Days Off, and Other Digressions
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Title: Days Off, and Other Digressions
Author: Henry Van Dyke
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DAYS OFF
And Other Digressions
by
HENRY VAN DYKE
[Illustration: Our canoes go with the river, but no longer easily or
lazily.]
I do not count the hours I spend
In wandering by the sea;
The forest is my loyal friend,
Like God it useth me:
Or on the mountain-crest sublime,
Or down the oaken glade,
O what have I to do with Time?
For this the day was made.
--RALPH WALDO EMERSON
Illustrated
New York
Charles Scribner's Sons
MDCCCCVII
Copyright, 1907, by Charles Scribner's Sons
Printed in October, 1907
Reprinted in November, 1907
Reprinted in December, 1907
To
MY FRIEND AND NEIGHBOUR
GROVER CLEVELAND
WHOSE YEARS OF GREAT WORK
AS A STATESMAN
HAVE BEEN CHEERED BY DAYS OF GOOD PLAY
AS A FISHERMAN
THIS BOOK IS DEDICATED
WITH WARM AND DEEP REGARDS
Avalon,
July 10th, 1907.
CONTENTS
I. _Days Off_ 1
II. _A Holiday in a Vacation_ 23
III. _His Other Engagement_ 57
IV. _Books that I Loved as a Boy_ 101
V. _Among the Quantock Hills_ 117
VI. _Between the Lupin and the Laurel_ 139
VII. _Little Red Tom_ 177
VIII. _Silverhorns_ 193
IX. _Notions about Novels_ 221
X. _Some Remarks on Gulls_ 233
XI. _Leviathan_ 271
XII. _The Art of Leaving Off_ 309
ILLUSTRATIONS
_Our canoes go with the river, but no longer easily
or lazily_ Frontispiece
Facing page
_On such a carry travel is slow_ 36
_A notion to go down stream struck the salmon_ 88
_There was the gleam of an immense mass of silver in
its meshes_ 94
_Tannery Combe, Holford_ 126
"_Billy began to call, and it was beautiful_" 206
_There he stood defiant, front feet planted wide apart_ 218
_She took the oars and rowed me slowly around the shore_ 266
DAYS OFF
"A day off" said my Uncle Peter, settling down in his chair before the
open wood-fire, with that air of complacent obstinacy which spreads
over him when he is about to confess and expound his philosophy of
life,--"a day off is a day that a man takes to himself."
"You mean a day of luxurious solitude," I said, "a stolen sweet of
time, which he carries away into some hidden corner to enjoy alone,--a
little-Jack-Horner kind of a day?"
"Not at all," said my Uncle Peter; "solitude is a thing which a man
hardly ever enjoys by himself. He may practise it from a sense of duty.
Or he may take refuge in it from other things that are less tolerable.
But nine times out of ten he will find that he can't get a really good
day to himself unless he shares it with some one else; if he takes it
alone, it will be a heavy day, a chain-and-ball day,--anything but a
day off."
"Just what do you mean, then?" I asked, knowing that nothing would
please him better than the chance to discover his own meaning against a
little background of apparent misunderstanding and opposition.
"I mean," said my Uncle Peter, in that deliberate manner which lends a
flavour of deep wisdom to the most obvious remarks, "I mean that every
man owes it to himself to have some days in his life when he escapes
from bondage, gets away from routine, and does something which seems to
have no purpose in the world, just because he wants to do it."
"Plays truant," I interjected.
"Yes, if you like to put it in that objectionable way," he answered;
"but I should rather compare it to bringing flowers into the
school-room, or keeping white mice in your desk, or inventing a new
game for the recess. You see we are all scholars, boarding scholars, in
the House of Life, from the moment when birth matriculates us to the
moment when death graduates us. We never really leave the big school,
no matter what we do. But my point is this: the lessons that we learn
when we do not know that we are studying are often the pleasantest, and
not always the least important. There is a benefit as well as a joy in
finding out that you can lay down your task for a proper while without
being disloyal to your duty. Play-time is a part of school-time, not a
break in it. You remember what Aristotle says: '_ascholoumetha gar hina
scholazomen_.'"
"My dear uncle," said I, "there is nothing out of the common in your
remarks, except of course your extraordinary habit of decorating them
with a Greek quotation, like an ancient coin set as a scarf-pin and
stuck carelessly into a modern neck-tie. But apart from this
eccentricity, everybody admits the propriety of what you have been
saying. Why, all the expensive, up-to-date schools are arranged on your
principle: play-hours, exercise-hours, silent-hours, social-hours, all
marked in the schedule: scholars compelled and carefully guided to
amuse themselves at set times and in approved fashions: athletics,
dramatics, school-politics and social ethics, all organized and
co-ordinated. What you flatter yourself by putting forward as an
amiable heresy has become a commonplace of orthodoxy, and your liberal
theory of education and life is now one of the marks of fashionable
conservatism."
My Uncle Peter's face assumed the beatific expression of a man who
knows that he has been completely and inexcusably misunderstood, and is
therefore justified in taking as much time as he wants to make the
subtlety and superiority of his ideas perfectly clear and to show how
dense you have been in failing to apprehend them.
"My dear boy," said he, "it is very singular that you should miss my
point so entirely. All these things that you have been saying about
your modern schools illustrate precisely the opposite view from mine.
They are signs of that idolatry of organization, of system, of the
time-table and the schedule, which is making our modern life so tedious
and exhausting. Those unfortunate school-boys and school-girls who have
their amusements planned out for them and cultivate their social
instincts according to rule, never know the joy of a real day off,
unless they do as I say, and take it to themselves. The right kind of a
school will leave room and liberty for them to do this. It will be a
miniature of what life is for all of us,--a place where law reigns and
independence is rewarded,--a stream of work and duty diversified by
islands of freedom and repose,--a pilgrimage in which it is permitted
to follow a side-path, a mountain trail, a footway through the meadow,
provided the end of the journey is not forgotten and the day's march
brings one a little nearer to that end."
"But will it do that," I asked, "unless one is careful to follow the
straight line of the highway and march as fast as one can?"
"That depends," said my Uncle Peter, nodding his head gravely, "upon
what you consider the end of the journey. If it is something entirely
outside of yourself, a certain stint of work which you were created to
perform; or if it is something altogether beyond yourself, a certain
place or office at which you are aiming to arrive; then, of course, you
must stick to the highway and hurry along.
"But suppose that the real end of your journey is something of which
you yourself are a part. Suppose it is not merely to get to a certain
place, but to get there in a certain condition, with the light of a
sane joy in your eyes and the peace of a grateful content in your
heart. Suppose it is not merely to do a certain piece of work, but to
do it in a certain spirit, cheerfully and bravely and modestly, without
overrating its importance or overlooking its necessity. Then, I fancy,
you may find that the winding foot-path among the hills often helps you
on your way as much as the high road, the day off among the islands of
repose gives you a steadier hand and a braver heart to make your voyage
along the stream of duty."
"You may skip the moralizing, if you please, Uncle Peter," said I, "and
concentrate your mind upon giving me a reasonable account of the
peculiar happiness of what you call a day off."
"Nothing could be simpler," he answered. "It is the joy of getting out
of the harness that makes a horse fling up his heels, and gallop around
the field, and roll over and over in the grass, when he is turned loose
in the pasture. It is the impulse of pure play that makes a little
bunch of wild ducks chase one another round and round on the water, and
follow their leader in circles and figures of eight; there is no
possible use in it, but it gratifies their instinct of freedom and
makes them feel that they are not mere animal automata, whatever the
natural history men may say to the contrary. It is the sense of release
that a man experiences when he unbuckles the straps of his knapsack,
and lays it down under a tree, and says 'You stay there till I come
back for you! I'm going to rest myself by climbing this hill, just
because it is not on the road-map, and because there is nothing at the
top of it except the view.'
"It is this feeling of escape," he continued, in the tone of a man who
has shaken off the harness of polite conversation and let himself go
for a gallop around the field of monologue, "it is just this
exhilarating sense of liberation that is lacking in most of our social
amusements and recreations. They are dictated by fashion and directed
by routine. Men get into the so-called 'round of pleasure,' and they
are driven into a trot to keep up with it, just as if it were a
treadmill. The only difference is that the pleasure-mill grinds no
corn. Harry Bellairs was complaining to me, the other day, that after
an exhausting season of cotillons in New York, he had been running his
motor-car through immense fatigues in France and Italy, and had
returned barely in time to do his duty by his salmon-river in Canada,
work his new boat through the annual cruise of the yacht club, finish
up a round of house-parties at Bar Harbor and Lenox, and get ready for
the partridge-shooting in England with his friend the Duke of
Bangham,--it was a dog's life, he said, and he had no time to himself
at all. I rather pitied him; he looked so frayed. It seems to me that
the best way for a man or a woman of pleasure to get a day off would be
to do a little honest work.
"You see it is the change that makes the charm of a day off. The real
joy of leisure is known only to the people who have contracted the
habit of work without becoming enslaved to the vice of overwork.
"A hobby is the best thing in the world for a man with a serious
vocation. It keeps him from getting muscle-bound in his own task. It
helps to save him from the mistake of supposing that it is his little
tick-tack that keeps the universe a-going. It leads him out, on off
days, away from his own garden corner into curious and interesting
regions of this wide and various earth, of which, after all, he is a
citizen.
"Do you happen to know the Reverend Doctor McHook? He is a learned
preacher, a devoted churchman, a faithful minister; and in addition to
this he has an extra-parochial affection for ants and spiders. He can
spend a happy day in watching the busy affairs of a formicary, and to
observe the progress of a bit of spider-web architecture gives him a
peculiar joy. There are some severe and sour-complexioned theologians
who would call this devotion to objects so far outside of his parish an
illicit passion. But to me it seems a blessing conferred by heavenly
wisdom upon a good man, and I doubt not he escapes from many an
insoluble theological puzzle, and perhaps from many an unprofitable
religious wrangle, to find refreshment and invigoration in the society
of his many-legged friends."
"You are moralizing again, Uncle Peter," I objected; "or at least you
are getting ready to do so. Stop it; and give me a working definition
of the difference between a hobby and a fad."
"Let me give you an anecdote," said he, "instead of a definition. There
was a friend of mine who went to visit a famous asylum for the insane.
Among the patients who were amusing themselves in the great hall, he
saw an old gentleman with a long white beard, who was sitting astride
of a chair, spurring its legs with his heels, holding both ends of his
handkerchief which he had knotted around the back, and crying 'Get up,
get up! G'long boy, steady!' with the utmost animation. 'You seem to be
having a fine ride, sir,' said my friend. 'Capital,' said the old
gentleman, 'this is a first-rate mount that I am riding.' 'Permit me to
inquire,' asked my friend, 'whether it is a fad or a hobby?' 'Why,
certainly!' replied the old gentleman, with a quizzical look. 'It is a
hobby, you see, for I can get off whenever I have a mind to.' And with
that he dismounted and walked into the garden.
"It is just this liberty of getting off that marks the superiority of a
hobby to a fad. The game that you feel obliged to play every day at the
same hour ceases to amuse you as soon as you realize that it is a
diurnal duty. Regular exercise is good for the muscles, but there must
be a bit of pure fun mixed with the sport that is to refresh your
heart.
"A tour in Europe, carefully mapped out with an elaborate itinerary and
a carefully connected timetable, may be full of instruction, but it
often becomes a tax upon the spirit and a weariness to the flesh.
Compulsory castles and mandatory museums and required ruins pall upon
you, as you hurry from one to another, vaguely agitated by the fear
that you may miss something that is marked with a star in the
guide-book, and so be compelled to confess to your neighbour at the
_table-d'hôte_ that you have failed to see what he promptly and
joyfully assures you is 'the best thing in the whole trip,' Delicate
and sensitive people have been killed by taking a vacation in that way.
"I remember meeting, several years ago, a party of personally conducted
tourists in Venice, at the hour which their itinerary consecrated to
the enjoyment of the fine arts in the gallery of the Academy. Their
personal conductor led them into one of the great rooms, and they
gathered close around him, with an air of determination on their tired
faces, listening to his brief, dry patter about the famous pictures
that the room contained. He stood in the centre of the room holding his
watch in his hand while they dispersed themselves around the walls,
looking for the paintings which they ought to see, like chickens
searching for scattered grains of corn. At the expiration of five
minutes he clapped his hands sharply; his flock scurried back to him;
and they moved on to 'do' the next room.
"I suppose that was one way of seeing Venice: but I would much rather
sit at a little table on the _Riva degli Schiavoni_, with a plate of
bread and cheese and a _mezzo_ of Chianti before me, watching the
motley crowd in the street and the many-coloured sails in the harbour;
or spend a lazy afternoon in a gondola, floating through watery
alley-ways that lead nowhere, and under the façades of beautiful
palaces whose names I did not even care to know. Of course I should
like to see a fine picture or a noble church, now and then; but only
one at a time, if you please; and that one I should wish to look at as
long as it said anything to me, and to revisit as often as it called
me."
"That is because you have no idea of the educational uses of a
vacation, Uncle Peter," said I. "You are an unsystematic person, an
incorrigible idler."
"I am," he answered, without a sign of penitence, "that is precisely
what I am,--in my days off. Otherwise I should not get the good of
them. Even a hobby, on such days, is to be used chiefly for its lateral
advantages,--the open doors of the sideshows to which it brings you,
the unexpected opportunities of dismounting and tying your hobby to a
tree, while you follow the trail of something strange and attractive,
as Moses did when he turned aside from his shepherding on Mount Horeb
and climbed up among the rocks to see the burning bush.
"The value of a favourite pursuit lies not only in its calculated
results but also in its by-products. You may become a collector of
almost anything in the world,--orchids, postage-stamps, flint
arrowheads, cook-books, varieties of the game of cat's cradle,--and if
you chase your trifle in the right spirit it will lead you into pleasant
surprises and bring you acquainted with delightful or amusing people.
You remember when you went with Professor Rinascimento on a Della Robbia
hunt among the hill towns of Italy, and how you came by accident into
that deep green valley where there are more nightingales with sweeter
voices than anywhere else on earth? Your best _trouvaille_ on that
expedition was hidden in those undreamed-of nights of moonlight and
music. And it was when you were chasing first editions of Tennyson, was
it not, that you discovered your little head of a marble faun, which you
vow is by Donatello, or one of his pupils? And what was it that you told
me about the rare friend you found when you took a couple of days off in
an ancient French town, on a flying journey from Rome to London? Believe
me, dear boy, all that we win by effort and intention is sometimes
overtopped by a gift that is conferred upon us out of a secret and
mysterious generosity. Wordsworth was right:
"'Think you, 'mid all this mighty sum
Of things forever speaking,
That nothing of itself will come,
But we must still be seeking?'"
"You talk," said I, "as if you thought it was a man's duty to be
happy."
"I do," he answered firmly, "that is precisely and definitely what I
think. It is not his chief duty, nor his only duty, nor his duty all
the time. But the normal man is not intended to go through this world
without learning what happiness means. If he does so he misses
something that he needs to complete his nature and perfect his
experience. 'Tis a poor, frail plant that can not endure the wind and
the rain and the winter's cold. But is it a good plant that will not
respond to the quickening touch of spring and send out its sweet odours
in the embracing warmth of the summer night? Suppose that you had made
a house for a child, and given him a corner of the garden to keep, and
set him lessons and tasks, and provided him with teachers and masters.
Would you be satisfied with that child, however diligent and obedient,
if you found that he was never happy, never enjoyed a holiday, never
said to himself and to you, 'What a good place this is, and how glad I
am to live here'?"
"Probably not," I answered, "but that is because I should be selfish
enough to find a pleasure of my own in his happiness. I should like to
take a day off with him, now and then, and his gladness would increase
my enjoyment. There is no morality in that. It is simply natural. We
are all made that way."
"Well," said my Uncle Peter, "if we are made that way we must take it
into account in our philosophy of life. The fact that it is natural is
not a sufficient reason for concluding that it is bad. There is an old
and wonderful book which describes the creation of the world in poetic
language; and when I read that description it makes me feel sure that
something like this was purposely woven into the very web of life.
After the six mystical days of making things and putting things in
order, says this beautiful old book, the Person who had been doing it
all took a day to Himself, in which He 'rested from all the things that
He had created and made,' and looked at them, and saw how good they
were. His work was not ended, of course, for it has been going on ever
since, and will go on for ages of ages. But in the midst of it all it
seemed right to Him to take a divine day off. And His example is
commended to us for imitation because we are made in His likeness and
have the same desire to enjoy as well as to create.
"Do you remember what the Wisest of all Masters said to his disciples
when they were outworn by the weight of their work and the pressure of
the crowd upon them? 'Come ye yourselves apart into a lonely place, and
rest awhile.' He would never have bidden them do that, unless it had
been a part of their duty to get away from their task for a little. He
knew what was in man, more deeply than any one else had ever known; and
so he invited his friends out among the green hills and beside the
quiet waters of Galilee to the strengthening repose and the restoring
joy which are only to be found in real days off."
My Uncle Peter's voice had grown very deep and gentle while he was
saying these things. He sat looking far away into the rosy heart of the
fire, where the bright blaze had burned itself out, and the delicate
flamelets of blue and violet were playing over the glowing, crumbling
logs. It seemed as if he had forgotten where we were, and gone
a-wandering into some distant region of memories and dreams. I almost
doubted whether to call him back; the silence was so full of
comfortable and friendly intercourse.
"Well," said I, after a while, "you are an incorrigible moralist, but
certainly a most unconventional one. The orthodox would never accept
your philosophy. They would call you a hedonist, or something equally
dreadful."
"Let them," he said, placidly.
"But tell me": I asked, "you and I have many pleasant and grateful
memories, little pictures and stories, which seem like chapters in the
history of this doubtful idea of yours: suppose that I should write
some of them down, purely in a descriptive and narrative way, without
committing myself to any opinion as to their morality; and suppose that
a few of your opinions and prejudices, briefly expressed, were
interspersed in the form of chapters to be skipped: would a book like
that symbolize and illustrate the true inwardness of the day off? How
would it do to make such a book?"
"It would do," he answered, "provided you wanted to do it, and provided
you did not try to prove anything, or convince anybody, or convey any
profitable instruction."
"But would any one read it?" I asked. "What do you think?"
"I think," said he, stretching his arms over his head as he rose and
turned towards his den to plunge into a long evening's work, "I reckon,
and calculate, and fancy, and guess that a few people, a very few,
might browse through such a book in their days off."
A HOLIDAY IN A VACATION
It was really a good little summer resort where the boy and I were
pegging away at our vacation. There were the mountains conveniently
arranged, with pleasant trails running up all of them, carefully marked
with rustic but legible guide-posts; and there was the sea comfortably
besprinkled with islands, among which one might sail around and about,
day after day, not to go anywhere, but just to enjoy the motion and the
views; and there were cod and haddock swimming over the outer ledges in
deep water, waiting to be fed with clams at any time, and on fortunate
days ridiculously accommodating in letting themselves be pulled up at
the end of a long, thick string with a pound of lead and two hooks tied
to it. There were plenty of places considered proper for picnics, like
Jordan's Pond, and Great Cranberry Island, and the Russian Tea-house,
and the Log Cabin Tea-house, where you would be sure to meet other
people who also were bent on picnicking; and there were hotels and
summer cottages, of various degrees of elaboration, filled with
agreeable and talkable folk, most of whom were connected by occupation
or marriage with the rival colleges and universities, so that their
ambitions for the simple life had an academic thoroughness and
regularity. There were dinner parties, and tea parties, and garden
parties, and sea parties, and luncheon parties, masculine and feminine,
and a horse-show at Bar Harbor, and a gymkhana at North East, and
dances at all the Harbors, where Minerva met Terpischore on a friendly
footing while Socrates sat out on the veranda with Midas discussing the
great automobile question over their cigars.
It was all vastly entertaining and well-ordered, and you would think
that any person with a properly constituted mind ought to be able to
peg through a vacation in such a place without wavering. But when the
boy confessed to me that he felt the need of a few "days off" in the
big woods to keep him up to his duty, I saw at once that the money
spent upon his education had not been wasted; for here, without effort,
he announced a great psychological fact--_that no vacation is perfect
without a holiday in it_. So we packed our camping-kit, made our peace
with the family, tied our engagements together and cut the string below
the knot, and set out to find freedom and a little fishing in the
region around Lake Nicatöus.
