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Title: Excursions

Author: Henry David Thoreau

Contributor: Ralph Waldo Emerson

Release date: February 1, 2006 [eBook #9846]
Most recently updated: January 21, 2022

Language: English

Other information and formats: www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/9846

Credits: Charles Bidwell and PG Distributed Proofreaders

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Excursions

by Henry David Thoreau

1863

Contents

BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCH
NATURAL HISTORY OF MASSACHUSETTS
A WALK TO WACHUSETT
THE LANDLORD
A WINTER WALK
THE SUCCESSION OF FOREST TREES
WALKING
AUTUMNAL TINTS
WILD APPLES
NIGHT AND MOONLIGHT

BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCH.
BY R.W. EMERSON.

HENRY DAVID THOREAU was the last male descendant of a French
ancestor who came to this country from the Isle of Guernsey. His character
exhibited occasional traits drawn from this blood in singular combination
with a very strong Saxon genius.
He was born in Concord, Massachusetts, on the 12th of July, 1817. He
was graduated at Harvard College in 1837, but without any literary
distinction. An iconoclast in literature, he seldom thanked colleges for their
service to him, holding them in small esteem, whilst yet his debt to them
was important. After leaving the University, he joined his brother in
teaching a private school, which he soon renounced. His father was a
manufacturer of lead-pencils, and Henry applied himself for a time to this
craft, believing he could make a better pencil than was then in use. After
completing his experiments, he exhibited his work to chemists and artists in
Boston, and having obtained their certificates to its excellence and to its
equality with the best London manufacture, he returned home contented.
His friends congratulated him that he had now opened his way to fortune.
But he replied, that he should never make another pencil. “Why should I? I
would not do again what I have done once.” He resumed his endless walks
and miscellaneous studies, making every day some new acquaintance with
Nature, though as yet never speaking of zoölogy or botany, since, though
very studious of natural facts, he was incurious of technical and textual
science.
At this time, a strong, healthy youth, fresh from college, whilst all his
companions were choosing their profession, or eager to begin some
lucrative employment, it was inevitable that his thoughts should be
exercised on the same question, and it required rare decision to refuse all
the accustomed paths, and keep his solitary freedom at the cost of

disappointing the natural expectations of his family and friends: all the
more difficult that he had a perfect probity, was exact in securing his own
independence, and in holding every man to the like duty. But Thoreau never
faltered. He was a born protestant. He declined to give up his large ambition
of knowledge and action for any narrow craft or profession, aiming at a
much more comprehensive calling, the art of living well. If he slighted and
defied the opinions of others, it was only that he was more intent to
reconcile his practice with his own belief. Never idle or self-indulgent, he
preferred, when he wanted money, earning it by some piece of manual labor
agreeable to him, as building a boat or a fence, planting, grafting,
surveying, or other short work, to any long engagements. With his hardy
habits and few wants, his skill in wood-craft, and his powerful arithmetic,
he was very competent to live in any part of the world. It would cost him
less time to supply his wants than another. He was therefore secure of his
leisure.
A natural skill for mensuration, growing out of his mathematical
knowledge, and his habit of ascertaining the measures and distances of
objects which interested him, the size of trees, the depth and extent of ponds
and rivers, the height of mountains, and the air-line distance of his favorite
summits,—this, and his intimate knowledge of the territory about Concord,
made him drift into the profession of land-surveyor. It had the advantage for
him that it led him continually into new and secluded grounds, and helped
his studies of Nature. His accuracy and skill in this work were readily
appreciated, and he found all the employment he wanted.
He could easily solve the problems of the surveyor, but he was daily
beset with graver questions, which he manfully confronted. He interrogated
every custom, and wished to settle all his practice on an ideal foundation.
He was a protestant à l’outrance, and few lives contain so many
renunciations. He was bred to no profession; he never married; he lived
alone; he never went to church; he never voted; he refused to pay a tax to
the State: he ate no flesh, he drank no wine, he never knew the use of
tobacco; and, though a naturalist, he used neither trap nor gun. He chose,
wisely, no doubt, for himself, to be the bachelor of thought and Nature. He
had no talent for wealth, and knew how to be poor without the least hint of
squalor or inelegance. Perhaps he fell into his way of living without
forecasting it much, but approved it with later wisdom.

“I am often reminded,” he wrote in his journal, “that, if I had bestowed
on me the wealth of Croesus, my aims must be still the same, and my means
essentially the same.” He had no temptations to fight against,—no appetites,
no passions, no taste for elegant trifles. A fine house, dress, the manners and
talk of highly cultivated people were all thrown away on him. He much
preferred a good Indian, and considered these refinements as impediments
to conversation, wishing to meet his companion on the simplest terms. He
declined invitations to dinner-parties, because there each was in every one’s
way, and he could not meet the individuals to any purpose. “They make
their pride,” he said, “in making their dinner cost much; I make my pride in
making my dinner cost little.” When asked at table what dish he preferred,
he answered, “The nearest.” He did not like the taste of wine, and never had
a vice in his life. He said,—“I have a faint recollection of pleasure derived
from smoking dried lily-stems, before I was a man. I had commonly a
supply of these. I have never smoked anything more noxious.”
He chose to be rich by making his wants few, and supplying them
himself. In his travels, he used the railroad only to get over so much country
as was unimportant to the present purpose, walking hundreds of miles,
avoiding taverns, buying a lodging in farmers’ and fishermen’s houses, as
cheaper, and more agreeable to him, and because there he could better find
the men and the information he wanted.
There was somewhat military in his nature not to be subdued, always
manly and able, but rarely tender, as if he did not feel himself except in
opposition. He wanted a fallacy to expose, a blunder to pillory, I may say
required a little sense of victory, a roll of the drum, to call his powers into
full exercise. It cost him nothing to say No; indeed, he found it much easier
than to say Yes. It seemed as if his first instinct on hearing a proposition
was to controvert it, so impatient was he of the limitations of our daily
thought. This habit, of course, is a little chilling to the social affections; and
though the companion would in the end acquit him of any malice or
untruth, yet it mars conversation. Hence, no equal companion stood in
affectionate relations with one so pure and guileless. “I love Henry,” said
one of his friends, “but I cannot like him; and as for taking his arm, I should
as soon think of taking the arm of an elm-tree.”
Yet, hermit and stoic as he was, he was really fond of sympathy, and
threw himself heartily and childlike into the company of young people

whom he loved, and whom he delighted to entertain, as he only could, with
the varied and endless anecdotes of his experiences by field and river. And
he was always ready to lead a huckleberry party or a search for chestnuts or
grapes. Talking, one day, of a public discourse, Henry remarked, that
whatever succeeded with the audience was bad. I said, “Who would not like
to write something which all can read, like ‘Robinson Crusoe’? and who
does not see with regret that his page is not solid with a right materialistic
treatment, which delights everybody?” Henry objected, of course, and
vaunted the better lectures which reached only a few persons. But, at
supper, a young girl, understanding that he was to lecture at the Lyceum,
sharply asked him, “whether his lecture would be a nice, interesting story,
such as she wished to hear, or whether it was one of those old philosophical
things that she did not care about.” Henry turned to her, and bethought
himself, and, I saw, was trying to believe that he had matter that might fit
her and her brother, who were to sit up and go to the lecture, if it was a
good one for them.
He was a speaker and actor of the truth,—born such,—and was ever
running into dramatic situations from this cause. In any circumstance, it
interested all bystanders to know what part Henry would take, and what he
would say; and he did not disappoint expectation, but used an original
judgment on each emergency. In 1845 he built himself a small framed
house on the shores of Walden Pond, and lived there two years alone, a life
of labor and study. This action was quite native and fit for him. No one who
knew him would tax him with affectation. He was more unlike his
neighbors in his thought than in his action. As soon as he had exhausted the
advantages of that solitude, he abandoned it. In 1847, not approving some
uses to which the public expenditure was applied, he refused to pay his
town tax, and was put in jail. A friend paid the tax for him, and he was
released. The like annoyance was threatened the next year. But, as his
friends paid the tax, notwithstanding his protest, I believe he ceased to
resist. No opposition or ridicule had any weight with him. He coldly and
fully stated his opinion without affecting to believe that it was the opinion
of the company. It was of no consequence, if every one present held the
opposite opinion. On one occasion he went to the University Library to
procure some books. The librarian refused to lend them. Mr. Thoreau
repaired to the President, who stated to him the rules and usages, which
permitted the loan of books to resident graduates, to clergymen who were

alumni, and to some others resident within a circle of ten miles’ radius from
the College. Mr. Thoreau explained to the President that the railroad had
destroyed the old scale of distances,—that the library was useless, yes, and
President and College useless, on the terms of his rules,—that the one
benefit he owed to the College was its library,— that, at this moment, not
only his want of books was imperative, but he wanted a large number of
books, and assured him that he, Thoreau, and not the librarian, was the
proper custodian of these. In short, the President found the petitioner so
formidable, and the rules getting to look so ridiculous, that he ended by
giving him a privilege which in his hands proved unlimited thereafter.
No truer American existed than Thoreau. His preference of his country
and condition was genuine, and his aversation from English and European
manners and tastes almost reached contempt. He listened impatiently to
news or bon mots gleaned from London circles; and though he tried to be
civil, these anecdotes fatigued him. The men were all imitating each other,
and on a small mould. Why can they not live as far apart as possible, and
each be a man by himself? What he sought was the most energetic nature;
and he wished to go to Oregon, not to London. “In every part of Great
Britain,” he wrote in his diary, “are discovered traces of the Romans, their
funereal urns, their camps, their roads, their dwellings. But New England, at
least, is not based on any Roman ruins. We have not to lay the foundations
of our houses on the ashes of a former civilization.”
But, idealist as he was, standing for abolition of slavery, abolition of
tariffs, almost for abolition of government, it is needless to say he found
himself not only unrepresented in actual politics, but almost equally
opposed to every class of reformers. Yet he paid the tribute of his uniform
respect to the Anti-Slavery Party. One man, whose personal acquaintance he
had formed, he honored with exceptional regard. Before the first friendly
word had been spoken for Captain John Brown, after the arrest, he sent
notices to most houses in Concord, that he would speak in a public hall on
the condition and character of John Brown, on Sunday evening, and invited
all people to come. The Republican Committee, the Abolitionist Committee,
sent him word that it was premature and not advisable. He replied,—“I did
not send to you for advice, but to announce that I am to speak.” The hall
was filled at an early hour by people of all parties, and his earnest eulogy of
the hero was heard by all respectfully, by many with a sympathy that
surprised themselves.

It was said of Plotinus that he was ashamed of his body, and ’tis very
likely he had good reason for it,—that his body was a bad servant, and he
had not skill in dealing with the material world, as happens often to men of
abstract intellect. But Mr. Thoreau was equipped with a most adapted and
serviceable body. He was of short stature, firmly built, of light complexion,
with strong, serious blue eyes, and a grave aspect,—his face covered in the
late years with a becoming beard. His senses were acute, his frame well-
knit and hardy, his hands strong and skilful in the use of tools. And there
was a wonderful fitness of body and mind. He could pace sixteen rods more
accurately than another man could measure them with rod and chain. He
could find his path in the woods at night, he said, better by his feet than his
eyes. He could estimate the measure of a tree very well by his eyes; he
could estimate the weight of a calf or a pig, like a dealer. From a box
containing a bushel or more of loose pencils, he could take up with his
hands fast enough just a dozen pencils at every grasp. He was a good
swimmer, runner, skater, boatman, and would probably outwalk most
countrymen in a day’s journey. And the relation of body to mind was still
finer than we have indicated. He said he wanted every stride his legs made.
The length of his walk uniformly made the length of his writing. If shut up
in the house, he did not write at all.
He had a strong common sense, like that which Rose Flammock, the
weaver’s daughter, in Scott’s romance, commends in her father, as
resembling a yardstick, which, whilst it measures dowlas and diaper, can
equally well measure tapestry and cloth of gold. He had always a new
resource. When I was planting forest-trees, and had procured half a peck of
acorns, he said that only a small portion of them would be sound, and
proceeded to examine them, and select the sound ones. But finding this took
time, he said, “I think, if you put them all into water, the good ones will
sink;” which experiment we tried with success. He could plan a garden, or a
house, or a barn; would have been competent to lead a “Pacific Exploring
Expedition”; could give judicious counsel in the gravest private or public
affairs.
He lived for the day, not cumbered and mortified by his memory. If he
brought you yesterday a new proposition, he would bring you to-day
another not less revolutionary. A very industrious man, and setting, like all
highly organized men, a high value on his time, he seemed the only man of
leisure in town, always ready for any excursion that promised well, or for

conversation prolonged into late hours. His trenchant sense was never
stopped by his rules of daily prudence, but was always up to the new
occasion. He liked and used the simplest food, yet, when some one urged a
vegetable diet, Thoreau thought all diets a very small matter, saying that
“the man who shoots the buffalo lives better than the man who boards at the
Graham House.” He said,—“You can sleep near the railroad, and never be
disturbed: Nature knows very well what sounds are worth attending to, and
has made up her mind not to hear the railroad-whistle. But things respect
the devout mind, and a mental ecstasy was never interrupted.” He noted,
what repeatedly befell him, that, after receiving from a distance a rare plant,
he would presently find the same in his own haunts. And those pieces of
luck which happen only to good players happened to him. One day, walking
with a stranger, who inquired where Indian arrow-heads could he found, he
replied, “Everywhere,” and, stooping forward, picked one on the instant
from the ground. At Mount Washington, in Tuckerman’s Ravine, Thoreau
had a bad fall, and sprained his foot. As he was in the act of getting up from
his fall, he saw for the first time the leaves of the Arnica mollis.
His robust common sense, armed with stout hands, keen perceptions, and
strong will, cannot yet account for the superiority which shone in his simple
and hidden life. I must add the cardinal fact, that there was an excellent
wisdom in him, proper to a rare class of men, which showed him the
material world as a means and symbol. This discovery, which sometimes
yields to poets a certain casual and interrupted light, serving for the
ornament of their writing, was in him an unsleeping insight; and whatever
faults or obstructions of temperament might cloud it, he was not disobedient
to the heavenly vision. In his youth, he said, one day, “The other world is all
my art: my pencils will draw no other; my jack-knife will cut nothing else; I
do not use it as a means.” This was the muse and genius that ruled his
opinions, conversation, studies, work, and course of life. This made him a
searching judge of men. At first glance he measured his companion, and,
though insensible to some fine traits of culture, could very well report his
weight and calibre. And this made the impression of genius which his
conversation often gave.
He understood the matter in hand at a glance, and saw the limitations and
poverty of those he talked with, so that nothing seemed concealed from
such terrible eyes. I have repeatedly known young men of sensibility
converted in a moment to the belief that this was the man they were in

search of, the man of men, who could tell them all they should do. His own
dealing with them was never affectionate, but superior, didactic,—scorning
their petty ways,—very slowly conceding, or not conceding at all, the
promise of his society at their houses, or even at his own. “Would he not
walk with them?” “He did not know. There was nothing so important to him
as his walk; he had no walks to throw away on company.” Visits were
offered him from respectful parties, but he declined them. Admiring friends
offered to carry him at their own cost to the Yellow-Stone River,—to the
West Indies,—to South America. But though nothing could be more grave
or considered than his refusals, they remind one in quite new relations of
that fop Brummel’s reply to the gentleman who offered him his carriage in a
shower, “But where will you ride, then?”—and what accusing silences, and
what searching and irresistible speeches, battering down all defences, his
companions can remember!
Mr. Thoreau dedicated his genius with such entire love to the fields, hills,
and waters of his native town, that he made them known and interesting to
all reading Americans, and to people over the sea. The river on whose banks
he was born and died he knew from its springs to its confluence with the
Merrimack. He had made summer and winter observations on it for many
years, and at every hour of the day and the night. The result of the recent
survey of the Water Commissioners appointed by the State of
Massachusetts he had reached by his private experiments, several years
earlier. Every fact which occurs in the bed, on the banks, or in the air over
it; the fishes, and their spawning and nests, their manners, their food; the
shad-flies which fill the air on a certain evening once a year, and which are
snapped at by the fishes so ravenously that many of these die of repletion;
the conical heaps of small stones on the river-shallows, one of which heaps
will sometimes overfill a cart,—these heaps the huge nests of small fishes;
the birds which frequent the stream, heron, duck, sheldrake, loon, osprey;
the snake, musk-rat, otter, woodchuck, and fox, on the banks; the turtle,
frog, hyla, and cricket, which make the banks vocal,—were all known to
him, and, as it were, townsmen and fellow-creatures; so that he felt an
absurdity or violence in any narrative of one of these by itself apart, and
still more of its dimensions on an inch-rule, or in the exhibition of its
skeleton, or the specimen of a squirrel or a bird in brandy. He liked to speak
of the manners of the river, as itself a lawful creature, yet with exactness,

and always to an observed fact. As he knew the river, so the ponds in this
region.
One of the weapons he used, more important than microscope or alcohol-
receiver to other investigators, was a whim which grew on him by
indulgence, yet appeared in gravest statement, namely, of extolling his own
town and neighborhood as the most favored centre for natural observation.
He remarked that the Flora of Massachusetts embraced almost all the
important plants of America,—most of the oaks, most of the willows, the
best pines, the ash, the maple, the beech, the nuts. He returned Kane’s
“Arctic Voyage” to a friend of whom he had borrowed it, with the remark,
that “most of the phenomena noted might be observed in Concord.” He
seemed a little envious of the Pole, for the coincident sunrise and sunset, or
five minutes’ day after six months: a splendid fact, which Annursnuc had
never afforded him. He found red snow in one of his walks, and told me
that he expected to find yet the Victoria regia in Concord. He was the
attorney of the indigenous plants, and owned to a preference of the weeds to
the imported plants, as of the Indian to the civilized man,—and noticed,
with pleasure, that the willow bean-poles of his neighbor had grown more
than his beans. “See these weeds,” he said, “which have been hoed at by a
million farmers all spring and summer, and yet have prevailed, and just now
come out triumphant over all lanes, pastures, fields, and gardens, such is
their vigor. We have insulted them with low names, too,—as Pigweed,
Wormwood, Chickweed, Shad-Blossom.” He says, “They have brave
names, too,—Ambrosia, Stellaria, Amelanchia, Amaranth, etc.”
I think his fancy for referring everything to the meridian of Concord did
not grow out of any ignorance or depreciation of other longitudes or
latitudes, but was rather a playful expression of his conviction of the
indifferency of all places, and that the best place for each is where he
stands. He expressed it once in this wise:—“I think nothing is to be hoped
from you, if this bit of mould under your feet is not sweeter to you to eat
than any other in this world, or in any world.”
The other weapon with which he conquered all obstacles in science was
patience. He knew how to sit immovable, a part of the rock he rested on,
until the bird, the reptile, the fish, which had retired from him, should come
back, and resume its habits, nay, moved by curiosity, should come to him
and watch him.

It was a pleasure and a privilege to walk with him. He knew the country
like a fox or a bird, and passed through it as freely by paths of his own. He
knew every track in the snow or on the ground, and what creature had taken
this path before him. One must submit abjectly to such a guide, and the
reward was great. Under his arm he carried an old music-book to press
plants; in his pocket, his diary and pencil, a spy-glass for birds, microscope,
jack-knife, and twine. He wore straw hat, stout shoes, strong gray trousers,
to brave shrub-oaks and smilax, and to climb a tree for a hawk’s or a
squirrel’s nest. He waded into the pool for the water-plants, and his strong
legs were no insignificant part of his armor. On the day I speak of he looked
for the Menyanthes, detected it across the wide pool, and, on examination
of the florets, decided that it had been in flower five days. He drew out of
his breast-pocket his diary, and read the names of all the plants that should
bloom on this day, whereof he kept account as a banker when his notes fall
due. The Cypripedium not due till to-morrow. He thought, that, if waked up
from a trance, in this swamp, he could tell by the plants what time of the
year it was within two days. The redstart was flying about, and presently the
fine grosbeaks, whose brilliant scarlet makes the rash gazer wipe his eye,
and whose fine clear note Thoreau compared to that of a tanager which has
got rid of its hoarseness. Presently he heard a note which he called that of
the night-warbler, a bird he had never identified, had been in search of
twelve years, which always, when he saw it, was in the act of diving down
into a tree or bush, and which it was vain to seek; the only bird that sings
indifferently by night and by day. I told him he must beware of finding and
booking it, lest life should have nothing more to show him. He said, “What
you seek in vain for, half your life, one day you come full upon all the
family at dinner. You seek it like a dream, and as soon as you find it you
become its prey.”
His interest in the flower or the bird lay very deep in his mind, was
connected with Nature,—and the meaning of Nature was never attempted to
be defined by him. He would not offer a memoir of his observations to the
Natural History Society. “Why should I? To detach the description from its
connections in my mind would make it no longer true or valuable to me:
and they do not wish what belongs to it.” His power of observation seemed
to indicate additional senses. He saw as with microscope, heard as with ear-
trumpet, and his memory was a photographic register of all he saw and
heard. And yet none knew better than he that it is not the fact that imports,

but the impression or effect of the fact on your mind. Every fact lay in glory
in his mind, a type of the order and beauty of the whole. His determination
on Natural History was organic. He confessed that he sometimes felt like a
hound or a panther, and, if born among Indians, would have been a fell
hunter. But, restrained by his Massachusetts culture, he played out the game
in this mild form of botany and ichthyology. His intimacy with animals
suggested what Thomas Fuller records of Butler the apiologist, that “either
he had told the bees things or the bees had told him.” Snakes coiled round
his leg; the fishes swam into his hand, and he took them out of the water; he
pulled the woodchuck out of its hole by the tail, and took the foxes under
his protection from the hunters. Our naturalist had perfect magnanimity; he
had no secrets: he would carry you to the heron’s haunt, or even to his most
prized botanical swamp,—possibly knowing that you could never find it
again, yet willing to take his risks.
No college ever offered him a diploma, or a professor’s chair; no
academy made him its corresponding secretary, its discoverer, or even its
member. Whether these learned bodies feared the satire of his presence. Yet
so much knowledge of Nature’s secret and genius few others possessed,
none in a more large and religious synthesis. For not a particle of respect
had he to the opinions of any man or body of men, but homage solely to the
truth itself; and as he discovered everywhere among doctors some leaning
of courtesy, it discredited them. He grew to be revered and admired by his
townsmen, who had at first known him only as an oddity. The farmers who
employed him as a surveyor soon discovered his rare accuracy and skill, his
knowledge of their lands, of trees, of birds, of Indian remains, and the like,
which enabled him to tell every farmer more than he knew before of his
own farm; so that he began to feel as if Mr. Thoreau had better rights in his
land than he. They felt, too, the superiority of character which addressed all
men with a native authority.
Indian relics abound in Concord,—arrow-heads, stone chisels, pestles,
and fragments of pottery; and on the river-bank, large heaps of clam-shells
and ashes mark spots which the savages frequented. These, and every
circumstance touching the Indian, were important in his eyes. His visits to
Maine were chiefly for love of the Indian. He had the satisfaction of seeing
the manufacture of the bark-canoe, as well as of trying his hand in its
management on the rapids. He was inquisitive about the making of the
stone arrow-head, and in his last days charged a youth setting out for the

Rocky Mountains to find an Indian who could tell him that: “It was well
worth a visit to California to learn it.” Occasionally, a small party of
Penobscot Indians would visit Concord, and pitch their tents for a few
weeks in summer on the river-bank. He failed not to make acquaintance
with the best of them; though he well knew that asking questions of Indians
is like catechizing beavers and rabbits. In his last visit to Maine he had great
satisfaction from Joseph Polis, an intelligent Indian of Oldtown, who was
his guide for some weeks.
He was equally interested in every natural fact. The depth of his
perception found likeness of law throughout Nature, and I know not any
genius who so swiftly inferred universal law from the single fact. He was
no pedant of a department. His eye was open to beauty, and his ear to
music. He found these, not in rare conditions, but wheresoever he went. He
thought the best of music was in single strains; and he found poetic
suggestion in the humming of the telegraph-wire.
His poetry might be bad or good; he no doubt wanted a lyric facility and
technical skill; but he had the source of poetry in his spiritual perception.
He was a good reader and critic, and his judgment on poetry was to the
ground of it. He could not be deceived as to the presence or absence of the
poetic element in any composition, and his thirst for this made him
negligent and perhaps scornful of superficial graces. He would pass by
many delicate rhythms, but he would have detected every live stanza or line
in a volume, and knew very well where to find an equal poetic charm in
prose. He was so enamored of the spiritual beauty that he held all actual
written poems in very light esteem in the comparison. He admired
Aeschylus and Pindar; but, when some one was commending them, he said
that “Aeschylus and the Greeks, in describing Apollo and Orpheus, had
given no song, or no good one. They ought not to have moved trees, but to
have chanted to the gods such a hymn as would have sung all their old ideas
out of their heads, and new ones in.” His own verses are often rude and
defective. The gold does not yet run pure, is drossy and crude. The thyme
and marjoram are not yet honey. But if he want lyric fineness and technical
merits, if he have not the poetic temperament, he never lacks the causal
thought, showing that his genius was better than his talent. He knew the
worth of the Imagination for the uplifting and consolation of human life,
and liked to throw every thought into a symbol. The fact you tell is of no
value, but only the impression. For this reason his presence was poetic,

always piqued the curiosity to know more deeply the secrets of his mind.
He had many reserves, an unwillingness to exhibit to profane eyes what was
still sacred in his own, and knew well how to throw a poetic veil over his
experience. All readers of “Walden” will remember his mythical record of
his disappointments:—
“I long ago lost a hound, a bay horse, and a turtledove, and am still on
their trail. Many are the travellers I have spoken concerning them,
describing their tracks, and what calls they answered to. I have met one or
two who had heard the hound, and the tramp of the horse, and even seen the
dove disappear behind a cloud; and they seemed as anxious to recover them
as if they had lost them themselves.” [“Walden” p.20]
His riddles were worth the reading, and I confide, that, if at any time I do
not understand the expression, it is yet just. Such was the wealth of his truth
that it was not worth his while to use words in vain. His poem entitled
“Sympathy” reveals the tenderness under that triple steel of stoicism, and
the intellectual subtilty it could animate. His classic poem on “Smoke”
suggests Simonides, but is better than any poem of Simonides. His
biography is in his verses. His habitual thought makes all his poetry a hymn
to the Cause of causes, the Spirit which vivifies and controls his own.
“I hearing get, who had but ears,
And sight, who had but eyes before;
I moments live, who lived but years,
And truth discern, who knew but learning’s lore.”

And still more in these religious lines:—
“Now chiefly is my natal hour,
And only now my prime of life;
I will not doubt the love untold,
Which not my worth or want hath bought,
Which wooed me young, and wooes me old,
And to this evening hath me brought.”

