS 
 MY OLD COMRADE 
 
 AND 
 
 THE BEST MAN OF WOOD AND FIELD 
 I EVER KNEW 
 
THE ILLUSTRATIONS 
 
 The illustrations in this volume are reproductions from 
 photographs taken on the walks which gave life to these 
 notes on Nature. All but four were done by Joel H. 
 Hendrick, who, with Chester T. Stockwell, has in these 
 later years been a constant companion. The portrait 
 facing the title was taken by E. J. Lazelle, in the course 
 of a memorable climb over Mount Tom. Three other 
 pictures, of farm life in the Berkshire Hills, were made 
 by Albert Cargill and Edward Elwell Whiting. 
 
LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS 
 
 1. "The Saunterer," . .... Frontispiece 
 
 Facing page 
 
 2. The Mountain s Peak, 20 
 
 3. Gray Birches : Hyla Sunday, 34 
 
 4. White Birches on Easter Morn, 49 
 
 5. Where the Birds haunt the Spring, .... 68 
 
 6. At the Farm House Door, 84 
 
 7. The Beetling Brow, Mount Holyoke, .... 86 
 
 8. In the Midst of the Woods, 95 
 
 9. The Saunterer s Mountain Home, .... 98 
 
 10. At the Altar of the Hemlock, 100 
 
 11. The View through the Gorge, ..... 105 
 
 12. Ferns and Sarsaparillas, 118 
 
 13. Blackberrying 140 
 
 14. The Mount Tom Range, 145 
 
 15. The Hillside Pasture, I5 2 
 
 16. The Lone Pine at Sunset, i?3 
 
 17. The White Oak at the Mountain Portal, . . .189 
 
 1 8. Wildwater in a Wind of Fall, I9 8 
 
 19. Poet and Mystic at Oak Knoll, 208 
 
 20. The Pine s Grand Column, 217 
 
 21. Seen over Cedars and Junipers, 231 
 
 22. Icicles over Wildwater, 243 
 
 23. Wildwater in Winter Ice, . . . . . 252 
 
 24. Over Newly Cleared Land, ...... 260 
 
CONTENTS 
 
 Come! Thou Song Sparrow, . . . . . . . 13 
 
 A Sabbath in the Open, . . 21 
 
 The Life of Earth, 27 
 
 The Sugar Snow, 28 
 
 The Hyla s Voice is Heard in the Land, .... 30 
 
 In the Soul s Native Air, . 35 
 
 Easter Hope, 37 
 
 A Far Easter in the Future, . . . . . *" .., 45 
 
 " Where Nature Reigns," 49 
 
 The Culminating Easter, 55 
 
 April at Work, ... . . . . . . 59 
 
 The Chain, -65 
 
 Opening April, 66 
 
 Hepatica, 7 
 
 These Summer Visitations, 76 
 
 May Song, . . . . . . . 80 
 
 The Marvelous Beauty of the Spring, . . . . 81 
 
 In Mid-May, 88 
 
 11 Ah Still Delay ! Thou Art so Fair 1 " . . . : . 93 
 
 Fragrance and Melody, 97 
 
 An Over-Ardent June, ... IO2 
 Birds, Insects, Man and Woman, . . . .107 
 
 Nature s Independence Day, 11 7 
 
 Looking Unto the Hills, I2 
 
 The Birds in the Thickets, I2 4 
 
 July Days, I2 7 
 
 The Electric Storm, I 3 
 
 A Seasonable Divagation, *33 
 
 The Height of Summer, J 39 
 
 In the Dog-Days : 1898, J 44 
 
 "The Fountain Light of All Our Day," . . . . I5 1 
 
 The Symphony of the Storm, 154 
 
 After the Summer J 5 8 
 
Contents 
 
 Page 
 
 The Fall Begins, 163 
 
 These September Days, 168 
 
 After a Dry Summer, 175 
 
 Wind of the East, 176 
 
 A Fall Day of Mists, 180 
 
 The Glories of October, . . 183 
 
 Paradise was Never Lost, 187 
 
 Of His Good Pleasure, 193 
 
 Let Us Say, " He is Beautiful," . . . . . .199 
 
 Ready for Winter, 205 
 
 Witch Hazel Bloom, 211 
 
 Gliding into Indian Summer, 216 
 
 Flowers in November Bloom, 220 
 
 One Indian Summer Day, 224 
 
 Indian Summer Reverie, 230 
 
 The Second Day of December 236 
 
 The Day of the Child, 239 
 
 Winter Takes Possession . . 242 
 
 The Splendour of the New Jerusalem, 247 
 
 Skating and Sliding Down Hill, . . . . ... 252 
 
 Across Lots is Best, 259 
 
 Things One Sees in Winter, 266 
 
 A Prophesying Day, 272 
 
 Winter Morn and Moon, . 276 
 
 Spring Days in Winter, . 280 
 
 The Great March Blizzard of 1888, 284 
 
 The Picture after the Storm, 289 
 
 The Snow-Storm, ... 291 
 
 In City and Country, 294 
 
 The Unbeginning Love, 299 
 
in 
 
WALKS IN 
 
 NEW ENGLAND 
 
 Come ! Thou Song Sparrow 
 
 THE vernal equinox is past, and all the 
 storms are here of snow and sleet and 
 rain, and winter still wages his perpetual 
 quarrel with spring. Late is the coming of 
 spring, long is the winter s persistence ; the birds 
 on the wing from the south wait for the south 
 wind s assistance ; a few of the bluebirds have 
 come, but where is the daring song-sparrow that 
 sings over snowdrifts of home when the March 
 wind is chilling the marrow ? Dumb are the 
 fence-rails he lights on, silent the bush and the 
 brier. Oh ! for the charm that delights one 
 when the sun rises red as a fire, and the sparrow 
 springs swift from the ground in bright unre- 
 strainable joy, and in a sweet whirlwind of sound 
 lets out the whole secret employ of the spell of 
 the opening season, then we know that the 
 spring is at hand, we know that in rhyme and 
 in reason new life is at work in the land. Come, 
 
 13 
 
14 Walks in New England 
 
 then, O sparrow ! and hymn to us, talk of the 
 new greening meadows ; prophesy what is now 
 dim to us, scatter the snowdrifts to shadows ! 
 What are the crows in the field, or crying their 
 caws o er the forest, what does the chickadee 
 yield but his courage when need is the sorest, 
 what do such robins as live in the hemlocks de 
 spite of wild weather, what can all of these give 
 to compare with the sparrow s specked feather ? 
 Even the bluebird s bright carol is not so inspir 
 ing a presage as when the song-sparrow will dare 
 all the elements with his sweet message. Come 
 then, O sparrow ! and wing to the fence-post 
 and joyously hymn to us, quick will our spirits 
 then spring to the answer that now is so grim to 
 us. 
 
 Pardon a trifle of rhapsody, for notwithstand 
 ing the forbidding storms, we have felt the breath 
 of spring, at odd times, on rare days, with dis 
 couragements and miseries between, but still there 
 are the growing trees and shrubs which swell 
 their buds of leaf and bloom, giving evidence that 
 Nature s great processes are steadily advancing. 
 This is after the vernal equinox, which sets a 
 milestone against the boundary of a strenuous 
 and sturdy winter of the most old-fashioned type. 
 Not since the winter of 1842-3 has there been 
 so long a season of snow. Very nearly all sorts 
 
Come ! Thou Song Sparrow 1 5 
 
 of weather have been furnished, and there is 
 scarcely any stock left except the summer stock. 
 Even our thaws have been very wintry, and the 
 fogs we had in February are, so the farmers say, 
 earnest of frosts in May, while the thunder show 
 ers mean mischief of cold in midsummer. 
 Perhaps there is some sort of balance in the sea 
 sons malaises, but when we are told that because 
 the first snow-storm came on November 24, we 
 must have 24 snow-storms, and we learn that the 
 tale is not filled without three more, we find it 
 an overdraft on our credulity. Still, late as it is, 
 by a little hurrying up, the three storms can get 
 here before April. It is certainly rather unusual 
 to look out upon a wild wintry world of white at 
 so late a date. Why, the farmers on the hills are 
 yet sledding over the shun-pikes instead of the 
 turnpikes, going out into the fields by paths 
 well determined through many generations to 
 avoid the drifts in the established roads. Such 
 an experience is very rare. It is what they call a 
 new thing, though it is plain that there can be 
 no new types of seasons, vary as seasons will, 
 they have every one their precedents. And old 
 inhabitants relate how in 1 843 the sleighing lasted 
 in the valley until April 1 1 . 
 
 In the course of this riotous winter, wonderful 
 exhibitions of beauty have been made. We re- 
 
1 6 IValks in New England 
 
 call one tremendous day of northwest wind, in 
 which an inch or two of light snow mounted to 
 drifts here and there six or eight feet high. The 
 wind was 50 miles an hour on the top of the 
 Berkshire hills, but as one faced the sunset extraor 
 dinary effects of colour were produced. All the 
 way up in the morning the snow wreaths wrought 
 by the wind made marvelous pictures of magic as 
 they swept up the hillsides, and Emerson s sea, 
 " carving the coastwise mountain into caves," was 
 fellowed with this riot of the drifting snow. And 
 here and again in some curious hollow in the hills 
 one beheld a miniature in delicate gray and white 
 not black and white, there is no black in Na 
 ture of the light flames that hover over the crater 
 of such a volcano as Kilauea. But now, suddenly, 
 as the edge of a hill was turned, the rays of the 
 descending sun swept over the crest of a pasture, 
 and all the gray-white snow was turned to rose 
 and glowed with the exquisite beauty of that pure 
 colour, for some minutes, until, the sun declining, 
 it was shot through by a golden glow that empur 
 pled it, all as if to contradict and destroy the 
 power of the tempest. It was a transfiguration 
 wrought by the elements in evidence of the po 
 tential glory of winter. 
 
 Later there was a lull in the storms, and the 
 fogs came and crusted the trees and the shrubs 
 
Come / Thou Song Sparrow 1 7 
 
 with delicate frost-work. This was charming and 
 gracious, but there was finer beauty to come in the 
 several ice-storms of the season. Never were there 
 more glorious exhibitions of ice-draped and sun 
 lit forests than in the course of the winter that 
 still lingers. Those who dwell in cities and see 
 only the trees in the streets know little about the 
 brilliant impression the forest makes in such a 
 garb. Indeed, a vast deal of the glory of Nature 
 is only to be realized in the winter, when the 
 trees stand forth in their essential character of 
 strength and vigour. The woodland was magnifi 
 cent in the great ice-storm of midwinter, when 
 the ice remained on the trees for some ten days, 
 glittering and rustling in the wind and sun. But 
 it was a ruinous glory to many a tree. The 
 birches were bent in picturesque arches over 
 mountain roads, and dipped their heads deep in 
 the snow which followed and pinned them down. 
 A remarkable effect was produced in the park 
 of Holland mountain, so wonderfully planned 
 by Nature, with its groups and vistas of red 
 cedars. In all that beautiful hilltop there were 
 few of these cedars which remained upright ; and 
 a great number of them were broken off at 
 half or two-thirds their height. Then there have 
 been many storms which left the trees covered 
 with light, soft snow, creating a fairyland less 
 B 
 
1 8 Walks in New England 
 
 glowing with rainbow colours, but most deli 
 cately graceful. 
 
 The winter has been notable in these later weeks 
 for the swelling of the flower and leaf buds on 
 shrubs and trees, so manifest that everyone must 
 have noted it. The elm buds, which are not the 
 earliest, are distinctly ready to come forth, and as 
 for the willow catkins, never was there a season in 
 which they have been more ambitious or more un 
 decided. They usually begin to show themselves 
 at the very outset of winter, just enough to indi 
 cate their intentions ; but this passing season the 
 bushes at the edges of ponds, in the swamps 
 or along the river banks, have thrust out their 
 silky " pussies/ and then drawn them in closer to 
 their sheaths, even when the ice was close about 
 their roots, or in the midst of snowdrifts. But the 
 poet is right " None is too late none is too 
 soon." 
 
 Now around the borders of the swamps, where 
 the ghostly drooping panicles of the poison sumach 
 are seen beneath the cedars and the hackmatacks, 
 the flower buds of the cassandra are growing very 
 definite and determined, and the more delicate 
 pink andromeda follows its sturdier example. 
 For colour, there is nothing to surpass in its way 
 a swamp of the cassandra, whose leaves are now 
 rich bronze, or fairly copper hue, while around 
 
Come ! Thou Song Sparrow 19 
 
 the shores the huckleberry bushes are reddening 
 their new shoots, and the spice bushes and clethras 
 add their note of coming leafage and flowering. 
 Still linger also the varied leaves of last year on 
 the oaks, and the pines rise with green distinction 
 in the midst of the otherwise bare branches. 
 
 A striking picture, the other day, was that of a 
 great balm-of-gilead poplar, its buds far advanced, 
 and in its top a crow, whose prismatic black was 
 relieved against the greenish yellow of the trunk 
 and boughs. The crows have been very abundant, 
 and hundreds have been seen before these last 
 snows feeding on grubs in the pastures around the 
 city. Now they have betaken themselves to the 
 Long Island Sound shores, until the snow shall 
 melt again. It is marvelous how these things re 
 cur, year after year, and our eyes are so blind and 
 our hearts so dull to realize how infinite life throbs 
 through the earth, and God is living in all that he 
 has sent out, to tell us that we are not the sole re 
 cipients of his spirit. 
 
 We see through a glass darkly, and yet we may 
 see face to face as truly now as we ever shall. 
 No man hath seen God at any time, no man ever 
 will see him except in the myriad manifestations 
 of his life, around us at every step, and most 
 wonderfully present, no doubt, to the generations 
 that seek after a sign, in the opening of spring. 
 
2O IValks in New England 
 
 Let us open our eyes, our ears, our hearts, to the 
 great current of his life, of which we are but a 
 part, how small a part or how great we cannot 
 yet imagine. Unnumbered lives, infinite worlds, 
 remain for us to learn, and we would do well 
 to learn as much of this one as we can, and ap 
 prehend in some degree the marvel of the divine 
 life. 
 
THE MOUNTAIN S PEAK 
 
A Sabbath in the Open 21 
 
 A Sabbath in the Open 
 
 IT was a good Sabbath that was kept in the 
 fields and woods ; a good Sunday, too, full 
 of spring hope and heart, and as one stood 
 on the brow of a brown hill, and saw the oaks and 
 apples and maples suddenly alive with bluebirds 
 and robins, with now and then a sparrow, not to 
 mention woodpeckers, coming in on the south 
 west wind, and heard the exquisite warble of the 
 bluebird from every tree, there stirred in the 
 heart that thrilling pleasure that is almost as 
 poignant as pain, so keen and sudden and serious 
 is its appeal to the hidden life, that reveals itself 
 so reticently and with such hesitations and with 
 drawals throughout the long wintry season. 
 Here then sounds the emphatic call of Nature : 
 Mistake not ; the moment arrives, the harbingers 
 are at hand ; my most unselfish child, spring, 
 is busy with the marsh cabbage and busy with 
 the hepatica buds ; out again creep the willow 
 pussies that had retired while February froze the 
 air ; again swell the poplar and the hazel and alder 
 
22 Walks in New England 
 
 aments, this time they may come out and fear 
 naught. 
 
 So irresistibly suggest the undertones of Na 
 ture, echoing the bluebird and the robin, and tell 
 ing of the song-sparrow that begins to sing on the 
 verge of the snowdrifts the song he will not cease 
 to sing until November closes tight the sheaths 
 of the buds that are to bloom another year. Of 
 course, one finds the bluejays in fine fettle with 
 their spring whistling to balance their shrill 
 screams ; of course the crows are plenty, for they 
 are with us all through the winter. Perhaps the 
 chickadee is never happier than now, as he begins 
 slowly to try his vernal phoebe note, while he ex 
 plores the trees and stumps for those insects 
 which are his food, a useful as well as a beauti 
 ful brave creature. He is life, life sentient and 
 conscious and at work in the realm for which it 
 has been fitted, life that goes on and can never 
 cease. This lovely creature, so small, so mod 
 est, but so unafraid ; with clear black poll above 
 that bright and trusting eye ; hopping almost at 
 your very feet, is he not the frankest of the bird 
 races ? He scarcely suspects a man who behaves 
 himself. 
 
 But the crow that drops inadvertently into the 
 neighbourhood of one of us, how furtively and 
 silently he departs ! nor makes a note of criticism 
 
A Sabbath in the Open 23 
 
 until he gets well out of gunshot, then he tells 
 all the other fellows that in such and such a glen 
 or wood their arch-enemy has a posted sentinel. 
 We hear him, far overhead, screaming, " Don t 
 go there ! " His first cousin, the dandy bluejay, 
 has no such timidity : indeed it is scorn this gay, 
 skyey-tinted predatory rascal expresses as he 
 swings down close overhead of the intruding 
 human being. All the birds have their opinion 
 of men. There is the ruffed grouse, which we 
 call the partridge,- hen and cock are so distrust 
 ful that they are up and away before we know 
 where they be. All these one may espy in a 
 March ramble, if circumstances favour, and might 
 be wholly happy in espying them were it not for 
 the knowledge that there are guns. Traces, too, 
 of other birds may be detected, as when in a wood 
 of yellow pines, the ground beneath is littered 
 with the eviscerated shells of the cones, on whose 
 seeds the Canadian crossbills have been feeding, 
 and no doubt some bluejays also. 
 
 The tracks in the forest snows are eloquent of 
 life, as silence is eloquent in this secret manner. 
 When, traversing the snowy woods, one finds a 
 convergence of fox and dog tracks to some cav 
 ernous ledge, which shows that there has been 
 many a chase that ended at that refuge, he readily 
 imagines the shrewd joy of Master Reynard in 
 
24 Walks in New England 
 
 leading his free-foot pursuers to the place where 
 they must perforce lose him. There is nothing 
 more interesting in its way than the insouciant 
 fashion in which a fox will regard the dog that is 
 chasing him. He will loiter, and turn, and sniff, 
 and swing his broad brush, and then dart off, with 
 a sure lead, and anon double and cross, and pres 
 ently vanish. Then the free-foot dog will 
 pause, and cry, and give it up after a while, un 
 less the man is along; and the man does not 
 make it sure. 
 
 Curious things may be observed, as for instance 
 when among a lot of mouse tracks one perceives a 
 straight mark between one line of individual toes, 
 and realizes that an unfortunate mouse has had 
 his tail broken so that it trails behind him. Mice 
 have ways of their own. They work along un 
 der the snow until they reach the edge of a drift 
 beneath a ledge, or the stem of some tree or bush, 
 with its melted passage to the ground, when they 
 emerge, thus covering their real home from dis 
 covery. The forest is full of tricks, full of evi 
 dences of the wisdom of the furry or feathery 
 tribes that inhabit it. And their wisdom and 
 folly, whichever is shown, is marvelously akin to 
 the human wisdom and folly. 
 
 Now surely the spells of the frost are loosened, 
 and those skunk cabbages that choose, and that 
 
A Sabbath in the Open 25 
 
 have not hurried too much, will presently be 
 humming all over their spadixes with pollen- 
 scattering flowers, for there is sound in this work 
 of reproduction, though our ears be not finely 
 enough attuned to distinguish it. Our yet im 
 perfect senses miss a hundred shades and hues 
 and tints of colour, which artists are ever striving 
 to discover and fix on canvas ; they cannot see 
 light where multitudes of living things of so- 
 called lower orders do see light and go about 
 their businesses ; they cannot catch the myriad 
 overtones even of the musical instruments we 
 make, no one of which, not even the subtle violin, 
 ever registered the infinite delicacies and refine 
 ments of tone that vibrate to the spiritual sense ; 
 they cannot hear the corn grow, though they hear 
 the waters trickle and the frosts whisper ; and 
 even the movements of the ants in the ground, 
 the beetles in the bark, the larvae in the wood, 
 are only heard by a few whose trained ears have 
 reached a neater touch of hearing. 
 
 We live in a world of sense and manifestation 
 scarce apprehended, and for many of its phenom 
 ena we are less finely organized than the trivial 
 creatures which we regard not. Man is the lord 
 of creation, but while he assumes this rank with 
 great conceit, he knows little of his lordship, and 
 less of his subjects. The few that study life and 
 
26 Walks in New England 
 
 dwell amid its myriad forms, and search in them 
 for the great secrets, in great measure begin at the 
 wrong end with an assumption of the material as 
 the ultimate. But there is new light gleaming 
 over the field of life, a new study of the things 
 we can physically touch and see as related to 
 things beyond physics, a growth of science to 
 ward spirit, a conviction that life was before those 
 manifestations which touch our imperfect physical 
 sense ; which was and is infinite and illimitable, 
 and as it never began can never end. The uni 
 verse, from least atom to greatest concourse of 
 atoms, from the simplest sensitiveness to the fur 
 thest reach of man s soul, is all one living being, 
 of which man no less surely and no more truly 
 than the amoeba is the expression. 
 
The Life of Earth 27 
 
 THE LIFE OF EARTH 
 
 The Spring s life breathes in the air amid the snows ; 
 
 The Spring s pulse beats beneath the eager sun s ray ; 
 Pliant and yellow and mellow the willow bark grows ; 
 
 The beechen buds listen and glisten and think of May ; 
 
 Sweet at the forest s cool verge there steals a scent, 
 A scent that is tender and intimate, yet not bold 
 
 To quarrel and rival the pine, but still has lent 
 
 A freedom that whispers and smiles amid the cold. 
 
 The knolls are bare and the mosses are freshly green, 
 The wintergreen berries redden and spice the view, 
 
 Where the pulse of the young year s heart is sensibly seen 
 As arbutus blushes peep from their sleep anew. 
 
 This is the grace of the Spring New England knows, 
 The arbutus rathe and blithe, that wins to its side 
 
 The earliest ardour the sun can give to the snows, 
 The perfume that promises all the dear spring-tide. 
 
28 Walks in New England 
 
 The Sugar Snow 
 
 THE snow was a surprise, certainly. Few 
 years within the memory of this genera 
 tion or the last can parallel the experi 
 ence of finding this wintry substance covering 
 the ground a foot deep on the morning of 
 March 29. Let us try to hope that it was the 
 last foot fall of winter. The birds have a 
 right to complain of misplaced confidence, and 
 so have we, since the blandness of spring, the 
 day before, deluded us into regarding her in 
 tentions as honourable, and we welcomed her in 
 expensive language, forgetting what an inveterate 
 coquette she is. Where spring went, after flirting 
 with us all so sweetly, Saturday, who can say ? 
 but no doubt she was just as insinuating and 
 cheating, wherever she was. The bluebirds woke 
 up Sunday morning and took the snow as the 
 joke of the season ; they warbled around genially 
 and expressed a clear conviction that they could 
 stand it longer than the snow could. The snow 
 felt a good deal that way, too, before night. The 
 
The Sugar Snow 29 
 
 crows, naturally, observed that no such thing 
 ever came without cause, and they gave a few for 
 its speedy departure. The old farmer, starting 
 for meetin on runners, said this was as near goin 
 sleighin on the Fourth as he ever wanted to. 
 The boys said they were glad there was so much 
 of it for there would be some left for snowballs 
 Monday. Moreover, it gave everybody some 
 thing fresh to say about the weather. Something 
 was heard about filling milk-pans with it, to pour 
 the boiling syrup on and make that dainty, maple 
 wax. It was surely a sugar snow, one of those 
 swift night falls, on frozen ground, which send the 
 sap stirring up the maples when the sun comes 
 out. It was really very beautiful snow, and 
 whether dissipating in the sunshine or shining in 
 the moonlight, it was several degrees whiter than 
 the average. Less meteoric dust in it. Spring 
 snow always looks so very young, and it is a 
 blessing to the new grass and young grain, 
 one of those blessings that brighten as they take 
 their flight. 
 
30 Walks in New England 
 
 The Hylas Voice is Heard in the Land 
 
 THE last Sunday in Lent was the first 
 Sunday in Lent to assume in its exterior 
 phases, as a day of the grace of God in 
 Nature, that truly joyous aspect which belongs to 
 a feast day, as all the Sundays in Lent are feast 
 days by the church reckoning. So far as the 
 common feeble mortal is concerned, he wants the 
 sun to shine if his mood is to be festal. The 
 morning indications were all for rain before the 
 day should end, bright though it began ; but the 
 wind shifted to northwest, without much increase 
 of cold, and the splendid sun ruled the day to a 
 fine sunset. There will be many other perfect 
 days, in the hastening advance of summer, and 
 beyond ; but Easter itself will be rare, indeed, 
 if it equals the transcendent beauty of yester 
 day, when life informed the air, the earth, the 
 birds, the marsh-king s courtiers hyla and croak 
 ing frog ; and breathed low beneath the ground 
 the summons of bloom. Every character of 
 
The Hylas Voice is Heard 31 
 
 life was in the over breeze and the subterranean 
 whispers. 
 
 There were bluebirds with the sky on their 
 backs and the earth on their breasts, warbling 
 with that tender and unobtrusive delicacy of which 
 they have the sole secret. There were robins, 
 cheery and bold ; and there was the modest 
 phoebe, whose fellow the chickadee now is little 
 in evidence, going northward. There is much 
 talk of plagiarism in music, and it might be a 
 question which of these birds is the plagiarist of 
 the phoebe call, if it had not been for Paderewski s 
 daring and truthful assertion that there is no 
 proper theft in music, since no theme can be ab 
 solutely original, and the question depends on 
 the use of the theme. This lets out both the 
 phoebe and the chickadee, for each has an unde 
 niable right to the notes he was born with. The 
 song-sparrow, most celestially lovely of all the 
 songsters of our clime, is now in his first rich de 
 light in new light, new love, new home, new life. 
 He is a wonderful fellow for continuous joy ; 
 for sweet as all the others are, he will sing for 
 the beautiful love of song until November chills. 
 Other sparrows there are now to keep him com 
 pany, called by various names, but none of them 
 has quite the inspiration of this nonpareil of the 
 early fields and copses. There is pleasure now, 
 
32 IValks in New England 
 
 as always, in the hoarse and knowing caws of the 
 crows and the lighter but still passionate tempers 
 of the bluejay. But no longer the crow and his 
 cousin jay, no longer the tones of winter strike 
 the keynote gentler, tenderer, more exquisite 
 strains are filling the air. 
 
 One may hardly call the croak of the early 
 bullfrog and the shrill piping of the hyla by such 
 titles as these ; but these queer creatures now 
 make, wherever there are ponds or marshes, an 
 important part of the spring symphony. What 
 an elusive being is this little hyla, clinging to the 
 stems of the cat-tail or sweet-flag or to the sedges 
 and water grasses, indistinguishable from the 
 stems he clings to unless one with exhaustless 
 patience sits beside some marsh until the tiny crea 
 ture forgets that the alien is there, and again raises 
 muzzle above the water. Even then what a long 
 time will pass before the " curious impertinent " 
 (to quote from the Cardenio story in " Don 
 Quixote ") may detect the fifer. Shrill beyond 
 the highest-keyed piccolo rises the hyla s greeting 
 to spring, and none may be sure that the winter 
 barrier has been broken until it is heard. This 
 year hyla is ahead of time, as indeed all the birds 
 have been. One of our few close observers 
 assures us that this is an extraordinary season for 
 early migrations to our latitude. It is now three 
 
The Hylas Voice is Heard 33 
 
 weeks since the first flight of wild geese to the 
 north ; a great detachment swung over Mount 
 Tom last Monday. 
 
 As for flowers, hepaticas have bloomed in the 
 city limits, and two weeks ago dandelions were 
 caught sight of. To be honest, there were adven 
 titious circumstances that helped them ; and so, 
 nevertheless, the only reliable blossom of the 
 season is that of the skunk cabbage, one of the 
 richest and most splendid of plants, notwithstand 
 ing its name, and for all that it is modest, and 
 does not force itself upon the attention. It is one 
 of those exceptional plants which spends all its 
 substance of obvious beauty on the hood which 
 hides the blossoms ; the beauty of the flowers 
 themselves is reserved for the microscope to dis 
 cover. Let no one despise a type like this ; there 
 is a certain nobility in this efFacement. There are 
 human analogues, if we would care to follow out 
 the resemblance. 
 
 And it must be said that the infinite charm of 
 the day was that of perpetual promise. So goes 
 on the life of earth, only interfered with by man, 
 who does his worst to ruin and obliterate this con 
 stant impulse of life. He, the height of evolution, 
 lingers yet in shallow sense of the place he holds, 
 and of his duty as conservator of all that earth 
 holds. In the scripture parable men are judged 
 c 
 
34 Walks in New England 
 
 by the use they have made of the talents intrusted 
 to them. Here has a vast world of continually 
 reproducing beauty and glory been committed to 
 man s care, and he should be bound by the condi 
 tions of the gift to increase and glorify the work 
 of Nature. But instead, the line of the poet is 
 true : " Man marks the earth with ruin." 
 
 In this springtide, with every force of Nature, 
 that is, of God bent on the greater beauty, how 
 sluggish, how short-sighted, how injurious is our 
 custody of the treasures of beauty ! It is yet to 
 be discovered by mankind that there is nothing in 
 Nature which can be sacrificed without loss ; that 
 everything in Nature has value ; that not the least, 
 but the greatest value in the earth is its beauty. 
 It belongs and appeals to the spiritual part of 
 man, which will exist and find its fit place of 
 evolution or of devolution after this day, and will 
 be judged, saith the scripture, by the deeds done 
 in the body. 
 
 Lo ! Easter comes ! and let us get quickly into 
 sympathy with that symbolic and noble coming, 
 in which God and Nature meet in one being, and 
 man is a part and an heir of both, that is to say, 
 of the selfsame begotten kinship, along with the 
 flower of the field, the bird of the air, the hyla of 
 the marsh, and the finest intelligence that sings 
 before the throne of God ! 
 
In the Soul s Native Air 35 
 
 IN THE SOUL S NATIVE AIR 
 
 Dear is the breath of the April winds, in the pines on 
 
 the hillside, 
 Dear is the smile of the sun on the knolls where the 
 
 ground pines creep, 
 Dear are the showers that waken the flowers to bloom 
 
 by the rillside, 
 
 Dear are those blossoms that answer the sun and the 
 rain from their sleep. 
 
 Aye, when the torrents adown from the springs of the 
 
 mountain are dashing, 
 Gleams of celestial silver illuming the hemlock s deep 
 
 shade, 
 The spirit of God moves those waters, so vividly rushing 
 
 and flashing, 
 
 Even as on the great day when the firmament highly 
 was made. 
 
 Still we behold it anew, as if God were the first time cre 
 ating, 
 
 Nature eternally showing the pulse of continuing life ; 
 Nature forever repeating, all of her forces relating, 
 
 Glory and beauty and honour born out of storm and of 
 strife. 
 
 Crumble the rocks into mould, and trees spring from out 
 
 of the ruin, 
 
 Climb to the sunlight and sway their breathing leaves 
 in the breeze; 
 
36 Walks in New England 
 
 Sheltered beneath them spring the delicate flowers that 
 
 renew in 
 
 Loveliness ever unfailing worship that never shall 
 cease. 
 
 Over the pastures the grasses slowly grow sweet and pre 
 pare them 
 Food of the servants of man, as erst of the rabbit and 
 
 deer ; 
 Green o er the meadows the grasses, and swell the pink 
 
 buds that o erfare them, 
 
 Promise of fruit for the feasting that comes of the fall 
 of the year. 
 
 Aye, and the birds that fly northward, pause here and so 
 journ and sing to us, 
 Birds with the sky in their voices, the message of love 
 
 in their lays, 
 Birds that are free in the ether, and poise and waver, and 
 
 bring to us 
 
 Thoughts of the time when we too shall escape from 
 the tumult of days, 
 
 Escape and flee and evanish, and soar to the home of the 
 
 spirit, 
 Soar there and sing, even we, the song that all life and 
 
 breath share, 
 Praising and loving and honouring Him in whose grace 
 
 we ensphere it, 
 
 Once more in the bosom of God, restored to the soul s 
 native air. 
 
Raster Hope 37 
 
 Easter Hope 
 
 THE day of the rising of Jesus, the sea 
 son of the rising of Nature, come into 
 the closest connection this late Easter ; 
 and the hope of humanity, the promise of earth, 
 are blent in one common springtide, as irresistible 
 as the sunlight and the south winds, that waken 
 the grass and swell the buds, cheer the birds, and 
 invite the peaceful forces of the spirit of all life to 
 renew the miracle of summer. How charming is 
 youth ! The very fact of youth is a prefigure- 
 ment of immortality. Energies that find their 
 way to the seed in the ground, to the germ in the 
 egg ; that fill the birds with joy and the air with 
 their happy melody ; that stir the pulses with 
 vigour and make strife more expectant and ideals 
 draw nearer, these are the same that thrill the 
 stars in their courses and bring the vital warmth 
 of our sun to all its little worlds, and so with all 
 the other suns and their attendant worlds. 
 
 It is still the word of Jesus that throbs with 
 undiminished conviction this Easter : " Because 
 
38 Walks in New England 
 
 I live, ye shall live also." Not with Jesus was 
 born the sense of the divine spirit of original, con 
 tinuing and never ending life and advance. In 
 the myriad ages of our race upon this planet there 
 have been many prophets and priests of the liv 
 ing God who knew this truth and could not be 
 put down by discouragements of transient and 
 evil days. Not with Jesus did the line of these 
 sons of God end, nor will it ever end. But it 
 was he who first, so far as we have record, so knew 
 the purpose of the Spirit and was so possessed by 
 its unity, its sacred essence and its illimitable 
 glory in ages beyond imagination to conceive, that 
 his sense thereof was not hope, but knowledge, 
 the certainty where is no room for doubt. He 
 spake, because he knew at first hand. The voice 
 of his Father was his own voice, for they were 
 one. 
 
 " If a man die, shall he live again ? " This is 
 the form the question of questions has taken all 
 down through the ages. It is the riddle of the 
 eternal sphinx, of which all legendary sphinxes 
 are but shadowy types ; and notwithstanding 
 CEdipus, it may be maintained that no sphinx 
 ever was answered, for his answer was an over 
 whelming catastrophe. Perhaps it is near the time 
 when the riddle shall assume a new form, and 
 we shall no longer ask a question that predicates 
 
Raster Hope 39 
 
 death as a condition ; when it shall be fully known 
 that death is no more than an incident of life, like 
 sleep its twin, and that life is the only fact of the 
 universe of God. 
 
 This day is consecrated to the memory of the 
 resurrection of Jesus, who is called the Christ, as 
 narrated in the gospels of the faith called after his 
 office of anointed Master of Life, who brought 
 immortality to light, as it is written. And, indeed, 
 though there are thousands of millions of human 
 beings who have no heredity of faith in this ex 
 traordinary personage, and though among peoples 
 called broadly after his name the confidence in 
 this revealed evidence is growing dulled and lost, 
 nevertheless, it must always be from him that the 
 strongest of evidence proceeds, because, a spirit 
 ual man, conscious of his divine sonship, he knew 
 and from his knowledge declared that the spirit 
 of man does not die at all. It is not necessary 
 to hold the creed of any Christian church, so- 
 called ; it is not necessary to think at all of the 
 trinity or any other dogma or theologic conception. 
 To give full force to what he has said, it needs 
 only to recognize that element in him which has 
 never been absent from the poet and the prophet, 
 the spirit s own witness to the spirit s undy 
 ing continuance. " Because I live, ye shall live 
 also," is enough. Viewed merely as the utter- 
 
40 Walks in New England 
 
 ance of a soul so infinitely one with the in 
 forming soul of the universe that no other word 
 is possible to it, it thus puts on a universal author 
 ity, independent of Hebrew precedent or Pauline 
 glosses, and all that theologians have since argued 
 or invented. 
 
 It is one with the certainty of Socrates as he 
 was about to drink the hemlock, and answered to 
 his lamenting friends, who asked his preference as 
 to his burial " Bury me where you will, if you 
 can catch me ! " It is one with Walter Raleigh s 
 lines, " Yet stab at thee who will, No stab the 
 soul can kill." It is one with every outburst of 
 the Spirit itself, in Cicero and in Bernard, from 
 the psalmists to Longfellow, in Emerson, Tenny 
 son, Browning and Whitman. This is the essen 
 tial and unchanging testimony of the inspiration 
 of God, which has never failed the poets, who re 
 buke the sluggish faith of their fellows and give 
 them an uplift in the on-going life. 
 
 And this is to be said, in this age of science, 
 which has seemed to tend toward materialism of 
 the most crushing character, even to the point 
 where men actually say that there is no truth at 
 tainable save through the processes of the labora 
 tory, and that nothing is proved until the retort 
 has tried it and the figures have demonstrated it. 
 What folly is this ! The age of science, we have 
 
Easter Hope 41 
 
 termed it. But what is our science ? Marvelous 
 as have been the progresses of investigation in 
 the century that has passed, who can say that any 
 thing ultimate has been reached ? A hundred 
 years ago science was as sure as it is now, yet 
 there is not a book in any branch of science that 
 is authoritative if it is more than five years old. 
 We consult the books of the beginnings if we go 
 back to the epoch-making cc Origin of Species." 
 Since then, while that book and its fellows are 
 guides of vast value, and have even more weight 
 than when they were new, nevertheless almost 
 every day adds so many marvels of development 
 that they are good for principles rather than for 
 particulars. The steps grow larger and the in 
 terstices between them compass more. 
 
 Now we are learning from men of research in 
 biology and physics that their studies are leading 
 them to a point where they are catching glimpses 
 and touches of a something mysterious, which, as 
 one of them has substantially said, " we can call 
 by no name more fitting than Love/ The point 
 has been reached where physical standards no 
 longer suffice ; where in the unknown ether has 
 been found a substance which is not susceptible 
 of the laws and qualities of matter, and which 
 may be the true expression of the endless creative 
 energy. 
 
42 Walks in New England 
 
 Instead of a question of life, it comes to this, 
 that there is nothing but life. The infinite Spirit 
 fills all Nature, our souls no more truly, though 
 so much more greatly, than the earth on which 
 we live. That life is not potential, but actual, in 
 every atom, and it never ceases, but still advances 
 toward an unimaginable unity with the " master 
 light, the secret truth of things, which is the 
 body of the infinite God," as Arthur Hallam 
 says. Science grows and discovers, and no 
 man can say that it has a pause ; but before 
 sciences, before theologies, there was always the 
 intuition of the spirit, and it is the one evi 
 dence which deserves credence, for it has never 
 failed. Spontaneous it seems in its expression, 
 but it is the indrawn breath of a diviner life 
 than ours on earth that makes the poet so ab 
 solute. Emerson did not wait for Darwin and 
 Wallace to read evolution in the record of earth. 
 When he said : 
 
 Ever fresh the broad creation, 
 
 A divine improvisation, 
 
 From the heart of God proceeds, 
 
 A single will, a million deeds. 
 
 Once slept the world an egg of stone, 
 
 And pulse and sound and light was none ; 
 
 And God said " Throb ! " and there was motion, 
 
 And the vast mass became vast ocean, 
 
Easter Hope 43 
 
 it was an additional revelation to that of 
 the primeval poet of Genesis, because to him 
 it was not a thing outside of God on which 
 God acted, but a direct emanation of God. Life 
 that never begins, life that never ceases, is Em 
 erson s word. " The eternal Pan " is but an 
 other name of him who "layeth the world s 
 incessant plan ": 
 
 Halteth never in one shape 
 
 But forever doth escape 
 
 Like wave or flame, into new forms 
 
 Of gem and air, of plants and worms. 
 
 This vault which glows immense with light 
 
 Is the inn where he lodges for a night. 
 
 What recks such traveler if the bowers 
 
 Which bloom and fade like meadow flowers 
 
 A bunch of fragrant lilies be 
 
 Or the stars of eternity ? 
 
 Alike to him the better, the worse 
 
 The glowing angel, the outcast corse ; 
 
 Thou metest him by centuries, 
 
 And lo ! he passes like the breeze ; 
 
 Thou seek st in globe and galaxy, 
 
 He hides in pure transparency. 
 
 And let us cite one more of this seer s command 
 ing divinations which fills the Easter of the 
 spirit : 
 
44 IValks in New England 
 
 Saying : What is excellent 
 As God lives, is permanent. 
 Hearts are dust, hearts loves remain, 
 Heart s love will meet thee again. 
 