The south-east corner of the State of Maine is a happy remnant of the
ancient wilderness. The railroads will carry you around it in a day, if
you wish to go that way, making a big oval of two or three hundred
miles along the sea and by the banks of the Penobscot, the
Mattawamkeag, and the St. Croix. But if you wisely wish to cross the
oval you must ride, or go afoot, or take to your canoe; probably you
will have to try all three methods of locomotion, for the country is a
mixed quantity. It reminds me of what I once heard in Stockholm: that
the Creator, when the making of the rest of the world was done, had a
lot of fragments of land and water, forests and meadows, mountains and
valleys, lakes and moors, left over; and these He threw together to
make the southern part of Sweden. I like that kind of a promiscuous
country. The spice of life grows there.
When we had escaped from the railroad at Enfield on the Penobscot, we
slept a short night in a room over a country store, and took wagon the
next morning for a twenty-five mile drive. At the somnolent little
village of Burlington we found our guides waiting for us. They were
sitting on the green at the cross-roads, with their paddles and axes
and bundles beside them. I knew at a glance that they were ready and
all right: Sam Dam, an old experienced, seasoned guide, and Harry, a
good-looking young woodsman who had worked in lumber camps and on "the
drive," but had never been "guiding" before. He was none the worse for
that, for he belonged to the type of Maine man who has the faculty of
learning things by doing them.
As we rattled along the road the farms grew poorer and sparser, until
at last we came into the woods, crossed the rocky Passadumkeag River,
and so over a succession of horseback hills to the landing-place on
Nicatöus Stream, where the canoes were hidden in the bushes. Now load
up with the bundles and boxes, the tent, the blanket-roll, the
clothes-bag, the provisions--all the stuff that is known as "duffel"
in New York, and "_butins_" in French Canada, and "_wangan_" in
Maine--stow it all away judiciously so that the two light craft will be
well balanced; and then push off, bow paddles, and let us taste the joy
of a new stream! New to the boy and me, you understand; but to the
guides it was old and familiar, a link in a much-travelled route. The
amber water rippled merrily over the rocky bars where the river was
low, and in the still reaches it spread out broad and smooth, covered
with white lilies and fringed with tall grasses. All along the pleasant
way Sam entertained us with memories of the stream.
"Ye see that grassy p'int, jest ahead of us? Three weeks ago I was
comin' down for the mail, and there was three deer a-stannin' on that
p'int, a buck and a doe and a fawn. And----"
"Up in them alders there's a little spring brook comes in. Good fishin'
there in high water. But now? Well----"
"Jest beyond that bunch o' rocks last fall there was three fellers
comin' down in a canoe, and a big bear come out and started 'cross
river. The gun was in the case in the bottom of the canoe, and one o'
the fellers had a pistol, and so----"
Beyond a doubt it was so, always has been so, and always will be
so--just so, on every river travelled by canoes, until the end of time.
The sportsman travels through a happy interval between memories of
failure and expectation of success. But the river and the wind in the
trees sing to him by the way, and there are wild flowers along the
banks, and every turn in the stream makes a new picture of beauty. Thus
we came leisurely and peacefully to the place where the river issued
from the lake; and here we must fish awhile, for it was reported that
the landlocked salmon lay in the narrow channel just above the dam.
Sure enough, no sooner had the fly crossed the current than there was a
rise; and at the second cast a pretty salmon of two and a half pounds
was hooked, played, and landed. Three more were taken, of which the boy
got two--and his were the biggest. Fish know nothing of the respect
due to age. They leaped well, those little salmon, flashing clean out
of the water again and again with silvery gleams. But on the whole
they did not play as strongly nor as long as their brethren (called
_ouananiche_,) in the wild rapids where the Upper Saguenay breaks from
Lake St. John. The same fish are always more lively, powerful, and
enduring when they live in swift water, battling with the current, than
when they vegetate in the quiet depths of a lake. But if a salmon must
live in a luxurious home of that kind, Nicatöus is a good one, for the
water is clear, the shores are clean, the islands plenty, and the bays
deep and winding.
At the club-house, six miles up the lake, where we arrived at
candle-lighting, we found such kindly welcome and good company that we
tarried for three days in that woodland Capua, discussing the further
course of our expedition. Everybody was willing to lend us aid and
comfort. The sociable hermit who had summered for the last twenty years
in his tiny cabin on the point gave us friendly counsel and excellent
large blueberries. The matron provided us with daily bags of most
delicate tea, a precaution against the native habit of "squatting" the
leaves--that is, boiling and squeezing them to extract the tannin. The
little lady called Katharyne (a fearless forest-maid who roamed the
woods in leathern jacket and short blue skirt, followed by an enormous
and admiring guide, and caught big fish everywhere) offered to lend us
anything in her outfit, from a pack-basket to a darning-needle. It was
cheerful to meet with such general encouragement in our small
adventure. But the trouble was to decide which way to go.
Nicatöus lies near the top of a watershed about a thousand feet high.
From the region round about it at least seven canoeable rivers descend
to civilization. The Narraguagus and the Union on the south, the
Passadumkeag on the west, the Sisladobsis and the St. Croix on the
north, and the two branches of the Machias or Kowahshiscook on the
east; to say nothing of the Westogus and the Hackmatack and the Mopang.
Here were names to stir the fancy and paralyze the tongue. What a joy
to follow one of these streams clear through its course and come out of
the woods in our own craft--from Nicatöus to the sea!
It was perhaps something in the name, some wild generosity of
alphabetical expenditure, that led us to the choice of the
Kowahshiscook, or west branch of the Machias River. Or perhaps it was
because neither of our guides had been down that stream, and so the
whole voyage would be an exploration, with everybody on the same level
of experience. An easy day's journey across the lake, and up Comb's
Brook, where the trout were abundant, and by a two-mile carry into
Horseshoe Lake, and then over a narrow hardwood ridge, brought us to
Green Lake, where we camped for the night in a new log shanty.
Here we were at the topmost source--_fons et origo_--of our chosen
river. This single spring, crystal-clear and ice-cold, gushing out of
the hillside in a forest of spruce and yellow birch and sugar maple,
gave us the clue that we must follow for a week through the wilderness.
But how changed was that transparent rivulet after it entered the lake.
There the water was pale green, translucent but semi-opaque, for at a
depth of two or three feet the bottom was hardly visible. The lake was
filled, I believe, with some minute aquatic growth which in the course
of a thousand years or so would transform it into a meadow. But
meantime the mystical water was inhabited, especially around the mouth
of the spring, by huge trout to whom tradition ascribed a singular and
provoking disposition. They would take the bait, when the fancy moved
them: but the fly they would always refuse, ignoring it with calm
disdain, or slapping at it with their tails and shoving it out of their
way as they played on the surface in the summer evenings. This was the
mysterious reputation of the trout of Green Lake, handed down from
generation to generation of anglers; and this spell we had come to
break, by finding the particular fly that would be irresistible to
those secret epicures and the psychological moment of the day when they
could no longer resist temptation. We tried all the flies in our books;
at sunset, in the twilight, by the light of the stars and the rising
moon, at dawn and at sunrise. Not one trout did we capture with the fly
in Green Lake. Nor could we solve the mystery of those reluctant fish.
The boy made a scientific suggestion that they got plenty of food from
the cloudy water, which served them as a kind of soup. My guess was
that their sight was impaired so that they could not see the fly. But
Sam said it was "jest pure cussedness." Many things in the world happen
from that cause, and as a rule it is best not to fret over them.
[Illustration: On such a carry travel is slow.]
The trail from Green Lake to Campbell Lake was easily found; it
followed down the outlet about a mile. But it had been little used for
many years and the undergrowth had almost obliterated it. Rain had been
falling all the morning and the bushes were wetter than water. On such
a carry travel is slow. We had three trips to make each way before we
could get the stuff and the canoes over. Then a short voyage across the
lake, and another mile of the same sort of portage, after which we came
out with the last load, an hour before sundown, on the shore of the Big
Sabeo. This lake was quite different from the others; wide and open,
with smooth sand-beaches all around it. The little hills which
encircled it had been burned over years ago; and the blueberry pickers
had renewed the fire from year to year. The landscape was light green
and yellow, beneath a low, cloudy sky; no forest in sight, except one
big, black island far across the water.
The place where we came out was not attractive; but nothing is more
foolish than to go on looking for a pretty camp-ground after daylight
has begun to wane. When the sun comes within the width of two
paddle-blades of the horizon, if you are wise you will take the first
bit of level ground within reach of wood and water, and make haste to
get the camp in order before dark. So we pitched our blue tent on the
beach, with a screen of bushes at the back to shelter us from the wind;
broke a double quantity of fir branches for our bed, to save us from
the midnight misery of sand in the blankets; cut a generous supply of
firewood from a dead pine-tree which stood conveniently at hand; and
settled down in comfort for the night.
What could have been better than our supper, cooked in the open air and
eaten by fire-light! True, we had no plates--they had been
forgotten--but we never mourned for them. We made a shift to get along
with the tops of some emptied tin cans and the cover of a kettle; and
from these rude platters, (quite as serviceable as the porcelain of
Limoges or Sèvres) we consumed our toast, and our boiled potatoes with
butter, and our trout prudently brought from Horseshoe Lake, and, best
of all, our bacon.
Do you remember what Charles Lamb says about roast pig? How he falls
into an ecstasy of laudation, spelling the very name with small
capitals, as if the lower case were too mean for such a delicacy, and
breaking away from the cheap encomiums of the vulgar tongue to hail it
in sonorous Latin as _princeps obsoniorum_! There is some truth in his
compliments, no doubt; but they are wasteful, excessive, imprudent. For
if all this praise is to be lavished on plain, fresh, immature, roast
pig, what adjectives shall we find to do justice to that riper, richer,
more subtle and sustaining viand, broiled bacon? On roast pig a man can
not work; often he can not sleep, if he have partaken of it immoderately.
But bacon "brings to its sweetness no satiety." It strengthens the arm
while it satisfies the palate. Crisp, juicy, savory; delicately salt as
the breeze that blows from the sea; faintly pungent as the blue smoke
of incense wafted from a clean wood-fire; aromatic, appetizing,
nourishing, a stimulant to the hunger which it appeases, 'tis the
matured bloom and consummation of the mild little pig, spared by
foresight for a nobler fate than juvenile roasting, and brought by art
and man's device to a perfection surpassing nature. All the problems of
woodland cookery are best saved by the baconian method. And when we say
of one escaping great disaster that he has "saved his bacon," we say
that the physical basis and the quintessential comfort of his life are
still untouched and secure.
Steadily fell the rain all that night, plentiful, persistent, drumming
on the tightened canvas over our heads, waking us now and then to
pleasant thoughts of a rising stream and good water for the morrow.
Breaking clouds rolled before the sunrise, and the lake was all
a-glitter when we pushed away in dancing canoes to find the outlet.
This is one of the problems in which the voyager learns to know
something of the infinite reserve, the humorous subtlety, the
hide-and-seek quality in nature. Where is it--that mysterious outlet?
Behind yonder long point? Nothing here but a narrow arm of the lake. At
the end of this deep bay? Nothing here but a little brook flowing in.
At the back of the island? Nothing here but a landlocked lagoon. Must
we make the circuit of the whole shore before we find the way out? Stop
a moment. What are those two taller clumps of bushes on the edge of
this broad curving meadow--down there in the corner, do you see? Turn
back, go close to the shore, swing around the nearer clump, and here we
are in the smooth amber stream, slipping silently, furtively, down
through the meadow, as if it would steal away for a merry jest and
leave us going round and round the lake till nightfall.
Easily and swiftly the canoes slide along with the little river,
winding and doubling through the wide, wild field, travelling three
miles to gain one. The rushes nod and glisten around us; the bending
reeds whisper as we push between them, cutting across a point. Follow
the stream; we know not its course, but we know that if we go with it,
though it be a wayward and tricksy guide, it will bring us out--but not
too soon, we hope!
Here is a lumberman's dam, broad-based, solid, and ugly, a work of
infinite labour, standing lonely, deserted, here in the heart of the
wilderness. Now we must carry across it. But it shall help while it
hinders us. Pry up the creaking sluice-gates, sending a fresh head of
water down the channel along with us, lifting us over the shallows,
driving us on through the rocky places, buoyant, alert, and rejoicing,
till we come again to a level meadow, and the long, calm, indolent
reaches of river.
Look on the right there, under the bushes. There is a cold, still
brook, slipping into the lazy river; and there we must try the truth of
the tales we have heard of the plentiful trout of Machias. Let the
flies fall light by the mouth of the brook, caressing, inviting.
Nothing there? Then push the canoe through the interlaced alders,
quietly, slowly up the narrow stream, till a wider pool lies open
before you. Now let the rod swing high in the air, lifting the line
above the bushes, dropping the flies as far away as you can on the
dark-brown water. See how quickly the answer comes, in two swift golden
flashes out of the depths of the sleeping pool. This is a pretty brace
of trout, from thirty to forty ounces of thoroughbred fighting pluck,
and the spirit that will not surrender. If they only knew that their
strength would be doubled by acting together, they soon would tangle
your line in the roots or break your rod in the alders. But all the
time they are fighting against each other, making it easy to bring them
up to the net and land them--a pair of beauties, evenly matched in
weight and in splendour, gleaming with rich iridescent hues of orange
and green and peacock-blue and crimson. A few feet beyond you find
another, a smaller fish, and then one a little larger; and so you go on
up the stream, threading the boat through the alders, with patience and
infinite caution, carefully casting your flies when the stream opens
out to invite them, till you have rounded your dozen of trout and are
wisely contented. Then you go backward down the brook--too narrow for
turning--and join the other canoe that waits, floating leisurely on
with the river.
There is a change now in the character of the stream. The low hills
that have been standing far away, come close together from either side,
as if they meant to bar any further passage; and the dreamy river wakes
up to wrestle its way down the narrow valley. There are no long, sleepy
reaches, no wide, easy curves, now; but sharp, quick turns from one
rocky ledge to another; and enormous stones piled and scattered along
the river-bed; and sudden descents from level to level as if by the
broad steps of a ruined, winding stairway. The water pushes, and
rushes, and roars, and foams, and frets--no, it does not fret, after
all, for there is always something joyous and exultant in its voice,
a note of the _gaudia certaminis_ by which the struggle of life is
animated, a note of confident strength, sure that it can find or make
a way, through all obstacles, to its goal. This is what I feel in a
river, especially a little river flowing through a rough, steep
country. This is what makes me love it. It seems to be thoroughly
alive, and glad to be alive, and determined to go on, and certain that
it will win through.
Our canoes go with the river, but no longer easily or lazily. Every
step of the way must be carefully chosen; now close to the steep bank
where the bushes hang over; now in mid-stream among the huge pointed
rocks; now by the lowest point of a broad sunken ledge where the water
sweeps smoothly over to drop into the next pool. The boy and I, using
the bow paddles, are in the front of the adventure, guessing at the
best channel, pushing aside suddenly to avoid treacherous stones hidden
with dark moss, dashing swiftly down the long dancing rapids, with the
shouting of the waves in our ears and the sprinkle of the foam in our
faces.
From side to side of the wild avenue through the forest we turn and
dart, zigzagging among the rocks. Thick woods shut us in on either
hand, pines and hemlocks and firs and spruces, beeches and maples and
yellow-birches, alders with their brown seed-cones, and mountain-ashes
with their scarlet berries. All four of us know the way; there can be
no doubt about that, for down the river is the only road out. But none
of us knows the path; for this is a new stream, you remember, and
between us and our journey's end there lie a thousand possible
difficulties, accidents, and escapes.
The boy had one of them. His canoe struck on a ledge, in passing over a
little fall, swung around sidewise to the current, and half filled with
water; he and Harry had to leap out into the stream waist-deep. Sam and
I made merry at their plight. But Nemesis was waiting for me a few
miles below.
All the pools were full of fine trout. While the men were cooking lunch
in a grove of balsams I waded down-stream to get another brace of fish.
Stepping carefully among the rocks, I stood about thigh-deep in my
rubber boots and cast across the pool. But the best bit of water was a
little beyond my reach. A step further! There is a yellow bit of gravel
that will give a good footing. Intent upon the flight of my flies, I
took the step without care. But the yellow patch under the brown water
was not gravel; it was the face of a rock polished smoother than glass.
Gently, slowly, irresistibly, and with deep indignation I subsided
backward into the cold pool. The rubber boots filled with water and the
immersion was complete. Then I stood up and got the trout. When I
returned to the camp-fire, the others laughed at me uproariously, and
the boy said: "Why did you go in swimming with your clothes on? Were
you expecting a party of ladies to come down the stream?"
Our tenting-places were new every night and forsaken every morning.
Each of them had a charm of its own. One was under a great yellow-birch
tree, close to the bank of the river. Another was on top of a bare
ridge in the middle of a vast blueberry patch, where the luscious
fruit, cool and fresh with the morning dew, spread an immense
breakfast-table to tempt us. The most beautiful of all was at the edge
of a fir-wood, with a huge rock, covered with moss and lichen, sloping
down before us in a broad, open descent of thirty feet to the foaming
stream. The full moon climbed into the sky as we sat around our
camp-fire, and showed her face above the dark, pointed tree-tops. The
winding vale was flooded with silver radiance that rested on river and
rock and tree-trunk and multitudinous leafage like an enchantment of
tranquillity. The curling currents and the floating foam, up and down
the stream, were glistening and sparkling, ever moving, yet never
losing their position. The shouting of the water melted to music, in
which a thousand strange and secret voices, near and far away, blending
and alternating from rapid to rapid and fall to fall, seemed like
hidden choirs, answering one another from place to place. The sense of
struggle, of pressure and resistance, of perpetual change, was gone;
and in its stead there was a feeling of infinite quietude, of perfect
balance and repose, of deep accord and amity between the watching
heavens and the waiting earth, in which the conflicts of existence
seemed very distant and of little meaning, and the peace of nature
prophesied
"That one, far-off divine event
Towards which the whole creation moves."
Thus for six days and nights we kept company with our little river,
following its guidance and enjoying all its changing moods. Sometimes
it led us through a smooth country, across natural meadows,
alder-fringed, where the bed of the stream was of amber sand and
polished gravel, and the water rippled gently over the shallow bars,
and there were deep holes underneath the hanging bushes, where the
trout hid from the heat of the noon sun. Sometimes it had carved a way
for itself over huge beds of solid rock, where, if the slope was
gentle, we could dart arrow-like along the channel from pool to pool;
but if the descent was steep and broken, we must get out of the canoes
and let them down with ropes. Sometimes the course ran for miles
through evergreen forests, where the fragrance of the fir-trees filled
the air; and again we came out into the open regions where thousands of
acres of wild blueberries were spread around us.
I call them wild because no man's hand has planted them. Yet they are
cultivated after a fashion. Every two or three years a district of
these hills is set on fire, and in the burned ground, the next spring,
the berry-bushes come up innumerable. The following fall they are
loaded so heavily with blueberries that the harvest is gathered with
rakes, each of which has a cup underneath it into which the berries
fall as the rake is thrust through the bushes. The land is owned by two
or three large proprietors, who employ men and women to gather the
crop, paying them a few cents a bushel for picking. Sometimes the
proprietor leases his land to a factor, who pays a royalty on every
bushel turned in at the factory in some village on the railroad or by
the seashore, where the berries are canned or dried.
One day we came upon a camp of these berry-pickers by the river-side.
Our first notice of their proximity was the sight of a raft with an
arm-chair tied in the centre of it, stranded upon the rocks in a long,
fierce rapid. Imagine how this looked to us after we had been five days
in the wilderness! An arm-chair sitting up sedately in the middle of
the rapids! What did it mean? Perhaps some vagrant artist had been
exploring the river, and had fixed his seat there in order to paint a
picture. Perhaps some lazy fisherman had found a good pool amid those
boiling waters, and had arranged to take his ease while he whipped that
fishy place with his flies. The mystery was solved when we rounded the
next point; for there we found the berry-pickers taking their nooning
in a cluster of little slab-shanties. They were friendly folks, men,
women, and children, but they knew nothing about the river; had never
been up farther than the place where the boys had left their raft in
the high water a week ago; had never been down at all; could not tell
how many falls there were below, nor whether the mouth was five or
fifty miles away. They had come in by the road, which crossed the river
at this point, and by the road they would go back when the berries were
picked. They wanted to know whether we were prospecting for lumber or
thinking of going into the berry business. We tried to explain the
nature of our expedition to them, but I reckon we failed.
These were the only people that we really met on our journey, though we
saw a few others far off on some bare hill. We did not encounter a
single boat or canoe on the river. But we saw the deer come down to the
shore, and stand shoulder-deep among the golden-rod and purple asters.