Whilst he used in his writings a certain petulance of remark in reference
to churches or churchmen, he was a person of a rare, tender, and absolute
religion, a person incapable of any profanation, by act or by thought. Of
course, the same isolation which belonged to his original thinking and
living detached him from the social religious forms. This is neither to be
censured nor regretted. Aristotle long ago explained it, when he said, “One

who surpasses his fellow-citizens in virtue is no longer a part of the city.
Their law is not for him, since he is a law to himself.”
Thoreau was sincerity itself, and might fortify the convictions of prophets
in the ethical laws by his holy living. It was an affirmative experience
which refused to be set aside. A truth-speaker he, capable of the most deep
and strict conversation; a physician to the wounds of any soul; a friend,
knowing not only the secret of friendship, but almost worshipped by those
few persons who resorted to him as their confessor and prophet, and knew
the deep value of his mind and great heart. He thought that without religion
or devotion of some kind nothing great was ever accomplished: and he
thought that the bigoted sectarian had better bear this in mind.
His virtues, of course, sometimes ran into extremes. It was easy to trace
to the inexorable demand on all for exact truth that austerity which made
this willing hermit more solitary even than he wished. Himself of a perfect
probity, he required not less of others. He had a disgust at crime, and no
worldly success could cover it. He detected paltering as readily in dignified
and prosperous persons as in beggars, and with equal scorn. Such dangerous
frankness was in his dealing that his admirers called him “that terrible
Thoreau,” as if he spoke when silent, and was still present when he had
departed. I think the severity of his ideal interfered to deprive him of a
healthy sufficiency of human society.
The habit of a realist to find things the reverse of their appearance
inclined him to put every statement in a paradox. A certain habit of
antagonism defaced his earlier writings,—a trick of rhetoric not quite
outgrown in his later, of substituting for the obvious word and thought its
diametrical opposite. He praised wild mountains and winter forests for their
domestic air, in snow and ice he would find sultriness, and commended the
wilderness for resembling Rome and Paris. “It was so dry, that you might
call it wet.”
The tendency to magnify the moment, to read all the laws of Nature in
the one object or one combination under your eye, is of course comic to
those who do not share the philosopher’s perception of identity. To him
there was no such thing as size. The pond was a small ocean; the Atlantic, a
large Walden Pond. He referred every minute fact to cosmical laws. Though
he meant to be just, he seemed haunted by a certain chronic assumption that
the science of the day pretended completeness, and he had just found out

that the savans had neglected to discriminate a particular botanical variety,
had failed to describe the seeds or count the sepals. “That is to say,” we
replied, “the blockheads were not born in Concord; but who said they were?
It was their unspeakable misfortune to be born in London, or Paris, or
Rome; but, poor fellows, they did what they could, considering that they
never saw Bateman’s Pond, or Nine-Acre Corner, or Becky-Stow’s Swamp.
Besides, what were you sent into the world for, but to add this
observation?”
Had his genius been only contemplative, he had been fitted to his life, but
with his energy and practical ability he seemed born for great enterprise and
for command; and I so much regret the loss of his rare powers of action,
that I cannot help counting it a fault in him that he had no ambition.
Wanting this, instead of engineering for all America, he was the captain of a
huckleberry party. Pounding beans is good to the end of pounding empires
one of these days; but if, at the end of years, it is still only beans!
But these foibles, real or apparent, were fast vanishing in the incessant
growth of a spirit so robust and wise, and which effaced its defeats with
new triumphs. His study of Nature was a perpetual ornament to him, and
inspired his friends with curiosity to see the world through his eyes, and to
hear his adventures. They possessed every kind of interest.
He had many elegances of his own, whilst he scoffed at conventional
elegance. Thus, he could not bear to hear the sound of his own steps, the
grit of gravel; and therefore never willingly walked in the road, but in the
grass, on mountains and in woods. His senses were acute, and he remarked
that by night every dwelling-house gives out bad air, like a slaughter-house.
He liked the pure fragrance of melilot. He honored certain plants with
special regard, and, over all, the pond-lily,—then, the gentian, and the
Mikania scandens, and “life-everlasting,” and a bass-tree which he visited
every year when it bloomed, in the middle of July. He thought the scent a
more oracular inquisition than the sight,—more oracular and trustworthy.
The scent, of course, reveals what is concealed from the other senses. By it
he detected earthiness. He delighted in echoes, and said they were almost
the only kind of kindred voices that he heard. He loved Nature so well, was
so happy in her solitude, that he became very jealous of cities, and the sad
work which their refinements and artifices made with man and his dwelling.
The axe was always destroying his forest. “Thank God,” he said, “they

cannot cut down the clouds!” “All kinds of figures are drawn on the blue
ground with this fibrous white paint.”
I subjoin a few sentences taken from his unpublished manuscripts, not
only as records of his thought and feeling, but for their power of description
and literary excellence.
“Some circumstantial evidence is very strong, as when you find a trout in
the milk.”
“The chub is a soft fish, and tastes like boiled brown paper salted.”
“The youth gets together his materials to build a bridge to the moon, or,
perchance, a palace or temple on the earth, and at length the middle-aged
man concludes to built a wood-shed with them.”
“The locust z-ing.”
“Devil’s-needles zigzagging along the Nut-Meadow brook.”
“Sugar is not so sweet to the palate as sound to the healthy ear.”
“I put on some hemlock-boughs, and the rich salt crackling of their
leaves was like mustard to the ear, the crackling of uncountable regiments.
Dead trees love the fire.”
“The bluebird carries the sky on his back.”
“The tanager flies through the green foliage as if it would ignite the
leaves.”
“If I wish for a horse-hair for my compass-sight, I must go to the stable;
but the hair-bird, with her sharp eyes, goes to the road.”
“Immortal water, alive even to the superficies.”
“Fire is the most tolerable third party.”
“Nature made ferns for pure leaves, to show what she could do in that
line.”
“No tree has so fair a bole and so handsome an instep as the beech.”
“How did these beautiful rainbow-tints get into the shell of the fresh-
water clam, buried in the mud at the bottom of our dark river?”
“Hard are the times when the infant’s shoes are second-foot.”
“We are strictly confined to our men to whom we give liberty.”
“Nothing is so much to be feared as fear. Atheism may comparatively be
popular with God himself.”

“Of what significance the things you can forget? A little thought is sexton
to all the world.”
“How can we expect a harvest of thought who have not had a seed-time
of character?”
“Only he can be trusted with gifts who can present a face of bronze to
expectations.”
“I ask to be melted. You can only ask of the metals that they be tender to
the fire that melts them. To nought else can they be tender.”

There is a flower known to botanists, one of the same genus with our
summer plant called “Life-Everlasting,” a Gnaphalium like that, which
grows on the most inaccessible cliffs of the Tyrolese mountains, where the
chamois dare hardly venture, and which the hunter, tempted by its beauty,
and by his love, (for it is immensely valued by the Swiss maidens,) climbs
the cliffs to gather, and is sometimes found dead at the foot, with the flower
in his hand. It is called by botanists the Gnaphalium leontopodium, but by
the Swiss Edelweisse, which signifies Noble Purity. Thoreau seemed to me
living in the hope to gather this plant, which belonged to him of right. The
scale on which his studies proceeded was so large as to require longevity,
and we were the less prepared for his sudden disappearance. The country
knows not yet, or in the least part, how great a son it has lost. It seems an
injury that he should leave in the midst his broken task, which none else can
finish,—a kind of indignity to so noble a soul, that it should depart out of
Nature before yet he has been really shown to his peers for what he is. But
he, at least, is content. His soul was made for the noblest society; he had in
a short life exhausted the capabilities of this world; wherever there is
knowledge, wherever there is virtue, wherever there is beauty, he will find a
home.

EXCURSIONS

[1]
NATURAL HISTORY OF MASSACHUSETTS.

[1842.]

Books of natural history make the most cheerful winter reading. I read in
Audubon with a thrill of delight, when the snow covers the ground, of the
magnolia, and the Florida keys, and their warm sea-breezes; of the fence-
rail, and the cotton-tree, and the migrations of the rice-bird; of the breaking
up of winter in Labrador, and the melting of the snow on the forks of the
Missouri; and owe an accession of health to these reminiscences of
luxuriant nature.
Within the circuit of this plodding life,
There enter moments of an azure hue,
Untarnished fair as is the violet
Or anemone, when the spring strews them
By some meandering rivulet, which make
The best philosophy untrue that aims
But to console man for his grievances.
I have remembered when the winter came,
High in my chamber in the frosty nights,
When in the still light of the cheerful moon,
On every twig and rail and jutting spout,
The icy spears were adding to their length
Against the arrows of the coming sun,
How in the shimmering noon of summer past
Some unrecorded beam slanted across
The upland pastures where the Johnswort grew;
Or heard, amid the verdure of my mind,
The bee’s long smothered hum, on the blue flag
Loitering amidst the mead; or busy rill,
Which now through all its course stands still and dumb
Its own memorial,—purling at its play
Along the slopes, and through the meadows next,
Until its youthful sound was hushed at last
In the staid current of the lowland stream;
Or seen the furrows shine but late upturned,
And where the fieldfare followed in the rear,
When all the fields around lay bound and hoar

Beneath a thick integument of snow.
So by God’s cheap economy made rich
To go upon my winter’s task again.

I am singularly refreshed in winter when I hear of service-berries, poke-
weed, juniper. Is not heaven made up of these cheap summer glories? There
is a singular health in those words, Labrador and East Main, which no
desponding creed recognizes. How much more than Federal are these
States. If there were no other vicissitudes than the seasons, our interest
would never tire. Much more is adoing than Congress wots of. What journal
do the persimmon and the buckeye keep, and the sharp-shinned hawk?
What is transpiring from summer to winter in the Carolinas, and the Great
Pine Forest, and the Valley of the Mohawk? The merely political aspect of
the land is never very cheering; men are degraded when considered as the
members of a political organization. On this side all lands present only the
symptoms of decay. I see but Bunker Hill and Sing-Sing, the District of
Columbia and Sullivan’s Island, with a few avenues connecting them. But
paltry are they all beside one blast of the east or the south wind which
blows over them.
In society you will not find health, but in nature. Unless our feet at least
stood in the midst of nature, all our faces would be pale and livid. Society is
always diseased, and the best is the most so. There is no scent in it so
wholesome as that of the pines, nor any fragrance so penetrating and
restorative as the life-everlasting in high pastures. I would keep some book
of natural history always by me as a sort of elixir, the reading of which
should restore the tone of the system. To the sick, indeed, nature is sick, but
to the well, a fountain of health. To him who contemplates a trait of natural
beauty no harm nor disappointment can come. The doctrines of despair, of
spiritual or political tyranny or servitude, were never taught by such as
shared the serenity of nature. Surely good courage will not flag here on the
Atlantic border, as long as we are flanked by the Fur Countries. There is
enough in that sound to cheer one under any circumstances. The spruce, the
hemlock, and the pine will not countenance despair. Methinks some creeds
in vestries and churches do forget the hunter wrapped in furs by the Great
Slave Lake, and that the Esquimaux sledges are drawn by dogs, and in the
twilight of the northern night, the hunter does not give over to follow the
seal and walrus on the ice. They are of sick and diseased imaginations who
would toll the world’s knell so soon. Cannot these sedentary sects do better

than prepare the shrouds and write the epitaphs of those other busy living
men? The practical faith of all men belies the preacher’s consolation. What
is any man’s discourse to me, if I am not sensible of something in it as
steady and cheery as the creak of crickets? In it the woods must be relieved
against the sky. Men tire me when I am not constantly greeted and refreshed
as by the flux of sparkling streams. Surely joy is the condition of life. Think
of the young fry that leap in ponds, the myriads of insects ushered into
being on a summer evening, the incessant note of the hyla with which the
woods ring in the spring, the nonchalance of the butterfly carrying accident
and change painted in a thousand hues upon its wings, or the brook minnow
stoutly stemming the current, the lustre of whose scales worn bright by the
attrition is reflected upon the bank.
We fancy that this din of religion, literature, and philosophy, which is
heard in pulpits, lyceums, and parlors, vibrates through the universe, and is
as catholic a sound as the creaking of the earth’s axle; but if a man sleep
soundly, he will forget it all between sunset and dawn. It is the three-inch
swing of a pendulum in a cupboard, which the great pulse of nature vibrates
by and through each instant. When we lift our eyelids and open our ears, it
disappears with smoke and rattle like the cars on a railroad. When I detect a
beauty in any of the recesses of nature, I am reminded, by the serene and
retired spirit in which it requires to be contemplated, of the inexpressible
privacy of a life,—how silent and unambitious it is. The beauty there is in
mosses must be considered from the holiest, quietest nook. What an
admirable training is science for the more active warfare of life. Indeed, the
unchallenged bravery, which these studies imply, is far more impressive
than the trumpeted valor of the warrior. I am pleased to learn that Thales
was up and stirring by night not unfrequently, as his astronomical
discoveries prove. Linnaeus, setting out for Lapland, surveys his “comb”
and “spare shirt,” “leathern breeches” and “gauze cap to keep off gnats,”
with as much complacency as Bonaparte a park of artillery for the Russian
campaign. The quiet bravery of the man is admirable. His eye is to take in
fish, flower, and bird, quadruped and biped. Science is always brave, for to
know, is to know good; doubt and danger quail before her eye. What the
coward overlooks in his hurry, she calmly scrutinizes, breaking ground like
a pioneer for the array of arts that follow in her train. But cowardice is
unscientific; for there cannot be a science of ignorance. There may be a

science of bravery, for that advances; but a retreat is rarely well conducted;
if it is, then is it an orderly advance in the face of circumstances.
But to draw a little nearer to our promised topics. Entomology extends
the limits of being in a new direction, so that I walk in nature with a sense
of greater space and freedom. It suggests besides, that the universe is not
rough-hewn, but perfect in its details. Nature will bear the closest
inspection; she invites us to lay our eye level with the smallest leaf, and
take an insect view of its plain. She has no interstices; every part is full of
life. I explore, too, with pleasure, the sources of the myriad sounds which
crowd the summer noon, and which seem the very grain and stuff of which
eternity is made. Who does not remember the shrill roll-call of the harvest
fly? There were ears for these sounds in Greece long ago, as Anacreon’s ode
will show.
“We pronounce thee happy, Cicada,
For on the tops of the trees,
Drinking a little dew,
Like any king thou singest,
For thine are they all,
Whatever thou seest in the fields,
And whatever the woods bear.
Thou art the friend of the husbandmen,
In no respect injuring any one;
And thou art honored among men,
Sweet prophet of summer.
The Muses love thee,
And Phoebus himself loves thee,
And has given thee a shrill song;
Age does not wrack thee,
Thou skilful, earthborn, song-loving,
Unsuffering, bloodless one;
Almost thou art like the gods.”

In the autumn days, the creaking of crickets is heard at noon over all the
land, and as in summer they are heard chiefly at nightfall, so then by their
incessant chirp they usher in the evening of the year. Nor can all the vanities
that vex the world alter one whit the measure that night has chosen. Every
pulse-beat is in exact time with the cricket’s chant and the tickings of the
deathwatch in the wall. Alternate with these if you can.
About two hundred and eighty birds either reside permanently in the
State, or spend the summer only, or make us a passing visit. Those which
spend the winter with us have obtained our warmest sympathy. The nut-

hatch and chicadee flitting in company through the dells of the wood, the
one harshly scolding at the intruder, the other with a faint lisping note
enticing him on; the jay screaming in the orchard; the crow cawing in
unison with the storm; the partridge, like a russet link extended over from
autumn to spring, preserving unbroken the chain of summers; the hawk
with warrior-like firmness abiding the blasts of winter; the robin[2] and lark
lurking by warm springs in the woods; the familiar snow-bird culling a few
seeds in the garden, or a few crumbs in the yard; and occasionally the
shrike, with heedless and unfrozen melody bringing back summer again;—
His steady sails he never furls
At any time o’ year,
And perching now on Winter’s curls,
He whistles in his ear.

As the spring advances, and the ice is melting in the river, our earliest
and straggling visitors make their appearance. Again does the old Teian poet
sing, as well for New England as for Greece, in the
RETURN OF SPRING.
“Behold, how Spring appearing,
The Graces send forth roses;
Behold, how the wave of the sea
Is made smooth by the calm;
Behold, how the duck dives;
Behold, how the crane travels;
And Titan shines constantly bright.
The shadows of the clouds are moving;
The works of man shine;
The earth puts forth fruits;
The fruit of the olive puts forth.
The cup of Bacchus is crowned,
Along the leaves, along the branches,
The fruit, bending them down, flourishes.”

The ducks alight at this season in the still water, in company with the
gulls, which do not fail to improve an east wind to visit our meadows, and
swim about by twos and threes, pluming themselves, and diving to peck at
the root of the lily, and the cranberries which the frost has not loosened. The
first flock of geese is seen beating to north, in long harrows and waving
lines; the gingle of the song-sparrow salutes us from the shrubs and fences;
the plaintive note of the lark comes clear and sweet from the meadow; and

the bluebird, like an azure ray, glances past us in our walk. The fish-hawk,
too, is occasionally seen at this season sailing majestically over the water,
and he who has once observed it will not soon forget the majesty of its
flight. It sails the air like a ship of the line, worthy to struggle with the
elements, falling back from time to time like a ship on its beam ends, and
holding its talons up as if ready for the arrows, in the attitude of the national
bird. It is a great presence, as of the master of river and forest. Its eye would
not quail before the owner of the soil, but make him feel like an intruder on
its domains. And then its retreat, sailing so steadily away, is a kind of
advance. I have by me one of a pair of ospreys, which have for some years
fished in this vicinity, shot by a neighboring pond, measuring more than
two feet in length, and six in the stretch of its wings. Nuttall mentions that
“The ancients, particularly Aristotle, pretended that the ospreys taught their
young to gaze at the sun, and those who were unable to do so were
destroyed. Linnaeus even believed, on ancient authority, that one of the feet
of this bird had all the toes divided, while the other was partly webbed, so
that it could swim with one foot, and grasp a fish with the other.” But that
educated eye is now dim, and those talons are nerveless. Its shrill scream
seems yet to linger in its throat, and the roar of the sea in its wings. There is
the tyranny of Jove in its claws, and his wrath in the erectile feathers of the
head and neck. It reminds me of the Argonautic expedition, and would
inspire the dullest to take flight over Parnassus.
The booming of the bittern, described by Goldsmith and Nuttall, is
frequently heard in our fens, in the morning and evening, sounding like a
pump, or the chopping of wood in a frosty morning in some distant farm-
yard. The manner in which this sound is produced I have not seen anywhere
described. On one occasion, the bird has been seen by one of my neighbors
to thrust its bill into the water, and suck up as much as it could hold, then
raising its head, it pumped it out again with four or five heaves of the neck,
throwing it two or three feet, and making the sound each time.
At length the summer’s eternity is ushered in by the cackle of the flicker
among the oaks on the hill-side, and a new dynasty begins with calm
security.
In May and June the woodland quire is in full tune, and given the
immense spaces of hollow air, and this curious human ear, one does not see
how the void could be better filled.

Each summer sound
Is a summer round.

As the season advances, and those birds which make us but a passing
visit depart, the woods become silent again, and but few feathers ruffle the
drowsy air. But the solitary rambler may still find a response and expression
for every mood in the depths of the wood.
Sometimes-I hear the veery’s[3] clarion,
Or brazen trump of the impatient jay,
And in secluded woods the chicadee
Doles out her scanty notes, which sing the praise
Of heroes, and set forth the loveliness
Of virtue evermore.

The phoebe still sings in harmony with the sultry weather by the brink of
the pond, nor are the desultory hours of noon in the midst of the village
without their minstrel.
Upon the lofty elm-tree sprays
The vireo rings the changes sweet,
During the trivial summer days,
Striving to lift our thoughts above the street.

With the autumn begins in some measure a new spring. The plover is
heard whistling high in the air over the dry pastures, the finches flit from
tree to tree, the bobolinks and flickers fly in flocks, and the goldfinch rides
on the earliest blast, like a winged hyla peeping amid the rustle of the
leaves. The crows, too, begin now to congregate; you may stand and count
them as they fly low and straggling over the landscape, singly or by twos
and threes, at intervals of half a mile, until a hundred have passed.
I have seen it suggested somewhere that the crow was brought to this
country by the white man; but I shall as soon believe that the white man
planted these pines and hemlocks. He is no spaniel to follow our steps; but
rather flits about the clearings like the dusky spirit of the Indian, reminding
me oftener of Philip and Powhatan, than of Winthrop and Smith. He is a
relic of the dark ages. By just so slight, by just so lasting a tenure does
superstition hold the world ever; there is the rook in England, and the crow
in New England.
Thou dusky spirit of the wood,
Bird of an ancient brood,
Flitting thy lonely way,

A meteor in the summer’s day,
From wood to wood, from hill to hill,
Low over forest, field, and rill,
What wouldst thou say?
Why shouldst thou haunt the day?
What makes thy melancholy float?
What bravery inspires thy throat,
And bears thee up above the clouds,
Over desponding human crowds,
Which far below
Lay thy haunts low?

The late walker or sailor, in the October evenings, may hear the
murmurings of the snipe, circling over the meadows, the most spirit-like
sound in nature; and still later in the autumn, when the frosts have tinged
the leaves, a solitary loon pays a visit to our retired ponds, where he may
lurk undisturbed till the season of moulting is passed, making the woods
ring with his wild laughter. This bird, the Great Northern Diver, well
deserves its name; for when pursued with a boat, it will dive, and swim like
a fish under water, for sixty rods or more, as fast as a boat can be paddled,
and its pursuer, if he would discover his game again, must put his ear to the
surface to hear where it comes up. When it comes to the surface, it throws
the water off with one shake of its wings, and calmly swims about until
again disturbed.
These are the sights and sounds which reach our senses oftenest during
the year. But sometimes one hears a quite new note, which has for
background other Carolinas and Mexicos than the books describe, and
learns that his ornithology has done him no service.
It appears from the Report that there are about forty quadrupeds
belonging to the State, and among these one is glad to hear of a few bears,
wolves, lynxes, and wildcats.
When our river overflows its banks in the spring, the wind from the
meadows is laden with a strong scent of musk, and by its freshness
advertises me of an unexplored wildness. Those backwoods are not far off
then. I am affected by the sight of the cabins of the musk-rat, made of mud
and grass, and raised three or four feet along the river, as when I read of the
barrows of Asia. The musk-rat is the beaver of the settled States. Their
number has even increased within a few years in this vicinity. Among the
rivers which empty into the Merrimack, the Concord is known to the
boatmen as a dead stream. The Indians are said to have called it

Musketaquid, or Prairie River. Its current being much more sluggish, and its
water more muddy than the rest, it abounds more in fish and game of every
kind. According to the History of the town, “The fur-trade was here once
very important. As early as 1641, a company was formed in the colony, of
which Major Willard of Concord was superintendent, and had the exclusive
right to trade with the Indians in furs and other articles; and for this right
they were obliged to pay into the public treasury one twentieth of all the
furs they obtained.” There are trappers in our midst still, as well as on the
streams of the far West, who night and morning go the round of their traps,
without fear of the Indian. One of these takes from one hundred and fifty to
two hundred musk-rats in a year, and even thirty-six have been shot by one
man in a day. Their fur, which is not nearly as valuable as formerly, is in
good condition in the winter and spring only; and upon the breaking up of
the ice, when they are driven out of their holes by the water, the greatest
number is shot from boats, either swimming or resting on their stools, or
slight supports of grass and reeds, by the side of the stream. Though they
exhibit considerable cunning at other times, they are easily taken in a trap,
which has only to be placed in their holes, or wherever they frequent,
without any bait being used, though it is sometimes rubbed with their musk.
In the winter the hunter cuts holes in the ice, and shoots them when they
come to the surface. Their burrows are usually in the high banks of the
river, with the entrance under water, and rising within to above the level of
high water. Sometimes their nests, composed of dried meadow grass and
flags, may be discovered where the bank is low and spongy, by the yielding
of the ground under the feet. They have from three to seven or eight young
in the spring.
Frequently, in the morning or evening, a long ripple is seen in the still
water, where a musk-rat is crossing the stream, with only its nose above the
surface, and sometimes a green bough in its mouth to build its house with.
When it finds itself observed, it will dive and swim five or six rods under
water, and at length conceal itself in its hole, or the weeds. It will remain
under water for ten minutes at a time, and on one occasion has been seen,
when undisturbed, to form an air-bubble under the ice, which contracted
and expanded as it breathed at leisure. When it suspects danger on shore, it
will stand erect like a squirrel, and survey its neighborhood for several
minutes, without moving.

In the fall, if a meadow intervene between their burrows and the stream,
they erect cabins of mud and grass, three or four feet high, near its edge.
These are not their breeding-places, though young are sometimes found in
them in late freshets, but rather their hunting-lodges, to which they resort in
the winter with their food, and for shelter. Their food consists chiefly of
flags and fresh-water muscles, the shells of the latter being left in large
quantities around their lodges in the spring.
The Penobscot Indian wears the entire skin of a musk-rat, with the legs
and tail dangling, and the head caught under his girdle, for a pouch, into
which he puts his fishing tackle, and essences to scent his traps with.
The bear, wolf, lynx, wildcat, deer, beaver, and marten, have disappeared;
the otter is rarely if ever seen here at present; and the mink is less common
than formerly.
Perhaps of all our untamed quadrupeds, the fox has obtained the widest
and most familiar reputation, from the time of Pilpay and Aesop to the
present day. His recent tracks still give variety to a winter’s walk. I tread in
the steps of the fox that has gone before me by some hours, or which
perhaps I have started, with such a tiptoe of expectation, as if I were on the
trail of the Spirit itself which resides in the wood, and expected soon to
catch it in its lair. I am curious to know what has determined its graceful
curvatures, and how surely they were coincident with the fluctuations of
some mind. I know which way a mind wended, what horizon it faced, by
the setting of these tracks, and whether it moved slowly or rapidly, by their
greater or less intervals and distinctness; for the swiftest step leaves yet a
lasting trace. Sometimes you will see the trails of many together, and where
they have gambolled and gone through a hundred evolutions, which testify
to a singular listlessness and leisure in nature.
When I see a fox run across the pond on the snow, with the carelessness
of freedom, or at intervals trace his course in the sunshine along the ridge of
a hill, I give up to him sun and earth as to their true proprietor. He does not
go in the sun, but it seems to follow him, and there is a visible sympathy
between him and it. Sometimes, when the snow lies light, and but five or
six inches deep, you may give chase and come up with one on foot. In such
a case he will show a remarkable presence of mind, choosing only the safest
direction, though he may lose ground by it. Notwithstanding his fright, he
will take no step which is not beautiful. His pace is a sort of leopard canter,

as if he were in nowise impeded by the snow, but were husbanding his
strength all the while. When the ground is uneven, the course is a series of
graceful curves, conforming to the shape of the surface. He runs as though
there were not a bone in his back. Occasionally dropping his muzzle to the
ground for a rod or two, and then tossing his head aloft, when satisfied of
his course. When he comes to a declivity, he will put his forefeet together,
and slide swiftly down it, shoving the snow before him. He treads so softly
that you would hardly hear it from any nearness, and yet with such
expression that it would not be quite inaudible at any distance.

Of fishes, seventy-five genera and one hundred and seven species are
described in the Report. The fisherman will be startled to learn that there are
but about a dozen kinds in the ponds and streams of any inland town; and
almost nothing is known of their habits. Only their names and residence
make one love fishes. I would know even the number of their fin-rays, and
how many scales compose the lateral line. I am the wiser in respect to all
knowledges, and the better qualified for all fortunes, for knowing that there
is a minnow in the brook. Methinks I have need even of his sympathy, and
to be his fellow in a degree.
I have experienced such simple delight in the trivial matters of fishing
and sporting, formerly, as might have inspired the muse of Homer or
Shakspeare; and now, when I turn the pages and ponder the plates of the
Angler’s Souvenir, I am fain to exclaim,—
“Can these things be,
And overcome us like a summer’s cloud?”

Next to nature, it seems as if man’s actions were the most natural, they so
gently accord with her. The small seines of flax stretched across the shallow
and transparent parts of our river, are no more intrusion than the cobweb in
the sun. I stay my boat in midcurrent, and look down in the sunny water to
see the civil meshes of his nets, and wonder how the blustering people of
the town could have done this elvish work. The twine looks like a new river
weed, and is to the river as a beautiful memento of man’s presence in
nature, discovered as silently and delicately as a footprint in the sand.
When the ice is covered with snow, I do not suspect the wealth under my
feet; that there is as good as a mine under me wherever I go. How many

pickerel are poised on easy fin fathoms below the loaded wain. The
revolution of the seasons must be a curious phenomenon to them. At length
the sun and wind brush aside their curtain, and they see the heavens again.
Early in the spring, after the ice has melted, is the time for spearing fish.
Suddenly the wind shifts from northeast and east to west and south, and
every icicle, which has tinkled on the meadow grass so long, trickles down
its stem, and seeks its level unerringly with a million comrades. The steam
curls up from every roof and fence.
I see the civil sun drying earth’s tears,
Her tears of joy, which only faster flow.

In the brooks is heard the slight grating sound of small cakes of ice,
floating with various speed, full of content and promise, and where the
water gurgles under a natural bridge, you may hear these hasty rafts hold
conversation in an undertone. Every rill is a channel for the juices of the
meadow. In the ponds the ice cracks with a merry and inspiriting din, and
down the larger streams is whirled grating hoarsely, and crashing its way
along, which was so lately a highway for the woodman’s team and the fox,
sometimes with the tracks of the skaters still fresh upon it, and the holes cut
for pickerel. Town committees anxiously inspect the bridges and
causeways, as if by mere eye-force to intercede with the ice, and save the
treasury.
The river swelleth more and more,
Like some sweet influence stealing o’er
The passive town; and for a while
Each tussuck makes a tiny isle,
Where, on some friendly Ararat,
Resteth the weary water-rat.