A Far Easter in the Future 45 
 
 A Far Easter in the Future 
 
 " 1^ TOW late on the Sabbath day, as it be- 
 ^W] gan to dawn toward the first day of the 
 week, came Mary Magdalene and the 
 other Mary to the sepulchre. And behold, there 
 was a great earthquake, for an angel of the Lord 
 descended from heaven and came and rolled away 
 the stone, and sate upon it. His appearance was 
 as lightning and his raiment white as snow ; and 
 for fear of him the watchers did quake, and became 
 as dead men. And the angel answered and said 
 unto the women : c Fear not ye ; for I know that 
 ye seek Jesus, which hath been crucified. He is 
 not here, for he is risen, even as he said/ 
 
 It is well to recall on this Easter morning the 
 simple narrative of the resurrection of Jesus who 
 is called the Christ, told by the most gentle and 
 humble of his immediate companions. Not one 
 of his four biographers comes any nearer to an ex 
 planation of how that sealed tomb of Joseph of 
 Arimathea was left by its temporary occupant. 
 The Roman soldiers, overcome at their post in in- 
 
46 Walks in New England 
 
 explicable terror, excused themselves in what way 
 they could, and the ruling Jews imposed secrecy 
 upon them, and sealed it by a bribe, and taught 
 them the tale that the disciples of the false prophet 
 had stolen away his body, and this was the story 
 current among the Jews. 
 
 The concern of the Christian church has been 
 too much with the body, stolen away privily, and 
 too little with the living Christ, the spirit, which 
 was not and could not be so treated, since he was 
 free, and privileged to take a body as he should 
 please, a body which might be present to his im 
 mediate followers, and be translated to spiritual 
 essence on the hill of Ascension, and might at any 
 time appear in vision before fine and simple souls 
 to say to them, when faith should shrink, " I have 
 ascended to my father and your father, to my God 
 and your God." It was not necessary longer to 
 live the life of earth ; had he done so, he would 
 have been a noble force dissipated in unequal 
 struggle with the conditions of alien men and low 
 planes of life. 
 
 Instead of such a failure, he rose above earth 
 and became a transcendent and glorified ideal ; 
 imagination wove around his risen form the trans 
 figured splendours of the life he had lived among 
 his fellows ; and the man of the people, born in 
 poverty, reared in labour, who rebuked the proud 
 
A Far Easter in the Future 47 
 
 and exalted the humble, who arraigned the priests 
 and their scheduled worship and asserted the per 
 fect simplicity of approach to the divine Father, 
 he it was who gained and yet keeps the first 
 place in the worship of the world. No prince like 
 Sakya-Muni, no wild warrior-chief like Moham 
 med, no cold philosopher like Confucius, not to 
 be compared with any other saviour of the earth, 
 this Jesus reigns because he was a man and loved 
 his kind, loved them without consideration of 
 place or privilege, his sole scorn and reproach 
 for arrogance, oppression and hypocrisy those 
 vile sins which Jesus never condoned. 
 
 The era of the people, of man in himself as the 
 child of God, arose to light on that strange wild 
 morning in Judea, when over the bare eastern 
 hills rose the violet dawn, and the light thereof 
 showed to the two Marys the angel in the sepul 
 chre of Joseph. Was it for nothing in the fu 
 ture of the life of man on this earth that Jesus 
 was of the common ranks of life, that his chosen 
 friends were of those who laboured for daily bread, 
 that the gentle Mary of Bethany and the ardent 
 Mary of Magdala were the first to see and speak 
 with him in his risen appearance ? All these 
 things were of infinite significance. From that 
 day the people began to be the immediate and 
 ultimate object of the world s progress ; and de- 
 
48 Walks in New England 
 
 spite feudalism, despotism, priestcraft and plutoc 
 racy, it is the people who rose with Christ, and 
 still are rising. 
 
 The time shall come when there will be no 
 more despoilment of man by his brother man ; 
 when wealth as now conceived will have become 
 a meaningless term ; when all things shall be done 
 for the good of all and nothing for the good of 
 one, be that one king, emperor, priest, president 
 or great capitalist. The time shall come, and 
 then warVillhave become a hideous legend of the 
 past, and no more shall men destroy the lives and 
 hopes and happiness of other peoples for a little 
 trivial aggrandizement and the interest of a few 
 ignorant and pitiable men misled by false ideas. 
 This is the Easter of the future. But because of 
 the life of Jesus, we may be confident that it is to 
 come. Even as he said : " Because I live, ye 
 shall live also." 
 

 WHITE BIRCHES ON EASTER MORN 
 
" Where Nature Reigns " 49 
 
 Where Nature Reigns " 
 
 EASTER was perfect. The sun was a true 
 Easter sun, brilliant, yet softened in its 
 heat by the light vapours which portended 
 new storm ; the deep blue sky, with its mare s- 
 tail clouds, was worthy altogether of Hamlet s 
 appreciation : " This most excellent canopy, the 
 air, look you ! this brave o erhanging firmament, 
 this majestical roof fretted with golden fire," 
 for such was the show of Sunday. It could not be 
 surpassed if one had the pick of the year. And 
 the tender, wooing, winning movement of the 
 light breeze coaxed out more than the blossoms, 
 and these and the grasses and clovers, feeling the 
 invitation of the gentle rain, sprang with instant 
 response. What a day it was for the red maples 
 and the elms the scarce slippery elm was in 
 flower in a miraculous moment, a richer, larger, 
 sweeter flower than that of the white elm. The 
 poplar s tassels swung free and scattered pollen, 
 and the willow pussies burst from kittenhood into 
 full bloom, and the bees took their first full taste 
 D 
 
50 IValks in New England 
 
 of spring honey, their hum of wings heard a rod 
 or two before one reached the bushes. 
 
 On the way to the mountain one saw an ex 
 traordinary apparition, a little bevy of terns 
 from the sea, dipping and swinging over the 
 waters of the Connecticut. They are back to 
 salt water before this, we hope, or some fool will 
 be shooting them. Over the valley inside of 
 Mount Tom, an eagle sailed, a noble wild crea 
 ture, and with an air of majesty even beyond the 
 osprey s, which is fine enough. Birds were on 
 every hand ; the song-sparrow, singing on the 
 fences, and in the hedge-rows that Nature fur 
 nishes along even barbed-wire barriers, with that 
 infinitely happy melody which he knows so well 
 and varies so joyously ; the robin, with his clear, 
 bold notes ; the bluebird, repeating his modest 
 warble ; the chewink, the dashing flicker, the 
 chickadee and phcebe, the grackle, besides the 
 jays and crows, who are old winter familiars. 
 Truly a rich body of Easter music, all of them 
 praising God as he inspires them. Lesser crea 
 tures, too ; for not only the bees, but flies of un 
 known families, butterflies here and there making 
 the scene more vivid with their wayward flights ; 
 spiders all over the leaves, and ants rustling be 
 neath them ; and the hylas in the pools fifing and 
 flageoleting because life is too good to be silent. 
 
" Where Nature Reigns " 51 
 
 It is only the infinite that is silent, says a poet, it 
 is the finite that must speak. But is not their 
 speech that of the infinite, through its myriad 
 tongues ? How otherwise reach our own dull 
 finite senses ? Does it not teach us what has been 
 so well said by William Mountford, a religious 
 soul that loved Nature and knew well her se 
 crets : 
 
 " Nature about us is a companionship, which our 
 souls feel, and were meant to feel, for there is to 
 be caught from it a tone so peculiar as to be in 
 tentional. Cheerful is what Nature would make 
 us, not merry, nor melancholy. Now it is in 
 cheerfulness that our moral faculties are freest, 
 that we most readily trust, and are kind, and con 
 trol ourselves. . . . And then, in itself, this 
 earth is what we ought to die out of triumphantly. 
 For in this world, has not God s presence been 
 what rightly makes us long for a manifestation of 
 of it, higher and still plainer ? " 
 
 The flowers of Easter were for the most part 
 of the trees and the shrubs ; yet there is an amaz 
 ing forwardness in the saxifrages, whose little 
 flower bunches so far swell out amid the pretty 
 rosettes of foot leaves with their bronze and reddish 
 hues, that another week will see them open. The 
 arbutus is much slower to respond, and will wait 
 awhile. But the wonderful discovery was of hun- 
 
52 Walks in New England 
 
 dreds of hepaticas in full beauty on a sunny hill 
 side, with their miraculous blue, lavender, pink 
 and milk-white, every one a marvel of variable 
 colour, pulsing with the very heart of earth, and 
 the aspirant essence of the spring. Hepaticas 
 like this on the joth of March, who ever knew 
 the like ! It is as much as one expects to see a 
 solitary hepatica in the first fortnight of April. 
 But everything is hastening to light this spring, 
 the birds are antedating their arrivals. Perhaps 
 they are too daring, but until the frost comes, let 
 us forget that such a thing can be, and delight in 
 the sunny flavours of the woodland, the gracious 
 sweetness of the flowers, the music of the birds 
 and the busy murmur of the bees ; and as one 
 drinks of the cold spring beneath the hemlocks, 
 he partakes of the greatest blessing of Nature, 
 the pure essence of her life, distilled through 
 clouds and suns, and filtered through the chan 
 nels of the holy earth, where as yet man has not 
 arrived to delete and pollute with his many in 
 ventions. 
 
 All these wonderful things the faint ruddy 
 tinges of the red maples and the delicate yellow 
 tints of the poplars on the great mountain side, 
 beneath the many forest trees whose responses 
 are yet invisible, the sweep of sunny atmosphere 
 through the delectable valley, the delicious fra- 
 
" Where Nature Reigns " 53 
 
 grances of the fallen leaves of last year warmed by 
 the first spring fervours, the charm of bird song 
 and butterfly wavering, the blossoms that are seek 
 ing the light from earth s warming bosom, all 
 these call us up higher. The birds will die, as 
 human folk die ; the flowers in their present 
 beauty will vanish ; but " what decays in flowers," 
 says Mountford, " is not what you care for ; the 
 beauty in them that you love never perishes, and 
 every year it is fresh to look at. Oh, flowers are 
 words about a life more spiritual than is plainly 
 to be signified in this earth by things springing 
 out of it. Sometimes, in looking at a flower, my 
 mind is drawn into a mood that is like a firm 
 persuasion of immortality, it is so largely thought 
 ful and full of peace. Summer and winter, sun 
 shine and darkness, rolling seas and high moun 
 tains, there is that in me that is like them all. 
 If only flowers, or only trees, or only some one 
 class of objects in Nature were beautiful to us, 
 then their perishing might infect us with mortal 
 fears. But now all things are made beautiful to 
 us in their time, all things of God s making are. 
 And the feeling of this is fellow feeling with 
 God." 
 
 And in this mood of responsiveness to the 
 divine life, expressing itself in these myriads of 
 beautiful shapes and sounds and breaths, we know 
 
54 IValks in New England 
 
 that there is no death, but as Carl Spencer 
 apostrophizes : 
 
 Thou angel of the other change unknown, 
 
 With such vague terrors rife, 
 Speak to us in thine own familiar tone, 
 
 And we shall call thee Life. 
 
 " When death takes those we love, then we love 
 death." And it is for that reason we love it, or 
 may love it, that it is only change to new life. 
 As Mountford writes : " The grace that rises 
 from the earth in many a tree ; the fascination 
 that eddies and murmurs in flowing water, keeps 
 the gazer standing by the riverside ; the beauty 
 that lives along the plain, and draws man s out 
 stretched hands toward itself, as in recognition ; 
 the loveliness that in a valley is around and over 
 man, and embosomed in which he feels unearthly 
 and sublimed ; the dear and fearful beauty of the 
 lightning ; the wild grandeur of a September sun 
 set ; what is in them we shall all feel again, and 
 drink in everlastingly. And it will be a dearer 
 delight than now ; intenser and fuller. For then, 
 O God ! we shall be in thee and of thee, and 
 thou wilt be to us like an ocean of delight, our 
 little spirits being bathed in thine infinite spirit." 
 
The Culminating Easier 55 
 
 The Culminating Easter 
 
 IT was a wise, and in no respect accidental 
 adaptation, that took into the young Chris 
 tianity the ancient Teutonic festival of Spring, 
 and named from the imagined goddess thereof 
 the time wherein the rising of the Saviour from the 
 tomb took place. It is so much easier for the 
 human consciousness to apprehend the immortal 
 life in the presence of those lovely analogies 
 which the new springing life of earth multiply 
 before the eyes of dwellers in those northern 
 climes where Eostre s rites were celebrated, as 
 those of Rhea and Persephone were in the Nature- 
 worship of the Greeks. Nothing is more natural 
 than to believe in perpetual life for the soul that 
 can perceive this wonderful resemblance to itself. 
 It is so plain that the forms alone die, but the 
 life, depending not upon forms, but on essential 
 principles, cannot die. And even that imperfec 
 tion which gives to many a seed no fertility, that 
 misfortune which blasts the new buds in their 
 
56 Walks in New England 
 
 sheaths and brings what we call death to the tree 
 and the shrub, indicates but a conversion of life 
 force into new modes of manifestation. Life ends 
 not, but forever begins. And as it has been, so 
 it shall be. 
 
 The individual life, as it is a growth, may have 
 its pause or its conclusion ; let the spirit see to it 
 that, set free from whatever circumstances forbid 
 or contract it, it shall have continuance in itself 
 by virtue of that which in the sight of Jesus made 
 man of a farther advance than the flowers of the 
 field and the birds of the air, and yet of the same 
 nature and under the same care. Not a sparrow 
 falleth to the ground without your Father. It 
 was not necessary to make a hypothetical emen 
 dation here ; this does not mean that God had a 
 purpose in the sparrow s fall, or that he decreed 
 it, but that he must perforce be present in all the 
 incident and result of life, the Father is not 
 outside, but within the phenomena we see ; he is 
 all and in all. Jesus was a pantheist, as all high 
 poetic natures have been, for he knew no place 
 where God was not. But this is hidden to some 
 by ecclesiasticism, to some by dogma, and the 
 most religious may be deficient in this spiritual 
 sense. For as Cowley wrote : 
 
 Only the spirit can the spirit own. 
 
The Culminating Easter 57 
 
 And to quote again from William Mount- 
 ford : 
 
 "In God the fountains rise and the rivers run 
 and the oceans ebb and flow ; and shall not my 
 spirit continue to be a spirit in him ? But in 
 death there is the loss of the body ; and in health, 
 is there not a losing of the body and a regaining 
 of other flesh every minute ? And then has a 
 river the same water running in it any two hours 
 together ? A fountain is a fountain, in God, 
 for a hundred, a thousand, and many thousand 
 years ; and I will not fear but my soul shall be a 
 soul in him for ages of ages." 
 
 In Mountford s beautiful book, which he called 
 " Euthanasy," Aubin says : 
 
 " In the woods I seldom was long before I was 
 possessed by a spirit, like what the Greeks imag 
 ined was Pan. A fearful pleasure ! At first it 
 seemed as though the low wind whispered me ; 
 and then, as though it waited about me and curled 
 about my face. If a branch waved, it was toward 
 me, and if a leaf fluttered, so did my heart. Then 
 I would sit down and wonder in awe and joy and 
 tears. And the awe in my spirit would deepen, 
 and the joy, too, and my tears would fall faster, 
 till I felt as the child Samuel may have done in 
 the temple, while waiting for the Lord to speak. 
 And there was speech from God to me at those 
 
58 Walks in New England 
 
 times ; because from my feelings then I am now 
 sure, even to myself, of the blessedness which is 
 to be felt with God by the pure in heart." 
 
 And this is no extravagance. Until the spirit 
 ual resurrection comes to business, politics and 
 the great affairs of the world, until the convic 
 tion of a spiritual life touches, informs and trans 
 forms everything which humanity has to accom 
 plish, the divine purpose waits, and with infinite 
 patience, for that culminating Easter morning 
 when the life of God shall possess man as it pos 
 sesses the new springing earth, and Jesus, the 
 first fruit, shall welcome his brothers and sisters 
 to the fullness of life. 
 
April at IVork 59 
 
 April at Work 
 
 CONVERSATION on the weather is one 
 of the universal and continuous indul 
 gences of humanity. There is no speech 
 nor language where this talk is not heard unless 
 in places like the city of Mexico or the desert of 
 Sahara, where they have only one kind of weather. 
 In this country nothing but politics and religion 
 can rival the weather as a subject, and it is a curi 
 ous fact that the basis of talk about the weather 
 is not the familiarity which characterizes the treat 
 ment of politics, but rather a religious mystery. 
 No sort of weather is accepted as natural, the very 
 sort to be expected and just the thing that is 
 wanted. It is always unusual, extraordinary, in 
 comprehensible. Men " never saw such a steady 
 pull of cold weather," or " such a fearful hot spell," 
 or " such a dry time," or " so long a siege of rain," 
 and so on, or " leastwise, not at this time of the 
 year," or " not for ten years," or " not since the 
 summer of 1811," or "1837," or some other 
 remote date. 
 
60 Walks in New England 
 
 Yet the gospel of God in Nature is published 
 abroad upon the mountain tops and down the 
 valleys, so far as the sun has shone to unlock the 
 voices of the waters and the birds, and to stir the 
 pulses of growth in the earth. Many a long and 
 dreary day of gray forbiddance we wait through, 
 with rebellion and discouragement, while the rains 
 prepare the ground and the north winds restrain 
 the buds from premature ventures. This is the 
 trial of our faith, which in the natural as the spirit 
 ual life worketh patience, that after these may 
 come experience and hope. The sequence is 
 always the same, the experience that came in past 
 years has no sort of effect in working patience in 
 the present. Indeed in all things is it not so ? It 
 is only by looking at the results of ages over the 
 whole human race that we can discern strongly 
 marked the value of experience : and that value, 
 as Paul the tent-maker said, is to develop hope. 
 Hope is the virtue and moral essence of spring 
 time, wherein nothing is as we would have it, and 
 yet to the observant eye the promises abound of 
 all the comforts and recompenses of summer. 
 
 For the hardier fern fronds begin to uncoil and 
 the hepatica buds to prick through the mat of 
 forest leaves ; pussy-willow is tossing yellow pollen 
 on the air; the pale yellow butterflies, hatched 
 from last year s chrysalids, flit around these cat- 
 
April at Work 61 
 
 kins ; the trailing arbutus is wooing all, even 
 those whom it would not wish to know ; the 
 robins sing at morning and evening around our 
 homes, and the song-sparrow in the fields ; all 
 these and their like assuring us how 
 
 Once again the Heavenly Power 
 Makes all things new. 
 
 There is no need of haste ; the season is before 
 us, and all its appointed events have their proper 
 and reasonable course ; were sunshine continuous 
 and winds from the south each day, were there 
 not these gloomy skies and bitter winds to retard, 
 then everything would rush to manifest life at 
 once, and the uses of discipline and the allure 
 ments of hope alike be lost to us. It is strange 
 that we should complain of spring, seeing that in 
 completeness is so great an element in all that is 
 pleasant in life, and pursuit the charm of all am 
 bition and endeavour. Who would have all at 
 once the blessings he desires ? The zest of living 
 would be lost if we had the purse of Fortunatus 
 or the ring of Aladdin, and our only chance to 
 recover it would be to lose the magic talisman. 
 We might set forth at once on the quest for a new 
 one ; but that would lead to new adventures, new 
 experiences, and give something again to live for. 
 If by some such magic power we could environ 
 
62 IValks in New England 
 
 ourselves with perpetual summer, skies always 
 sweet and bloom ever fair, fruit beside blossom 
 and trees never bare, birds that do not depart, 
 and all unchanging luxury and unresting perfec 
 tion, would it not grow tedious ? Could our New 
 England virtues live where 
 
 Droops the heavy blossomed bower, hangs the heavy- 
 fruited tree, 
 
 Summer isles of Eden lying in dark purple spheres of 
 sea? 
 
 April is a charming creature at times, full of coy 
 and pretty caprices, but one does not get very 
 intimate with her, there is commonly a distant 
 chilliness in her smiles, and it takes a brave wooer 
 to fall heartily in love with her. Yet the earth is 
 waking up leisurely, day by day, as she traverses 
 the old paths. We see the grass springing green 
 and hear the robins and the bluebirds ; even a few 
 fire-hang-birds are prospecting in couples ; the 
 wild geese fly high northward ; the lilac bushes 
 swell their leaf-buds, and alders and black birches 
 are shaking pollen from their tassels. There is a 
 treasure of charm in the sunny valleys that lie in 
 the hearts of the hills, for although there is no 
 richness of colour and scarcely a breath of fragrance 
 in their spaces, there is an indefinable expectation 
 in the air, and the eye, lacking the greater things 
 
April at Work 63 
 
 of interest, finds pleasure in the humble beginnings 
 and hints, such as the incipient fronds of ferns in 
 the clefts of the ledges, the herb-robert s delicate, 
 reddish leaves, as beautiful as flowers, the first 
 leaves of honest saxifrage or bold corydalis or 
 gypsy columbine. Small things are as interesting 
 as large ones, and mean as much in the everlasting 
 mystery of creation and resurrection. 
 
 The waters now dash in splendid cataracts down 
 many a precipice of basaltic trap that will be only 
 dry rock a month hence ; and one may lie on a 
 sun-warmed rock, and watch the birds as they dart 
 and drop and chatter, and call and fling out bursts 
 of hopeful song, or see here and there tiny whirl 
 winds lift a spiral twist of brown leaves far above 
 the trees they fell from in the fall, and enjoy other 
 privileges that the forest foliage will presently re 
 strict. 
 
 On the mountain s peak, one of these fresh 
 spring mornings, the earth seems deliciously 
 slumbrous, as if at the verge of awakening, but 
 enjoying its morning naps, turning itself therein, 
 and saying like the sluggard in the Proverbs : " Yet 
 a little sleep, a little slumber, a little folding of the 
 hands to sleep." There lies to the southward a 
 mist from the seething snows, clouding the hori 
 zon ; and all around indeed this melting vapour 
 rises ; yet Greylock seems so near as if one might 
 
64 HSalks in New England 
 
 put his hand on that white snow-cap ; Haystack 
 looms blue further north, Monadnoc s grand dome 
 shows its dark spruce belt, and gentle Wachusett 
 rises blandly in the east. While one views the 
 vast panorama of mountain and valley, the sense 
 grows upon him of the perfect oneness of the 
 whole scene, and of all scenes of Nature, as pass 
 ing exhibitions of the constant life, which originates 
 and informs them all. Here are we, midgets of a 
 moment, which we call human life and mark out 
 into hours and days and years, fretting over the 
 vexing incidents of that moment. We are excited, 
 eager, angry, emulating, envying, disappointed, 
 despairing. And yet we know we shall presently 
 be gone where all such emotions shall appear to 
 us as the snow mists from the height ; and we shall 
 wonder that we were moved by so slight considera 
 tions. 
 
The Chain 65 
 
 THE CHAIN 
 
 This is the chain that binds the world 
 
 In endless sequence, life in life ; 
 This coil, inextricably curled, 
 
 Draws soul and sense to ceaseless strife ; 
 These fatal links, untiring whirled, 
 
 Enclose a penance without strife ; 
 These golden gleaming bands unfurled 
 
 Display a growth with canker rife; 
 What is this chain, this coil, these bands, 
 
 And what the danger of their spell, 
 The evil of their mystic grasp ? 
 
 Let him then answer whose weak hands 
 Their power in vain essayed to quell, 
 
 In vain essayed to loose their clasp ! 
 
 E 
 
66 IValks in New England 
 
 Opening April 
 
 FAIRLY launched in April, the most hope 
 ful, most capricious, dearest of the spring 
 months, we are quarreling with the chilly 
 winds of north and west, and wishing for summer. 
 T is most unreasonable. Is there anything less 
 satisfying than fulfilment, anything more de 
 licious than expectation ? Luxury comes with 
 summer, but this tardy, hesitating, lingering spring 
 possesses the finer charm of reticent retreat and 
 delicate enticement. A little advance of green 
 grass in sunny spots beside the hedge of the road 
 sides ; a little freshening of the willow bark and 
 the soft maples ; a brave and sudden disengage 
 ment of the buttonwood s brown shell of out 
 grown bark, revealing the clear, splendid gayety 
 of its fresh garniture ; a deepening of tone all 
 along the woodland, the young growth first 
 flinging its modified reds against the gray of win 
 ter ; a new tint swelling in the swamps, where the 
 Cassandra s young buds push out beneath the 
 copper bronze of the winter-living leaves ; these 
 
Opening April 67 
 
 and many more signs are saying that all is as it 
 should be, that 
 
 " God s in his heaven, 
 All s right with the world ! " 
 
 But now we wait for April opening, such as its 
 name invites. South winds must hurry to come, 
 thrust back the western breezes and keep busy 
 until they melt the snows of the mountains north 
 and northwest ; for so long as those snows lie in 
 the forest depths unyielding, so long the summer 
 waits. Yet now the hepaticas are opening in the 
 sunny dells of the woodland ; and now the birds 
 are flying from southern climes and singing all 
 about us. Hear the robins with their bold and 
 heartsome warbles and calls ; hear the fleets of 
 grackles, swinging through the groves and call 
 ing their all-hails to the new earth ; the song- 
 sparrows and their congeners ; the meadow larks, 
 and the brown thrasher, flinging forth his vernal 
 hymn at a fence corner, in so off-hand a way 
 that one feels as if winter had been a mere 
 dream. 
 
 All the pulse of lasting life is in these beautiful 
 rebirths, all the promise of immortality. Ay, 
 truly, such manifestations are but the earnest of 
 the vast splendours of realms and climes that lie 
 beyond. Hear Vaughan s teaching : 
 
68 IValks in New England 
 
 " Hark ! how the birds do sing 
 
 And woods do ring ! 
 All creatures have their joy, and man hath his ; 
 
 Yet if we rightly measure 
 
 Man s joy and pleasure 
 Rather hereafter than in present is. 
 
 " Not that he may not here 
 
 Taste of the cheer ; 
 But as birds drink, and straight lift up their head, 
 
 So must he sip and think 
 
 Of better drink 
 He may attain to after he is dead." 
 
 Dead? It is but a euphemism, a mode of 
 speech, a concession to faithless humanity. There 
 is no analogue for this word in what we see of Na 
 ture s processes, and less than none in what the 
 soul is self-convicted of. Why not such a thren 
 ody as we may thus express ? 
 
 Man hath his travail here, 
 
 And much that he must learn, 
 But learning, lift his soul above his task ; 
 
 For here t is he shall earn 
 Whatever from his Father he would ask 
 For that continuing sphere. 
 
 Why, then, sing as the birds ! 
 Make so our transient nest, 
 Rear broods and love them well, then all resign ; 
 

 WHERE BIRDS HAUNT THE SPRING 
 
Opening April 69 
 
 Above remains our rest, 
 
 Thereto we tend, and when we re there, we 11 shine 
 Brighter than all our words. 
 
 Yet think, the while we sing, 
 
 To furnish holy food 
 For those we leave when we adventuring go ; 
 
 As Jesus on the rood 
 
 Blest those who brought him there, even so, 
 We 11 love as we take wing. 
 
70 Walks in New England 
 
 Hepatica 
 
 THE watchword of the day is Hepatica! 
 or it is Arbutus, or it is Saxifrage, or 
 possibly in some camps of Nature it may 
 be Dirca ! Awhile ago it was Pussy- Willow ; 
 pretty soon it will be Quaker Lady or Blue Violet. 
 These are peaceful tokens of speech, and even 
 the cruel lovers of beauty have them at their 
 tongues end. In the sweet new winds of the 
 west they are rare, this spring, but we have felt 
 them one should have only gracious thoughts 
 to match such words. But Nature bars none, 
 her gates are always open, and it rests with the 
 one who enters to be worthy or unworthy of her 
 intimacy. On the conscience and the heart of 
 the visitor it depends whether blessing or barren 
 ness comes. 
 
 One may rightly weigh for no little time the 
 respective charms of the mayflower and the he- 
 patica. What can be more delicious than the 
 pink sweetness of the trailing arbutus, that ex 
 quisite bloom of mossy wildwood knolls, nestled 
 
Hepatica 7 1 
 
 beneath the shields of green leaves somewhat 
 rusty from the winter weather, springing from 
 furry stems that are so hardy in appearance, and 
 so full of the character of the heath family to 
 which this lovely flower belongs. This creeping 
 vine may be aspiring to become a shrub, like its 
 cousins, the white-belled cassandras and pink- 
 belled andromedas of the swamps (which are even 
 now vine-like), like the blueberries and the aza 
 leas, like the kalmias, those glorious bushes we 
 call mountain laurel. All of these share the hard 
 iness and the delicacy in one of the arbutus, and 
 the kindred is not difficult to discern. If the ar 
 butus has this longing, then as its sensitive flowers 
 aspire to a more perfect state, for they are now 
 changing, botanists tell us, from self-fertilizing to 
 insect-fertilizing, as the way of evolution is, and 
 its stem would fain lift into the air, it must more 
 readily yield, as it does, to the onslaughts of 
 spoilers, and so give up the struggle with intru 
 sion. The very neighbourhood of our coarse 
 civilization affronts it, and even were it not 
 torn asunder by robbers wherever it is found, it 
 would retreat and resign its place as houses get 
 near. 
 
 Tis the fragrance of the trailing arbutus which 
 gives it precedence in the popular esteem ; and 
 added to that, it will kindly blossom after pluck- 
 
72 Walks in New England 
 
 ing, because of the sustaining force of its woody 
 stem. But the hepatica scarcely survives the 
 plucking ; it wilts and dies as it departs from the 
 earth. It is said that it has no fragrance, but this 
 saying about flowers means only that our sense is 
 not fine enough to apprehend the subtlety of their 
 evanescent breath. Doubtless the hepatica has 
 fragrance ; doubtless the common blue violet, and 
 the branching white violet, and surely the branch 
 ing yellow violet, as well as the dainty marsh 
 white violet, have their fragrances. Only the last 
 mentioned, the tiny blanda, with its violet streaks 
 in white, is credited with the faintest of perfume. 
 But there are those who, long loving flowers, find 
 in them the properties that others miss, and will 
 not allow that the deficiency in such as these is 
 more than relative. 
 
 Be that as it may, the hepatica needs no charms 
 but those that are obvious to gain our love. And 
 yet not all obvious. There is something more 
 than meets the first glance in this modest, simple 
 flower, espied in the midst of the dry brown leaves 
 of the forest, where the fall ripening shook them 
 from the boughs upon the warm slopes open to 
 the south. Generally the old leaves of the year 
 that went, encompass the crown of the new bloom, 
 but sometimes the blossoms come in a pathetic 
 loneliness. Always they wear the look of celes- 
 
Hepatica 73 
 
 tial visitants, entering the new world of the spring 
 with a certain surprise. 
 
 The hepatica is so beautiful that it transcends 
 the sky and the earth, and brings heaven close. 
 Look into the heart of the flower, and view its 
 wondrous life ; most of all, that pulsating colour 
 which lifts and dilates, and drops and lessens, 
 from blue of the sapphire to soft purple of the 
 amethyst, as if the sky itself were living in this 
 tiny blossom. And if the bloom be white, then 
 note how at the foot of the petals a slight golden 
 glow appears, as if the sun had given it a special 
 ray : 
 
 " Oh, the earth s unconscious bosom 
 Such rare colour never knew ! " 
 
 but the heavens have known it, and here are their 
 translated undulations of light, fascinating our 
 eyes and hearts in the life of a little flower where 
 in the spirit moves with the same infinite power 
 that is exercised as easily in the movement of the 
 universes. The scene of the advent of this de 
 lightful blossom is beautifully presented by Dora 
 Read Goodale : 
 
 " All the woodlawn path is broken 
 By warm tints along the way ; 
 And the low and sunny slope 
 Is alive with sudden hope, 
 
74 Walks in New England 
 
 When there comes the silent token 
 Of an April day 
 Blue hepatica ! " 
 
 While thus the summer forerunners appear, 
 proclaiming the message of blossom and growth in 
 the still open woodland and on sunny knolls, see 
 also the willows in flower, the catkins grown dusty 
 with pollen, see the poplars shaking their tas 
 sels, and the alders and birches and hazels. Now, 
 too, the adder-tongue lily is showing its yellow 
 bells at the edges of sunny woodland, and along 
 the moist banks of meadows. The ferns are un 
 coiling their fronds, the crosiers of the bishop s 
 fern are lifting in benediction over those that shall 
 follow. The leatherwood s golden tassels are 
 lighting the woods with their echoed sunshine, 
 and the buds of the spice bush and hobble-bush 
 are betraying their intentions. A hundred shrubs 
 are swelling their leaf buds and flower buds, and 
 all things are telling of life. All the while, over 
 these growths, the birds are warbling, and scold 
 ing, and the sunshine and showers are making 
 earth over. The sheaths of the elm buds are 
 loosening and the elms grow gold-brown over 
 head ; and what ! can it be that the ruddy sweet 
 florets of red maple are opening? Even so, and 
 beneath at the wood s edge the bloodroot s white 
 calyx spreads purely like a dream of virtue un- 
 
Hepatica 75 
 
 flawed. All the sweet life of Nature is waking, 
 and the promise of summer is here. Pray, we, 
 that man may awake, too, and emulate such lives 
 as these. 
 
76 IValks in New England 
 
 These Summer Visitations 
 
 SUMMER makes hasty brief calls on spring, 
 and not many of them, either, this year. 
 She hurries in at the edge of a northeaster, 
 says howdy, and is gone before we fairly recog 
 nize her. But each time something happens to 
 the face of Nature ; a new lot of flowers take ad 
 vantage of the sunshine and smile at her invita 
 tion ; a new flight of birds suddenly arrives, and 
 at the same time the beetles and the worms and 
 the caterpillars, getting about their own business, 
 provide food for the songsters, thus getting trans 
 lated into a higher order of being, which they 
 could reach in no other way so quickly. This is 
 one of the seasons Hosea Biglow speaks of: 
 
 " For half our May s so awfully like Mayn t 
 Twould rile a Shaker, or an evrige saint." 
 
 And yet who would have it otherwise, for the 
 beauty of it ? the very delays enhance its loveli 
 ness. Things of desire attained are never so sweet 
 in fulfilment ; and May is the charmer because 
 
These Summer Visitations 77 
 
 she evades us, and leaves us while giving her 
 promise. Were man to manage the progress, 
 we well know how he would do it; everything 
 all at once would be perfect, and run on time, 
 like a railroad. So should we lose this enticing 
 delay, and the grace of surprise would be want 
 ing that grace which, turning the coign of a 
 ledge, reveals the gay columbine dancing in the 
 light airs : 
 
 " With a gypsy beauty free and fine." 
 
 For now the columbine is happy in the sunny 
 woodland, and its slender roots in the mere dry 
 clefts of the rocks sustain a burden of beauty so 
 rich that one marvels to see such results from a 
 footing that seems so precarious. Just a few 
 root-threads in a rift barely enough to contain 
 them, and here is this wonderful flower, nodding, 
 yellow and red, on its slight, sturdy stem, with its 
 beautiful sunlighted leaves, so perfectly wrought 
 to sustain it. Also the anemones are out in their 
 benign modesty, the rue and the wood anemones, 
 and the pretty star flower their kin. The hepat- 
 ica s season has passed, it also was once called 
 anemone, and indeed one easily recognizes its 
 kindred in the singular changeable beauty of the 
 rue anemone s satiny petals, besprinkled with sil 
 ver, surrounding its yellow anthered stamens 
 
78 Walks in New England 
 
 around its five pistils with their starry stigmas. 
 But while the hepatica has gone on to fruit, its 
 twin on wings, the hepatica butterfly, its very 
 counterfeit in blue and lavender colours, still flits 
 through the woodland ways, and seems to be 
 searching for the flower it fellows. This miracu 
 lous creature, the very psyche of the hepatica, 
 still links May to April, and keeps alive the con 
 tinuous sympathy of Nature. 
 
 Now is the infinite delicacy of the spring 
 merging into summer, and something is lost, day 
 by day, of the subtleties of colour, which yet are 
 magical enough, as the gray birches, the tas- 
 seled poplars, the aspens, the pink or crim 
 son oaks, the bronze tints of hickories and the 
 pendulous sugar maple blooms emphasize the 
 hillsides. Now, too, the sassafras is blossom 
 ing in pale old gold, on the hillsides, and there is 
 in the swamps all the bloom of the dainty cas- 
 sandra, drooping its heathery bells over the edge 
 of the waters. To view any scene in Nature 
 now is to feel the beauty of that slow advance 
 by which in our clime one season melts into 
 another, and hard and fast lines are avoided. 
 There are no such lines in all Nature. The 
 edges of a flower and of a mountain alike indicate 
 something beyond ; the sharp outline is only true 
 of man s structures, and of these, if they get age 
 
These Summer Visitations 79 
 
 enough, it ceases to be true. Time makes a 
 castle or abbey in England a piece of the land 
 scape ; time more quickly adopts into its age the 
 barns and houses of our countryside. All out 
 lines close up and tone down and soften, till a 
 stone wall or a rail fence becomes as much a part 
 of the landscape as the original rocks or the trees 
 from which the fence-rails were made. And the 
 old houses, when they were raised in the human 
 pride of their possessors they were intrusive, no 
 doubt ; but now they take their place with dignity 
 as children by adoption. In this there is an 
 analogue of the whole course of Nature; and 
 rightly, for all things are in the scope of the 
 infinite life which pervades all that man is or 
 does, all that this earth or the universes are and 
 do, which " fills and bounds, connects and equals 
 all." 
 
8o IValks in New England 
 
 MAY SONG 
 
 Within her springy copses hid 
 
 Wakes slowly the dear life of earth, 
 
 Each blossom as it opes its lid 
 Englories its enchanting birth, 
 
 Sweet is the bud, and rich amid 
 
 The springing green the blossom s worth. 
 
 The world smiles on the ardent day ; 
 
 It is the open face of Spring, 
 The faithful tenderness of May, 
 
 That coaxes all the birds to sing. 
 What gracious heart could fail to say 
 
 Let all with earth s winged chorus sing ! 
 
The Marvelous Beauty of Spring 81 
 
 The Marvelous Beauty of the Spring 
 
 THE singular character of the season has 
 given to the landscape certain unwonted 
 charms, which have been felt even by 
 those unused to close observance of the ways of 
 Nature. Everything has put on an original char 
 acter, from the start out of winter until now that 
 we are on the verge of summer, and yet we linger 
 without remonstrance, for the earth is too beautiful 
 to wish it otherwise. Flowers and leaves, grasses 
 and sedges, the herbs, the shrubs, the vines, the 
 trees, and with them the birds and bees, butter 
 flies and beetles, all came swiftly in advance of 
 their customary dates, and it seemed that the glory 
 of the earth was about to rush in upon us like a 
 flood. But then came the conservative delay. 
 We had barely one or two summery days, just 
 enough to give a fillip to the ambitions of the 
 things that grow and bloom and fly and sing, 
 and Nature has gone on in her gentle deliberation 
 with merely warm days and constantly cool nights, 
 and thus the exquisite delicacy of spring has been 
 
82 IValks in New England 
 
 prolonged, its ideal loveliness preserved, through 
 weeks of unsurpassable beauty, as if to intensify all 
 our love for the " soote season " that Surrey wrote 
 of, and that is so often brief as " the posy of a 
 ring." 
 
 What these weeks of pause produce we may see 
 now all around us in the woods and fields ; while 
 yet on the higher hills summer is much farther off, 
 and bloom and leafage not yet in large evidence. 
 It is owing largely to the maples that the colours 
 of the spring remain so charmingly fine. Without 
 the maples our woodland and our meadows and 
 pastures, not to speak of our roadsides, would lose 
 much in both spring and fall. The maple is 
 claimed by the Canadas, but New England surely 
 shares their claim of this tree s noble and continu 
 ous beauty. Matthew Arnold, when he visited 
 this country, was more impressed with the great 
 sugar maples before old places in the Berkshire 
 towns than with the elms which are so commonly 
 regarded as special New England glories. To his 
 eye, the English elm was not the inferior of our 
 white elm, but the English maple, he allowed, bore 
 no comparison with these superb trees. He un 
 fortunately never traveled among our hills with 
 that freedom which alone can show truly the 
 characteristics of country, or he would have found 
 the red and white maples also important and ex- 
 
The Marvelous Beauty of Spring 83 
 
 ceeding. We must realize the exceptional beauty 
 of this fine family, and there is no time better than 
 now, when the early leafage is beginning to swell 
 from its buds in very various tints of red, and the 
 brilliant yellow or crimson keys are still, thanks 
 to the delays of the chill winds, augmenting their 
 splendour. 
 