We saw the ruffled grouse whir through the thickets and the wild ducks
skitter down the stream ahead of us. We saw the warblers and the
cedar-birds gathering in flocks for their southward flight, the
muskrats making their houses ready for the winter, and the porcupines
dumbly meditating and masticating among the branches of the young
poplar-trees. We also had a delightful interview with a wild-cat, and
almost a thrilling adventure with a bear.
The boy and I had started out from camp for an hour of evening fishing.
He went down the stream some distance ahead of me, as I supposed,
(though, as I afterward found, he had made a little detour and turned
back). I was making my way painfully through a spruce thicket when I
heard a loud crash and crackling of dead branches. "Hallo!" I cried;
"have you fallen down? Are you hurt?" No answer. "Hallo, Teddy!" I
shouted again; "what's the matter?" Another tremendous crash, and then
dead silence.
I dropped my rod and pushed as rapidly as possible in the direction
from which the sound had come. There I found a circle about fifty feet
in diameter torn and trampled as if a circus had been there. The ground
was trodden bare. Trees three and four inches thick were broken off.
The bark of the larger trees was stripped away. The place was a ruin. A
few paces away, among the bushes, there was a bear trap with some claws
in it, and an iron chain attached to the middle of a clog about four
feet long. The log hovel in which the trap had been set, we found
later, a little way back on an old wood road. Evidently a bear had been
caught there, perhaps two or three days before we came. He had dragged
the trap and the chained clog down into the thicket. There he had
stayed, tearing up things generally in his efforts to escape from his
encumbrance, and resting quietly in the intervals of his fury. My
approach had startled him and he had made the first crash that I heard.
Then he lay low and listened. My second inconsiderate shout of "Hallo,
_Teddy_!" had put such an enormous fear into him that he dashed through
the trees, caught the foolishly chained clog across two of them, and,
tearing himself loose, escaped with the loss of a couple of toes. Thus
ended our almost adventure with a bear. How glad the old fellow must
have been!
The moral is this: If you want a bear, you should set your trap with
the clog chained at one end, not around the middle: then it will trail
through the woods and not break loose. But the best way is not to want
a bear.
Our last camp was just at the head of Holmes's Fall, a splendid ravine
down which the river rushes in two foaming leaps. Here in the gray of
the morning we lugged our canoes and our camp-kit around the cataract,
and then launched away for the end of our voyage. It was full of
variety, for the river was now cutting its course through a series of
ridges, and every mile was broken with rapids and larger falls. There
was but one other place, however, where we had to make a portage. I
believe it was called Grand Falls. After that, the stream was smooth
and quiet. The tall maples and ashes and elms stood along the banks as
if they had been planted for a park. The first faint touch of autumn
colour was beginning to illuminate their foliage. A few weeks later the
river would be a long, winding avenue of gold and crimson, for every
tree would redouble its splendour in the dark, unruffled water.
At one place, where there were a few cleared fields bordering on the
river, we saw two or three houses and barns, and supposed we were near
the end of our voyage. This was about nine o'clock in the morning; and
we were glad because we calculated that we could catch the ten o'clock
train for Bar Harbor. But that calculation was far astray. We skirted
the cleared fields and entered the woodland again. The river flowed,
broad and leisurely, in great curves half a mile long from point to
point. As we rounded one cape after another we said to each other,
"When we pass the next turn we shall see the village." But that
inconsiderate village seemed to flee before us. Still the tall trees
lined the banks in placid monotony. Still the river curved from cape to
cape, each one like all the others. We paddled hard and steadily. Ten
o'clock passed. Every day of our journey we had lost something--a
frying-pan, a hatchet, a paddle, a ring. This day was no exception. We
had lost a train. Still we pushed along against the cool wind, which
always headed us, whether we turned north, or east, or south; wondering
whether the village that we sought was still in the world, wondering
whether the river came out anywhere, wondering--till at last we saw,
across a lake-like expanse of water, the white church and the
clustering houses of the far-famed Whitneyville.
It was a quaint old town, which had seen better days. The big
lumber-mill that had once kept it busy was burned down, and the
business had slipped away to the prosperous neighbouring town of
Machias. There were nice old houses with tall pillars in front of them,
now falling into decay and slipping out of plumb. There were shops that
had evidently been closed for years, with not even a sign "To Let" in
the windows. Our dinner was cooked for us in a boarding-house, by a
brisk young lady of about fifteen years, whose mother had gone to
Machias for a day in the gay world. With one exception that pleasant
young lady was the only thing in Whitneyville that did not have an air
of having been left behind.
The exception was the establishment of Mr. Cornelius D----, whose
"General Store" beside the bridge was still open for business, and
whose big white house stood under the elm-trees at the corner of the
road opposite the church, with bright windows, fresh-painted walls, and
plenty of flowers blooming around it. He was walking in the yard,
dressed in a black broadcloth frock-coat, with a black satin necktie
and a collar with pointed ends,--an old-fashioned Gladstonian garb.
When I heard him speak I knew where he came from. It was the rich
accent of Killarney, just as I had heard it on the Irish lakes two
summers ago. But sixty years had passed since the young Cornelius had
left the shores of the River Laune and come to dwell by the
Kowahshiscook. He had grown up with the place; had run the lumber-mill
and the first railroad that hauled the lumber from the mill down to
tide-water; had become the owner of the store and the proprietor of
some sixteen miles of timber-land along the river-front; had built the
chief house of the village and given his children a capital education;
and there he still dwelt, with his wife from Killarney, and with his
tall sons and daughters about him, contented and happy, and not at all
disposed to question the beneficent order of the universe. We had
plenty of good talk that afternoon and evening, chiefly about the Old
Country, and I had to rub up my recollections of Ross Castle and
Kenmare House and all the places around Lough Leane, in order to match
the old man's memory. He was interested in our expedition, too. He had
often been far into the woods looking after his lumber. But I doubt
whether he quite understood what it was that drew the boy and me on our
idle voyage from Nicatöus to the sea.
HIS OTHER ENGAGEMENT
Among the annals of the Petrine Club, which has for its motto the wise
words of St. Peter, "I go a-fishing," there are several profitable
tales. Next to the story of Beekman De Peyster's fatal success in
transforming a fairly good wife into a ferocious angler, probably the
most instructive is the singular adventure that befell Bolton
Chichester in taking a brief vacation while he was engaged to be
married. And having already told the former story as an example of the
vicissitudes of "Fisherman's Luck," I now propose to narrate the latter
as a striking illustration of what may happen to a man who takes "a day
off."
Chichester is known among his intimate friends as "Chinchin." This
nominal appendix was given to him not in allusion to his habits of
speech, for he is rather a small talker, but with reference to the
prominence of that feature of his countenance which is at once the
organ of utterance, the instrument of mastication, the sign of
firmness, and (at least in the Gibsonian period of facial architecture)
the chief point of manly beauty.
Point is an absurd word to apply to Chichester's chin. It might better
be called a surface, a region, a territory. Smooth, spacious, square,
kept always in perfect order and carried with a what-do-I-care-for-that
air, it gives him a most distinguished appearance, and makes you think,
when you meet him, that you are in the presence of a favourite matinée
actor, the hero of a modern short-story, or a man of remarkable
decision of character.
The last, of course, is the correct interpretation of the sign. Bolton
Chichester is the most decided man that I have ever known. He can make
up his mind more quickly, on a greater variety of subjects, and adhere
to each determination more firmly, than all the other members of the
Petrine Club put together. For this reason we always anticipated for
him a large success in life, and some even predicted that he would
become President of the United States--unless he made up his mind to do
something else on the way to the White House. At all events, we felt
sure, he would get what he wanted; and when he became decidedly
attentive to Ethel Asham it was taken for granted that he would woo,
win, and marry her in short order.
She was rather a difficult person, to be sure; the eldest daughter of
that cryptic old millionaire, Watson Asham, who lived in New York and
resided, for purposes of taxation, at West Smithfield; a graduate of
Brainmore College; president of the Social Settlement of Higher
Lighters; a frequent contributor in brief fiction to the Contrary
Magazine; a beauty of the tea-after-tennis type; the best dancer in St.
Swithin's Lenten Circle, and the most romantic creature that ever took
up the cause of Progress with a large P. It would not be fair to call
her strong-minded, because the adjective seems to imply some kind of a
limitation in her strength. She was even stronger in her impulses than
in her mind; original in every direction; in fact, originality was a
kind of convention with her. It was wonderful how many things she
accomplished; but then she never lost any time; she was precise,
punctual, inevitable in her sweet, feminine, self-possessed way; and
her varied and surprising programme went through on schedule time,
while she cherished in her heart the dream of a romance in the style of
"The Prisoner of Zenda."
Naturally, such a many-sided young woman would be difficult to please;
and a number of eligible young men had acquired personal knowledge of
the fact. But the difficulty seemed to attract Chichester. He went at
it in his bold, decided manner, with his chin forward; and he
conquered. After the February campaign no one was surprised to hear, in
March, that the engagement of Miss Ethel Asham to Mr. Bolton Chichester
was announced, and that the wedding would occur in June.
The place was not specified. Conjectures were hazarded that it might be
Dunfermline Abbey, the Castle of Chillon, Bridal Veil Falls in the
Yosemite, the Natural Bridge in Virginia, or St. George's, Hanover
Square. Little Pop Wilson, the well-known dialect novelist of the
southeastern part of northern Kentucky, suggested that there was
something to be said in favor of the Mammoth Cave--"always cool, you
know. Artificial lights, pulpit rock, stalactites--all that sort of
thing!" Even this was felt to be within the bounds of possibility. The
one thing that was not open to doubt was that the wedding would
certainly be celebrated in an original way and a romantic place, at
precisely the appointed hour. If anyone had foretold that it would be
broken off, and that the reason given would be "another engagement" on
the part of Mr. Bolton Chichester, we should have laughed in the face
of such a ridiculous prophet and advised him to take something to cool
his brain.
Yet this is exactly what happened; and the secret of that other
engagement is the subject of this brief, simple, but I hope not unmoral
narrative.
Chichester had been with the Ashams at the residential farm-house in
West Smithfield during the first fortnight of April, and had devoted
the remainder of that showery month to his affairs in the city,
diversified with a few afternoons of trout-fishing on Long Island: for
like all the members of the Petrine Club he was a sincere angler. It
was during this period that Ethel took up, in her daily correspondence
with him, the question of the cruelty of angling. She was not yet quite
clear in her mind upon the subject, but she wanted him to consider it
seriously; and she quoted Byron, Leigh Hunt, and Aurora W. Chime's
book, "The Inwardness of the Outward." Chichester promised to consider
it.
The second week in May they spent together at a house-party near
Portland, Maine; and he tried the landlocked salmon in Sebago Lake,
twice. Ethel continued the subject of the cruelty of angling, in
conversation, and illuminated her increasing conviction with references
to the Reverend Wilbur Short's "Tales of Strange Things in Woods and
Waters," and "Songs of the Scaly," by Alonzo Sweetbread.
"You would not allow any difference of thought or feeling to mar the
perfect chord of our love, would you, Bolton dear?" she asked.
"Of course not," said Bolton.
"Then promise me faithfully that you will think about this pastime
which gives so much anguish to the innocent fish--think about it very,
very seriously."
"I do. I have to. It costs me seven or eight hundred a year."
"But you must think in a different way. Put yourself in the place of
the fish."
"I did once. Fellow with a rod and line tried to land me in the tank at
the gymnasium. Lots of fun. Never had a better fight."
"But suppose you had a hook in your mouth. How would you like that?"
"Better than the dentist's chair, I'm sure. I spent three afternoons
there, last month."
"You're absurd," said Ethel, "you're perverse. Don't hold your chin up
in that aggravating way. I don't believe--you--love----"
The rest of the conversation followed the usual course, which may be
supplied from the pages of any of the fifteen-cent magazines, and ended
with a promise on the part of Chichester that he would think again, and
very, very seriously.
Meantime, you will understand, the preparations for the wedding had
been going forward, in the regular way, modified, however, in one most
important particular by Ethel Asham's passion for romantic originality.
She insisted that the day and the place should be left entirely to her.
She did not wish to have the ordinary, commonplace, fashionable wedding
performance. She wanted something really and truly poetic and fitting,
something to remember. She had a plan. The wedding should be in June?
Yes. And she would be ready? Yes. And all the family, at least, should
be there? Yes. But she asked that she might keep the secret of the
precise time and the exact place as long as possible; it would make it
all seem so much more spontaneous and natural.
The situation was a little peculiar, I grant you, and somewhat
embarrassing to the rest of the family, including Chichester. But he
took it like a man, and backed Ethel up with the utmost decision, just
as if her idea was what he had always thought of and determined to do.
What was his chin for, if he could not give her a firm support in a
thing like this? As a matter of fact he did not care in the least where
the wedding might be. A man never does. It does not seem to be his
business. Ethel's paternal parent, however, had some misgivings which
must be satisfied.
"Is it a church?" he growled; "none of your dusty, shabby little Higher
Light shrines, eh?"
"Yes, it's a church," said Ethel solemnly, "and a very old and
beautiful church."
"And a Christian ceremony," he insisted; "parson, robes,
prayer-book--regular thing--no sideshow performance, eh?"
"Of course," said she, "what do you think? Do you suppose that just
because I see things in an original way, I don't know what's proper? I
like to hear the Swami Abikadanda talk; and I don't want a regular
cut-and-dried wedding; but I'm not going to take any risks about a
thing like that. The clergyman will be there, and you will give me
away, and Gladys and Victoria will be the bridesmaids, and Arthur will
be the best man, and Howard and Willis----"
"Well, well," grunted her father, with his chuckling laugh, "it's all
right, I suppose, seeing that it's your wedding. Have it your own way
while you can." For the old man had formed his idea of the significance
of Chichester's chin.
So it was settled that the affair should remain unsettled for every one
except Ethel; and the whole family was plunged into a cheerful state of
evasion, prevarication, and downright falsification; and Chichester
grinned and smoothed the left side of his chin with his forefinger and
said, "What do I care for that? It's all right, I know," and everybody
predicted that Ethel Asham was about to do something very original.
In the middle of June she marshalled her party for a little Canadian
_giro_. There were her father and mother; and the inseparable twins,
Gladys and Victoria, one of whom always laughed when the other was
amused; and the three preternaturally important brothers, representing
the triple-x output of Harvard, Yale and Columbia; and Aunt Euphemia
van Benschoten, who had inherited the van Benschoten nose, a block on
Fifth Avenue, and a pew in St. Mark's church (two of which possessions
she was entitled to devise by will); and Miss Nancy Bangs, Ethel's most
intimate friend; and the Reverend Oriel Bellingham Jenks, her favourite
clergyman of the period; and--oh, yes! of course--there was Bolton
Chichester.
It was quite a large party. They went first to Niagara, which Pop
Wilson said was "premature, if not improper." Then they went down
through the Thousand Islands, where Ethel pointed out the inhuman and
cruel expression of the many fishermen, to which Chichester answered,
"I don't know that it's cruel to catch pickerel, but it's certainly
childish."
Then they descended the ridiculous rapids of Lachine, which splashed
and murmured around them like a very mild surf at Shelter Island. They
spent a couple of days in looking for the antiquities of Montreal,
trying to find the romantic atmosphere of New France under the _ancien
régime_. Then they went to Quebec, and found it.
Dear, delightful old Quebec, with her gray walls and shining tin roofs;
her precipitous, headlong streets and sleepy squares and esplanades;
her narrow alleys and peaceful convents; her harmless antique cannon
on the parapets and her sweet-toned bells in the spires; her towering
château on the heights and her long, low, queer-smelling warehouses
in the lower town; her spick-and-span _caléches_ and her dingy
trolley-cars; her sprinkling of soldiers and sailors with Scotch accent
and Irish brogue and Cockney twang, on a background of _petite bourgeoisie_
speaking the quaintest of French dialects; her memories of an
adventurous, glittering past and her placid contentment with the
tranquil grayness of the present; her glorious daylight outlook over
the vale of the St. Charles, the level shore of Montmorenci, the green
Isle d'Orleans dividing the shining reaches of the broad St. Lawrence,
and the blue Laurentian Mountains rolling far to the eastward--and at
night, the dark bulk of the Citadel outlined against the starry blue,
the trampling of many feet up and down the wooden pavement of the
terrace, the chattering and the laughter, the music of the military
band, and far below, the huddled housetops, the silent wharves, the
lights of the great warships swinging with the tide, the intermittent
ferry-boats plying to and fro, the twinkling lamps of Levis rising
along the dim southern shore and reflected in the lapsing, curling,
seaward-sliding waves of the great river! What city of the New World
keeps so much of the charm of the Old?
The camp which Samuel de Champlain made in the wilderness three hundred
years ago, has become one of the last refuges of the romantic dream and
the courtly illusion, still haunted by the shades of impecunious young
noblemen with velvet cloaks and feathered hats and rapiers at their
hips; of delicate, high-spirited beauties braving the snowy wildwood in
their silks and laces; of missionary monks, tonsured and rope-girdled,
pressing with lean faces and eager eyes to plant the banner of the
Church upon the shores of the West and win the fiery crown of
martyrdom. Other figures follow them--gold-seekers, fur-traders,
empire-builders, admirals and generals of France and England,
strugglers for dominion, soldiers of fortune, makers of cunning plots,
and dreamers of great enterprises--and round them all flows the
confused tide of war and love, of intrigue and daring, of religious
devotion and imperial plot. The massive walls of the old city have been
broken, the rude palaces have vanished in fire or sunken in decay, but
the past is still indomitable on Cape Diamond, and the lovers of
romance can lose themselves in pleasant reveries among the winding
streets and on the lofty, sun-bathed ramparts of Quebec.
It was there, in a shady corner of the Grand Battery, that Ethel
disclosed to her mother and Chichester and the Reverend Father
Bellingham Jenks her plan for the wedding; since, indeed, it was hardly
possible to keep it a secret any longer.
"The day after to-morrow, you know," said she, "we are going to take
the Saguenay boat for Tadousac. Do you know that village curving along
the cliff at the base of the Mamelons; and the half-circle of the bay
opening out into the big St. Lawrence, full of sunshine and blue water;
and the steep, shaggy mountains of the Saguenay in the background; and
the tiny old mission chapel of the Jesuit Fathers where the same bell
has been ringing for nearly three hundred years? I was there the summer
after I graduated; and I've never forgotten it. It's a picture and a
dream. That is where I want to have my wedding. I don't believe that
anybody else would have thought of it. Perhaps it's more than a hundred
years since the last Indian wedding was held in that little deserted
chapel; but it's all right, kept in good order, just as a relic beside
the big new church. I think"--turning to the clergyman--"that it will
be perfectly delightful and original to have you marry me there, at
high noon, on the last day of June."
Well, of course, there was a good deal of astonishment and confusion
and reluctance when this extraordinary plan came out. No one had
imagined precisely this turn in Ethel's originality. Her mother was in
a state of paralyzed dismay at an idea so wildly unconventional; the
twins and her brothers and Miss Nancy Bangs bubbled over with practical
difficulties and protests; Father Bellingham Jenks was doubtful and
embarrassed. "Would it be possible--decorous--regular? The Roman
Branch, you know, has not yet openly acknowledged the Anglican position
in The Church. Might not objections arise--misunderstanding--refusal of
permission to use the chapel? I should hesitate very much, you know!"
But Ethel carried things through with her usual sweet, sparkling
high-handedness; and Chichester supported her with irresistible
determination, as if he had decided on exactly this thing years ago.
"Certainly," he said, "splendid idea--entirely novel--quite
correct--nothing could be better. Telegraph for one wing of the
Tadousac Hotel, with drawing-rooms and private dining-room. Send down
plenty of flowers and cakes and wines and whatever we need from here by
boat on the twenty-ninth. Get a letter of introduction from my friend
Paradol, the Minister of Fisheries and Lighthouses, to the archbishop
here--letter from him to the curé at Tadousac--keys of the
chapel--permission to make drawings and photographs of the interior
every morning of next week. I've been at Tadousac almost every summer
for the last five or six years, on the way to my salmon-fishing at the
Ste. Marjorie Club. It's all perfectly easy and it shall be done."
The difficulties seemed to vanish before his masterful air, and
everybody fell into line with sudden enthusiasm. Ethel smiled
discreetly and moved along her pathway of inflexible originality with
gentle triumph. The voyage down the river was delightful. The
arrangements at the big white wooden hotel on the curving bay were
rather primitive but quite comfortable; and three of the five days
which were to pass before the ringing of the antique wedding-bell
slipped away as if by magic.