No ripple shows Musketaquid,
Her very current e’en is hid,
As deepest souls do calmest rest,
When thoughts are swelling in the breast,
And she that in the summer’s drought
Doth make a rippling and a rout,
Sleeps from Nabshawtuck to the Cliff,
Unruffled by a single skiff.
But by a thousand distant hills
The louder roar a thousand rills,
And many a spring which now is dumb,
And many a stream with smothered hum,
Doth swifter well and faster glide,

Though buried deep beneath the tide.

Our village shows a rural Venice,
Its broad lagoons where yonder fen is;
As lovely as the Bay of Naples
Yon placid cove amid the maples;
And in my neighbor’s field of corn
I recognize the Golden Horn.

Here Nature taught from year to year,
When only red men came to hear,
Methinks ’twas in this school of art
Venice and Naples learned their part;
But still their mistress, to my mind,
Her young disciples leaves behind.

The fisherman now repairs and launches his boat. The best time for
spearing is at this season, before the weeds have begun to grow, and while
the fishes lie in the shallow water, for in summer they prefer the cool
depths, and in the autumn they are still more or less concealed by the grass.
The first requisite is fuel for your crate; and for this purpose the roots of the
pitchpine are commonly used, found under decayed stumps, where the trees
have been felled eight or ten years.
With a crate, or jack, made of iron hoops, to contain your fire, and
attached to the bow of your boat about three feet from the water, a fish-
spear with seven tines, and fourteen feet long, a large basket, or barrow, to
carry your fuel and bring back your fish, and a thick outer garment, you are
equipped for a cruise. It should be a warm and still evening; and then with a
fire crackling merrily at the prow, you may launch forth like a cucullo into
the night. The dullest soul cannot go upon such an expedition without some
of the spirit of adventure; as if he had stolen the boat of Charon and gone
down the Styx on a midnight expedition into the realms of Pluto. And much
speculation does this wandering star afford to the musing nightwalker,
leading him on and on, jack-o’lantern-like, over the meadows; or, if he is
wiser, he amuses himself with imagining what of human life, far in the
silent night, is flitting mothlike round its candle. The silent navigator shoves
his craft gently over the water, with a smothered pride and sense of
benefaction, as if he were the phosphor, or light-bringer, to these dusky
realms, or some sister moon, blessing the spaces with her light. The waters,
for a rod or two on either hand and several feet in depth, are lit up with
more than noonday distinctness, and he enjoys the opportunity which so

many have desired, for the roofs of a city are indeed raised, and he surveys
the midnight economy of the fishes. There they lie in every variety of
posture; some on their backs, with their white bellies uppermost, some
suspended in midwater, some sculling gently along with a dreamy motion
of the fins, and others quite active and wide awake,—a scene not unlike
what the human city would present. Occasionally he will encounter a turtle
selecting the choicest morsels, or a musk-rat resting on a tussuck. He may
exercise his dexterity, if he sees fit, on the more distant and active fish, or
fork the nearer into his boat, as potatoes out of a pot, or even take the sound
sleepers with his hands. But these last accomplishments he will soon learn
to dispense with, distinguishing the real object of his pursuit, and find
compensation in the beauty and never-ending novelty of his position. The
pines growing down to the water’s edge will show newly as in the glare of a
conflagration; and as he floats under the willows with his light, the song-
sparrow will often wake on her perch, and sing that strain at midnight,
which she had meditated for the morning. And when he has done, he may
have to steer his way home through the dark by the north star, and he will
feel himself some degrees nearer to it for having lost his way on the earth.
The fishes commonly taken in this way are pickerel, suckers, perch, eels,
pouts, breams, and shiners,—from thirty to sixty weight in a night. Some
are hard to be recognized in the unnatural light, especially the perch, which,
his dark bands being exaggerated, acquires a ferocious aspect. The number
of these transverse bands, which the Report states to be seven, is, however,
very variable, for in some of our ponds they have nine and ten even.

It appears that we have eight kinds of tortoises, twelve snakes,—but one
of which is venomous,—nine frogs and toads, nine salamanders, and one
lizard, for our neighbors.
I am particularly attracted by the motions of the serpent tribe. They make
our hands and feet, the wings of the bird, and the fins of the fish seems very
superfluous, as if nature had only indulged her fancy in making them. The
black snake will dart into a bush when pursued, and circle round and round
with an easy and graceful motion, amid the thin and bare twigs, five or six
feet from the ground, as a bird flits from bough to bough, or hang in
festoons between the forks. Elasticity and flexibleness in the simpler forms
of animal life are equivalent to a complex system of limbs in the higher;

and we have only to be as wise and wily as the serpent, to perform as
difficult feats without the vulgar assistance of hands and feet.
In May, the snapping turtle, Emysaurus serpentina, is frequently taken on
the meadows and in the river. The fisherman, taking sight over the calm
surface, discovers its snout projecting above the water, at the distance of
many rods, and easily secures his prey through its unwillingness to disturb
the water by swimming hastily away, for, gradually drawing its head under,
it remains resting on some limb or clump of grass. Its eggs, which are
buried at a distance from the water, in some soft place, as a pigeon-bed, are
frequently devoured by the skunk. It will catch fish by daylight, as a toad
catches flies, and is said to emit a transparent fluid from its mouth to attract
them.
Nature has taken more care than the fondest parent for the education and
refinement of her children. Consider the silent influence which flowers
exert, no less upon the ditcher in the meadow than the lady in the bower.
When I walk in the woods, I am reminded that a wise purveyor has been
there before me; my most delicate experience is typified there. I am struck
with the pleasing friendships and unanimities of nature, as when the lichen
on the trees takes the form of their leaves. In the most stupendous scenes
you will see delicate and fragile features, as slight wreaths of vapor,
dewlines, feathery sprays, which suggest a high refinement, a noble blood
and breeding, as it were. It is not hard to account for elves and fairies; they
represent this light grace, this ethereal gentility. Bring a spray from the
wood, or a crystal from the brook, and place it on your mantel, and your
household ornaments will seem plebeian beside its nobler fashion and
bearing. It will wave superior there, as if used to a more refined and
polished circle. It has a salute and a response to all your enthusiasm and
heroism.
In the winter, I stop short in the path to admire how the trees grow up
without forethought, regardless of the time and circumstances. They do not
wait as man does, but now is the golden age of the sapling. Earth, air, sun,
and rain, are occasion enough; they were no better in primeval centuries.
The “winter of their discontent” never comes. Witness the buds of the
native poplar standing gayly out to the frost on the sides of its bare
switches. They express a naked confidence. With cheerful heart one could
be a sojourner in the wilderness, if he were sure to find there the catkins of

the willow or the alder. When I read of them in the accounts of northern
adventurers, by Baffin’s Bay or Mackenzie’s river, I see how even there too
I could dwell. They are our little vegetable redeemers. Methinks our virtue
will hold out till they come again. They are worthy to have had a greater
than Minerva or Ceres for their inventor. Who was the benignant goddess
that bestowed them on mankind?
Nature is mythical and mystical always, and works with the license and
extravagance of genius. She has her luxurious and florid style as well as art.
Having a pilgrim’s cup to make, she gives to the whole, stem, bowl, handle,
and nose, some fantastic shape, as if it were to be the car of some fabulous
marine deity, a Nereus or Triton.
In the winter, the botanist needs not confine himself to his books and
herbarium, and give over his out-door pursuits, but may study a new
department of vegetable physiology, what may be called crystalline botany,
then. The winter of 1837 was unusually favorable for this. In December of
that year, the Genius of vegetation seemed to hover by night over its
summer haunts with unusual persistency. Such a hoarfrost, as is very
uncommon here or anywhere, and whose full effects can never be witnessed
after sunrise, occurred several times. As I went forth early on a still and
frosty morning, the trees looked like airy creatures of darkness caught
napping; on this side huddled together with their gray hairs streaming in a
secluded valley, which the sun had not penetrated; on that hurrying off in
Indian file along some watercourse, while the shrubs and grasses, like elves
and fairies of the night, sought to hide their diminished heads in the snow.
The river, viewed from the high bank, appeared of a yellowish green color,
though all the landscape was white. Every tree, shrub, and spire of grass,
that could raise its head above the snow, was covered with a dense ice-
foliage, answering, as it were, leaf for leaf to its summer dress. Even the
fences had put forth leaves in the night. The centre, diverging, and more
minute fibres were perfectly distinct, and the edges regularly indented.
These leaves were on the side of the twig or stubble opposite to the sun,
meeting it for the most part at right angles, and there were others standing
out at all possible angles upon these and upon one another, with no twig or
stubble supporting them. When the first rays of the sun slanted over the
scene, the grasses seemed hung with innumerable jewels, which jingled
merrily as they were brushed by the foot of the traveller, and reflected all
the hues of the rainbow as he moved from side to side. It struck me that

these ghost leaves, and the green ones whose forms they assume, were the
creatures of but one law; that in obedience to the same law the vegetable
juices swell gradually into the perfect leaf, on the one hand, and the
crystalline particles troop to their standard in the same order, on the other.
As if the material were indifferent, but the law one and invariable, and
every plant in the spring but pushed up into and filled a permanent and
eternal mould, which, summer and winter forever, is waiting to be filled.
This foliate structure is common to the coral and the plumage of birds,
and to how large a part of animate and inanimate nature. The same
independence of law on matter is observable in many other instances, as in
the natural rhymes, when some animal form, color, or odor, has its
counterpart in some vegetable. As, indeed, all rhymes imply an eternal
melody, independent of any particular sense.
As confirmation of the fact, that vegetation is but a kind of
crystallization, every one may observe how, upon the edge of the melting
frost on the window, the needle-shaped particles are bundled together so as
to resemble fields waving with grain, or shocks rising here and there from
the stubble; on one side the vegetation of the torrid zone, high-towering
palms and widespread banyans, such as are seen in pictures of oriental
scenery; on the other, arctic pines stiff frozen, with downcast branches.
Vegetation has been made the type of all growth; but as in crystals the
law is more obvious, their material being more simple, and for the most part
more transient and fleeting, would it not be as philosophical as convenient
to consider all growth, all filling up within the limits of nature, but a
crystallization more or less rapid?
On this occasion, in the side of the high bank of the river, wherever the
water or other cause had formed a cavity, its throat and outer edge, like the
entrance to a citadel, bristled with a glistening ice-armor. In one place you
might see minute ostrich-feathers, which seemed the waving plumes of the
warriors filing into the fortress; in another, the glancing, fan-shaped banners
of the Lilliputian host; and in another, the needle-shaped particles collected
into bundles, resembling the plumes of the pine, might pass for a phalanx of
spears. From the under side of the ice in the brooks, where there was a
thicker ice below, depended a mass of crystallization, four or five inches
deep, in the form of prisms, with their lower ends open, which, when the ice
was laid on its smooth side, resembled the roofs and steeples of a Gothic

city, or the vessels of a crowded haven under a press of canvas. The very
mud in the road, where the ice had melted, was crystallized with deep
rectilinear fissures, and the crystalline masses in the sides of the ruts
resembled exactly asbestos in the disposition of their needles. Around the
roots of the stubble and flower-stalks, the frost was gathered into the form
of irregular conical shells, or fairy rings. In some places the ice-crystals
were lying upon granite rocks, directly over crystals of quartz, the frost-
work of a longer night, crystals of a longer period, but to some eye
unprejudiced by the short term of human life, melting as fast as the former.
In the Report on the Invertebrate Animals, this singular fact is recorded,
which teaches us to put a new value on time and space. “The distribution of
the marine shells is well worthy of notice as a geological fact. Cape Cod,
the right arm of the Commonwealth, reaches out into the ocean, some fifty
or sixty miles. It is nowhere many miles wide; but this narrow point of land
has hitherto proved a barrier to the migrations of many species of Mollusca.
Several genera and numerous species, which are separated by the
intervention of only a few miles of land, are effectually prevented from
mingling by the Cape, and do not pass from one side to the other…. Of the
one hundred and ninety-seven marine species, eighty-three do not pass to
the south shore, and fifty are not found on the north shore of the Cape.”
That common muscle, the Unio complanalus, or more properly
fluviatilis, left in the spring by the musk-rat upon rocks and stumps, appears
to have been an important article of food with the Indians. In one place,
where they are said to have feasted, they are found in large quantities, at an
elevation of thirty feet above the river, filling the soil to the depth of a foot,
and mingled with ashes and Indian remains.
The works we have placed at the head of our chapter, with as much
license, as the preacher selects his text, are such as imply more labor than
enthusiasm. The State wanted complete catalogues of its natural riches, with
such additional facts merely as would be directly useful.
The reports on Fishes, Reptiles, Insects, and Invertebrate Animals,
however, indicate labor and research, and have a value independent of the
object of the legislature.
Those on Herbaceous Plants and Birds cannot be of much value, as long
as Bigelow and Nuttall are accessible. They serve but to indicate, with more

or less exactness, what species are found in the State. We detect several
errors ourselves, and a more practised eye would no doubt expand the list.
The Quadrupeds deserved a more final and instructive report than they
have obtained.
These volumes deal much in measurements and minute descriptions, not
interesting to the general reader, with only here and there a colored sentence
to allure him, like those plants growing in dark forests, which bear only
leaves without blossoms. But the ground was comparatively unbroken, and
we will not complain of the pioneer, if he raises no flowers with his first
crop. Let us not underrate the value of a fact; it will one day flower in a
truth. It is astonishing how few facts of importance are added in a century to
the natural history of any animal. The natural history of man himself is still
being gradually written. Men are knowing enough after their fashion. Every
countryman and dairymaid knows that the coats of the fourth stomach of
the calf will curdle milk, and what particular mushroom is a safe and
nutritious diet. You cannot go into any field or wood, but it will seem as if
every stone had been turned, and the bark on every tree ripped up. But, after
all, it is much easier to discover than to see when the cover is off! It has
been well said that “the attitude of inspection is prone.” Wisdom does not
inspect, but behold. We must look a long time before we can see. Slow are
the beginnings of philosophy. He has something demoniacal in him, who
can discern a law or couple two facts. We can imagine a time when,
—“Water runs down hill,”—may have been taught in the schools. The true
man of science will know nature better by his finer organization; he will
smell, taste, see, hear, feel, better than other men. His will be a deeper and
finer experience. We do not learn by inference and deduction, and the
application of mathematics to philosophy, but by direct intercourse and
sympathy. It is with science as with ethics,—we cannot know truth by
contrivance and method; the Baconian is as false as any other, and with all
the helps of machinery and the arts, the most scientific will still be the
healthiest and friendliest man, and possess a more perfect Indian wisdom.
[2] A white robin, and a white quail have occasionally been seen. It is mentioned
in Audubon as remarkable that the nest of a robin should be found on the ground;
but this bird seems to be less particular than most in the choice of a building
spot. I have seen its nest placed under the thatched roof of a deserted barn, and in
one instance, where the adjacent country was nearly destitute of trees, together
with two of the phoebe, upon the end of a board in the loft of a saw-mill, but a

few feet from the saw, which vibrated several inches with the motion of the
machinery.

[3] This bird, which is so well described by Nuttall, but is apparently unknown
by the author of the Report, is one of the most common in the woods in this
vicinity, and in Cambridge I have heard the college yard ring with its trill. The
boys call it “yorrick,” from the sound of its querulous and chiding note, as it flits
near the traveller through the underwood. The cowbird’s egg is occasionally
found in its nest, as mentioned by Audubon.

[1] Reports—on the Fishes, Reptiles, and Birds; the Herbaceous Plants and
Quadrupeds; the Insects Injurious to Vegetation; and the Invertebrate Animals of
Massachusetts. Published agreeably to an Order of the Legislature, by the
Commissioners on the Zoölogical and Botanical Survey of the State.

A WALK TO WACHUSETT.

[1843.]
The needles of the pine
All to the west incline.

CONCORD, July 19, 1842.

Summer and winter our eyes had rested on the dim outline of the
mountains in our horizon, to which distance and indistinctness lent a
grandeur not their own, so that they served equally to interpret all the
allusions of poets and travellers; whether with Homer, on a spring morning,
we sat down on the many-peaked Olympus, or, with Virgil and his
compeers, roamed the Etrurian and Thessalian hills, or with Humboldt
measured the more modern Andes and Teneriffe. Thus we spoke our mind
to them, standing on the Concord cliffs.—
With frontier strength ye stand your ground,
With grand content ye circle round,
Tumultuous silence for all sound,
Ye distant nursery of rills,
Monadnock, and the Peterboro’ hills;
Like some vast fleet,
Sailing through rain and sleet,
Through winter’s cold and summer’s heat;
Still holding on, upon your high emprise,
Until ye find a shore amid the skies;
Not skulking close to land,
With cargo contraband.
For they who sent a venture out by ye
Have set the sun to see
Their honesty.
Ships of the line, each one,
Ye to the westward run,
Always before the gale,
Under a press of sail,
With weight of metal all untold.

I seem to feel ye, in my firm seat here,
Immeasurable depth of hold,
And breadth of beam, and length of running gear.

Methinks ye take luxurious pleasure
In your novel western leisure;
So cool your brows, and freshly blue,
As Time had nought for ye to do;
For ye lie at your length,
An unappropriated strength,
Unhewn primeval timber,
For knees so stiff, for masts so limber;
The stock of which new earths are made,
One day to be our western trade,
Fit for the stanchions of a world
Which through the seas of space is hurled.

While we enjoy a lingering ray,
Ye still o’ertop the western day,
Reposing yonder, on God’s croft,
Like solid stacks of hay.
Edged with silver, and with gold,
The clouds hang o’er in damask fold,
And with such depth of amber light
The west is dight,
Where still a few rays slant,
That even heaven seems extravagant.
On the earth’s edge mountains and trees
Stand as they were on air graven,
Or as the vessels in a haven
Await the morning breeze.
I fancy even
Through your defiles windeth the way to heaven;
And yonder still, in spite of history’s page,
Linger the golden and the silver age;
Upon the laboring gale
The news of future centuries is brought,
And of new dynasties of thought,
From your remotest vale.

But special I remember thee,
Wachusett, who like me
Standest alone without society.
Thy far blue eye,
A remnant of the sky,
Seen through the clearing or the gorge,
Or from the windows on the forge,
Doth leaven all it passes by.
Nothing is true,
But stands ’tween me and you,

Thou western pioneer,
Who know’st not shame nor fear,
By venturous spirit driven,
Under the eaves of heaven,
And can’st expand thee there,
And breathe enough of air?
Upholding heaven, holding down earth,
Thy pastime from thy birth,
Not steadied by the one, nor leaning on the other;
May I approve myself thy worthy brother!

At length, like Rasselas, and other inhabitants of happy valleys, we
resolved to scale the blue wall which bound the western horizon, though not
without misgivings, that thereafter no visible fairy land would exist for us.
But we will not leap at once to our journey’s end, though near, but imitate
Homer, who conducts his reader over the plain, and along the resounding
sea, though it be but to the tent of Achilles. In the spaces of thought are the
reaches of land and water, where men go and come. The landscape lies far
and fair within, and the deepest thinker is the farthest travelled.
At a cool and early hour on a pleasant morning in July, my companion
and I passed rapidly through Acton and Stow, stopping to rest and refresh us
on the bank of a small stream, a tributary of the Assabet, in the latter town.
As we traversed the cool woods of Acton, with stout staves in our hands, we
were cheered by the song of the red-eye, the thrushes, the phoebe, and the
cuckoo; and as we passed through the open country, we inhaled the fresh
scent of every field, and all nature lay passive, to be viewed and travelled.
Every rail, every farm-house, seen dimly in the twilight, every tinkling
sound told of peace and purity, and we moved happily along the dank roads,
enjoying not such privacy as the day leaves when it withdraws, but such as
it has not profaned. It was solitude with light; which is better than darkness.
But anon, the sound of the mower’s rifle was heard in the fields, and this,
too, mingled with the lowing kine.
This part of our route lay through the country of hops, which plant
perhaps supplies the want of the vine in American scenery, and may remind
the traveller of Italy, and the South of France, whether he traverses the
country when the hop-fields, as then, present solid and regular masses of
verdure, hanging in graceful festoons from pole to pole; the cool coverts
where lurk the gales which refresh the wayfarer; or in September, when the
women and children, and the neighbors from far and near, are gathered to

pick the hops into long troughs; or later still, when the poles stand piled in
vast pyramids in the yards, or lie in heaps by the roadside.
The culture of the hop, with the processes of picking, drying in the kiln,
and packing for the market, as well as the uses to which it is applied, so
analogous to the culture and uses of the grape, may afford a theme for
future poets.
The mower in the adjacent meadow could not tell us the name of the
brook on whose banks we had rested, or whether it had any, but his younger
companion, perhaps his brother, knew that it was Great Brook. Though they
stood very near together in the field, the things they knew were very far
apart; nor did they suspect each other’s reserved knowledge, till the stranger
came by. In Bolton, while we rested on the rails of a cottage fence, the
strains of music which issued from within, probably in compliment to us,
sojourners, reminded us that thus far men were fed by the accustomed
pleasures. So soon did we, wayfarers, begin to learn that man’s life is
rounded with the same few facts, the same simple relations everywhere, and
it is vain to travel to find it new. The flowers grow more various ways than
he. But coming soon to higher land, which afforded a prospect of the
mountains, we thought we had not travelled in vain, if it were only to hear a
truer and wilder pronunciation of their names, from the lips of the
inhabitants; not Way-tatic, Way-chusett, but Wor-tatic, Wor-chusett. It made
us ashamed of our tame and civil pronunciation, and we looked upon them
as born and bred farther west than we. Their tongues had a more generous
accent than ours, as if breath was cheaper where they wagged. A
countryman, who speaks but seldom, talks copiously, as it were, as his wife
sets cream and cheese before you without stint. Before noon we had
reached the highlands overlooking the valley of Lancaster, (affording the
first fair and open prospect into the west,) and there, on the top of a hill, in
the shade of some oaks, near to where a spring bubbled out from a leaden
pipe, we rested during the heat of the day, reading Virgil, and enjoying the
scenery. It was such a place as one feels to be on the outside of the earth, for
from it we could, in some measure, see the form and structure of the globe.
There lay Wachusett, the object of our journey, lowering upon us with
unchanged proportions, though with a less ethereal aspect than had greeted
our morning gaze, while further north, in successive order, slumbered its
sister mountains along the horizon.

We could get no further into the Aeneid than
—atque altae moenia Romae,
—and the wall of high Rome,

before we were constrained to reflect by what myriad tests a work of genius
has to be tried; that Virgil, away in Rome, two thousand years off, should
have to unfold his meaning, the inspiration of Italian vales, to the pilgrim on
New England hills. This life so raw and modern, that so civil and ancient;
and yet we read Virgil, mainly to be reminded of the identity of human
nature in all ages, and, by the poet’s own account, we are both the children
of a late age, and live equally under the reign of Jupiter.
“He shook honey from the leaves, and removed fire,
And stayed the wine, everywhere flowing in rivers;
That experience, by meditating, might invent various arts
By degrees, and seek the blade of corn in furrows,
And strike out hidden fire from the veins of the flint.”

The old world stands serenely behind the new, as one mountain yonder
towers behind another, more dim and distant. Rome imposes her story still
upon this late generation. The very children in the school we had that
morning passed, had gone through her wars, and recited her alarms, ere they
had heard of the wars of neighboring Lancaster. The roving eye still rests
inevitably on her hills, and she still holds up the skirts of the sky on that
side, and makes the past remote.
The lay of the land hereabouts is well worthy the attention of the
traveller. The hill on which we were resting made part of an extensive
range, running from southwest to northeast, across the country, and
separating the waters of the Nashua from those of the Concord, whose
banks we had left in the morning; and by bearing in mind this fact, we
could easily determine whither each brook was bound that crossed our path.
Parallel to this, and fifteen miles further west, beyond the deep and broad
valley in which lie Groton, Shirley, Lancaster, and Boylston, runs the
Wachusett range, in the same general direction. The descent into the valley
on the Nashua side, is by far the most sudden; and a couple of miles
brought us to the southern branch of the Nashua, a shallow but rapid stream,
flowing between high and gravelly banks. But we soon learned that there
were no gelidae valles into which we had descended, and missing the

coolness of the morning air, feared it had become the sun’s turn to try his
power upon us.
“The sultry sun had gained the middle sky,
And not a tree, and not an herb was nigh.”

and with melancholy pleasure we echoed the melodious plaint of our
fellow-traveller, Hassan, in the desert,—
“Sad was the hour, and luckless was the day,
When first from Schiraz’ walls I bent my way.”

The air lay lifeless between the hills, as in a seething caldron, with no
leaf stirring, and instead of the fresh odor of grass and clover, with which
we had before been regaled, the dry scent of every herb seemed merely
medicinal. Yielding, therefore, to the heat, we strolled into the woods, and
along the course of a rivulet, on whose banks we loitered, observing at our
leisure the products of these new fields. He who traverses the woodland
paths, at this season, will have occasion to remember the small drooping
bell-like flowers and slender red stem of the dogs-bane, and the coarser
stem and berry of the poke, which are both common in remoter and wilder
scenes; and if “the sun casts such a reflecting heat from the sweet fern,” as
makes him faint, when he is climbing the bare hills, as they complained
who first penetrated into these parts, the cool fragrance of the swamp pink
restores him again, when traversing the valleys between.
As we went on our way late in the afternoon, we refreshed ourselves by
bathing our feet in every rill that crossed the road, and anon, as we were
able to walk in the shadows of the hills, recovered our morning elasticity.
Passing through Sterling, we reached the banks of the Stillwater, in the
western part of the town, at evening, where is a small village collected. We
fancied that there was already a certain western look about this place, a
smell of pines and roar of water, recently confined by dams, belying its
name, which were exceedingly grateful. When the first inroad has been
made, a few acres levelled, and a few houses erected, the forest looks
wilder than ever. Left to herself, nature is always more or less civilized, and
delights in a certain refinement; but where the axe has
encroached upon the edge of the forest, the dead and unsightly limbs of
the pine, which she had concealed with green banks of verdure, are exposed
to sight. This village had, as yet, no post-office, nor any settled name. In the

small villages which we entered, the villagers gazed after us, with a
complacent, almost compassionate look, as if we were just making our
debut in the world at a late hour. “Nevertheless,” did they seem to say,
“come and study us, and learn men and manners.” So is each one’s world
but a clearing in the forest, so much open and inclosed ground. The landlord
had not yet returned from the field with his men, and the cows had yet to be
milked. But we remembered the inscription on the wall of the Swedish inn,
“You will find at Trolhate excellent bread, meat, and wine, provided you
bring them with you,” and were contented. But I must confess it did
somewhat disturb our pleasure, in this withdrawn spot, to have our own
village newspaper handed us by our host, as if the greatest charm the
country offered to the traveller was the facility of communication with the
town. Let it recline on its own everlasting hills, and not be looking out from
their summits for some petty Boston or New York in the horizon.
At intervals we heard the murmuring of water, and the slumberous
breathing of crickets throughout the night; and left the inn the next morning
in the gray twilight, after it had been hallowed by the night air, and when
only the innocent cows were stirring, with a kind of regret. It was only four
miles to the base of the mountain, and the scenery was already more
picturesque. Our road lay along the course of the Stillwater, which was
brawling at the bottom of a deep ravine, filled with pines and rocks,
tumbling fresh from the mountains, so soon, alas! to commence its career of
usefulness. At first, a cloud hung between us and the summit, but it was
soon blown away. As we gathered the raspberries, which grew abundantly
by the roadside, we fancied that that action was consistent with a lofty
prudence, as if the traveller who ascends into a mountainous region should
fortify himself by eating of such light ambrosial fruits as grow there; and,
drinking of the springs which gush out from the mountain sides, as he
gradually inhales the subtler and purer atmosphere of those elevated places,
thus propitiating the mountain gods, by a sacrifice of their own fruits. The
gross products of the plains and valleys are for such as dwell therein; but it
seemed to us that the juices of this berry had relation to the thin air of the
mountain-tops.
In due time we began to ascend the mountain, passing, first, through a
grand sugar maple wood, which bore the marks of the augur, then a denser
forest, which gradually became dwarfed, till there were no trees whatever.
We at length pitched our tent on the summit. It is but nineteen hundred feet

above the village of Princeton, and three thousand above the level of the
sea; but by this slight elevation it is infinitely removed from the plain, and
when we reached it, we felt a sense of remoteness, as if we had travelled
into distant regions, to Arabia Petrea, or the farthest east. A robin upon a
staff, was the highest object in sight. Swallows were flying about us, and
the chewink and cuckoo were heard near at hand. The summit consists of a
few acres, destitute of trees, covered with bare rocks, interspersed with
blueberry bushes, raspberries, gooseberries, strawberries, moss, and a fine
wiry grass. The common yellow lily, and dwarf-cornel, grow abundantly in
the crevices of the rocks. This clear space, which is gently rounded, is
bounded a few feet lower by a thick shrubbery of oaks, with maples,
aspens, beeches, cherries, and occasionally a mountain-ash intermingled,
among which we found the bright blueberries of the Solomon’s Seal, and
the fruit of the pyrola. From the foundation of a wooden observatory, which
was formerly erected on the highest point, forming a rude, hollow structure
of stone, a dozen feet in diameter, and five or six in height, we could see
Monadnock, in simple grandeur, in the northwest, rising nearly a thousand
feet higher, still the “far blue mountain,” though with an altered profile. The
first day the weather was so hazy that it was in vain we endeavored to
unravel the obscurity. It was like looking into the sky again, and the patches
of forest here and there seemed to flit like clouds over a lower heaven. As to
voyagers of an aërial Polynesia, the earth seemed like a larger island in the
ether; on every side, even as low as we, the sky shutting down, like an
unfathomable deep, around it, a blue Pacific island, where who knows what
islanders inhabit? and as we sail near its shores we see the waving of trees,
and hear the lowing of kine.
We read Virgil and Wordsworth in our tent, with new pleasure there,
while, waiting for a clearer atmosphere, nor did the weather prevent our
appreciating the simple truth and beauty of Peter Bell:
“And he had lain beside his asses,
On lofty Cheviot hills.”