 The show of Nature in the woodland stretches 
 around our outlying farm lands is one of ex 
 traordinary beauty. Pause at the gray rail fence, 
 and across a little tract of bushy marsh view the 
 woods encompassing the prospect and hiding the 
 horizon, lifting into the sky their myriad boughs 
 and slender twigs, clad in the sweet grace of the 
 young leaves, a miraculous symphony of colour, 
 in tones refined to the ideal of harmonious rela 
 tion. In their midst the light wind weaves its 
 caresses, and they sway and swerve, not in dis 
 turbance, but in response. The sun, partly 
 veiled by the rising vapours of earth, fills all these 
 moving tree-tops with a tender golden radiance, 
 and when it touches a pine s dark masses among 
 the maples and birches and poplars, it lights it 
 suddenly with sparkling silver brilliance. It is 
 the magic of infinite life that fills, that surcharges, 
 the scene ; and Nature to our common eyes 
 transfigures the woodland and the near swamp, 
 and the lifting pasture-sidehill until they take on 
 
84 Walks in New England 
 
 a character not so much of earth and time as of 
 God and eternity. This is but for a moment in 
 the endless ages, it is a transient glimpse of the 
 unbeginning and unending Spirit, which lives 
 thus and moves thus, and so influences our souls, 
 that are parts of his soul, that we feel our deri 
 vation and know our destiny. Such as we may 
 see betokens and assures what we are and shall 
 be. 
 
 The foreground of such a view is always as 
 wonderful in beauty, though less impressive, 
 lacking that transfiguration which the zephyrs, 
 the sunlight and the splendid cloud-traversed 
 blue sky lend to the larger and higher view. 
 This foreground may be of a little marsh in 
 which gray birches, poplars, a spruce or two, may 
 add a touch of variety, but in which also the 
 cinnamon ferns are swiftly unrolling their " fiddle- 
 heads/ the skunk cabbage displays its tropical 
 luxuriance of rich green leaves and the rhodora 
 blooms in royal purple modesty among the tufts 
 of strong marsh grasses. Then what should be 
 said about the darlings of the spring, the bluets, 
 the Quaker ladies, which now make edges of 
 pastures, and often whole sidehills, milk-white 
 with their infantile prettiness ? These little 
 blossoms are individually charming, but they are 
 only emphatic in communities, and they never 
 
The Marvelous Beauty of Spring 85 
 
 lack of adding an element of cheer to the season. 
 Another foreground might be a pasture crowded 
 with the " painted cup," or " Indian paint brush/ 
 which now abounds in grounds a little moist, 
 as red as a cardinal s robe, but not at all a " cup," 
 while very much recalling the look of a brush 
 dipped into red paint, such as the Indians who 
 once dwelt here were wont to use in adorning 
 their countenances. It is an interesting reminis 
 cence in history, that old Yankee name. In 
 the marshes, too, is now blooming the yellow 
 lady s slipper, and the crimson moccasin flower 
 in somewhat dryer grounds. Ferns of many 
 species are now rolling out of their curls, which 
 begin beneath the ground. In fine, there is an 
 exhaustless variety of beauty in the woods and 
 fields. 
 
 Nor shall we wander over the realms of un- 
 trammeled and unneighboured Nature without the 
 inspiration and delight of the birds, most absolute 
 of the gifts of heaven, who live in the air and on 
 the earth alike, and in exuberance of love are now 
 filling all the fields and roadsides with their song. 
 One may see almost all the birds that come here 
 to stay, and not a few of these who will shortly 
 go northward. Orioles, both Baltimore and or 
 chard ; so many sparrows and warblers and fly 
 catchers ; the kingbird and the chimney swift, the 
 
86 IValks in New England 
 
 barn swallow and the meadow lark ; and not to 
 mention our familiars, the robin, the bluebird and 
 the rest, here is the brown thrasher, whom Yankee 
 farmers have dubbed " the planting-bird," since 
 he arrives at planting time and from the tops of 
 tall trees directs the farmer how to do his work, 
 with volubility and an extraordinary variety of 
 songs, as many as the catbird has, or the mock 
 ingbird himself. cc List the brown thrasher s 
 vernal hymn " one cannot do otherwise if he be 
 within hearing distance. What endless delight in 
 life, what joy is life ! 
 
 However much one may complain of lesser 
 matters, the breath of flying winds on the rocks 
 is enough to make one forget all else. There all 
 the earth seems a mere accident, and one breathes 
 the universal communion. Things as they are in 
 the valleys, where men mould and mismanage 
 them, are forgotten, and for the moment one feels 
 the divine wholeness, the inspiration of God 
 which makes existence bearable, in hope, almost 
 in view, of the infinite liberation. 
 
 Then one feels that while there are constant 
 and inexorable duties in the vale, and reason 
 enough to fulfil those duties and against escaping 
 from them, yet there is a refuge which is sure 
 to come, a freedom which is instinct and char 
 tered in the soul, which may be earned by that 
 
The Marvelous Beauty of Spring 87 
 
 lower discipline, and can only be forfeited by re 
 bellion against it. This is the lesson of the 
 robins, the grackles and the orioles. Why should 
 we not all learn it? 
 
88 Walks in New England 
 
 In Mid-May 
 
 THE swift advances of the summer are 
 depriving us of the tender, delicate, gra 
 cious qualities of the spring. Too sud 
 denly, if not too soon, the full greens of the sum 
 mer are beginning to shade our streets, and those 
 tentative tints of the trees are overtaken and over 
 borne by the full chlorophyll rushing from the 
 earth and drinking in the vapours of the sky. 
 Earth is in haste to be ready for June. The ap 
 ple trees are blossoming, it is the apple year ; 
 the pears are coming out, the cherries of cultiva 
 tion are going by, but the wild cherries are all in 
 great beauty; the shadblow has shed its light 
 some petals, and now the lilacs are full of fra 
 grance and charm. And a little way out of the 
 city, where the forest remnants exist, where the 
 snow lingered longer and the frosts were slower 
 in loosing hold, the red and sugar maples are now 
 in beautiful bloom, the poplars in their several 
 fellowships are harmonizing the woodland, and 
 the great family of the oaks are adding richer 
 
In Mid-May 89 
 
 colours of exceeding tenderness. The oaks, with 
 their long patience and prospect, are in no hurry 
 about leafing, as the shorter-lived deciduans are. 
 The scrub oak is now one of the most attractive 
 ornaments of the plain lands, and one resents the 
 name, for while the husbandman may find this 
 oak a scrub, it should be called rather the shrub, 
 or the bush oak, for such is its manner of growth. 
 It is delightful to find a member of the majestic 
 family of the oaks condescending to lesser stature 
 and common fellowship with the wayside willows, 
 the hazels, the alders and the sumachs. In truth, 
 it is only our false notions of importance which 
 make such distinctions ; in Nature all are of equal 
 character and rank. 
 
 The season of appearance which we call spring 
 has been so cautious, considerate and dilatory that 
 still there lingers on shaded slopes beneath the 
 pines the arbutus ; still the hepatica flower of 
 April is in bloom in the woodland; and the 
 skunk cabbage, though now swelling those great 
 green leaves which give it its proper name, has 
 not yet done with the hooded blossoms of the 
 earliest spring. Now are the anemones in bloom, 
 and the first of our lilies, the adder-tongue, is 
 making splendid many a knoll in pasture and 
 meadow. This is one of the flowers that gets 
 civilized out of our parks, as the skunk cabbage 
 
90 IValks in New England 
 
 does, and as the arbutus does, and indeed almost 
 every wild flower, by the constant meddling of 
 the park improvers. There is no flower more 
 lovely and more delightful than the erythronium 
 this adder-tongue lily but it must be let alone. 
 Now the cassandra and the andromeda are bloom 
 ing in the swamps, and all around their borders 
 the magical rosy purple rhodora is aflame, and 
 in the edges of damp woods the gold-thread sends 
 up from its beautiful green vine that runs under 
 ground its bright starry blossoms. The wake- 
 robin and the painted trillium, its fellow, are now 
 opening in the woods ; the lovely corydalis is in 
 bloom on the mountain, its favourite home the 
 seams in the venerable ledges where the ages have 
 lodged bits of soil ; there is budding the strange 
 and forbidding flowerage of the poison ivy ; and 
 the bright yellow rocket and pretty zizia, the ear 
 liest of the parsleys, are in that stage. Note, too, 
 the strong growth of the plants that are to bear 
 those sturdy democracies, the asters and golden- 
 rods, every apparent flower really a community 
 of equals, and many hundreds of such communi 
 ties gregarious in the fields and by the roadsides, 
 making confederacies of beauty in their later days, 
 when all the delicate graces which live so briefly 
 now are without evidence, and hundreds of others, 
 the riper riches of the summer, have bloomed 
 
In Mid- May 91 
 
 and are gone. Then comes the season of these 
 honest, social families. 
 
 The loveliness of spring is that which most 
 surely appeals to all. It is release from captivity, 
 it is rising from death, it is promise and expect 
 ancy, it is hope, immortally beauteous and pre 
 cious, the star of the future dawn gleaming against 
 the blackness of the cloudy past. So for ages 
 since man first rhymed the poets have declared, 
 saying for the rest of us what we cannot so well 
 say for ourselves. But there is also something 
 pathetic and even melancholy in spring, since after 
 all, these charming and cheering tokens are of 
 the moment, and the season s secret burden is 
 evanescence. 
 
 " Sweet day, so cool, so calm, so bright, 
 
 Bridal of earth and sky, 
 The dews shall weep thy fall to-night, 
 
 For thou must die." 
 
 " Like to the grass that s newly sprung, 
 Or like a tale that s new begun, 
 Or like the bird that s here to-day, 
 Or like the pearled dew of May. 
 Or like an hour, or like a span, 
 Or like the singing of a swan, 
 E en such is man, who lives by breath, 
 Is here, now there, in life and death, 
 The grass it withers, the tale is ended, 
 The bird is flown, the dew s ascended, 
 
92 Walks in New England 
 
 The hour is short, the span is long, 
 
 The swan s near death Man s life is done." 
 
 More native to spring are these broodings on 
 the brevity of earth than even to autumn, if one 
 considers closely. For much of this sweet prom 
 ise can have no fulfilment ; whereas as the fall 
 draws on apace, and the harvests are made, the 
 fruits brought in, we witness the accomplished re 
 sults of the energy of Nature and the labour of 
 man ; it is achieved, the year s growth and service, 
 and the sustenance of all things and creatures from 
 least to highest won once more from the earth. 
 
 It is one mood of man to doubt most when 
 most is promised, to question most when most is 
 asserted, to apprehend storm when skies are fair 
 est, and ruin when omens favour. Tis this mood, 
 as often as the mood of defeat and discourage 
 ment, which rebukes the aspiring spirit and re 
 duces it to the weary level of the common ground. 
 So in times when out of the winter little by little 
 the sun lifts over the line, and the drifts that cover 
 the highways, and send travelers out into the 
 fields over rocks and stumps and fences in order 
 to get along at all, begin to shrink and lay bare 
 the true roads and expose the nature of the make 
 shifts, then the worry and work are the hardest, 
 and the change is the slowest to come. Yet it 
 always comes. 
 
Ah Still Delay /" 93 
 
 " A h Still Delay ! Thou Art So Fair ! " 
 
 THERE is an especial interest in the 
 tardiness of summer, when Nature seems 
 so reluctant to change, so fondly linger 
 ing in the pleasant purlieus of spring. It is as if 
 Nature were feeling that final mood of Faust, 
 when he should say to the passing moment, " Ah 
 still delay ! thou art so fair ! " Often in our 
 clime that mood possesses Nature in the days of 
 ripening forests, when the achievement has de 
 clared itself, when fervour and passion are over, 
 and the reward of repose is sweet. But the de 
 lays of spring are apt to be sour, savage and 
 menacing, not as now, cool but cheerful and 
 even brilliant, with the beauty of the earth un 
 folding steadily, tenderly, with infinite delight, 
 the very temperance of luxury. 
 
 Who has looked upon the wonderful variance, 
 harmonies, gradations of the foliage over streets 
 and roads and mountains, in valleys and beside 
 rivers, the magic of the increasing and deepen 
 ing shadows of the trees, the outspringing of 
 
94 IValks in New England 
 
 the hidden flowers from forest leaves, on pasture 
 hillsides, in green meadows, in dipping swales, in 
 tangled swamps, who has watched the birds come, 
 creating and enticing beauty as they bring their 
 warbles and songs to join earth and sky in equal 
 praise, who has noted each new butterfly, and 
 the coming of the dragon flies from the pools, 
 and the burly welcome of the bumble-bee, the 
 piping of the hyla and the chirp of frogs, who, 
 in fine, has followed the cautious steps of sum 
 mer in the escort of spring, without repeating, 
 over and over, day and day, " Ah still delay ! 
 thou art so fair ! " 
 
 And yet what such a one suffers in the ravage 
 of the axe in the forest ! never more rude and 
 savage than now. The destruction wrought by 
 man is melancholy in a degree to the lover of 
 Nature, even where there is use to follow, but 
 how much more when the mere wantonness of 
 ignorance sweeps away beauty and glory, and 
 there is nothing to make amends. We have in 
 mind a glen on the south side of a mountain. A 
 year ago it was a scene of fairy witchery ; the 
 brook flowing through a bit of rich alluvium, be 
 sprent with adder-tongue lily, trillium, hepatica, 
 anemone, the little early buttercup, and the lovely 
 spot begirt all around with the spice-bush, then 
 in full sweet yellow bloom. It was a place of in- 
 
IN THE MIDST OF THE WOODS 
 
 
"Ah Still Delay /" 95 
 
 describable beauty ; which robbed the owner of 
 nothing, and gave the visitor who had eyes to see 
 and a soul to enjoy immeasurable pleasure. Why, 
 when the unworthy owner wished to cut the tim 
 ber and cord wood from around this glen, should 
 he not have left the spice-bushes ? They were 
 worth nothing to him ; but a few ignorant chop 
 pers no more ignorant than he leveled them, 
 and the lover of beauty cursed him and pitied him 
 at once. It is man, in his partial development, 
 his half-civilization, that knows not how to enjoy 
 his earth, and so destroys it. 
 
 The Nature-school of the age that began with 
 Wordsworth and continued through Bryant and 
 Thoreau and is so well known in Burroughs and 
 many another " all can raise the flower now, for 
 all have got the seed," that it is which has opened 
 the wonder of the manifestation of life in tree and 
 flower and the glory of the scenic beauty of earth 
 to all, without giving them the radical secret of 
 respect. 
 
 There is no time of the year more marvelous 
 than this border region of the seasons. It cannot 
 but awaken a fresh sense of the miraculous life of 
 earth, even though it be very imperfectly appre 
 hended. When Wordsworth wrote his well- 
 known lines in " Peter Bell " : 
 
96 Walks in New England 
 
 " A primrose by a river s brim 
 A yellow primrose was to him, 
 And it was nothing more, " 
 
 and further, 
 
 " The soft blue sky did never melt 
 Into his heart ; he never felt 
 
 The witchery of the soft blue sky, " 
 
 he appealed to so few that these and like lines 
 were among those which received the most con 
 temptuous mockery of the wits and scholars of the 
 time. They could not possibly understand what 
 the man was driving at. But now there are very 
 few who fail to see what Wordsworth meant, for the 
 spiritual conception of the universe has stolen into 
 the sense of all thinkers or been thrust there by 
 the very remarkable advances of science. That 
 way all the researches of physics and biology tend, 
 and so at last the Wordsworth idea has become a 
 part of thought, and the love of Nature as the very 
 life of the divine spirit is no longer a matter for 
 mockery. Whether in the flower of the field or 
 the star in the sky, God dwells ; and no life can 
 be dissevered from that all-pervading and all-en 
 compassing spirit. 
 
Fragrance and Melody 97 
 
 Fragrance and Melody 
 
 EARTH is never more beautiful than when 
 hasty summer riotously rushes upon us, 
 and all the fields and woods are captivated 
 by that only too generous largess of the sun the 
 air, the bloom, the fragrance, the wings, the songs, 
 the greening and growth, the ineffable hurry of 
 life that cannot wait, but in ardent desire races 
 through hope and promise and pledge in all its 
 myriad forms to the fruit and fulfilment, the crown 
 and achievement, of the swift season between 
 winter and spring. " Do the duty nearest thee " 
 is a watchword of creation, no more for man alone 
 than for all that we call animal or vegetable or 
 mineral. It is to mistake gravely to assume that 
 humanity alone fails to observe this law because 
 of misleading and perversion. For every blos 
 som or bird there are a multitude that lapse and 
 fail. Life abounds, but lives are lost, in every 
 grade of Nature s work. Unceasing is the in 
 finite Spirit, renewing, developing, ending but to 
 begin again, and in the midst of this swift and 
 a 
 
98 IValks in New England 
 
 shining season the thrill of that endless vitality 
 stirs the most sluggish pulse. 
 
 The air is full summer, and the sweet oppres 
 sion of the breeze, shot through by the rising sun, 
 opens the day with myriad perfumes. There is 
 not a flower or fern or unfolding leaf of the woods 
 that does not contribute to the fragrance of the 
 hour. The sweet briar wafts its wild tenderness 
 over the multitude of lesser scents, and a spicy 
 odour from the tasseling black birch follows swift 
 behind. Another touch, and the sweet fern s 
 pervasive scent steals to the nostrils. A little tang 
 of bitterness swings in from the poplar and the 
 tonic willow, and more spice from the sassafras. 
 But while one detects such individual fragrances, 
 be sure that something in the air is due to blos 
 soming hickory and elm and red maple, and the 
 oaks, too, just opening, have their honey, which 
 wild bees love, and many another insect. 
 
 Then deeper, stronger, more constant than all, 
 wherever they grow, the pines and hemlocks, the 
 cedars and firs and spruces, swell the rich gift of 
 the breeze. And their balsam heightens as the 
 fervour of the day draws on, and the magnetic sun 
 pierces their tossing depths, and the conifers yield 
 of their secret, treasured essences, and thrill the 
 sense beyond all that the rest can do. The 
 flowers that spring and bloom and fade so quickly, 
 
THE SAUNTERER S MOUNTAIN HOME 
 
Fragrance and Melody 99 
 
 the trees that greet the new season with leafage 
 and grow into hospitable shade, these are transi 
 tory, but the pines and hemlocks endure and bear 
 from year to year, in all seasons, the promise of 
 eternity. They are commercially nothing but 
 cord wood, or a little timber, but to the lover of 
 Nature they embody the will of everlasting life. 
 
 To lie upon the side of a wooded ravine, at the 
 edge of the forest, and behold the great trees sway 
 ing and tossing in the warm breeze, bending far 
 east and revolting far west, as each passing gust 
 passes by ; to breathe these odours, and to mark 
 the sunshine swell down the long aisles of the 
 woods or repose in the opening of the field ; to 
 follow the hawk s sailing flight above all the woods 
 and despite the wind ; to watch the labouring crows 
 and hear their social and sagacious conversation ; 
 to hear the curious cry of the scarlet tanager, or 
 the slight, solemn warble of the wood thrush, or 
 the rich and insistent note of the Baltimore oriole, 
 so noble a note, with its melancholy tone ; to 
 do this, is to raise the question whether any heaven 
 that can be imagined could be more beautiful 
 than earth. But in truth, the answer is ready 
 enough. In the life beyond, as in this, the soul 
 will seek and find its own. If there are not the 
 particular beauties and charms and associations 
 which have made this life precious and desirable, 
 
ioo IValks in New England 
 
 there will be such others as will meet the demand 
 of each soul in its earthly tabernacle. As our 
 senses delight in these fragrances and songs, and 
 in the wonderful skies, the flowing rivers, the 
 sweet springs and the great oceans that we know, 
 so something that corresponds to all these will 
 greet our greater life. With this also comes the 
 assurance that our human loves, our intimate at 
 tachments, will live, for all souls seek their or 
 dained fellowships, and souls are not, like trees 
 and flowers, bounded by the limits of those things 
 which are but shows and types, and not immortal 
 in essence, as themselves. 
 
 Now every day hastens some new beauty and 
 grace into light and air. How rapidly they fol 
 low, there was first the rare yellow violet of the 
 cold brookside, then the common blue violet, 
 no lovelier flower grows, and now the yellow 
 wood violet, the lavish white branching violet of 
 the deep woods, the tender sky-blue violet of the 
 forest borders, are out, and the larkspur-leaved 
 violet, with its intense blue, is almost ready to ap 
 pear. The lovely dicentra now peeps from amid 
 its exquisitely cut leaves, the first corydalis blooms 
 on the mountain rocks, the mitre-wort and its 
 cousin Nancy-over-the-ground are in evidence, 
 and the early meadow rue is lifting its misty head. 
 Buttercups and daisy fleabanes are rushing into 
 
AT THE ALTAR OF THE HEMLOCK 
 
Fragrance and Melody i o i 
 
 view, in the company of the grass flowers to which 
 they are entitled. Every day some new fern 
 uncurls, and this delightful woodland race, with 
 its many families, makes the forests a constant 
 surprise. Some on the sternest heights, where 
 water is scarce, exploit their graceful beauty, as if, 
 said Thoreau, Nature designed in them to show 
 how wonderful a mere leaf might be; some in 
 the darkest marshes, some on the sunny hills, 
 everywhere lavish in varied grace and elegance, 
 the finest bred of all vegetable races. 
 
 Such are the gifts of Nature in this wondrous 
 season. Who does not receive and love them is 
 the poorer for his failure. They are an ines 
 timable part of the training of the soul, the 
 essential, the only, purpose and meaning of the 
 life of earth. 
 
IO2 Walks in New England 
 
 An Over- Ardent June 
 
 ON this occasion, much as June is loved, 
 there is a general feeling that she came 
 in with too much of a bounce. What 
 we have largely loved in June has been the shy, 
 sweet, elusive way with which she slips in, so that 
 she usually has been around, coaxing the roses 
 gently, and suggesting buds to the red clover, 
 and so on, until the conviction of her presence 
 steals upon our senses with subtle sweetness 
 as the perfume of the syringas, the wild cherries 
 and the grapes follow on the vanishing lilacs and 
 the azaleas. But she arrived in a hustling fash 
 ion, this year, taking hold as if she were emulous 
 of July, infuriating the thermometer, and making 
 us want to take off our flesh and sit in our bones, 
 as Sydney Smith said. For the first time in a 
 generation, we desired a little more coolness in 
 June s advances. She was too forward, too for 
 cible. Her Amazonian caresses took our breath 
 away, who wants to make love in such a fever 
 and fret ? In fact, if June would give us the cold 
 
An Over- Ardent June 103 
 
 shoulder for a bit, we said, we should be relieved. 
 And straightway she gave us just that. 
 
 Still, let us reflect, when the heated term as 
 saults us, that some odd hundreds of thousands 
 of years ago, where we now broil, the ice-cap 
 rested a mile deep over Massachusetts which 
 had not yet been thought of and did not know 
 it. It was even deeper than it is now over Green 
 land. That was a climate to talk of in these days. 
 How comfortable it must have been ! about 250 
 degrees or less cooler than Sunday s sunshine and 
 200 degrees cooler than its shade. It is still cool 
 near the Arctic circle. And the Antarctic con 
 tinent is an even grander refrigerator. Butter 
 would never melt there, nor meats spoil ; and 
 there could be no call for ice-cream, soda water 
 or palm-leaf fans. The interesting narrative of 
 Arthur Gordon Pym, as reported by Mr. Poe, is 
 good reading for such a term as the recent. So 
 is Dr. Kane s romantic chronicle of his explora 
 tions, and the history of the Jeannette, not to 
 mention the tales of the various searches for Sir 
 John Franklin s party and the Peary relief ex 
 peditions. It is cool, too, on Kunchin-Jinga, on 
 Popocatepetl and on Cotopaxi. But the snow is 
 not clean on Cotopaxi, the volcanic dust is too 
 abundant. It is also cold on the moon, but there 
 is no atmosphere at all there, it is said, and even 
 
IO4 Walks in New England 
 
 a little hot June atmosphere is better than none 
 at all, that is, better for a race used to breathing 
 through lungs. 
 
 Then we might read Kipling, and thank heaven 
 we are not in India. When one fancies himself 
 in that printing office where Kipling met the Man 
 who would be King, or sits with him and the 
 Soldiers Three while Mulvaney, hero that he is, 
 tells tales all night long to keep his comrade 
 from sheer insanity, one feels that there are worse 
 places than New England in a hot June. Or if 
 one likes a change, let him march awhile in the 
 African forest with Stanley, and presently fancy 
 himself going mad as Barttelot did. Or the 
 Death Valley of Arizona is worth contemplating, 
 or Fort Yuma on leaving which for the infernal 
 regions they say one wants to carry a double out 
 fit of winter clothing. It is all a matter of com 
 parison. When one gets used to it, a temperature 
 in the hundreds is not bad not positively bad, 
 though it may be superlatively so. 
 
 On the whole, it has been very pleasant weather. 
 Things grow, though thoughts dwindle, in the 
 presence of heat. It has been delightful to 
 watch the leaves swelling and the full garniture of 
 the trees developing in the sumptuous warmth. 
 The woods are rich in colour and fragrance. Sit 
 for a moment on a broad ledge and gaze down the 
 
or r*e 
 UNIVERSITY 
 
 of 
 

 THE VIEW THROUGH THE GORGE 
 
An Over- Ardent June 105 
 
 valleys into the shimmering heat, and the scent of 
 a late azalea draws you to a thicket where it mod 
 estly blossoms, caring not that it is unseen ; or the 
 merest waft of fragrance, like the exhaling spirit of 
 bloom, tells you that there are moccasin-flowers 
 somewhere hidden in the hollow. Then, too, on 
 those ledges, in the fullest glare of the fierce sun 
 light, nods and trembles the graceful corydalis, 
 and the brave mountain fern, the woodsia, springs 
 in cheerful tufts in crevices of the rock, green 
 enough now, but in later summer as dry as the 
 rock itself. 
 
 Over and over the white clouds float, and from 
 peak to peak and tree to tree in the forest the 
 birds fly, catbirds and thrushes and finches, now 
 and then a tanager, and many warblers, and the 
 whole natural earth breathes a symphony of con 
 tent. Not yet the springs have dried from the 
 mountain tops, and one who knows their ways can 
 drop half a hundred feet, or may be a full hundred, 
 to a pool of refreshing water, or to where a rivulet 
 issues beneath the broken rocks, still feeding the 
 mountain growths. The squirrels are full of life, 
 and when one misses their calls and their sharp 
 casual chatter, he can always hear the evidences of 
 humble life in the beetles and ants that roam be 
 neath the leaves and rustle them to dispel the ab 
 solute solitude. These do not mind the heat, and 
 
io6 IValks in New England 
 
 always through the forest roads and openings 
 the breeze strays, cooling itself from the outside 
 heat in the healthful quiet of their depths. If 
 man wearies of the conditions he makes, let him 
 spend an hour or so where Nature continually 
 works to repair his ravages, and harmonize his 
 emotions with the constant charm of her un 
 spoiled beauty. 
 
Birds, Insects, Man and Woman 107 
 
 Birds, Insects, Man and Woman 
 
 THE blossoms and leaves of summer are 
 rapidly filling the air with perfume and 
 the day with shade. Over our New 
 England hills and valleys, by the farm-houses and 
 in the villages, the lilacs have crowded close after 
 the cherries, peaches and pears ; they have had 
 their , day of bloom and are setting their fruit. 
 The apples also are gone by, after welcoming the 
 orioles and the robins ; the orioles no more dash 
 sportively amid the orchard masses of blossom, 
 but are already constructing their nests on the 
 pendent boughs of the elms. It is a day of birds, 
 the song sparrows by the roadside and the vesper 
 sparrows by the brooksides, the red-wings in the 
 marshy sedges, the bobolinks in the meadows, and 
 over all the crows, with their wise commentary 
 on our inferior and wicked contrivances which 
 they behold in the fields, ready against the coming 
 of the corn. The night-jar swings over our streets 
 and over farmers fields with equal vigilance, 
 screaming as it flies, after moths and chafers for 
 
io8 Walks in New England 
 
 the chafers are now heard buzzing amid the 
 bushes and banging against the panes, June- 
 bugs, or May-bees as we call them when they 
 come ahead of time. The gardener unearths every 
 day these curious blundering beetles, whose grubs 
 he will be killing later. The insect hordes are 
 early to arrive and late to depart, in fact, they 
 are always with us, and it is amazing what a 
 number of them live on the herbage and the 
 sylvan foliage. 
 
 In the state of Nature all these inchoate races 
 of minor life are kept in subjection by the birds, 
 but since of late years the birds have been slaugh 
 tered by wholesale to make women s hats hideous, 
 the balance is lost, and hence we have plagues of 
 elm beetles, cottony louses, and gypsy and brown- 
 tailed moths. Thousands of varieties of insects 
 have found their proper food on trees from time 
 immemorial, and might continue to do so without 
 reminding us of the plagues of Egypt, were it not 
 for the women who want birds and feathers of 
 birds on their hats. If the wearers of these 
 slaughtered creatures of God, more beautiful and 
 more useful than themselves, could only see how 
 they look to a lover of Nature, or a mere en 
 lightened farmer and fruit raiser, they would surely 
 discard their egrets, their bird-of- Paradise plumes, 
 their wings, and the whole birds so hideously adorn- 
 
Birds, Insects, Man and Woman 109 
 
 ing their comely heads, and never wear another. 
 Why do they proclaim themselves murderers ? 
 
 As we listen to the delicious glee of the bobo 
 link over the meadows, to the swift, bright cry of 
 the meadow lark, or the tender sibilation of the 
 red-winged blackbird in the swales, it seems im 
 possible that human beings can possibly think of 
 killing these lovely creatures, or of being accom 
 plices after the fact in their slaughter. The other 
 day, the sun shining ardently over the fields and 
 forests, and drawing delicate veils of moisture 
 from the brooks and swamps, one listening to 
 these wild and gracious utterances of the sole and 
 infinite Spirit could only conceive of the world 
 of Nature as one of harmony. The several grades 
 of life are interdependent and the less developed 
 nurture the higher perpetually. 
 
 As for man, only he introduces a breach in the 
 order of being, and destroys tree and flower and 
 bird without respect to their offices, despoiling 
 himself the worst of all. And when he is told 
 this and it is proved to him, the moment s greed 
 makes him shut his mind and dismiss considera 
 tion of the subject. Still his ignorant woodchop- 
 pers fell the forest, " clearing " the land, destroy 
 ing the saplings as remorselessly as they cut the 
 trees of timber or of cord wood, and ravaging the 
 whole forest by fire. Still his railroads rush 
 
1 10 IValks in New England 
 
 through the land, sending out their sparks to set 
 fires that burn over in an hour 25 or 30 acres of 
 young forest and rob him of all their promise. 
 What has man been given reason for ? Appar 
 ently to make a dollar to-day, forgetting that 
 generations are to come after him to whom his 
 dollar will be valueless because long since ex 
 pended, and whom his destruction of the very 
 sources of life has left poor indeed. No, man 
 does not use his reason, with even his self-interest, 
 except for the bare moment. Obloquy has set 
 tled over more than one generation in the history 
 of man for the cause which was expressed in the 
 phrase of the Bourbon society of France before 
 its great Revolution " After us, the deluge." 
 There is too much of this in even our civilization, 
 though the motto is not avowed. What the earth 
 is to render, what society is to become, when we 
 are gone, these things are not sufficiently re 
 garded by the present generation. 
 
 Let us try to escape from these difficult and 
 dispiriting thoughts. Let us leave the city, in 
 these opening days of summer, forget its paved 
 streets and its clouds of black smoke clogging the 
 free air of God, and visit those precincts where 
 yet Nature reigns. It is long ere we reach those 
 unpolluted places. But once among the undis 
 puted tracts, where streets are not yet laid out, 
 
Birds, Insects, Man and Woman 1 1 1 
 
 there is revival of native and intimate sympathies. 
 The great oaks, so noble a feature of our sur 
 rounding country, are past their period of blos 
 soming, and no longer delight earth with those 
 exquisite variations of colour in the young foliage 
 of these monarchs of the forest, so great a matter 
 of wonder, showing us how consistent is strength 
 with beauty. Tis no slight matter that a rugged, 
 robust oak should blossom in graceful tasseling 
 and leaf in exceeding delicacy of pink and buff 
 and cream tints, making the woodland a parterre 
 of rare and fine harmonies, with the maples be 
 hind in their clear, translucent greens, and the 
 somber pines, just lightened by the new bright 
 growth, like thrusts of kindling sunshine. Now 
 beneath these shades the solemn quietude of an 
 infinite, primitive, remote age is gathering, an 
 age when man was not, and when forests rose in 
 majesty and lived their long lives, and the aged 
 fell and their physical decay nourished their suc 
 cessors. That far gone time renews itself to one 
 who enters these sacred precincts in sympathy 
 with Nature. Here yet the sense of essential 
 life resides, and temporary and conditional living 
 recedes. The spirit of the universe does not 
 desert the forest shades. The ceaseless hurry of 
 our semi-civilization is left behind, and the health 
 ful recovery of repose succeeds. 
 
1 1 2 IValks in New England 
 
 If that repose may end in what is called death, 
 who quarrels with that in the forest? It is as 
 fruitful and more peaceful than what is called life. 
 After this life has been lived, and we have done 
 what it was allotted us to do, the dismissal is even 
 joyous. In the midst of the odorous cedars and 
 hackmatacks, with many a blossoming shrub 
 around, and the red sweet waters noiselessly mov 
 ing into and from the deep, dark pond, as the 
 sun sinks behind the forest, and its depths grow 
 dusky, and warm fragrances steal from the flowers 
 whose faces hold the vanishing light though all 
 the bushes are vague, as the wild, strange waves 
 of delicate colour rise in the sky above the depart 
 ing sun, and the thrush, deep in the wood, sends 
 forth its sweet and thrilling vesper, like the notes 
 of a group of rich organ-pipes springing forth out 
 of the harmonious chords of the great instrument 
 of Nature in its noble largo appassionato, at such 
 an hour the thought which Whitman has so nobly 
 expressed in President Lincoln s burial hymn may 
 well come to mind. 
 
 Whitman was no shy recluse of Nature, no 
 wanderer of woods and fields he was a vivid, 
 robust, hearty adorer of human life in every shape, 
 there was no limit to his sympathy and fellow 
 ship in all that men do. But it was reserved for 
 such a man as this to express more poignantly 
 
Birds, Insects, Man and Woman 1 13 
 
 than any man besides the profound and serious 
 sweetness of the teachings of such an hour and 
 scene embodying all the infinite lesson of our 
 departure : 
 
 " Now, while I sat in the day and looked forth, 
 
 In the close of the day with its light and the fields of 
 
 spring, and the farmers preparing their crops, 
 In the large unconscious scenery of my land, with its 
 
 lakes and forests, 
 In the heavenly aerial beauty, after the perturbed winds 
 
 and storms, 
 
 Under the arching heavens of the afternoon swift pass 
 ing, and the voices of children and women, 
 The many moving sea-tides, and I saw the ships how 
 
 they sailed, 
 And the summer approaching with richness, and the 
 
 fields all busy with labour, 
 And the infinite separate houses, how they all went on, 
 
 each with its meals and minutia of daily usages, 
 And the streets, how their throbbings throbbed, and the 
 
 cities pent, lo, then and there, 
 Falling upon them all and among them all, enveloping 
 
 me with the rest, 
 
 Appeared the cloud, appeared the long, black trail, 
 And I knew death, its thought, and the sacred knowledge 
 
 of death. 
 
 Then with the knowledge of death as walking one side 
 of me, 
 H 
 
1 1 4 IValks in New England 
 
 And the thought of death close-walking the other side 
 
 of me, 
 And I in the middle as with companions, and as holding 
 
 the hands of companions, 
 
 I fled forth to the hiding receiving night that talks not, 
 Down to the shores of the water, the path by the swamp 
 
 in the dimness, 
 
 To the solemn shadowy cedars and ghostly pines so still. 
 And the singer so shy to the rest received me 
 The gray-brown bird I know received us comrades 
 
 three, 
 And he sang the carol of death, and a verse for him I 
 
 love. 
 
 From deep secluded recesses, 
 
 From the fragrant cedars and the ghostly pines so still, 
 
 Came the carol of the bird : 
 
 Come, lovely and soothing death, 
 Undulate round the world, serenely arriving, 
 In the day, in the night, to all, to each, 
 Sooner or later, delicate death. 
 
 Praised be the fathomless universe 
 
 For life and joy and for objects and knowledge curious, 
 And for love, sweet love, but praise ! praise ! praise ! 
 For the sure-enwinding of cool-enfolding death. 
 
 Dark mother always gliding near with soft feet, 
 Have none chanted for thee a chant of fullest welcome ? 
 Then I chant it for thee, I glorify thee above all, 
 I bring thee a song that when thou must indeed come, 
 come unfalteringly. 
 
Birds, Insects, Man and Woman 1 15 
 
 Approach, strong deliveress, 
 
 When it is so, when thou hast taken them, I joyously 
 
 sing the dead, 
 
 Lost in the loving floating ocean of thee, 
 Laved in the flood of thy bliss, O death. 
 
 From me to thee glad serenades, 
 
 Dances for thee I propose, saluting thee, adornments and 
 
 feastings for thee, 
 And the sights of the open landscape and the high-spread 
 
 sky are fitting, 
 And life and the fields, and the huge and thoughtful 
 
 night. 
 
 The night in silence under many a star, 
 
 The ocean shore and the husky whispering wave whose 
 
 voice I know, 
 And the soul turning to thee, O vast and well-veiled 
 
 death, 
 And the body gratefully nestling close to thee. 
 
 Over the tree-tops I float thee a song, 
 
 Over the rising and sinking waves, over the myriad 
 
 fields and the prairies wide, 
 Over the dense-packed cities and all the teeming wharves 
 
 and ways, 
 I float this carol with joy, with joy to thee, O death." 
 
 It is not sacrilege to take these wonderful na 
 tive rhythms from their setting, for whether a 
 great or a lesser one depart, the office of separa- 
 
1 1 6 IValks in New England 
 
 tion is the same. It liberates while it terminates 
 for every child of earth, and one who has not 
 felt this encompassment in the midst of the glo 
 rious charm of Nature has not sounded the depths 
 of his spiritual possession. 
 
Nature s Independence Day 1 1 7 
 
 Nature s Independence Day 
 
 THE day was as it should be intense. 
 Patriotic ardour had an unequal match 
 with the solar, and the spots on the 
 horoscope of the country were less conspicuous 
 than those on the face of the sun. Why should 
 we be asked to worry over petty villainies and 
 wrongs, within so small and transitory a sphere of 
 days, when a storm 50,000 miles across, larger 
 than two earths stretched out flat the longest way 
 round, is careering over the vast orb that makes 
 our life and our country s possible ? We are but 
 a speck upon a little ball, in one of the least among 
 myriads of universes, and why fret on a day that 
 in itself forbids such a temper, and would have us 
 indolent and content? As the Swan of Usk 
 wrote to his friend : 
 
 " Why should we 
 Vex at the land s ridiculous miserie ? " 
 
 Let us go rest and breathe slow, and dream, 
 where trees bend over shady waters that cool the 
 
1 1 8 IValks in New England 
 
 hot winds. For indeed in this very stress and 
 splendour of summer even the light zephyrs are 
 distempered, their wings as it were shriveled, and 
 their lips fevered as they kiss our brows. Only 
 where water is do they revive their sweetness and 
 comfort, and in the deep hearts of pines and hem 
 locks, where they roam like bees in clover, these 
 hot hours, stirring the balsamic odours which the 
 sun coaxes forth, and bestowing them on weary 
 men and women. 
 
 The holiday is one of Nature s own adoption ; 
 therefore let us withdraw into her generous society, 
 and be at ease. The country is to be served any 
 day and all days, and for the sanity that brings 
 her good service there is no food better than the 
 forest shades afford. Seen from the coverts the 
 very fervours of the sun bestow their aid. Look 
 out upon the fields that faint in the keen rays, and 
 over the meadows of drooping clover, to where 
 
 " Far in the fierce sunshine tower the hills." 
 
 Then the wind comes, tossing the trees, bend 
 ing the grasses, and the clouds swiftly sweep up 
 the sky, dark and threatening. Suddenly an om 
 inous silence falls, the rush of winds upgath- 
 ered breaks forth upon the heat and scatters all 
 the warm fragrance of the day; man and all 
 creatures haste to shelter; the birds with quick 
 
FERNS AND SARSAPARILLAS 
 
out u 
 over 
 
 Then the 
 ing the i 
 
 dark and th 
 lence t 
 
 forth u] 
 ranee 
 
 and 
 
 hyrs are 
 , and 
 Only 
 3 and 
 
 "ipm- 
 
 
Nature s Independence Day 1 1 9 
 
 cries fly to inner haunts they wot of; the trees 
 writhe ; the mighty beast rolls from the thunder 
 cloud that blackens and blots out the sultry sky, 
 and with its swift and yearning rains makes the 
 cool odours of the refreshed earth " forth from far 
 recesses fern scents rush." And with such gracious 
 legacies departs the heated day in the imposing 
 grandeur of the storm. 
 