On the fourth day, June twenty-ninth, Chichester having been assured by
telegraph that all the things from Quebec had been safely shipped on
the _Ste. Irenée_, was spending a morning hour with Ethel in the
pavilion of the Government Fish Station at _Anse á l'Eau_, watching the
great herd of captive salmon, circling round and round in restless
imprisonment in their warm shallow pool. The splendid fish were growing
a little dull and languid in their confined quarters, freshened only by
the inflowing of a small brook, and exposed to the full glare of the
sun. Many of them bore the scars of the nets in which they had been
captured. Others had red wounds on the ends of their noses where they
had butted against the rocks or the timbers of the dam. There were some
hundreds of the fish, and every now and then a huge thirty-pounder
would wallow on top of the water, or a small, lively one would spring
high into the air and fall back with a sounding splash on his side.
Here they must wait through the summer, the pool becoming daily hotter,
more crowded, more uncomfortable, until the time came when the hatchery
men would strip them of their spawn. To an angler the sight was
somewhat disquieting, though he might admit the strength of the
arguments for the artificial propagation of fish. But to Ethel it
seemed a pretty spectacle and a striking contrast to the cruelty of
angling.
"Look at them," she said, "how happy they are, and how safe! No
fly-fishermen to stick a hook in their mouths and make them suffer. How
can you bear to do it?"
"Well," said Chichester, "if it comes to suffering, I doubt whether the
fish are conscious of any such thing, as we understand it. But even if
they are, they suffer twice as much, and a thousand times as long, shut
up in this hot, nasty pool, as they would in being caught in proper
style."
"But think of the hook!"
"Hurts about as much as a pin-prick."
"But think of the fearful struggle, and the long, gasping agony on the
shore."
"There's no fear in the struggle; it's just a trial of strength and
skill, like a game of football. A fish doesn't know anything about
death; so he has no fear of it. And there is no gasping on the shore;
nothing but a quick rap on the head with a stick, and it's all over."
"But why should he be killed at all?"
"Well," said he, smiling, "there are reasons of taste. You eat salmon,
don't you?"
"Ye-e-es," she answered a little doubtfully--then with more assurance,
"but remember what Wilbur Short says in that lovely chapter on
'Communion with the Catfish': I want them brought to the table in the
simplest and most painless way."
"And that is angling with the fly," said he, still more decidedly. "The
fly is not swallowed like a bait. It sticks in the skin of the lip
where there is least feeling. There is no torture in the play of a
salmon. It's just a fair fight with an unknown opponent. Compare it
with the other ways of bringing a fish to the table. If he's caught in
a net he hangs there for hours, slowly strangled. If he's speared, half
the time the spear slips and he struggles off badly wounded; and if the
spear goes through him, he is flung out on the bank to bleed to death.
Even if he escapes, he is sure to come to a pitiful end some
day--perish by starvation when he gets too old to catch his food--or be
torn to pieces by a seal, an otter, or a fish-hawk. Fly-fishing really
offers him----"
"Never mind that," said Ethel, "what does it offer you?"
"A gentleman's sport, I suppose," he answered rather slowly. "That is,
a fair and exciting effort to get something that is made for human use,
in a way that involves some hardship, a little risk, a good deal of
skill and patience and perseverance, and plenty of out-of-door life. I
guess it must be an inheritance of the old days when people lived by
the chase; but, whatever it is, almost every real man feels a certain
kind of gratification in being able to get game or fish by the exertion
of his own pluck or skill. Some day perhaps this will all be changed,
and we shall be contented to take our exercise in the form of massage
or croquet, and our food in compressed tablets. But not yet!"
Ethel shook her head and smiled rather sadly. "Bolton," she said, "you
discourage me. You argue in this way because you like fishing."
"I do," he answered, promptly. "And so far as I can see, that is the
principal reason why your friends, Aurora W. Chime and the Reverend
Wilbur Short, and the rest of them, condemn it. They object to the
evident pleasure of the fisherman more than to the imaginary suffering
of the fish."
"Bolton!" she exclaimed earnestly, "that is not a fair thing to say.
They are truly good and noble teachers. They live on a lofty plane and
labour for the spreading of the Higher Light. You will know them when
we are married. They will be far better company for you than the
thoughtless fishermen in your clubs."
Bolton looked a little glum. But he behaved like a gentleman, and
cheered up. "Well, well," he said, "of course--you know--your friends,
my friends! I'll be glad to meet them, and hear what they have to say,
and consider it all very, very seriously. I promised you that, dearest,
you remember. But that reminds me--there are two of the men on the
_Ste. Marjorie_ now, at the club-house--Colonel Lang and the Doctor--old
Harvey, you know--fine old chap. It's only twenty miles away. Couldn't
we send word to them and ask them to come down for to-morrow? I'm so
proud and happy about it all; I'd like to have them here, if you don't
mind."
"Why, certainly," she answered, smiling with manifest pleasure, "that
will be delightful. We'll send a messenger at once with a note to them.
But stop a moment--I have a better plan than that! Why not drive over
yourself, this afternoon, to invite them? You'll be glad to see them
again; and if you stay here you'll only be in the way until to-morrow,"
laughed she. "Why not go over and spend the night at the club-house and
come back early in the morning? That will be quite like the ancient
days--the young adventurer hurrying out of the forest to meet his
bride."
Bolton insisted that he couldn't think of it--didn't want to go--would
much rather stay where he was. But Ethel was captivated with the
novelty of the idea. She always liked her own plans. Besides, she
really wished to have him out of the way for the rest of the day and
the evening. There was a good deal to be done--letters to be written--a
long, personal, uplifting talk with Nancy Bangs, and with Gladys, and
with Victoria, and with each of her brothers separately--just
half-an-hour of soul-counsel for each one: three hours altogether. She
would see them in regular succession, beginning with the youngest
brother, and winding up with Nancy. Then she was charmed with the
picture of Bolton coming in, post haste, in the morning, as if he had
just arrived from a journey across the great northern wilderness. So
she carried her point, and when he had agreed to it, he found that he
rather liked the plan too. It gave him something to do, a chance to
practise his habit of putting things through with determination.
He sent a messenger over to _Sacré Coeur_ at once, to say that he was
coming and that a canoe should meet him at the landing-place on the
North-East Branch. He finished up all the arrangements that remained to
be made at Tadousac for the smooth running of to-morrow's affair. He
ordered a good horse and a "_quatre roue_" to be ready for him at five
o'clock; and having parted with Ethel in the manner appropriate even
for so brief a separation, he was away for the river in due season.
The long road with its heavy stretches of sand, its incredibly steep
clay hills, its ruts and bumpers over which the buckboard rocked like a
boat in a choppy sea, and its succession of shadeless _habitant_ houses
and discouraged farms, had never seemed to him so monotonous. At eight
o'clock, when it was growing dusk, and the moon rising, he reached the
landing-place on the Branch, and found his canoe, with his two old
canoe-men, P'tit Louis, and Vieux Louis, waiting for him. With their
warm, homely greeting his spirits began to revive; and the swift run
through foaming rapids and eddying pools, along the four miles of the
Branch, brought him into a state of mind that was thoroughly cheerful,
not to say exhilarated. There was Brackett's Camp on the point above
the Forks; and there was the veteran painter-angler himself, with his
white beard and his knickerbockers, standing on the shore to wave a
salutation as the canoe shot by the point. There was the main river,
rushing down with full waters from the northwest, and roaring past the
island. There was the club-house among the white birches and the
balsams on the opposite bank, with the two flags fluttering in the
moonlight, and the lights twinkling from the long, low veranda. And
there were half a dozen canoe-men with a lantern at the landing-steps,
and old John the steward in his white apron rubbing his hands, and the
Colonel and the Doctor blowing the conch and the fish-horn in merry
welcome. It was all very jolly, and Chichester knew at once that he was
at home.
Dinner at nine o'clock, before the big open hearth, with a friendly
fire. Much chaffing and pleasant talk about the arrangements for
to-morrow. A man to be sent off at daybreak to have two buckboards ready
at the landing at seven for the drive to Tadousac. Then a reprehensible
quantity of tobacco smoked in the book-room, and the tale of the
season's angling told from the beginning with many embellishments and
divagations. There were stories of good luck and bad; vituperations of
the lumbermen for leaving tree-tops and broken branches in the stream to
get caught among the rocks and ruin the fishing; accounts of the immense
number of salmon that had been seen leaping in the estuary, waiting to
come up the river. The interest centred in the story of a huge fish that
had taken up his transient abode in the pool called _La Fourche_. The
Colonel had pricked and lost the monster two days ago, and had seen him
jump twice yesterday. The Colonel was greatly excited about it, and
vowed it was the largest salmon seen in the river for ten years--"a
whale, I tell you, a regular _marsouin_!" he cried, waving his hands in
the air. The Doctor was provokingly sceptical about the size of the
fish. But both agreed that there was one thing that must be done.
Chichester must try a few casts in _La Fourche_ early in the morning.
"Yes," said the Doctor, puffing slowly at his pipe, "plenty of time
between daylight and breakfast--good hour for a shy, old fish--we give
up our rights to you--the pool is yours--see what you can do with
it--may be your last chance to try your luck--" for somehow a rumour in
regard to Miss Asham's views on angling had leaked out, and
Chichester's friends were inclined to make merry about it.
He rose to the fly decidedly. "I don't know about this being my last
chance," said he, "but I'll take it, any way. John, give me a call at
half-past three sharp, and tell the two Louis to be ready with the
canoe and the rod and the big landing-net."
The little wreaths of grey mist were curling up from the river, and the
fleecy western clouds were tinged with wild rose behind the wooded
hills, as Chichester stepped out on the slippery rocks at the head of
the pool, loosened his line, gave a couple of pulls to his reel to see
that the click was all right, waved his slender rod in the air, and
sent his fly out across the swift current. Once it swung around,
dancing over the water, without result. The second cast carried it out
a few feet further, and it curved through a wider arc, but still
without result. The third cast sent it a little further still, past the
edge of a big sunken rock in the current. There was a flash of silver
in the amber water, a great splash on the surface, a broad tail waved
in the air and vanished--an immense salmon had risen and missed the
fly.
Chichester reeled in his line and sat down. His pulses were hammering,
and his chin was set at the angle of solid determination. "The Colonel
was right," he said, "that's an enormous fish, _and he's mine!_"
He waited the full five minutes, according to ancient rule, before
making the next cast. There was a tiny wren singing among the
Balm-o'-Gilead trees on the opposite shore, with a voice that rose
silverly above the noise of the rapids. "Cheer up, cheer up," it seemed
to say, "what's the matter with you? Don't hurry, don't worry, try it
again--again--again!"
But the next cast was made in vain. There was no response. Chichester
changed his fly. The result was the same. He tried three different
flies in succession without effect. Then he gave the top of the pool a
rest, and fished down through the smooth water at the lower end,
hooking and losing a small fish. Then he came back to the big salmon
again, and fished a small Durham Ranger over him without success. A
number four Critchley's Fancy produced no better result. A tiny double
Silver Grey brought no response. Then he looked through his fly-box in
despair, and picked out an old three-nought Prince of Orange--a huge,
gaudy affair with battered feathers, which he had used two years before
in flood-water on the Restigouche. At least it would astonish the
salmon, for it looked like a last season's picture-hat, very much the
worse for wear. It lit on the ripples with a splash, and floated down
stream in a dishevelled state till it reached the edge of the sunken
rock. Bang! The salmon rose to that incredible fly with a rush, and
went tearing across the pool.
The reel shrieked wildly as the line ran out. The rod quivered and bent
almost double. Chichester had the butt pressed against his belt, the
tip well up in the air, the reel-handle free from any possible touch of
coat-flap or sleeve. To check that fierce rush by a hundredth part of a
second meant the snapping of the delicate casting-line, or the smashing
of the pliant rod-tip. He knew, as the salmon leaped clear of the
water, once, twice, three times, that he was in for the fight of his
life; and he dropped the point of the rod quickly at each leap to yield
to the sudden strain.
The play, at first, was fast and furious. The salmon started up the
stream, breasting the rapids at a lively rate, and taking out line as
rapidly as the reel could run. Chichester followed along the open
shore, holding his rod high with both hands, stumbling over the big
rocks, wading knee-deep across a side-channel of the river, but keeping
his feet somehow, until the fish paused in the lower part of the pool
called _La Batture_. Here there was a chance to reel in line, and the
men poled the canoe up from below, to be ready for the next turn in the
contest.
The salmon was now sulking at the bottom, with his head down, balanced
against the current, and boring steadily. He kept this up for a quarter
of an hour, then made a rush up the pool, and a sidelong skittering
leap on the surface. Coming back with a sudden turn, he threw a
somersault in the air, close to the opposite shore, sank to the bottom
and began jigging. Jig, jig, jig, from side to side, with short, heavy
jerks, he worked his way back and forth twice the length of the pool.
Chichester knew it was dangerous. Any one of these sharp blows might
snap the leader or the hook. But he couldn't stop it. There was nothing
to do but wait, with tense nerves, until the salmon got through
jigging.
The change came suddenly. A notion to go down stream struck the salmon
like a flash of lightning; without a moment's warning he took the line
over his shoulder and darted into the rapids. "_Il va descendre! Vite,
vite! Le canot! Au large!_" shouted the two Louis; but Chichester had
already stepped into his place in the middle of the canoe, and there
were still forty yards of white line left on the reel, when the narrow
boat dashed away in pursuit of the fish, impelled by flashing paddles
and flinging the spray to right and left. There were many large rocks
half hidden in the wild white water through which they were plunging,
and with a long line there was danger that the fish would take a turn
around one of them and break away. It was necessary to go faster than
he went, in order to retrieve as much line as possible. But paddle as
fast as they could the fish kept ahead. He was not towing the boat, of
course; for only an ignoramus imagines that a salmon can "tow" a boat,
when the casting-line that holds him is a single strand of gut that
will break under a strain of ten pounds. He was running away, and the
canoe was chasing him through the roaring torrent. But he held his
lead, and there were still eighty or ninety yards of line out when he
rushed down the last plunge into _La Fourche_.
[Illustration: A notion to go down stream struck the salmon.]
The situation was this: The river here is shaped like a big Y. The
salmon went down the inside edge of the left-hand fork. The canoe
followed him down the outside edge of the same fork. When he came to
the junction it was natural to suppose that he would follow the current
down the main stem of the Y. But instead of that, when the canoe
dropped into the comparative stillness of the pool, the line was
stretched, taut and quivering, across the foot of the left-hand fork
and straight up into the current of the right-hand fork. "He's gone up
the other branch," shouted Chichester, above the roar of the stream,
"we must follow him! Push across the rapids! Push lively!" So the men
seized their setting-poles and shoved as fast as they could across the
foot of the rapids, while the rushing torrent threatened at every
moment to come in over the side and swamp the canoe. There was a
tugging and a trembling on the line, and it led, apparently, up the
North-East Branch, past Brackett's Camp. But when the canoe reached the
middle of the rapids P'tit Louis uttered an exclamation, leaned over
the bow, and pulled up the end of a tree-top, the butt of which was
firmly wedged among the rocks. Around the slender branches, waving and
quivering in the current with life-like motion, the line was looped.
The lower part of it trailed away loosely down the stream into the
pool.
Chichester took in the situation in a flash of grieved insight. "Well,"
he said, "that is positively the worst! Good-by, Mr. Salmon. Louis,
pull out that-er, er--that branch!" and he began slowly to reel in the
line. But old Louis, in the stern of the canoe, had taken hold of the
slack and was pulling it in hand over hand. In a second he shouted
"_Arrêtez! Arrêtez! M'sieu, il n'est pas parti, il est la!_"
It was a most extraordinary affair. The spring of the flexible branch
had been enough to keep the line from breaking. The salmon, resting in
the comparatively still water of the pool, had remained at the end of
the slack, and the hook, by some fortunate chance, held firm. It took
but a moment to get the line taut and the point of the rod up again.
And then the battle began anew. The salmon was refreshed by his fifteen
minutes between the halves of the game. No centre in a rush-line ever
played harder or faster.
He exhausted the possibilities of attack and defence in _La Fourche_,
and then started down the rapids again. In the little pot-hole in
mid-river, called _Pool à Michel_, he halted; but it was only for a
minute. Soon he was flying down the swift water, the canoe after him,
toward the fierce, foaming channel which runs between the island and
the eastern bank opposite the club-house. Chichester could see the
Colonel and the Doctor at the landing, waving and beckoning to him, as
he darted along with the current. Intent upon carrying his fight
through to a finish, he gave only a passing glance to what he thought
was their friendly gesture of encouragement, took his right hand from
the reel for a second to wave a greeting, and passed on, with
determination written in every line of his chin, following the fish
toward the sea.
Through the clear shallows of _La Pinette_, and the rapids below;
through the curling depths of _Pool à Pierre_, and the rapids below;
through the long, curving reach of _L'Hirondelle_, and the mad rapids
below; so the battle went, and it was fight, fight, fight, and never
the word "give up!" At last they came to the head of tide-water and the
lake-like pool beside the old quay. Here the methods of the fish
changed. There was no more leaping in the air; no more violent jigging;
no more swift rushing up or down stream; but instead, there was just an
obstinate adherence to the deepest water in the pool, a slow and steady
circling round and round in some invisible eddy below the surface. From
this he could only be moved by pressure. Now was the time to test the
strength of the rod and line. The fish was lifted a few feet by main
force, and the line reeled in while the rod was lowered again. Then
there was another lift, and another reeling in; and so the process was
repeated until he was brought close to the shore in comparatively
shallow water. Even yet he did not turn over on his back, or show the
white fin; but it was evident that he was through fighting.
Chichester and P'tit Louis stepped out on the shore, old Louis holding
the canoe. P'tit Louis made his way carefully to a point of rock, with
the wide-mouthed, long-handled net, and dipped it quietly down into the
water, two or three feet deep. The fish was guided gently in toward the
shore, and allowed to drop back with the smooth current until the net
was around him. Then it was swiftly lifted; there was the gleam of an
immense mass of silver in its meshes, an instant of furious struggle,
the quick stroke of a short, heavy _baton_; and the great salmon was
landed and despatched.
[Illustration: There was the gleam of an immense mass of silver in its
meshes.]
The hook was well set in the outside of his jaw, just underneath his
chin; no wonder he played so long, with his mouth shut! Bring the
spring-balance and test his weight. Forty-eight pounds, full measure,
the record salmon of the river--a deep thickset fish, whose gleaming
silver sides and sharp teeth proved him fresh-run from the sea! It was
a signal victory for an angler to land such a fish under such
conditions, and Chichester felt that fortune had been with him.
He enjoyed a quarter of an hour of great satisfaction as the men poled
the canoe up-river to the club-house. But there was a shadow of
anxiety, of vague misgiving, that troubled him; and he urged the men to
make haste. At the landing the Colonel and the Doctor were waiting,
with strange, long, inscrutable faces.
"Did you get him?" they said.
"I did," he answered; "forty-eight pounds. Hold up that fish, Louis!"
"Magnificent," they cried, "a great fish! You've done it! But, man, do
you know what time it is? Five minutes to ten o'clock!"
Nearly ten, and twenty miles of rough river and road to cover before
high noon. Was it possible? In a second it flashed upon Chichester what
he had done, what a fearful situation he must face. "Come on, you
fellows," he cried, stepping back into the canoe. "Now, Louis, shove
her as you never shoved before! Ten dollars apiece if you make the
upper landing in half an hour."
The other canoe followed immediately. They found the two buckboards
waiting, and scrambled in, explaining to the drivers the necessity for
the utmost haste. Chichester's horse was a scrawny, speedy little
beast, called _Le Coq Noir_, the champion trotter of the region. "_Hé,
Coq!_" shouted the driver, flourishing his whip, at the top of the
first long hill; and they started off at a breakneck pace. They passed
through the village of _Sacré Coeur_ a mile and a half ahead of the
other wagon. But on the first steep _côte_ beyond the village, the
inevitable happened. The buckboard went slithering down the slippery
slope of clay, struck a log bridge at the bottom with a resounding
thump, and broke an axle clean across. The wheel flew off, and the
buckboard came to the ground, and Chichester and the driver tumbled
out. The Black Cock gave a couple of leaps and then stood still,
looking back with an expression of absolute dismay.
There was nothing to do but wait for the other buckboard, which arrived
in ten or fifteen minutes. "Will you have the kindness to lend me your
carriage?" said Chichester elaborately. "Oh, don't talk! Get out quick.