“And he had trudged through Yorkshire dales,
Among the rocks and winding scars,
Where deep and low the hamlets lie
Beneath their little patch of sky,
And little lot of stars.”

Who knows but this hill may one day be a Helvellyn, or even a
Parnassus, and the Muses haunt here, and other Homers frequent the
neighboring plains,
Not unconcerned Wachusett rears his head
Above the field, so late from nature won,
With patient brow reserved, as one who read
New annals in the history of man.

The blue-berries which the mountain afforded, added to the milk we had
brought, made our frugal supper, while for entertainment the evensong of
the wood-thrush rung along the ridge. Our eyes rested on no painted ceiling
nor carpeted hall, but on skies of nature’s painting, and hills and forests of
her embroidery. Before sunset, we rambled along the ridge to the north,
while a hawk soared still above us. It was a place where gods might wander,
so solemn and solitary, and removed from all contagion with the plain. As
the evening came on, the haze was condensed in vapor, and the landscape
became more distinctly visible, and numerous sheets of water were brought
to light.
Et jam summa procul villarum culmina fumant,
Majoresque cadunt altis de montibus umbrae.

And now the tops of the villas smoke afar off,
And the shadows fall longer from the high mountains.

As we stood on the stone tower while the sun was setting, we saw the
shades of night creep gradually over the valleys of the east, and the
inhabitants went into their houses, and shut their doors, while the moon
silently rose up, and took possession of that part. And then the same scene
was repeated on the west side, as far as the Connecticut and the Green
Mountains, and the sun’s rays fell on us two alone, of all New England
men.
It was the night but one before the full of the moon, so bright that we
could see to read distinctly by moonlight, and in the evening strolled over
the summit without danger. There was, by chance, a fire blazing on
Monadnock that night, which lighted up the whole western horizon, and by
making us aware of a community of mountains, made our position seem
less solitary. But at length the wind drove us to the shelter of our tent, and
we closed its door for the night, and fell asleep.

It was thrilling to hear the wind roar over the rocks, at intervals when we
waked, for it had grown quite cold and windy. The night was in its
elements, simple even to majesty in that bleak place,—a bright moonlight
and a piercing wind. It was at no time darker than twilight within the tent,
and we could easily see the moon through its transparent roof as we lay; for
there was the moon still above us, with Jupiter and Saturn on either hand,
looking down on Wachusett, and it was a satisfaction to know that they
were our fellow-travellers still, as high and out of our reach as our own
destiny. Truly the stars were given for a consolation to man. We should not
know but our life were fated to be always grovelling, but it is permitted to
behold them, and surely they are deserving of a fair destiny. We see laws
which never fail, of whose failure we never conceived; and their lamps burn
all the night, too, as well as all day,— so rich and lavish is that nature which
can afford this superfluity of light.
The morning twilight began as soon as the moon had set, and we arose
and kindled our fire, whose blaze might have been seen for thirty miles
around. As the daylight increased, it was remarkable how rapidly the wind
went down. There was no dew on the summit, but coldness supplied its
place. When the dawn had reached its prime, we enjoyed the view of a
distinct horizon line, and could fancy ourselves at sea, and the distant hills
the waves in the horizon, as seen from the deck of a vessel. The cherry-
birds flitted around us, the nuthatch and flicker were heard among the
bushes, the titmouse perched within a few feet, and the song of the wood-
thrush again rung along the ridge. At length we saw the sun rise up out of
the sea, and shine on Massachusetts; and from this moment the atmosphere
grew more and more transparent till the time of our departure, and we
began to realize the extent of the view, and how the earth, in some degree,
answered to the heavens in breadth, the white villages to the constellations
in the sky. There was little of the sublimity and grandeur which belong to
mountain scenery, but an immense landscape to ponder on a summer’s day.
We could see how ample and roomy is nature. As far as the eye could reach,
there was little life in the landscape; the few birds that flitted past did not
crowd. The travellers on the remote highways, which intersect the country
on every side, had no fellow-travellers for miles, before or behind. On every
side, the eye ranged over successive circles of towns, rising one above
another, like the terraces of a vineyard, till they were lost in the horizon.
Wachusett is, in fact, the observatory of the State. There lay Massachusetts,

spread out before us in its length and breadth, like a map. There was the
level horizon, which told of the sea on the east and south, the well-known
hills of New Hampshire on the north, and the misty summits of the Hoosac
and Green Mountains, first made visible to us the evening before, blue and
unsubstantial, like some bank of clouds which the morning wind would
dissipate, on the northwest and west. These last distant ranges, on which the
eye rests unwearied, commence with an abrupt boulder in the north, beyond
the Connecticut, and travel southward, with three or four peaks dimly seen.
But Monadnock, rearing its masculine front in the northwest, is the grandest
feature. As we beheld it, we knew that it was the height of land between the
two rivers, on this side the valley of the Merrimack, or that of the
Connecticut, fluctuating with their blue seas of air,—these rival vales,
already teeming with Yankee men along their respective streams, born to
what destiny who shall tell? Watatic, and the neighboring hills in this State
and in New Hampshire, are a continuation of the same elevated range on
which we were standing. But that New Hampshire bluff,—that promontory
of a State,—lowering day and night on this our State of Massachusetts, will
longest haunt our dreams.
We could, at length, realize the place mountains occupy on the land, and
how they come into the general scheme of the universe. When first we
climb their summits and observe their lesser irregularities, we do not give
credit to the comprehensive intelligence which shaped them; but when
afterward we behold their outlines in the horizon, we confess that the hand
which moulded their opposite slopes, making one to balance the other,
worked round a deep centre, and was privy to the plan of the universe. So is
the least part of nature in its bearings referred to all space. These lesser
mountain ranges, as well as the Alleghanies, run from northeast to
southwest, and parallel with these mountain streams are the more fluent
rivers, answering to the general direction of the coast, the bank of the great
ocean stream itself. Even the clouds, with their thin bars, fall into the same
direction by preference, and such even is the course of the prevailing winds,
and the migration of men and birds. A mountain-chain determines many
things for the statesman and philosopher. The improvements of civilization
rather creep along its sides than cross its summit. How often is it a barrier to
prejudice and fanaticism? In passing over these heights of land, through
their thin atmosphere, the follies of the plain are refined and purified; and as
many species of plants do not scale their summits, so many species of folly

no doubt do not cross the Alleghanies; it is only the hardy mountain plant
that creeps quite over the ridge, and descends into the valley beyond.
We get a dim notion of the flight of birds, especially of such as fly high
in the air, by having ascended a mountain. We can now see what landmarks
mountains are to their migrations; how the Catskills and Highlands have
hardly sunk to them, when Wachusett and Monadnock open a passage to the
northeast; how they are guided, too, in their course by the rivers and
valleys; and who knows but by the stars, as well as the mountain ranges,
and not by the petty landmarks which we use. The bird whose eye takes in
the Green Mountains on the one side, and the ocean on the other, need not
be at a loss to find its way.
At noon we descended the mountain, and having returned to the abodes
of men, turned our faces to the east again; measuring our progress, from
time to time, by the more ethereal hues which the mountain assumed.
Passing swiftly through Stillwater and Sterling, as with a downward
impetus, we found ourselves almost at home again in the green meadows of
Lancaster, so like our own Concord, for both are watered by two streams
which unite near their centres, and have many other features in common.
There is an unexpected refinement about this scenery; level prairies of great
extent, interspersed with elms and hop-fields and groves of trees, give it
almost a classic appearance. This, it will be remembered, was the scene of
Mrs. Kowlandson’s capture, and of other events in the Indian wars, but
from this July afternoon, and under that mild exterior, those times seemed
as remote as the irruption of the Goths. They were the dark age of New
England. On beholding a picture of a New England village as it then
appeared, with a fair open prospect, and a light on trees and river, as if it
were broad noon, we find we had not thought the sun shone in those days,
or that men lived in broad daylight then. We do not imagine the sun shining
on hill and valley during Philip’s war, nor on the war-path of Paugus, or
Standish, or Church, or Lovell, with serene summer weather, but a dim
twilight or night did those events transpire in. They must have fought in the
shade of their own dusky deeds.
At length, as we plodded along the dusty roads, our thoughts became as
dusty as they; all thought indeed stopped, thinking broke down, or
proceeded only passively in a sort of rhythmical cadence of the confused
material of thought, and we found ourselves mechanically repeating some

familiar measure which timed with our tread; some verse of the Robin
Hood ballads, for instance, which one can recommend to travel by.
“Swearers are swift, sayd lyttle John,
As the wind blows over the hill;
For if it be never so loud this night,
To-morrow it may be still.”

And so it went up hill and down till a stone interrupted the line, when a new
verse was chosen.
“His shoote it was but loosely shot,
Yet flewe not the arrowe in vaine,
For it met one of the sheriffe’s men,
And William-a-Trent was slaine.”

There is, however, this consolation to the most way-worn traveller, upon
the dustiest road, that the path his feet describe is so perfectly symbolical of
human life,—now climbing the hills, now descending into the vales. From
the summits he beholds the heavens and the horizon, from the vales he
looks up to the heights again. He is treading his old lessons still, and though
he may be very weary and travel-worn, it is yet sincere experience.
Leaving the Nashua, we changed our route a little, and arrived at
Stillriver Village, in the western part of Harvard, just as the sun was setting.
From this place, which lies to the northward, upon the western slope of the
same range of hills on which we had spent the noon before, in the adjacent
town, the prospect is beautiful, and the grandeur of the mountain outlines
unsurpassed. There was such a repose and quiet here at this hour, as if the
very hill-sides were enjoying the scene, and we passed slowly along,
looking back over the country we had traversed, and listening to the
evening song of the robin, we could not help contrasting the equanimity of
nature with the bustle and impatience of man. His words and actions
presume always a crisis near at hand, but she is forever silent and
unpretending.
And now that we have returned to the desultory life of the plain, let us
endeavor to import a little of that mountain grandeur into it. We will
remember within what walls we lie, and understand that this level life too
has its summit, and why from the mountain-top the deepest valleys have a
tinge of blue; that there is elevation in every hour, as no part of the earth is

so low that the heavens may not be seen from, and we have only to stand on
the summit of our hour to command an uninterrupted horizon.
We rested that night at Harvard, and the next morning, while one bent his
steps to the nearer village of Groton, the other took his separate and solitary
way to the peaceful meadows of Concord; but let him not forget to record
the brave hospitality of a farmer and his wife, who generously entertained
him at their board, though the poor wayfarer could only congratulate the
one on the continuance of hayweather, and silently accept the kindness of
the other. Refreshed by this instance of generosity, no less than by the
substantial viands set before him, he pushed forward with new vigor, and
reached the banks of the Concord before the sun had climbed many degrees
into the heavens.

THE LANDLORD.

[1843.]

Under the one word, house, are included the school-house, the alms-
house, the jail, the tavern, the dwelling-house; and the meanest shed or cave
in which men live contains the elements of all these. But nowhere on the
earth stands the entire and perfect house. The Parthenon, St. Peter’s, the
Gothic minster, the palace, the hovel, are but imperfect executions of an
imperfect idea. Who would dwell in them? Perhaps to the eye of the gods,
the cottage is more holy than the Parthenon, for they look down with no
especial favor upon the shrines formally dedicated to them, and that should
be the most sacred roof which shelters most of humanity. Surely, then, the
gods who are most interested in the human race preside over the Tavern,
where especially men congregate. Methinks I see the thousand shrines
erected to Hospitality shining afar in all countries, as well Mahometan and
Jewish, as Christian, khans, and caravansaries, and inns, whither all
pilgrims without distinction resort.
Likewise we look in vain, east or west over the earth, to find the perfect
man; but each represents only some particular excellence. The Landlord is a
man of more open and general sympathies, who possesses a spirit of
hospitality which is its own reward, and feeds and shelters men from pure
love of the creatures. To be sure, this profession is as often filled by
imperfect characters, and such as have sought it from unworthy motives, as
any other, but so much the more should we prize the true and honest
Landlord when we meet with him.
Who has not imagined to himself a country inn, where the traveller shall
really feel in, and at home, and at his public-house, who was before at his
private house; whose host is indeed a host, and a lord of the land, a self-
appointed brother of his race; called to his place, beside, by all the winds of
heaven and his good genius, as truly as the preacher is called to preach; a

man of such universal sympathies, and so broad and genial a human nature,
that he would fain sacrifice the tender but narrow ties of private friendship,
to a broad, sunshiny, fair-weather-and-foul friendship for his race; who
loves men, not as a philosopher, with philanthropy, nor as an overseer of the
poor, with charity, but by a necessity of his nature, as he loves dogs and
horses; and standing at his open door from morning till night, would fain
see more and more of them come along the highway, and is never satiated.
To him the sun and moon are but travellers, the one by day and the other by
night; and they too patronize his house. To his imagination all things travel
save his sign-post and himself; and though you may be his neighbor for
years, he will show you only the civilities of the road. But on the other
hand, while nations and individuals are alike selfish and exclusive, he loves
all men equally; and if he treats his nearest neighbor as a stranger, since he
has invited all nations to share his hospitality, the farthest travelled is in
some measure kindred to him who takes him into the bosom of his family.
He keeps a house of entertainment at the sign of the Black Horse or the
Spread Eagle, and is known far and wide, and his fame travels with
increasing radius every year. All the neighborhood is in his interest, and if
the traveller ask how far to a tavern, he receives some such answer as this:
“Well, sir, there’s a house about three miles from here, where they haven’t
taken down their sign yet; but it’s only ten miles to Slocum’s, and that’s a
capital house, both for man and beast.” At three miles he passes a cheerless
barrack, standing desolate behind its sign-post, neither public nor private,
and has glimpses of a discontented couple who have mistaken their calling.
At ten miles see where the Tavern stands,—really an entertaining prospect,
—so public and inviting that only the rain and snow do not enter. It is no
gay pavilion, made of bright stuffs, and furnished with nuts and
gingerbread, but as plain and sincere as a caravansary; located in no
Tarrytown, where you receive only the civilities of commerce, but far in the
fields it exercises a primitive hospitality, amid the fresh scent of new hay
and raspberries, if it be summer time, and the tinkling of cow-bells from
invisible pastures; for it is a land flowing with milk and honey, and the
newest milk courses in a broad, deep stream across the premises.
In these retired places the tavern is first of all a house—elsewhere, last of
all, or never,—and warms and shelters its inhabitants. It is as simple and
sincere in its essentials as the caves in which the first men dwelt, but it is
also as open and public. The traveller steps across the threshold, and lo! he

too is master, for he only can be called proprietor of the house here who
behaves with most propriety in it. The Landlord stands clear back in nature,
to my imagination, with his axe and spade felling trees and raising potatoes
with the vigor of a pioneer; with Promethean energy making nature yield
her increase to supply the wants of so many; and he is not so exhausted, nor
of so short a stride, but that he comes forward even to the highway to this
wide hospitality and publicity. Surely, he has solved some of the problems
of life. He comes in at his backdoor, holding a log fresh cut for the hearth
upon his shoulder with one hand, while he greets the newly arrived traveller
with the other.
Here at length we have free range, as not in palaces, nor cottages, nor
temples, and intrude nowhere. All the secrets of housekeeping are exhibited
to the eyes of men, above and below, before and behind. This is the
necessary way to live, men have confessed, in these days, and shall he skulk
and hide? And why should we have any serious disgust at kitchens? Perhaps
they are the holiest recess of the house. There is the hearth, after all,—and
the settle, and the fagots, and the kettle, and the crickets. We have pleasant
reminiscences of these. They are the heart, the left ventricle, the very vital
part of the house. Here the real and sincere life which we meet in the streets
was actually fed and sheltered. Here burns the taper that cheers the lonely
traveller by night, and from this hearth ascend the smokes that populate the
valley to his eyes by day. On the whole, a man may not be so little ashamed
of any other part of his house, for here is his sincerity and earnest, at least.
It may not be here that the besoms are plied most,—it is not here that they
need to be, for dust will not settle on the kitchen floor more than in nature.
Hence it will not do for the Landlord to possess too fine a nature. He
must have health above the common accidents of life, subject to no modern
fashionable diseases; but no taste, rather a vast relish or appetite. His
sentiments on all subjects will be delivered as freely as the wind blows;
there is nothing private or individual in them, though still original, but they
are public, and of the hue of the heavens over his house,—a certain out-of-
door obviousness and transparency not to be disputed. What he does, his
manners are not to be complained of, though abstractly offensive, for it is
what man does, and in him the race is exhibited. When he eats, he is liver
and bowels, and the whole digestive apparatus to the company, and so all
admit the thing is done. He must have no idiosyncrasies, no particular bents
or tendencies to this or that, but a general, uniform, and healthy

development, such as his portly person indicates, offering himself equally
on all sides to men. He is not one of your peaked and inhospitable men of
genius, with particular tastes, but, as we said before, has one uniform relish,
and taste which never aspires higher than a tavern-sign, or the cut of a
weather-cock. The man of genius, like a dog with a bone, or the slave who
has swallowed a diamond, or a patient with the gravel, sits afar and retired,
off the road, hangs out no sign of refreshment for man and beast, but says,
by all possible hints and signs, I wish to be alone—good-by—farewell. But
the landlord can afford to live without privacy. He entertains no private
thought, he cherishes no solitary hour, no Sabbath day, but thinks,—enough
to assert the dignity of reason,—and talks, and reads the newspaper. What
he does not tell to one traveller, he tells to another. He never wants to be
alone, but sleeps, wakes, eats, drinks, sociably, still remembering his race.
He walks abroad through the thoughts of men, and the Iliad and Shakspeare
are tame to him, who hears the rude but homely incidents of the road from
every traveller. The mail might drive through his brain in the midst of his
most lonely soliloquy, without disturbing his equanimity, provided it
brought plenty of news and passengers. There can be no pro-fanity where
there is no fane behind, and the whole world may see quite round him.
Perchance his lines have fallen to him in dustier places, and he has
heroically sat down where two roads meet, or at the Four Corners, or the
Five Points, and his life is sublimely trivial for the good of men. The dust of
travel blows ever in his eyes, and they preserve their clear, complacent look.
The hourlies and half-hourlies, the dailies and weeklies, whirl on well-worn
tracks, round and round his house, as if it were the goal in the stadium, and
still he sits within in unruffled serenity, with no show of retreat. His
neighbor dwells timidly behind a screen of poplars and willows, and a fence
with sheaves of spears at regular intervals, or defended against the tender
palms of visitors by sharp spikes,—but the traveller’s wheels rattle over the
door-step of the tavern, and he cracks his whip in the entry. He is truly glad
to see you, and sincere as the bull’s-eye over his door. The traveller seeks to
find, wherever he goes, some one who will stand in this broad and catholic
relation to him, who will be an inhabitant of the land to him a stranger, and
represent its human nature, as the rock stands for its inanimate nature; and
this is he. As his crib furnishes provender for the traveller’s horse, and his
larder provisions for his appetite, so his conversation furnishes the
necessary aliment to his spirits. He knows very well what a man wants, for

he is a man himself, and as it were the farthest travelled, though he has
never stirred from his door. He understands his needs and destiny. He would
be well fed and lodged, there can be no doubt, and have the transient
sympathy of a cheerful companion, and of a heart which always prophesies
fair weather. And after all the greatest men, even, want much more the
sympathy which every honest fellow can give, than that which the great
only can impart. If he is not the most upright, let us allow him this praise,
that he is the most downright of men. He has a hand to shake and to be
shaken, and takes a sturdy and unquestionable interest in you, as if he had
assumed the care of you, but if you will break your neck, he will even give
you the best advice as to the method.
The great poets have not been ungrateful to their landlords. Mine host of
the Tabard Inn, in the Prologue to the Canterbury Tales, was an honor to his
profession:—
“A semely man our Hoste was, with alle,
For to han been an marshal in an halle.
A large man he was, with eyen stepe;
A fairer burgeis is ther nou in Chepe:
Bold of his speche, and wise, and well ytaught,
And of manhood him lacked righte naught.
Eke thereto, was he right a mery man,
And after souper plaien he began,
And spake of mirthe amonges other thinges,
Whan that we hadden made our reckoninges.”

He is the true house-band, and centre of the company—of greater
fellowship and practical social talent than any. He it is that proposes that
each shall tell a tale to while away the time to Canterbury, and leads them
himself, and concludes with his own tale:—
“Now, by my fader’s soule that is ded,
But ye be mery, smiteth of my hed:
Hold up your hondes withouten more speche.”

If we do not look up to the Landlord, we look round for him on all
emergencies, for he is a man of infinite experience, who unites hands with
wit. He is a more public character than a statesman,—a publican, and not
consequently a sinner; and surely, he, if any, should be exempted from
taxation and military duty.

Talking with our host is next best and instructive to talking with one’s
self. It is a more conscious soliloquy; as it were, to speak generally, and try
what we would say provided we had an audience. He has indulgent and
open ears, and does not require petty and particular statements. “Heigho!”
exclaims the traveller. Them’s my sentiments, thinks mine host, and stands
ready for what may come next, expressing the purest sympathy by his
demeanor. “Hot as blazes!” says the other,—“Hard weather, sir,—not much
stirring nowadays,” says he. He is wiser than to contradict his guest in any
case; he lets him go on, he lets him travel.
The latest sitter leaves him standing far in the night, prepared to live right
on, while suns rise and set, and his “good night” has as brisk a sound as his
“good morning;” and the earliest riser finds him tasting his liquors in the
bar ere flies begin to buzz, with a countenance fresh as the morning star
over the sanded floor,—and not as one who had watched all night for
travellers. And yet, if beds be the subject of conversation, it will appear that
no man has been a sounder sleeper in his time.
Finally, as for his moral character, we do not hesitate to say, that he has
no grain of vice or meanness in him, but represents just that degree of virtue
which all men relish without being obliged to respect. He is a good man, as
his bitters are good,—an unquestionable goodness. Not what is called a
good man,—good to be considered, as a work of art in galleries and
museums,—but a good fellow, that is, good to be associated with. Who ever
thought of the religion of an innkeeper—whether he was joined to the
Church, partook of the sacrament, said his prayers, feared God, or the like?
No doubt he has had his experiences, has felt a change, and is a firm
believer in the perseverance of the saints. In this last, we suspect, does the
peculiarity of his religion consist. But he keeps an inn, and not a
conscience. How many fragrant charities and sincere social virtues are
implied in this, daily offering of himself to the public. He cherishes good
will to all, and gives the wayfarer as good and honest advice to direct him
on his road as the priest.
To conclude, the tavern will compare favorably with the church. The
church is the place where prayers and sermons are delivered, but the tavern
is where they are to take effect, and if the former are good, the latter cannot
be bad.

A WINTER WALK.

[1843.]

The wind has gently murmured through the blinds, or puffed with
feathery softness against the windows, and occasionally sighed like a
summer zephyr lifting the leaves along, the livelong night. The meadow-
mouse has slept in his snug gallery in the sod, the owl has sat in a hollow
tree in the depth of the swamp, the rabbit, the squirrel, and the fox have all
been housed. The watch-dog has lain quiet on the hearth, and the cattle have
stood silent in their stalls. The earth itself has slept, as it were its first, not
its last sleep, save when some street-sign or wood-house door has faintly
creaked upon its hinge, cheering forlorn nature at her midnight work,—the
only sound awake twixt Venus and Mars,—advertising us of a remote
inward warmth, a divine cheer and fellowship, where gods are met together,
but where it is very bleak for men to stand. But while the earth has
slumbered, all the air has been alive with feathery flakes descending, as if
some northern Ceres reigned, showering her silvery grain over all the fields.
We sleep, and at length awake to the still reality of a winter morning. The
snow lies warm as cotton or down upon the window-sill; the broadened
sash and frosted panes admit a dim and private light, which enhances the
snug cheer within. The stillness of the morning is impressive. The floor
creaks under our feet as we move toward the window to look abroad
through some clear space over the fields. We see the roofs stand under their
snow burden. From the eaves and fences hang stalactites of snow, and in the
yard stand stalagmites covering some concealed core. The trees and shrubs
rear white arms to the sky on every side; and where were walls and fences,
we see fantastic forms stretching in frolic gambols across the dusky
landscape, as if nature had strewn her fresh designs over the fields by night
as models for man’s art.

Silently we unlatch the door, letting the drift fall in, and step abroad to
face the cutting air. Already the stars have lost some of their sparkle, and a
dull, leaden mist skirts the horizon. A lurid brazen light in the east
proclaims the approach of day, while the western landscape is dim and
spectral still, and clothed in a sombre Tartarian light, like the shadowy
realms. They are Infernal sounds only that you hear,—the crowing of cocks,
the barking of dogs, the chopping of wood, the lowing of kine, all seem to
come from Pluto’s barn-yard and beyond the Styx;—not for any
melancholy they suggest, but their twilight bustle is too solemn and
mysterious for earth. The recent tracks of the fox or otter, in the yard,
remind us that each hour of the night is crowded with events, and the
primeval nature is still working and making tracks in the snow. Opening the
gate, we tread briskly along the lone country road, crunching the dry and
crisped snow under our feet, or aroused by the sharp clear creak of the
wood-sled, just starting for the distant market, from the early farmer’s door,
where it has lain the summer long, dreaming amid the chips and stubble;
while far through the drifts and powdered windows we see the farmer’s
early candle, like a paled star, emitting a lonely beam, as if some severe
virtue were at its matins there. And one by one the smokes begin to ascend
from the chimneys amidst the trees and snows.
The sluggish smoke curls up from some deep dell,
The stiffened air exploring in the dawn,
And making slow acquaintance with the day;
Delaying now upon its heavenward course,
In wreathed loiterings dallying with itself,
With as uncertain purpose and slow deed,
As its half-wakened master by the hearth,
Whose mind still slumbering and sluggish thoughts
Have not yet swept into the onward current
Of the new day;—and now it streams afar,
The while the chopper goes with step direct,
And mind intent to swing the early axe.
First in the dusky dawn he sends abroad
His early scout, his emissary, smoke,
The earliest, latest pilgrim from the roof,
To feel the frosty air, inform the day;
And while he crouches still beside the hearth,
Nor musters courage to unbar the door,
It has gone down the glen with the light wind,
And o’er the plain unfurled its venturous wreath,
Draped the tree-tops, loitered upon the hill,
And warmed the pinions of the early bird;

And now, perchance, high in the crispy air,
Has caught sight of the day o’er the earth’s edge,
And greets its master’s eye at his low door,
As some refulgent cloud in the upper sky.