1 20 Walks in New England 
 
 Looking Unto the Hills 
 
 THE earth in our latitude is now at the 
 height of vigorous life. Now is all 
 growth thrifty and spirited ; in the hot 
 days which wilt down poor humanity the great 
 forest trees luxuriate, and show such shining 
 glory of foliage as brings close to the lover of 
 Nature the delight of all this proud vegetation, 
 the joy of the maples, the elms, the oaks, the 
 beeches, the birches, the sempiternal pines and 
 hemlocks in the July sun. What luxury is ex 
 pressed in the imperial chestnut, blossoming on 
 all the hills and asserting its lordship over thou 
 sands of acres of woodland ! In the city there are 
 also the European lindens in honeyed bloom, and 
 the catalpas, kcelreuterias, and honeysuckles. 
 
 It is a season emphatic in its wealth of life. 
 The flowering of the fields and the thickets is less 
 in number and variety than in the spring, but it is 
 gorgeous in colour. The predominance of yellow 
 has begun, and the black-eyed Susans produce 
 concrete sunshine over meadows and pastures. 
 
Looking Unto the Hills 1 2 1 
 
 The ox-eye daisies company these closely ; amid 
 the tall grasses bloom the gay nodding lilies of 
 orange, and the upright red lilies at the edge of the 
 copse fill the eye with noble flame. The first 
 goldenrods are out, and all the loosestrife family, 
 even to the steironema ; the Canada thistle, as 
 sweet and pretty as if every farmer did not detest 
 it, the pretty but even more greedy shrubby 
 cinquefoil, and the mulleins are in evidence. But 
 not the yellows alone, that other hue of the 
 later days is beginning to show itself, the purple 
 scale of colour, descending from the linaria to the 
 lobelia, in advance of the thistles and vervains, 
 and with the asters and ironweed in prospect ; 
 while yet the daintiest of all the composite, the 
 daisy fleabanes, are profuse in bloom. Every 
 where in forest shades and pasture hillsides, the 
 multitudinous ferns are fruiting in their lavish 
 frondage. All trees and shrubs, in this early sum 
 mer climax, fill the prospect with a sense of high 
 rejoicing in vital warmth and stored moisture. 
 
 This pervasive and potent sense of life in all 
 the earth takes possession of the senses as one 
 wanders through the wildwood pleasaunces, or re 
 clines upon the breezy mountain-top, content to 
 rest in the embracement of the divine Spirit that 
 utters by its lightest breath all these wondrous 
 and lovely phenomena. Only to look upon the 
 
122 IValks in New England 
 
 tossing woods in a summer breeze, only to feel the 
 life of the air as it passes, is to be filled with a 
 sacred possession of endless power and grace. So 
 moved the Spirit upon the face of the waters when 
 the firmament was formed above the fogs of the 
 inchoate earth ; so moved that Spirit when the 
 angel was set at the gates of Paradise to forbid 
 forever the access of the sons of Adam. But now 
 we do not care for any Paradise where life was 
 not conditioned by work, we have a higher 
 world, in which work is the requisite of rest and 
 reward. Let us be thankful that this is so, and 
 that never more may sluggards claim what they 
 have not rightly earned. 
 
 For what can all the glory of the earth mean 
 to those who have done nothing to justify even 
 their existence among sentient living things ? 
 Nothing is more true than the dictum of the old 
 Scripture : " He that will not work, neither shall 
 he eat." And this is not meant for physical food 
 alone ; but as well for spiritual food, which can 
 not be gained by spiritual indolence, that waits to 
 be fed. Those who desert duty and court pleas 
 ure forfeit all that pertains to the soul, for that 
 requires vast nourishment, which must come from 
 the roots of practical human life, through which 
 the spirit s atmosphere is generated. And it is in 
 the free realm of air, in the wide fields, on the bare 
 
Looking Unto the Hills 1 23 
 
 rocks that top the hills, beneath the shades of the 
 forest, that these truths are strongly felt. Where 
 fore, as the fervent waves of July beat upon the 
 tired nerves, let us remember the cry of the He 
 brew poet : " I will look unto the hills, whence 
 cometh my help." 
 
1 24 Walks in New England 
 
 THE BIRDS IN THE THICKETS 
 
 What voices are these in the thickets ? 
 
 Why, unless my old eyes are garblers, 
 Come here, my boy, and look quick ! it s 
 
 Touch and go with the warblers, 
 
 There there there ! on a score or so of the boughlets, 
 Flitting while you are looking, see their sides of red 
 
 chestnut 
 Gleam for a moment, and now they are still as the 
 
 owlets 
 Up in the hollowed maple Speak now ? well, I guess 
 
 not ! 
 They know their time to talk, and it s not while we re 
 
 near them, 
 Unless we grow still and fine, and grow part of their 
 
 quiet. 
 
 Well have they reason to hush and hide, and to fear 
 
 men, 
 
 Well have they cause every one of our race to shy at, 
 We that slay their bright kindred to adorn the bonnets 
 
 of woman, 
 
 We that kill them to eat, as does the childish Italian, 
 How should the dear birds know that any one that is 
 
 human 
 
 Differs at all from the tramp or the tatterdemalion ? 
 Clad are they all much alike, methinks, to the bird s eye ; 
 Judged by the bird s keen optics and keener acoustics 
 Enemies must we appear, nor caught is the heard sigh, 
 
The Birds in the Thickets 1 25 
 
 For that is conveyed away by the devil-on-two-sticks, 
 He who can show us all up, the spirit Asmodeus, 
 He of all others the coldest, unkindest diviner, 
 Making oneself to oneself at every turn most odious, 
 And without modulation transposing our confident major 
 to minor. 
 
 Ah yes ! ye birds that flit in the shadowy hemlocks, 
 
 Ye mountain sparrows, ye chickadees, buntings and jun- 
 
 cos, 
 
 Trust us not. Time was that the gemboks, 
 Unsuspecting their imminent need was to shun foes, 
 Came to the call of the hunter, rested their chins on his 
 
 shoulder, 
 Followed him close as o er the South African wilds he 
 
 wandered, 
 
 Trusted him, till at last, grown meaner, not bolder, 
 The man turned and slew the poor fools, basely 
 
 squandered 
 
 Their fond, silly faith, and their innocent friendship. 
 Trust us not, why trust me ? Hast not seen such an 
 other 
 
 Steal carefully on, and rest, so ! Let the end skip, 
 I might be that man, I am that man s brother. 
 
 Ay, dear little birds in the fir trees, 
 Be shy of me too, though I love ye ; 
 
 Prudently, cautiously skirt these 
 Thickets that border in birches 
 
 The forests in summer that grove ye ; 
 Come not too nigh, lest a savage 
 
 Spring from my silent devotion, 
 
1 26 IValks in New England 
 
 And, like my kind, I make ravage 
 Of what I love best. That s our notion : 
 
 If we love, we destroy ; tis the record of history. 
 Destroy and despoil and lay desolate, 
 
 Thus hath man done. O dread Mystery ! 
 Thou whose intent we all guess so late, 
 
 Thou whose gray hell we all tessellate 
 With the blessings we would give, but cannot, 
 
 Art thou coldly the high heavens mounting ? 
 Is t even, who ran and who ran not ? 
 
 Has not character, too, an accounting ? 
 The Spirit speaks the God s astir, 
 
 The speech is brief and strong : 
 " Leave to the lower gods that were 
 
 Their rustic crowd so long. 
 Leave to old Pan his worshiper 
 
 Who knows not of thy wrong ; 
 Leave to the maple and the fir 
 
 The rapture of their song. 
 I breathe through their delicious throats 
 
 The sacred joy of life ; 
 Tis I that utter in their notes 
 
 That melody arife 
 With beauty of the seven spheres 
 
 That reach to Paradise, 
 That melody which he who hears 
 
 Joins to the singing skies ; 
 And he on very wings of birds 
 
 In transport of the soul 
 May rise to me, and, lacking words, 
 
 Know he hath said the whole ! " 
 
July Days 127 
 
 July Days 
 
 NATURE holds her most royal state in 
 this month of glowing heat. We yield 
 too thoughtlessly to the fine tyranny of 
 Lowell s muse, glorifying June with so intimate 
 eulogy as the absolute " high tide of the year." 
 June is indeed beautiful, sweet and gracious, and 
 none denies her charm, or disputes that 
 
 Then, if ever, come perfect days ; 
 Then heaven tries the earth if it be in tune 
 
 And over it softly her warm ear lays. 
 Whether we look, or whether we listen, 
 We hear life murmur and see it glisten. 
 
 But now there is no need to try if earth be in tune, 
 for her stately rhythm is perfected, its harmonies 
 written in, and the great symphony fills every 
 sense with the rich burden of its adagio. The 
 height and rest of summer are not found in the 
 day of cherry and horse-chestnut blossoms ; it is 
 in July, when the sun is fervid and strong and the 
 winds both cordial and vigorous, that Nature re- 
 
128 Walks in New England 
 
 poses in her splendid wealth. There is now a 
 complete sense of comfort and joy in power, and 
 nourishment of beauty, and liberal welcome, such 
 as no other season equals. The meadows or the 
 hills whose daisied grasses or tall grains roll their 
 waves of light and shade before the hurrying 
 winds ; the deep, cool shaded woods where the 
 ferns spread their profuse fronds ; the prodigal 
 roses and the linden-bloom loved of bees, even 
 the mere city s shaded streets and shaven lawns, 
 utter the same thought of endless resource and 
 liberal bestowal. 
 
 The advance of a perfect July day is like noth 
 ing else so nearly as a musical work by a fine ar 
 tist, a Mendelssohn concerto, or a Mozart 
 sonata, for instance. There begins to steal upon 
 the lesser stars a dimness, yet it is still the starry 
 night that fills the vault immense ; then a pearly 
 gray grows at the edge of the east, and the robins, 
 earliest of birds, begin to call in sharp, quick notes; 
 the gray grows whiter, and delicate sea-shell tints 
 in imperceptible gradations rise in the sky ; a faint 
 streak of cloud absorbs them, and then suddenly 
 lights into flame ; the birds are all awake now, and 
 full of twittering talk, with little music in the trees, 
 though the wood-birds have yet their songs to 
 sing ; the sun is near ; his ruddy disk cuts the 
 bright horizon line, and in an instant springs ra- 
 
July Days 1 29 
 
 diantly forth, " rejoicing as a strong man to run a 
 race;" dawn is lost in day. 
 
 For hours yet there are dewy grasses to sparkle 
 with hues of the rainbow ; the maples keep the 
 sweet morning breeze in their leafy harbours ; 
 the hearts of the roses are cool, and the bees are in 
 the poppies and petunias, and busy at the clover, 
 before the fervours of the noon have come, and 
 the earth is lapt in light. Then a myriad insects 
 are leaping and darting, humming and shrilling 
 their strident happiness ; the click-clack of the 
 mower and the tedder sounds over the fields, and 
 the new-mown hay crowds the air with warm high 
 fragrance ; the earth is the captive of the sun, and 
 David s words are in our ears, when he says : 
 " His going forth is from the end of the heaven 
 and his circuit unto the end of it ; and there is 
 nothing hid from the heat thereof." Yet there is 
 health in the heat ; the air is clear and sweet and 
 full of life, and when the evening returns with 
 dewy coolness, the lone evening star is revealed 
 golden and tender above the vanished sun ; the 
 afterglow mounts high in its white, celestial bene 
 diction, and as all trace of day departs, " stars 
 arise, and the night is holy." 
 i 
 
130 Walks i n N^ England 
 
 The Electric Storm 
 
 YET upon the hush of the elements breaks 
 in the electric storm. There are more 
 terrible manifestations of the elemental 
 forces, as when a tornado sweeps across the land, 
 or a tidal wave engulfs a city, or an earthquake 
 or volcanic eruption destroys the habitations of 
 men and the supposed stability of mountains, or 
 a typhoon sweeps across the ocean and tosses a 
 great ship with its human freight as a bubble. 
 These are more terrible, because so escapeless. 
 But the emotion of awe is swallowed up in terror, 
 and with it, if any other feeling arise, it is that of 
 revolt and anger, that man should so be taken 
 advantage of, helpless and resourceless as he must 
 be in the concourse and conspiracy of elements. 
 To awaken in its sublime reach the grand spirit 
 ual feeling truly known as awe, that small impulse 
 of pygmy resentment must be stilled, must be 
 absent, nothing must remain except what the 
 prophet felt when on the mount before the Lord 
 he heard and beheld him pass by, " a still, small 
 
The Electric Storm 131 
 
 voice," after the mountains had been rent and 
 the rocks broken in pieces, and the pause had come. 
 There was the moment of awe, when all the 
 weight of the world fell on the prophet s shoul 
 ders, and the God spake to him, in the unearthly 
 silence that ensued. 
 
 Nothing else that we experience in the yearly 
 course is so wonderful and inexplicable as the 
 thunderstorm, as it is still called, by metonymy, 
 placing the effect for the cause. The splendour 
 of such a storm from the coign of a commanding 
 hill, looking over miles of mountains and valleys, 
 is something inexpressible in language. To view 
 it aright, and know its magnificence, one must 
 see it through, from its long upgathering over 
 roods and square miles of territory, with its brood 
 ing echoes of thunder from flashes that are mere 
 streaks of gentle light ; to the moment when the 
 fringes of the shower descend and the flashes grow 
 brighter, and the response is swifter ; to the cru 
 cial, living instant when crashes all the air, and 
 every hill echoes back, so soon after the flash 
 that no common watch can register the elapsing 
 fragment of a second. Here, when heaven and 
 earth seem to clash in one tremendous utterance 
 of unity, is the splendid thrill of the electric 
 storm. 
 
 Attuned to this infinitely glorious music, what, 
 
132 Walks in New England 
 
 for the moment, seem all the inventions of men ? 
 But this is not a permanent thought in another 
 moment the great separation is plain, and there 
 is not a true comparison between man and the 
 immenser elements. To say this is not to say 
 anything of the exceeding brilliant beauty of the 
 electric discharges as they chart themselves on the 
 clouds in their immediate descent or assent or in 
 terchange, so incessant, sometimes, that all the 
 heavens seem ablaze with wandering currents, 
 making crosses and curves and circles, and mighty 
 zigzags, with colours of violet and red, gold and 
 fire yellow, and multitudinous other tints, or hues, 
 across and within the deep-bosomed blue-gray 
 clouds. It is in vain to picture the scene. Few 
 ever remain out of cover beneath the skies to wit 
 ness it. These storms are the crowning glories of 
 July, the visible and audible presence of God 
 as he walks in his garden of the universe. 
 
A Seasonable Divagation 133 
 
 A Seasonable Divagation 
 
 IN the bright blazing heat of July, this penulti 
 mate year of the century, it is more than 
 ever an escape that one makes when he 
 leaves the city for mountain, lake or seashore. 
 There is more to escape from than for a whole 
 generation past. Thrust aside the city, forget 
 the telegraph and the newspaper ; under God s 
 free sky, breathing vital air, in touch with the 
 wholesome earth, come into community with 
 the original state of man, amid the healing ele 
 ments that have not heard of war or known of 
 greed. 
 
 Be there balsam or brine in the air that we 
 seek, it refreshes the jaded nerves of the denizen 
 of cities, worn upon by contact with his kind 
 until life itself is ajar with noise and noisomeness, 
 and has become indeed like " a tale told by an 
 idiot, full of sound and fury, signifying nothing." 
 The old earth receives her children with the same 
 uncaring aspect ; emotionless it accepts our love ; 
 without passion it responds to our fever ; we 
 
134 Walks in New England 
 
 grow calm and sane. Over all this wide " gannet s 
 bath " ply the winds of the east, as before man 
 set foot on the wild shores of America ; over 
 the great sweeping hills rush the western winds 
 with the tang of the north filling them now and 
 again, as when no man had sought a northwest 
 passage for commerce or thought to discover the 
 north pole. These at least are yet untouched by 
 the transient race of man. 
 
 And what wonderful gifts are these the winds 
 bring over the salt foam and the great wilder 
 nesses, gifts of new living force and fresh de 
 light, which sooth our frayed and fretted sensa 
 tions, and bring to us healing and heartsome 
 purpose. They are indeed no less than the voice 
 of God walking in the garden in the cool of the 
 day. Tis all the cool of the day for the spirit 
 that formed this scene of earth, and is not bound 
 by our petty limitations. We measure everything 
 by our own small yardstick we time what is 
 done by our yo-year clocks, and remember not 
 what Jesus said to us all, as he looked forth over 
 the hills of Judea, and noted the lilies and the 
 birds, and rebukingly said : " Shall he not much 
 more clothe you, O ye of little faith?" And 
 we know that we shall yet be clothed upon in the 
 home that is to come in beauty equal to that of 
 the earth which is our present habitation. 
 
A Seasonable Divagation 135 
 
 The summer splendour and enchantment is at 
 its fill of perfection. The hayfield fragrance is 
 subtly interwoven with the currents of air, and 
 the sun draws forth as well the balsamic odours of 
 the pines and hemlocks and spruces. He who 
 dwells in a mountain region where such trees grow 
 is more richly furnished with the breath of health 
 than any other. The yellow pines that abound 
 on the plain are a great constituent of our health, 
 and so fast as they are destroyed by the invasion 
 of the houses, the atmosphere deteriorates. They 
 cannot combat the soft coal smoke which hangs 
 over all the valley. But this is the way of the 
 world ; the opportunity of money-getting fouls 
 all the air of the valleys, and to the hills or the 
 shore one must fly to escape this pollution. 
 Faugh ! Let us get out of it for a moment and 
 make for the mountains " whence cometh my 
 help," said David the psalmist. 
 
 There is nothing more wonderful for us than 
 the hill country westward, where as yet only 
 farmers live and where still a few villages with 
 their home industries exist, if they do not flourish. 
 If things were healthy, these industries should be 
 prosperous, and the whole country round about 
 would be happier, as it was a generation ago. 
 It was a most attractive sight, one of the little 
 old-time villages, set in a valley still high in the 
 
136 IValks in New England 
 
 hills, where a shop, making churns, or drums, or 
 tool-handles, or cheese-boxes, or axes, or cloth, 
 or yarn, centered the activities of a community 
 to which the surrounding farmers contributed 
 their custom and whence they shipped their prod 
 uce. Those which still exist are not what they 
 were, yet they still add to the pleasure of a country 
 life. The mail comes in twice a day in the sum 
 mer, once a day in the winter ; there is enough to 
 draw thither the farmers to swap stories at the 
 village store ; and such a village is one of the 
 centers of the world. For the newspaper comes 
 there, and all of the people get the news, although 
 not all of them buy the newspapers. 
 
 But why do we linger in the world in this 
 way ? It is now as it was when Wordsworth 
 wrote : 
 
 " The world is too much with us : late and soon, 
 Getting and spending, we lay waste our powers ; 
 Little we see in Nature that is ours ; 
 We have given our hearts away, a sordid boon ! 
 The sea that bares her bosom to the moon, 
 The winds that will be howling at all hours, 
 And are up-gathered now, like sleeping flowers, 
 For this, for everything, we are out of tune ; 
 It moves us not. Great God ! I d rather be 
 A pagan, suckled in a creed outworn, 
 So might I, standing on this pleasant lea, 
 
A Seasonable Divagation 137 
 
 Have glimpses that would make me less forlorn ; 
 Have sight of Proteus rising from the sea, 
 Or hear old Triton blow his wreathed horn." 
 
 The world is too much with us yea, indeed. 
 
 Oh, to meet face to face with Freedom on the 
 heights, where she dwells, free-eyed, full-bosomed, 
 forthright and faithful ! What is all the mischief 
 of men when one stands on a mountain summit, 
 and surveys vast billows of hills swelling around 
 him, north, south, east and west ; and descries 
 the Catskills and Greylock, Haystack, Monadnoc, 
 and even little Mount Tom, through the defile 
 of the Westfield river, and the Dome of the 
 Taconics, with multitudes of hills unnamed and 
 unknown, but forest-clad and glorious in green, 
 with chestnuts blossoming, oaks glistening, birches 
 shining, hemlocks, pines, spruces and balsams 
 darkling, and hackmatacks gayly dancing ! 
 Here in truth one feels free of human ills, for 
 here is that immitigable spirit, the freedom of 
 God s life, filling all the air. 
 
 There is then, we find, something stronger, 
 more masterly, more beautiful, more encom 
 passing, more enduring, more holy and purifying, 
 than all that we children of Adam have done. It 
 was done before one of our race had been born 
 out of the slow evolved forms of life, before right 
 and wrong had become differentiated with the 
 
138 IValks in New England 
 
 growth of conscience in the latest of evolutions. 
 God here reigns in an earlier expression, and 
 teaches his latest born children that they have 
 multitudinous steps yet to take to reach his 
 reign of calm and power, in which he reposes, and 
 gives us so the opportunity to repose in faith and 
 hope. 
 
The Height of Summer 139 
 
 The Height of Summer 
 
 NOW summer is at her midmost fervour and 
 splendour. For a moment she pauses in 
 the glory of full foliage, the ripening of 
 grasses and grains, the drifting fragrances of first 
 harvests and the firs whose resinous sap is drained 
 by the ardent sun and richly distilled within the 
 air, she pauses and contemplates what she has 
 done. Over the hills sweep her wild western 
 breezes and the forests murmur gratefully ; in the 
 valley brood her heats, and her dews rise and the 
 thrushes sing and there is peace ; on the plains 
 the rye nods and the corn-blades wave and the 
 cattle lie beneath the trees at the pasture edge in 
 the noontide, and are content. All the earth has 
 changed since summer came. No faint scents of 
 tiny violets or brave arbutus are hers ; after the 
 lilacs and thesyringas followed the roses, and all the 
 air was full of their sumptuous fragrance ; then the 
 grapes joined their wine. All the sweetness of the 
 azalea and the clethra is forgotten now, and even 
 the roses are a memory, save where in the secluded 
 
140 IValks in New England 
 
 swamps Rosa Carolina brightens the whole circuit 
 of the cedars and hackmatacks. The fragrances 
 of the hills and vales are those of the elderblow 
 and the honeysuckles. Clovers are no longer 
 sending their honeyed perfume over many an acre ; 
 their time is past, and the mowings only offer the 
 nostrils the pleasant wholesome scent of hay, with 
 now and then a delicious intensity where the sweet 
 grass has been cut with the rest. Haying is the 
 business of the farmer, and the weather has been 
 kind to him. It is true that the great New 
 England crop brings lower prices than might be 
 wished, but if its exchange value is less, its use 
 value is as great as ever, it will raise the farmer s 
 beef, it will give the farmer s milk, and butter 
 and cheese will be produced as richly as if the crop 
 as it s mowed were worth $20 a ton. And to us 
 who look at the earth as a place of beauty this is 
 merely a side issue. 
 
 There is a rich profusion of wayside bloom now, 
 and it is noteworthy that on every hand the tone 
 that marks the turn of the year toward the fall is 
 prevalent in field lilies and rudbeckia, and the first 
 golden-rod of July is beginning to prophecy that 
 combination of the golden-rods and asters which 
 are in fact the flowers of fall. Meantime there 
 are scores of lesser flowers that lighten the way 
 side. The cleavers are sending up their clamber- 
 

 BLACKBERRYING 
 

The Height of Summer 141 
 
 ing stems, that clutch by the fine little spines un 
 der their leaves and pointing down along their 
 stems, and so climb up in the midst of other 
 plants, and fairly " cleave " their way to sunlight. 
 Some of these cleavers are lovely in their delicate 
 pale flowering, as well as attractive in the starry 
 arrangement of their leaves. The rich crimson 
 flowers of the thimble-berry or Scotch-cap abound 
 in the mountain thickets. The bittersweet is in 
 blossom, and in the woods the two twin flowers, 
 Linnaea and Mitchella, and the creeping snow- 
 berry in dark recesses. Also many an orchid is 
 out, and Venus s looking-glass is seen, so ex 
 travagantly misnamed. Of course the hearty 
 yarrow is busy on the roadsides and in the yards, 
 and the ground-nut s pink blossoms are swinging 
 from the shrubs they climb over. The Indian- 
 pipe is lifting its curious flower, a piece of sculp 
 ture that perishes, but as well worth the artist s 
 use as the acanthus. Thus Nature is full of joy 
 in these days of heat good days, wherein life is 
 embodied and pursued with constant energy. 
 
 Now when summer reigns so royally, the 
 mountains and the seaside are rivals in their at 
 tractions. The winds that sweep the mountain 
 tops are not like those that come up from the 
 sea, bringing the strengthening breath of the brine, 
 the breath that has blown over the waves of the 
 
142 Walks in New England 
 
 globe, and has in it Cathay and Ceylon and Araby 
 the Blest and so many other realms of tradition 
 and poesy. For though we know all the regions 
 of the earth and their peoples, and there are no 
 secrets hidden from us of a sophisticated genera 
 tion, to whom all things have become common, 
 yet there lingers in the salt air a fascination that 
 knowledge and reason does not destroy, and that 
 adds to its physical impact an element that be 
 longs to past romance. 
 
 Past in certain phases, but living in other lines ; 
 for the ocean is always the home of infinite power ; 
 swept over though it is by thousands of the petty 
 craft of men, it is still untamed and strange, and 
 its tragedies are numerous enough and better 
 known than they were of old. On some cliff 
 above the broad Atlantic, with nothing between 
 one and the shores of Spain, there still comes to 
 the ear the mystic song of the sailor that Count 
 Arnaldos heard, and asked in vain to be taught : 
 
 " In each sail that skims the horizon, 
 In each landward blowing breeze, 
 
 I behold the stately galley, 
 
 Hear those mournful melodies, 
 
 Till my soul is full of longing 
 For the secret of the sea." 
 
 Yet Thoreau thought the secret of the sea was 
 better caught on land : 
 
The Height of Summer 143 
 
 u The middle sea contains no crimson dulse, 
 Its deeper waves cast up no pearls to view, 
 
 But on the shore my hand is on its pulse, 
 
 And I converse with many a shipwrecked crew." 
 
 In these days, when everybody makes the ocean 
 voyage, the truth ought to be known. The 
 Spanish ballad says that the sailor answered to 
 Count Arnaldos : 
 
 " Only those who brave its dangers 
 Comprehend its mystery." 
 
 And perhaps the reason why the hills are more 
 dear to so many who love Nature is that their 
 mystery, as profound as that of the sea, is more 
 near and more free of apprehension. Not that 
 Nature is ever truly in sympathy with man s 
 moods, but that we are in her very bosom, sensi 
 bly nurtured by her abundant life and intimate 
 with her very heart-beats. She is not sympathetic 
 with man, but man may glide into her great flood 
 and current of divine power, and feel himself borne 
 on in endless vigour to a broader and most 
 wondrous order of development, where all that is 
 beautiful here will have a transcendent renewal 
 and spiritual exaltation. 
 
144 Walks in New England 
 
 In the Dog-Days : 1 898 
 
 THE dog-days have been so long with us, 
 beginning at a most unconscionably 
 early date, before Sirius was in the as 
 cendant that recognition of their presence seems 
 belated. It would seem that in sympathy with 
 our soldiers in the tropics, we had taken on some 
 of the aspects of the rainy season of those lati 
 tudes, and were enabled thereby to share, even if 
 in a very small degree, the discomforts and dis 
 couragements of their climatic differences. But 
 as soon as we speak the words, the foolish notion 
 vanishes, the slender resemblance disappears. It 
 is a wetter season than usual; we have malaria 
 fever, the humidity clogs our veins and our di 
 gestions, but we are not having our physical vi 
 tality lowered to the point where collapse follows 
 and the rest of life threatens to be a struggle with 
 a broken constitution. That is the prospect be 
 fore our soldiers, and the thought of it makes us 
 feel as if mere enjoyment of active labour here 
 were something of an affront to the men whose 
 
LtllLlloLu. 
 
 
 
 i ntain peaks ; - 
 .ngland <eaceful, sunr 
 
 I to their vis 
 
 they were ; the promontories ai 
 
 idsWtMU! Wlofrefres 
 
 and salt in their airs, and as incon 
 
 -I human feelings. If, indeed, Nature d 
 
 jathize, as sentimental poets have said f i i 
 
 with human feelings, how i e tl 
 
 i would become I It is bet is i 
 
 , !ecau 
 
 i)efbre man was T nan h 
 
 red, transient 
 to unconceived c; 
 
THE MOUNT TOM RANGE 
 
In the Dog-Day s : 1898 145 
 
 prime of life is burdened by these dangers. In 
 deed, the war clouds even the beauty of the earth, 
 and it is hard to escape for a moment its terrific 
 burden. 
 
 Yet there still rise the great undisturbed hills, 
 there still rolls the majestic solemn ocean ; breezes 
 of the west sweep the mountain peaks ; the pla 
 teaus of our New England are as peaceful, sunny, 
 free and unsuggestive of human ill to their visit 
 ors as ever they were ; the promontories and 
 stretched sands of our coasts are as full of refresh 
 ing spice and salt in their airs, and as inconsiderate 
 of all human feelings. If, indeed, Nature did 
 sympathize, as sentimental poets have said in the 
 past, with human feelings, how intolerable this 
 earth would become ! It is because Nature is re 
 mote, vast, venerable, incommensurate, because 
 she was before man was, and will be after man has 
 disappeared, transient passenger over unknown 
 ages to unconceived destinies that Nature af 
 fords us comfort. In these phenomena which are 
 so familiar to us we learn as we view them in their 
 apparent dimensions the slow patience and constant 
 persistence of that inner purpose of all that is, 
 the constancy of development of the highest from 
 the lowest, the never ceasing progress of knowing 
 and doing and being, the infinite dimly conceived 
 in our ideals. 
 
146 IValks in New England 
 
 The earth is now as rich as in June in wonder 
 and power in our woods and fields. Much of 
 the charm has departed, for no doubt the stages 
 of the spring catch us more graciously and hold 
 us more tenderly than any others, and the sump 
 tuous vitality of early summer is profoundly cap 
 tivating, with its apple blooms and its roses, and 
 every fern growing into perfection, and all the 
 trees rich with verdant glory, and the birds utter 
 ing their varied melodies. But midsummer has 
 its own charms, not altogether without music 
 either, for the song-sparrow never ceases to sing, 
 and the wood thrush is now at his height of song, 
 while the hermit thrush in the depths of the for 
 est is sure to send forth his evening hymn. But 
 besides these, how many delicious bits of song are 
 heard, by those who wander in unfrequented thick 
 ets, from lesser members of the singing craft. 
 Yes, the time of courtship is past, but it is a libel 
 on many of the tribes of birds to say that they 
 only sing in that period ; some of them sing al 
 ways, and wherever they are. There are odds in 
 birds as in men. Certainly one who in deep win 
 ter woods has heard the chickadees and the moun 
 tain sparrows sibilating back and forth in the 
 frosty air knows that the note of tenderness lasts 
 in beauty, though it changes its insistence and its 
 accent. So long as these little creatures chirp and 
 
In the Dog-Day s: 1898 147 
 
 whisper in the spruces and the hemlocks, " the 
 poetry of earth is never dead." 
 
 But woods and fields are feeling the warnings of 
 fall. How the golden-rods colour the pastures 
 and the roadsides, some five or six varieties being 
 in full bloom now ; while the cone flowers yet 
 linger, and will for a long time ; and the superb 
 butterfly-weed is yet crowded with its clouds of 
 cinnamon-coloured butterflies, and the joe-pye 
 lifts its wealthy pinkish-purple corymbs high over 
 the moist brooksides where it loves to dwell. The 
 cardinal flower now bends its stately panicles over 
 the very edges of the mountain streams, and splen 
 did in colour as it is, it bears the modest air of 
 retirement. Now also the lobelias are plenty in 
 various habitudes, and the parsley tribe riots in 
 meadows and roadsides and marshy tracts, from 
 Queen Anne s Lace to water hemlock and the 
 heracleums and the archangelicas, though the 
 former of those giant parsleys is past its blooming 
 and in fruit, like the poison carrot. In the open 
 and sunny marshes now the arrowhead is in its 
 finest condition, and few years see such great 
 blossoms of sagittaria as this year discloses. This 
 is emphatically the season of the mints, and bee- 
 balm in the gardens, and occasionally in stray 
 nooks where once there have been gardens, calls 
 to the lilac, bergamot, the paler, tall pennyroyal 
 
148 Walks in New England 
 
 or mountain mint, and many more whose spicy 
 fragrance fills the air and attracts the bees. 
 
 These are of the fields, of the unshaded places, 
 but there are also the offsprings of the wood mold 
 which charm, or which interest because of their 
 peculiarities, if they do not charm. Such are the 
 parasites of the tree roots and the dwellers upon 
 decaying wood. Now may be seen in full char 
 acter that amazing plant which the Indians are 
 said to have named " ghost flower," which the 
 Puritans first called " corpse plant," and which 
 later New Englanders named "Indian pipe" 
 the monotropa uniflora of the botanists. The 
 danger of judging by appearances is well illustrated 
 by this truly ghostlike flower, for it is closely al 
 lied to the trailing arbutus, the kalmias, the huc 
 kleberries and the deerberry and a score more of 
 plants so unlike that their actual fellowship seems 
 a fiction. This is analogous to human nature, 
 for we are all of one blood, and the Caucasian 
 philosopher and scientist is as like the Andaman is 
 lander as the arbutus is like the Indian pipe, or the 
 mountain laurel like the false beech-drops, which 
 also are now in bloom. Strangely, too, one of the 
 loveliest groups of flowers of this season bears 
 the same stigma of filched growth, the gerardias, 
 whose most showy species, the yellow and the 
 oak-leaved, are now in full bloom, and the grace- 
 
In the Dog-Days : 1898 149 
 
 ful purple wayside species soon will be. Now, 
 also, the most splendidly coloured funguses are 
 in evidence, those great crimson boletuses in the 
 woodland, and the deep orange mushrooms. It is 
 thus the choice season for parasites, and among 
 them also is to be found the corallorhiza, or coral 
 root, to which little beauty belongs, but only a 
 certain element of marvel, as it springs from the 
 damp mold of the deep woods, brown of stalk and 
 with dead brown or yellowish bracts in place of 
 leaves, with rather pretty, waxen flowers, devoid of 
 light in their dull tones. There is also the true 
 beech-drops, as unearthly or too earthly as the 
 others. 
 
 The swamps are now reservoirs of unliberated 
 heat, where the atmosphere steams visibly in the 
 sunshine and the poison sumach is filling its for 
 bidding panicles of berries, as the poison ivy is 
 doing in like manner around the fences and on 
 the trees in the open lands. But the swamp rose 
 still blooms in these deep cedar-fringed and hack 
 matack-bordered recesses and the sphagnum is 
 riotous in its growth. The hackmatacks, our native 
 larches, are yellowing already, and the water- 
 maples are sending forth their brilliant red signals 
 of the coming fall. The end is foreknown in the 
 swamps first of all ; before even a bough changes 
 on the maples of the upland or the first leaf crim- 
 
150 Walks in New England 
 
 sons on the woodbine, their relations in the 
 swamps are saying that the parting of the ways 
 has come. Here we realize first how the inexor 
 able process of Nature moves on, and all the 
 glory of the earth is rushing as swift as sap can 
 move and fruit can mature to the season s turn, 
 when in quick following come all the splendid 
 colours of that bloom which marks the end. 
 
 But it is not given to the race of man to end 
 in splendour as age draws on. That is the boon 
 of the transient show, the partial bestowal of the 
 great spirit which informs all. Man s period is 
 not for yearly change, fall and renewal, but for a 
 momentous pause precluding and signifying a 
 period of new conditions. The trees and the 
 flowers and the grasses obey their genius of exist 
 ence, and go with triumph and with peace into 
 their wintry rest. But we of higher sensitiveness 
 and closer neighbourbood to the great spirit of all 
 have lost that confident commitment of fortune, 
 and worry over what is to happen and what we 
 are to be. There is no need of this anxiousness. 
 " Are ye not of much more value than they ? " 
 
The Fountain Light " 151 
 
 " The Fountain Light of All Our Day " 
 
 YESTERDAY was a day of foreboding 
 fate. As one in the fields has heard from 
 the distant town one slow and solemn toll, 
 and then an echoing silence long succeeding be 
 fore the bell begins its solemn record of the dead, 
 so was it in that short morning hour when upon 
 the intolerable blazing sunshine fell a sudden 
 cloud, and a slight chill wind breathed upon earth, 
 and the sky grew overcast ; in that moment 
 sounded the warning stroke of the year s decline. 
 The prophetic pause is sooner or later, one year 
 and another, but it always comes, and it remains 
 in memory, like as the lingering echo from the 
 village belfry, until the note is struck again, and 
 the summer is indeed gone. 
 
 There is a poem that by some strange hap 
 strayed into the hymn-books which has these 
 musical lines, as we remember them : 
 u Sweet Sabbath of the year, 
 
 While earthly lights decay, 
 Thy parting steps methinks I hear 
 Pass from the world away." 
 
152 Walks in New England 
 
 The pensive cadence of these simple words falls 
 with a delicate perfectness of sympathy into the 
 anticipating thought of autumn ; for whether be 
 cause of old religious associations, or because the 
 Sabbath idea is rest, nothing could better express 
 the especial charm of the season. And though 
 long weeks of heat are to come, rounding out the 
 fruit of the orchards and the nuts of the forests, 
 filling the maize ears in the rustling fields and 
 swelling the pumpkins beneath them, yet the Sab 
 bath sense has come into our lives, and the hour 
 of eve has filled us with a curious calm, in which 
 the strange and cruel human world is for a little 
 time alien and absent. 
 
 Resting in such a solemn sweet day upon the 
 shaded ledges of the mountain side, beholding the 
 wonderful great earth stretching away in billowy 
 hills, the peace of God fills the soul. Lapped in 
 the ample bosom of mighty Nature, into every 
 sense steals the deep and still conviction of the 
 Spirit that began not nor ceases, so strong, so 
 sure, so patient, so constant, so harmonious, in its 
 dateless and enduring ages working out its tre 
 mendous and holy purposes. What are we, to 
 fret and labour and curse, and confound our mortal 
 weakness, with the face of God continually before 
 us, and his life throbbing in our veins, and in the 
 birds and the squirrels, the trees and the shrubs, 
 

 THE HILLSIDE PASTURE 
 
" The Fountain Light " 153 
 
 the myriad grasses and ferns and flowers, aye, in 
 streams of the spring and in the very rocks them 
 selves, which are called insensate as if anywhere 
 in a living universe there could be a thing insen 
 sate ! We are not merely in God s hands, we are 
 partakers of his being, and without us, surely, 
 there were no God. 
 
 Why should we limit our vision and shut our 
 ears in the presence and witness of the greater 
 harmonies, the everlasting truths ? Labour in our 
 accustomed ways we must ; the transient busy 
 world of men has work for us all to do, and none 
 may shirk or deny it. But there remaineth a rest 
 to the people of God, and it is open to all to 
 partake of it, not in some imagined heaven with 
 out duties and responsibilities, some abode of sub 
 limated selfishness, but here and now, while we 
 have our work, and are doing it. To it we re 
 turn, as by instinctive movement of that spark of 
 the divine, that true self, the soul we got from the 
 Over-soul, in which abide, though smothered un 
 der passing circumstance and burden, yet now and 
 again thrilling us with deathless fire, the feelings 
 which, " be they what they may," 
 
 " Are yet the fountain light of all our day, 
 
 Are yet a master light of all our seeing, 
 Uphold us, cherish, and have power to make 
 Our noisy years seem moments in the being 
 
154 Walks in New England 
 
 Of the eternal Silence : truths that wake 
 
 To perish never; 
 While neither listlessness, nor mad endeavour, 
 
 Nor man nor boy, 
 Nor all that is at enmity with joy 
 Can utterly abolish or destroy ! 
 
 Hence in a season of calm weather, 
 
 Though inland far we be, 
 Our souls have sight of that immortal sea 
 
 Which brought us hither, 
 
 Can in a moment travel thither, 
 And see the Children sporting on the shore, 
 And hear the mighty waters rolling evermore ! " 
 
 THE SYMPHONY OF THE STORM 
 
 The storm-ship dips its swift rudder 
 Deep into cloud waves that shudder 
 And shake into showers o er the land, 
 Descending, possessing the land. 
 The hills in its mist-wake are hidden, 
 The woods with its wild winds are ridden, 
 
 They tremble and toss, 
 As seaweeds are tossed on the strand ; 
 
 They moan o er the loss 
 Of the leaves that they loose on demand 
 Of the guides of the ship, the storm-spirits, 
 Now in power for the hour 
 While deep-bosomed clouds lower; 
 
The Symphony of the Storm 155 
 
 Now in power and in duty 
 To fret and to harry the earth, 
 To rouse and enhearten the earth. 
 For the storm-ship never will veer its 
 Course from the orders it got 
 Till all is fulfilled of its lot, 
 
 And it stops in the harbour with booty 
 Reft from the earth and its dwellers. 
 What should the spirits that guide 
 Care for the ruin that wide 
 Follows their track, the pride-quellers ! 
 Down go the great works man has builded, 
 
 Crushed are his ships and their piers ; 
 Swept into rude heaps are his gilded 
 Palaces, the glory of years ; 
 His warehouses of merchandise nought ; 
 In his homes desolation is wrought ; 
 Man, woman and child 
 In the wreck overpiled 
 
 Most endangered where safety they sought, 
 Done to death by the rioting rage 
 Of the war that the elements wage. 
 