You can walk!" They changed horses quickly, and Chichester took the
reins and drove on. Quarter past eleven; half past; quarter to
twelve--and three miles yet to go! It was barely possible to do it. And
perhaps it would have been done, if at that moment the good little
Black Cock had not stumbled on a loose stone, gone down almost to his
knees, and recovered himself with a violent wrench--lame! Chichester
was a fair runner and a good walker. But he knew that the steep sandy
hills which lay between him and Tadousac could never be covered in
fifteen minutes. He gave the reins to the driver, leaned back in the
seat, and folded his arms.
At twenty-five minutes past twelve the buckboard passed slowly down the
main street of Tadousac, bumped deliberately across the bridge, and
drew up before the hotel. The little white chapel on the other side of
the road was shut, deserted, sleeping in the sunlight. On the long
hotel piazza were half a dozen groups of strangers, summer visitors,
evidently in a state of suppressed curiosity and amusement. They fell
silent as the disconsolate vehicle came to a halt, and Arthur Asham,
the Harvard brother, in irreproachable morning costume and perfect
form, moved forward to meet it.
"Well?" said Chichester, as he stepped out.
"Well!" answered the other; and they went a few paces together on the
lawn, shaking hands politely and looking at each other with unspoken
interrogations.
"I'm awfully sorry," Chichester said, "but it couldn't be helped. A
chapter of accidents--I'll explain."
"My dear fellow," answered young Asham, "what good will that do? You
needn't explain to me, and you can't explain to Ethel. She is in her
most lofty and impossible mood. She'll never listen to you. I'm awfully
sorry, too, but I fear it's all over. In fact, she has driven down to
the wharf with the others to wait for the Quebec boat, which goes at
one. I am staying to get the luggage together and bring it on
to-morrow. She gave me this note for you. Will you read it?"
Asham politely turned away, and Chichester read:
MY DEAR MR. CHICHESTER:
Fortunate indeed is the disillusion which does not come too late.
But the bridegroom who comes too late is known in time.
You may be sure that I have no resentment at what you have done; I
have risen to those heights where anger is unknown. But I now see
clearly what I have long felt dimly--that your soul does not keep
time with the music to which my life is set. I do not know what
_other engagement_ kept you away. I do not ask to know. I know
only that ours is at an end, and you are at liberty to return to
your fishing. That you will succeed in it is the expectation of
Your well-wisher, E. ASHAM.
Chichester's chin dropped a little as he read. For the first time in
his life he looked undecided. Then he folded the note carefully, put it
in the breast pocket of his coat, and turned to his companion.
"You will be going up in to-morrow's boat, I suppose. Shall we go
together?"
"My dear fellow," said Arthur Asham, "really, you know--I should be
delighted. But do you think it would be quite the thing?"
BOOKS THAT I LOVED AS A BOY
"It is one thing," said my Uncle Peter, "to be perfectly honest. But it
is quite another thing to tell the truth."
"Are you honest in that remark," I asked, "or are you merely telling
the truth?"
"Both," he answered, with twinkling eyes, "for that is an abstract
remark, in which species of discourse truth-telling is comparatively
easy. Abstract remarks are a great relief to the lazy honest man. They
spare him the trouble of meticulous investigation of unimportant facts.
But a concrete remark, touching upon a number of small details, is full
of traps for the truth-teller."
"You agree, then," said I, "with what the Psalmist said in his haste:
'All men are liars'?"
"Not in the least," he replied, laying down the volume which he was
apparently reading when he interrupted himself. "I have leisure enough
to perceive at once the falsity of that observation which the honest
Psalmist recorded for our amusement. The real liars, conscious,
malicious, wilful falsifiers, must always be a minority in the world,
because their habits tend to bring them to an early grave or a
reformatory. It is the people who want to tell the truth, and try to,
but do not quite succeed, who are in the majority. Just look at this
virtuous little volume which I was reading when you broke in upon me.
It is called 'Books that Have Influenced Me.' A number of authors,
politicians, preachers, doctors, and rich men profess to give an
account of the youthful reading which has been most powerful in the
development of their manly minds and characters. To judge from what
they have written here you would suppose that these men were as mature
and discriminating at sixteen as they are at sixty. They tell of great
books, serious books, famous books. But they say little or nothing of
the small, amusing books, the books full of fighting and adventure, the
books of good stuff poorly written, in which every honest boy, at some
time in his life, finds what he wants. They are silent, too, about the
books which as a matter of fact had a tremendous influence on them--the
plain, dull school-books. For my part, if you asked me what books had
influenced me, I should not be telling the truth if my answer left out
Webster's Spelling-Book and Greenleaf's Arithmetic, though I did not
adore them extravagantly."
"That's just the point, Uncle Peter," said I, "these distinguished men
were really trying to tell you about the books that delighted and
inspired their youth, the books that they loved as boys."
"Well," said my Uncle Peter, "if it comes to love, and reminiscences of
loving, that is precisely the region in which the exact truth is least
frequently told. Maturity casts its prim and clear-cut shadow backwards
upon the vague and glittering landscape of youth. Whether he speaks of
books or of girls, the aged reminiscent attributes to himself a
delicacy of taste, a singleness and constancy of affection, and a
romantic fervour of devotion, which he might have had, but probably did
not. He is not in the least to blame for drawing his fancy-picture of a
young gentleman. He cannot help it. It is his involuntary tribute to
the ideal. Youth dreams in the future tense; age, in the past
participle.
"There is no kind of fiction more amiable and engaging than the droll
legends of infancy and pious recollections of boyhood. Do you suppose
that Wordsworth has given us a complete portrait of the boy that he
was, in 'The Prelude'? He says not a word about the picture of his
grandmother that he broke with his whip because the other children gave
him a 'dare,' nor about the day when he went up into the attic with an
old fencing-foil to commit suicide, nor about the girl with whom he
fell in love while he was in France. Do you suppose that Stevenson's
'Memories and Portraits' represent the youthful R. L. S. with
photographic accuracy and with all his frills? Not at all. Stevenson's
essays are charming; and Wordsworth's poem is beautiful,--in streaks it
is as fine as anything that he ever wrote: but both of these works
belong to literature because they are packed full of omissions,--which
Stevenson himself called 'a kind of negative exaggeration.' No, my dear
boy, old Goethe found the right title for a book of reminiscences when
he wrote _'Wahrheit und Dichtung_.' Truth and poetry,--that is what it
is bound to be. I don't know whether Goethe was as honest a man as
Wordsworth and Stevenson, but I reckon he told about as much of the
truth. Autobiography is usually a man's view of what his biography
ought to be."
"This is rather a disquieting thought, my Uncle Peter," said I, "for it
seems to leave us all adrift on a sea of illusions."
"Not if you look at it in the right way," he answered, placidly. "We
can always get at a few more facts than the man himself gives us, from
letters and from the dispassionate recollections of his friends.
Besides, a man's view of what his life ought to have been is almost as
interesting, and quite as instructive, as a mere chronicle of what it
actually was. The truth is, there are two kinds of truth: one kind
is----"
Crash! went the fire-irons, tumbling in brazen confusion on the
red-brick hearth. When my Uncle Peter has mounted his favourite
metaphysical theory, I know that nothing can make him dismount but
physical violence. I apologized for the poker and the shovel and the
tongs (practising a Stevensonian omission in regard to my own share in
the catastrophe), arranged the offending members in their proper
station on the left of the fire-place, and took the bellows to
encourage the dull fire into a more concrete flame.
"I know enough about the different kinds of truth," said I, working
away at the bellows. "Haven't I just been reading Professor Jacobus on
'Varieties of Religious Experience'? What I want now is something
concrete; and I wish you would try to give it to me, whatever perils it
may involve. Tell me something about the books that you loved as a boy.
Never mind your veracity, Uncle Peter, just be honest, that will be
enough."
"My veracity!" he grunted, "Humph! Impudent academic mocker, university
life has destroyed your last rag of reverence. You have become a mere
pivot for turning another fellow's remarks against himself. However, if
you will just allow me to talk, and promise to let those fire-irons
alone, I will tell you about some of the literary loves of my boyhood."
"I promise not to stir hand or tongue or foot," said I, "unless I see
you sliding towards a metaphysical precipice."
"Very well," said my Uncle Peter, "I will do my best to give you the
facts. And the first is this: there never was a day in my boyhood when
I would not rather go a-fishing than read the best book in the world.
If the choice had been given me, I never would have hesitated between
climbing a mountain or paddling a canoe, and spending hours in a
library. I would have liked also to hunt grizzly bears and to fight
Indians,--but these were purely Platonic passions, detached from
physical experience. I never realized them in hot blood.
"My native preferences were trimmed and pruned by the fortune that
fixed my abode, during nine months of every year, in the city of
Brooklyn, where there were no mountains to climb, no rivers to canoe,
and no bears to hunt. The winter of my discontent, however, was
somewhat cheered by games of football and baseball in the vacant lots
on the heights above Wall Street Ferry, and by fierce battles and
single combats with the tribes of 'Micks' who inhabited the regions of
Furman Street and Atlantic Avenue. There was no High Court of
Arbitration to suggest a peaceful solution of the difficulties out of
which these conflicts arose. In fact, so far as I can remember, there
was seldom a _casus belli_ which could be defined and discussed. The
warfare simply effervesced, like gas from a mineral spring. It was
chronic, geographical, temperamental, and its everlasting continuance
was suggested in the threat with which the combatants usually parted:
'wait till we ketch you alone, down our street!'
"There was also a school which claimed some hours of my attention on
five days of the week. On holidays my father used to take me on the
most delightful fishing excursions to the then unpolluted waters of
Coney Island Creek and Sheepshead Bay; and on Monday afternoons in
midwinter it was a regular thing that I should go with him to New York
to ramble among the old book-shops in Nassau Street and eat oysters at
Dorlon's stall, with wooden tables and sawdust-sprinkled floor, in
Fulton Market. Say what you please about the friendship of books: it
was worth a thousand times more to have the friendship of such a
father.
"But there was still a good deal of unoccupied time on my hands between
the first of October and the first of May, and having learned to read
(in the old-fashioned way, by wrestling with the alphabet and plain
spelling), at the age of about five years, I was willing enough to give
some of my juvenile leisure to books and try to find out what they had
to say about various things which interested me. I did not go to school
until my tenth year, and so there was quite a long period left free for
general reading, beginning with the delightful old-fashioned books of
fairy tales without a moral, and closing with 'Robinson Crusoe,' 'Don
Quixote,' and Plutarch's 'Lives of Illustrious Men.' In the last two
books I took a real and vivid interest, though I now suspect that it
was strictly limited in range. They seemed to open a new world to me,
the world of the past, in which I could see men moving about and doing
the most remarkable things. Both of these books appeared to me equally
historical; I neither doubted the truth of their narratives nor
attended to the philosophical reflections with which they were padded.
The meaning of the long words I guessed at.
"My taste at this time was most indiscriminate. I could find some kind
of enjoyment in almost anything that called itself a book--even a
Sunday-school story, or a child's history of the world--provided only
it gave something concrete for imagination to work upon. The mere
process of reading, with the play of fancy that it quickened, became an
agreeable pastime. I got a great deal of pleasure, and possibly some
good, out of Bunyan's 'Holy War' (which I perversely preferred to 'The
Pilgrim's Progress') and Livingstone's 'Missionary Journals and
Researches,' and a book about the Scotch Covenanters. These volumes
shortened many a Sunday. I also liked parts of 'The Compleat Angler,'
but the best parts I skipped.
"With the coming of school days the time for reading was reduced, and
it became necessary to make a choice among books. The natural instincts
of youth asserted themselves, and I became a devotee of Captain Mayne
Reid and R. M. Ballantyne, whose simple narratives of wild adventure
offered a refuge from the monotony of academic life. It gave me no
concern that the names of these authors were not included in the
encyclopædias of literature nor commented upon in the critical reviews.
I had no use for the encyclopædias or reviews; but 'The Young
Voyageurs,' 'The White Chief,' 'Osceola the Seminole,' 'The Bush Boys,'
'The Coral Island,' 'Red Eric,' 'Ungava,' and 'The Gorilla Hunters'
gave me unaffected delight.
"After about two years of this innocent dissipation I began to feel the
desire for a better life, and turned, by my father's advice, to Sir
Walter Scott. 'Ivanhoe' and 'The Pirate' pleased me immensely;
'Waverley' and 'The Heart of Midlothian' I accepted with
qualifications; but the two of Scott's novels that gave me the most
pleasure, I regret to state, were 'Quentin Durward' and 'Count Robert
of Paris.' Then Dickens claimed me, and I yielded to the spell of
'Oliver Twist,' 'David Copperfield,' and 'Pickwick Papers.'
"By this time it had begun to dawn upon me that there was a difference
among books, not only in regard to the things told, but also in regard
to the way of the telling. Unconsciously I became sensitive to the
magic of style, and, wandering freely through the library, was drawn to
the writers whose manner and accent had a charm for me. Emerson and
Carlyle I liked no better than I liked caviar; but Lamb's Essays and
Irving's Sketches were fascinating. For histories of literature, thank
Heaven, I never had any appetite. I preferred real books to books about
books. My only idea of literature was a vivid reflection of life in the
world of fancy or in the world of fact.
"In poetry, Milton's 'Comus' was about the first thing that took hold
of me; I cannot tell why--perhaps it was because I liked my father's
reading of it. But even he could not persuade me to anything more than
a dim respect for 'Paradise Lost.' Some of Shakespeare's plays
entranced me; particularly 'The Tempest,' 'Romeo and Juliet,' and 'As
You Like It;' but there were others which made no real impression upon
my wayward mind. Dryden and Pope and Cowper I tried in vain to
appreciate; the best that I could attain to was a respectful
admiration. 'The Lady of the Lake' and 'The Ancient Mariner,' on the
contrary, were read without an effort and with sincere joy. The first
book of poetry that I bought for myself was Tennyson's 'Enoch Arden,'
and I never regretted the purchase, for it led me on, somehow or other,
into the poetic studies and the real intimacy with books which enabled
me to go through college without serious damage.
"I cannot remember just when I first read 'Henry Esmond;' perhaps it
was about the beginning of sophomore year. But, at all events, it was
then that I ceased to love books as a boy and began to love them as a
man."
"And do you still love 'Henry Esmond'?" I asked.
"I do indeed," said my Uncle Peter, "and I call it the greatest of
English novels. But very close to it I put 'Lorna Doone,' and 'The
Heart of Midlothian,' and 'The Cloister and the Hearth,' and 'The
Ordeal of Richard Feverel,' and 'John Inglesant.'"
"If you love 'John Inglesant,'" said I, "you must be getting old, Uncle
Peter."
"Oh, no," he answered, comfortably lighting his pipe with a live coal
of wood from the hearth, "I am only growing up."
AMONG THE QUANTOCK HILLS
My little Dorothea was the only one of the merry crowd who cared to
turn aside with me from the beaten tourist-track, and give up the sight
of another English cathedral for the sake of a quiet day among the
Quantock Hills. Was it the literary association of that little corner
of Somersetshire with the names of Wordsworth and Coleridge that
attracted her, I wonder? Or was it the promise that we would hire a
dog-cart, if one could be found, and that she should be the driver all
through the summer day? I confess my incompetence to decide the
question. When one is fifteen years old, a live horse may be as
interesting as two dead poets. Not for the world would I put Dorothea
to the embarrassment of declaring which was first in her mind.
When she and I got out of the railway carriage, in the early morning,
at the humble station of Watchet, (barely mentioned in the guide-book,)
our travelling companions jeered gently at our enterprise. As the train
rumbled away from the platform, they stuck their heads out of the
window and cried, "Where are you going? And how are you going to get
there?" Upon my honour, I did not know. That was just the fun of it.
But there was an inn at Watchet, though I doubt whether it had ever
entertained tourists. The friendly and surprised landlady thought that
she could get us a dog-cart to drive across the country; but it would
take about an hour to make ready. So we strolled about the town, and
saw the sights of Watchet.
They were few and simple; yet something, (perhaps the generous sunshine
of the July day, or perhaps an inward glow of contentment in our
hearts,) made them bright and memorable. There were the quaint, narrow
streets, with their tiny shops and low stone houses. There was the
coast-guard station, with its trim garden, perched on a terrace above
the sea. There was the life-boat house, with its doors wide open, and
the great boat, spick and span in the glory of new paint, standing
ready on its rollers, and the record of splendid rescues in past years
inscribed upon the walls. There was the circular basin-harbour, with
the workmen slowly repairing the breakwater, and a couple of ancient
looking schooners reposing on their sides in the mud at low tide. And
there, back on the hill, looking down over the town and far away across
the yellow waters of the Bristol Channel, was the high tower of St.
Decuman's Church.
"It was from this tiny harbour," said I to Dorothea, "that a great
friend of ours, the Ancient Mariner, set sail on a wonderful voyage. Do
you remember?
"'The ship was cheered, the harbour cleared,
Merrily did we drop
Below the kirk, below the hill,
Below the lighthouse top.'
"That was the kirk to which he looked back as he sailed away to an
unknown country."
"But, father," said Dorothea, "the Ancient Mariner was not a real
person. He was only a character!"
"Are you quite sure," said I, "that a character isn't a real person? At
all events, it was here that Coleridge, walking from Nether Stowey to
Dulverton, saw the old sailor-man. And since Coleridge saw him, I
reckon he lived, and still lives. Are we ever going to forget what he
has told us?
"'He prayeth best, who loveth best
All things both great and small;
For the dear God who loveth us,
He made and loveth all.'"
Just then a most enchanting little boy and his sister, not more than
five years old, came sauntering down the gray street, hand in hand.
They were on their way to school, at least an hour late, round and
rosy, careless and merry, manifest owners of the universe. We stopped
them: they were dismayed, but resolute. We gave each of them a penny;
they radiated wonder and joy. Too happy for walking, they skipped and
toddled on their way, telling everyone they met, children and grown-up
people, of the good fortune that had befallen them. We could see them
far down the street, pausing a moment to look in at the shop-windows,
or holding up their coppers while they stopped some casual passer-by
and made him listen to their story--just like the Ancient Mariner.
By this time the dog-cart was ready. The landlord charged me eighteen
shillings for the drive to Bridgewater, nineteen miles away, stopping
where we liked, and sending back the cart with the post-boy that
evening. By the look on his face I judge that he thought it was too
much. But I did not. So we climbed to the high seat, Dorothea took the
reins and the whip, and we set forth for a day of unguide-booked
pleasure.
What good roads they have in England! Look at the piles of broken stone
for repairs, stored in little niches all along the way; see how
promptly and carefully every hole is filled up and every break mended;
and you will understand how a small beast can pull a heavy load in this
country, and why the big draught-horses wear long and do good work. A
country with a fine system of roads is like a man with a good
circulation of the blood; the labour of life becomes easier, effort is
reduced and pleasure increased.
Bowling along the smooth road we crossed a small river at Doniford,
where a man was wading the stream below the bridge and fly-fishing for
trout; we passed the farmhouses of Rydon, where the steam-thresher was
whirling, and the wheat was falling in golden heaps, and the
pale-yellow straw was mounded in gigantic ricks; and then we climbed
the hill behind St. Audries, with its pretty gray church, and manor
house half hidden in the great trees of the park.
The view was one of indescribable beauty and charm; soft, tranquil
woods and placid fertile fields; thatched cottages here and there,
sheltered and embowered in green; far away on the shore, the village of
East Quantockshead; beyond that the broad, tossing waters of the
Bristol Channel; and beyond that again, thirty miles away, the silver
coast of Wales and the blue mountains fading into the sky. Ships were
sailing in and out, toy-like in the distance. Far to the north-west, we
could see the cliffs of the Devonshire coast; to the north-east the
islands of Steep Holm and Flat Holm rose from the Severn Sea; and
around the point beyond them, in the little churchyard of Clevedon, I
knew that the dust of Arthur Henry Hallam, whose friendship Tennyson
has immortalized in "In Memoriam," was sleeping
"By the pleasant shore
And in the hearing of the wave."
High overhead the great white clouds were loitering across the
deep-blue heaven. White butterflies wavered above the road. Tall
foxglove spires lit the woodland shadows with rosy gleams. Bluebells
and golden ragwort fringed the hedge-rows. A family of young wrens
fluttered in and out of the hawthorns. A yellow-hammer, with cap of
gold, warbled his sweet, common little song. The colour of the earth
was warm and red; the grass was of a green so living that it seemed to
be full of conscious gladness. It was a day and a scene to calm and
satisfy the heart.