We hear the sound of wood-chopping at the farmers’ doors, far over the
frozen earth, the baying of the house-dog, and the distant clarion of the
cock. Though the thin and frosty air conveys only the finer particles of
sound to our ears, with short and sweet vibrations, as the waves subside
soonest on the purest and lightest liquids, in which gross substances sink to
the bottom. They come clear and bell-like, and from a greater distance in
the horizon, as if there were fewer impediments than in summer to make
them faint and ragged. The ground is sonorous, like seasoned wood, and
even the ordinary rural sounds are melodious, and the jingling of the ice on
the trees is sweet and liquid. There is the least possible moisture in the
atmosphere, all being dried up, or congealed, and it is of such extreme
tenuity and elasticity, that it becomes a source of delight. The withdrawn
and tense sky seems groined like the aisles of a cathedral, and the polished
air sparkles as if there were crystals of ice floating in it. As they who have
resided in Greenland tell us, that, when it freezes, “the sea smokes like
burning turf-land, and a fog or mist arises, called frost-smoke,” which
“cutting smoke frequently raises blisters on the face and hands, and is very
pernicious to the health.” But this pure stinging cold is an elixir to the
lungs, and not so much a frozen mist, as a crystallized midsummer haze,
refined and purified by cold.
The sun at length rises through the distant woods, as if with the faint
clashing swinging sound of cymbals, melting the air with his beams, and
with such rapid steps the morning travels, that already his rays are gilding
the distant western mountains. Meanwhile we step hastily along through the
powdery snow, warmed by an inward heat, enjoying an Indian summer still,
in the increased glow of thought and feeling. Probably if our lives were
more conformed to nature, we should not need to defend ourselves against
her heats and colds, but find her our constant nurse and friend, as do plants
and quadrupeds. If our bodies were fed with pure and simple elements, and
not with a stimulating and heating diet, they would afford no more pasture
for cold than a leafless twig, but thrive like the trees, which find even
winter genial to their expansion.

The wonderful purity of nature at this season is a most pleasing fact.
Every decayed stump and moss-grown stone and rail, and the dead leaves of
autumn, are concealed by a clean napkin of snow. In the bare fields and
tinkling woods, see what virtue survives. In the coldest and bleakest places,
the warmest charities still maintain a foothold. A cold and searching wind
drives away all contagion, and nothing can withstand it but what has a
virtue in it; and accordingly, whatever we meet with in cold and bleak
places, as the tops of mountains, we respect for a sort of sturdy innocence, a
Puritan toughness. All things beside seem to be called in for shelter, and
what stays out must be part of the original frame of the universe, and of
such valor as God himself. It is invigorating to breathe the cleansed air. Its
greater fineness and purity are visible to the eye, and we would fain stay out
long and late, that the-gales may sigh through us, too, as through the
leafless trees, and fit us for the winter:—as if we hoped so to borrow some
pure and steadfast virtue, which will stead us in all seasons.
There is a slumbering subterranean fire in nature which never goes out,
and which no cold can chill. It finally melts the great snow, and in January
or July is only buried under a thicker or thinner covering. In the coldest day
it flows somewhere, and the snow melts around every tree. This field of
winter rye, which sprouted late in the fall, and now speedily dissolves the
snow, is where the fire is very thinly covered. We feel warmed by it. In the
winter, warmth stands for all virtue, and we resort in thought to a trickling
rill, with its bare stones shining in the sun, and to warm springs in the
woods, with as much eagerness as rabbits and robins. The steam which rises
from swamps and pools, is as dear and domestic as that of our own kettle.
What fire could ever equal the sunshine of a winter’s day, when the
meadow mice come out by the wallsides, and the chicadee lisps in the
defiles of the wood? The warmth comes directly from the sun, and is not
radiated from the earth, as in summer; and when we feel his beams on our
backs as we are treading some snowy dell, we are grateful as for a special
kindness, and bless the sun which has followed us into that by-place.
This subterranean fire has its altar in each man’s breast, for in the coldest
day, and on the bleakest hill, the traveller cherishes a warmer fire within the
folds of his cloak than is kindled on any hearth. A healthy man, indeed, is
the complement of the seasons, and in winter, summer is in his heart. There
is the south. Thither have all birds and insects migrated, and around the
warm springs in his breast are gathered the robin and the lark.

At length, having reached the edge of the woods, and shut out the
gadding town, we enter within their covert as we go under the roof of a
cottage, and cross its threshold, all ceiled and banked up with snow. They
are glad and warm still, and as genial and cheery in winter as in summer. As
we stand in the midst of the pines, in the nickering and checkered light
which straggles but little way into their maze, we wonder if the towns have
ever heard their simple story. It seems to us that no traveller has ever
explored them, and notwithstanding the wonders which science is
elsewhere revealing every day, who would not like to hear their annals? Our
humble villages in the plain are their contribution. We borrow from the
forest the boards which shelter, and the sticks which warm us. How
important is their evergreen to the winter, that portion of the summer which
does not fade, the permanent year, the unwithered grass. Thus simply, and
with little expense of altitude, is the surface of the earth diversified. What
would human life be without forests, those natural cities? From the tops of
mountains they appear like smooth shaven lawns, yet whither shall we walk
but in this taller grass?
In this glade covered with bushes of a year’s growth, see how the silvery
dust lies on every seared leaf and twig, deposited in such infinite and
luxurious forms as by their very variety atone for the absence of color.
Observe the tiny tracks of mice around every stem, and the triangular tracks
of the rabbit. A pure elastic heaven hangs over all, as if the impurities of the
summer sky, refined and shrunk by the chaste winter’s cold, had been
winnowed from the heavens upon the earth.
Nature confounds her summer distinctions at this season. The heavens
seem to be nearer the earth. The elements are less reserved and distinct.
Water turns to ice, rain to snow. The day is but a Scandinavian night. The
winter is an arctic summer.
How much more living is the life that is in nature, the furred life which
still survives the stinging nights, and, from amidst fields and woods covered
with frost and snow, sees the sun rise.
“The foodless wilds
Pour forth their brown inhabitants.”.

The gray squirrel and rabbit are brisk and playful in the remote glens, even
on the morning of the cold Friday. Here is our Lapland and Labrador, and
for our Esquimaux and Knistenaux, Dog-ribbed Indians, Novazemblaites,

and Spitzbergeners, are there not the ice-cutter and wood-chopper, the fox,
musk-rat, and mink?
Still, in the midst of the arctic day, we may trace the summer to its
retreats, and sympathize with some contemporary life. Stretched over the
brooks, in the midst of the frost-bound meadows, we may observe the
submarine cottages of the caddice-worms, the larvae of the Plicipennes.
Their small cylindrical cases built around themselves, composed of flags,
sticks, grass, and withered leaves, shells, and pebbles, in form and color like
the wrecks which strew the bottom,—now drifting along over the pebbly
bottom, now whirling in tiny eddies and dashing down steep falls, or
sweeping rapidly along with the current, or else swaying to and fro at the
end of some grass-blade or root. Anon they will leave their sunken
habitations, and, crawling up the stems of plants, or to the surface, like
gnats, as perfect insects henceforth, flutter over the surface of the water, or
sacrifice their short lives in the flame of our candles at evening. Down
yonder little glen the shrubs are drooping under their burden, and the red
alder-berries contrast with the white ground. Here are the marks of a myriad
feet which have already been abroad. The sun rises as proudly over such a
glen, as over the valley of the Seine or the Tiber, and it seems the residence
of a pure and self-subsistent valor, such as they never witnessed; which
never knew defeat nor fear. Here reign the simplicity and purity of a
primitive age, and a health and hope far remote from towns and cities.
Standing quite alone, far in the forest, while the wind is shaking down snow
from the trees, and leaving the only human tracks behind us, we find our
reflections of a richer variety than the life of cities. The chicadee and
nuthatch are more inspiring society than statesmen and philosophers, and
we shall return to these last, as to more vulgar companions. In this lonely
glen, with its brook draining the slopes, its creased ice and crystals of all
hues, where the spruces and hemlocks stand up on either side, and the rush
and sere wild oats in the rivulet itself, our lives are more serene and worthy
to contemplate.
As the day advances, the heat of the sun is reflected by the hill-sides, and
we hear a faint but sweet music, where flows the rill released from its
fetters, and the icicles are melting on the trees; and the nuthatch and
partridge are heard and seen. The south wind melts the snow at noon, and
the bare ground appears with its withered grass and leaves, and we are

invigorated by the perfume which exhales from it, as by the scent of strong
meats.
Let us go into this deserted woodman’s hut, and see how he has passed
the long winter nights and the short and stormy days. For here man has
lived under this south hill-side, and it seems a civilized and public spot. We
have such associations as when the traveller stands by the ruins of Palmyra
or Hecatompolis. Singing birds and flowers perchance have begun to appear
here, for flowers as well as weeds follow in the footsteps of man. These
hemlocks whispered over his head, these hickory logs were his fuel, and
these pitch-pine roots kindled his fire; yonder fuming rill in the hollow,
whose thin and airy vapor still ascends as busily as ever, though he is far off
now, was his well. These hemlock boughs, and the straw upon this raised
platform, were his bed, and this broken dish held his drink. But he has not
been here this season, for the phoebes built their nest upon this shelf last
summer. I find some embers left, as if he had but just gone out, where he
baked his pot of beans; and while at evening he smoked his pipe, whose
stemless bowl lies in the ashes, chatted with his only companion, if
perchance he had any, about the depth of the snow on the morrow, already
falling fast and thick without, or disputed whether the last sound was the
screech of an owl, or the creak of a bough, or imagination only; and through
this broad chimney throat, in the late winter evening, ere he stretched
himself upon the straw, he looked up to learn the progress of the storm, and,
seeing the bright stars of Cassiopeia’s chair shining brightly down upon
him, fell contentedly asleep. See how many traces from which we may
learn the chopper’s history. From this stump we may guess the sharpness of
his axe, and, from the slope of the stroke, on which side he stood, and
whether he cut down the tree without going round it or changing hands;
and, from the flexure of the splinters, we may know which way it fell. This
one chip contains inscribed on it the whole history of the wood-chopper and
of the world. On this scrap of paper, which held his sugar or salt, perchance,
or was the wadding of his gun, sitting on a log in the forest, with what
interest we read the tattle of cities, of those larger huts, empty and to let,
like this, in High Streets and Broadways. The eaves are dripping on the
south side of this simple roof, while the titmouse lisps in the pine, and the
genial warmth of the sun around the door is somewhat kind and human.
After two seasons, this rude dwelling does not deform the scene. Already
the birds resort to it, to build their nests, and you may track to its door the

feet of many quadrupeds. Thus, for a long time, nature overlooks the
encroachment and profanity of-man. The wood still cheerfully and
unsuspiciously echoes the strokes of the axe that fells it, and while they are
few and seldom, they enhance its wildness, and all the elements strive to
naturalize the sound.
Now our path begins to ascend gradually to the top of this high hill, from
whose precipitous south side we can look over the broad country, of forest
and field and river, to the distant snowy mountains. See yonder thin column
of smoke curling up through the woods from some invisible farm-house; the
standard raised over some rural homestead. There must be a warmer and
more genial spot there below, as where we detect the vapor from a spring
forming a cloud above the trees. What fine relations are established between
the traveller who discovers this airy column from some eminence in the
forest, and him who sits below. Up goes the smoke as silently and naturally
as the vapor exhales from the leaves, and as busy disposing itself in
wreathes as the housewife on the hearth below. It is a hieroglyphic of man’s
life, and suggests more intimate and important things than the boiling of a
pot. Where its fine column rises above the forest, like an ensign, some
human life has planted itself,—and such is the beginning of Rome, the
establishment of the arts, and the foundation of empires, whether on the
prairies of America, or the steppes of Asia.
And now we descend again to the brink of this woodland lake, which lies
in a hollow of the hills, as if it were their expressed juice, and that of the
leaves, which are annually steeped in it. Without outlet or inlet to the eye, it
has still its history, in the lapse of its waves, in the rounded pebbles on its
shore, and in the pines which grow down to its brink. It has not been idle,
though sedentary, but, like Abu Musa, teaches that “sitting still at home is
the heavenly way; the going out is the way of the world.” Yet in its
evaporation it travels as far as any. In summer it is the earth’s liquid eye; a
mirror in the breast of nature. The sins of the wood are washed out in it. See
how the woods form an amphitheatre about it, and it is an arena for all the
genialness of nature. All trees direct the traveller to its brink, all paths seek
it out, birds fly to it, quadrupeds flee to it, and the very ground inclines
toward it. It is nature’s saloon, where she has sat down to her toilet.
Consider her silent economy and tidiness; how the sun comes with his
evaporation to sweep the dust from its surface each morning, and a fresh
surface is constantly welling up; and annually, after whatever impurities

have accumulated herein, its liquid transparency appears again in the
spring. In summer a hushed music seems to sweep across its surface. But
now a plain sheet of snow conceals it from our eyes, except where the wind
has swept the ice bare, and the sere leaves are gliding from side to side,
tacking and veering on their tiny voyages. Here is one just keeled up against
a pebble on shove, a dry beech-leaf, rocking still, as if it would start again.
A skilful engineer, methinks, might project its course since it fell from the
parent stem. Here are all the elements for such a calculation. Its present
position, the direction of the wind, the level of the pond, and how much
more is given. In its scarred edges and veins is its log rolled up.
We fancy ourselves in the interior of a larger house. The surface of the
pond is our deal table or sanded floor, and the woods rise abruptly from its
edge, like the walls of a cottage. The lines set to catch pickerel through the
ice look like a larger culinary preparation, and the men stand about on the
white ground like pieces of forest furniture. The actions of these men, at the
distance of half a mile over the ice and snow, impress us as when we read
the exploits of Alexander in history. They seem not unworthy of the
scenery, and as momentous as the conquest of kingdoms.
Again we have wandered through the arches of the wood, until from its
skirts we hear the distant booming of ice from yonder bay of the river, as if
it were moved by some other and subtler tide than oceans know. To me it
has a strange sound of home, thrilling as the voice of one’s distant and
noble kindred. A mild summer sun shines over forest and lake, and though
there is but one green leaf for many rods, yet nature enjoys a serene health.
Every sound is fraught with the same mysterious assurance of health, as
well now the creaking of the boughs in January, as the soft sough of the
wind in July.
When Winter fringes every bough
With his fantastic wreath,
And puts the seal of silence now
Upon the leaves beneath;

When every stream in its pent-house
Goes gurgling on its way,
And in his gallery the mouse
Nibbleth the meadow hay;

Methinks the summer still is nigh,
And lurketh underneath,

As that same meadow-mouse doth lie
Snug in that last year’s heath.

And if perchance the chicadee
Lisp a faint note anon,
The snow is summer’s canopy,
Which she herself put on.

Fair blossoms deck the cheerful trees,
And dazzling fruits depend,
The north wind sighs a summer breeze,
The nipping frosts to fend,

Bringing glad tidings unto me,
The while I stand all ear,
Of a serene eternity,
Which need not winter fear.

Out on the silent pond straightway
The restless ice doth crack,
And pond sprites merry gambols play
Amid the deafening rack.

Eager I hasten to the vale,
As if I heard brave news,
How nature held high festival,
Which it were hard to lose.

I gambol with my neighbor ice,
And sympathizing quake,
As each new crack darts in a trice
Across the gladsome lake.

One with the cricket in the ground,
And fagot on the hearth,
Resounds the rare domestic sound
Along the forest path.

Before night we will take a journey on skates along the course of this
meandering river, as full of novelty to one who sits by the cottage fire all
the winter’s day, as if it were over the polar ice, with Captain Parry or
Franklin; following the winding of the stream, now flowing amid hills, now
spreading out into fair meadows, and forming a myriad coves and bays
where the pine and hemlock overarch. The river flows in the rear of the
towns, and we see all things from a new and wilder side. The fields and
gardens come down to it with a frankness, and freedom from pretension,
which they do not wear on the highway. It is the outside and edge of the

earth. Our eyes are not offended by violent contrasts. The last rail of the
farmer’s fence is some swaying willow bough, which still preserves its
freshness, and here at length all fences stop, and we no longer cross any
road. We may go far up within the country now by the most retired and
level road, never climbing a hill, but by broad levels ascending to the
upland meadows. It is a beautiful illustration of the law of obedience, the
flow of a river; the path for a sick man, a highway down which an acorn
cup may float secure with its freight. Its slight occasional falls, whose
precipices would not diversify the landscape, are celebrated by mist and
spray, and attract the traveller from far and near. From the remote interior,
its current conducts him by broad and easy steps, or by one gentle inclined
plane, to the sea. Thus by an early and constant yielding to the inequalities
of the ground, it secures itself the easiest passage.
No domain of nature is quite closed to man at all times, and now we draw
near to the empire of the fishes. Our feet glide swiftly over unfathomed
depths, where in summer our line tempted the pout and perch, and where
the stately pickerel lurked in the long corridors formed by the bulrushes.
The deep, impenetrable marsh, where the heron waded, and bittern
squatted, is made pervious to our swift shoes, as if a thousand railroads had
been made into it. With one impulse we are carried to the cabin of the
musk-rat, that earliest settler, and see him dart away under the transparent
ice, like a furred fish, to his hole in the bank; and we glide rapidly over
meadows where lately “the mower whet his scythe,” through beds of frozen
cranberries mixed with meadow grass. We skate near to where the
blackbird, the pewee, and the kingbird hung their nests over the water, and
the hornets builded from the maple in the swamp. How many gay warblers
following the sun, have radiated from this nest of silver-birch and
thistledown. On the swamp’s outer edge was hung the supermarine village,
where no foot penetrated. In this hollow tree the wood-duck reared her
brood, and slid away each day to forage in yonder fen.
In winter, nature is a cabinet of curiosities, full of dried specimens, in
their natural order and position. The meadows and forests are a hortus
siccus. The leaves and grasses stand perfectly pressed by the air without
screw or gum, and the birds’ nests are not hung on an artificial twig, but
where they builded them. We go about dryshod to inspect the summer’s
work in the rank swamp, and see what a growth have got the alders, the
willows, and the maples; testifying to how many warm suns, and fertilizing

dews and showers. See what strides their boughs took in the luxuriant
summer,—and anon these dormant buds will carry them onward and
upward another span into the heavens.
Occasionally we wade through fields of snow, under whose depths the
river is lost for many rods, to appear again to the right or left, where we
least expected; still holding on its way underneath, with a faint, stertorous,
rumbling sound, as if, like the bear and marmot, it too had hibernated, and
we had followed its faint summer-trail to where it earthed itself in snow and
ice. At first we should have thought that rivers would be empty and dry in
midwinter, or else frozen solid till the spring thawed them; but their volume
is not diminished even, for only a superficial cold bridges their surface. The
thousand springs which feed the lakes and streams are flowing still. The
issues of a few surface springs only are closed, and they go to swell the
deep reservoirs. Nature’s wells are below the frost. The summer brooks are
not filled with snow-water, nor does the mower quench his thirst with that
alone. The streams are swollen when the snow melts in the spring, because
nature’s work has been delayed, the water being turned into ice and snow,
whose particles are less smooth and round, and do not find their level so
soon.
Far over the ice, between the hemlock woods and snow-clad hills, stands
the pickerel fisher, his lines set in some retired cove, like a Finlander, with
his arms thrust into the pouches of his dreadnought; with dull, snowy, fishy
thoughts, himself a finless fish, separated a few inches from his race; dumb,
erect, and made to be enveloped in clouds and snows, like the pines on
shore. In these wild scenes, men stand about in the scenery, or move
deliberately and heavily, having sacrificed the sprightliness and vivacity of
towns to the dumb sobriety of nature. He does not make the scenery less
wild, more than the jays and musk-rats, but stands there as a part of it, as
the natives are represented in the voyages of early navigators, at Nootka
Sound, and on the Northwest coast, with their furs about them, before they
were tempted to loquacity by a scrap of iron. He belongs to the natural
family of man, and is planted deeper in nature and has more root than the
inhabitants of towns. Go to him, ask what luck, and you will learn that he
too is a worshipper of the unseen. Hear with what sincere deference and
waving gesture in his tone, he speaks of the lake pickerel, which he has
never seen, his primitive and ideal race of pickerel. He is connected with
the shore still, as by a fish-line, and yet remembers the season when he took

fish through the ice on the pond, while the peas were up in his garden at
home.
But now, while we have loitered, the clouds have gathered again, and a
few straggling snow-flakes are beginning to descend. Faster and faster they
fall, shutting out the distant objects from sight. The snow falls on every
wood and field, and no crevice is forgotten; by the river and the pond, on
the hill and in the valley. Quadrupeds are confined to their coverts, and the
birds sit upon their perches this peaceful hour. There is not so much sound
as in fair weather, but silently and gradually every slope, and the gray walls
and fences, and the polished ice, and the sere leaves, which were not buried
before, are concealed, and the tracks of men and beasts are lost. With so
little effort does nature reassert her rule and blot out the traces of men. Hear
how Homer has described the same. “The snow-flakes fall thick and fast on
a winter’s day. The winds are lulled, and the snow falls incessant, covering
the tops of the mountains, and the hills, and the plains where the lotus-tree
grows, and the cultivated fields, and they are falling by the inlets and shores
of the foaming sea, but are silently dissolved by the waves.” The snow
levels all things, and infolds them deeper in the bosom of nature, as, in the
slow summer, vegetation creeps up to the entablature of the temple, and the
turrets of the castle, and helps her to prevail over art.
The surly night-wind rustles through the wood, and warns us to retrace
our steps, while the sun goes down behind the thickening storm, and birds
seek their roosts, and cattle their stalls.
“Drooping the lab’rer ox
Stands covered o’er with snow, and now demands
The fruit of all his toil.”

Though winter is represented in the almanac as an old man, facing the
wind and sleet, and drawing his cloak about him, we rather think of him as
a merry wood-chopper, and warm-blooded youth, as blithe as summer. The
unexplored grandeur of the storm keeps up the spirits of the traveller. It
does not trifle with us, but has a sweet earnestness. In winter we lead a
more inward life. Our hearts are warm and cheery, like cottages under
drifts, whose windows and doors are half concealed, but from whose
chimneys the smoke cheerfully ascends. The imprisoning drifts increase the
sense of comfort which the house affords, and in the coldest days we are
content to sit over the hearth and see the sky through the chimney top,

enjoying the quiet and serene life that may be had in a warm corner by the
chimney side, or feeling our pulse by listening to the low of cattle in the
street, or the sound of the flail in distant barns all the long afternoon. No
doubt a skilful physician could determine our health by observing how
these simple and natural sounds affected us. We enjoy now, not an oriental,
but a boreal leisure, around warm stoves and fireplaces, and watch the
shadow of motes in the sunbeams.
Sometimes our fate grows too homely and familiarly serious ever to be
cruel. Consider how for three months the human destiny is wrapped in furs.
The good Hebrew Revelation takes no cognizance of all this cheerful snow.
Is there no religion for the temperate and frigid zones? We know of no
scripture which records the pure benignity of the gods on a New England
winter night. Their praises have never been sung, only their wrath
deprecated. The best scripture, after all, records but a meagre faith. Its saints
live reserved and austere. Let a brave devout man spend the year in the
woods of Maine or Labrador, and see if the Hebrew Scriptures speak
adequately to his condition and experience, from the setting in of winter to
the breaking up of the ice.
Now commences the long winter evening around the farmer’s hearth,
when the thoughts of the indwellers travel far abroad, and men are by
nature and necessity charitable and liberal to all creatures. Now is the happy
resistance to cold, when the farmer reaps his reward, and thinks of his
preparedness for winter, and, through the glittering panes, sees with
equanimity “the mansion of the northern bear,” for now the storm is over,
“The full ethereal round,
Infinite worlds disclosing to the view,
Shines out intensely keen; and all one cope
Of starry glitter glows from pole to pole.”

[4]
THE SUCCESSION OF FOREST TREES.

[1860.]

Every man is entitled to come to Cattle-show, even a transcendentalist;
and for my part I am more interested in the men than in the cattle. I wish to
see once more those old familiar faces, whose names I do not know, which
for me represent the Middlesex country, and come as near being indigenous
to the soil as a white man can; the men who are not above their business,
whose coats are not too black, whose shoes do not shine very much, who
never wear gloves to conceal their hands. It is true, there are some queer
specimens of humanity attracted to our festival, but all are welcome. I am
pretty sure to meet once more that weak-minded and whimsical fellow,
generally weak-bodied too, who prefers a crooked stick for a cane; perfectly
useless, you would say, only bizarre, fit for a cabinet, like a petrified snake.
A ram’s horn would be as convenient, and is yet more curiously twisted. He
brings that much indulged bit of the country with him, from some town’s
end or other, and introduces it to Concord groves, as if he had promised it
so much sometime. So some, it seems to me, elect their rulers for their
crookedness. But I think that a straight stick makes the best cane, and an
upright man the best ruler. Or why choose a man to do plain work who is
distinguished for his oddity? However, I do not know but you will think that
they have committed this mistake who invited me to speak to you to-day.
In my capacity of surveyor, I have often talked with some of you, my
employers, at your dinner-tables, after having gone round and round and
behind your farming, and ascertained exactly what its limits were.
Moreover, taking a surveyor’s and a naturalist’s liberty, I have been in the
habit of going across your lots much oftener than is usual, as many of you,
perhaps to your sorrow, are aware. Yet many of you, to my relief, have
seemed not to be aware of it; and when I came across you in some out-of-
the-way nook of your farms, have inquired, with an air of surprise, if I were

not lost, since you had never seen me in that part of the town or county
before; when, if the truth were known, and it had not been for betraying my
secret, I might with more propriety have inquired if you were not lost, since
I had never seen you there before. I have several times shown the proprietor
the shortest way out of his wood-lot.
Therefore, it would seem that I have some title to speak to you to-day;
and considering what that title is, and the occasion that has called us
together, I need offer no apology if I invite your attention, for the few
moments that are allotted me, to a purely scientific subject.
At those dinner-tables referred to, I have often been asked, as many of
you have been, if I could tell how it happened, that when a pine wood was
cut down an oak one commonly sprang up, and vice versa. To which I have
answered, and now answer, that I can tell,—that it is no mystery to me. As I
am not aware that this has been clearly shown by any one, I shall lay the
more stress on this point. Let me lead you back into your wood-lots again.
When, hereabouts, a single forest tree or a forest springs up naturally
where none of its kind grew before, I do not hesitate to say, though in some
quarters still it may sound paradoxical, that it came from a seed. Of the
various ways by which trees are known to be propagated,—by
transplanting, cuttings, and the like,—this is the only supposable one under
these circumstances. No such tree has ever been known to spring from
anything else. If any one asserts that it sprang from something else, or from
nothing, the burden of proof lies with him.
It remains, then, only to show how the seed is transported from where it
grows, to where it is planted. This is done chiefly by the agency of the
wind, water, and animals. The lighter seeds, as those of pines and maples,
are transported chiefly by wind and water; the heavier, as acorns and nuts,
by animals.
In all the pines, a very thin membrane, in appearance much like an
insect’s wing, grows over and around the seed, and independent of it, while
the latter is being developed within its base. Indeed this is often perfectly
developed, though the seed is abortive; nature being, you would say, more
sure to provide the means of transporting the seed, than to provide the seed
to be transported. In other words, a beautiful thin sack is woven around the
seed, with a handle to it such as the wind can take hold of, and it is then
committed to the wind, expressly that it may transport the seed and extend

the range of the species; and this it does, as effectually, as when seeds are
sent by mail in a different kind of sack from the patent-office. There is a
patent-office at the seat of government of the universe, whose managers are
as much interested in the dispersion of seeds as anybody at Washington can
be, and their operations are infinitely more extensive and regular.
There is then no necessity for supposing that the pines have sprung up
from nothing, and I am aware that I am not at all peculiar in asserting that
they come from seeds, though the mode of their propagation by nature has
been but little attended to. They are very extensively raised from the seed in
Europe, and are beginning to be here.
When you cut down an oak wood, a pine wood will not at once spring up
there unless there are, or have been, quite recently, seed-bearing pines near
enough for the seeds to be blown from them. But, adjacent to a forest of
pines, if you prevent other crops from growing there, you will surely have
an extension of your pine forest, provided the soil is suitable.
As for the heavy seeds and nuts which are not furnished with wings, the
notion is still a very common one that, when the trees which bear these
spring up where none of their kind were noticed before, they have come
from seeds or other principles spontaneously generated there in an unusual
manner, or which have lain dormant in the soil for centuries, or perhaps
been called into activity by the heat of a burning. I do not believe these
assertions, and I will state some of the ways in which, according to my
observation, such forests are planted and raised.
Every one of these seeds, too, will be found to be winged or legged in
another fashion. Surely it is not wonderful that cherry-trees of all kinds are
widely dispersed, since their fruit is well known to be the favorite food of
various birds. Many kinds are called bird-cherries, and they appropriate
many more kinds, which are not so called. Eating cherries is a bird-like
employment, and unless we disperse the seeds occasionally, as they do, I
shall think that the birds have the best right to them. See how artfully the
seed of a cherry is placed in order that a bird may be compelled to transport
it—in the very midst of a tempting pericarp, so that the creature that would
devour this must commonly take the stone also into its mouth or bill. If you
ever ate a cherry, and did not make two bites of it, you must have perceived
it—right in the centre of the luscious morsel, a large earthy residuum left on
the tongue. We thus take into our mouths cherry stones as big as peas, a

dozen at once, for Nature can persuade us to do almost anything when she
would compass her ends. Some wild men and children instinctively
swallow these, as the birds do when in a hurry, it being the shortest way to
get rid of them. Thus, though these seeds are not provided with vegetable
wings, Nature has impelled the thrush tribe to take them into their bills and
fly away with them; and they are winged in another sense, and more
effectually than the seeds of pines, for these are carried even against the
wind. The consequence is, that cherry-trees grow not only here but there.
The same is true of a great many other seeds.
But to come to the observation which suggested these remarks. As I have
said, I suspect that I can throw some light on the fact, that when hereabouts
a dense pine wood is cut down, oaks and other hard woods may at once take
its place. I have got only to show that the acorns and nuts, provided they are
grown in the neighborhood, are regularly planted in such woods; for I assert
that if an oak-tree has not grown within ten miles, and man has not carried
acorns thither, then an oak wood will not spring up at once, when a pine
wood is cut down.
Apparently, there were only pines there before. They are cut off, and after
a year or two you see oaks and other hard woods springing up there, with
scarcely a pine amid them, and the wonder commonly is, how the seed
could have lain in the ground so long without decaying. But the truth is, that
it has not lain in the ground so long, but is regularly planted each year by
various quadrupeds and birds.
In this neighborhood, where oaks and pines are about equally dispersed,
if you look through the thickest pine wood, even the seemingly unmixed
pitch-pine ones, you will commonly detect many little oaks, birches, and
other hard woods, sprung from seeds carried into the thicket by squirrels
and other animals, and also blown thither, but which are over-shadowed and
choked by the pines. The denser the evergreen wood, the more likely it is to
be well planted with these seeds, because the planters incline to resort with
their forage to the closest covert. They also carry it into birch and other
woods. This planting is carried on annually, and the oldest seedlings
annually die; but when the pines are cleared off, the oaks, having got just
the start they want, and now secured favorable conditions, immediately
spring up to trees.