 " Oh praise the Lord of Heaven ! praise him in the height ! 
 Praise him, all ye angels of his ! praise him all his hosts ! 
 Praise him, sun and moon ! praise him all ye stars and 
 
 light ! 
 
 Praise him all ye seas ! praise him all ye coasts ! 
 Fire and hail, snow and vapour, stormy wind fulfilling 
 
 his word ! 
 
156 IValks in New England 
 
 Let them praise the name of the Lord ! 
 
 Let everything that hath breath praise the Lord ! " 
 
 Yea, for all they are doing his will, 
 
 All the life of God, going on, all that is and shall be to 
 
 fill;- 
 
 And we know not why or how, but surely it is, 
 Death in a moment of storm, death in the quiet of home, 
 Death in the horror of murder, death at the hight of 
 
 bliss, 
 
 What matters how we depart ? Even in ocean s foam 
 God is : and not wave and not wind, 
 Nor other messengers of his mind, 
 
 Can harm the soul that knows him, 
 Since each of them but shows him 
 Intent upon the mighty work of Time, 
 Which is Eternity : for what we call 
 Time s but the entrance hall, 
 Nay, tis a corridor 
 Whence opens many a door 
 On passages which lead us to the prime 
 And present habitation of our God, 
 The spiritual place where feet ne er trod, 
 Unlimned, illimitable light, the abode of God. 
 
 " The Lord descended from above 
 And bowed the heavens high, 
 
 And underneath his feet he cast 
 The darkness of the sky ; 
 
 On cherub and on seraphim 
 
The Symphony of the Storm 157 
 
 Full royally he rode, 
 And on the wings of mighty winds 
 Came flying all abroad ! " 
 
 So shall the storm-ship scud ; 
 
 So shall it harry the earth and the sea ; 
 Secure that His life will waken and bud, 
 
 Secure that the flower and the fruit will be. 
 The bud that blasts, the flower that may wither, 
 
 The fruit that decays, we scarce may see ; 
 They are but efforts stopped erewhither, 
 
 They are but motes in Eternity. 
 
 " O all ye works of the Lord, bless ye the Lord ! 
 
 Praise him, and magnify him forever ! 
 O let the earth bless the Lord ! 
 
 Yea, let it praise him, and magnify him forever ! 
 O all ye fowls of the air, O all ye beasts and cattle, 
 
 bless ye the Lord ! 
 Praise him and magnify him forever ! 
 O ye children of men, bless ye the Lord 1 
 
 Praise him and magnify him forever ! 
 O ye holy and humble men of heart, bless ye the Lord ! 
 
 Praise him and magnify him forever ! 
 O ye spirits and souls of the righteous," ye spirits of all 
 
 the offspring of God, " bless ye the Lord ! 
 Praise him and magnify him forever ! " 
 
 Amen ! 
 
158 IValks in New England 
 
 After the Summer 
 
 THE leaves that redden on the soft maples, 
 that grow ruby on the woodbine, that 
 gold on the birches, that yellow on the 
 aspens, the ferns that blanch in the wood, the 
 tiarella leaves that turn bronze and purple as the 
 vine grows old ; the bittersweet berries that swell 
 and begin to split their buff wrappings and show 
 how red they are ; the fox-grapes that are turn 
 ing reddish, a grape or two at a time in the 
 cluster ; the few prophesying gentians in the 
 marshes, the cardinal flower, which shares its 
 colour with no other of our region, the ladies-tres 
 ses in the damp meadows, the ternate botrychiums 
 in the pastures ; the entrance of the later fragrant 
 golden-rod upon the scene where several of its 
 congeners have disported themselves for the past 
 month ; the passing in splendour of the eupato- 
 riums the joe-pye, the thoroughwort and now the 
 snowy ageratoides ; the blooming of the first wood 
 aster ; the swelling of the wild rose hips and the 
 thorn-tree s haws ; the scent of the flowers of the 
 
After the Summer 159 
 
 mints in all the air, these, and so many other 
 signs indicate the entrance of autumn. The rich 
 charm of ripening possesses the earth. 
 
 Now the field flowers have their innings, and 
 are doing their work bravely, the autumn colours 
 of purple and gold flaunting along the roadsides, 
 although the purples and blues of the asters have 
 scarcely yet begun to show, the first lone purple 
 aster that has dared to blossom is of no longer 
 date than this week. The lespedeza has fur 
 nished most of that class of colour, and is going 
 by, but the heroic purple of the ironweed and the 
 royal of the vervain abounds, where they choose 
 to grow. 
 
 Moreover, this is the season when the rhexia, 
 one of the most beautiful harmonies of the year, 
 with its rose-pink petals and golden stamens, and 
 red buds, is to be found. Tis a somewhat rare 
 plant, but where it does occur, in moist pastures 
 or mowings, it is abundant and profuse, and gives 
 the spot a refined gayety that draws all eyes. In 
 certain haunts it is as distinctive as the fringed 
 gentian, and like that, bears a certain elegance 
 and delicacy which seem to mark it as one of the 
 aristocracy of flowers ; it is, however, less sensi 
 tive and less capricious. The gentian has now 
 begun to blossom. The clematis, the traveler s 
 joy, makes bowers of the hedge rows and poetry 
 
160 Walks in New England 
 
 of the fences, even the barbed-wire atrocities of 
 our civilization are made use of by this happy 
 wanderer. 
 
 Myriad sounds of insects make what the poets 
 have called the dirge of the departing year. And 
 indeed although the grasshoppers have long been 
 very numerous, and the cicadas have crushed the 
 air with their strident cacophony, and the crickets 
 have added their solemn minor to these curious 
 instrumental performances, it is not until the 
 katydid starts his extraordinary utterance that 
 one really feels that fall is at hand. Autumn is a 
 quiet and gentle summation of the period of 
 growth, and it is yet long to last, for the rowen 
 will ripen in the meadows, and the nuts grow 
 brown and drop before the real fall shall come. 
 Here, however, the katydid vaticinates, and says 
 to us : Nevertheless, the end is nigh. 
 
 Thus are the warnings of Nature continually 
 given ; we do not need to wait for the ripening 
 of the apples to learn that they must ripen ; we 
 do not need to see for the first time in the falling 
 of the rose petals the doom of the rose, the fate is 
 instinct in the bud, the blossom foretells the fruit; 
 the dropping fruit too soon asserts the farewell of 
 its spring. The birds add their forecast as they 
 teach their brood to fly, and thenceforth know no 
 more their offspring. The squirrels that frisk 
 
After the Summer 161 
 
 about the forest or the lawn grow bolder as their 
 young have learned their lesson of self support. 
 These creatures irresponsibly live and die, and 
 each generation makes its own career. 
 
 Thus we are not as the flowers of the field or 
 the birds of the air or the denizens of the trees and 
 the burrows, for some new element has entered 
 into us as we have evolved our nature and our 
 destiny. Not one spring, not one summer, not 
 one fall nay, not one winter, is our own. And 
 man has not only his labour and pains, for himself 
 and his successors, but he must bear the care of 
 the humbler creatures to whom he should be the 
 thought and the providence that preserves, since 
 in his growth he has been taught that no man 
 liveth or dieth unto himself. The responsibility 
 is limitless : 
 
 u For so the whole round earth is every way 
 Bound by gold chains about the feet of God." 
 
 The phenomena of ongoing life are endlessly 
 marvelous, and what man faints under, Nature 
 sustains with glorious triumph. Were these won 
 ders all made just for man s mere sustenance of 
 a physical life conditioned on this earth, how 
 wasted were these generous beauties ! But man 
 has other qualities that touch spheres beyond the 
 one he thinks he knows, and which yet he cannot 
 
 K 
 
1 62 Walks in New England 
 
 know. A word from a lofty thinker may give us 
 pause. Sir Thomas Browne wrote, long ago, 
 such meditations as these : 
 
 " That we are the breath and similitude of God, 
 it is indisputable, and upon record of holy scrip 
 ture ; but to call ourselves a microcosm, or little 
 world, I thought it only a pleasant trope of rhetoric, 
 till my near judgment and second thought told 
 me there was a real truth therein. For first we 
 are a rude mass, and in the rank of creatures which 
 only are, and have a dull kind of being, not yet 
 privileged with life, or preferred to sense or reason ; 
 next we live the life of plants, the life of animals, 
 the life of men, and at last the life of spirits; 
 running on, in one mysterious nature, those five 
 kinds of existences, which comprehend the creatures 
 not only of the world, but of the universe. Thus 
 is man that great and true amphibium, whose 
 nature is disposed to live not only like other crea 
 tures in divers elements, but in divided and dis 
 tinguished worlds ; for though there be but one 
 to sense, there are two to reason, the one visible, 
 the other invisible." 
 
The Fall Begins 163 
 
 The Fall Begins 
 
 THE first fall day has come. Premonitions 
 of the change of the year, the ripening 
 of fruitage, the pause of growth, the 
 hastening of colour here and there, such signs 
 have been noted. But with the cool northwest 
 wind of yesterday one felt that the fall was with 
 us, and that sweet, subtle, wild fragrance of the 
 woods breathed out on the wanderers in forest and 
 field, making a new atmosphere of fulfilment. 
 There is an ichor in the autumn air which renews 
 human life and gives it fresh zest ; over the hills, 
 over the rowen clover, over the pastures of golden- 
 rod and aster, over the ponds with their lilies, 
 over the swales with their flags and grasses and 
 sedges, through the forests with their early fall 
 of prematurely ripening leaves and their nutty 
 fragrances, over and among the copses of glowing 
 sumach pompons and joe-pyes, thoroughwort and 
 sunflowers, salicin-breathing willow and delicious 
 hearty sweet fern, comes the inspiriting essence 
 of life that is accomplishing its purpose. It fills 
 
164 Walks in New England 
 
 our nostrils and expands our lungs with vital 
 force, force unexpended, and going on to other 
 years, and in our veins no less than in the growths 
 of the earth which to-day are and to-morrow shall 
 receive their boon of rest. 
 
 Rest is what this hurrying day does not allow ; 
 and those who most long for it in sympathy with 
 free Nature know well they cannot have it save 
 for moments, such as Byron describes when he 
 says : 
 
 u There is a pleasure in the pathless woods, 
 
 There is a rapture on the lonely shore, 
 There is society, where none intrudes, 
 
 By the deep sea, and music in its roar. 
 
 I love not man the less, but Nature more 
 From these our interviews, in which I steal 
 
 From all I may be, or have been before, 
 To mingle with the universe, and feel 
 What I can ne er express, yet cannot all con 
 ceal." 
 
 Thus it is that we touch Nature, in brief inter 
 views, a moment, an hour, half a day, and then 
 back again to the task which is ours. The rest, 
 the rapture, the sense of partaking of the very 
 soul of the universe, the sense, that is, of com 
 munion with the Spirit of earth and sea and all 
 things else, this is what our fall brings to us ; 
 and while the earth about us is lovely and full of 
 
The Fall Begins 165 
 
 grace, the poet was right in his love of the ocean. 
 Not for every day is the great sea movement, to 
 one who is in unity with grand uplift of the moun 
 tains and gentle caresses of the moors and glens. 
 But there comes a moment when all things else 
 seem dull and lifeless compared with the impact of 
 the mighty, far-running ocean waves rushing upon 
 the beach, or dashing against the cliff. Oh to 
 feel the salt breath of thousands of miles of water 
 breaking at our feet, on the shore, or splashing 
 spray upon us as we sit upon the coast cliffs ! 
 Oh to dream of all that has been in man s curious 
 and contradictory history, resting for a little space 
 upon a rock, and watching the waves, and behold 
 ing the gulls and kittiwakes in their fine, free sail 
 ing and dipping. A gull ? nay, rather 
 
 " A spirit on Eternity s wide sea, 
 
 Calling : Come thou where all we glad souls be ! " 
 
 Yet when we behold a flight of cranes from 
 some sequestered pond, or crows, black against 
 the keen blue sky, cawing as they go in their 
 emphatic language, or a pair of bluejays in their 
 brilliant garb, or when we startle a wren from the 
 hedgerow or a sparrow from the ground, there 
 is something of significance, though no way so 
 suggestive as the birds of the waves, of that illim- 
 itation of freedom that we know shall be ours 
 
1 66 IValks in New England 
 
 when we depart from this habitude, and enter 
 into that infinite realm where all the glad souls 
 be. 
 
 Now the nuts are ripening in their wraps, the 
 hazels by the roadside and in field, the chestnuts 
 in their burrs, the butternuts in their Nessus gar 
 ments and the walnuts in their mathematical 
 boxes. It is the charted time of all the asters ; 
 every aster has a name, thanks to the botanists, 
 but let us know them simply as asters, a simple, 
 earnest kindly class of folk, who do their best to 
 make life happy, for themselves, of course, but 
 as it happens, for men and women and children, 
 just as the golden-rods do. 
 
 The sunflowers are busy, and the burr-mari 
 golds ; and the various lettuces, especially those 
 of the prenanthes group, are making their bits of 
 the world beautiful. Now the fringed gentian is 
 to be found, and as well that recluse, the brilliantly 
 blue closed gentian, and the snake-head or turtle- 
 head is abundant beside water courses. The 
 great tribe of polygonaceae are riotous over all 
 manner of places, and prettiest of all is the dainty 
 pink-white polygonella on dry fields. In the 
 purples of the fall, besides the few lespedezas, the 
 desmodiums, the wildbeans and the ground nuts, 
 there are the stern darkness of the vernonia and 
 the bright splendour of the liatris to keep up the 
 
The Fall Begins 1 67 
 
 tone. The gerardias are mainly gone, but the 
 pretty purple species yet is to be seen on the 
 roadsides. 
 
 What is all this display on Nature s part but 
 expression of the inexhaustible life which informs 
 the earth, that earth which with all the other 
 parts of the universal frame gives all its wealth to 
 us, as constituting in its place " the body of the 
 infinite God ? " 
 
1 68 Walks in New England 
 
 These September Days 
 
 u Oh tenderly the haughty day 
 Fills his blue urn with fire." 
 
 EMERSON S daring and splendid trope fits 
 these fine September days with so exqui 
 site an expression that it is almost sacrilege 
 to give it a lesser voice. But even as the crickets 
 and grasshoppers play their light instruments in 
 the autumn orchestra, and the cicada scrapes his 
 harsh strings, and the katydid carries on his in 
 conclusive accusations in the elms at evening, and 
 these make a rich undertone of harmony which 
 with all its sharp accents suits well with the sweeter 
 messages of the breezes, the farewell notes of the 
 birds and the subtle throbbing diapason of Na 
 ture in these parting days so the fragmentary 
 thought and perception of the beauty of earth and 
 its exhaustless meanings contribute somewhat in 
 the same way to the comprehensive image of the 
 seer. 
 
 What phase of Nature is more wonderful and 
 
These September Days 169 
 
 mastering than the spell of these days of lingering 
 farewell ? Long since, in the later July, the fore 
 telling came, one knew not how, in a day when 
 the air breathed some quality that was not of sum 
 mer. Then weeks followed without another hint 
 of the impending change, when suddenly it came 
 again, and the maples near to die began to redden 
 and the ferns to blanch in the woods, and the key 
 of fall was subtly sounded, not to be lost again 
 except in northwest winds and snows. The In 
 dian pipe and the beech-drops from the forest 
 mold took the place of the pyrola and the pip- 
 sissewa, and the orchis family had the coral-root 
 for representative instead of the habenarias, and 
 the myriad funguses arose to add rich hues to the 
 neutral ground of the fallen leaves of former years, 
 and along the roadsides the asters and golden-rods 
 began to multiply in variety. Now they are all 
 here, the copious glories of our fall, with their 
 adagios of purple and lavender and white, their 
 allegros of bright yellows and oranges, their gen 
 erous modulations of tone, a simultaneous sym 
 phony, let us say, in which all the movements are 
 performed at once, and yet all accord. Nature is 
 not really like an orchestra, in sound or in its par 
 allel of colour, but as all beauty is correlated and 
 congruous, her utterance is colour and tone and 
 feeling and thought all in one and all at once, 
 
1 70 Walks in New England 
 
 the discords lost in the greater spirit which informs 
 the wondrous whole. 
 
 The sunlight in these long afternoons reaches 
 into farther depths of the woods than it did in 
 summer months ; and in shadowy twilights where 
 the ferns have scarce seen a ray sift through the 
 lofty tops, they are now touched with long after 
 noon beams that linger and light them with gold, 
 and their green grows tenderer of hue. The 
 leaves of the trees are plainly growing thinner in 
 texture, and they droop from their stems a little, 
 and so the meshes of that wonderful screen are 
 wider and the rays are not all caught, but steal 
 through to the waiting heart of the earth, which 
 has not been warmed since the full delicious April 
 sun awakened the hepaticas and arbutus. Now 
 begin the fragrances of the forest herbs departing 
 life, rising like sacred incense in a solemn temple ; 
 while the cheerful scents of the waysides and pas 
 tures without are as vivacious as the swift and 
 busy existence of mankind itself, both phases of 
 the same indwelling worship, shown in work and 
 sport and meditation with an equal difference. 
 All moods are satisfied in September days, wherein 
 the pulse of harvest is so keen, and the fields 
 are being cleared of their crops, and the fall plow 
 ing is being done for the next year s expectations, 
 and the sweet rowen is mowed which the milch 
 

 
 These September Days 171 
 
 cows love for dessert and the young stock delight 
 in when the winter comes. 
 
 The vapours of this fading vegetation lie close 
 to the earth in the night hours, and are seen be 
 neath the moon from the hilltops lying or lifting 
 or wavering over the meadows as the mists of the 
 
 o 
 
 streams mingle with them. The variance of the 
 atmospheric effects from those of the summer are 
 subtle, and yet few eyes do not detect, though 
 they cannot define, the change that really has 
 passed upon the face of the earth, making more 
 veil-like the blue tones of the mountains in the 
 distance. The colour now grows day by day in 
 the woodlands. Maples always lead the glory 
 with their red and golden boughs from the midst 
 of green foliage ; but rapidly follow the ash trees, 
 with their olives, bronzes and purples ; and a white 
 or gray birch turns yellow early here and there. 
 The butternuts are leafless, tis one of the trees 
 which does not adorn the fall, but simply drops 
 its withered brown leaves day by day till all be 
 gone. One of the richest effects is made by the 
 great dog-wood, whose broad cordate leaves so 
 blend sanguine hues with olive greens, as to pro 
 duce a superb harmony, which crowned by its 
 corymbs of bright red berries lights the under side 
 of the woods. There are many lesser trees and 
 shrubs which give to the wayside a wealth of 
 
172 IValks in New England 
 
 colour unnoted in the general effect. But the 
 glories of autumn are yet beginning, and still the 
 general aspect of the forests is verdant. 
 
 Not so the fields. These are never so varied 
 as now, where the tilth is upturned brown over 
 many an acre, and the meadows are green with 
 second growth or third, and the roadsides are so 
 full of bloom ; the buckwheat fields, reaped or 
 unreaped, enrich the slopes with wine-brown 
 stretches, and the dead bents of the June grass 
 make the pastures all a dusky white, except where 
 the cinnamon fern is leather-brown or the dick- 
 sonia s gold-green masses command the steep 
 sidehill. The earth is green, is the common no 
 tion ; but when one looks upon the earth in early 
 autumn he sees it is many other colours besides, 
 even before the forests have fairly begun to blos 
 som. The infinite variety of notes in the colour 
 scheme of earth requires a lifetime to learn, and 
 the special vocabulary of the artist to nominate. 
 
 The lesser flowers of the region which we dwell 
 in are changing with the days. The orchis family 
 is now known by scarcely any other members than 
 those of the spiranthes class, which spring up 
 along the roadsides and in the meadows where 
 there is moisture enough, the ladies tresses, they 
 are called, not very happily. The cardinal flower 
 is now almost at the end of its brilliant life, where 
 
THE LONE PINE AT SUNSET 
 
These September Days 1 73 
 
 beside the brooks and in the marshes it flames 
 forth, a splendid beacon of the wayfarer s quest. 
 The snake-head yet blooms in the marsh, and 
 there the fringed gentian should be frequent. 
 The late botrychiums are now in trim among the 
 ferns, things lightly passed over, often never 
 seen, but adding a little beauty of frond to the 
 many beauties of earth, in the midst of the grasses 
 and lingering second growth clovers in the moist 
 meadow. 
 
 We hear the autumn bemoaned as a season of 
 death, and indeed superficially it is such a season. 
 But how superficially ! For the truth is to any 
 one who observes Nature and sees things sanely, 
 the autumn is the season of promise. What hath 
 been shall be, and the flowers that fade, the leaves 
 that fall, are but forms of life that have fulfilled 
 their functions, and pass life on to another year. 
 So is it with our own human tenure. Its purpose 
 is filled and its end has come. What, then, is 
 this death that men fear, and which seems to our 
 poor race the end of all ? It is but the period put 
 to the transient show, the pause in the eternal 
 progress. What is not essential is stripped off, 
 and that which remains is the core and inner truth 
 of life. That goes on endlessly ; and human 
 souls that have breathed the breath of that inner 
 life go on as endlessly. No one else has so 
 
1 74 Walks in New England 
 
 superbly expressed the true office of death as Sir 
 Walter Raleigh : " O eloquent, just and mighty 
 Death ! whom none could advise, thou hast per 
 suaded ; what none hath dared, thou hast done ; 
 and whom all the world hath flattered, thou only 
 hast cast out of the world and despised ; thou 
 hast drawn together all the far-stretched greatness, 
 all the pride, cruelty and ambition of man, and 
 covered it all over with these two narrow words 
 Hie Jacet ! " 
 
After a Dry Summer 1 75 
 
 After a Dry Summer 
 
 THERE are heats stored up in the dying 
 moon of September, but there is that in 
 the breeze which is the sole property of 
 our fall, a frank acceptance of the doom of 
 flowers and fruit and herb and tree, a wild free 
 feeling of joyous farewell. The line storm has 
 broken the long drouth, and at least the surface 
 of earth has been rejoiced, refreshed and restored 
 to its old values in some measure. The surface 
 only as yet, for the springs are scarcely reached, 
 and the big trout brooks of the mountains do not 
 fill with their accustomed currents. It must 
 have been a tragic season for the finny population 
 of the brooks, and trout will be scarce next year 
 in many a familiar current from the mountain 
 springs. 
 
 We are now able to discern the terrible effect 
 of the dry summer, for when the forests should 
 be showing glorious colour they are brown and 
 sere. It is common speech that the hues of 
 autumn are dying splendours, but in truth they 
 
1 76 Walks in New England 
 
 are ripenings ; like the flowers of the gardens 
 and the roadsides, the trees too bloom in one 
 triumphant burst of noble colour, to delight the 
 earth and the children of earth. This fall is seen 
 veritable death in the decay, the leaves, abandon 
 ing life when they should be emphasizing it in 
 gold and red and crimson, hang on the trees with 
 out a tinge of pride or sentiment, barren and 
 desert of life. 
 
 WIND OF THE EAST 
 
 Trouble the trees, 
 
 Wind of the East ! 
 Stir up the seas, 
 
 Churn them to yeast, 
 Wind that blows over the brine ! 
 Strong is thy voice, 
 
 Rough is thy breath, 
 Ships are thy toys, 
 
 Thou bearest death 
 Thou bearest life like wine ! 
 
 Haste with thy train 
 Of tumultuous cloud ; 
 
 Haste with the rain 
 
 From the skies overbowed, 
 Lowering and longing to pour 
 
 For the forest athirst 
 
After a Dry Summer 177 
 
 All their heart out at once 
 In a generous burst, 
 
 But too late for the nonce, 
 Does the burden of storm hurry o er. 
 
 For the forest is parched, 
 
 The scorch of the sun, 
 The heat as they marched 
 
 Of the winds that o errun 
 Have dried out the roots of the trees, 
 And they stand and appeal 
 For the help of the rain; 
 Leaves fall and fates seal, 
 Yet they pray once again 
 For the visit renewed of the breeze, 
 
 The return of the storm, 
 
 The assail of the gale, 
 Full clouds that reform, 
 
 That descend and envail 
 All the land with their burden of mist ; 
 For thus the earth waits 
 
 For the tempest and stress, 
 When the rain opes the gates, 
 
 And released from duress 
 Sinks deep in the earth it has kissed. 
 
 So trouble the trees, 
 
 Wind of the East ! 
 Mind not the seas, 
 
 Or greatest or least, 
 
178 JValks in New England 
 
 Careering o er the broad brine, 
 Lift thy wild voice, 
 Fore-cry the rain, 
 Clamour, rejoice ! 
 
 As comes thy refrain 
 To the blessing so dear, so divine ! 
 
 Nature smiles on with her wonderful, imperturb 
 able, inscrutable sweetness. All is right with her. 
 What is it to her in the vast process of the ages 
 of earth, that there should be a season which dis 
 comfits the weakness of man ? She is beyond 
 human needs ; she has no touch of human frailty 
 or worry or reproach. How often during the 
 trying summer have we witnessed this serene con 
 tent of Nature ! A shower of an hour, a day 
 of brisk north wind dissipating the oppressive 
 smoke clouds, and lo ! the everlasting Mother, 
 crowned and sceptered and secure of homage, 
 looked upon the earth and declared that it was 
 good. The mere creatures of a day out of her 
 millions of days may repine and rebel, but what 
 do they know of her everlasting plans ? " For 
 my thoughts are not your thoughts, neither are 
 my ways your ways, saith the Lord. For as the 
 heavens are higher than the earth, so are my ways 
 higher than your ways, and my thoughts than 
 your thoughts. For as the rain cometh down 
 and the snow from heaven, and returneth not 
 
After a Dry Summer 179 
 
 thither, but watereth the earth, and maketh it 
 bring forth and bud, and giveth seed to the sower 
 and bread to the eater, so shall my word be that 
 goeth out of my mouth ; it shall not return unto 
 me void, but it shall accomplish that which I 
 please, and it shall prosper in the things whereto 
 I send it." 
 
 It is still a question whether the voice of the 
 people is the voice of God, though we believe 
 that true but that Nature is the action of God 
 is sure. We may fret and complain and worry 
 over what the sun and the rains do or fail to do, 
 but in the domain of law that began before the 
 world was on planets yet unknown in other uni 
 verses of which we have not an inkling, these same 
 causes have been operating forever, and will for 
 ever so operate in myriads of worlds to come. 
 Out of all that exists, or seems to exist, there is 
 nothing that shall last save the soul ; and the 
 small conditions of earth, in Nature as well as in 
 moral and social, national and globe-wide rela 
 tions, are but experiences and disciplines for the 
 soul. If the glory of summer is rich and satisfy 
 ing, or if it be cruel and withering, if autumn be 
 crowned and glorified with colour or dun and dis 
 couraging under drouth, it is all one in the essen 
 tial matter. We reckon in years and days, God 
 and Nature have no dates. 
 
1 80 Walks in New England 
 
 A Fall Day of Mists 
 
 A DAY like yesterday was not a day to bring 
 out the colour. But it was one of the 
 most wonderful of days for beauty, if one 
 only lifted himself high enough. Dull and de 
 pressing, fairly of the dog-day type, inthe valleys, 
 on the hills it was marked by vigorous life, in 
 the infinite swift movement of the low cloud 
 masses over the great expanse of country. Even 
 from the cliffs of Mount Tom so down-reaching 
 and valley-pervading were the clouds, one had 
 delight in being above the storm, if storm the 
 rapid slight mists could be termed, which swinging 
 in and rolling over and over and whirling around 
 from the east, swept over the valleys and broke 
 upon the western hills. There the mist clouds 
 encompassed the mountain for a few minutes, 
 and suddenly a break showed sunlight on the 
 fields below, and in a moment more a great white 
 mass rushing northward, hit by the full force of 
 the sun, fairly blazed upon the eye, while the 
 moving tumult under the shadow of the pursuing 
 
A Fall Day of Mists 1 8 1 
 
 clouds seemed densely dark. The gleams of 
 flickering sunlight, skimming the valleys, were 
 exquisite in effect ; and far eastward, on the 
 long range of hills from the Holyoke ridges, that 
 all the time hung mysteriously blue, right from 
 the sky there gleamed the echo of the same sun 
 light, but of other beams, like messengers from 
 the hypethral beauty. It was not a day for glow 
 ing colour, it is true, but was one of infinitely 
 subtle atmospheric effects. 
 
 The lesser and more intimate face of earth is 
 still a manifest of the divine beauty in flower and 
 fruit, for now the berries add much to these 
 charms, and the later golden-rods, the wreath, 
 the speciosa, and some others, accompany the 
 asters in their abundance. The gentians are in 
 full excellence ; and, though yet in great rarity, 
 the magical scent of the witch hazel steals upon 
 the nostrils in the edges of the forest. Nor have 
 all the birds left us. Many of the migrants who 
 have nested to the northward are pausing here in 
 their flight to winter quarters, and having little 
 harmless orgies of their own over the seeds of such 
 plants as they have known and approved for 
 generations beyond number. In fine, it is a 
 choice autumn which opens before us. It is 
 characteristic, as every season has been this first 
 year of the new century. A sturdy winter ; a 
 
1 82 Walks in New England 
 
 lingering, delaying, provoking, delighting spring ; 
 a fervent summer ; dog days up to the most afflic 
 tive standard, and now the seductive cordiality 
 of fall, which would break to us with the finest kind 
 ness the warning that winter is in prospect. 
 
The Glories of October 183 
 
 The Glories of October 
 
 BEFORE the frosts have curled the clover, 
 while yet the asters by the brook invite 
 the bee to honey that is a trifle bitter, 
 while yet the katydid is heard, and the catbirds 
 mew and the red-winged blackbirds creak, no 
 longer uttering their soft, sighing notes of con 
 tent ; while Nature is at her best and bravest and 
 sweetest, let us do honour to the most beautiful of 
 Octobers, in a region where October, if no other 
 month, is sure to be beautiful. The fall, like 
 the summer, has indeed been throughout a pattern 
 of seasons so far as airs of delicious temperance 
 and invigoration could make it so. We have 
 lacked the latter rains in their customary abun 
 dance, and the equinoctial storm dear to tradition 
 made but a feeble showing of purpose, and passed 
 us by for the coasts and the northern hills. But 
 day after day the clouds have swept over the in 
 tense blue in splendid snowy masses, or thin va 
 pours have melted in just so much haziness as to 
 
184 Walks in New England 
 
 soften the rays of the southing sun, and it has 
 been ungrateful to complain. 
 
 The week that now closes has been of the 
 richest colour and light. Never, perhaps, have 
 the New England hills been more splendidly 
 adorned than during this time, and though after 
 the dashing rains and windy tempests of the last 
 day thereof there can be little left of the gor 
 geous show, it will remain in memory as unsur 
 passed for harmonious pride of bloom. Generous 
 indeed is Nature in what is wrongfully called our 
 bleak New England clime. Nowhere in the 
 world can this parting glory of the green year, 
 rising into superb blossoming of ripened life, be 
 excelled, as it is seen each fall from the Canadas 
 down to the Carolinas, on the eastward slopes of 
 the grand Appalachian ranges. No time else 
 better presents Nature in her kindliest character. 
 
 It is the season of cheer and promise. Spring 
 has more aggravations and discouragements ; for 
 she gives one day to take back the next, and 
 wintry storms recall the snows to the hills and 
 fasten the streams in fetters they had been freed 
 from by the climbing sun. The weariness of 
 hope deferred vexes us, and the season is long 
 and labouring, with all its charms, which, lovely 
 as they are, one humanly forgets in their frequent 
 oblivion. But the attractions of autumn are loth 
 
The Glories of October 185 
 
 to leave us, and linger with delight, while each 
 week prolongs a pleasure in what we know we 
 soon must lose. One watches October s beauty 
 with a love that is child of longing and parent of 
 loss. As the Sky Farm poet sang, years ago, 
 beholding her where 
 
 " In queenly state she rules her forest lands 
 Where maples light with flame the frosty air, " 
 
 so we feel moved to appeal to the forerunning 
 messengers of winter : 
 
 " Blow softly, wind ! one rude or reckless breath 
 Might take from out her hair its silken flow, 
 One dash of rain might drown those brave blue eyes 
 And drain from cheeks and lips their living glow." 
 
 Now even yet, although her cheeks are paler 
 and her glories shred, there is beauty in the royal 
 figure, and her presence on the hills has not lost 
 its grace and dignity. It fills the brooding mists 
 of night, and the morning, that drifts those mists 
 away in light and wavering vapours up the moun 
 tain side, reveals her still in state. The wilding 
 fragrances of the late flowers, the withering ferns 
 and the fallen leaves are incense before her throne, 
 and among them all steals, mysteriously subtle 
 and enchanting, the unkinned magic of the witch 
 hazel, whose yellow wraiths of bloom spray on 
 the bare twigs, encircling the fruit of last year s 
 
1 86 Walks in New England 
 
 bloom. The booming flight of the grouse breaks 
 on the ear like the very tone of the forests, and 
 squirrels, gray, red and striped, each in his indi 
 vidual way, whistles warning, as the alien foot of 
 man intrudes upon the solitudes. 
 
 The earth is full of abounding life, life which 
 sleeps for a season, but doubts not for a moment 
 that it resumes and goes on, and is always to re 
 sume and go on. And so let us, the higher chil 
 dren of Nature, who have in sophisticated ways 
 lost our true birthright of her unity, think of our 
 selves, we, too, shall sleep, and awake, and re 
 sume, and go on, according to the divine spirit 
 within us, and within all. 
 
Paradise was Never Lost 187 
 
 Paradise was Never Lost 
 
 THE hills are now at their height of glory, 
 and in the broad valleys the watercourses 
 are marked by the richest reds and yel 
 lows, maroons and olives, russet brown, orange and 
 buff, and all that superb gamut of the spectrum 
 which sings to the eye as birds sing to the ear in 
 summer when the woods and fields are full of 
 chants and warbles and living joyance. No frost 
 has marred the splendid changes of the trees, and 
 in this region the autumn flowers are to be found 
 in bloom over many a meadow, pasture and forest 
 opening, whence they have commonly disappeared 
 at this time. The sheltered nooks are not alone 
 in sportive new blooms of aster and golden-rod, 
 daisy and clover, wild flax and caraway, bouncing 
 bets and immortelles, while the herb robert s deli 
 cate pink flower nestles in its exquisitely wrought 
 leaves, among whose green are changing colours 
 as rich as on the maples themselves. The leaves 
 have fallen from the grape vines, and the rare 
 abundance of the clusters adorn the wayside 
 
1 88 IValks in New England 
 
 thickets, now and then giving the charm of their 
 fruitage to some forest tree which they have caught 
 upon and climbed, and compensate for their too 
 close embrace by that unwonted beauty. 
 
 Now, as the hues deepen on the mountains and 
 in the valleys, the concentrated warmth and sweet 
 ness that sunshine and rain have stored in the 
 leaves of the trees and the fronds of the ferns, the 
 grapes, the nuts and the autumn flowers, crowds 
 the air with delicious scents, and adds to the au 
 tumn the grace of evanescent perfume which befits 
 the closing hours of the pageant of Nature. It is 
 so wholly different in character and effect from the 
 seasons of multitudinous bloom, when the fra 
 grance of honeyed flowers intoxicates the most 
 luxurious of the senses. 
 
 In the autumn forest aisles or among its lanes 
 and generous fields, there is a sober tenderness of 
 feeling which largely proceeds from these subtle 
 dying odours of the leaves which have fulfilled their 
 office and now are sinking to earth to rebegin their 
 service of use and beauty through transformation. 
 Not dead do the leaves of the trees and shrubs 
 fall to earth, but alive. Gather the red and yel 
 low, the olive and gold, the bronze and buff, the 
 salmon and gamboge of the trees from the ground 
 where they have fallen ; compare them with the 
 rich green leaf that remains upon the tree, and 
 

 THE WHITE OAK AT THE MOUNTAIN PORTAL 
 
Paradise was Never Lost 1 89 
 
 their texture will be found as firm. It is the buds 
 of the leaves of next year that push beneath them 
 and gently thrust them from their summer thrones, 
 in their bright blossoming. 
 
 On Sunday the earth was so rich in its tran 
 scendent beauty that it made the heart to ache 
 with joy but to look upon it, but to breath the 
 delicious fragrance of the forest, and those wild, 
 mysterious scents that are borne from the ferns ; 
 besides the lingering wealth of the odora golden- 
 rod, the life-everlasting, the traveler s-joy ; and. trie 
 bouquet of wild grapes in the wayside thickets, 
 while ever and anon one suspires deeply to take in 
 the magic of witch hazel. At every turn of the 
 road there is a new wonder. Now one pauses at a 
 large outlook over the low hills to consume in a 
 glance the gorgeous harmony of every forest hue 
 spread over miles of spectacle, as if all the earth 
 were crying in this visible utterance: "Glory to 
 God in the Highest! on earth peace, good-will to 
 men!" 
 
 All now is solemn and restful in the woods and 
 fields ; work is over, repose has come ; and yet 
 in this there is nothing that depresses, nothing 
 that bears the emphasis of gloom or melancholy. 
 It is what should be, and so we recognize it, and 
 find in these days of glowing colour and pervad 
 ing fragrance great store of comfort and consola- 
 
Walks in New England 
 
 tion. The farewell that is breathed by these 
 ferny scents and last lingering leafage, the shy 
 and mysterious essence of the witch hazel pene 
 trating through it all with a charm that cannot 
 be defined, but is like a spiritual greeting this is 
 most sane and ennobling, and leaves the lover of 
 Nature a blessing for the imprisoning period of 
 the snows. 
 
 In the seasonable pause before the storm, though 
 the mists drift over the glens and the sunshine 
 but fitfully gleams on the hills and lights for a 
 moment a forest, all is as the lover of Nature 
 would have it. Was it said that Paradise was 
 lost ? But is it not Paradise ? this valley in 
 which, among the bright flames of maples and the 
 ruddy back-log glow of oaks, and in the viburnum 
 thickets with their purple-grays and the spice- 
 bushes with their garnered sunlight, amid these 
 and so much more, the birds of June are flocking, 
 bluebirds and robins, flickers and jays, juncos, 
 chickadees and phoebes, mountain sparrows and 
 now and then a chippie, are flocking and some 
 times warbling. Surely this is a valley of Para 
 dise, where none has yet entered to molest or 
 make afraid. Into the valley flows a flood of 
 heaven, out of it flows the streams of healing for 
 the discomforts of civilization. Nay, why are not 
 the four rivers that watered Eden here ? or streams 
 
Paradise was Never Lost 191 
 
 as good, since from such a spot must diverge 
 influences that keep earth alive. 
 
 There is a singular companionship or parallelism 
 between June and October, in seasons when mild 
 weather sustains the slender manifest lives of 
 plants. It is in such a year that apples and cher 
 ries, raspberries, and other fruits blossom again ; 
 and so one need not be surprised at a pasture 
 sunny with hundreds of dandelions ; and the 
 mulleins and evening primroses send out new 
 blossom stems from the very end of the already 
 dry and seeded pods of the summer bloom. 
 Many things of June and July are now vigorously 
 blossoming, the ox-eye daisy, the tall daisy flea- 
 bane, mayweed ; then there is the queer white 
 green-ribbed Grass of Parnassus, and many vio 
 lets appear. These with the most beautiful of 
 the asters, and the wreath golden-rod, the black- 
 eyed Susans, the tansy and the Queen Anne s 
 lace, make fine bouquets. Besides, one finds the 
 fringed gentians and the closed gentians, equally 
 attractive, though so apart. " There are diver 
 sities of gifts, but the same Spirit." 
 
 Nature has her conditions, to which we must 
 conform, for if man be lord of creation, as the old 
 way of thinking and writing has it, he is a lord 
 with lords over him, lords many and gods many, 
 and all these are but Nature, the embodiment of 
 
192 IValks in New England 
 
 the divine spirit, weaving at " the roaring loom 
 of time," instantly and forever, " the garment 
 thou seest Him by." It is none other than God, 
 that " warms in the sun, refreshes in the breeze," 
 that " lives through all time, extends through all 
 extent, spreads undivided, operates unspent." 
 All that we see and breathe and love and are is 
 not only His, but Him, and there is no other. 
 The message of the autumn is thus the same that 
 the Hebrews from time immemorial chant in their 
 service, in music that is thought to have come 
 down from the very day of Moses : 
 
 " The Lord bless thee and keep thee. 
 