At Kilve, a straggling village along the road-side, I remembered
Wordsworth's poem called "An Anecdote for Fathers." The little boy in
the poem says that he would rather be at Kilve than at Liswyn. When his
father foolishly presses him to give a reason for his preference, he
invents one:
"At Kilve there was no weather-cock,
And that's the reason why."
Naturally, I looked around the village to see whether it would still
answer to the little boy's description. Sure enough, there was no
weather-cock in sight, not even on the church-tower.
Not far beyond Kilve we saw a white house, a mile or so away, standing
among the trees to the south, at the foot of the high-rolling Quantock
Hills. Our post-boy told us that it was Alfoxton, "where Muster
Wudswuth used to live," but just how to get to it he did not know. So
we drove into the next village of Holford and made inquiry at the
"Giles' Plough Inn," a most quaint and rustic tavern with a huge
ancient sign-board on the wall, representing Giles with his white horse
and his brown horse and his plough. Turning right and left and right
again, through narrow lanes, between cottages gay with flowers, we came
to a wicket-gate beside an old stone building, and above the gate a
notice warning all persons not to trespass on the grounds of Alfoxton.
But the gate was on the latch, and a cottager, passing by, told us that
there was a "right of way" which could not be closed--"goä straight on,
and nivver feär, nubbody 'll harm ye."
[Illustration: Tannery Combe, Holford.]
A few steps brought us into the thick woods, and to the edge of a deep
glen, spanned by a bridge made of a single long tree-trunk, with a
hand-rail at one side. Down below us, as we stood on the swaying
bridge, a stream dashed and danced and sang through the shade, among
the ferns and mosses and wild flowers. The steep sides of the glen
glistened with hollies and laurels, tangled and confused with
blackberry bushes. Overhead was the interwoven roof of oaks and ashes
and beeches. Here it was that Wordsworth, in the year 1797, when he was
feeling his way back from the despair of mind which followed the
shipwreck of his early revolutionary dreams, used to wander alone or
with his dear sister Dorothy. And here he composed the "Lines Written
in Early Spring"--almost the first notes of his new poetic power:
"I heard a thousand blended notes,
While in a grove I sat reclined,
In that sweet mood when pleasant thoughts
Bring sad thoughts to the mind.
"Through primrose tufts, in that green bower,
The periwinkle trailed its leaves;
And 'tis my faith that every flower
Enjoys the air it breathes."
Climbing up to the drive, we followed a long curving avenue toward the
house. It led along the breast of the hill, with a fine view under the
spreading arms of the great beeches, across the water to the Welsh
mountains. On the left the woods were thick. Huge old hollies showed
the ravages of age and storm. A riotous undergrowth of bushes and
bracken filled the spaces between the taller trees. Doves were
murmuring in the shade. Rabbits scampered across the road. In an open
park at the edge of the wood, a herd of twenty or thirty fallow deer
with pale spotted sides and twinkling tails trotted slowly up the
slope.
Alfoxton House is a long, two-story building of white stucco, with a
pillared porch facing the hills. The back looks out over a walled
garden, with velvet turf and brilliant flowers and pretty evergreens,
toward the sea-shore. The house has been much changed and enlarged
since the days when young William Wordsworth rented it, (hardly more
than a good farmhouse), for twenty-three pounds a year, and lived in it
with his sister from 1797 to 1798, in order to be near his friend
Coleridge at Nether Stowey. There is not a room that remains the same,
though the present owner has wisely brought together as much of the old
wood-work as possible into one chamber, which is known as Wordsworth's
study. But the poet's real study was out of doors; and it was there
that we looked for the things that he loved.
In a field beyond the house there were two splendid old ash-trees,
which must have been full-grown in Wordsworth's day. We stretched
ourselves among the gnarled roots, my little Dorothy and I, and fed our
eyes upon the view that must have often refreshed him, while his
Dorothy was leading his heart back with gentle touches toward the
recovery of joy. There was the soft, dimpled landscape, in tones of
silvery verdure, blue in distance, green near at hand, sloping down to
the shining sea. The sky was delicate and friendly, bending close above
us, with long lines of snowy clouds. There was hardly a breath of wind.
Far to the east we saw the rich plain rolling away to Bridgewater and
the bare line of the distant Mendip Hills. Shadows of clouds swept
slowly across the land. Colours shifted and blended. On the steep hill
behind us a row of trees stood out clear against the blue.
"With ships the sea was sprinkled far and nigh."
What induced Wordsworth to leave a place so beautiful? A most prosaic
reason. He was practically driven out by the suspicion and mistrust of
his country neighbours. A poet was a creature that they could not
understand. His long rambles among the hills by day and night,
regardless of the weather; his habit of talking to himself; his
intimacy and his constant conferences on unknown subjects with
Coleridge, whose radical ideas were no secret; his friendship with
Thelwall the republican, who came to reside in the neighbourhood; the
rumour that the poet had lived in France and sympathized with the
Revolution--all these were dark and damning evidences to the rustic
mind that there was something wrong about this long-legged,
sober-faced, feckless young man. Probably he was a conspirator,
plotting the overthrow of the English Government, or at least of the
Tory party. So ran the talk of the country-side; and the lady who owned
Alfoxton was so alarmed by it that she declined to harbour such a
dangerous tenant any longer. Wordsworth went with his sister to Germany
in 1798; and in the following year they found a new home at Dove
Cottage, in Grasmere, among the English lakes.
On our way out to the place where we had left our equipage, we met the
owner of the estate, walking with his dogs. He was much less fierce
than his placard. It may have been something in Dorothea's way that
mollified him, but at all events he turned and walked with us to show
us the way up the "Hareknap"--the war-path of ancient armies--to a
famous point of view. There we saw the Quantock Hills, rolling all
around us. They were like long smooth steep billows of earth, covered
with bracken, and gorse, and heather just coming into bloom. Thick
woodlands hung on their sides, but above their purple shoulders the
ridges were bare. They looked more than a thousand feet high. Among
their cloven combes, deep-thicketed and watered with cool springs, the
wild red deer still find a home. And it was here (not in Cardiganshire
as the poem puts it) that Wordsworth's old huntsman, "Simon Lee,"
followed the chase of the stag.
It was a three-mile drive from Holford to Nether Stowey. Dorothea
remarked that Coleridge and the Wordsworths must have been great
walkers if this was their idea of living close together. And so they
were, for that bit of road seemed to them only a prelude to a real walk
of twenty or thirty miles. The exercise put them in tune for poetry,
and their best thoughts came to them when they were afoot.
"The George" at Nether Stowey is a very modest inn, the entrance paved
with flag-stones, the only public room a low-ceiled parlour; but its
merits are far beyond its pretensions. We lunched there most
comfortably on roast duck and green peas, cherry tart and cheese, and
then set out to explore the village, which is closely built along the
roads whose junction is marked by a little clock-tower. The
market-street is paved with cobble-stones, and down one side of it runs
a small brook, partly built in and covered over, but making a merry
noise all the way. Coleridge speaks of it in his letters as "the dear
gutter of Stowey."
Just outside of the town is the Castle Mound, a steep, grassy hill, to
the top of which we climbed. There was the distinct outline of the
foundations of the old castle, built in the Norman times; we could
trace the moat, and the court, and all the separate rooms; but not a
stone of the walls remained--only a ground-plan drawn in the turf of
the hill-top. All the pride and power of the Norman barons had passed
like the clouds that were sailing over the smooth ridges of the
Quantocks.
Coleridge was twenty-four years old when he came to Nether Stowey with
his young wife and a boy baby. Troubles had begun to gather around him;
he was very poor, tormented with neuralgia, unable to find regular
occupation, and estranged by a quarrel from his friend and
brother-in-law, Robert Southey. Thomas Poole, a well-to-do tanner at
Nether Stowey, a man of good education and noble character, a great
lover of poetry and liberty, had befriended Coleridge and won his deep
regard and affection. Nothing would do but that Poole should find a
cottage near to his own house, where the poet could live in quietude
and congenial companionship.
The cottage was found; and, in spite of Poole's misgivings about its
size, and his warnings in regard to the tedium and depression of
village life, Coleridge took it and moved in with his little family on
the last day of the year 1796--a cold season for a "flitting!" We can
imagine the young people coming down the Bridgewater road through the
wintry weather with their few household goods in a cart.
The cottage was at the western end of the village; and there it stands
yet, a poor, ugly house, close on the street. We went in, and after
making clear to the good woman who owned it that we were not looking
for lodgings, we saw all that there was to see of the dwelling. There
were four rooms, two downstairs and two above. All were bare and
disorderly, because, as the woman explained, house-cleaning was in
progress. It was needed. She showed us a winding stair, hardly better
than a ladder, which led from the lower to the upper rooms. There was
no view, no garden. But in Coleridge's day there was a small plot of
ground belonging to the house and running back to the large and
pleasant place of his friend Poole. It was upon this little garden that
the imagination of the new tenant was fixed, and there he saw, in his
dream, the corn and the cabbages and the potatoes growing luxuriantly
under his watchful and happy care; enough, he hoped, to feed himself
and his family, and to keep a couple of what he called "snouted and
grunting cousins" on the surplus. "Literature," he wrote, "though I
shall never abandon it, will always be a secondary object with me. My
poetic vanity and my political favour have been exhaled, and I would
rather be an expert, self-maintaining gardener than a Milton, if I
could not unite them both." How amusing are men's dreams--those of
humility as well as those of ambition! There is a peculiarly Coleridgean
touch in that last hint of uniting Milton and the market-gardener.
In fact, I doubt whether the garden ever paid expenses; but, on the
other hand, the crop of poetry that sprung from Coleridge's marvellous
mind was rich and splendid. It was while he lived in this poor little
cottage that he produced "Osorio," "Fears in Solitude," "Ode to
France," the first part of "Christabel," "Frost at Midnight," "The
Nightingale," "Kubla Khan," and "The Ancient Mariner," and planned with
his friend Wordsworth "Lyrical Ballads," the most epoch-making book of
modern English poetry. Truly this year, from April, 1797, to April,
1798, was the _annus mirabilis_ of his life. Never again was he so
happy, never again did he do such good work, as when he harboured in
this cottage, and slipped through the back gate to walk in the garden
or read in the library of his good friend, Thomas Poole, or trudged
down the road to the woods of Alfoxton to talk with the Wordsworths. He
wrote lovingly of the place:
"And now, beloved Stowey, I behold
Thy Church-tower, and methinks, the four huge elms
Clustering, which mark the mansion of my friend;
And close behind them, hidden from my view,
Is my own lovely cottage, where my babe
And my babe's mother dwell in peace."
Dorothea and I were not sure that Mrs. Coleridge enjoyed the cottage as
much as he did. Greta Hall, at Keswick, with its light airy rooms and
its splendid view, was her next home; and when we saw it, a few weeks
later, we were glad that the babe and the babe's mother had lived
there.
But the afternoon was waning, and we must turn our back to the
Quantocks, and take to the road again. Past the church and the manor
house, with its odd little turreted summer-house, or _gazébo_, perched
on the corner of the garden-wall; past a row of ancient larch-trees and
a grove of Scotch pines; past smooth-rolling meadows full of cattle and
sheep; past green orchards full of fruit for the famous and potent
Somereset cider; past the old town of Cannington, where the fair
Rosamund was born, and where, on our day, we saw the whole population
in the streets, perturbed by some unknown excitement and running to and
fro like mad folks; past sleepy farms and spacious parks and snug
villas, we rolled along the high-road, into Bridgewater, a small city,
where they make "Bath bricks," and where the statue of Admiral Blake
swaggers sturdily in the market-place. There we took the train to join
our friends at dinner in Bristol; and so ended our day among the
Quantock Hills.
BETWEEN THE LUPIN AND THE LAUREL
No other time of the year, on our northern Atlantic seaboard, is so
alluring, so delicate and subtle in its charm, as that which follows
the fading of the bright blue lupins in the meadows and along the banks
of the open streams, and precedes the rosy flush of myriad laurels in
full bloom on the half-wooded hillsides, and in the forest glades, and
under the lofty shadow of the groves of yellow pine. Then, for a little
while, the spring delays to bourgeon into summer: the woodland maid
lingers at the garden gate of womanhood, reluctant to enter and leave
behind the wild sweetness of freedom and uncertainty.
Winter is gone for good and all. There is no fear that he will come
sneaking back with cold hands to fetch something that he has forgotten.
Nature is secure of another season of love, of mating, of germination,
of growth, of maturity--a fair four months in which the joyful spirit
of life may have its way and work its will. The brown earth seems to
thrill and quicken everywhere with new impulses which transform it into
springing grass and overflowing flowers. The rivers are at their best:
strong and clear and musical, the turbulence of early floods departed,
the languor of later droughts not yet appearing. The shrunken woods
expand; the stringent, sparkling wintry stars grow mild and liquid,
shining with a tremulous and tender light; the whole world seems
larger, happier, more full of untold, untried possibilities. The air
vibrates with wordless promises, calls, messages, beckonings; and
fairy-tales are told by all the whispering leaves.
Yet though the open season is now secure, it is not yet settled. No
chance of a relapse into the winter's death, but plenty of change in
the unfolding of the summer's life. There are still caprices and
wayward turns in nature's moods; cold nights when the frost-elves are
hovering in the upper air; windy mornings which shake and buffet the
tree-tassels and light embroidered leaves; sudden heats of tranquil
noon through which the sunlight pours like a flood of eager love,
pressing to create new life.
Birds are still mating; and quarrelling, too. Their songs, their cries
of agitation and expectancy, their call notes, their lyrical
outpourings of desire are more varied and more copious than ever. All
day long they are singing, and every hour on the wing, coming up from
the southward, passing on to the northward, fluttering through the
thickets, exploring secret places, choosing homes and building nests.
In every coppice there is a running to and fro, a creeping, a
scampering, and a leaping of wild creatures. At the roots of the bushes
and weeds and sedges, in the soft recesses of the moss, and through the
intricate tangle of withered grass-blades pierced with bright-green
shoots, there is a manifold stir of insect life. In the air millions of
gauzy wings are quivering, swarms of ethereal, perishable creatures
rising and falling and circling in mystical dances of joy. Fish are
leaping along the stream. The night breeze trembles with the shrill,
piercing chorus of the innumerable hylas.
Late trees, like the ash, the white oak, the butternut, are still
delaying to put forth their full foliage; veiled in tender, transparent
green, or flushed with faint pink, they stand as if they were waiting
for a set time; and the tiny round buds on the laurels, clustered in
countless umbels of bright rose among the dark green, glistening
leaves, are closed, hiding their perfect beauty until the day
appointed. It is the season of the unfulfilled desire, the eager hope,
the coming surprise. To-day the world is beautiful; but to-morrow, next
day--who knows when?--something more beautiful is coming, something
new, something perfect. This is the lure of wild nature between the
lupin and the laurel.
At such a season it is hard to stay at home. The streets all seem to
lead into the country, and one longs to follow their leading, out into
the highway, on into the winding lane, on into the wood-road, on and
on, until one comes to that mysterious and delightful ending, (told of
in the familiar saying,) where the road finally dwindles into a
squirrel track and runs up a tree--not an ending at all, you see, but
really a beginning! For there is the tree; and if you climb it, who
knows what new landscape, what lively adventure, will open before you?
At any rate, you will get away from the tyranny of the commonplace, the
conventional, the methodical, which transforms the rhythm of life into
a logarithm. Even a small variation, a taste of surprise, will give you
what you need as a spring tonic: the sense of escape, a day off.
Living in a university town, and participating with fidelity in its
principal industry, I find that my own particular nightmare of monotony
takes the form of examination papers--quires of them, reams of them,
stacks of them--a horrid incubus, always oppressive, but then most
unendurable when the book-room begins to smell musty in the morning,
and the fire is unlit upon the hearth, and last night's student-lamp is
stuccoed all over with tiny gnats, and the breath of the blossoming
grape is wafted in at the open window, and the robins, those melodious
rowdies, are whistling and piping over the lawn and through the trees
in voluble mockery of the professor's task. "Come out," they say, "come
out! Why do you look in a book? Double, double, toil and trouble! Give
it up--tup, tup, tup! Come away and play for a day. What do you know?
Let it go. You're as dry as a chip, chip, chip! Come out, won't you?
will you?"
Truly, these examination questions that I framed with such pains look
very dull and tedious now--a desiccation of the beautiful work of the
great poets. And these answers that the boys have wrought out with such
pains, on innumerable pads of sleazy white paper, how little they tell
me of what the fellows really know and feel! Examination papers are
"requisite and necessary," of course; I can't deny it--requisite
formalities and necessary absurdities. But to turn the last page of the
last pad, and mark it with a red pencil and add it to the pile of
miseries past, and slip away from books to nature, from learning to
life, between the lupin and the laurel--that is a pleasure doubled by
release from pain.
I think a prize should be offered for the discovery of good places to
take a free and natural outing within easy reach of the great city and
the routine of civilized work--just-over-the-fence retreats, to which
you can run off without much preparation, and from which you can come
back again before your little world discovers your absence. That was
the charm of Hopkinson Smith's sketch, "A Day at Laguerre's"; and an
English writer who calls himself "A Son of the Marshes" has written a
delightful book of interviews with birds and other wild things, which
bears the attractive title, "Within an Hour of London Town." But I
would make it a condition of the prize that the name of the
hiding-place should not be published, lest the careless, fad-following
crowd should flock thither and spoil it. Let the precious news be
communicated only by word of mouth, or by letter, as a confidence and
gift of friendship, so that none but the like-minded may strike the
trail to the next-door remnant of Eden.
It was thus that my four friends--Friends in creed as well as in
deed--told to me, one of "the world's people," toiling over my
benumbing examination papers, their secret find of a little river in
South Jersey, less than an hour from Philadelphia, where one could
float in a canoe through mile after mile of unbroken woodland, and camp
at night in a bit of wilderness as wildly fair as when the wigwams of
the Lenni-Lenape were hidden among its pine groves. The Friends said
that they "had a concern" to guide me to their delectable retreat, and
that they hoped the "way would open" for me to come. Canoes and tents
and camp-kit? "That will all be provided; it is well not to be anxious
concerning these sublunary things." Mosquitoes? "Concerning this, also,
thee must learn to put thy trust in Providence; yet there is a happy
interval, as it were, between the fading of the hepatica and the
blooming of the mosquito, when the woods of South Jersey are habitable
for man, and it would be most prudent to choose this season for the
exercise of providential trust regarding mosquitoes." Examination
papers? Duty? "Surely thee must do what thee thinks will do most good,
and follow the inward voice. And if it calls thee to stay with the
examination papers, or if it calls thee to go with us, whichever way,
thee will be resigned to obey." Fortunately, there was no doubt about
the inward voice; it was echoing the robins; it was calling me to go
out like Elijah and dwell under a juniper-tree. I replied to the
Friends in the words of one of their own preachers: "I am resigned to
go, or resigned to stay, but most resigned to go"; and we went.
The statue of William Penn seemed to look benignantly down upon us as
we passed, bag and bundle in hand, along the regular Philadelphia
shortcut which leads through the bowels of the Courthouse, from the
Broad Street station to John Wanamaker's store. Philadelphians always
have the air of doing something very modern, hurried, and time-saving
when they lead you through that short-cut. But we were not really in a
hurry; we had all the time there is; we could afford to gape a little
in the shop-windows. The spasmodic Market Street trolley-car and the
deliberate Camden ferry-boat were rapid enough for us. The gait of the
train on the Great Sandy and Oceanic Railway was neither too fast nor
too slow. Even the deserted condition of Hummingtown, where we
disembarked about eleven o'clock in the morning, and found that the
entire population had apparently gone to a Decoration Day ball-game,
leaving post-office, telegraph station, fruit store, bakery, all
closed--even this failure to meet our expectations did not put us out
of humour with the universe, or call forth rude words on the degeneracy
of modern times.
Our good temper was imperturbable; for had we not all "escaped as a
bird from the hand of the fowler"--Master Thomas from the mastery of
his famous boarding-school in Old Chester, and Friends Walter and
Arthur from the uninspired scripture of their ledgers and day-books,
and I from the incubation of those hideous examination papers, and the
gentle Friend William from his--there! I have forgotten what particular
monotony William was glad to get away from; but I know it was from
something. I could read it in his face; in his pleased, communicative
silence; in the air of almost reckless abandon with which he took off
his straight-breasted Quaker coat, and started out in his shirt-sleeves
to walk with Walter, ahead of the cart which carried our two canoes and
the rest of us over to the river.