The shade of a dense pine wood, is more unfavorable to the springing up
of pines of the same species than of oaks within it, though the former may
come up abundantly when the pines are cut, if there chance to be sound
seed in the ground.
But when you cut off a lot of hard wood, very often the little pines mixed
with it have a similar start, for the squirrels have carried off the nuts to the
pines, and not to the more open wood, and they commonly make pretty
clean work of it; and moreover, if the wood was old, the sprouts will be
feeble or entirely fail; to say nothing about the soil being, in a measure,
exhausted for this kind of crop.
If a pine wood is surrounded by a white oak one chiefly, white oaks may
be expected to succeed when the pines are cut. If it is surrounded, instead
by an edging of shrub-oaks, then you will probably have a dense shrub-oak
thicket.
I have no time to go into details, but will say, in a word, that while the
wind is conveying the seeds of pines into hard woods and open lands, the
squirrels and other animals are conveying the seeds of oaks and walnuts
into the pine woods, and thus a rotation of crops is kept up.
I affirmed this confidently many years ago, and an occasional
examination of dense pine woods confirmed me in my opinion. It has long
been known to observers that squirrels bury nuts in the ground, but I am not
aware that any one has thus accounted for the regular succession of forests.
On the 24th of September, in 1857, as I was paddling down the Assabet,
in this town, I saw a red squirrel run along the bank under some herbage,
with something large in its mouth. It stopped near the foot of a hemlock,
within a couple of rods of me, and, hastily pawing a hole with its forefeet,
dropped its booty into it, covered it up, and retreated part way up the trunk
of the tree. As I approached the shore to examine the deposit, the squirrel,
descending part way, betrayed no little anxiety about its treasure, and made
two or three motions to recover it before it finally retreated. Digging there, I
found two green pig-nuts joined together, with the thick husks on, buried
about an inch and a half under the reddish soil of decayed hemlock leaves,
—just the right depth to plant it. In short, this squirrel was then engaged in
accomplishing two objects, to wit, laying up a store of winter food for itself,
and planting a hickory wood for all creation. If the squirrel was killed, or
neglected its deposit, a hickory would spring up. The nearest hickory tree

was twenty rods distant. These nuts were there still just fourteen days later,
but were gone when I looked again, November 21, or six weeks later still.
I have since examined more carefully several dense woods, which are
said to be, and are apparently exclusively pine, and always with the same
result. For instance, I walked the same day to a small, but very dense and
handsome white-pine grove, about fifteen rods square, in the east part of
this town. The trees are large for Concord, being from ten to twenty inches
in diameter, and as exclusively pine as any wood that I know. Indeed, I
selected this wood because I thought it the least likely to contain anything
else. It stands on an open plain or pasture, except that it adjoins another
small pine wood, which has a few little oaks in it, on the southeast side. On
every other side, it was at least thirty rods from the nearest woods. Standing
on the edge of this grove and looking through it, for it is quite level and free
from underwood, for the most part bare, red-carpeted ground, you would
have said that there was not a hard wood tree in it, young or old. But on
looking carefully along over its floor I discovered, though it was not till my
eye had got used to the search, that, alternating with thin ferns, and small
blueberry bushes, there was, not merely here and there, but as often as
every five feet and with a degree of regularity, a little oak, from three to
twelve inches high, and in one place I found a green acorn dropped by the
base of a pine.
I confess, I was surprised to find my theory so perfectly proved in this
case. One of the principal agents in this planting, the red squirrels, were all
the while curiously inspecting me, while I was inspecting their plantation.
Some of the little oaks had been browsed by cows, which resorted to this
wood for shade.
After seven or eight years, the hard woods evidently find such a locality
unfavorable to their growth, the pines being allowed to stand. As an
evidence of this, I observed a diseased red-maple twenty-five feet long,
which had been recently prostrated, though it was still covered with green
leaves, the only maple in any position in the wood.
But although these oaks almost invariably die if the pines are not cut
down, it is probable that they do better for a few years under their shelter
than they would anywhere else.
The very extensive and thorough experiments of the English, have at
length led them to adopt a method of raising oaks almost precisely like this,

which somewhat earlier had been adopted by nature and her squirrels here;
they have simply rediscovered the value of pines as nurses for oaks. The
English experimenters seem early and generally, to have found out the
importance of using trees of some kind, as nurse-plants for the young oaks.
I quote from Loudon what he describes as “the ultimatum on the subject of
planting and sheltering oaks,”—“an abstract of the practice adopted by the
government officers in the national forests” of England, prepared by
Alexander Milne.
At first some oaks had been planted by themselves, and others mixed
with Scotch pines; “but in all cases,” says Mr. Milne, “where oaks were
planted actually among the pines, and surrounded by them, [though the soil
might be inferior,] the oaks were found to be much the best.” “For several
years past, the plan pursued has been to plant the inclosures with Scotch
pines only, [a tree very similar to our pitch-pine,] and when the pines have
got to the height of five or six feet, then to put in good strong oak plants of
about four or five years’ growth among the pines,—not cutting away any
pines at first, unless they happen to be so strong and thick as to overshadow
the oaks. In about two years, it becomes necessary to shred the branches of
the pines, to give light and air to the oaks, and in about two or three more
years to begin gradually to remove the pines altogether, taking out a certain
number each year, so that, at the end of twenty or twenty-five years, not a
single Scotch pine shall be left; although, for the first ten or twelve years,
the plantation may have appeared to contain nothing else but pine. The
advantage of this mode of planting has been found to be that the pines dry
and ameliorate the soil, destroying the coarse grass and brambles which
frequently choke and injure oaks; and that no mending over is necessary, as
scarcely an oak so planted is found to fail.”
Thus much the English planters have discovered by patient experiment,
and, for aught I know, they have taken out a patent for it; but they appear
not to have discovered that it was discovered before, and that they are
merely adopting the method of Nature, which she long ago made patent to
all. She is all the while planting the oaks amid the pines without our
knowledge, and at last, instead of government officers, we send a party of
wood-choppers to cut down the pines, and so rescue an oak forest, at which
we wonder as if it had dropped from the skies.

As I walk amid hickories, even in August, I hear the sound of green pig-
nuts falling from time to time, cut off by the chickaree over my head. In the
fall, I notice on the ground, either within or in the neighborhood of oak
woods, on all sides of the town, stout oak twigs three or four inches long,
bearing half-a-dozen empty acorn-cups, which twigs have been gnawed off
by squirrels, on both sides of the nuts, in order to make them more portable.
The jays scream and the red squirrels scold while you are clubbing and
shaking the chestnut trees, for they are there on the same errand, and two of
a trade never agree. I frequently see a red or gray squirrel cast down a green
chestnut bur, as I am going through the woods, and I used to think,
sometimes, that they were cast at me. In fact, they are so busy about it, in
the midst of the chestnut season, that you cannot stand long in the woods
without hearing one fall. A sportsman told me that he had, the day before,—
that was in the middle of October,—seen a green chestnut bur dropt on our
great river meadow, fifty rods from the nearest wood, and much further
from the nearest chestnut-tree, and he could not tell how it came there.
Occasionally, when chestnutting in midwinter, I find thirty or forty nuts in a
pile, left in its gallery, just under the leaves, by the common wood-mouse
(mus leucopus).
But especially, in the winter, the extent to which this transportation and
planting of nuts is carried on is made apparent by the snow. In almost every
wood, you will see where the red or gray squirrels have pawed down
through the snow in a hundred places, sometimes two feet deep, and almost
always directly to a nut or a pine-cone, as directly as if they had started
from it and bored upward,—which you and I could not have done. It would
be difficult for us to find one before the snow falls. Commonly, no doubt,
they had deposited them there in the fall. You wonder if they remember the
localities, or discover them by the scent. The red squirrel commonly has its
winter abode in the earth under a thicket of evergreens, frequently under a
small clump of evergreens in the midst of a deciduous wood. If there are
any nut-trees, which still retain their nuts, standing at a distance without the
wood, their paths often lead directly to and from them. We, therefore, need
not suppose an oak standing here and there in the wood in order to seed it,
but if a few stand within twenty or thirty rods of it, it is sufficient.
I think that I may venture to say that every white-pine cone that falls to
the earth naturally in this town, before opening and losing its seeds, and
almost every pitch-pine one that falls at all, is cut off by a squirrel, and they

begin to pluck them long before they are ripe, so that when the crop of
white-pine cones is a small one, as it commonly is, they cut off thus almost
every one of these before it fairly ripens. I think, moreover, that their
design, if I may so speak, in cutting them off green, is, partly, to prevent
their opening and losing their seeds, for these are the ones for which they
dig through the snow, and the only white-pine cones which contain
anything then. I have counted in one heap, within a diameter of four feet,
the cores of 239 pitch-pine cones which had been cut off and stripped by the
red squirrel the previous winter.
The nuts thus left on the surface, or buried just beneath it, are placed in
the most favorable circumstances for germinating. I have sometimes
wondered how those which merely fell on the surface of the earth got
planted; but, by the end of December, I find the chestnut of the same year
partially mixed with the mould, as it were, under the decaying and mouldy
leaves, where there is all the moisture and manure they want, for the nuts
fall first. In a plentiful year, a large proportion of the nuts are thus covered
loosely an inch deep, and are, of course, somewhat concealed from
squirrels. One winter, when the crop had been abundant, I got, with the aid
of a rake, many quarts of these nuts as late as the tenth of January, and
though some bought at the store the same day were more than half of them
mouldy, I did not find a single mouldy one among these which I picked
from under the wet and mouldy leaves, where they had been snowed on
once or twice. Nature knows how to pack them best. They were still plump
and tender. Apparently, they do not heat there, though wet. In the spring
they were all sprouting.
Loudon says that “when the nut [of the common walnut of Europe] is to
be preserved through the winter for the purpose of planting in the following
spring, it should be laid in a rot-heap, as soon as gathered, with the husk on;
and the heap should be turned over frequently in the course of the winter.”
Here, again, he is stealing Nature’s “thunder.” How can a poor mortal do
otherwise? for it is she that finds fingers to steal with, and the treasure to be
stolen. In the planting of the seeds of most trees, the best gardeners do no
more than follow Nature, though they may not know it. Generally, both
large and small ones are most sure to germinate, and succeed best, when
only beaten into the earth with the back of a spade, and then covered with
leaves or straw. These results to which planters have arrived, remind us of

the experience of Kane and his companions at the North, who, when
learning to live in that climate, were surprised to find themselves steadily
adopting the customs of the natives, simply becoming Esquimaux. So, when
we experiment in planting forests, we find ourselves at last doing as Nature
does. Would it not be well to consult with Nature in the outset? for she is
the most extensive and experienced planter of us all, not excepting the
Dukes of Athol.
In short, they who have not attended particularly to this subject are but
little aware to what an extent quadrupeds and birds are employed,
especially in the fall, in collecting, and so disseminating and planting the
seeds of trees. It is the almost constant employment of the squirrels at that
season and you rarely meet with one that has not a nut in its mouth, or is not
just going to get one. One squirrel-hunter of this town told me that he knew
of a walnut-tree which bore particularly good nuts, but that on going to
gather them one fall, he found that he had been anticipated by a family of a
dozen red squirrels. He took out of the tree, which was hollow, one bushel
and three pecks by measurement, without the husks, and they supplied him
and his family for the winter. It would be easy to multiply instances of this
kind. How commonly in the fall you see the cheek-pouches of the striped
squirrel distended by a quantity of nuts! This species gets its scientific name
Tamias, or the steward, from its habit of storing up nuts and other seeds.
Look under a nut-tree a month after the nuts have fallen, and see what
proportion of sound nuts to the abortive ones and shells you will find
ordinarily. They have been already eaten, or dispersed far and wide. The
ground looks like a platform before a grocery, where the gossips of the
village sit to crack nuts and less savory jokes. You have come, you would
say, after the feast was over, and are presented with the shells only.
Occasionally, when threading the woods in the fall, you will hear a sound
as if some one had broken a twig, and, looking up, see a jay pecking at an
acorn, or you will see a flock of them at once about it, in the top of an oak,
and hear them break them off. They then fly to a suitable limb, and placing
the acorn under one foot, hammer away at it busily, making a sound like a
woodpecker’s tapping, looking round from time to time to see if any foe is
approaching, and soon reach the meat, and nibble at it, holding up their
heads to swallow, while they hold the remainder very firmly with their
claws. Nevertheless, it often drops to the ground before the bird has done
with it. I can confirm what Wm. Bartram wrote to Wilson, the

Ornithologist, that “The jay is one of the most useful agents in the economy
of nature, for disseminating forest trees and other nuciferous and hard-
seeded vegetables on which they feed. Their chief employment during the
autumnal season is foraging to supply their winter stores. In performing this
necessary duty they drop abundance of seed in their flight over fields,
hedges, and by fences, where they alight to deposit them in the post-holes,
&c. It is remarkable what numbers of young trees rise up in fields and
pastures after a wet winter and spring. These birds alone are capable, in a
few years’ time, to replant all the cleared lands.”
I have noticed that squirrels also frequently drop their nuts in open land,
which will still further account for the oaks and walnuts which spring up in
pastures, for, depend on it, every new tree comes from a seed. When I
examine the little oaks, one or two years old, in such places, I invariably
find the empty acorn from which they sprung.
So far from the seed having lain dormant in the soil since oaks grew there
before, as many believe, it is well known that it is difficult to preserve the
vitality of acorns long enough to transport them to Europe; and it is
recommended in Loudon’s Arboretum, as the safest course, to sprout them
in pots on the voyage. The same authority states that “very few acorns of
any species will germinate after having been kept a year,” that beechmast,
“only retains its vital properties one year,” and the black-walnut, “seldom
more than six months after it has ripened.” I have frequently found that in
November, almost every acorn left on the ground had sprouted or decayed.
What with frost, drouth, moisture, and worms, the greater part are soon
destroyed. Yet it is stated by one botanical writer that “acorns that have lain
for centuries, on being ploughed up, have soon vegetated.”
Mr. George B. Emerson, in his valuable Report on the Trees and Shrubs
of this State, says of the pines: “The tenacity of life of the seeds is
remarkable. They will remain for many years unchanged in the ground,
protected by the coolness and deep shade of the forest above them. But
when the forest is removed, and the warmth of the sun admitted, they
immediately vegetate.” Since he does not tell us on what observation his
remark is founded, I must doubt its truth. Besides, the experience of
nurserymen makes it the more questionable.
The stories of wheat raised from seed buried with an ancient Egyptian,
and of raspberries raised from seed found in the stomach of a man in

England, who is supposed to have died sixteen or seventeen hundred years
ago, are generally discredited, simply because the evidence is not
conclusive.
Several men of science, Dr. Carpenter among them, have used the
statement that beach-plums sprang up in sand which was dug up forty miles
inland in Maine, to prove that the seed had lain there a very long time, and
some have inferred that the coast has receded so far. But it seems to me
necessary to their argument to show, first, that beach-plums grow only on a
beach. They are not uncommon here, which is about half that distance from
the shore; and I remember a dense patch a few miles north of us, twenty-
five miles inland, from which the fruit was annually carried to market. How
much further inland they grow, I know not. Dr. Chas. T. Jackson speaks of
finding “beach-plums” (perhaps they were this kind) more than one
hundred miles inland in Maine.
It chances that similar objections lie against all the more notorious
instances of the kind on record.
Yet I am prepared to believe that some seeds, especially small ones, may
retain their vitality for centuries under favorable circumstances. In the
spring of 1859, the old Hunt House, so called, in this town, whose chimney
bore the date 1703, was taken down. This stood on land which belonged to
John Winthrop, the first Governor of Massachusetts, and a part of the house
was evidently much older than the above date, and belonged to the
Winthrop family. For many years, I have ransacked this neighborhood for
plants, and I consider myself familiar with its productions. Thinking of the
seeds which are said to be sometimes dug up at an unusual depth in the
earth, and thus to reproduce long extinct plants, it occurred to me last fall
that some new or rare plants might have sprung up in the cellar of this
house, which had been covered from the light so long. Searching there on
the 22d of September, I found, among other rank weeds, a species of nettle
(Urtica urens), which I had not found before; dill, which I had not seen
growing spontaneously; the Jerusalem oak (Chenopodium botrys), which I
had seen wild in but one place; black nightshade (Solanum nigrum), which
is quite rare hereabouts, and common tobacco, which, though it was often
cultivated here in the last century, has for fifty years been an unknown plant
in this town, and a few months before this not even I had heard that one
man in the north part of the town, was cultivating a few plants for his own

use. I have no doubt that some or all of these plants sprang from seeds
which had long been buried under or about that house, and that that tobacco
is an additional evidence that the plant was formerly cultivated here. The
cellar has been filled up this year, and four of those plants, including the
tobacco, are now again extinct in that locality.
It is true, I have shown that the animals consume a great part of the seeds
of trees, and so, at least, effectually prevent their becoming trees; but in all
these cases, as I have said, the consumer is compelled to be at the same time
the disperser and planter, and this is the tax which he pays to nature. I think
it is Linnaeus, who says, that while the swine is rooting for acorns, he is
planting acorns.
Though I do not believe that a plant will spring up where no seed has
been, I have great faith in a seed—a, to me, equally mysterious origin for it.
Convince me that you have a seed there, and I am prepared to expect
wonders. I shall even believe that the millennium is at hand, and that the
reign of justice is about to commence, when the Patent Office, or
Government, begins to distribute, and the people to plant the seeds of these
things.’
In the spring of 1857, I planted six seeds sent to me from the Patent
Office, and labelled, I think, “Poitrine jaune grosse,” large yellow squash.
Two came up, and one bore a squash which weighed 123-1/2 pounds, the
other bore four, weighing together 186-1/4 pounds. Who would have
believed that there was 310 pounds of poitrine jaune grosse in that corner
of my garden? These seeds were the bait I used to catch it, my ferrets which
I sent into its burrow, my brace of terriers which unearthed it. A little
mysterious hoeing and manuring was all the abra cadabra presto-change,
that I used, and lo! true to the label, they found for me 310 pounds of
poitrine jaune grosse there, where it never was known to be, nor was
before. These talismen had perchance sprung from America at first, and
returned to it with unabated force. The big squash took a premium at your
fair that fall, and I understood that the man who bought it, intended to sell
the seeds for ten cents a piece. (Were they not cheap at that?) But I have
more hounds of the same breed. I learn that one which I despatched to a
distant town, true to its instinct, points to the large yellow squash there, too,
where no hound ever found it before, as its ancestors did here and in
France.

Other seeds I have which will find other things in that corner of my
garden, in like fashion, almost any fruit you wish, every year for ages, until
the crop more than fills the whole garden. You have but little more to do,
than throw up your cap for entertainment these American days. Perfect
alchemists I keep, who can transmute substances without end; and thus the
corner of my garden is an inexhaustible treasure-chest. Here you can dig,
not gold, but the value which gold merely represents; and there is no Signor
Blitz about it. Yet farmers’ sons will stare by the hour to see a juggler draw
ribbons from his throat, though he tells them it is all deception. Surely, men
love darkness rather than light.
[4] An Address read to the Middlesex Agricultural Society, in Concord,
September, 1860.

WALKING.

[1862.]

I wish to speak a word for Nature, for absolute freedom and wildness, as
contrasted with a freedom and culture merely civil,—to regard man as an
inhabitant, or a part and parcel of Nature, rather than a member of society. I
wish to make an extreme statement, if so I may make an emphatic one, for
there are enough champions of civilization: the minister and the school-
committee, and every one of you will take care of that.

I have met with but one or two persons in the course of my life who
understood the art of Walking, that is, of taking walks,—who had a genius,
so to speak, for sauntering: which word is beautifully derived “from idle
people who roved about the country, in the Middle Ages, and asked charity,
under pretence of going à la Sainte Terre” to the Holy Land, till the children
exclaimed, “There goes a Sainte-Terrer,” a Saunterer,—a Holy-Lander.
They who never go to the Holy Land in their walks, as they pretend, are
indeed mere idlers and vagabonds; but they who do go there are saunterers
in the good sense, such as I mean. Some, however, would derive the word
from sans terre, without land or a home, which, therefore, in the good
sense, will mean, having no particular home, but equally at home
everywhere. For this is the secret of successful sauntering. He who sits still
in a house all the time may be the greatest vagrant of all; but the saunterer,
in the good sense, is no more vagrant than the meandering river, which is all
the while sedulously seeking the shortest course to the sea. But I prefer the
first, which, indeed, is the most probable derivation. For every walk is a sort
of crusade, preached by some Peter the Hermit in us, to go forth and
reconquer this Holy Land from the hands of the Infidels.

It is true, we are but faint-hearted crusaders, even the walkers, nowadays,
who undertake no persevering, never-ending enterprises. Our expeditions
are but tours, and come round again at evening to the old hearth-side from
which we set out. Half the walk is but retracing our steps. We should go
forth on the shortest walk, perchance, in the spirit of undying adventure,
never to return,—prepared to send back our embalmed hearts only as relics
to our desolate kingdoms. If you are ready to leave father and mother, and
brother and sister, and wife and child and friends, and never see them again,
—if you have paid your debts, and made your will, and settled all your
affairs, and are a free man, then you are ready for a walk.
To come down to my own experience, my companion and I, for I
sometimes have a companion, take pleasure in fancying ourselves knights
of a new, or rather an old, order,—not Equestrians or Chevaliers, not Ritters
or riders, but Walkers, a still more ancient and honorable class, I trust. The
chivalric and heroic spirit which once belonged to the Rider seems now to
reside in, or perchance to have subsided into, the Walker,—not the Knight,
but Walker Errant. He is a sort of fourth estate, outside of Church and State
and People.
We have felt that we almost alone hereabouts practised this noble art;
though, to tell the truth, at least, if their own assertions are to be received,
moat of my townsmen would fain walk sometimes, as I do, but they cannot.
No wealth can buy the requisite leisure, freedom, and independence, which
are the capital in this profession. It comes only by the grace of God. It
requires a direct dispensation from Heaven to become a walker. You must
be born into the family of the Walkers. Ambulator nascitur, non fit. Some of
my townsmen, it is true, can remember and have described to me some
walks which they took ten years ago, in which they were so blessed as to
lose themselves for half an hour in the woods; but I know very well that
they have confined themselves to the highway ever since, whatever
pretensions they may make to belong to this select class. No doubt they
were elevated for a moment as by the reminiscence of a previous state of
existence, when even they were foresters and outlaws.
“When he came to grene wode,
In a mery mornynge,
There he herde the notes small
Of byrdes mery syngynge.

“It is ferre gone, sayd Robyn,

That I was last here;
Me lyste a lytell for to shote
At the donne dere.”

I think that I cannot preserve my health and spirits, unless I spend four
hours a day at least,—and it is commonly more than that,—sauntering
through the woods and over the hills and fields, absolutely free from all
worldly engagements. You may safely say, A penny for your thoughts, or a
thousand pounds. When sometimes I am reminded that the mechanics and
shopkeepers stay in their shops not only all the forenoon, but all the
afternoon too, sitting with crossed legs, so many of them,—as if the legs
were made to sit upon, and not to stand or walk upon,—I think that they
deserve some credit for not having all committed suicide long ago.
I, who cannot stay in my chamber for a single day without acquiring
some rust, and when sometimes I have stolen forth for a walk at the
eleventh hour of four o’clock in the afternoon, too late to redeem the day,
when the shades of night were already beginning to be mingled with the
daylight, have felt as if I had committed some sin to be atoned for,—I
confess that I am astonished at the power of endurance, to say nothing of
the moral insensibility, of my neighbors who confine themselves to shops
and offices the whole day for weeks and months, ay, and years almost
together. I know not what manner of stuff they are of,—sitting there now at
three o’clock in the afternoon, as if it were three o’clock in the morning.
Bonaparte may talk of the three-o’clock-in-the-morning courage, but it is
nothing to the courage which can sit down cheerfully at this hour in the
afternoon over against one’s self whom you have known all the morning, to
starve out a garrison to whom you are bound by such strong ties of
sympathy. I wonder that about this time, or say between four and five
o’clock in the afternoon, too late for the morning papers and too early for
the evening ones, there is not a general explosion heard up and down the
street, scattering a legion of antiquated and house-bred notions and whims
to the four winds for an airing,—and so the evil cure itself.
How womankind, who are confined to the house still more than men,
stand it I do not know; but I have ground to suspect that most of them do
not stand it at all. When, early in a summer afternoon, we have been
shaking the dust of the village from the skirts of our garments, making haste
past those houses with purely Doric or Gothic fronts, which have such an
air of repose about them, my companion whispers that probably about these

times their occupants are all gone to bed. Then it is that I appreciate the
beauty and the glory of architecture, which itself never turns in, but forever
stands out and erect, keeping watch over the slumberers.
No doubt temperament, and, above all, age, have a good deal to do with
it. As a man grows older, his ability to sit still and follow indoor
occupations increases. He grows vespertinal in his habits as the evening of
life approaches, till at last he comes forth only just before sundown, and
gets all the walk that he requires in half an hour.
But the walking of which I speak has nothing in it akin to taking exercise,
as it is called, as the sick take medicine at stated hours,—as the swinging of
dumb-bells or chairs; but is itself the enterprise and adventure of the day. If
you would get exercise, go in search of the springs of life. Think of a man’s
swinging dumb-bells for his health, when those springs are bubbling up in
far-off pastures unsought by him!
Moreover, you must walk like a camel, which is said to be the only beast
which ruminates when walking. When a traveller asked Wordsworth’s
servant to show him her master’s study, she answered, “Here is his library,
but his study is out of doors.”
Living much out of doors, in the sun and wind, will no doubt produce a
certain roughness of character,—will cause a thicker cuticle to grow over
some of the finer qualities of our nature, as on the face and hands, or as
severe manual labor robs the hands of some of their delicacy of touch. So
staying in the house, on the other hand, may produce a softness and
smoothness, not to say thinness of skin, accompanied by an increased
sensibility to certain impressions. Perhaps we should be more susceptible to
some influences important to our intellectual and moral growth, if the sun
had shone and the wind blown on us a little less; and no doubt it is a nice
matter to proportion rightly the thick and thin skin. But methinks that is a
scurf that will fall off fast enough,—that the natural remedy is to be found
in the proportion which the night bears to the day, the winter to the summer,
thought to experience. There will be so much the more air and sunshine in
our thoughts. The callous palms of the laborer are conversant with finer
tissues of self-respect and heroism, whose touch thrills the heart, than the
languid fingers of idleness. That is mere sentimentality that lies abed by day
and thinks itself white, far from the tan and callus of experience.