 The Lord make his face to shine upon thee and be 
 gracious unto thee. 
 
 The Lord lift up his countenance upon thee, and 
 give thee peace." 
 
Of His Good Pleasure 1 93 
 
 Of His Good Pleasure 
 
 THE splendour of the hills and plains is 
 wonderful ; the trees which a week ago 
 were as green as in June have felt the re 
 inforcement of the rains, which have put into solu 
 tion the salts of the earth that give to our forests 
 the marvelous hues of the season. Here once 
 more is the magic of transformation, here once 
 more the unceasing expression of the life which 
 wreaks that lovely magic. Man has in himself 
 incorporate a personality which leaves him at his 
 end a problem and an uncertainty to himself; but 
 if he could meet his seasons as the roses and 
 grasses and trees do, would he not desire and 
 would he not receive such vicissitudes between 
 spring and spring, through summer and fall and 
 winter, with joy and triumph ? Not thus is it 
 with man, that restless spark of the divine with 
 in him can have no pauses for recovery and re 
 newal ; on it must go, and its best chance for 
 developing advance is by Goethe s motto, " With 
 out haste, without rest." And this other : " For 
 
 M 
 
194 Walks in New England 
 
 it is God which worketh in you both to will and 
 to do of his good pleasure." 
 
 Traversing the ways of field and woodland this 
 troubled and worried spirit of man finds now as 
 fine a repose and as keen a delight as it can reach 
 to and sustain. For the wonderful days which 
 have passed over us and which have not yet ended, 
 the common spectacle of ripening earth has filled 
 us with a luxurious comfort that never satiates. 
 The atmosphere of the days of the fall of the leaf 
 and the farewell of the flowers is in itself a deli 
 cious gift of heaven, for heaven is about us not 
 only in our infancy, as Wordsworth wrote, but 
 always, if we resign ourselves to the infant s heart 
 that lives beneath the experiences of the world. 
 Indeed, it is not until we slip into the further side 
 of our human term, until we pass " life s height of 
 water-shedding," that we get the whole value of 
 the heaven which God has given to the soul 
 through which he expresses himself, as through 
 the myriad forms of life besides. 
 
 The region manifests the extraordinary vitality 
 of Nature when the frosts hold off. There has 
 been but one frost that even touched the trees, 
 and then only in limited areas where moisture ad 
 vances the assault of lowering temperature. The 
 ferns seldom survive as in this fall, where even 
 the sensitive fern (onoclea sensibilis) may yet oc- 
 
Of His Good Pleasure 1 95 
 
 casionally be found, and the eagle fern, " hoss 
 brake," the Yankee name is, is quite frequently 
 green and stout. The cinnamon and the clayton 
 ferns are gone by, and so too the ostrich fern, and 
 many another. But now is the bravery shown of 
 the marginal, the spinulose, the Christmas and 
 the crested ferns, the fine sisterhood of the as- 
 pidiums, which love to dwell together, knowing 
 their kindred. Now all the lesser shrubs, the vi 
 burnums, the cornels, the blueberry family, are 
 thronging the wood paths with exquisite variations 
 of colour, scarlet, crimson, mulberry and tints 
 that have no colour names ; while beneath them 
 blanching ferns, and lilac cohosh, and purplish 
 cranesbill, over the fallen leaves, adorn the ground 
 work of the great scheme. 
 
 Out in the open fields, by the roadsides and 
 over the highways the maples have filled the com 
 mon earth with cloth of gold, a more truly pre 
 cious gold than that of the commercial medium 
 over which nations fight and men surrender their 
 immortal lives. What words can express the glory 
 of looking up into the royal branches of a sugar 
 maple, catching its golden glow in the reflected 
 light of the leaves which have ripened and fallen ! 
 Indeed, what are words to interpret such magnifi 
 cence of growth and such splendour of bloom ? 
 We can but be quiet, and admire and worship. 
 
196 IValks in New England 
 
 The persistence and readiness of life is seen in 
 a thousand ways, as we note the way that the 
 small herbs are forming their foot leaves in rich 
 resets on the ground ; the five-finger, the evening 
 primrose, the robin s plantain, the saxifrage, the 
 various asters, the mullein. One never mentions 
 the grasses and the rushes, the flags and the 
 sedges, which are expected and sure, yet are 
 these not the perennial evidences of continuing 
 impulse and vigour ? Note, too, how the plants 
 flower anew under the encouragement of the rains 
 and warm suns, how the bygone asters and 
 golden-rods and mayweeds start forth with new 
 flowers and even groups of flowers. One may 
 find now pretty nooks in the pastures where there 
 are many dandelions in bloom dandelions which 
 arise from the seed plants of the spring. The 
 branching yellow violet and the branching white 
 are now occasionally found, and the common blue 
 hooded violet of the meadows. Black-eyed Su 
 san and ox-eye daisy start forth frankly upon 
 the autumn air, sure that they are wanted. The 
 wreath golden-rod is quite a common adornment 
 of the forest paths. Rarely there is a fringed gen 
 tian, very rarely. 
 
 And the fragrances of the forest, that general 
 woodsy scent which fills all their aisles, the rich 
 bouquet of the fox grapes, the peculiar evanos- 
 
Of His Good Pleasure 1 97 
 
 cence of the witch hazel, the balsamic odours of 
 pine and hemlock these add so much to the 
 charm of the earth, far from the purlieus of men. 
 With these belong the slight, subdued, musical 
 whispers of the mountain sparrow ; some stray 
 warblers not yet able to fling themselves away 
 from the charm of our woods ; the juncos and the 
 cheery chickadees ; and over the wide landscape 
 the crow s sagacious observations. 
 
 Then the great views of the circuit of the hills, 
 the reflections in the rivers and the ponds, the 
 graciousness of the atmosphere that wraps us 
 round, the glory of God in his creation, the mani 
 festation of the Spirit, tis a whole whose purport 
 can never be conveyed in words, but it enters our 
 soul as a part of itself, a breath of the ineffable 
 but familiar presence, the Oversoul and the inner 
 soul of man as of earth and of the universes, and 
 we can only say with Emerson, in " Each and 
 All : " 
 
 As I spoke, beneath my feet 
 
 The ground pine curled its pretty wreath, 
 
 Running over the club-moss burrs ; 
 
 I inhaled the violet s breath ; 
 
 Around me stood the oaks and firs ; 
 
 Pine cones and acorns lay on the ground ; 
 
 Over me soared the eternal sky 
 
 Full of light and of deity ; 
 
198 Walks in New England 
 
 Again I saw, again I heard, 
 The rolling river, the morning bird, 
 Beauty throughout my senses stole ; 
 I yielded myself to the perfect whole. 
 
W1LDWATER IN A WIND OF FALL 
 

 3TAW 
 
Let Us Say, "He is Beautiful" 199 
 
 Let Us Say, " He is Beautiful" 
 
 LET us call it the line storm. It is true 
 that the autumnal equinox was three weeks 
 past when it began, but why should we 
 closely hug the letter when by freeing the spirit 
 we can count three weeks as nothing in comparison 
 with that attractive tradition ? It surely seems 
 reasonable that the sun, when it goes wintering 
 down South, should have more distinction than 
 the English gentry who go to the Riviera or the 
 happy American who changes to Florida or Ber 
 muda, his stay being longer and his importance 
 greater. So while a paragraph in the gossip col 
 umn will do for the one, a good, steady, old- 
 fashioned coast storm is much more appropriate 
 at the southing of the sun. The old rule was al 
 ways elastic, the 22d, " there or thereabouts," 
 and three weeks later is thereabouts. We have 
 a scriptural warrant for the early and "the latter 
 rains." 
 
 The line storm was of rare beauty and consid- 
 erateness. It was one of those slow, deliberate 
 
2OO Walks in New England 
 
 gatherings of cloud and fog and mist, fog sweep 
 ing in along the coast and hiding the sea from the 
 shore, mists rising from the streams and the marshes, 
 dry as they seemed, farther inland ; a day of lower 
 ing clouds, low descending on the hillsides, veiling 
 the view of the earth from the mountains, full of 
 gray clinging vapours and dripping trees and a 
 mysterious consciousness of change ; then a day 
 of showers and of sunlight breaking through the 
 clouds now and again, settling into quiet rains, 
 with an occasional burst of a cloud in swift descent 
 all at once, which filled a night and a day and a 
 night again ; then in the " wee sma hours ayont 
 the twaF " the morning star hanging as a sign 
 in the thinning clouds, which letting fall their gen 
 tle burthen melted away and dispersed, until the 
 auroral glory began, and the sun shone on a re 
 newed earth, and the west wind arose with the 
 sun and tossed the patient and refreshed trees, 
 strewing with leaves the woodland and the city 
 streets, and the line storm was over. It is one 
 of the most admirable events of New England 
 meteorology, and old folks say that this used to 
 be a regular thing until the weather bureau was 
 constituted to cold-shoulder dear tradition, and 
 relegate the equinoctial to the realm of fable. No 
 such thing! Is there anything fabulous about the 
 four-days storm that began on Sunday ? We trow 
 
Let Us Say, "He is Beautiful" 201 
 
 not. It fulfilled all the conditions. Let it be 
 accepted at its full value. 
 
 With or without the richer and broader glories, 
 the season holds a multitudinous magic for the 
 lover of Nature in her infinitely varied manifests. 
 It is in such a season that one realizes most com 
 pletely the ceaseless movement of conscious life, 
 expressing itself in myriad forms. While the 
 birds are fewer, and now the lesser creatures of 
 the forest, the snakes and salamanders, and the 
 crickets and grasshoppers and locusts in the fields, 
 are almost all retired, the life that speaks in plants 
 is as busy as ever. 
 
 On a barren hillside, as almost anybody would 
 call it, there is room for inexhaustible study and 
 admiration, yes, and adoration, for where is 
 God to be worshiped, where is his essence to be 
 known, where is the unbeginning and unending 
 life to be discerned, more than in these bright 
 and happy spontaneities of scores of humble 
 plants, over which hundreds may walk oblivious of 
 their presence? In a few hours ramble on such 
 barren hillsides, among the grasses, every one 
 of the many species and varieties a marvel in it 
 self, one finds the pretty Deptford pink, a 
 charming little relation to the carnations which 
 man has developed, but quite unacquainted with 
 them. It is so modest that one is amazed to see 
 
2O2 IValks in New England 
 
 how its clear pink lightens up and cheers the 
 spot where it blooms. Then one finds a butter 
 cup, or a tender little " Quaker Lady," or if no 
 flower appears, then note how robin s plantain 
 or saxifrage or St. John s wort is spreading its 
 roset for next year s growth ; or how the sump 
 tuous silver-dewed velvet aquamarina of the heart 
 of the mullein makes a spot of infinite wealth at 
 the edge of the ledge, or how the young plants of 
 the columbine, which will have bloom next May, 
 are turning into charm with lilac and purple 
 colours, as well as with their most graceful and 
 delicate leaves, so finely wrought in sinuated arcs 
 of beauty. 
 
 Now and again one comes on a group, a 
 community rather, of the wild rose, and with 
 blossoms here and there as lovely as those of 
 June. In another community we shall see the 
 little royal purple laurel, the sheep laurel, bloom 
 ing as if its time were not four months past. 
 These are of course " sports," accidents of the 
 rare autumnal heats ; and there is yet one more 
 notable, the pillared mullein amid its brown seed- 
 vessels strikes out a new sweet yellow flower for 
 the bees to seek, and at its top sends forth a new 
 essay at greater height in a sprout as fresh and 
 green and full of bloom as it were just beginning 
 its destiny of fruit. Furthermore, one finds the 
 
Let Us Say, "He is Beautiful" 203 
 
 great plant of the Indian poke with its ruddy 
 stalks and great green leaves whose borders are 
 growing red, and its berries in panicles of most 
 royally dark crimson, while still the pink-white 
 blossoms persist in coming out at the ends of the 
 stems. 
 
 Of course the juniper and the cedar are blue 
 with their masked cones, and the silvery lights 
 amid their greens add an elusive grace to the 
 charm, while over the fences and up the cedars 
 climbs the bittersweet, with its pendants of orange 
 berries, whose yellow envelopes have fallen back 
 to display them. The poison sumach is now 
 most splendid, and its drooping stems of whitish 
 berries add to its effect. Now and then, too, one 
 may hap to see by a rill side the unrivaled cardi 
 nal flower, and a colony of fringed gentians, the 
 most exquisite of fall flowers, and the most ca 
 pricious. Then, most characteristic of all of the 
 season, there steals upon the nostrils the wild 
 magic of the witch hazel s fragrance, so slight, so 
 subtle, so penetrating, so spiritual, that nothing 
 else in the odours of field and forest can be com 
 pared with it. 
 
 What are all these, and the grasses, the mosses, 
 the lycopodiums, the lichens, the very moulds on 
 the rocks, but the expression in infinite various- 
 ness of the one constant Spirit that pauses not 
 
204 Walks in New England 
 
 nor completes, but with every moment lives ? 
 though we call one season life and another season 
 death, that Spirit goes on, infinitely urging, end 
 lessly encouraging, in the least as in the greatest, 
 and producing all we see or know or are, as the 
 life of his life, the breath of his breath, the body 
 of his all compassing soul. Let us say, " Not 
 It is beautiful, but He is beautiful." 
 
Ready for Winter 205 
 
 Ready for Winter 
 
 THE glory of the fall is gone, though its 
 beauty lingers yet in green meadows and 
 the brooding haze that softens the moun 
 tain outlines on sunny afternoons. The delay of 
 the black frosts preserves this brightness of the 
 verdure that contrasts so well with the wintry 
 grayness of the discrowned forest. The farmers 
 on the hills have forecast moderate weather to the 
 very verge of winter, and thus far the season con 
 firms them, and withal the long latter rains have 
 come and filled the springs, though not to their 
 over-brimming autumn standard. The brooks 
 are alive again in the glens and ravines, and the 
 rivers rush and shout down their rapids as if all 
 the spirits of the waters had returned and were 
 telling of their travels in aerial voyages to other 
 lands. There is as much charm in a country 
 walk as at any season ; though it be not the same 
 charm, what matters that ? since life without va 
 riety is tasteless, and the life of Nature no less 
 than that of man. 
 
206 Walks in New England 
 
 We have a better part of Nature than they who 
 dwell under the tropics and know no repose in 
 the things that grow and glorify earth, and see no 
 wondrous arising from death to life as we when 
 the bluebird drops out of the March sky upon 
 our roadside weeds, and finds its food in their 
 seeds, and the trillium glows over the beach leaves 
 on the southern slope, and finally lilac time comes 
 again, and apple-blossoms, and the fire-hang-bird 
 flashing among their sweet delights. In those 
 climes where Nature works incessantly, man de 
 clines and dwarfs ; here, where she rests and renews, 
 man has the energies that make the world advance. 
 And so there is a deep pleasure in the farewell we 
 pay each year to the splendid bloom of the forests 
 and the warm and palpitating skies of summer. 
 
 The fall has not been so rich in colour as other 
 falls, because the long dry time, with its soft airs, 
 enervated the trees ; as roses in June when there 
 is not rain enough have but half their beauty and 
 scatter their petals like poppies, so the leaves in 
 a dry autumn are less glorious in hue, and less 
 tenacious of their slender hold, and sooner than 
 their wont yield to the light October winds, 
 
 " And fall like flakes of light, 
 To the ground." 
 
 Yet there were never more brilliant sidehills 
 
Ready for IVinter 207 
 
 of young growth, where birch, maple and poplar 
 saplings felt the first breath of fall, and glowed in 
 brilliant beauty. And later the oaks, last and 
 strongest in their robust dyes, were all the more 
 magnificent for the lack of rivalry, or were richly 
 set off by the generous golden chestnuts. The 
 chestnuts gave no fallacious promises in their toss 
 ing summer plumes ; for there surely was never a 
 more satisfying season for chestnuting parties. 
 The glossy, full and healthy nuts are so abundant 
 that the squirrels will have great store this fall, after 
 all the children and many of the grown folks have 
 helped themselves. The rustling covering of the 
 earth is brown with them still in unfrequented 
 woodlands, and the squirrels scamper on every 
 hand at a stranger s step, and seek the trees and 
 watch him as he pokes the leaves over and opens 
 the rare reluctant burrs. If in such search you 
 come upon one of Bunny s cunningly hidden 
 caches, let us hope you have the conscience to let 
 it alone, for there are rights of property that are 
 not expressed in human title deeds. 
 
 It is a curious matter, by the way, that nobody 
 ever thinks of the owner of the land whereon nut 
 trees grow as having any property in their fruit. 
 He cuts down the trees without anybody s ques 
 tion, but if he tries to reserve the fruits thereof 
 to his use and behoof, there is an instinctive re- 
 
208 Walks in New England 
 
 bellion of the public, from the small boy up to 
 the predatory stroller or Sunday sportsman. Nuts 
 at least are ferae naturae, even if apples and fish 
 must be protected. This feeling is not so well 
 known in other countries, and perhaps in this we 
 New Englanders are the true heirs of our fore 
 fathers, who in all the deeds they received from 
 the Indians of their pleasant lands, conserved to 
 the red men the privileges of gathering nuts and 
 taking fish. It is very interesting to read those 
 deeds of two and a half centuries ago, with this 
 invariable proviso. The chestnut was important 
 to the Indian, so important to him that the region 
 of Mettawampe and Pocomtuck was known and 
 described in the deeds the Dedham pioneers took 
 as " the Chestnut country/ But the privileges 
 of nutting and fishing do not seem very large when 
 one reads the petty barter of strings of wampum 
 and other small goods that went with those privi 
 leges to make an even trade for the fair Connecti 
 cut valley and its noble forests and meadows. 
 
 Besides the nuts and the squirrels, there are 
 quantities of deerberries and berries of the wood 
 bine, and skurrying grouse ; the crows caw as 
 wisely as ever, getting ready to depart, and there 
 are still in sheltered glades small asters flourish 
 ing with great bravery, and even a very occasional 
 golden-rod. The ferns are not all withered, but 
 

 POET AND MYSTIC AT OAK KNOLL 
 
Ready for Winter 209 
 
 those that blanch early to foretell winter are 
 long since gone, and little besides the polypody, 
 the Christmas fern and its special kindred of the 
 aspidium name, look healthily satisfied with the 
 northwest winds. All things indeed are closing 
 up for rest, and presently the earth will be ready 
 for the winter to forbid and fetter its life, content 
 to sleep its time. Then, when the frost has quite 
 completed its ruthless work, and the snow has 
 covered the ruins of the verdurous year ; when 
 the landscape is brought into sober tints and the 
 sharp contrasts of white and black are brought 
 into harmony by the Master-artist ; then the 
 glory of the sky succeeds to the charm of earth. 
 
 For while the earth is beautiful, inviting, famil 
 iar and infinitely various, there is little notion of 
 regarding the skies except as pendants and adorn 
 ments to this pleasant globe of ours. It is when 
 the obvious monotony of winter becomes oppres 
 sive that skyscapes take the lead of landscapes, 
 and our thoughts rise toward the unimaginable 
 reach of the starry vault, with its eternal distance 
 and extension. It is in such gazing that we feel 
 how insignificant is our physical being, and how 
 petty our mortal environment, how mighty our 
 spiritual reach, how tremendous our possible des 
 tiny ! 
 
 In such a mood wrote Whitman: 
 N 
 
2io IValks in New England 
 
 O Thou Transcendent ! 
 Nameless, the fiber and the breath, 
 Light of the light, shedding forth universes, thou center 
 
 of them, 
 
 Thou pulse, thou motive of the stars, suns, systems, 
 That circling move in order, safe, harmonious, 
 Athwart the shapeless vastnesses of space, 
 How should I think, how breathe a single breath, how 
 
 speak, if out of myself 
 I could not launch to those superior universes ? 
 
 Swiftly I shrivel at the thought of God, 
 
 At Nature and its wonders, Time and Space and Death, 
 
 But that I turning call to thee, O soul, 
 
 And lo, thou gently masterest the orbs, 
 
 Thou matest Time, smilest content at Death, 
 
 And fillest, swellest full the vastness of Space ! 
 
Witch Hazel Bloom 2 1 1 
 
 JVitch Hazel Bloom 
 
 THE rich, ripe beauty of the mature year 
 now delights all who in our clime and 
 latitude walk forth to view the great 
 colour harmonies of the forests, the completed 
 repose of the harvested fields, and breathe the 
 vital elixir of the border air, blending summer 
 sweetness with winter strength. If the pearl of 
 the year be June, with its glorious sensuous loveli 
 ness, then October is the ruby, deeply founded, 
 superbly toned, a crystallization, not an accretion, 
 and royal even in the rough. For there is no 
 year in which October is not glorious, though its 
 degrees of hospitality are by no means uniform. 
 Stern storms and frosts may forbid its minor 
 graces of tenderness, its veiling hazes, its woo 
 ing zephyrs, its blossoming of clover, its warm 
 hillsides beneath the curtained sun, its clear north 
 winds that sweep the heavens clear, and provoke 
 the mountains into joy. But never can storms 
 or frosts utterly abolish the transfiguring colour of 
 the ripening trees, which under skies of cloud as 
 
2 1 2 Walks in New England 
 
 beneath the sun display the grand artistry of Na 
 ture ; nor can these change the magic of the leafy 
 woodland paths, which one treads as if in another 
 world from that of business, books, newspapers 
 and politics, which compel his attention where he 
 and his fellow-mortals confront their artificial 
 existence. 
 
 The forest bloom has departed, the birds have 
 flown, the squirrels and the boys are a-nutting ; 
 on the roadsides few flowers besides the asters 
 linger and the long sprays of the wreath golden- 
 rod, the humbler members of the sunflower kin 
 dred and the late gentians ; in the fields appear 
 those second blossoms that spring from the mowed 
 down golden-rods, ox-eye daisies and black-eyed 
 Susans. Down the forest aisles streams the unique 
 magnetic fragrance of the witch hazel, which 
 only of all fragrances could harmonize with the 
 sacred sweetness of the autumn woodland. A 
 familiar of the flowers knows that a month hence 
 he shall find these and a score of flowers besides, 
 in places that he wots of, but to the general eye 
 the gay children of Nature have departed, and 
 winter seems waiting around the corner to close 
 the door. 
 
 Still the charm of the fall air softens the omens 
 of departure. The wild fragrance of the fallen 
 foliage rises like an oblation to the generous gen- 
 
IVitch Hazel Bloom 2 1 3 
 
 his of Nature, and thrills the sense with kinship 
 of all that lives which now and again fills the heart 
 of Nature s lover, as he reclines on the bare rocks 
 of the mountain peak, and beholds the varied 
 earth, the wild wood, the clearing, the reaped 
 grain-field, the meadow with its sweet rowen, the 
 bare brown earth reft of its roots or tubers, the 
 corn-stocks like to tented camps and the piles 
 of sunny pumpkins among them ; the abandoned 
 summer pastures, the cattle feeding in the mow 
 ings ; the orchards with their heaps of green, ruddy 
 or yellow apples some for the market, some for 
 the home, much for the cider mill ; the tobacco 
 fields with their scattered little sprouts since the 
 harvest ; the onion fields with their rows of bulbs 
 pulled and deployed along the lines of their orig 
 inal ranks, and whatsoever other truck of the 
 husbandman is visible in the fertile valley beneath 
 his eyes. 
 
 Far off on his horizons rise in blue remoteness 
 the heights of greater hills, and as he calls their 
 names he seems to share their prospects also, so 
 that from Tom or Holyoke he looks not only on 
 the winding Connecticut, but as well on the twin 
 lakes of Salisbury or across the wide valley of the 
 Hudson to the Catskills, as if he were on the 
 wild, treeless top of Taconic Dome ; or perchance 
 across to peaceful Sugar river, as if he were on 
 
214 IValks in New England 
 
 Ascutney ; or over multitudinous hills to the 
 Adirondacks, as if it were Greylock he stood on. 
 All the mountain world is his in a new sense ; it 
 almost seems as if it were but to will, and be trans 
 ported to Greylock, to Mettawampe, or to Met- 
 tawee, as the oriental heroes journey. But no 
 magic carpet has ever been owned in New Eng 
 land, except the one Madame Blavatsky had at 
 Spirit Vale, and that she took with her. 
 
 This fall there is no swift and sweeping change 
 of colour in the hills, but as a whole the great 
 effect is delayed and prolonged ; the work began 
 later than usual, and individual trees have suddenly 
 reddened or bloomed in golden luxuriance, and 
 sooner than their wont have shed their leaves 
 and stand bare amid their yet verdant fellows. 
 But we cannot clearly know in our valley when 
 in the northern or western hills, lifted from a 
 thousand to three thousand feet higher, this mag 
 ical painting of the autumn began. A month ago 
 there was a marshy pasture on the side of Metta- 
 wampe as brilliant in its glow of ruddy maples as 
 any place hereabout is now, and in the noble sugar 
 orchards of that region there were glorious old 
 maples, with their feet in the springy mountain 
 side, as richly robed as such monarchs ought to be, 
 before whose presence one remembered the boast 
 of King Adrastus in Talfourd s " Ion : " 
 
IVitch Hazel Bloom 2 1 5 
 
 " Thus shall the royalty of Argos pass 
 In festal blaze to darkness." 
 
 Through all this pomp of regal bloom insinuates 
 and permeates and controls the mysterious beauty 
 and enchantment of Nature s slumber charm, whose 
 very essence is the atttactive, elusive, withdrawing, 
 sacred scent of the witch hazel. This strange 
 bush, that flowers in the fall and fruits in the 
 spring, is as individual in its flower as in its habit, 
 and both so strange. Now the pale gold fringes 
 release themselves slowly from the close fitting 
 wraps that summer has wrought around the buds, 
 buds that afford no hint of the weird wraiths of 
 bloom they hold. Before yet their delicate petals 
 disentangle themselves, they bestow their mystic 
 fragrance on the forest depths. It is like a lov 
 ing benediction of God to the wanderer of the 
 woods, a tender farewell from the secret soul of 
 Nature. 
 
2 1 6 Walks in New England 
 
 Gliding Into Indian Summer 
 
 THIS glorious first autumn of the twentieth 
 century advances with almost unexampled 
 beauty, and we now see and feel the ex 
 traordinary charm of a brilliant October gliding 
 imperceptibly into the gracious loveliness of the 
 Indian summer, the summer of All Saints, 
 whose festival is this day. Such days as the last 
 Sunday and yesterday are typical of Indian sum 
 mer, with its singular atmospheric conditions in 
 full character, the far-echoing transmission of 
 remote sounds, the brooding peace and the vapoury 
 distances in which clouds and hills melt together, 
 and through the vistas of the woodland gleam like 
 spiritual transfigurations the yellow young maples 
 and the translucent red cornels, making a fairy 
 realm of inexpressible beauty, at once bright and 
 soft, the magical tenderness of a divine expres 
 sion of harmony. Not every year do we behold 
 this infinite concinnity ; it would be the less 
 thought of, the less esteemed, were it not so rare. 
 Nature is never lacking in dear and intimate phases 
 
I 
 
 resign their < fo- 
 
 and the mover the 
 
 There have bee 
 
 ^lish autumn h so 
 
 f there springs to the memory that 
 :t Season of mists and 
 
 ^hWflie New England 
 more characteristic, keen and shi< 
 cl in b id colour, there is no <- 
 
 cation to quote Keats. 
 The first glories, indeed, have not r 
 That taking audacity of the early, sumit the 
 
 flaming maples which won all admiring ^ no 
 
 more. Many a maple is yet corn 
 ;nd blood-red, and lesser plant 
 ure yet he thickets am: 
 
 but now it is the magiv 
 ur the hills and the lo 
 g the plains, th; 
 
m* 
 
 THE PINE S GRAND COLUMN 
 
 
2 1 8 Walks in New England 
 
 oak is that enduring symbol of aged force, which 
 contains the earnest of eternity. And when that, 
 too, passes, there remain the hemlocks, pines and 
 spruces, and the vital cedars, that can subsist for 
 centuries on the mere trickle of rains on the cleft 
 rocks, these in the bare forests will still uplift 
 their vivid or their solemn greens, and the wind 
 that plays within their boughs as upon giant harps 
 brings forth the superb rhythms of continuous 
 praise. 
 
 How full are the fields and forests of this hold 
 on life ! Not for the moment is anything in Na 
 ture born. It is true that life never ceases. All 
 these living things which have made the beauty 
 of the earth do not supinely rest in winter. 
 Note how the buds swell on the birches; how 
 the arbutus buds are all ready for spring even 
 now; how the azalea and the laurel give the same 
 tokens. Note how the foot leaves of a thou 
 sand humble plants spread themselves on the 
 kindly ground, and keep life for the flower stalks 
 of the spring or summer. And in such a fall as 
 this, note how the young seedlings of the year 
 hurry into bloom, to greet the wooing gentleness 
 of the southern zephyrs. On a recent walk over 
 mountain and valley a company of lovers of Na 
 ture made note of 56 species of wild flowers in full 
 bloom; among them the wild strawberry, the 
 
Gliding Into Indian Summer 219 
 
 deerberry most beautiful of all its family, whose 
 name recalls the days when deer were as familiar 
 in the forest as gray squirrels are in Springfield 
 the herb robert, the evening primrose, the canina 
 violet, the Deptford pink, seven or eight species 
 of aster, four or five of golden-rod, the Queen 
 Anne s lace to represent the parsleys, and others 
 that may await naming. 
 
 The charm of Indian summer, which has so 
 overtaken and conquered us all, may not last long; 
 but while it lasts it is incomparable in these mi 
 raculous suggestions of the underlying vitality and 
 ongoing force of the Spirit which has made all 
 this earth and through it expresses himself. If 
 God did not constantly evolve life out of life, he 
 would not live. It is God who speaks in the 
 unending glory of the seasons. All the poets 
 know it, and have known it, for they are informed 
 of him. The seasons are the type of God, where 
 with he prints before his dullard children on his 
 " three mighty leaves, earth, ocean, sky," the 
 rune of "might, justice, love." And the greatest 
 of these is love. 
 
22O Walks in New England 
 
 Flowers in November Bloom 
 
 THE fifty-six flower species found in bloom 
 in the walk noted above deserve to be 
 specified, as showing the extraordinary 
 grace of this lingering warmth of autumn. The 
 walk was from the south peak of Mount Tom for 
 some miles northward along the ridge, then still 
 northward down the mountain and through the val 
 ley between it and Little Tom, and so across to 
 Smith s Ferry, thus compassing a considerable 
 variety of conditions. The flowers found were as 
 follows, according to Gray, but not the latest 
 edition of that standard botany, which is not at 
 hand, so that some variations will be noted : 
 
 Sinapis arvensis (charlock, wild mustard) ; ara- 
 bis lyrata (low rock cress) ; lepidium virginicum 
 (peppergrass properly pepper-cress) ; cerastium 
 viscosum (mouse-ear chickweed) ; polygala san- 
 guinea (milkwort) ; desmodium canadense (tick 
 trefoil) ; geum album (white wood tick) ; hama- 
 melis virginica (witch hazel) ; oenothera biennis 
 (evening primrose) ; viola canina (the light blue 
 
Flowers in November Bloom 221 
 
 dog violet) ; dianthus armeria (Deptford pink) ; 
 anychia dichotoma (chickweed) ; malva rotundi- 
 folia (mallow) ; geranium robertianum (herb rob- 
 ert) ; trifolium agrarium, arvense, pratense and 
 repens (yellow, rabbit-foot, red and white clovers) ; 
 fragaria virginiana (strawberry) ; diervilla trifida 
 (bush honeysuckle) ; daucus carota (Queen Anne s 
 lace) ; galium asprellum (cleavers) ; ambrosia ar- 
 temisiaefolia (roman wormwood) ; gnaphalium 
 polycephalum (common everlasting) ; gnaphalium 
 uliginosum (cudweed) ; anaphalis margaritacea 
 (pearly everlasting) ; antennaria plantaginifolia 
 (the spring species) ; eupatorium ageratoides (white 
 snake root) ; eupatorium perfoliatum (thorough- 
 wort or boneset) ; solidago bicolor (silver rod), 
 latifolia (broad-leaved golden-rod), nemoralis 
 (small spike), caesia (wreath) ; aster corymbosus 
 and macrophyllus (both woodland species), cordi- 
 folius (heart-leaved), Novae-Angliae (New Eng 
 land), patens (red-stemmed), ericoides (heath-like, 
 with white involucre), multiflorus (bushy and 
 abundant-flowering) ; erigeron annuum (larger 
 daisy fleabane) ; achillea millefolium (yarrow) ; 
 anthemis cotula (mayweed) ; chrysanthemum 
 leucanthemum (ox-eye daisy) ; potentilla arguta 
 (tall cinquefoil) ; rudbeckia hirta (Black-eyed 
 Susan, cone-flower) ; hieracium paniculatum (wood 
 hawk-weed) ; prenanthes alba (white lettuce) ; 
 
222 Walks in New England 
 
 lobelia inflata (Indian tobacco) ; vaccinium stam- 
 ineum (deerberry) ; chelone glabra (snake-head) ; 
 pycnanthemum lanceolatum (mountain mint) ; 
 nepeta cataria (catnip) ; polygonum sagittatum 
 (tear-thumb) ; brunella vulgaris (self-heal). 
 
 This is undoubtedly an uncommon record, for 
 very rarely does the black frost hold off as it is 
 doing this fall in this region. Nevertheless, it by 
 no means represents the flowers that were to be 
 found in blossom that day, or may be found so 
 now, for no severe frost has occurred since, 
 the brilliant hoar frost at the beginning of last 
 week being quite harmless even to delicate forest 
 growths. On that walk there was no endeavour 
 made to search for plants in blossom. The ob 
 servers had been over neighbouring ground only a 
 week before, and knew that with a little divagation 
 they might have seen dandelions, butter-and-eggs, 
 mulleins, ladies tresses, and possibly fringed 
 gentian, the purple gerardias, arrowheads at the 
 edge of a marsh, and bluets the pretty houstonia. 
 Some of these have been found since by a mem 
 ber of the party. As to the rare mildness of the 
 season there are other facts that bear interesting 
 witness. The sweet fern is untouched by frost 
 all around this region. Not only the Christmas, 
 the marginal and the spinulose ferns are now green 
 and lusty, but are seen now and again a commun- 
 
Flowers in November Bloom 223 
 
 ity of sensitive ferns yet unwilted, and the bracken 
 (pteris aquilina) here and there quite green. Even 
 the maiden-hair fern may still be found green in 
 sheltered spots. Many of the blossomings noted 
 are new efforts of life on the already fruited 
 stalks ; many are of young plants of this year 
 that have decided to come out before winter in 
 stead of after. The arbutus sometimes does this, 
 but these special observers did not find any buds 
 so enterprising. The really extraordinary per 
 formance was that of a deerberry bush on one of 
 the sternest cliffs of the mountain ; it was crowded 
 with bloom, and a beautiful sight. The bluets, 
 or " Quaker ladies " (to use the pretty Pennsyl 
 vania name), are now not infrequently to be met 
 with in their favorite places. 
 
224 IValks in New England 
 
 One Indian Summer Day 
 
 iHE true and only Indian Summer has 
 visited our clime this year; not with 
 generous expenditure of balm and 
 
 beauty, as sometimes happens, but none the less 
 
 truly because its perfect loveliness was expended 
 
 on one day. Very rarely have we a season of 
 
 marvelous days such as Longfellow describes in 
 
 " Evangeline," 
 
 " That beautiful season 
 
 Called by the pious Acadian peasants the summer of All 
 Saints. 
 
 Filled was the air with a dreamy and magical light, and 
 the landscape 
 
 Lay as if new created in all the freshness of childhood. 
 
 Peace seemed to reign upon Earth, and the restless heart 
 of the ocean 
 
 Was for a moment consoled. All sounds were in har 
 mony blended : 
 
 Voices of children at play, the crowing of cocks in the 
 farmyards, 
 
 Whir of wings in the drowsy air, and the cooing of pi 
 geons, 
 
One Indian Summer Day 225 
 
 All were subdued and low as the murmurs of love, and 
 
 the great sun 
 Looked with the eye of love through the golden vapours 
 
 around him. 
 
 If we have a single day that answers this descrip 
 tion, we have Indian Summer, and any one who 
 noted the beauty of Thursday knew such a day. 
 The lovely rarity had not come unheralded, for 
 had not the western wind of the day before blown 
 somewhat too briskly and too keenly, that also 
 would have answered the requirements. It is a 
 pity that the Century dictionary concedes the ap 
 plication of the term to any sort of mild weather 
 between September and December. This, to the 
 most of those who consult a dictionary, supposing 
 it to be a final authority and not a simple register 
 of usage, seems a sanction of the vulgar error 
 against which observers of Nature have been pro 
 testing for many years. We always have mild 
 weather in October, with blue haze on the hills 
 and quiet in the air. But the true Indian Summer 
 which Longfellow so well pictures comes at the 
 time of the feast of All Saints, November i , a day 
 or two before, a day or two after, and sometimes 
 lasts for a week or two or even more. The leaves 
 of the forest have fallen, save for the lingering 
 winterers of the oaks and beeches; the frosts 
 have blackened the clover and wilted the wild 
 
226 Walks in New England 
 
 flowers, before earth is ripe for this miraculous 
 charm. 
 
 That one wonderful day revealed the ideal type 
 of the exceptional season. Seldom in a lifetime 
 may one hope to see and to feel that wondrous dream 
 of air and light and exquisite illusion. To one 
 who viewed the earth from a mountain peak, all 
 fields and forests, streams and ponds, blended in 
 phantasmagoria. There may be azure hazes veil 
 ing and masking the landscape at many seasons : 
 in early April when the snows are melting ; in 
 June when summer grows sensuous ; in August 
 when the heat settles, gray and intimate, on the 
 bosom of earth, and all the garniture of Nature 
 is suffused with fervent sunlight ; in September 
 when the leaves put on colour and the winds are 
 whist; in October when all the woods are glo 
 rious and the delicate blue tinge sets off the glow 
 ing tones of trees and shrubs and dying ferns. 
 But such a transforming skyey hue as charges 
 the Indian Summer landscape is so different from 
 all other azures of the advancing year that no 
 one who has viewed the scene under such a light 
 can be misled. 
 
 On that rarest of days the earth lay in peace 
 and transcendent slumber. The light western 
 breeze scarcely stirred the pine leaves high up in 
 the ether. The hemlocks were whispering softly 
 
One Indian Summer Day 227 
 
 as the sough of the zephyr disturbed them, and 
 out from the witch hazel covert the grouse now 
 and then dashed whirring. Over the broad farms 
 lightly there brooded the sense of contentment, 
 and the forests sighed gently as through them the 
 breezes caressingly wandered. All the broad 
 earth seemed transmuted to a region of dreaming 
 enchantment, as if at a breath it might vanish, 
 as if all that was seen was but Maya ; the sun in 
 its shining subdued, the vault of the high skyey 
 spaces, no less than the sinuous river that gleamed 
 white far into the cloud-bank of vapours that 
 clung close to earth and shut in the common hori 
 zon, or the hills that were lost as they rose in 
 the veil of the magical distance. 
 
 For this day indeed all the autumn had ingen 
 uously been preparing, with frosts in this latitude 
 delayed so that every tree in the forest has had 
 its full opportunity to blossom at its best, and so 
 splendid masses of orange and gold and pale 
 lemon in the sugar orchards, of brightest red in 
 soft maples, so rich ranges of brown in elms, 
 beeches and chestnuts, the hickories gamboge 
 yellow, the sumachs scarlets and crimsons, the 
 glowing viburnums and cornels, mingled and 
 qualified by the heart-reds and maroons of oaks 
 along the mountain sides, have seldom been sur 
 passed. Even the apple trees, whose foliage usu- 
 
228 Walks in New England 
 
 ally withers to dull brown in early frosts, have had 
 time enough to grow interesting in shining mottled 
 hues of bronze, and the Japanese ampelopsis that 
 in the city adorns so many churches and houses has 
 shown all its striking variegations of colour, which 
 are more like those of the poison ivy than the 
 simple pure colours of the woodbine, our native 
 ampelopsis, whose season is so much briefer, 
 though not less conspicuous. The eye has been 
 nobly feasted by the procession of Nature s glory 
 over hills and meadows and pastures and along 
 country roads. There is yet the harmony, the 
 poetry of earth, which Keats said is never dead ; the 
 insect musicians are not silenced utterly, as usually 
 the killing touch of frost has silenced them ere this ; 
 still on sunny mid-days the cricket s chirp and 
 the grasshopper s dry fiddling may be heard ; and 
 wasps, hornets and bumblebees dash about in 
 counterfeit of summer. The hawks sail and 
 scream over the hills ; the crows caw lustily, as 
 they will do in their customary visits all winter 
 long; even yet there are a few jolly song sparrows 
 singing for pure love of it. Gentians yet " look 
 through their fringes to the sky ; " nor yet has 
 every aster or golden-rod extinguished its cheerful 
 rays. The pulse of the life of God beats warmly 
 in these latter days, as in the days of beginning. 
 It may indeed be felt that in one Indian Sum- 
 
One Indian Summer Day 229 
 
 mer day, we have had an earnest of the truth that 
 in the transient show of earth lives the constant 
 substance of the divine spirit, in which death that 
 seems is but a phase of life that is. 
 