It was just an ordinary express wagon, with two long, heavy planks
fastened across the top of it. On these the canoes were lashed, with
their prows projecting on either flank of the huge, pachydermatous
horse, who turned his head slowly from one side to the other, as he
stalked along the level road, and looked back at his new environment
with stolid wonder. He must have felt as if he were suffering "a sea
change," and going into training for Neptune's stud. The driver sat on
the dashboard between the canoes; and Master Thomas, Arthur, and I were
perched upon the ends of the planks with our feet dangling over the
road. It was not exactly what one would call an elegant equipage, but
it rolled along.
The road was of an uncompromising straightness. It lay across the
slightly undulating sandy plain like a long yellow ruler; and on each
side were the neatly marked squares and parallelograms of the little
truck farms, all cultivated by Italians. Their new and unabashed frame
houses were freshly painted in incredible tones of carrot yellow, pea
green, and radish pink. The few shade trees and the many fruit trees,
with whitewashed trunks, were set out in unbending regularity of line.
The women and children were working in the rows of strawberries which
covered acre after acre of white sand with stripes of deep green. Some
groups of people by the wayside were chattering merrily together in the
language which Byron calls
"That soft bastard Latin
Which melts like kisses from a woman's mouth."
It was a scene of foreign industry and cheerfulness, a bit of little
Italy transplanted. Only the landscape was distinctly not Italian, but
South Jersey to the core. Yet the people seemed at home and happy in
it. Perhaps prosperity made up to them for the loss of picturesqueness.
At New Prussia the road was lifted by a little ridge, and for a few
minutes we travelled through another European country. Two young men
were passing ball in front of a beer saloon. "Vot's der news?" said one
of them in a strong German accent. We were at a loss for an answer, as
it was rather a dull time in international politics; but Master Thomas
began to say something about the riots in Russia. "Russia hell!" said
the young man. "How's der ball-game? Vas our nine of Hummingtown ahead
yet?" We could give no information on this important subject, but we
perceived that New Prussia was already Americanized.
A mile or so beyond this the road dipped gently into a shallow,
sparsely wooded valley and we came to a well-built stone bridge which
spanned, with a single narrow arch, the little river of our voyage. It
was like a big brook, flowing with deep, brown current out of a
thicket, and on through a small cranberry bog below the bridge. Here we
launched and loaded our canoes, and went down with the stream, through
a bit of brushy woodland, till we found a good place for luncheon. For
though it was long past noon and we were very hungry, we wanted to get
really into the woods before we broke bread together.
Scanty woods they were, indeed; just a few scrub pines growing out of a
bank of clean white sand. But we spread a rubber blanket in their thin
shade, and set forth our repast of biscuits and smoked beef and olives,
and fell to eating as heartily and merrily as if it had been a banquet.
The yellow warblers and the song sparrows were flitting about us; and
two cat-birds and a yellow-throat were singing from the thicket on the
opposite shore. There were patches of snowy sand-myrtle and yellow
poverty-plant growing around our table; tiny, hardy, heath-like
creatures, delicately wrought with bloom as if for a king's palace;
irrepressible and lovely offspring of the yearning for beauty that
hides in the poorest place of earth. In a still arm of the stream, a
few yards above us, was a clump of the long, naked flower-scapes of the
golden-club, now half entered upon their silvery stage.
It was strange what pleasure these small gifts of blossom and song
brought to us. We were in the mood which Wordsworth describes in the
lines written in his pocket-copy of "The Castle of Indolence":
"There did they dwell, from earthly labour free,
As happy spirits as were ever seen;
If but a bird, to keep them company,
Or butterfly sate down, they were, I ween,
As pleased as if the same had been a Maiden-queen."
But our "earthly labour" began again when we started down the stream;
for now we had fairly entered the long strip of wilderness which
curtains its winding course. On either hand the thickets came down so
close to the water that there were no banks left; just woods and water
blending; and the dark topaz current swirling and gurgling through a
clump of bushes or round the trunk of a tree, as if it did not care
what path it took so long as it got through. Alders and pussy-willows,
viburnums, clethras, chokecherries, swamp maples, red birches, and all
sorts of trees and shrubs that are water-loving, made an intricate
labyrinth for the stream to thread; and through the tangle, cat-briers,
blackberries, fox grapes, and poison ivy were interlaced.
Worst of all was the poison ivy, which seemed here to deserve its other
name of poison oak, for it was more like a tree than a vine, flinging
its knotted branches from shore to shore, and thrusting its pallid,
venomous blossoms into our faces. Walter was especially susceptible to
the influence of this poison, so we put him in the middle of our canoe,
and I, being a veteran and immune, took the bow-paddle. It was no easy
task to guide the boat down the swift current, for it was bewilderingly
crooked, twisting and turning upon itself in a way that would have made
the far-famed Mæander look like a straight line. Many a time it ran us
deep into the alders, or through a snarl of thorn-set vines, or crowded
us under the trunk of an overhanging tree. We glimpsed the sun through
the young leaves, now on our right hand, now on our left, now in front
of us, and now over our shoulders. After several miles of this
curliewurlie course, the incoming of the Penny Pot Stream on the left
broadened the flowing trail a little. Not far below that, the
Hospitality Branch poured in its abundant waters on the right, and we
went floating easily down a fair, open river.
There were banks now, and they were fringed with green borders of
aquatic plants, rushes, and broad spatter-docks, and flags, and
arrow-heads, and marsh-marigolds, and round-leaved pond-lilies, and
pointed pickerel-weed. The current was still rapid and strong, but it
flowed smoothly through the straight reaches and around the wide
curves. On either hand the trees grew taller and more stately. The
mellow light of afternoon deepened behind them, and the rich cloud
colours of approaching sunset tinged the mirror of the river with
orange and rose. We floated into a strip of forest. The stream
slackened and spread out, broadening into the head of a pond. On the
left, there was a point of higher land, almost like a low bluff, rising
ten or twelve feet above the water and covered with a grove of oaks and
white pines. Here we beached our canoes and made our first camp.
A slender pole was nailed horizontally between two trees, and from this
the shelter tent was stretched with its sloping roof to the breeze and
its front open toward the pond. There were no balsam or hemlock boughs
for the beds, so we gathered armfuls of fallen leaves and pine needles,
and spread our blankets on this rude mattress. Arthur and Walter cut
wood for the fire. Master Thomas and William busied themselves with the
supper. There was a famous dish of scrambled eggs, and creamed
potatoes, and bacon, and I know not what else. We ate till we could eat
no more, and then we sat in the wide-open tent, with the camp-fire
blazing in front of us, and talked of everything under the stars.
I like the Quaker speech: the gentle intimacy of their "little
language," with its quaint "thees" and "thous," and the curious turn
they give to their verbs, disregarding the formalities of grammar.
"Will thee go," "has thee seen," "does thee like"--that is the way they
speak it; an unjustifiable way, I know, but it sounds pleasantly. I
like the Quaker spirit and manners, at least as I have found them in my
friends: sober but not sad, plain but very considerate, genuinely
simple in the very texture of their thoughts and feelings, and not
averse to that quiet mirth which leaves no bitter taste behind it. One
thing that I cannot understand in Charles Lamb is his confession, in
the essay on "Imperfect Sympathies," that he had a prejudice against
Quakers. But then I remember that one of his best bits of prose is
called "A Quaker's Meeting," and one of his best poems is about the
Quaker maiden, Hester Savory, and one of his best lovers and companions
was the broad-brim Bernard Barton. I conclude that there must be
different kinds of Quakers, as there are of other folks, and that my
particular Friends belong to the tribe of Bernard and Hester, and their
spiritual ancestry is in the same line with the poet Whittier.
Yet even these four are by no means of one pattern. William is the
youngest of the group, but the oldest-fashioned Friend, still clinging
very closely to the old doctrines and the old ritual of silent
simplicity, and wearing the straight-cut, collarless coat, above which
his youthful face looks strangely ascetic and serene. I can imagine him
taking joyfully any amount of persecution for his faith, in the ancient
days; but in these tolerant modern times, he has the air of waiting
very tranquilly and with good humour for the world to see that the old
ways are the best, and to come round to them again.
Walter and Arthur are Young Quakers, men of their time, diligent in
business, fond of music and poetry, loyal to the society of their
fathers, but more than willing to see its outward manners and customs,
and even some of its ways of teaching, quietly modified to meet the
needs and conditions of the present. In appearance you could hardly
tell them from the world's people; yet I perceive that inwardly the
meeting-house has made its indelible mark upon them in a certain poise
of mind and restraint of temper, a sweet assurance of unseen things,
and a mind expectant of spiritual visitations.
Master Thomas, the leader of our expedition, is a veteran
school-teacher, in one of the largest and most successful of the
Friends' boarding-schools. To him I think there is neither old nor new
in doctrine; there is only the truth, and the only way to be sure of it
is by living. He is a fervent instructor, to whom an indifferent
scholar is a fascinating problem, and a pupil who "cannot understand
mathematics" offers a new adventure. But part of his instruction, and
the part to which he gives himself most ardently, is the knowledge and
love of the great out-of-doors. Every summer he runs a guest-camp in
the Adirondacks, and in the fall he gives a big camp-supper for the old
pupils of his school, who come back by the hundred to renew their
comradeship with "Master Thomas." It is good to have an academic title
like that. Arthur and William and Walter are among his old boys, and
they still call him by that name. But it is partly because he has also
been their master in fire-making, and tent-pitching, and cooking, and
canoe-building, and other useful arts which are not in the curriculum
of book-learning.
Here, then, I have sketched the friends who sat with me before the
glowing logs on that cool, starry night, within a few miles of the
railroad and not far away from the roaring town, yet infinitely deep in
the quietude of nature's heart. Of the talk I can remember little,
except that it was free and friendly, natural and good. But one or two
stories that they told me of a famous old Philadelphia Quaker, Nicholas
Waln, have stuck in my memory.
His piety was tempered with a strong sense of humour, and on one
occasion when he was visiting a despondent sister, he was much put out
by her plaintive assertions that she was going to die. "I have no
doubt," said he finally, "but that thou will; and when thou gets to
heaven give my love to the Apostle Paul, and tell him I wish he would
come back to earth and explain some of the hard things in his
epistles." At another time he overtook a young woman Friend in worldly
dress, upon which he remarked, "Satin without, and Satan within." But
this time he got as good as he gave, for the young woman added, "And
old Nick behind!" When it was the fashion to wear a number of capes,
one above another, on a great-coat, Nicholas met a young acquaintance
dressed in the mode. Taking hold of one of the capes, the old Quaker
asked innocently what it was. "That is Cape Hatteras," said the pert
youth. "And this?" said Nicholas, touching another. "Oh, that is Cape
Henlopen," was the answer. "Then, I suppose," said Nicholas gravely,
pointing to the young man's head, "this must be the lighthouse." I
think that Charles Lamb, despite his imperfect sympathy with Quakers,
would have liked this turn to the conversation.
Bedtime comes at last, even when you are lodging at the Sign of the
Beautiful Star. There were a few quiet words read from a peace-giving
book, and a few minutes of silent thought in fellowship, and then each
man pulled his blanket round him and slept as if there were no troubles
in the world.
Certainly there were none waiting for us in the morning; for the day
rose fresh and fair, and we had nothing to do but enjoy it. After
fishing for an hour or two, to supply our larder, we paddled down the
pond, which presently widened into quite a lake, ending in a long, low
dam with trees growing all across it. Here was the forgotten village of
Watermouth, founded before the Revolution, and once the seat of a
flourishing iron industry, but now stranded between two railways, six
miles on either side of it, and basking on the warm sand-hills in a
painless and innocent decay.
Watermouth had done nothing to deserve ill fortune. But the timber
which had once been floated down its river was all cut and gone; and
the bog-iron which had once been smelted in its furnaces was all used
up; and the forest glass-makers and charcoal-burners who had once
traded in its store had all disappeared; and the new colonies of
fruit-growers and truck-farmers from Italy and Germany did not like to
settle quite so far from the railway; and there was nothing left for
Watermouth but to sit in the sun and doze, while one family after
another melted away, and house after house closed its windows and its
doors.
The manor-house stood in spacious grounds sloping gently down to the
southern shore of the lake, well planted with a variety of shade trees
and foreign evergreens, but overgrown with long grass and straggling
weeds. Master Thomas and I landed, and strolled through the neglected
lawn toward the house, in search of a possible opportunity to buy some
fresh eggs. The long, pillared veranda, with its French windows opening
to the floor; the wide double door giving entrance to a central hall; a
score of slight and indefinable signs told us that the mansion had seen
its days of comfort and elegance. But there were other signs--a pillar
leaning out of plumb, a bit of railing sagging down, a board loose at
the corner--which seemed to speak of the pluperfect tense. In a
fragment of garden at one side, where a broken trellis led to an arbor
more than half hidden by vines, we saw a lady, clad in black, walking
slowly among the bewildered roses and clumps of hemerocallis, stooping
now and then to pluck a flower or tenderly to lift and put aside a
straggling branch.
"This is plainly the mistress of the house," said Master Thomas; "does
thee think that we could make bold to speak with her upon the subject
of fresh eggs?"
"I think," said I, "that with thy friendly tact thee could speak with
anybody upon any subject."
"But my coat?" said Master Thomas, for he had left it in the boat.
"'Tis a warm day, Master Thomas," I answered, "and doubtless the lady
will know that thee has a coat, when she hears thee speak. But in any
event, it is wise not to think too much of these mundane things. Let us
go up."
So we made our salutations, stated our names and our occupations, and
described the voyage which had brought us to Watermouth, in a way that
led naturally to an explanation of our present need and desire for
fresh eggs: though indeed it was hardly necessary to be explicit on
that point, for our little tin pail betrayed us as foragers. The lady
in black received us with gracious dignity, identified and placed us
without difficulty (indeed she knew some relation of each of us), and
gave us hospitable assurance that our wants in the matter of eggs could
easily be satisfied. Meantime we must come up to the house with her and
rest ourselves.
Rest was not an imperative necessity for us just then, but we were glad
to see the interior of the old mansion. There was the long
drawing-room, with its family portraits running back into the
eighteenth century--one of them an admirable painting by Sully--and the
library, with its tall book-shelves, now empty, and engravings and
autographs hanging on the walls. The lady in black was rather sad; for
her father, a distinguished publicist and man of letters, had built
this house; and her grandfather, a great iron-master, had owned most of
the land hereabouts; and the roots and tendrils of her memory were all
entwined about the place; but now she was dismantling it and closing it
up, preparatory to going away, perhaps to selling it.
By this time the tin pail had come in, filled with the nutritious fruit
of the industrious and faithful hen. So we said farewell to the lady in
black, with suitable recognition of her courtesy and kindness, and not
without some silent reflections on the mutability of human affairs.
Here had been a fine estate, a great family, a prosperous industry
firmly established, now fading away like smoke. But I do not believe
the lady in black will ever disappear entirely from Watermouth while
she lives; for is there not the old meeting-house, a hundred years old
(with the bees' nest in the weather-boarding), for her to watch over,
and care for, and worship in?
The young men were waiting for us below the dam. Here was a splendid
water-power running away almost idle. For the great iron forge, with
its massive stone buildings, standing (if the local tradition is
correct) on the site where the first American cannon-balls had been
cast for the Revolutionary War, and where that shrewd Rhode Islander,
Gen. Nathanael Greene, had invested some of the money he made in army
contracts, had been put out of business many years ago by the
development of iron-making in North Jersey and Pennsylvania. An attempt
was made to turn it into a wood-pulp factory; but that had failed
because the refractory yellow pine was full of hard knots that refused
to let themselves be ground into pulp. Now a feeble little saw-mill was
running from time to time in one corner of the huge edifice; and the
greater part of the river out of work was foaming and roaring in
wasteful beauty over the gates of the dam.
It was here, on the slopes of the open fields and on the dry sides of
the long embankment, that we saw the faded remnants of the beauty with
which the lupins had surrounded Watermouth a few days ago. The
innumerable plants with their delicate palmate leaves were still fresh
and vigorous; no drought can wither them even in the dryest soil, for
their roots reach down to the hidden waters. But their winged blossoms,
with which a little while since they had "blued the earth," as Thoreau
says, were now almost all gone; as if a countless flock of blue
butterflies had taken flight and vanished. Only here and there one
could see little groups of belated flowers, scraps of the coerulean
colour, like patches of deep-blue sky seen through the rents in a
drifting veil of clouds.
But the river called us away from the remembrance of the lupins to
follow the promise of the laurels. How charming was the curve of that
brown, foam-flecked stream, as it rushed swiftly down, from pool to
pool, under the ancient, overhanging elms and willows and sycamores! We
gave ourselves to the current, and darted swiftly past the row of
weather-beaten houses on the left bank, into the heart of the woods
again.
Here the forest was dense, lofty, overarching. The tall silver maple,
the black ash, the river birch, the swamp white oak, the sweet gum and
the sour gum, and a score of other trees closed around the course of
the stream as it swept along with full, swirling waters. The air was
full of a diffused, tranquil green light, subdued yet joyous, through
which flakes and beams of golden sunshine flickered and sifted
downward, as if they were falling into some strange, ethereal
medium--something half liquid and half aërial, midway between an
atmosphere and the still depths of a fairy sea.
The spirit of enchantment was in the place; brooding in the delicate,
luminous midday twilight; hushing the song of the strong-flowing river
to a humming murmur; casting a spell of beautiful immobility on the
slender flower-stalks and fern-fronds and trailing shrubberies of the
undergrowth, while the young leaves of the tree-tops, far overhead,
were quivering and dancing in the sunlight and the breeze. Here Oberon
and Titania might sleep beneath a bower of motionless royal Osmunda.
Here Puck might have a noon-tide council with Peaseblossom, Cobweb,
Moth, and Mustardseed, holding forth to them in whispers, beneath the
green and purple sounding-board of a Jack-in-the-Pulpit. Here, even in
this age of reason, the mystery of nature wove its magic round the
curious mind of man,
"Annihilating all that's made,
To a green thought in a green shade."
Do you remember how old Andrew Marvell goes on from those two lovely
lines, in his poem?
"Here at the fountain's sliding foot,
Or at some fruit-tree's mossy root,
Casting the body's vest aside,
My soul into the boughs does glide;
There, like a bird, it sits and sings,
Then whets and claps its silver wings,
And, till prepared for longer flight,
Waves in its plumes the various light."
There were many beautiful shrubs and bushes coming into bloom around us
as we drifted down the stream. Two of the fairest bore the names of
nymphs. One was called after Leucothoë, "the white goddess," and its
curved racemes of tiny white bells hanging over the water were worthy
emblems of that pure queen who leaped into the sea with her babe in her
arms to escape from the frenzy of Athamas. The other was named for
Andromeda; and the great Linnæus, who gave the name, thus describes his
thought in giving it: "_Andromeda polifolia_ was now in its highest
beauty, decorating the marshy grounds in a most agreeable manner. The
flowers are quite blood-red before they expand, but when full-grown the
corolla is of a flesh-colour. As I contemplated it, I could not help
thinking of Andromeda as described by the poets; and the more I
meditated upon their descriptions, the more applicable they seemed to
the little plant before me. Andromeda is represented by them as a
virgin of most exquisite and unrivalled charms.... This plant is always
fixed on some little turfy hillock in the midst of the swamps, as
Andromeda herself was chained to the rock in the sea, which bathed her
feet as the fresh water does the roots of the plant. Dragons and
venomous serpents surrounded her, as toads and other reptiles frequent
the abode of her vegetable resembler. As the distressed virgin cast
down her face through excessive affliction, so does this rosy coloured
flower hang its head.... At length comes Perseus in the shape of
summer, dries up the surrounding water and destroys the monsters."
But more lovely than any of the shrubs along the river was that small
tree known as the sweet bay or the swamp laurel. Of course it is not a
laurel at all, but a magnolia (_Magnolia glauca_), and its glistening
leaves, dark green above, silvery beneath, are set around the large,
solitary flowers at the ends of the branches, like backgrounds of
malachite, to bring out the perfection of a blossom carved in fresh
ivory. What creamy petals are these, so thick, so tenderly curved
around the cone-like heart of the flower's fertility! They are warm
within, so that your finger can feel the soft glow in the centre of the
blossoms. But it is not for you to penetrate into the secret of their
love mystery. Leave that to the downy bee, the soft-winged moth, the
flying beetle, who, seeking their own pleasure, carry the
life-bestowing pollen from flower to flower. Your heavy hand would
bruise the soft flesh and discolor its purity. Be content to feast your
eyes upon its beauty, and breathe its wonderful fragrance, floating on
the air like the breath of love in the south and wild summer.