When we walk, we naturally go to the fields and woods: what would
become of us, if we walked only in a garden or a mall? Even some sects of
philosophers have felt the necessity of importing the woods to themselves,
since they did not go to the woods. “They planted groves and walks of
Platanes,” where they took subdiales ambulationes in porticos open to the
air. Of course it is of no use to direct our steps to the woods, if they do not
carry us thither. I am alarmed when it happens that I have walked a mile
into the woods bodily, without getting there in spirit. In my afternoon walk I
would fain forget all my morning occupations and my obligations to
society. But it sometimes happens that I cannot easily shake off the village.
The thought of some work will run in my head, and I am not where my
body is,—I am out of my senses. In my walks I would fain return to my
senses. What business have I in the woods, if I am thinking of something
out of the woods? I suspect myself, and cannot help a shudder, when I find
myself so implicated even in what are called good works,—for this may
sometimes happen.
My vicinity affords many good walks; and though for so many years I
have walked almost every day, and sometimes for several days together, I
have not yet exhausted them. An absolutely new prospect is a great
happiness, and I can still get this any afternoon. Two or three hours’
walking will carry me to as strange a country as I expect ever to see. A
single farmhouse which I had not seen before is sometimes as good as the
dominions of the King of Dahomey. There is in fact a sort of harmony
discoverable between the capabilities of the landscape within a circle of ten
miles’ radius, or the limits of an afternoon walk, and the threescore years
and ten of human life. It will never become quite familiar to you.
Nowadays almost all man’s improvements, so called, as the building of
houses, and the cutting down of the forest and of all large trees, simply
deform the landscape, and make it more and more tame and cheap. A people
who would begin by burning the fences and let the forest stand! I saw the
fences half consumed, their ends lost in the middle of the prairie, and some
worldly miser with a surveyor looking after his bounds, while heaven had
taken place around him, and he did not see the angels going to and fro, but
was looking for an old post-hole in the midst of paradise. I looked again,
and saw him standing in the middle of a boggy, stygian fen, surrounded by
devils, and he had found his bounds without a doubt, three little stones,

where a stake had been driven, and looking nearer, I saw that the Prince of
Darkness was his surveyor.
I can easily walk ten, fifteen, twenty, any number of miles, commencing
at my own door, without going by any house, without crossing a road
except where the fox and the mink do: first along by the river, and then the
brook, and then the meadow and the wood-side. There are square miles in
my vicinity which have no inhabitant. From many a hill I can see
civilization and the abodes of man afar. The farmers and their works are
scarcely more obvious than woodchucks and their burrows. Man and his
affairs, church and state and school, trade and commerce, and manufactures
and agriculture, even politics, the most alarming of them all,—I am pleased
to see how little space they occupy in the landscape. Politics is but a narrow
field, and that still narrower highway yonder leads to it. I sometimes direct
the traveller thither. If you would go to the political world, follow the great
road,—follow that market-man, keep his dust in your eyes, and it will lead
you straight to it; for it, too, has its place merely, and does not occupy all
space. I pass from it as from a bean-field into the forest, and it is forgotten.
In one half-hour I can walk off to some portion of the earth’s surface where
a man does not stand from one year’s end to another, and there,
consequently, politics are not, for they are but as the cigar-smoke of a man.
The village is the place to which the roads tend, a sort of expansion of the
highway, as a lake of a river. It is the body of which roads are the arms and
legs,—a trivial or quadrivial place, the thoroughfare and ordinary of
travellers. The word is from the Latin villa, which, together with via, a way,
or more anciently ved and vella, Varro derives from veho, to carry, because
the villa is the place to and from which things are carried. They who got
their living by teaming were said vellaturam facere. Hence, too, apparently,
the Latin word vilis and our vile; also villain. This suggests what kind of
degeneracy villagers are liable to. They are wayworn by the travel that goes
by and over them, without travelling themselves.
Some do not walk at all; others walk in the highways; a few walk across
lots. Roads are made for horses and men of business. I do not travel in them
much, comparatively, because I am not in a hurry to get to any tavern or
grocery or livery-stable or depot to which they lead. I am a good horse to
travel, but not from choice a roadster. The landscape-painter uses the
figures of men to mark a road. He would not make that use of my figure. I

walk out into a Nature such as the old prophets and poets, Menu, Moses,
Homer, Chaucer, walked in. You may name it America, but it is not
America: neither Atnericus Vespucius, nor Columbus, nor the rest were the
discoverers of it. There is a truer account of it in mythology than in any
history of America, so called, that I have seen.
However, there are a few old roads that may be trodden with profit, as if
they led somewhere now that they are nearly discontinued. There is the Old
Marlborough Road, which does not go to Marlborough now, methinks,
unless that is Marlborough where it carries me. I am the bolder to speak of
it here, because I presume that there are one or two such roads in every
town.

THE OLD MARLBOROUGH ROAD.
Where they once dug for money,
But never found any;
Where sometimes Martial Miles
Singly files,
And Elijah Wood,
I fear for no good:
No other man,
Save Elisha Dugan,—
O man of wild habits,
Partridges and rabbits,
Who hast no cares
Only to set snares,
Who liv’st all alone,
Close to the bone,
And where life is sweetest
Constantly eatest.
When the spring stirs my blood
With the instinct to travel,
I can get enough gravel
On the Old Marlborough Road.
Nobody repairs it,
For nobody wears it;
It is a living way,
As the Christians say.
Not many there be
Who enter therein,
Only the guests of the
Irishman Quin.
What is it, what is it,
But a direction out there,
And the bare possibility
Of going somewhere?

Great guide-boards of stone,
But travellers none;
Cenotaphs of the towns
Named on their crowns.
It is worth going to see
Where you might be.
What king
Did the thing,
I am still wondering;
Set up how or when,
By what selectmen,
Gourgas or Lee,
Clark or Darby?
They’re a great endeavor
To be something forever;
Blank tablets of stone,
Where a traveller might groan,
And in one sentence
Grave all that is known;
Which another might read,
In his extreme need.
I know one or two
Lines that would do,
Literature that might stand
All over the land,
Which a man could remember
Till next December,
And read again in the spring,
After the thawing.
If with fancy unfurled
You leave your abode,
You may go round the world
By the Old Marlborough Road.

At present, in this vicinity, the best part of the land is not private
property; the landscape is not owned, and the walker enjoys comparative
freedom. But possibly the day will come when it will be partitioned off into
so-called pleasure-grounds, in which a few will take a narrow and exclusive
pleasure only,—when fences shall be multiplied, and man-traps and other
engines invented to confine men to the public road, and walking over the
surface of God’s earth shall be construed to mean trespassing on some
gentleman’s grounds. To enjoy a thing exclusively is commonly to exclude
yourself from the true enjoyment of it. Let us improve our opportunities,
then, before the evil days come.

What is it that makes it so hard sometimes to determine whither we will
walk? I believe that there is a subtile magnetism in Nature, which, if we
unconsciously yield to it, will direct us aright. It is not indifferent to us
which way we walk. There is a right way; but we are very liable from
heedlessness and stupidity to take the wrong one. We would fain take that
walk, never yet taken by us through this actual world, which is perfectly
symbolical of the path which we love to travel in the interior and ideal
world; and sometimes, no doubt, we find it difficult to choose our direction,
because it does not yet exist distinctly in our idea.
When I go out of the house for a walk, uncertain as yet whither I will
bend my steps, and submit myself to my instinct to decide for me, I find,
strange and whimsical as it may seem, that I finally and inevitably settle
southwest, toward some particular wood or meadow or deserted pasture or
hill in that direction. My needle is slow to settle,—varies a few degrees, and
does not always point due southwest, it is true, and it has good authority for
this variation, but it always settles between west and south-southwest. The
future lies that way to me, and the earth seems more unexhausted and richer
on that side. The outline which would bound my walks would be, not a
circle, but a parabola, or rather like one of those cometary orbits which have
been thought to be non-returning curves, in this case opening westward, in
which my house occupies the place of the sun. I turn round and round
irresolute sometimes for a quarter of an hour, until I decide, for a
thousandth time, that I will walk into the southwest or west. Eastward I go
only by force; but westward I go free. Thither no business leads me. It is
hard for me to believe that I shall find fair landscapes or sufficient wildness
and freedom behind the eastern horizon. I am not excited by the prospect of
a walk thither; but I believe that the forest which I see in the western
horizon stretches uninterruptedly toward the setting sun, and there are no
towns nor cities in it of enough consequence to disturb me. Let me live
where I will, on this side is the city, on that the wilderness, and ever I am
leaving the city more and more, and withdrawing into the wilderness. I
should not lay so much stress on this fact, if I did not believe that something
like this is the prevailing tendency of my countrymen. I must walk toward
Oregon, and not toward Europe. And that way the nation is moving, and I
may say that mankind progress from east to west. Within a few years we
have witnessed the phenomenon of a southeastward migration, in the
settlement of Australia; but this affects us as a retrograde movement, and,

judging from the moral and physical character of the first generation of
Australians, has not yet proved a successful experiment. The eastern Tartars
think that there is nothing west beyond Thibet. “The world ends there,” say
they, “beyond there is nothing but a shoreless sea.” It is unmitigated East
where they live.
We go eastward to realize history and study the works of art and
literature, retracing the steps of the race; we go westward as into the future,
with a spirit of enterprise and adventure. The Atlantic is a Lethean stream,
in our passage over which we have had an opportunity to forget the Old
World and its institutions. If we do not succeed this time, there is perhaps
one more chance for the race left before it arrives on the banks of the Styx;
and that is in the Lethe of the Pacific, which is three times as wide.
I know not how significant it is, or how far it is an evidence of
singularity, that an individual should thus consent in his pettiest walk with
the general movement of the race; but I know that something akin to the
migratory instinct in birds and quadrupeds,—which, in some instances, is
known to have affected the squirrel tribe, impelling them to a general and
mysterious movement, in which they were seen, say some, crossing the
broadest rivers, each on its particular chip, with its tail raised for a sail, and
bridging narrower streams with their dead,—that something like the furor
which affects the domestic cattle in the spring, and which is referred to a
worm in their tails,—affects both nations and individuals, either perennially
or from time to time. Not a flock of wild geese cackles over our town, but it
to some extent unsettles the value of real estate here, and, if I were a broker,
I should probably take that disturbance into account.
“Than longen folk to gon on pilgrimages,
And palmeres for to seken strange strondes.”

Every sunset which I witness inspires me with the desire to go to a West
as distant and as fair as that into which the sun goes down. He appears to
migrate westward daily, and tempt us to follow him. He is the Great
Western Pioneer whom the nations follow. We dream all night of those
mountain-ridges in the horizon, though they may be of vapor only, which
were last gilded by his rays. The island of Atlantis, and the islands and
gardens of the Hesperides, a sort of terrestrial paradise, appear to have been
the Great West of the ancients, enveloped in mystery and poetry. Who has

not seen in imagination, when looking into the sunset sky, the gardens of
the Hesperides, and the foundation of all those fables?
Columbus felt the westward tendency more strongly than any before. He
obeyed it, and found a New World for Castile and Leon. The herd of men in
those days scented fresh pastures from afar.
“And now the sun had stretched out all the hills,
And now was dropped into the western bay;
At last he rose, and twitched his mantle blue;
To-morrow to fresh woods and pastures new.”

Where on the globe can there be found an area of equal extent with that
occupied by the bulk of our States, so fertile and so rich and varied in its
productions, and at the same time so habitable by the European, as this is?
Michaux, who knew but part of them, says that “the species of large trees
are much more numerous in North America than in Europe; in the United
States there are more than one hundred and forty species that exceed thirty
feet in height; in France there are but thirty that attain this size.” Later
botanists more than confirm his observations. Humboldt came to America
to realize his youthful dreams of a tropical vegetation, and he beheld it in its
greatest perfection in the primitive forests of the Amazon, the most gigantic
wilderness on the earth, which he has so eloquently described. The
geographer Guyot, himself a European, goes farther,—farther than I am
ready to follow him; yet not when he says,— “As the plant is made for the
animal, as the vegetable world is made for the animal world, America is
made for the man of the Old World…. The man of the Old World sets out
upon his way. Leaving the highlands of Asia, he descends from station to
station towards Europe. Each of his steps is marked by a new civilization
superior to the preceding, by a greater power of development. Arrived at the
Atlantic, he pauses on the shore of this unknown ocean, the bounds of
which he knows not, and turns upon his footprints for an instant.” When he
has exhausted the rich soil of Europe, and reinvigorated himself, “then
recommences his adventurous career westward as in the earliest ages.” So
far Guyot.
From this western impulse coming in contact with the barrier of the
Atlantic sprang the commerce and enterprise of modern times. The younger
Michaux, in his “Travels West of the Alleghanies in 1802,” says that the
common inquiry in the newly settled West was, “‘From what part of the

world have you come?’ As if these vast and fertile regions would naturally
be the place of meeting and common country of all the inhabitants of the
globe.”
To use an obsolete Latin word, I might say, Ex Oriente lux; ex Occidente
FRUX. From the East light; from the West fruit.
Sir Francis, Head, an English traveller and a Governor-General of
Canada, tells us that “in both the northern and southern hemispheres of the
New World, Nature has not only outlined her works on a larger scale, but
has painted the whole picture with brighter and more costly colors than she
used in delineating and in beautifying the Old World…. The heavens of
America appear infinitely higher, the sky is bluer, the air is fresher, the cold
is intenser, the moon looks larger, the stars are brighter, the thunder is
louder, the lightning is vivider, the wind is stronger, the rain is heavier, the
mountains are higher, the rivers longer, the forests bigger, the plains
broader.” This statement will do at least to set against Buffon’s account of
this part of the world and its productions.
Linnaeus said long ago, “Nescio quae facies laeta, glabra plantis
Americanis: I know not what there is of joyous and smooth in the aspect of
American plants;” and I think that in this country there are no, or at most
very few, Africanae bestiae, African beasts, as the Romans called them, and
that in this respect also it is peculiarly fitted for the habitation of man. We
are told that within three miles of the centre of the East-Indian city of
Singapore, some of the inhabitants are annually carried off by tigers; but the
traveller can lie down in the woods at night almost anywhere in North
America without fear of wild beasts.
These are encouraging testimonies. If the moon looks larger here than in
Europe, probably the sun looks larger also. If the heavens of America
appear infinitely higher, and the stars brighter, I trust that these facts are
symbolical of the height to which the philosophy and poetry and religion of
her inhabitants may one day soar. At length, perchance, the immaterial
heaven will appear as much higher to the American mind, and the
intimations that star it as much brighter. For I believe that climate does thus
react on man,—as there is something in the mountain-air that feeds the
spirit and inspires. Will not man grow to greater perfection intellectually as
well as physically under these influences? Or is it unimportant how many
foggy days there are in his life? I trust that we shall be more imaginative,

that our thoughts will be clearer, fresher, and more ethereal, as our sky,—
our understanding more comprehensive and broader, like our plains,—our
intellect generally on a grander scale, like our thunder and lightning, our
rivers and mountains and forests,—and our hearts shall even correspond in
breadth and depth and grandeur to our inland seas. Perchance there will
appear to the traveller something, he knows not what, of laeta and glabra,
of joyous and serene, in our very faces. Else to what end does the world go
on, and why was America discovered?
To Americans I hardly need to say,—
“Westward the star of empire takes its way.”

As a true patriot, I should be ashamed to think that Adam in paradise was
more favorably situated on the whole than the backwoodsman in this
country.
Our sympathies in Massachusetts are not confined to New England;
though we may be estranged from the South, we sympathize with the West.
There is the home of the younger sons, as among the Scandinavians they
took to the sea for their inheritance. It is too late to be studying Hebrew; it
is more important to understand even the slang of to-day.
Some months ago I went to see a panorama of the Rhine. It was like a
dream of the Middle Ages. I floated down its historic stream in something
more than imagination, under bridges built by the Romans, and repaired by
later heroes, past cities and castles whose very names were music to my
ears, and each of which was the subject of a legend. There were
Ehrenbreitstein and Rolandseck and Coblentz, which I knew only in history.
They were ruins that interested me chiefly. There seemed to come up from
its waters and its vine-clad hills and valleys a hushed music as of Crusaders
departing for the Holy Land. I floated along under the spell of enchantment,
as if I had been transported to an heroic age, and breathed an atmosphere of
chivalry.
Soon after, I went to see a panorama of the Mississippi, and as I worked
my way up the river in the light of to-day, and saw the steamboats wooding
up, counted the rising cities, gazed on the fresh ruins of Nauvoo, beheld the
Indians moving west across the stream, and, as before I had looked up the
Moselle now looked up the Ohio and the Missouri, and heard the legends of
Dubuque and of Wenona’s Cliff,—still thinking more of the future than of

the past or present,—I saw that this was a Rhine stream of a different kind;
that the foundations of castles were yet to be laid, and the famous bridges
were yet to be thrown over the river; and I felt that this was the heroic age
itself, though we know it not, for the hero is commonly the simplest and
obscurest of men.

The West of which I speak is but another name for the Wild; and what I
have been preparing to say is, that in Wildness is the preservation of the
World. Every tree sends its fibres forth in search of the Wild. The cities
import it at any price. Men plough and sail for it. From the forest and
wilderness come the tonics and barks which brace mankind. Our ancestors
were savages. The story of Romulus and Remus being suckled by a wolf is
not a meaningless fable. The founders of every State which has risen to
eminence have drawn their nourishment and vigor from a similar wild
source. It was because the children of the Empire were not suckled by the
wolf that they were conquered and displaced by the children of the
Northern forests who were.
I believe in the forest, and in the meadow, and in the night in which the
corn grows. We require an infusion of hemlock-spruce or arbor-vitae in our
tea. There is a difference between eating and drinking for strength and from
mere gluttony. The Hottentots eagerly devour the marrow of the koodoo and
other antelopes raw, as a matter of course. Some of our Northern Indians eat
raw the marrow of the Arctic reindeer, as well as various other parts,
including the summits of the antlers, as long as they are soft. And herein,
perchance, they have stolen a march on the cooks of Paris. They get what
usually goes to feed the fire. This is probably better than stall-fed beef and
slaughter-house pork to make a man of. Give me a wildness whose glance
no civilization can endure,—as if we lived on the marrow of koodoos
devoured raw.
There are some intervals which border the strain of the wood-thrush, to
which I would migrate,—wild lands where no settler has squatted; to which,
methinks, I am already acclimated.
The African hunter Cummings tells us that the skin of the eland, as well
as that of most other antelopes just killed, emits the most delicious perfume
of trees and grass. I would have every man so much like a wild antelope, so
much a part and parcel of Nature, that his very person should thus sweetly

advertise our senses of his presence, and remind us of those parts of Nature
which he most haunts. I feel no disposition to be satirical, when the
trapper’s coat emits the odor of musquash even; it is a sweeter scent to me
than that which commonly exhales from the merchant’s or the scholar’s
garments. When I go into their wardrobes and handle their vestments, I am
reminded of no grassy plains and flowery meads which they have
frequented, but of dusty merchants’ exchanges and libraries rather.
A tanned skin is something more than respectable, and perhaps olive is a
fitter color than white for a man,—a denizen of the woods. “The pale white
man!” I do not wonder that the African pitied him. Darwin the naturalist
says, “A white man bathing by the side of a Tahitian was like a plant
bleached by the gardener’s art, compared with a fine, dark green one,
growing vigorously in the open fields.”
Ben Jonson exclaims,—
“How near to good is what is fair!”

So I would say,—
How near to good is what is wild!

Life consists with wildness. The most alive is the wildest. Not yet subdued
to man, its presence refreshes him. One who pressed forward incessantly
and never rested from his labors, who grew fast and made infinite demands
on life, would always find himself in a new country or wilderness, and
surrounded by the raw material of life. He would be climbing over the
prostrate stems of primitive forest-trees.
Hope and the future for me are not in lawns and cultivated fields, not in
towns and cities, but in the impervious and quaking swamps. When,
formerly, I have analyzed my partiality for some farm which I had
contemplated purchasing, I have frequently found that I was attracted solely
by a few square rods of impermeable and unfathomable bog,—a natural
sink in one corner of it. That was the jewel which dazzled me. I derive more
of my subsistence from the swamps which surround my native town than
from the cultivated gardens in the village. There are no richer parterres to
my eyes than the dense beds of dwarf andromeda (Cassandra calyculata)
which cover these tender places on the earth’s surface. Botany cannot go
farther than tell me the names of the shrubs which grow there,—the high-

blueberry, panicled andromeda, lamb-kill, azalea, and rhodora,—all
standing in the quaking sphagnum. I often think that I should like to have
my house front on this mass of dull red bushes, omitting other flower plots
and borders, transplanted spruce and trim box, even gravelled walks,—to
have this fertile spot under my windows, not a few imported barrow-fulls of
soil only to cover the sand which was thrown out in digging the cellar. Why
not put my house, my parlor, behind this plot, instead of behind that meagre
assemblage of curiosities, that poor apology for a Nature and Art, which I
call my front-yard? It is an effort to clear up and make a decent appearance
when the carpenter and mason have departed, though done as much for the
passer-by as the dweller within. The most tasteful front-yard fence was
never an agreeable object of study to me; the most elaborate ornaments,
acorn-tops, or what not, soon wearied and disgusted me. Bring your sills up
to the very edge of the swamp, then, (though it may not be the best place for
a dry cellar,) so that there be no access on that side to citizens. Front-yards
are not made to walk in, but, at most, through, and you could go in the back
way.
Yes, though you may think me perverse, if it were proposed to me to
dwell in the neighborhood of the most beautiful garden that ever human art
contrived, or else of a Dismal swamp, I should certainly decide for the
swamp. How vain, then, have been all your labors, citizens, for me!
My spirits infallibly rise in proportion to the outward dreariness. Give me
the ocean, the desert or the wilderness! In the desert, pure air and solitude
compensate for want of moisture and fertility. The traveller Burton says of
it,—“Your morale improves; you become frank and cordial, hospitable and
single-minded….. In the desert, spirituous liquors excite only disgust. There
is a keen enjoyment in a mere animal existence.” They who have been
travelling long on the steppes of Tartary say,—“On reëntering cultivated
lands, the agitation, perplexity, and turmoil of civilization oppressed and
suffocated us; the air seemed to fail us, and we felt every moment as if
about to die of asphyxia.” When I would recreate myself, I seek the darkest
wood, the thickest and most interminable, and, to the citizen, most dismal
swamp. I enter a swamp as a sacred place,—a sanctum sanctorum. There is
the strength, the marrow of Nature. The wild-wood covers the virgin mould,
—and the same soil is good for men and for trees. A man’s health requires
as many acres of meadow to his prospect as his farm does loads of muck.
There are the strong meats on which he feeds. A town is saved, not more by

the righteous men in it than by the woods and swamps that surround it. A
township where one primitive forest waves above, while another primitive
forest rots below,—such a town is fitted to raise not only corn and potatoes,
but poets and philosophers for the coming ages. In such a soil grew Homer
and Confucius and the rest, and out of such a wilderness comes the
Reformer eating locusts and wild honey.
To preserve wild animals implies generally the creation of a forest for
them to dwell in or resort to. So it is with man. A hundred years ago they
sold bark in our streets peeled from our own woods. In the very aspect of
those primitive and rugged trees, there was, methinks, a tanning principle
which hardened and consolidated the fibres of men’s thoughts. Ah! already
I shudder for these comparatively degenerate days of my native village,
when you cannot collect a load of bark of good thickness,—and we no
longer produce tar and turpentine.
The civilized nations—Greece, Rome, England—have been sustained by
the primitive forests which anciently rotted where they stand. They survive
as long as the soil is not exhausted. Alas for human culture! little is to be
expected of a nation, when the vegetable mould is exhausted, and it is
compelled to make manure of the bones of its fathers. There the poet
sustains himself merely by his own superfluous fat, and the philosopher
comes down on his marrow-bones.
It is said to be the task of the American “to work the virgin soil,” and that
“agriculture here already assumes proportions unknown everywhere else.” I
think that the farmer displaces the Indian even because he redeems the
meadow, and so makes himself stronger and in some respects more natural.
I was surveying for a man the other day a single straight line one hundred
and thirty-two rods long, through a swamp, at whose entrance might have
been written the words which Dante read over the entrance to the infernal
regions,—“Leave all hope, ye that enter,”—that is, of ever getting out
again; where at one time I saw my employer actually up to his neck and
swimming for his life in his property, though it was still winter. He had
another similar swamp which I could not survey at all, because it was
completely under water, and nevertheless, with regard to a third swamp,
which I did survey from a distance, he remarked to me, true to his instincts,
that he would not part with it for any consideration, on account of the mud
which it contained. And that man intends to put a girdling ditch round the

whole in the course of forty months, and so redeem it by the magic of his
spade. I refer to him only as the type of a class.
The weapons with which we have gained our most important victories,
which should be handed down as heirlooms from father to son, are not the
sword and the lance, but the bushwhack, the turf-cutter, the spade, and the
bog-hoe, rusted with the blood of many a meadow, and begrimed with the
dust of many a hard-fought field. The very winds blew the Indian’s
cornfield into the meadow, and pointed out the way which he had not the
skill to follow. He had no better implement with which to intrench himself
in the land than a clam-shell. But the farmer is armed with plough and
spade.
In Literature it is only the wild that attracts us. Dullness is but another
name for tameness. It is the uncivilized free and wild thinking in “Hamlet”
and the “Iliad,” in all the Scriptures and Mythologies, not learned in the
schools, that delights us. As the wild duck is more swift and beautiful than
the tame, so is the wild—the mallard—thought, which ’mid falling dews
wings its way above the fens. A truly good book is something as natural,
and as unexpectedly and unaccountably fair and perfect, as a wild flower
discovered on the prairies of the West or in the jungles of the East. Genius
is a light which makes the darkness visible, like the lightning’s flash, which
perchance shatters the temple of knowledge itself,—and not a taper lighted
at the hearth-stone of the race, which pales before the light of common day.
English literature, from the days of the minstrels to the Lake Poets,—
Chaucer and Spenser and Milton, and even Shakspeare, included,—breathes
no quite fresh and in this sense wild strain. It is an essentially tame and
civilized literature, reflecting Greece and Rome. Her wilderness is a green
wood,—her wild man a Robin Hood. There is plenty of genial love of
Nature, but not so much of Nature herself. Her chronicles inform us when
her wild animals, but not when the wild man in her, became extinct.
The science of Humboldt is one thing, poetry is another thing. The poet
to-day, notwithstanding all the discoveries of science, and the accumulated
learning of mankind, enjoys no advantage over Homer.
Where is the literature which gives expression to Nature? He would be a
poet who could impress the winds and streams into his service, to speak for
him; who nailed words to their primitive senses, as farmers drive down
stakes in the spring, which the frost has heaved; who derived his words as