230 U^alks in New England 
 
 Indian Summer Reverie 
 
 THE rare season of the year is passing 
 away. Gathering clouds forebode the 
 end of these Indian summer days, so per 
 fect in tranquil peace, the pause of Nature ere the 
 finishing frosts. The peculiar charm of earth at 
 this moment is a profound and serious sweetness. 
 Repose broods over the valleys and veils the 
 forests ; the hills melt into the melting sky ; high 
 the vapours of the fallen foliage mount in the at 
 mosphere ; sounds echo far yet soft across the 
 land ; the very caw of the crow loses its harsh 
 emphasis, and the bluejay s screams are in minor 
 keys. Now the chickadee s calls and the slight 
 whispers of the mountain sparrows are the chief 
 voices of the woodland and the copse ; the visit 
 ing snow-buntings lift their gleams of white as 
 they fly from bush to bush ; and over the marshes, 
 what is that swift vision of broad blue wings but 
 the blue heron, pausing in the journey of the year ? 
 The red squirrels chatter and scold, the chipmunks 
 skurry through the rustling leaves, and the grouse 
 

 
SEEN OVER CEDARS AND JUNIPERS 
 
Indian Summer Reverie 23 1 
 
 cluck and hasten to hide themselves, with boom 
 ing flight. Whatever life moves, whatever beauty 
 shows, is in the tone of waiting and content. 
 Were it not for the alien sharpness of the sports 
 man s gun, there would be no break in the magic 
 of the Indian summer. 
 
 The long moon of rain has filled the springs, 
 lowered by three successive years of drouth. Those 
 lowery days were not without their pleasurable as 
 pect, for in this region Nature can never be beauti- 
 less. There was something of keen delight in the 
 days of eastern winds that tossed the trees and 
 thrashed the falling leaves across the fields ; there 
 was comfort in the temperate rains, that had their 
 mission to fulfill ; the gray days were full of kind 
 promise, with picturesque effects of fog, and dif 
 fusing mists, and strange lights and shades over 
 the wide meadows and on the somber hills. There 
 were snatches of splendour in the forests ; then 
 came the winds and swept the roadways and heaped 
 the ripened leafage in winrows and around the 
 fences and wayside bushes, and there was no more 
 of the golden magnificence of the maples, the 
 olive purples of the ashes, the buff vestures 
 of the beeches, and the chestnuts. The yellow 
 bronzes of the hickories yet remained and the 
 light trembling poplars and the pale birches lin 
 gered. Against such backgrounds still an occa- 
 
232 Walks in New England 
 
 sional swamp maple would show like a fine altar 
 flame of worship. 
 
 Now there is only the great family of oaks that 
 gives colour to the landscape, but these are more 
 generous and glorious than ever. Seldom does 
 Indian summer come to such a wealth of fascina 
 tion. The wide fields are rich in ground colours 
 of superb browns, maroons, grays, yellows, with 
 now and then some acres of new rye or lush 
 meadow emphasizing all with broad spaces of fresh 
 green. In this display of the fields note what is 
 accomplished by humble plants which the farmer 
 calls weeds and justly calls them so, from his 
 practical point of view. What makes the seal- 
 brown hue on yon hillside ? The innumerable 
 plants of the lesser St. John s wort. What gives 
 the ruddy tinge to this sweep of plain ? The 
 little running blackberry, or dewberry. The 
 golden-rods, the blazing-stars, in their seed estate, 
 fill the long outlook with a harmonious ashy tone, 
 picked out with brown points of accent. The 
 high, feathery-seeded grasses of the sandy soils 
 swing and shake in the light breezes, and now 
 and then one discerns an aster or a golden-rod 
 that is belated, yet will blossom despite of the 
 date on the calendar. 
 
 Over all this rich foreground the eye wanders 
 to rest against the fringing forests, with the grand 
 
Indian Summer Reverie 233 
 
 and sturdy oaks, some deep blood-red, but mainly 
 russet and lighter browns. Among these the 
 white pine lifts its aristocratic head, full of grace 
 and elegance ; and the sturdy yellow pine, one 
 of our most characteristic trees, whose keen and 
 forceful clusters of stout needles are companioned 
 by such multitudes of cones, each with its scores 
 of seeds to keep the forest living. The oaks and 
 the pines, the chestnuts and the hickories, disdain 
 destruction. Here also are the noble hemlocks, 
 which join grace and dignity in a harmony all 
 their own, and in the deep marshes rise the hack 
 matacks, in their eccentric grace, with their light 
 yellow plumy branches defined against the bare 
 boughs of the deciduous trees and the darkness 
 of the evergreens. 
 
 But what shall tell the wealth of the marshes 
 in these closing days of the living year ? To 
 penetrate their deep recesses is to enter fairy-land. 
 Here yet the swamp maples bear a few bright 
 leaves, and the water oaks are richly red. Over 
 the trunks of the maples and cedars, the spruces 
 and pines, the lichens are fresh and soft in their 
 delicate greens, and the fine, tangled green mosses 
 hang from the boughs in long streamers. Beneath 
 is a wondrous fabric of sphagnum, deep-rooted 
 water cryptogams, now blushing with their au 
 tumn colours, besprent with starry crowns, trav- 
 
234 Walks in New England 
 
 ersed by the pretty cranberry, ruddy fruited, and 
 the creeping snowberry, bordered in the drier 
 parts of the marsh by goldthread and partridge- 
 berry with its sanguine fruit, and overrun by the 
 beautiful cassandra and andromeda. Here in 
 their season are to be seen lovely pink orchids, 
 and all around bloom the white clethra and the 
 crimson laurel called lambkill. The poison su 
 mach abounds, too, with its pale and forbidding 
 berries. Then we reach an outlook on a wide 
 stretch of swamp where the cat-tails grow, and at 
 the edges the sweet-flag ; while beneath our feet 
 the pitcher-plant riots in profusion. 
 
 What is the impression of these marshes, so 
 luxuriant in life, so defiant or ignorant of man ? 
 It is the great secret of Nature, its infinite and 
 versatile mystery. Mystery is the great voice of 
 earth, always heard by the attentive ear ; it is the 
 great aspect of earth, always seen by the enchanted 
 eye. This mystery is none other than the all- 
 pervading life of God. Leaving the ways of men 
 and plunging into the unspoiled wilderness, such 
 thoughts come as the current labour of daily life 
 finds no room for. All life is one ; we are one 
 with tree and shrub and flower, one with squirrel 
 and bird, one even with the sinuous serpent. The 
 sympathy of life draws to these lesser things than 
 ourselves a close attention, for they are near us 
 
Indian Summer Reverie 235 
 
 and yet far ; they also as we are emanations of the 
 spirit of endless life, concerning which we know 
 nothing and can know nothing except that we 
 belong to its continuous surge and ebb, move 
 with its purpose and retreat with its achievement, 
 and over and over again serve the everlasting 
 power. 
 
 Thus we look upon the great panorama of the 
 earth as a symbol and exemplifying of a force 
 which moves us and all to greater issues than our 
 limited intelligence can compass in our present 
 state. But the evidences and tokens of a vast 
 encompassing love fill our hearts as that pano 
 rama passes before us, carrying us with it in cease 
 less change and unchanging perpetuity. We are 
 a constituent element in the life of God, and of 
 all his creatures. What we are, we may feel sure 
 to be forever, giving our energy, our virtue, our 
 life, our love, to the immense energy, virtue, life 
 and love on whose bosom we rest, embarked on 
 sure waters for nobler lands of labour which we 
 shall attain as we are worthy. 
 
236 Walks in New England 
 
 The Second Day of December 
 
 LET it be remembered that the second day 
 of December, in this last year of the nine 
 teenth century, was one of the most exqui 
 site examples of Indian summer weather known in 
 this latitude. We are unusually blest, for snows 
 of several storms lie northwest and north and 
 northeast of us, and all along the hills of Western 
 Massachusetts our rains have been ice-storms. 
 Hereabouts, as in a magically guarded, charm- 
 encircled region, no frost has yet come to blacken 
 the clover in the fields and wilt the petunia in the 
 gardens. There have been many warm and sweet 
 early days of December, and even late days, but 
 the oldest inhabitant fails to remember a year 
 when without a killing frost summer has gradua 
 ted through autumn to the calendar verge of win 
 ter, as in this year of grace. With the light haze 
 and mists of the morning, the earth assumed that 
 mystic grace which we associate with Indian sum 
 mer now so long past its reasonable season. 
 A touch of mirage was in the landscape, as for- 
 
The Second Day of December 237 
 
 ests were seen in the veiling blue, lifting their very 
 ground into view miles away, and the reflections 
 of a)l upon its banks made the river deeper and 
 wider to the eye. The trees whose images were 
 reflected in the slumbrous water seemed scarcely 
 more real than those images ; and far away the 
 mountains rose against the faintly outlined orange 
 tone on the horizon. All this lovely smoky tint as 
 the day wore on grew to light lavender and lilac, 
 and the sweet cerulean skies began to be flecked 
 and then filled with soft white clouds rolling in 
 beautiful tenuous masses above the earth. 
 
 The sounds of the earth were fewer than on a 
 busier day, but they came with that far and mys 
 terious resonance which belongs to this peculiar 
 atmospheric condition. The bluejays and the 
 crows were lively with their wild and companion 
 able calls, which echoed so that whether before or 
 behind was now and again questioned. Magic 
 and mystery were the keynotes of the first half 
 of the day ; and as the clouds gathered and the 
 sun but rarely cast gleams through the yet thin 
 barrier, and " drew water," as the rustic phrase is, 
 the spell was not broken. Under the pines and 
 oaks the fitful sunlight stole, and illumined the 
 woodland with a refinement of infinitely gracious 
 charm. It was not wonderful among wonders to 
 witness on a warm hillside at the edge of the for- 
 
238 Walks in New England 
 
 est the playful flight of pretty earth flies, and the 
 blazonry of the rainbow on the bodies and wings 
 of other flies. One felt sorry for the grasshop 
 pers that came out, and were not quite happy, 
 though they leaped with considered vigour, and 
 for the light white butterfly that made mistaking 
 flights over the yet fresh herbage of the departing 
 year. Some flowers there were, of golden-rod in 
 the field, of tansy by the roadside, even a little 
 white violet. 
 
 The unceasing life was present, and all these 
 manifestations told us that a pause was not an 
 end, a sleep not an extinction. At the moment s 
 suggestion, life springs forth and greets us as 
 cordially as though there were no winter snows. 
 The great oaks that rise so strong and forceful, 
 the pines that are so cheery in the winter woods, 
 nay, the bearberry vine and the ground pine 
 that capture large tracts of woodland with their 
 spreading communities, and the mosses and ferns, 
 the pretty selaginella among the violets of the 
 brookside, all speak the same language. The 
 fragrance of the woods was that of October, that 
 worshipful sweetness which speaks of content and 
 grace. A memorable day, this Sunday, when all 
 things seemed to chant with delight, " The Lord 
 is in his holy temple ; let all the earth keep si 
 lence before him ! " 
 
The Day of the Child 239 
 
 The Day of the Child 
 
 THIS day the churches called Christian 
 commemorate the mystery of Incarna 
 tion, wherein God came down to dwell 
 with man, being born in the babe of Mary as all 
 souls are born into bodies, and not otherwise, no 
 matter what faith be held as to the mystery. Since 
 and before, God has always been coming in the 
 form of a babe to regenerate the earth, even as 
 Jesus, when he was grown to be a prophet among 
 his people, testified, when he said that their angels 
 do always behold the face of the Father in heaven, 
 and that he who should not receive the kingdom 
 of heaven as a little child, he might in nowise enter 
 therein. Words not for the moment, but for all 
 times, before and since and forever. 
 
 The naive, confiding, open and frank attitude 
 of the little child is not often kept, seldom enough 
 regained; yet often as one grows old, he discerns 
 how little by little he has been reassuming the 
 child s thought of many things, how sophistica 
 tions and subtleties, mockeries and antagonisms, 
 
240 Walks in New England 
 
 are losing their influence, and simplicity of feeling, 
 as well in outlook as in memory, is replacing 
 many old anxieties. Duties grow more obvious, 
 responsibilities more limited ; the day s good and 
 ill become more plainly sufficient for it ; and if 
 one should go suddenly out of life to another, he 
 would go more nearly as a little child, trusting 
 just because he does not know, than in many a 
 hard-working and worrying year. To many such 
 a one Thackeray s beautiful last sentence is a fit 
 expression : " And his heart throbbed with an 
 exquisite pleasure." 
 
 The heart of a child ! And to those who re 
 member what childhood was, it is seen to be the 
 very fitting test for the future, and as well for the 
 feast of this holy day, when childhood was so 
 glorified. It is still the children that make the 
 Christmas. Beautiful are the legends of the child 
 Jesus, even in the gospels of the Infancy; these 
 are the earliest fairy tales of Christianity, preced 
 ing Santa Claus and Kriss Kringle, and Christ- 
 kinden and bambino stories. If one desires a 
 warrant for the imagery and fancy of the children s 
 saint and the visits of " the good little Jesus," it 
 may be found in those strange pretty anecdotes, 
 as that wherein Jesus and other children played 
 in the clay banks, and made birds out of the clay, 
 but Jesus, when he had wrought his birds, clapped 
 
f UN 
 
 A 
 
 UNIV 
 
 of the Child 241 
 
 his hands, and lo ! they took flight and soared 
 away, the heaven-child had sent the birds to his 
 home, where birds ever sing and the flowers of 
 Galilee and Judea ever bloom. He never forgot 
 the birds or the flowers, or the children. " Let 
 the children come to me," he said, " don t hinder 
 them. Your only opportunity of the kingdom 
 of love is the child s heart." In such manner of 
 language he taught, and not as the scribes, for you 
 will not find that in Moses s law. 
 
 Do not be afraid of the children s fictions or 
 of fictions for the children. Trust them, they 
 will not fail to discover the difference between 
 dreams, which they know so well, and wilful de 
 ceits, which they should never know. It is not 
 Santa Claus legends that hurt the tender soul of 
 the child, it is the hard worldliness of lying ex 
 cuses, false reasons for forbidding things, the inner 
 hideousness of the cheat. Poetry is healthy ; tis 
 dishonesty that wounds. 
 
 The children s day ! Let us love childhood and 
 foster the heart of the child in boy and girl, and 
 most of all in ourselves. 
 p 
 
242 IValks in New England 
 
 Winter Takes Possession 
 
 WINTER, with unusual attention to the 
 conventionalities of the calendar, has 
 taken possession of the land. The 
 mercury that had been so bravely maintaining a 
 mild fall, took a wild fall itself, down below zero, 
 and all the muddy country roads froze rougher 
 than corduroy, and men and oxen walked abroad 
 with cloudy breath and icicle-hung whiskers. All 
 night the frost tightened ; in the forbidding moon 
 light the earth looked weird and desolate; the 
 woods echoed with curious snapping sounds, may 
 be from cracks in the freezing ground, or may be 
 twas the sap in deluded saplings that had misun 
 derstood the blandness of November. 
 
 The early morning revealed the pastures glitter 
 ing with crystal and the willows and alders along 
 the watercourses sparkled in the frosty day. The 
 partridges that started suddenly, surprised from 
 frugal breakfasts by the roadside, and whirred 
 with booming pinions to the woods, assured the 
 traveler that links with the abounding forest life 
 
^>5t r A 
 
 im 
 
 
 tjsiFj 
 
 
ICICLES OVER WILDWATER 
 
Winter Takes Possession 243 
 
 of summer yet remained unbroken, although the 
 crows were no longer to be heard and even the 
 chickadees were on that morning silent. 
 
 There is a kindly delay in the gradual departure 
 of the more engaging charms of Mother Earth. 
 As in the whimsical Good Night symphony of 
 Papa Haydn, where one after another of the play 
 ers rises, puts out his candle, takes up his instru 
 ment and bows himself out, so the flowers and 
 the birds leave us ; the symphony goes on while 
 they fly south, tribe by tribe, while they fade and 
 wither, family after family ; and we enjoy the 
 strains as much when the performers are fewer as 
 when the orchestra was complete. But the sym 
 phony of Nature never really ceases ; even in the 
 dead stress of winter there are players in the woods, 
 piping their own particular parts, small parts, no 
 doubt, and not especially admired when the whole 
 conservatory is in force, but now quite delightful. 
 
 The winter that has thus with rude and angry 
 hand given the blow of grace, as the French 
 phrase is, to lingering autumn, will be severe, if 
 the old country signs hold good. The snow-storm 
 that comes will not lead so tremendous a proces 
 sion of snows as this region often sees, because af 
 ter so great a snow-fall last season, and so frequent 
 and heavy rains throughout the summer, a dry 
 winter is more likely. But a very cold dry winter 
 
244 Walks in New England 
 
 is looked for; the woodchuck dug his burrow early 
 and deep and retired, the wild geese migrated a 
 fortnight sooner than usual, the robins and crows 
 likewise, and not so many of these two species 
 staid behind as are wont to stay when the season 
 is to be open. 
 
 It is often assumed that the robins who do not 
 follow the crowd to southern latitudes are the 
 young and foolish, truants, as it were, or prodigal 
 sons who stay instead of run away, but get reduced 
 to great straits just the same. But familiar obser 
 vation of these exceptional individuals, in their 
 door-yard calls, leads to the conclusion that they 
 are really the geniuses of their kind, experienced 
 fellows, that have found good winter homes in the 
 evergreens, and studied the lay of the land, the 
 resources of the woods in the way of deerberries 
 and fox-grapes, and of their human neighbours in 
 the specialty of crumbs at the farmers back doors 
 and in the hen-yards. We have, indeed, gathered 
 as much as this from the conversation of one of 
 them, met by the side of a Berkshire country road 
 in a sunny October day in a remarkably com 
 municative mood. "Walk along! walk along!" 
 he cried out cheerily; "I m going your way." 
 We cannot translate all his remarks into cold 
 blooded English, but in the course of the talk he 
 intimated that as to going down south for his 
 
Winter Takes Possession 245 
 
 health, like the rest of them, he knew a trick worth 
 two of that ; he didn t want to tell exactly what 
 his plans were, but he should have a good time, 
 plenty of company, and his health would not suf 
 fer not so much as to lose him a pennyweight of 
 flesh. Let us hope, at least, that he knew what 
 he was talking of. So far as food goes, the gray 
 woodpecker, who may now be heard tapping the 
 hemlocks and beeches, or the gnarled old apple 
 trees in the orchards, is well provided. His busy 
 beak now echoes the woodman s axe in the woods, 
 and that is busy enough, with no judgment for the 
 future, and not too much for the present. 
 
 But as we were saying, the winter signs are 
 ominous of a snug and tight and continuous freeze. 
 Now and then a sage, with a solemn headshake, 
 goes so far as to say that if tain t the stiffest win 
 ter that folks remember hereabouts, he loses his 
 guess. And if there ain t no snow, as it s likely 
 there won t be, the brooks ll freeze down to their 
 beds, and the grass-roots won t be none the better 
 for t. In this state of things those who like to 
 taste their misery beforehand may luxuriate. In 
 the meantime, let us wait for the next run of 
 prophecies, some day when the sun gets up with 
 cheerful resolution in his halo, and proceeds to 
 toll the mercury up in the forties. Then we shall 
 hear, it is probable, of other signs that were not 
 
246 Walks in New England 
 
 taken into account before, and that indicate on the 
 whole a tolerable average of weather. 
 
 There will be cold weather enough, trust the 
 genius of old New England for that. The winter 
 thermal lines run from the Taconic hills high into 
 Maine forests, and any of us who agree with the 
 robins that leave instead of the brave minority 
 that stay and " tucker it out," will hardly be 
 shaken in preference by the season that s with us. 
 After all, it only lasts two or three, or possibly 
 four months. Then comes spring again, and our 
 October robin will make ready to greet the fel 
 lows from South America with tall stories of the 
 rich picking he has had in the old home. 
 
Splendour of the New Jerusalem 247 
 
 The Splendour of the New Jerusalem 
 
 OUR Sunday was a pearl of winter days in 
 itself in its exquisite sweet freshness of 
 the new snow, so welcome after weeks of 
 germ-laden dust of the streets freshening the air, 
 thrilling it with ozone, with the cleansing am 
 moniac brought from the upper air, and enabl 
 ing clear and pure breathing, deep and grateful. 
 " The glorious sun uprist " over an earth of 
 splendour and in a sky of the most lovely blue, 
 with lightly, swiftly floating white clouds ; and 
 as the day began, so it continued and tenderly 
 closed. It was a day when in the woods and 
 fields mere physical life was a delight. 
 
 The ice-storm whose magnificence the sun and 
 sky of the perfect day enhanced and displayed 
 to every advantage was of peculiar nature. The 
 noises of the night were strange indeed. An un 
 easy waving of branches, a crackling and rustling, 
 as if prisoners were stirring in fetters, varied by a 
 low, dull moaning now and then as a gust came 
 hastily from the northeast, shook each tree a little 
 
248 Walks in New England 
 
 more rudely and careered onward. There seemed 
 a mysterious intelligence and expectancy about 
 the earth, as though it had a sense of the spectacle 
 that was being prepared and artistically finished. 
 
 The rain came slowly and gently, and great 
 accretions of ice grew on the trees and the shrubs ; 
 the light snow with which the storm ended was 
 blown away by the capricious breezes of the night; 
 and the temperature of the day being just below 
 the freezing point, the ice remained throughout 
 the day, except in warm southern exposures. 
 The pines and the spruces, which often are clad 
 in tranquil, gracious whiteness by the snow-fall, 
 now had their long branches stretched earthward, 
 their dark verdure offset by the diamond splendour 
 of the ice, and long icicles depending from every 
 stem and bough. The oak leaves clinging to the 
 center of their homes shone through the crystal 
 coating like moss shut in the agate. The slender 
 gray birches bowed till their tips touched the 
 ground, and a group of these graceful trees, each 
 member curved to an opposite point, made elfin 
 bowers that might well delight " the little people 
 of the snow," of whom Bryant wrote with so deli 
 cate a fancy. Every such bower and every black 
 berry bush by the roadside or rose bush in the 
 garden, shone with all the prismatic colours. 
 
 In the morning, when the sun s rays struck 
 
Splendour of the New Jerusalem 249 
 
 most vertically, the view of the forest against the 
 sun was ineffably beautiful. Those were true 
 jewels that hung on every grass blade and every 
 twig, and that sparkled from the boughs. The 
 dew-drop and the soap-bubble get their iridescence 
 by the same process, and the same law that makes 
 the diamond produces the ice-prism crystalliza 
 tion is identical in both. The one, we say, is 
 transient, the beauty of a moment ; the other, we 
 say, is permanent, enduring for ages. But what 
 are ages more than moments in the order of the 
 universe ? 
 
 Yesterday any one might have the wealth of 
 the world for the seeing. Such flashing, flaming 
 trees ! flaming in the very guise of gems, here 
 a ruddy jasper, there a delicate aquamarina ; a 
 turquoise here, and here a beryl ; topazes yellow 
 and orange, and fire opals that made the eye ache 
 to behold them ; rubies, too, and bright chryso 
 lites, amethysts and jacinths ; the infinite faceted 
 diamonds and the deep skyey lapis-lazuli. The 
 very names of precious stones are poetic in their 
 music, and all of them were seen on the great 
 trees, shining from their outmost boughs against 
 the wonderful skies like glories of the New Je 
 rusalem as the Revelator saw it coming down from 
 heaven to earth. And if one looked toward the 
 sun lo ! as it were transparent glass the whole 
 
250 Walks in New England 
 
 woods gleamed. This was revelation, this the 
 apocalyptic picture, God s glory breathing from 
 the earth and captured by the air in its wondrous 
 energies. 
 
 And one noteworthy matter was that so light a 
 snowfall was over the ground that the most deli 
 cate of tiny seed-stalks of the flowers, the lowly 
 herbs and the little shrubs which are usually, when 
 such storms occur, buried deep in snow banks, 
 were now each bearing their burden of ice crystals, 
 and flashing from a million points their " intoler 
 able magnificence." One saw jewels like stars in 
 magnitude, so rare that perforce one must find 
 them, to discover that not one great central ice 
 knot sent forth those stellar rays, but a favourable 
 crossing of several blades of grass or twigs of 
 sweet fern. Endless are the combinations of Na 
 ture to produce a desired effect, nay, an inevita 
 ble effect, for the crystal is as inevitable as the 
 motions of the stars in their courses. Remem 
 ber that wise saying : tc A fixed star is as much 
 within the bounds of Nature as a flower of the 
 field, though less obvious, and of far greater dig 
 nity." 
 
 Of all this magnificence naught will long remain, 
 but so it is with the precious stones which men 
 amass and fight over. When all is done, what 
 remains for the man who has got these rievings of 
 
Splendour of the New Jerusalem 251 
 
 the earth ? Nothing for him ; all is no more than 
 the ice masquerade of the hemlocks and the pines, 
 the chestnuts and the oaks, in that new order of 
 life into which he has entered. God s blessings 
 are those that lift the human life and fill the on 
 going soul. The very footprints on the snow of 
 mice and rabbits, partridges and foxes, tell of lives 
 that are as important in their order as our own. 
 They do not see these fiery, lucid glories, but 
 they have their own place. Truly, " there is one 
 glory of the sun, and another glory of the moon, 
 and one star differeth from another in glory." So 
 is it not only with humanity that rises from the 
 death, but as well for every form into which the 
 breath of God has been poured from that ex- 
 haustless fountain of his being, the true elixir of 
 life. 
 
252 Walks in New England 
 
 Skating and Sliding Down Hill 
 
 WHEN the country is yet almost snow- 
 less, although the winter has long since 
 set in, it is perhaps an undue aggrava 
 tion to talk of sleds and sliding, time-honoured 
 and child-delighting sport of New England, far 
 older and more important than skating, although 
 that is exceedingly pleasurable, and more abounds 
 in picturesque features and displays of athletic 
 skill. Who can forget the master-skater of his 
 village, he who would dash away ten miles an hour 
 upon mountain stream and back, and coming 
 home at rushing speed, make the high leap of ten 
 feet? But the high leap, and all the leaf-cutting 
 and figures-of-eight of the experts, can be done 
 within the limits of the city. These are spectacu 
 lar, and please the crowd. 
 
 There are far finer charms for the country boys, 
 who start up the winding river and skate to the 
 next town. In such a venture the lads soon sep 
 arate. It is not a track that is laid out before 
 them, it is the icy edges of a mountain stream 
 
Skating and Sliding Down Hill 253 
 
 which invite their enterprise, and each one de 
 velops according to his genius. The solitary and 
 adventurous skater has almost as good an oppor 
 tunity for romancing as the fisher who loses the 
 biggest fish and brings home the littlest, -just to 
 show that he must have told the truth, since if the 
 big fellow had not got away, would he not have 
 brought that instead ? 
 
 Skating stories are of many sorts ; an imagi 
 native lad can have many odd experiences in a ten- 
 mile expedition, what with thin ice and air holes. 
 For example, we recall the chap who dropped 
 into an air hole, floated down the river for half a 
 mile, now and then bumping his head against the 
 ice, until he reached another air hole and came 
 up all right. He certainly got wet, and he could 
 show the air holes, and would, to any one who 
 wanted to go over the course with him. Let not 
 that powerful skater be forgotten who came to 
 the verge of the mill-dam sooner than he had ex- 
 
 o 
 
 pected, when he was going about as fast as an ex 
 press train, he actually had raced half a mile on 
 the river with the iron horse on the rails, and as 
 he could not check his speed, he rose to the oc 
 casion in one mighty leap, landed like a bird ten 
 rods below the dam, and so easy that he never 
 felt the jar, and then just skimmed on as before, 
 for no little thing like that could faze him. No 
 
254 IValks in New England 
 
 one saw this except as he heard the story, but 
 then he saw it as plain as day ; there was the dam, 
 and the skater must have traveled in the air nigh 
 ten rods if he wanted to strike good ice. What 
 more would you have ? 
 
 For those of other predilections there are rare 
 charms in a solitary night exploration on skates 
 of a mountain stream. The glorious brilliance of 
 the moonlight reflected in the crystal ice ; the 
 glittering restlessness of the far stars in the steely 
 sky ; the west wind that cuts across the tingling 
 cheek as a bend is turned, the wind that whis 
 pers and murmurs in the cloudy pines ; the shad 
 ows of the hills, dark and vague, but at the edges 
 of the sky sharply defined ; the quiet pools of 
 clear ice, transparent in daylight as plate glass, 
 but now like black marble ; the waters where 
 some descent is made, gurgling beneath the skim 
 of crystal, and sending in advance great bubbles 
 that claw their way like living creatures ; then the 
 steeper rapids bursting quite free of trammels for 
 a space, around which the skater carefully trims 
 his way, over the shallow edge of brittle ice ; the 
 surprise of warm air currents now and again ; the 
 never-freezing spring beneath the roots of the old 
 hemlock, whose waters make an open hemicycle 
 where they enter the river ; all these, and a cer 
 tain wild transfiguration of the earth and sky a 
 
Skating and Sliding Down Hill 255 
 
 lonely and mysterious influence which possesses 
 the skater, as if he and all else were in some 
 vision of enchantment, such as these are the 
 charms of a solitary moonlight pursuit of a moun 
 tain river, up stream and down stream, and as 
 God wills. 
 
 Of the social side of skating there is nothing to 
 say that may not be familiar to the denizens of 
 any considerable city. They can get that. But 
 the social side of sliding, without which there would 
 be very little of it done, can t really be had in the 
 city, even by the children. The few streets they 
 are allowed to make dangerous are quite too social ; 
 they are crowded and noisy and full of foul lan 
 guage and the hoodlums that use it. Postponing 
 the question of the civilization of the hoodlums, 
 which is a pressing duty, it may be observed that 
 the children of other sorts ought to be brought up 
 to walk a few miles, to outlying hills at no great 
 remove. The country boys and girls don t mind 
 a long walk for good sliding. One of the best 
 slides that memory recalls could be made three 
 miles long, if the highway were in good condition ; 
 and while few would walk those three miles up 
 hill, and those few chiefly to say they had done it, 
 yet the lower section of that slide, say from half 
 to three-quarters of a mile long, was popular, and 
 even populous, on bright nights. A superb slide 
 
256 IValks in New England 
 
 it was ; and get a party of ten lads and lasses 
 on a big double-ripper, with a stout and steady 
 steersman, sweeping down the steep pitches, fly 
 ing into the air at every thank-ye-ma am, and 
 the landing from the flight tries the steersman s 
 nerve and muscle, finally, shooting across the 
 village square, up the rise and half way over the 
 bridge that crosses the north-west branch, that 
 was something to remember. Sometimes there 
 were disasters, it is true, for if the steersman did 
 lose his nerve, it meant scratched faces at the least, 
 and a sprain or so, or even a broken arm might 
 result. But the risk was part of the fun, just as 
 in Alp-climbing or Arctic exploration, while the 
 results were perhaps as truly compensatory. 
 
 Sliding on " the crust " is another good thing 
 of winter in the country. Let there be a mixed 
 storm of light snow and warm rain, and a brisk 
 freeze to finish off, leaving all the hills gleaming 
 in the sunshine with a stiff covering of concreted 
 pellets, what fun is at hand for all the sleds ! 
 Then no one course is open, but anybody s choice 
 of courses over the hilly pastures. Take down 
 the bars and leave the bar-way open ; down with 
 a bit of Virginia worm-fence between two fields, 
 or opening into the traveled road ; and then from 
 the hill-top aim for that ten or twelve-foot open 
 ing from any point that strikes the fancy. It 
 
Skating and Sliding Down Hill 257 
 
 needs a sure eye, a steady foot behind and a sturdy 
 girl in front, one who won t squirm or scream 
 more than enough to keep up the excitement, 
 to be sure of that particular break in the fence line. 
 
 Another way to improve the crust in old days 
 was to cross leather straps over barrel staves, on 
 the concave side, a little forward of the middle, 
 and then, thrusting the feet into these stirrups, 
 ride the stave-horses down the uncertain sidehill. 
 What a way the staves had of spreading out ! 
 until down the rider sat, and slid perforce on his 
 beam-ends as far as gravitation and impetus would 
 carry him. This is not yet obsolete, although it 
 belongs to days far antecedent of Boyesen s tales 
 which brought to knowledge the Norwegian ski, 
 before known only to readers of Fouque. Few, 
 if any, Yankees have ever mastered the ski, any 
 more than they have the Indian s snowshoes. 
 Read " Adirondack " Murray s brilliant wilderness 
 stories, they contain the most marvelous pictures 
 of winter in the woods, and of other seasons as 
 well. 
 
 Another phase of country children s winter 
 pleasures is afforded by the hollows in the pas 
 tures where rains make temporary ponds, and the 
 water, sinking into the earth, lets the ice down to 
 the bottom of these pockets, and there are thrilling 
 opportunities of venture on sleds or skates. To 
 Q 
 
258 JValks in New England 
 
 get a good start, dash down one side of such a 
 bowl with all the vim possible, and essay to reach 
 the other rim by sheer momentum, this is truly 
 heroic. Caught in the bowl, hurled back from 
 the very verge of achievement, to climb its cre 
 vasses and escape its immurement is a problem 
 indeed. In the most desperate cases the boy digs 
 out by cutting steps with a jack-knife -just as the 
 custom is of those fleeing from wolves in stories 
 that used to affright the child as he read them in 
 the school Readers and imagination did not fail 
 to supply the wolves. 
 
 Yes, there are good things for the children and 
 their elders in the wild country winter. If Na 
 ture ever gives reward, it is in the clear, cold, 
 bright, still winter day. There is no phase of her 
 eternal loveliness more absolute. Let us not 
 grumble over a brief interlude of rude wind and 
 flying snow. Such visitations make for our best 
 good, in stirring our languid pulses, and enforcing 
 that natural vigour which it is easy to lose in soft 
 and wooing seasons of untimely warmth. This 
 is all as it should be, and as the Lord looked upon 
 the earth after each day of creation and saw that it 
 was good, so should we regard the rigours of that 
 clime which largely made the old New England 
 force, and still nurtures the best part of our 
 character. 
 
Across Lots is Best 259 
 
 Across Lots is Best 
 
 F | "MrlERE are two ways of going from one 
 place to another, sometimes more, but 
 always two ; you may either take the 
 highroad or go across lots. By the highroad 
 one gets there quicker, as a rule, for several rea 
 sons, as because it actually is a road, with the im 
 pediments to travel removed, the streams bridged, 
 the way marked out so that the wayfaring man, 
 though a fool, need not err therein. Also one 
 finds less that distracts the attention ; his task is 
 laid out before him by the surveyors and the civil 
 engineers, or at least by the selectmen, assessors 
 and overseers of the poor for in truth some roads 
 do not appear to have had any surveying or en 
 gineering, but to have been made the way the 
 little girl s mother cut her waists " by presume." 
 It is true that out in the country, there are many 
 of these highways which are really most attractive 
 and tempting to divagation, being so winding, wil 
 ful and hid away that they seem only temporarily 
 diverted from the original cowpath or wood-road. 
 
260 Walks in New England 
 
 Yet at the best a road is a road, and the instinct 
 of conformity is such in us that once started on 
 it, we follow it faithfully. Wagon tracks or sleigh 
 tracks, tis much the same. It gets monotonous, 
 but one has the ever precious sense that one is 
 going to a definite goal. We take a prospect or 
 two by the way, but after all, there is a certain 
 impression of business about a highway. 
 
 And so if one is not bound on any business, on 
 a brisk but cheery winter morning, even though 
 he may mean to climb a mountain before the day 
 is done, there are odds in favour of the cross-lots 
 plan. It is not so easy for the muscles, but it is 
 more interesting for the nerves. There is a cer 
 tain triumph in trampling on difficulties, such 
 as the drifts on a rocky hillside and the over- 
 ankle snow in the woods. It is a jolly thing to 
 leap from tussock to tussock in the warm-watered 
 marsh, or even to hang on to an old-fashioned 
 rail fence while one treads tentatively on what may 
 be solid ground and may be a deceptive coating 
 over ice as thin as isinglass. There is excitement 
 in plunging through a thicket of birches and alders 
 and osiers, plentifully accompanied with black 
 berry brier and complicated by bittersweet vines 
 and wild grapes. How stupid is a bridge, when 
 you come to a brook and look for the likeliest 
 spot for a leap ! a leap is freedom, while a bridge 
 
OVER NEWLY CLEARED LAND 
 
Across Lots is Best 261 
 
 is convention. Thank heaven, and thank earth, 
 that when one goes across lots there is a parting 
 with conventions. 
 
 This used to be uniformly the case, in the old 
 days, for a rail fence is nothing but a piece of 
 Nature ; but nowadays the hateful barbed-wire 
 fence does introduce convention. The wanderer 
 of the woods and fields detests these wicked in 
 trusions, and he delights to see how soon the 
 wretched contrivance loses hold of its hooks and 
 gets crushed down by the operations of Nature. 
 Some of the masters of woodcraft have been heard 
 to observe that barbed-wire fence, particularly in 
 the winter, is apt to sag and droop, and get tangled 
 and torn off, whole lengths of it, of course they 
 don t know how it happens. The fact is, the best 
 sort of fence for the cross-lots man is the old- 
 fashioned one. That fence he crosses with honour 
 and respect, and if a rail be displaced, he stops 
 to replace and even strengthen its hold. 
 
 All along the way one finds the evidences of 
 the native uses, and that there is a considerable 
 population in the woods and fields. Tracks of 
 foxes and rabbits, of gray and red squirrels, mark 
 the snow, each in the peculiar fashion of the 
 creature. If one is quiet enough for a while, one 
 may see these furry denizens of all out-doors, but 
 he cannot be sure of it. The wild creatures do 
 
262 IValks in New England 
 
 not care to show themselves to men, knowing how 
 mischievous and murderous they are. Even the 
 wanderer most innocent of their blood is no bet 
 ter off than the hunter, not so well off, because 
 the hunter has his eye out for killing and there is 
 no instinct so strong as the killing instinct in the 
 half-civilized. He who has learned, or who did 
 not need to learn 
 
 " Never to blend our pleasure or our pride 
 With sorrow of the meanest thing that feels, " 
 
 sees the squirrel and hears his chatter, or beholds 
 the grouse break out of covert and rush forth 
 in booming flight, sees in these beautiful crea 
 tures of free Nature other manifestations of the 
 divine and inspiring life, and would almost as soon 
 think of killing a man as them. And for that 
 matter, but we will go no further. While one 
 notes such marks of the house-keeping life that 
 goes on so steadily (were it not for man), the crows 
 are crying overhead, and beat through the air, 
 sweeping in salient and re-entrant curves, until 
 they melt into the distance and are gone. In 
 thickets, if one pauses long enough, he will hear 
 the whispering of the few lesser birds that stop 
 here through the winter or pause a while on their 
 way elsewhere. These small birds, the chickadee, 
 a sparrow or two, do not sing, but they whisper 
 
Across Lots is Best 263 
 
 to each other, and now and again we hear the 
 tap of a gray woodpecker on a tree where there 
 are grubs. All the winter, if the sportsmen would 
 let them alone, these little winged blessings are 
 keeping down the insect pests. We should have 
 no fears for our elms or maples if the birds were 
 given a fair chance. 
 
 Other things come to one s knowledge ; among 
 the rest that even the green life of summer is not 
 altogether obliterated in the season of frost and 
 snow. Here is a marsh where the water is un 
 fettered and the grass is of as rich a green as the 
 finest city lawn wears in June ; where white and 
 red clover are in leaf untouched by frost, and the 
 marsh marigold and buttercup leaves are as fresh 
 as the grass, and one almost expects to see a 
 blossom of something or other, but of course 
 that is too much even to fancy. In such a marsh 
 one may take out a bit of turf or a plant or two 
 with his fingers, and feel no colder than in sum 
 mer. Of course dozens of plants maintain their 
 foot-leaves throughout the winter, such as the St. 
 John s wort, the evening primrose, the wild straw 
 berry and some of the asters and golden-rods. 
 But the warm spring makes a counterfeit of sum 
 mer in its little sphere, telling us that life is what 
 persists and death is but a semblance. 
 