About the middle of the afternoon, after passing through miles of
enchanted forest, unbroken by sign of human habitation, we
"Came unto a land
In which it seemed always afternoon."
Low-rolling ridges of gravel, clothed with pine and oak, came down
along the river. The bank on the right rose higher, and, at a sharp
angle in the stream, lifted itself into a bluff-like point. Opposite
was the serpentine course of the Dead River, coiling through an open
marsh-meadow. Below the junction of the two streams our own river
flowed swiftly, through a straight reach, to the mouth of the still
lagoon where Mare Run came in.
Here we made our second camp, on the point, among the pines and the
hollies. For here, at last, we were in the heart of the region of
laurels, which we had come to see. All along the river we had found
some of them, just beginning to open their flowers, here and there. But
above and below the mouth of the Dead River the banks and ridges, under
the high shadow of the pines, were crowded with shining clumps of the
_Kalmia latifolia_, and something in the soil and exposure, or perhaps
even the single day of warm sunshine that had passed since we began our
voyage, had brought them already into the young flood of bloom.
I have seen the flame azaleas at their bright hour of consummation in
the hill country of central Georgia--lakes of tranquil and splendid
fire spreading far away through the rough-barked colonnades of the
pineries. I have seen the thickets of great rhododendrons on the
mountains of Pennsylvania in coronation week, when the magic of June
covered their rich robes of darkest green with countless sceptres,
crowns, and globes of white bloom divinely tinged with rose: superb,
opulent, imperial flowers. I have seen the Magnolia Gardens near
Charleston when their Arabian Nights' dream of colour was unfolding
beneath the dark cypresses and moss-bannered live-oaks. I have seen the
tulip and hyacinth beds of Holland rolled like a gorgeous carpet on the
meadows beneath the feet of Spring; and the royal gardens of Kew in the
month when the rose is queen of all the flowers; but never have I seen
an efflorescence more lovely, more satisfying to the eye, than that of
the high laurel along the shores of the unknown little river in South
Jersey.
Cool, pure, and virginal in their beauty, the innumerable clusters of
pink and white blossoms thronged the avenues of the pine woods, and
ranged themselves along the hillsides and sloping banks, and trooped
down by cape and promontory to reflect their young loveliness in the
flowing stream. It was as if some quiet and shadowy region of solitude
had been suddenly invaded by companies of maidens attired for a holiday
and joyously confident of their simple charms. The dim woodland was
illumined with the blush of conscious pleasure.
Seen at a distance the flower clusters look like big hemispheres of
flushed snow. But examine them closely and you see that each of the
rounded umbels is compounded of many separate blossoms--shallow,
half-translucent cups poised on slender stems of pale green. The cup is
white, tinted more or less deeply with rose-pink, the colour brightest
along the rim and on the outside. The edge is scalloped into five
points, and on the outer surface there are ten tiny projections around
the middle of the cup. Looking within, you find that each of these is a
little red hollow made to receive the crimson tip of a curving anther,
cunningly bent like a spring, so that the least touch may loosen it and
scatter the pollen. There is no flower in the world more exquisitely
fashioned than this. It is the emblem of a rustic maid in the sweet
prime of her morning.
We were well content with our day's voyage and our parting camp on the
river. We had done no harm; no accident had befallen us; we had seen
many lovely things and heard music from warbler and vireo, thrush and
wren, all day long. Even now a wood thrush closed his last descant in
flute-like notes across the river. Night began silently to weave her
dusky veil upon the vast loom of the forest. The pink glow had gone
from the flower-masses around us; whitely they glimmered through the
deepening shadows, and stood like gentle ghosts against the dark.
To-morrow we must paddle down to the village where the railroad crosses
the river, and hurry back to civilization and work. But to-night we
were still very far off; and we should sleep at the foot of a
pine-tree, beneath the stars, among the virgin laurels.
LITTLE RED TOM
* *
* My Uncle Peter was much interested in the war which broke out, not long
ago, among the professional nature-writers. He said that it was a civil
war, and therefore a philosopher was bound to be regardful of it,
because a civil war always involved subtle problems of psychology. He
also said that it was a most uncivil war, and that the picturesque
violence of the language employed on both sides was intrinsically
noteworthy to a philologist, and therefore he felt obliged to follow it
with care. When the Chief Magistrate of his native country took a hand
in it, my Uncle Peter claimed that it had become a subject of national
importance and that no true patriot could be indifferent to it. Finally
he admitted, in a moment of confidence, that the real reason for his
interest was the fact that so many of his friends were engaged in the
strife, on both sides, and were being badly pummeled; and that he would
like to take some part in it himself. I asked him what part. He
answered that he proposed to himself the part of peace-maker. I pointed
out that this part is usually the most perilous and painful. He said
that this should not deter him from doing his duty, and he added that
he thought he could do it in such a way that no one could tell that he
was doing it. A week later he brought me the following paper, which he
called
THE TRAGEDY OF LITTLE RED TOM:
_A Contribution to the Fight About Nature-Books._
He was the youngest of the family, a late-comer at the feast of
life. Yet the rose-garlands on the table were not faded when he
arrived, and the welcome that he received was not colder, indeed it
was probably several degrees warmer, because he was so tardy, so
young, so tiny.
There was room for him in the household circle; joyous affection
and merry murmurs of contentment greeted his coming. His older
brothers never breathed a word of jealousy or unkindness toward
him. He grew peacefully under the shelter of mother-love; and it
would have been difficult to foresee, in the rosy promise of his
youth, the crimson tragedy in which his life ended.
How dull, how insensible to such things, most men and women are!
They go on their way, busily and happily, doing their work, seeking
their daily food, enjoying their human pleasures, and never
troubling themselves about the hidden and inarticulate sorrows of
the universe. The hunter hunts, and the fisher fishes, with
inconsiderate glee. A man kills a troublesome insect, he eats a
juicy berry or a succulent oyster, without thinking of what his
victims must feel.
But there are some tender and sensitive souls who are too fine for
these callous joys. They no longer imagine that human emotions are
confined to man. They reflect that every plant and every animal is
doomed to die in some way which the average man would regard as
distinctly unpleasant. To them the sight of a chicken-house is full
of sorrowful suggestion, and a walk through a vegetable garden is
like a funeral procession. They meditate upon the tragic side of
all existence; and to them there will be nothing strange in this
story of the tragedy of Little Red Tom.
You have guessed that he was called "red" on account of his colour.
It was a family trait. All his brothers had it; and strange to say
they were proud of it.
Most people are so foolish that they speak with ridicule, or even
with contempt of this colour, when it is personally evolved. Have
you ever asked yourself why it is that the cold world alludes
derisively to a "red-headed boy," or a "red-headed girl"? The
language is different when the locks are of another hue. Then it is
a "black-haired boy," or a "golden-haired girl." Is not the very
word "red-headed," with its implied slur upon an innocent and
gorgeous colour, an unconscious evidence of the unreasonable
prejudice and hard insensibility of the human race?
Not so the family of Tom. The redder they grew the happier they
were, and the more pride their mother took in them. But she herself
was green. And so was little Tom, like all his brothers, when he
made his first appearance in the world--green--very green.
Nestled against his mother's side, sheltered by her embracing arms,
safe and happy in the quietude of her maternal care, he must have
looked out upon the passing show with wonder and pleasure, while
she instilled into him the lessons of wisdom and the warnings of
destiny.
"Grow, my little one," we can imagine her saying to him, in her
mysterious wordless language, "your first duty is to grow. Look at
your brothers, how big and round and fat they are! I can hardly
lift them. They did what I told them, and see what they have
become. All by growing! Simple process! Even a babe can understand
it. Grow, my Tommykin, grow! But don't try to grow red; first, you
must grow big."
It is quite sure, and evident to every imaginative observer of
nature, that Tommy's mother _must_ have told him something like
this, for this is precisely what he did--obedient, docile, clever
little creature! How else could he have learned it, if she had not
taught him? Who can trace the subtle avenues by which intelligence
is communicated from the old to the young, the treasured lore of
the ages handed down from one generation to another? But when we
see the result, when the little one begins to do what its parents
and grandparents have done, is it not evident that the teaching
must have been given, though in some way beyond our ken? If Tommy's
mother had not taught him, there is at least an even chance that he
would have tried to grow red before he grew big. But he laid her
lesson to heart, and day by day, week by week, his rotundity
expanded, while his verdancy remained.
It was a very beautiful life that they lived in the garden; and if
the thoughts and feelings that unfolded there could be known,
perhaps they would seem even more wonderful than the things which
the old German gardener cultivated. Away at one end were the beds
of old-fashioned flowers: hollyhocks and phlox and stocks,
coreopsis and calliopsis, calendula and campanula, fox-gloves and
monks-hoods and lady-slippers. At the other end were the
strawberry-bed and the asparagus-bed. In between, there were long
rows of all kinds of vegetables and small fruits and fragrant
herbs.
Who can tell what ideas and emotions were stirring in those placid
companies of leguminous comrades? What aspirations toward a loftier
life in the climbing beans? What high spirits in the corn? What
light and airy dreams on the asparagus-bed? What philosophy among
the sage? Imagine what great schemes were hatching among the
egg-plants, and what hot feelings stung the peppers when the
raspberries crowded them!
Tommy, from his central place in the garden must have felt the
agitation of this mimic world around him. Many a time, no doubt, he
was tempted to give himself up to one or another of the contiguous
influences, and throw himself into the social tide for "one
glorious hour of crowded life." But his mother always held him
back.
"No, my Tommykin, stay with me. It is not for you to climb a pole
like a bean or wave in the wind like an asparagus stalk, or rasp
your neighbours like a raspberry. Be modest, be natural, be true to
yourself. Stay with me and grow fat."
When the sunshine of the long July days flooded the garden,
glistening on the silken leaves of the corn, wilting the
potato-blossoms, unfolding the bright yellow flowers of the okra
and the melon, Tom would fain have pushed himself out into the full
tide of light and heat. But his mother bent tenderly over him.
"Not yet, my child; it is not time for you to bear the heat of the
day. A little shade is good for you. Let me cover you. It is too
soon for you to be sunburned."
When the plumping afternoon showers came down, refreshing leaf and
root of every plant, Tom shrank from the precipitate inundation.
"Mother, I'm all wet. I want to come in out of the rain."
But the mother knew what was good for him. So she held him out
bravely while the streaming drops washed him; and she taught him
how to draw in the moisture which she gathered for his nourishment.
In late August a change began to come over his complexion. His
verdant brilliancy was "sicklied o'er with a pale cast of thought,"
whitish, yellowish, nondescript. A foolish human mother would have
been alarmed and would have hurried to the medicine closet for a
remedy for biliousness. Not so Tom's wise parent. She knew that the
time had come for him to grow red. She let him have his own way now
about being out in the sunshine. She even thrust him gently forth
into the full light, withdrawing the shelter that she had cast
around him. Slowly, gradually, but surely the bright crimson hue
spread over him, until the illumination was complete, and the
mother felt that he was the most beautiful of her children--not the
largest, but round and plump and firm and glowing red as a ruby.
Then the mother-heart knew that the perils of life were near at
hand for Little Red Tom. Many of his brothers had already been torn
from her by the cruel hand of fate and had disappeared into the
unknown.
"Where have they gone to?" wondered Tom. But his mother could not
tell him. All that she could do was to warn him of the unseen
dangers that surrounded him, and prepare him to meet them.
"Listen, my child, and do as I tell you. When you hear a step on
the garden path, that means danger; and when a thing with wings
flies around me and comes near to you, that means danger too. But I
will teach you how to avoid it. I will give you three signs.
"The first sign is a rustling noise that I will make when a bird
comes near to you. That means _droop_. Let yourself down behind the
wire netting that I lean on, and then the bird will be afraid to
come close enough to peck at you. The second sign is a trembling
that you will feel in my arms when the gardener comes along the
walk. That means _snuggle_. Hide yourself as close to me as you
can. The third sign--well, I will tell you the third sign to-morrow
evening, for now I am tired."
In the early morning of a bright September day, while the dew was
still heavy on the leaves and the grass, and the gossamer cobwebs
glistened with little diamonds, a hungry robin flew into the
garden, and Tom heard the signal "_Droop!_" So he let himself down
behind the woven wire, and the robin put his head on one side and
looked at Tom greedily, and flew on to find a breakfast elsewhere.
A little before noon, when the sun was shining broadly and the
silken tassels of the corn were shrivelling up into make-believe
tobacco for bad little boys to smoke, there was a heavy step on the
garden walk, and Tom felt the signal "_Snuggle!_" Then he hugged as
close as he could to his mother's side, and the gardener with his
sharp knife cut off all Tom's surviving brothers and put them into
a box full of vegetables. But he did not see Tom, hidden close and
safe.
How glad the mother must have been, and how much Tom must have
loved her as he remembered all her wise lessons! It was a long
beautiful afternoon that they spent together, filled with pleasant
reminiscences, touched by no shadow of gloom, no dream of parting.
A golden afternoon--the last!
Just before sunset, a fair creature, clothed in white, came into
the garden. She moved for a while among the flowers, her yellow
hair gleaming in the low rays of the sun, her eyes bluer than
forget-me-nots. Who could think that such a creature could be cruel
or heartless? Who could dream that she would pursue her pleasure at
the cost of pain to the innocent? Who could imagine that she would
take life to feed her own?
Gently and daintily she came down the garden walk, past the
raspberry patch, past the tall rows of corn, past the egg-plants
and the peppers, with steps so light that the ground hardly felt
them, with bright eyes glancing from side to side--yes, with all
these, and also with a remorseless purpose in her heart and a
basket half full of cut flowers on her arm.
No signal to _droop_ or _snuggle_ came to Tom. The third
signal--ah, that he had not yet learned! So he basked his rosy
sides in the sunlight as the lovely apparition drew near to him.
She looked at him with delight. She put out her delicate hand to
embrace him. Then, without a tremor, she tore him ruthlessly from
his mother's grasp, from the home that he loved, and dropped him
into her basket.
"Oh, you little red beauty!" she cried. "You are just what I wanted
to fill up my tomato salad."
That night, as she sat at supper, with her father and mother and
brother and sisters, she was smiling and serene, for the table was
well furnished, and the feast was merry. There was white bread that
had been ground from thousands of innocent blades of wheat, once
waving in the sunlight, and a juicy fish that had been lured and
unwillingly drawn from the crystal waters. There was a brace of
grouse that had been snatched away from their feeding-grounds among
the spicy berries in the woods. And there was poor Little Red Tom,
in the centre of the salad, surrounded by crisp lettuce leaves and
dressed to the queen's taste.
Are there not some who would have shed tears at that sight, and
lamented even while they ate? But do you suppose the young girl was
one of that kind? Do you imagine that she thought she had played a
part in a tragedy? Not a bit of it. She was simply grateful that
her salad was so good, and glad that the others liked it.
* * * * *
_Moral_
_Reader, if you would not be like this young girl, you must read
and believe_----[1]
[1] Note: I regret to state that my Uncle Peter's manuscript
broke off at this point.
SILVERHORNS
The railway station of Bathurst, New Brunswick, did not look
particularly merry at two o'clock of a late September morning. There
was an easterly haar driving in from the _Baie des Chaleurs_ and the
darkness was so saturated with chilly moisture that an honest downpour
of rain would have been a relief. Two or three depressed and somnolent
travellers yawned in the waiting-room, which smelled horribly of smoky
lamps. The telegraph instrument in the ticket-office clicked
spasmodically for a minute, and then relapsed into a gloomy silence.
The imperturbable station-master was tipped back against the wall in a
wooden armchair, with his feet on the table, and his mind sunk in an
old Christmas number of _The Cowboy Magazine_. The express-agent, in
the baggage-room, was going over his last week's way-bills and accounts
by the light of a lantern, trying to locate an error, and sighing
profanely to himself as he failed to find it. A wooden trunk tied with
rope, a couple of dingy canvas bags, a long box marked "Fresh Fish!
Rush!" and two large leather portmanteaus with brass fittings were
piled on the luggage-truck at the far end of the platform; and beside
the door of the waiting-room, sheltered by the overhanging eaves, was a
neat travelling bag, with a gun-case and a rod-case leaning against the
wall. The wet rails glittered dimly northward and southward away into
the night. A few blurred lights glimmered from the village across the
bridge.
Dudley Hemenway had observed all these features of the landscape with
silent dissatisfaction, as he smoked steadily up and down the platform,
waiting for the Maritime Express. It is usually irritating to arrive at
the station on time for a train on the Intercolonial Railway. The
arrangement is seldom mutual; and sometimes yesterday's train does not
come along until to-morrow afternoon. Moreover, Hemenway was inwardly
discontented with the fact that he was coming out of the woods instead
of going in. "Coming out" always made him a little unhappy, whether his
expedition had been successful or not. He did not like the thought that
it was all over; and he had the very bad habit, at such times, of
looking ahead and computing the slowly lessening number of chances that
were left to him.
"Sixty odd years--I may live to be that old and keep my shooting
sight," he said to himself. "That would give me a couple of dozen more
camping trips. It's a short allowance. I wonder if any of them will be
more lucky than this one. This makes the seventh year I've tried to get
a moose; and the odd trick has gone against me every time."
He tossed away the end of his cigar, which made a little trail of
sparks as it rolled along the sopping platform, and turned to look in
through the window of the ticket-office. Something in the agent's
attitude of literary absorption aggravated him. He went round to the
door and opened it.
"Don't you know or care when this train is coming?"
"Nope," said the man placidly.
"Well, when? What's the matter with her? When is she due?"
"Doo twenty minits ago," said the man. "Forty minits late down to
Noocastle. Git here quatter to three, ef nothin' more happens."
"But what has happened already? What's wrong with the beastly old road,
anyhow?"
"Freight-car skipped the track," said the man "up to Charlo. Everythin'
hung up an' kinder goin' slow till they git the line clear. Dunno
nothin' more."
With this conclusive statement the agent seemed to disclaim all
responsibility for the future of impatient travellers, and dropped his
mind back into the magazine again. Hemenway lit another cigar and went
into the baggage-room to smoke with the expressman. It was nearly three
o'clock when they heard the far-off shriek of the whistle sounding up
from the south; then, after an interval, the puffing of the engine on
the up-grade; then the faint ringing of the rails, the increasing
clatter of the train, and the blazing headlight of the locomotive swept
slowly through the darkness, past the platform. The engineer was
leaning on one arm, with his head out of the cab-window, and as he
passed he nodded and waved his hand to Hemenway. The conductor also
nodded and hurried into the ticket-office, where the tick-tack of a
conversation by telegraph was soon under way. The black porter of the
Pullman car was looking out from the vestibule, and when he saw
Hemenway his sleepy face broadened into a grin reminiscent of many
generous tips.
"Howdy, Mr. Hennigray," he cried; "glad to see yo' ag'in, sah! I got
yo' section alright, sah! Lemme take yo' things, sah! Train gwine to
stop hy'eh fo' some time yet, I reckon."
"Well, Charles," said Hemenway, "you take my things and put them in the
car. Careful with that gun now! The Lord only knows how much time this
train's going to lose. I'm going ahead to see the engineer."
Angus McLeod was a grizzle-bearded Scotchman who had run a locomotive
on the Intercolonial ever since the road was cut through the woods from
New Brunswick to Quebec. Everyone who travelled often on that line knew
him, and all who knew him well enough to get below his rough crust,
liked him for his big heart.
"Hallo, McLeod," said Hemenway as he came up through the darkness, "is
that you?"
"It's nane else," answered the engineer as he stepped down from his cab
and shook hands warmly. "Hoo are ye, Dud, an' whaur hae ye been
murderin' the innocent beasties noo? Hae ye killt yer moose yet? Ye've
been chasin' him these mony years."
"Not much murdering," replied Hemenway. "I had a queer trip this
time--away up the Nepissiguit, with old McDonald. You know him, don't
you?"
"Fine do I ken Rob McDonald, an' a guid mon he is. Hoo was it that ye
couldna slaughter stacks o' moose wi' him to help ye? Did ye see nane
at all?"
"Plenty, and one with the biggest horns in the world! But that's a long
story, and there's no time to tell it now."
"Time to burrrn, Dud, nae fear o' it! 'Twill be an hour afore the
line's clear to Charlo an' they lat us oot o' this. Come awa' up into
the cab, mon, an' tell us yer tale.' Tis couthy an' warm in the cab,
an' I'm willin' to leesten to yer bluidy advaintures."
So the two men clambered up into the engineer's seat. Hemenway gave
McLeod his longest and strongest cigar, and filled his own briarwood
pipe. The rain was now pattering gently on the roof of the cab. The
engine
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