 It is strange enough to find some of the deli- 
 
264 IValks in New England 
 
 catest ferns, like the asplenium trichomanes, look 
 ing brisk in their slight hold on the rocks between 
 the snows ; the Christmas fern all know keeps 
 green through the winter, and the rich marginal 
 fern also. The greatest surprise is that of the 
 wild geranium, the herb robert, an exquisitely 
 slight plant, in leaf and flower, which blossoms in 
 winter if the least encouragement is given it by 
 the sun and wind. Not all these things will be 
 seen in one walk, even across lots. But the bit 
 tersweet berries, hanging over the bushes which 
 the vine twines around and chokes with its selfish 
 affection quite a human trait these are sure to 
 to be seen, and at the border of some pool the 
 splendid bright berries of the black alder, our 
 native holly, will catch the eye. 
 
 Arrived at the mountain top, through whatever 
 hardships of pilgrimage, thus richly repaid, is there 
 not recompense enough for vastly more trouble ? 
 The wide country is spread before us, as interest 
 ing as in summer. Almost at the top of the 
 mountain one pauses to drink at the wayside 
 spring, over which, beneath their shelter of rocks, 
 nod and waver bright green ferns, as if it were not 
 winter at all. The draught we quaff is an elixir of 
 life, and becomes a part of the great glory of the 
 earth. Standing on the grand escarpment of rock 
 on the verge of the cliffs that lift themselves into 
 
Across Lots is Best 265 
 
 air far over the broken rock that they have been 
 letting go for ages, one views the kingdoms of the 
 world and the glory of them. It is all the same 
 in the long run, whether one looks upon the vast 
 realms of political importance or only on the farm 
 steads and forests of rural New England. It is 
 the soul that beholds and not the show that is be 
 held which counts. Here we may resist tempta 
 tions and rise superior to them. The eye that 
 sweeps the horizon and views Greylock, and 
 Monadnock and Wachusett, and all those bil 
 lowy hills between, needs no offer of great prizes. 
 It has already the one great prize, if it can under 
 stand it. That ineffable, incomprehensible, in 
 tolerable, eternal Divinity is here, taking the little 
 human soul into its own vast being, and mak 
 ing it one with him. On a mountain top dwells 
 the vast Oversoul, and man accepts his place, 
 and is silent. 
 
266 Walks in New England 
 
 Things One Sees in Winter 
 
 NOW that the January thaw is here, and 
 the frosts are getting out of the earth as 
 in March, and the leaves in the forest 
 steam with the odours of last fall, and many a bud 
 is coaxed into dangerous forth-putting, it may 
 seem a bit out of order to speak of the character 
 istic pleasures of cross-country walks in the winter 
 snows. But the recess of winter just in this region 
 will be over soon enough ; all bitter February, 
 with its traditional three cold days, is before us ; 
 and the snows will be furnished in due time. 
 These snows are the only drawback to the pleas 
 ure of winter walking. It requires twice or thrice 
 the nerve and muscle force used in other seasons 
 to traverse a mountain pass in the uncertain foot 
 ing of the snow ; the necessity of lifting the feet 
 six inches or a foot at every step is exhausting, 
 and then the ice that underlies the snow at un 
 expected places betrays the too confident foot. 
 It is rather odd that the snowshoe is not used 
 hereabouts, for it would be of great value in 
 
Things One Sees in Winter 267 
 
 traversing defined paths and roads, although in 
 the brush it would be hindrance rather than help. 
 
 The fields and roads are as full of interest in 
 winter as in the seasons of growth, flower and 
 fruit ; and there is a peculiar invigoration in the 
 cold, clear purity of the air ; so that facing a north 
 wester in the open country or on the hills is 
 welcome and comfortable, and the stirring of the 
 pulse and stiffening of the muscle as one beats 
 against the blast is a keen assertion of life that 
 renews youth. It is wholesome, joyous, triumph 
 ant. One becomes a part of the elements, thrilled 
 with their splendid spirit and force. 
 
 The study of the trees and shrubs dons a new 
 phase and importance. It is true that one does 
 not know these if he does not recognize them by 
 bark and habit, by root and bud. It is a rare 
 woodlander who can surely tell whether an oak in 
 the forest is white, post, red, yellow, scarlet, black, 
 pin, swamp white or chestnut oak. Even in leaf 
 the oaks are difficult, especially in youth, when 
 the extremely variable leaves have not settled in 
 their typical form. In the winter the trunk is the 
 chief object of notice ; when a tree bears its last 
 year s leaves there is some help, but that is not 
 so sure except to the most careful of students. 
 So among the maples there is some difficulty in 
 youth ; in old age there are few trees that do not 
 
268 Walks in New England 
 
 manifest themselves with small excuse for error, 
 but in our woods none is in full development, 
 the primeval forest is gone, and a tree that is more 
 than 30 years old is rare. So it comes to pass 
 that an old wood-ranger may pronounce a flower 
 ing dogwood a sassafras, and utter other such 
 humiliating dicta. How many can tell a blueberry 
 from a viburnum ? How many can declare at the 
 edge of the swamp that the little laurel is there 
 instead of the cassandra ? The heaths are very 
 closely related and resemblant, and tis no wonder, 
 so superficial is our observation. 
 
 It is interesting also to study the seed stalks as 
 they lift over the snow on the fields and in the 
 wooded paths. The golden-rods are easiest rec 
 ognized, but sometimes they get mixed with the 
 asters. These profusely seeded " weeds " of the 
 compositae are of great interest, because they 
 furnish a great part of the food of the birds that 
 frequent the winter fields and thickets. It would 
 be a very mistaken project to exterminate the 
 golden-rods and asters, the mulleins and thistles ; 
 for the birds are worth more to the farmer and the 
 earth than all the roods of cleared land on which 
 not a weed should be seen. The American holly, 
 commonly called the black alder, is not only one 
 of the most beautiful of our native shrubs, but its 
 brilliant red berries feed the juncos and the chicka- 
 
Things One Sees in IVinter 269 
 
 dees and mountain sparrows. All the viburnums 
 and vacciniums give the birds food. So does the 
 Indian poke, a plant so superb in its free growth 
 and royal crimson colouring that it ought to be a 
 favourite in gardens, where it will make itself at 
 home as easily as the sumachs will. The sumachs 
 are also great bird stores, and when the birds were 
 in the habit of coming back from the South in 
 great flocks, the sumach thickets gave their earliest 
 plunder. In the winter hills a natural plantation 
 of sumachs, whether of the staghorn, the glabra or 
 the little copallina species, fill the landscape with 
 vivid fire, lighting up all the region round about. 
 There is nothing else that produces so fine an ef 
 fect of warm colour except the bittersweet, when 
 with its yellow-wrapped orange berries it takes a 
 thicket for its own. There is much warmth, too, 
 in the lingering leaves of the young oaks, and es 
 pecially, in this vicinity, the abundant thatch, 
 which brings a touch of summer to the coldest 
 day. 
 
 In the woods there are all the mosses and lichens 
 of the rocks and stumps to interest one, and in 
 these there is an endless pleasure, as one sees how 
 life is ever active, asserting the universal presence 
 of God. It is in beholding such little things 
 that the lover of Nature most surely feels the truth 
 that Walt Whitman expressed : " And a kelson 
 
270 Walks in New England 
 
 of creation is Love." To observe the tracks of 
 the wild creatures in the woods is another joy of 
 the winter walk. Now all the forest regions would 
 be full of squirrels, rabbits, foxes and others of 
 their kin, of grouse and woodcock, too, were 
 it not for the hunters, who almost outnumber the 
 game. The woodland on our western hills 
 abounded in these charming creatures, 40 years 
 ago, but now there are probably more gray squir 
 rels in Springfield streets than there are on Mount 
 Tom or Mount Holyoke. It is probable that 
 city protection may yet be the only means to pre 
 serve them. Old men, who used to see gray and 
 red and striped squirrels by scores and hundreds 
 in the course of a year, now tell us that they 
 scarcely see one gray squirrel in a summer, a few 
 more red squirrels, and quite a number of chip 
 munks. It seems a pity. But yet their foot 
 prints are to be discerned in the less hunted 
 woods, and it is a delight to come upon a great 
 fallen tree where these rodents have eaten their 
 feast of nuts, and to discover in the snow the little 
 excavations where they have dug to recover the 
 hickory nuts they had buried in the fall. 
 
 Of other delights of the winter walk, of the 
 frozen ponds, of the cliffs over which trickling 
 rills have festooned grand icicles, a rod long, or 
 have poured in great floods and remain frozen, 
 
Things One Sees in IVinter 271 
 
 with the water gurgling and glowing beneath, 
 of the miniature cyclones of snow-wreaths, that 
 swing into the air on a sudden and go skurrying 
 down the sidehills and over the plains, of these 
 and many more phenomena of the country in 
 winter, there is not time to say. But there is no 
 more charming and recompensing season than 
 this for acquaintance with the glory and grace 
 of Nature. 
 
272 Walks in New England 
 
 A Prophesying Day 
 
 THESE bright March days at the end of 
 January rather worry the progress of the 
 seasons, and when one sees the aments of 
 the alders crimsoning, and plucks the pussy wil 
 lows, and actually discovers the skunk cabbage 
 thrusting its close-wrapt hood two inches above 
 the moist and warmth of the swale, he feels much 
 as if he had encountered a boy with a straw hat. 
 It is a surprising winter. Notwithstanding our 
 occasional spells of zero weather, or near it, 
 southern exposures in this region where one can 
 not thrust a walking stick deep into the roadside 
 bank must be few. There is little frost in the 
 ground, and there is the peculiar spring feeling in 
 the atmosphere a reviving, aspirant impulse, 
 which makes one for the time forget. But, after 
 all, what if the temperature lowers and the 
 northwesters roar ? Has not the promise been 
 given and felt, and the prayer of gratitude been 
 uttered ? 
 
 The moving of the sleepless, pauseless spirit of 
 
A Prophesying Day 273 
 
 life, that does not wait for months and days, 
 but manifests where and when it will, rebuking 
 our shallow and tenuous faith with witnesses to 
 its gentle energies, that it is which lifts above 
 the frosts, the snow, the ice, the hardened earth- 
 surface of winter, the assurance of summer. It 
 is truly summer that is our keynote of the year, 
 and not winter. There are indeed few days of 
 the cold season s calendar when we cannot hear 
 that note in the pines and spruces and hemlocks, 
 but chiefly in the white pines ; when we cannot 
 listen to its echo in the prattle of the brook. 
 While in our ardent summer there are few days 
 in many years that bring the memory of frost to 
 our consciousness, there are many days in winter 
 which open all the year to our entry. When we 
 wander in the fields and see the brooklime fresh 
 and green, and ready for the spring ; when on a 
 forest bank we note the arbutus buds prepared 
 for the first opportunity of spring bloom ; when 
 we note the preparation of the alder, the sweet 
 fern, the blueberry, the azalea, the mountain laurel 
 and so many other shrubs ; when we observe the 
 sand violet s foot leaves and the most beautiful 
 St. John s wort, the evening primrose, the robin s 
 plantain, the saxifrage, the golden-rods, we can 
 but feel that the perpetual truth is summer, just 
 as the perpetual truth is life. 
 
274 IValks in New England 
 
 The year is full of summer. Beneath a great 
 hemlock whose myriad branches and boughs sway 
 in the west winds, what is more sure than the real 
 new year no calendar convention, but the time 
 when the forces of growth are at once let loose, 
 and the voice of the Lord is heard among the 
 trees of the garden ! That voice is never silent, 
 though it be a still, small voice, and only the 
 prophets of the Lord may hear it. Among these 
 prophets are the mosses and lichens, which take 
 occasion for their renewing life in the wintry land 
 scape. For now it is that delicately bright red 
 dots and delicately green cups appear upon the 
 stumps of felled trees, and the green mosses at 
 the roots of trees begin to deepen their hues and 
 start in their lowest roots the slender stems that 
 shall bear their hidden fruits. Never does Nature 
 rest; and though the skunk cabbage may not yet 
 unfold its tight wrappings and project its full 
 crimson-streaked hood and open the starry blos 
 soms of its inner club, here is the marvelous 
 prophesy of spring in what it has already done. 
 
 As the summer heats furnish their days of pre 
 diction of fall and the suspense of the glorious 
 manifests of the forests and the fields, so that in 
 a July day one may sense in the air the coming of 
 October, so in January we catch the whole 
 character of March, the month of hope. By such 
 
A Prophesying Day 275 
 
 means the seasons are joined and unified, and such 
 a day was yesterday, with its westerly winds, so 
 little of snow and ice, and so little of forbidding 
 chill ; so much of cordial sunshine and so generous 
 response in the life of earth. The crows with 
 their hearty and wise utterances, the whispering 
 chickadees in the pines, these had their con 
 firmation to give. Crowded and engrossed and 
 saturated with the living spirit are these days. 
 Sweet is their air, lovely the colours of wood and 
 field, wonderful the modulations of blues and 
 greens in the sky. One lives indeed in their 
 wide and hospitable beauty. 
 
276 Walks in New England 
 
 Winter Morn and Moon 
 
 THE winter s own personal charms are of 
 no meager or indifferent sort. Even the 
 keen morning, when the squeak of the 
 slow wood-sled runners on the snow is heard half a 
 mile up the hill, and the oxen, as they yaw heavily 
 from side to side, holding back the load, breathe out 
 clouds of gray steam, when the axe of the wood 
 man is echoed far across the valley, and the frost 
 crystals are an inch thick on the butt of the felled 
 pine, when after the night s ice is cut from the 
 barnyard trough the water skims over again before 
 the impatient heifer has had time to quench her 
 thirst, when the farmer s hens cuddle miserably 
 against the southern wall and cackle plaintively 
 against the coldness of their corner of the barn, 
 when the brook is so tightly shut that its mur 
 murs can only be heard by laying one s ear close 
 in the dell at the roots of the hemlock, even 
 such a morning is full of extraordinary beauties, 
 which do not pale by commonness like the charms 
 of summer. How sharp and fine the outlines of 
 
Winter Morn and Moon 277 
 
 the forest are against the sky, and how strongly 
 the gray rocks, with their garb of lichens and poly 
 pody ferns, accentuate themselves in the midst of 
 the aggressive snow ! How sturdy the savin with 
 its creeping boughs, and how the fall memories 
 shiver in the blanched leaves of the beech ! How, 
 projected upon this steel-gray sky, the ancient oak 
 extends its gnarled arms, 
 
 " Spiry and stern, inveterately old." 
 
 Then comes the day of heavy skies, when the 
 storm is gathering ; the sun is gone, the wind 
 moans, and there is a suppressed weariness of 
 waiting in the very aspect of the earth. The 
 clouds thicken and crowd downward, and all the 
 horizon at sunset is bordered with a dull, oppres 
 sive, darkening mass that crushes the day from 
 the earth and forbids the morrow. This in its 
 way is a most magical and attractive phase of win 
 ter nature, though devoid of beauty and sweet 
 ness. But those mild and gracious qualities are 
 not lacking. Passing the beauty of a bright and 
 genial winter day, which everyone acknowledges, 
 from the school-boy to the most serious of silken 
 dowagers or stock speculators so irresistible is 
 our winter at its best, contemplate the wonder 
 ful loveliness of such nights as the moon now in 
 our sky bestows upon us. 
 
278 IValks in New England 
 
 Nothing in Nature for perfectness of peace 
 compares with the winter landscape beneath the 
 moon. This moon, just completing its second 
 quarter, rarely so luminous in this phase, bestows 
 its beams on the snowy expanse with a soft and 
 tender grace that makes the whole earth half 
 ethereal, and the tree-tops that define themselves 
 upon the steely sky are sublimed by their far, 
 mysterious background. The moon lies like a 
 boat in the mystic sea, and far beyond it in in 
 finite darkening depths the incredible myriads of 
 stars are dimly visible. Light clouds sweep low 
 behind the trees and disappear. Rarely a mass 
 of snowy fleece sails upward, gleans a tinge of 
 amber from the moon-beams, dissolves and van 
 ishes. Then up the vault drives swiftly a hurry 
 ing vail of mists, that pass, like lace-work end 
 lessly purveyed, over the face of Phoebe, reflect 
 ing her glance in amber and amethyst tints, and 
 they, too, disappear into the distant heavens. 
 Then, southward, drops with strange deliberation 
 a brilliant meteor, glowing with heat and splendid 
 in colour, that seems to fall in the next field, 
 but there are few really to see a meteor fall to 
 earth. 
 
 Such are the charms of a winter night, while 
 beneath all the business and pleasure and passion 
 and sleep of the actual human world go on ; the 
 
Winter Morn and Moon 279 
 
 boys and girls are sliding down hill, in the city 
 streets and in the country fields, where over 
 long reaches of the shining crust the home-made 
 sleds dash as merrily as any city rippers, and on 
 the ponds the skaters fly to their iron music, 
 joy to which the pent-up artificial pleasures of the 
 rolling-rink are tame and stupid indeed. The 
 beauty of the winter is not known in the city, any 
 more than the beauty of the summer ; it is not 
 the city that holds the key of " the mystic gates 
 of past and future," which "not for common fates 
 wide open fling ; " it is beyond the mad city, amid 
 the woods and fields, that the spiritual essence of 
 Nature is offered to the lips of her lovers, whether 
 the earth be royal green or penitential white. 
 
280 Walks in New England 
 
 Spring Days in Winter 
 
 IT has pleased the lovers of the New England 
 year to observe that its spirit and standard 
 of living are warm and ample, instead of frigid 
 and restricted ; that it is not disproportioned with 
 six months of winter, three months of summer 
 and three other months of betweenities, as the 
 slander goes ; but that in point of fact, it is sum 
 mer that rules. Summer is positive ; winter is 
 negative ; in the vexing rapidity of change from 
 one temperature to another we recognize the ag 
 gression of that royal life which will not consent 
 to be pent under snow and ice, but must break 
 forth and assert itself. Thus it is that after a few 
 iron-bound days, the sky grows blue and the 
 clouds delicately thin, and every storm that is 
 prepared has a preface of bright or veiled sweet 
 ness of air and earth in generous and tender har 
 mony. Such preliminary days have in them the 
 essential feeling of a life ready to start anew in all 
 the charms of earth ; and the suggestion of spring 
 thus irresistibly projects itself in such a day when 
 
Spring Days in Winter 28 1 
 
 an exquisite grace possesses the earth ; the atmos 
 phere pulsates with warmth ; there arise light 
 veiling vapours about the woodland ; distances 
 grow into mysteries ; and horizons lift into the 
 heavens. Such a day was not to be obliterated 
 by the stern and savage onslaught of the north 
 west wind, that crushed the mercury to zero 
 weather with such sudden force. The word 
 had gone forth that the earth was alive, and, 
 charged too much in the cold trip that followed, 
 one felt the rebate coming, as it did yesterday. 
 
 It was certainly a noble day, storm-gathering, 
 it is true, but in itself wonderfully fine and affec 
 tionate. To the wanderer over fields and through 
 forests, worshiping God in his holy temple, where 
 all the earth kept silence before him, it was a 
 chrysolite of days. In the eastern sky first came 
 the reflex of the clouded sun, the delicate greens 
 and blues that melt in each other, amid clouds of 
 lavender and ashes of roses ; and then the sun 
 came out of hiding for a few minutes, gracing 
 and sweetening the forest depths, now open to 
 his regal entrance ; lighting the fields with their 
 colouristic harmonies of bufT and salmon thatch, 
 the blacks and grays and umbers of sweet fern, 
 golden-rod and melilot, with the low oaks, now 
 brown, now yellow green, now fairly red, and 
 touching the pines and hemlocks, filled them with 
 
282 Walks in New England 
 
 light greens to complement their deep shadows, 
 and make the scene one of the richest repose. 
 
 In the midst of all the voices of the living choir 
 of ministrants were heard ; if from no other 
 throats, at least from those of the cheery chicka 
 dees, those lovely and fearless little birds that 
 when the snow comes dip into it with joy and 
 then rise to the tree tops and utter their simple 
 and honest warble of praise to what has made the 
 earth so good. Seeds to eat, by the millions 
 and what more is to be wanted ? And when one 
 hears the crow sound his knowing comment on 
 the way things are going, it is borne in upon 
 the wanderer that this is all right, and the 
 good time is coming. So when one sees the 
 hawk swinging and sailing aloft, he must feel the 
 mighty unity of all the glorious earth, which has 
 so much room for all life. To this also contribute 
 the footprints of field mice and squirrels, of juncos 
 and grouse the grouse are scarce hereabouts, but 
 they are not quite exterminated by the gunners. 
 Yet it is true that in the woods where the partridge 
 berries most abound the ungathered fruit shows 
 that these most attractive of game birds have been 
 sadly reduced in numbers. 
 
 In such days as these, which prefigure the 
 spring, there is a wonderful sense of cordial wel 
 come in the phenomena of Nature. There is an 
 
Spring Days in Winter 283 
 
 embracement of love in the air. It is so rich, so 
 clearly sweet, so invigorating, so lifting, so as 
 piring, that profound thoughts fill the soul of the 
 wanderer, thoughts of what must lie beyond this 
 dust. Is all this infinitude of charm and sense of 
 life that begins not, nor ends, to be expended 
 solely on the transitory race of men ? It has a 
 greater, a wider, a more enduring purpose, and 
 that purpose can be nothing less than the on-go 
 ing development of the life of the soul. Do we 
 feel in the air nothing but the slight impact of a 
 wooing movement on our faces, nothing but the 
 fierce attack of a storm-dispersing blast, nothing 
 but a physical mechanism strange to us in its 
 origins, but nevertheless merely functional in the 
 growth and ruin of this globe of ours ? Not so. 
 It is the essential and divine life of all that is, soul 
 and body, origin and environment, source and 
 end, that thrills, conflicts or soothes in these ele 
 mental manifestations. In truth, he who knows 
 not that God is, and (as the scripture says) is a 
 rewarder of those who seek Him, has yet much 
 to learn before he can hope to go, free of soul and 
 brave of heart, into the inheritance which God 
 hath prepared for them that love Him. 
 
284 Walks in New England 
 
 The Great March Blizzard of 1888 
 
 THE storm now upon us, which in its 
 course up the Atlantic coast reached this 
 region late Sunday evening, and has 
 brought pretty nearly all the concerns of men to 
 a stand-still, will be remembered in history as 
 the greatest of a generation. No middle-aged 
 man can recall its parallel. It began with a light 
 snow, falling with a deceitful gentleness, and peo 
 ple said it would probably turn to rain as soon as 
 the sun rose. The wind was northeast, and chilly, 
 but not very cold. As the night grew toward 
 morning the wind increased in strength and ve 
 locity, the snow came faster, and the drifts begun 
 to pile. It was already so much of a storm as 
 9 o clock approached that mothers felt apprehen 
 sive as their children started for school. By this 
 time too the railroad trains were giving up the 
 contest. And so it went on ; the wind becom 
 ing a gale from the north, the snow continuing to 
 fall, the drifts to grow, all paths to close up ; all 
 means of locomotion were withdrawn from the 
 
Great March Blizzard of 1888 285 
 
 streets ; there were no trains run, and conse 
 quently no mails received or dispatched ; there 
 was no business done in shops or stores, for few 
 ventured abroad, and they only persons who had 
 work to do. 
 
 Those who had come to their daily tasks in 
 the morning could not get home at night, and 
 the hotels were crowded with men and women 
 whose employers had to house them there ; while 
 business men who could not join their families 
 were added to the homeless throngs. There were 
 many rumours of missing children who had not re 
 ported since their schools were let out, even into 
 the evening. There was much reason to fear that 
 some of the rumours might be true in a tempest 
 so fierce and unceasing, where beside the fine, 
 light snow that the wind bore in its fury, a keen 
 sleet that cut the face was driven sharply ; the 
 eyes filled with it, and when one turned to catch 
 breath, every other minute, he wiped the icicles 
 from his eye-lashes. The wind was of such fury 
 that every breath seemed to tear the lungs, and 
 this trebled the labour of the walker, contending 
 against snow mid-thigh or waist deep, so that an 
 ordinary three-minute walk in a side-street would 
 consume a quarter of an hour. This was in the 
 middle of the afternoon ; by night the side- 
 streets were given up as impassable by any one, the 
 
286 Walks in New England 
 
 sidewalk drifts covering the fences from sight ex 
 cept for an occasional gulch scooped by the antic 
 winds. 
 
 There was no such thing as getting a view of 
 the storm during the day ; the vision could reach 
 but a few rods, the clouds could not be seen, all 
 the air was a mad whirl of flakes, and to look up 
 Main street was to see an ominous moving wall, 
 frayed and tossed at the edges, of a sort of dull 
 brown colour in the height of day, deepening as the 
 unseen sun dropped below the blocks. 
 
 It was a wicked day among the elements, one 
 of those days that impress on the mind the fact 
 that there is no sort of sympathy for man in that 
 mystery called Nature, and that beside her power 
 man s wonderful ingenious triumphs are mere toys. 
 What were his boasts, the locomotive engine and 
 the telegraph, yesterday, when the north wind and 
 the snow came down upon earth and raged over 
 it ? It was like the caprice of some gigantic spirit, 
 sending his servants not to destroy, but to ob 
 struct and vex. " See ! " thus they cried, " It 
 is well for you to stay where you are to-day ; you, 
 clerk at your desk, you, sales-woman at your 
 counter you, merchant, and your children will 
 not see each other to-night, sleep where you can, 
 all of you, this is my pleasure. Let the world 
 go on as it will, you people will be none the worse 
 
Great March Blizzard of 1888 287 
 
 off if you do not see a newspaper, or get a letter, 
 or send a dispatch. And I will leave you some 
 work to do or have done in the morning. Prison 
 ers are always digging out of prisons you may 
 dig out. Fun for all of you great fun ! " 
 
 How far the storm reaches no one knows at 
 this writing. It took from between 9 o clock 
 and 10 Sunday night until 8 o clock yesterday 
 morning for it to reach Lowell, which is not very 
 rapid traveling for such a coast gale as this. In the 
 evening, about 24 hours after it began, the snow 
 had apparently almost ceased falling here, and the 
 temperature was less exasperating, though the 
 winds still blew swiftly, heaping up the snow, 
 whistling and wailing around the eaves and down 
 the chimneys, and making life out of doors about 
 as undesirable as it ever is. On the hills this 
 must be a tremendous storm, like those the elders 
 tell of 50 and 60 years ago ; highways and byways 
 alike will be obliterated, and the cattle in some 
 barns have to go without fodder ; late in March 
 though it is, there will be neighbourhood breaking- 
 outs. Any one starting on a walk in a sparsely 
 settled mountain district yesterday would have 
 stood a right smart chance of never getting there 
 wherever he wanted to get. 
 
 There were a good many March meetings to 
 be held yesterday, but the corners and borders of 
 
288 IValks in New England 
 
 the towns were scarcely likely to turn out in great 
 numbers, even if there were important legislation 
 to accomplish, and matters were doubtless hurried 
 by those who did come. A Yankee will brave as 
 much as any man for business, but going out 
 yesterday on the hills was little short of foolish 
 ness. We suppose this storm was as good a 
 specimen of the blizzard as the East needs to see ; 
 men who had wintered in Dakota said yesterday 
 that except for the intense cold of the real Dakota 
 article, we had the same thing, every other fea 
 ture of the storm was perfectly reproduced. 
 
The Picture After the Storm 289 
 
 The Picture After the Storm 
 
 THE great storm had not discharged its 
 burden and taken wings and fled away 
 yesterday morning, nor did the clouds 
 disperse in the course of the day, but overhung 
 gloomily, as if they were waiting to produce some 
 new mischief. Occasionally a flurry of snow 
 filled the air, and the wind, still in the north 
 east, was rough and raw. The indecision of the 
 weather was the opportunity of the citizen, but 
 he was sluggish about improving it, and the 
 magnitude of the job frightened him, and neither 
 the city nor the street railroad company displayed 
 that energy which would have encouraged private 
 enterprise. In fact, slow though they were, the 
 citizens came off at the end of daylight ahead of 
 the municipality and the tenants of the highway. 
 The appearance of the city was unprecedented. 
 In the unbroken quiet of the morning hours it 
 lay, except for Main street, as trackless as the 
 forest. Like the forest, there was the exception 
 of its lesser animal life, for as the rabbits and 
 
290 J^alks in New England 
 
 foxes mark the woodland with paths, so had the 
 cats and dogs streaked the wilderness of the 
 streets and gardens with their signs pedal. Grad 
 ually as the day grew toward noon the streets be 
 came curiously diversified with trails, those who 
 had to pass through taking the middle of the 
 road so far as might be, but describing long 
 curves or sharp diagonals, to take advantage of 
 the lowest grades ; and sometimes, confronted by 
 an absolutely forbidding drift across the whole 
 highway, the trails led directly over miniature 
 Alps and White Mountains. Fences were largely 
 not matters of faith, but of pure supposition, and 
 great drifts rose even to second-story windows, 
 covered hen-houses in sepulchral mounds, or 
 combed up like ocean waves 12 or 15 feet high, 
 poising there as if a moment more might dash 
 them to break in foam against the assailed houses. 
 Main street was a marvelous sight in the 
 morning, nor less so when the clearing of the 
 sidewalks had heaped the sides of the streets as 
 they were never heaped before. Up Harrison 
 avenue a long notched ridge, a veritable Sierra 
 Nevada, reared its imposing bulk ; Market street 
 up to noon was a wild stretch of mountain and 
 valley. The Hill showed the freakish mischief 
 of the gale that swept out gullies and canons 
 where no one wanted to go, to pile full the 
 
The Picture After the Storm 291 
 
 household pathways and the public walks. There 
 more than on the lower levels might be seen 
 what Emerson has pictured so finely in a poem 
 which so fits this wonderful display that it may 
 well be quoted here entire : 
 
 THE SNOW-STORM 
 
 Announced by all the trumpets of the sky 
 Arrives the snow, and driving o er the fields, 
 Seems nowhere to alight ; the whited air 
 Hides hills and woods, the river and the heaven, 
 And veils the farm-house at the garden s end. 
 The sled and traveler stopped, the courier s feet 
 Delayed, all friends shut out, the housemates sit 
 Around the radiant fire-place, inclosed 
 In a tumultuous privacy of storm. 
 Come see the north wind s masonry. 
 Out of an unseen quarry evermore 
 Furnished with tile, the fierce artificer 
 Curves his white bastions with projected roof 
 Round every windward stake or tree or door. 
 Speeding, the myriad-handed, his wild work, 
 So fanciful, so savage, naught cares he 
 For number or proportion. Mockingly 
 On coop or kennel he hangs Parian wreaths 
 A swan-like form invests the hidden thorn ; 
 Fills up the farmer s lane from wall to wall, 
 Maugre the farmer s sighs ; and at the gate 
 A tapering turret overtops the work. 
 
292 Walks in New England 
 
 And when his hours are numbered, and the world 
 Is all his own, retiring, as he were not, 
 Leaves when the sun appears astonished Art 
 To mimic in slow structures, stone by stone, 
 Built in an age the mad wind s night-work, 
 The frolic architecture of the snow. 
 
 Never before within the memory of the oldest 
 inhabitant has the " fierce artificer " drawn so 
 liberally from the crystal stone of his "unseen 
 quarry " in this region. Not 30 or 40 years, but 
 60 or 70 years knows not the parallel of this storm. 
 On the hills, one or two thousand feet above us, 
 such storms are more frequent, while here we 
 have nothing like so tremendous a visitation. 
 The fall was three feet on a level, and the nearest 
 approach to that in the armory records is the 22 
 inches that fell in the storm of January 31, 1882. 
 William Smith of Pine Street remembers a snow 
 fall of four feet in the last part of March, when 
 he was a boy in Dalton, almost 80 years ago, but 
 then it did not blow. A lesser fall with such a 
 wind produces on the hills as great drifts as we 
 have now in the city, and moreover pounds and 
 presses the snow so close that oxen draw sleds 
 over the drifts. Here the drifts were nowhere 
 solid enough to bear even boys upon their surface, 
 and on snowshoes alone could one traverse the 
 wild scenery with freedom. If we are to have 
 
The Picture After the Storm 293 
 
 old-fashioned winters as a regular thing we shall 
 have to practice the aboriginal craft of snowshoe 
 locomotion. Such winters will be very unpopular, 
 however, and every one will be content to look 
 back upon this March storm as unrivaled, unap 
 proachable, unique and ideal. 
 
294 IValks in New England 
 
 In City and Country 
 
 THE impressive character of this March 
 storm, when one reflects upon it, is seen 
 to lie not in the physical facts belonging 
 to itself, such as its depth of snow and fierceness 
 and swiftness of wind, but almost wholly to the 
 theater of its action. It is not the first tremendous 
 snow-storm that has fallen in this country, but it 
 is the first that has included in its sweep the 
 mighty metropolis of the country and the railroads 
 and telegraph lines of all the eastern sea-board, 
 bringing affairs throughout so wide a region to a 
 pause of indefinite length, isolating large com 
 munities, and rendering visible in a moment the 
 infantile degree of man s mastery of Nature. 
 Here has Nature but to blow and snow a few 
 hours, and the important concerns of men are 
 halted ; do their best they cannot carry them on ; 
 and when the mysterious hand of Nature is with 
 drawn, men must labour for days before they get 
 free of the simple walls with which it has engirt 
 them, and can go their own ways, and start again 
 
In City and Country 295 
 
 their interrupted business. These circumstances 
 are what make the storm so extraordinary. 
 
 Storms far more severe, attended by an intense 
 cold which we have not suffered, and continuing 
 longer their fury, are familiar in our far West, 
 and we have been well acquainted with the news 
 of the destruction of cattle and sheep and the loss 
 of human life in these blizzards. Three feet on 
 a level, with a driving wind, is not so nearly un 
 precedented on the Berkshire, Hampshire and 
 Vermont hills, or in mountainous New Hamp 
 shire, or the Maine woods. The great storm of 
 1717 covered very much the same regions that 
 the present one has, but there was then not much 
 more to interfere with in all its extent than there 
 is now in the rural territories just mentioned. 
 The ancient storm in question is thus spoken of 
 in Noah Webster s " Elements of Useful Knowl 
 edge," published in 1806: 
 
 "In February, 1717, fell the greatest snow ever 
 known in this, or perhaps any country. It covered 
 the lower doors of houses so that some people were 
 obliged to step out of their chamber windows on 
 snowshoes. There was also a terrible tempest. 
 Eleven hundred sheep belonging to one man 
 perished. One flock was dug out of a snow 
 drift on Fisher s Island, where they had been 
 buried to the depth of 15 feet. This was 28 days 
 
296 Walks in New England 
 
 after the storm, when two of them were found 
 alive, having subsisted on the wool of the others, 
 and they sustained no injury." 
 
 Probably this was not the " greatest snow ever 
 known," for that which is so powerfully pictured 
 in the wonderful romance of " Lorna Doone," 
 a romance which is simple history so far as the 
 snow and all the characteristics of that strange 
 English winter were concerned, must have been 
 more notable. 
 
 The advantages of the country over the city are 
 considerable under such a visitation. The farmers 
 and dwellers in the hill-top villages are used to it ; 
 they have their food in the house ; they have their 
 beef and pork barrels, their butter and milk and 
 eggs, and they have no great anxiety about the 
 non-arrival of mails, or the absence of news from 
 the stock markets. Such things they can wait for 
 in perfect patience. Snow is therefore not such 
 an enemy as it is in the city, where all the domestic 
 affairs go wrong without the daily visits of the 
 butcher, the baker, the milkman, the postman and 
 the messenger boy. In the country, too, one does 
 not care much whether the trains are on time or 
 not, any day within a week or two will do. No 
 body is worried because street cars are not run 
 ning. Especially no one is afraid of fire, that 
 dreadful element of anxiety in the city. The fire 
 
In City and Country 297 
 
 department of Savoy or Otis would be as efficient 
 as ever in such a case, in fact, the snow might be 
 a great help, as supplying the lack of water. Thus 
 there could not be felt on the hills the sense of 
 oppressiveness, the unnatural burden, which has 
 weighed upon the citizens of places where men 
 have crowded their industries and dwellings to 
 gether. The paralysis of our civilization to so 
 extraordinary an extent is appalling to us. We 
 do not live in spiritual essentials, which are the 
 same now as ever, but in practical circumstances, 
 and these being changed, it seems as if the world 
 were awry. 
 
 The country has the advantage of the city, too, 
 in the after part of the storm, the clearing up of 
 obstacles and renewal of communications. The 
 winter is always in considerable measure a period 
 of seclusion and waiting for release, and the closer 
 imprisonment of a big March storm is not so 
 much to the farmers. In the city, where life in 
 winter is the briskest, to be reduced to mere hous 
 ing is unendurable. And when the storm is over, 
 it is a desperate job to break out again even for 
 merely interior uses. The sidewalks have to be 
 painfully shoveled out into the streets, making 
 them worse than in the first place, and then the 
 superfluous snow must be sledded off, and a day s 
 hard work only clears a few rods. But the farmer 
 
298 IValks in New England 
 
 cuts out a narrow path to the road, and other nar 
 row paths to the barn, the wood-house and the 
 tool-shop, and for the rest the snow s unbroken 
 beauty lies until the sun disposes of it. When 
 the chores are done and breakfast eaten, he yokes 
 his cattle, hitches the tongue of his wood-sled to 
 the yoke-ring, and starts with the boys to break 
 out. His neighbors do the same thing, and where 
 the road needs a heroic effort, the chains are 
 hooked on and two or three yoke attached in line, 
 and on they flounder till the road is made. Here 
 they dig through a short drift ; there they cut 
 around a big one, going through a pasture or 
 meadow, sometimes through an open bar-way, 
 sometimes over the fence, after a rail or two is 
 taken out. But the road is made somehow, not 
 such a road as you could speed a horse on, but a 
 road that will serve their turn. And it is a very 
 much more interesting spectacle to an eye that 
 appreciates the fact, than the city methods present. 
 Lives have been lost in this visitation, and this 
 remarkable quatrain is written by Mason Arnold 
 Green in view of that : 
 
 " Make me a bed," the Storm King said, 
 
 " Hard as fate and yet lighter than feather." 
 A bed of snow the blizzards blow : 
 
 And the Storm King and Death sleep together. 
 
The Unbeginning Love 299 
 
 THE UNBEGINNING LOVE 
 
 I 
 
 Now fades the full-orbed moon below the hill, 
 Cold, sacred and serene, as if a soul 
 Unstirred by passion, undisturbed and whole, 
 Yielded its life unto the eternal will, 
 
 Having of earth s vain transiency its fill, 
 With all its ardours in the sweet control 
 Of guides that guard it to the perfect goal, 
 Content and calm, with all its pulses still. 
 
 But far across the heavens melts the glow 
 Of rising Venus, golden rich and warm 
 With fervent flame of inextinguished love ; 
 
 Deep, strong, enduring, from her bosom flow 
 The heavenly glamours of all human charm 
 That draws to the eternal charm above. 
 
300 Walks in New England 
 
 II 
 
 And are Dian and Venus still opposed ? 
 Endymion shrouded in the Latmian mist, 
 By Dian s lips with chilling fervour kissed, 
 Therewith his virgin life too early closed ; 
 
 Adonis in the spring of life deposed 
 
 With o erwarm kisses to his death dismissed, 
 
 The goddess losing in the loving list, 
 
 And he unknowing what stern fate had glozed. 
 
 Yet both are one : Chaste Dian, Venus dear, 
 Are sisters of the self-same endless love 
 Which all that s lovely laps within its breast : 
 
 This may be calm and that may hot appear, 
 Yet vary as they will, each shall approve 
 The magic philter of celestial rest. 
 
The Unbeginning Love 301 
 
 III 
 
 For love is larger born and freer bred 
 And more divine than Venus or Dian, 
 Far elder than those beauteous thoughts of man, 
 Far wiser than the daughter of Jove s head. 
 
 Love was before the worlds in whirls were led, 
 And on their spheral race in music ran ; 
 The infinite life its course in love began, 
 And without love that life itself were dead. 
 
 O all ye endless sparkling lights of heaven ! 
 
 Not even when ye vanish as a scroll 
 
 Thrice heated in the elemental flame 
 Of that last day when life from death is riven, 
 
 Not then shall Love desert the sacred soul, 
 
 That springs to God s own bosom in Love s name 
 
ilane g 
 
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