often as he used them,—transplanted them to his page with earth adhering
to their roots; whose words were so true and fresh and natural that they
would appear to expand like the buds at the approach of spring, though they
lay half-smothered between two musty leaves in a library,—ay, to bloom
and bear fruit there, after their kind, annually, for the faithful reader, in
sympathy with surrounding Nature.
I do not know of any poetry to quote which adequately expresses this
yearning for the Wild. Approached from this side, the best poetry is tame. I
do not know where to find in any literature, ancient or modern, any account
which contents me of that Nature with which even I am acquainted. You
will perceive that I demand something which no Augustan nor Elizabethan
age, which no culture, in short, can give. Mythology comes nearer to it than
anything. How much more fertile a Nature, at least, has Grecian mythology
its root in than English literature! Mythology is the crop which the Old
World bore before its soil was exhausted, before the fancy and imagination
were affected with blight; and which it still bears, wherever its pristine
vigor is unabated. All other literatures endure only as the elms which
overshadow our houses; but this is like the great dragon-tree of the Western
Isles, as old as mankind, and, whether that does or not, will endure as long;
for the decay of other literatures makes the soil in which it thrives.
The West is preparing to add its fables to those of the East. The valleys of
the Ganges, the Nile, and the Rhine, having yielded their crop, it remains to
be seen what the valleys of the Amazon, the Plate, the Orinoco, the St.
Lawrence, and the Mississippi will produce. Perchance, when, in the course
of ages, American liberty has become a fiction of the past,—as it is to some
extent a fiction of the present,—the poets of the world will be inspired by
American mythology.
The wildest dreams of wild men, even, are not the less true, though they
may not recommend themselves to the sense which is most common among
Englishmen and Americans today. It is not every truth that recommends
itself to the common sense. Nature has a place for the wild clematis as well
as for the cabbage. Some expressions of truth are reminiscent,— others
merely sensible, as the phrase is,—others prophetic. Some forms of disease,
even, may prophesy forms of health. The geologist has discovered that the
figures of serpents, griffins, flying dragons, and other fanciful
embellishments of heraldry, have their prototypes in the forms of fossil

species which were extinct before man was created, and hence “indicate a
faint and shadowy knowledge of a previous state of organic existence.” The
Hindoos dreamed that the earth rested on an elephant, and the elephant on a
tortoise, and the tortoise on a serpent; and though it may be an unimportant
coincidence, it will not be out of place here to state, that a fossil tortoise has
lately been discovered in Asia large enough to support an elephant. I
confess that I am partial to these wild fancies, which transcend the order of
time and development. They are the sublimest recreation of the intellect.
The partridge loves peas, but not those that go with her into the pot.
In short, all good things are wild and free. There is something in a strain
of music, whether produced by an instrument or by the human voice,—take
the sound of a bugle in a summer night, for instance,—which by its
wildness, to speak without satire, reminds me of the cries emitted by wild
beasts in their native forests. It is so much of their wildness as I can
understand. Give me for my friends and neighbors wild men, not tame ones.
The wildness of the savage is but a faint symbol of the awful ferity with
which good men and lovers meet.
I love even to see the domestic animals reassert their native rights,—any
evidence that they have not wholly lost their original wild habits and vigor;
as when my neighbor’s cow breaks out of her pasture early in the spring and
boldly swims the river, a cold, gray tide, twenty-five or thirty rods wide,
swollen by the melted snow. It is the buffalo crossing the Mississippi. This
exploit confers some dignity on the herd in my eyes,—already dignified.
The seeds of instinct are preserved under the thick hides of cattle and
horses, like seeds in the bowels of the earth, an indefinite period.
Any sportiveness in cattle is unexpected. I saw one day a herd of a dozen
bullocks and cows running about and frisking in unwieldly sport, like huge
rats, even like kittens. They shook their heads, raised their tails, and rushed
up and down a hill, and I perceived by their horns, as well as by their
activity, their relation to the deer tribe. But, alas! a sudden loud Whoa!
would have damped their ardor at once, reduced them from venison to beef,
and stiffened their sides and sinews like the locomotive. Who but the Evil
One has cried, “Whoa!” to mankind? Indeed, the life of cattle, like that of
many men, is but a sort of locomotiveness; they move a side at a time, and
man, by his machinery, is meeting the horse and the ox half-way. Whatever

part the whip has touched is thenceforth palsied. Who would ever think of a
side of any of the supple cat tribe, as we speak of a side of beef?
I rejoice that horses and steers have to be broken before they can be made
the slaves of men, and that men themselves have some, wild oats still left to
sow before they become submissive members of society. Undoubtedly, all
men are not equally fit subjects for civilization; and because the majority,
like dogs and sheep, are tame by inherited disposition, this is no reason why
the others should have their natures broken that they may be reduced to the
same level. Men are in the main alike, but they were made several in order
that they might be various. If a low use is to be served, one man will do
nearly or quite as well as another; if a high one, individual excellence is to
be regarded. Any man can stop a hole to keep the wind away, but no other
man could serve so rare a use as the author of this illustration did.
Confucius says,—“The skins of the tiger and the leopard, when they are
tanned, are as the skins of the dog and the sheep tanned.” But it is not the
part of a true culture to tame tigers, any more than it is to make sheep
ferocious; and tanning their skins for shoes is not the best use to which they
can be put.

When looking over a list of men’s names in a foreign language, as of
military officers, or of authors who have written on a particular subject, I
am reminded once more that there is nothing in a name. The name
Menschikoff, for instance, has nothing in it to my ears more human than a
whisker, and it may belong to a rat. As the names of the Poles and Russians
are to us, so are ours to them. It is as if they had been named by the child’s
rigmarole,—Iery wiery ichery van, tittle-tol-tan. I see in my mind a herd of
wild creatures swarming over the earth, and to each the herdsman has
affixed some barbarous sound in his own dialect. The names of men are of
course as cheap and meaningless as Bose and Tray, the names of dogs.
Methinks it would be some advantage to philosophy, if men were named
merely in the gross, as they are known. It would be necessary only to know
the genus and perhaps the race or variety, to know the individual. We are
not prepared to believe that every private soldier in a Roman army had a
name of his own,—because we have not supposed that he had a character of
his own. At present our only true names are nicknames. I knew a boy who,
from his peculiar energy, was called “Buster” by his playmates, and this

rightly supplanted his Christian name. Some travellers tell us that an Indian
had no name given him at first, but earned it, and his name was his fame;
and among some tribes he acquired a new name with every new exploit. It
is pitiful when a man bears a name for convenience merely, who has earned
neither name nor fame.
I will not allow mere names to make distinctions for me, but still see men
in herds for all them. A familiar name cannot make a man less strange to
me. It may be given to a savage who retains in secret his own wild title
earned in the woods. We have a wild savage in us, and a savage name is
perchance somewhere recorded as ours. I see that my neighbor, who bears
the familiar epithet William, or Edwin, takes it off with his jacket. It does
not adhere to him when asleep or in anger, or aroused by any passion or
inspiration. I seem to hear pronounced by some of his kin at such a time his
original wild name in some jaw-breaking or else melodious tongue.

Here is this vast, savage, howling mother of ours, Nature, lying all
around, with such beauty, and such affection for her children, as the
leopard; and yet we are so early weaned from her breast to society, to that
culture which is exclusively an interaction of man on man,—a sort of
breeding in and in, which produces at most a merely English nobility, a
civilization destined to have a speedy limit.
In society, in the best institutions of men, it is easy to detect a certain
precocity. When we should still be growing children, we are already little
men. Give me a culture which imports much muck from the meadows, and
deepens the soil,—not that which trusts to heating manures, and improved
implements and modes of culture only!
Many a poor sore-eyed student that I have heard of would grow faster,
both intellectually and physically, if, instead of sitting up so very late, he
honestly slumbered a fool’s allowance.
There may be an excess even of informing light. Niépce, a Frenchman,
discovered “actinism,” that power in the sun’s rays which produces a
chemical effect,—that granite rocks, and stone structures, and statues of
metal, “are all alike destructively acted upon during the hours of sunshine,
and, but for provisions of Nature no less wonderful, would soon perish
under the delicate touch of the most subtile of the agencies of the universe.”

But he observed that “those bodies which underwent this change during the
daylight possessed the power of restoring themselves to their original
conditions during the hours of night, when this excitement was no-longer
influencing them.” Hence it has been inferred that “the hours of darkness
are as necessary to the inorganic creation as we know night and sleep are to
the organic kingdom.” Not even does the moon shine every night, but gives
place to darkness.
I would not have every man nor every part of a man cultivated, any more
than I would have every acre of earth cultivated: part will be tillage, but the
greater part will be meadow and forest, not only serving an immediate use,
but preparing a mould against a distant future, by the annual decay of the
vegetation which it supports.
There are other letters for the child to learn than those which Cadmus
invented. The Spaniards have a good term to express this wild and dusky
knowledge,—Gramática parda, tawny grammar,—a kind of mother-wit
derived from that same leopard to which I have referred.
We have heard of a Society for the Diffusion of Useful Knowledge. It is
said that knowledge is power; and the like. Methinks there is equal need of
a Society for the Diffusion of Useful Ignorance, what we will call Beautiful
Knowledge, a knowledge useful in a higher sense: for what is most of our
boasted so-called knowledge but a conceit that we know something, which
robs us of the advantage of our actual ignorance? What we call knowledge
is often our positive ignorance; ignorance our negative knowledge. By long
years of patient industry and reading of the newspapers,—for what are the
libraries of science but files of newspapers?—a man accumulates a myriad
facts, lays them up in his memory, and then when in some spring of his life
he saunters abroad into the Great Fields of thought, he, as it were, goes to
grass like a horse, and leaves all his harness behind in the stable. I would
say to the Society for the Diffusion of Useful Knowledge, sometimes,—Go
to grass. You have eaten hay long enough. The spring has come with its
green crop. The very cows are driven to their country pastures before the
end of May; though I have heard of one unnatural farmer who kept his cow
in the barn and fed her on hay all the year round. So, frequently, the Society
for the Diffusion of Useful Knowledge treats its cattle.
A man’s ignorance sometimes is not only useful, but beautiful,—while
his knowledge, so called, is oftentimes worse than useless, besides being

ugly. Which is the best man to deal with,—he who knows nothing about a
subject, and, what is extremely rare, knows that he knows nothing, or he
who really knows something about it, but thinks that he knows all?
My desire for knowledge is intermittent; but my desire to bathe my head
in atmospheres unknown to my feet is perennial and constant. The highest
that we can attain to is not Knowledge, but Sympathy with Intelligence. I do
not know that this higher knowledge amounts to anything more definite
than a novel and grand surprise on a sudden revelation of the insufficiency
of all that we called Knowledge before,—a discovery that there are more
things in heaven and earth than are dreamed of in our philosophy. It is the
lighting up of the mist by the sun. Man cannot know in any higher sense
than this, any more than he can look serenely and with impunity in the face
of sun: Ὁς τὶ νοῶν, οὐ κεῖνον νοήσεις,—“You will not perceive that, as
perceiving a particular thing,” say the Chaldean Oracles.
There is something servile in the habit of seeking after a law which we
may obey. We may study the laws of matter at and for our convenience, but
a successful life knows no law. It is an unfortunate discovery certainly, that
of a law which binds us where we did not know before that we were bound.
Live free, child of the mist,—and with respect to knowledge we are all
children of the mist. The man who takes the liberty to live is superior to all
the laws, by virtue of his relation to the law-maker. “That is active duty,”
says the Vishnu Parana, “which is not for our bondage; that is knowledge
which is for our liberation: all other duty is good only unto weariness; all
other knowledge is only the cleverness of an artist.”

It is remarkable how few events or crises there are in our histories; how
little exercised we have been in our minds; how few experiences we have
had. I would fain be assured that I am growing apace and rankly, though my
very growth disturb this dull equanimity,—though it be with struggle
through long, dark, muggy nights or seasons of gloom. It would be well, if
all our lives were a divine tragedy even, instead of this trivial comedy or
farce. Dante, Bunyan, and others, appear to have been exercised in their
minds more than we: they were subjected to a kind of culture such as our
district schools and colleges do not contemplate. Even Mahomet, though
many may scream at his name, had a good deal more to live for, ay, and to
die for, than they have commonly.

When, at rare intervals, some thought visits one, as perchance he is
walking on a railroad, then indeed the cars go by without his hearing them.
But soon, by some inexorable law, our life goes by and the cars return.
“Gentle breeze, that wanderest unseen,
And bendest the thistles round Loira of storms,
Traveller of the windy glens,
Why hast thou left my ear so soon?”

While almost all men feel an attraction drawing them to society, few are
attracted strongly to Nature. In their relation to Nature men appear to me for
the most part, notwithstanding their arts, lower than the animals. It is not
often a beautiful relation, as in the case of the animals. How little
appreciation of the beauty of the landscape there is among us! We have to
be told that the Greeks called the world Κόσμος, Beauty, or Order, but we
do not see clearly why they did so, and we esteem it at best only a curious
philological fact.
For my part, I feel that with regard to Nature I live a sort of border life,
on the confines of a world into which I make occasional and transional and
transient forays only, and my patriotism and allegiance to the State into
whose territories I seem to retreat are those of a moss-trooper. Unto a life
which I call natural I would gladly follow even a will-o’-the-wisp through
bogs and sloughs unimaginable, but no moon nor fire-fly has shown me the
causeway to it. Nature is a personality so vast and universal that we have
never seen one of her features. The walker in the familiar fields which
stretch around my native town sometimes finds himself in another land than
is described in their owners’ deeds, as it were in some far-away field on the
confines of the actual Concord, where her jurisdiction ceases, and the idea
which the word Concord suggests ceases to be suggested. These farms
which I have myself surveyed, these bounds which I have set up, appear
dimly still as through a mist; but they have no chemistry to fix them; they
fade from the surface of the glass; and the picture which the painter painted
stands out dimly from beneath. The world with which we are commonly
acquainted leaves no trace, and it will have no anniversary.
I took a walk on Spaulding’s Farm the other afternoon. I saw the setting
sun lighting up the opposite side of a stately pine wood. Its golden rays
straggled into the aisles of the wood as into some noble hall. I was
impressed as if some ancient and altogether admirable and shining family

had settled there in that part of the land called Concord, unknown to me,—
to whom the sun was servant,—who had not gone into society in the
village,—who had not been called on. I saw their park, their pleasure-
ground, beyond through the wood, in Spaulding’s cranberry-meadow. The
pines furnished them with gables as they grew. Their house was not
obvious, to vision; the trees grew through it. I do not know whether I heard
the sounds of a suppressed hilarity or not. They seemed to recline on the
sunbeams. They have sons and daughters. They are quite well. The farmer’s
cart-path, which leads directly through their hall, does not in the least put
them out,—as the muddy bottom of a pool is sometimes seen through the
reflected skies. They never heard of Spaulding, and do not know that he is
their neighbor,—notwithstanding I heard him whistle as he drove his team
through the house. Nothing can equal the serenity of their lives. Their coat
of arms is simply a lichen. I saw it painted on the pines and oaks. Their
attics were in the tops of the trees. They are of no politics. There was no
noise of labor. I did not perceive that they were weaving or spinning. Yet I
did detect, when the wind lulled and hearing was done away, the finest
imaginable sweet musical hum,—as of a distant hive in May, which
perchance was the sound of their thinking. They had no idle thoughts, and
no one without could see their work, for their industry was not as in knots
and excrescences embayed.
But I find it difficult to remember them. They fade irrevocably out of my
mind even now while I speak and endeavor to recall them, and recollect
myself. It is only after a long and serious effort to recollect my best
thoughts that I become again aware of their cohabitancy. If it were not for
such families as this, I think I should move out of Concord.

We are accustomed to say in New England that few and fewer pigeons
visit us every year. Our forests furnish no mast for them. So, it would seem,
few and fewer thoughts visit each growing man from year to year, for the
grove in our minds is laid waste,—sold to feed unnecessary fires of
ambition, or sent to mill, and there is scarcely a twig left for them to perch
on. They no longer build nor breed with us. In some more genial season,
perchance, a faint shadow flits across the landscape of the mind, cast by the
wings of some thought in its vernal or autumnal migration, but, looking up,
we are unable to detect the substance of the thought itself. Our winged

thoughts are turned to poultry. They no longer soar, and they attain only to a
Shanghai and Cochin-China grandeur. Those gra-a-ate thoughts, those gra-
a-ate men you hear of!

We hug the earth,—how rarely we mount! Methinks we might elevate
ourselves a little more. We might climb a tree, at least. I found my account
in climbing a tree once. It was a tall white pine, on the top of a hill; and
though I got well pitched, I was well paid for it, for I discovered new
mountains in the horizon which I had never seen before,—so much more of
the earth and the heavens. I might have walked about the foot of the tree for
threescore years and ten, and yet I certainly should never have seen them.
But, above all, I discovered around me,—it was near the end of June,—on
the ends of the topmost branches only, a few minute and delicate red cone-
like blossoms, the fertile flower of the white pine looking heavenward. I
carried straightway to the village the topmost spire, and showed it to
stranger jurymen who walked the streets,—for it was court-week,—and to
farmers and lumber-dealers and wood-choppers and hunters, and not one
had ever seen the like before, but they wondered as at a star dropped down.
Tell of ancient architects finishing their works on the tops of columns as
perfectly as on the lower and more visible parts! Nature has from the first
expanded the minute blossoms of the forest only toward the heavens, above
men’s heads and unobserved by them. We see only the flowers that are
under our feet in the meadows. The pines have developed their delicate
blossoms on the highest twigs of the wood every summer for ages, as well
over the heads of Nature’s red children as of her white ones; yet scarcely a
farmer or hunter in the land has ever seen them.

Above all, we cannot afford not to live in the present. He is blessed over
all mortals who loses no moment of the passing life in remembering the
past. Unless our philosophy hears the cock crow in every barn-yard within
our horizon, it is belated. That sound commonly reminds us that we are
growing rusty and antique in our employments and habits of thought. His
philosophy comes down to a more recent time than ours. There is
something suggested by it that is a newer testament,—the gospel according
to this moment. He has not fallen astern; he has got up early, and kept up
early, and to be where he is to be in season, in the foremost rank of time. It

is an expression of the health and soundness of Nature, a brag for all the
world,—healthiness as of a spring burst forth, a new fountain of the Muses,
to celebrate this last instant of time. Where he lives no fugitive slave laws
are passed. Who has not betrayed his master many times since last he heard
that note?
The merit of this bird’s strain is in its freedom from all plaintiveness. The
singer can easily move us to tears or to laughter, but where is he who can
excite in us a pure morning joy? When, in doleful dumps, breaking the
awful stillness of our wooden sidewalk on a Sunday, or, perchance, a
watcher in the house of mourning, I hear a cockerel crow far or near, I think
to myself, “There is one of us well, at any rate,”—and with a sudden gush
return to my senses.

We had a remarkable sunset one day last November. I was walking in a
meadow, the source of a small brook, when the sun at last, just before
setting, after a cold gray day, reached a clear stratum in the horizon, and the
softest, brightest morning sunlight fell on the dry grass and on the stems of
the trees in the opposite horizon, and on the leaves of the shrub-oaks on the
hill-side, while our shadows stretched long over the meadow eastward, as if
we were the only motes in its beams. It was such a light as we could not
have imagined a moment before, and the air also was so warm and serene
that nothing was wanting to make a paradise of that meadow. When we
reflected that this was not a solitary phenomenon, never to happen again,
but that it would happen forever and ever an infinite number of evenings,
and cheer and reassure the latest child that walked there, it was more
glorious still.
The sun sets on some retired meadow, where no house is visible, with all
the glory and splendor that it lavishes on cities, and perchance, as it has
never set before,—where there is but a solitary marsh-hawk to have his
wings gilded by it, or only a musquash looks out from his cabin, and there
is some little black-veined brook in the midst of the marsh, just beginning
to meander, winding slowly round a decaying stump. We walked in so pure
and bright a light, gilding the withered grass and leaves, so softly and
serenely bright, I thought I had never bathed in such a golden flood, without
a ripple or a murmur to it. The west side of every wood and rising ground

gleamed like the boundary of Elysium, and the sun on our backs seemed
like a gentle herdsman driving us home at evening.
So we saunter toward the Holy Land, till one day the sun shall shine
more brightly than ever he has done, shall perchance shine into our minds
and hearts, and light up our whole lives with a great awakening light, as
warm and serene and golden as on a bank-side in autumn.

AUTUMNAL TINTS.

[1862.]

Europeans coming to America are surprised by the brilliancy of our
autumnal foliage. There is no account of such a phenomenon in English
poetry, because the trees acquire but few bright colors there. The most that
Thomson says on this subject in his “Autumn” is contained in the lines,—
“But see the fading many-colored woods,
Shade deepening over shade, the country round
Imbrown; a crowded umbrage, dusk and dun,
Of every hue, from wan declining green to sooty dark”:—

and in the line in which he speaks of
“Autumn beaming o’er the yellow woods.”

The autumnal change of our woods has not made a deep impression on
our own literature yet. October has hardly tinged our poetry.
A great many, who have spent their lives in cities, and have never
chanced to come into the country at this season, have never seen this, the
flower, or rather the ripe fruit, of the year. I remember riding with one such
citizen, who, though a fortnight too, late for the most brilliant tints, was
taken by surprise, and would not believe that there had been any brighter.
He had never heard of this phenomenon before. Not only many in our
towns have never witnessed it, but it is scarcely remembered by the
majority from year to year.
Most appear to confound changed leaves with withered ones, as if they
were to confound ripe apples with rotten ones. I think that the change to
some higher color in a leaf is an evidence that it has arrived at a late and
perfect maturity, answering to the maturity of fruits. It is generally the
lowest and oldest leaves which change first. But as the perfect winged and
usually bright-colored insect is short-lived, so the leaves ripen but to fall.

Generally, every fruit, on ripening, and just before it falls, when it
commences a more independent and individual existence, requiring less
nourishment from any source, and that not so much from the earth through
its stem as from the sun and air, acquires a bright tint. So do leaves. The
physiologist says it is “due to an increased absorption of oxygen.” That is
the scientific account of the matter,—only a reassertion of the fact. But I am
more interested in the rosy cheek than I am to know what particular diet the
maiden fed on. The very forest and herbage, the pellicle of the earth, must
acquire a bright color, an evidence of its ripeness,—as if the globe itself
were a fruit on its stem, with ever a cheek toward the sun.
Flowers are but colored leaves, fruits but ripe ones. The edible part of
most fruits is, as the physiologist says, “the parenchyma or fleshy tissue of
the leaf,” of which they are formed.
Our appetites have commonly confined our views of ripeness and its
phenomena, color, mellowness, and perfectness, to the fruits which we eat,
and we are wont to forget that an immense harvest which we do not eat,
hardly use at all, is annually ripened by Nature. At our annual Cattle Shows
and Horticultural Exhibitions, we make, as we think, a great show of fair
fruits, destined, however, to a rather ignoble end, fruits not valued for their
beauty chiefly. But round about and within our towns there is annually
another show of fruits, on an infinitely grander scale, fruits which address
our taste for beauty alone.
October is the month for painted leaves. Their rich glow now flashes
round the world. As fruits and leaves and the day itself acquire a bright tint
just before they fall, so the year near its setting. October is its sunset sky;
November the later twilight.
I formerly thought that it would be worth the while to get a specimen leaf
from each changing tree, shrub, and herbaceous plant, when it had acquired
its brightest characteristic color, in its transition from the green to the brown
state, outline it, and copy its color exactly, with paint in a book, which
should be entitled, “October, or Autumnal Tints”;—beginning with the
earliest reddening,—Woodbine and the lake of radical leaves, and coming
down through the Maples, Hickories, and Sumachs, and many beautifully
freckled leaves less generally known, to the latest Oaks and Aspens. What a
memento such a book would be! You would need only to turn over its
leaves to take a ramble through the autumn woods whenever you pleased.

Or if I could preserve the leaves themselves, unfaded, it would be better
still. I have made but little progress toward such a book, but I have
endeavored, instead, to describe all these bright tints in the order in which
they present themselves. The following are some extracts from my notes.

THE PURPLE GRASSES.
By the twentieth of August, everywhere in woods and swamps, we are
reminded of the fall, both by the richly spotted Sarsaparilla-leaves and
Brakes, and the withering and blackened Skunk-Cabbage and Hellebore,
and, by the river-side, the already blackening Pontederia.
The Purple Grass (Eragròstis pectinàcea) is now in the height of its
beauty. I remember still when I first noticed this grass particularly. Standing
on a hillside near our river, I saw, thirty or forty rods off, a stripe of purple
half a dozen rods long, under the edge of a wood, where the ground sloped
toward a meadow. It was as high-colored and interesting, though not quite
so bright, as the patches of Rhexia, being a darker purple, like a berry’s
stain laid on close and thick. On going to and examining it, I found it to be a
kind of grass in bloom, hardly a foot high, with but few green blades, and a
fine spreading panicle of purple flowers, a shallow, purplish mist trembling
around me. Close at hand it appeared but a dull purple, and made little
impression on the eye; it was even difficult to detect; and if you plucked a
single plant, you were surprised to find how thin it was, and how little color
it had. But viewed at a distance in a favorable light, it was of a fine lively
purple, flower-like, enriching the earth. Such puny causes combine to
produce these decided effects. I was the more surprised and charmed
because grass is commonly of a sober and humble color.
With its beautiful purple blush it reminds me, and supplies the place, of
the Rhexia, which is now leaving off, and it is one of the most interesting
phenomena of August. The finest patches of it grow on waste strips or
selvages of land at the base of dry hills, just above the edge of the
meadows, where the greedy mower does not deign to swing his scythe; for
this is a thin and poor grass, beneath his notice. Or, it may be, because it is
so beautiful he does not know that it exists; for the same eye does not see
this and Timothy. He carefully gets the meadow hay and the more nutritious
grasses which grow next to that, but he leaves this fine purple mist for the
walker’s harvest,—fodder for his fancy stock. Higher up the hill, perchance,

grow also Blackberries, John’s-Wort, and neglected, withered, and wiry
June-Grass. How fortunate that it grows in such places, and not in the midst
of the rank grasses which are annually cut! Nature thus keeps use and
beauty distinct. I know many such localities, where it does not fail to
present itself annually, and paint the earth with its blush. It grows on the
gentle slopes, either in a continuous patch or in scattered and rounded tufts
a foot in diameter, and it lasts till it is killed by the first smart frosts.
In most plants the corolla or calyx is the part which attains the highest
color, and is the most attractive; in many it is the seed-vessel or fruit; in
others, as the Red Maple, the leaves; and in others still it is the very culm
itself which is the principal flower or blooming part.
The last is especially the case with the Poke or Garget (Phytolacca
decandra). Some which stand under our cliffs quite dazzle me with their
purple stems now and early in September. They are as interesting to me as
most flowers, and one of the most important fruits of our autumn. Every
part is flower, (or fruit,) such is its superfluity of color,—stem, branch,
peduncle, pedicel, petiole, and even the at length yellowish purple-veined
leaves. Its cylindrical racemes of berries of various hues, from green to dark
purple, six or seven inches long, are gracefully drooping on all sides,
offering repasts to the birds; and even the sepals from which the birds have
picked the berries are a brilliant lake-red, with crimson flame-like
reflections, equal to anything of the kind,—all on fire with ripeness. Hence
the lacca, from lac, lake. There are at the same time flower-buds, flowers,
green berries, dark purple or ripe ones, and these flower-like sepals, all on
the same plant.
We love to see any redness in the vegetation of the temperate zone. It is
the color of colors. This plant speaks to our blood. It asks a bright sun on it
to make it show to best advantage, and it must be seen at this season of the
year. On warm hillsides its stems are ripe by the twenty-third of August. At
that date I walked through a beautiful grove of them, six or seven feet high,
on the side of one of our cliffs, where they ripen early. Quite to the ground
they were a deep brilliant purple with a bloom, contrasting with the still
clear green leaves. It appears a rare triumph of Nature to have produced and
perfected such a plant, as if this were enough for a summer. What a perfect
maturity it arrives at! It is the emblem of a successful life concluded by a
death not premature, which is an ornament to Nature. What if we were to

mature as perfectly, root and branch, glowing in the midst of our decay, like
the Poke! I confess that it excites me to behold them. I cut one for a cane,
for I would fain handle and lean on it. I love to press the berries between
my fingers, and see their juice staining my hand. To walk amid these
upright, branching casks of purple wine, which retain and diffuse a sunset
glow, tasting each one with your eye, instead of counting the pipes on a
London dock, what a privilege! For Nature’s vintage is not confined to the
vine. Our poets have sung of wine, the product of a foreign plant which
commonly they never saw, as if our own plants had no juice in them more
than the singers. Indeed, this has been called by some the American Grape,
and, though a native of America, its juices are used in some foreign
countries to improve the color of the wine; so that the poetaster may be
celebrating the virtues of the Poke without knowing it. Here are berries
enough to paint afresh the western sky, and play the bacchanal with, if you
will. And what flutes its ensanguined stems would make, to be used in such
a dance! It is truly a royal plant. I could spend the evening of the year
musing amid the Poke-stems. And perchance amid these groves might arise
at last a new school of philosophy or poetry. It lasts all through September.
At the same time with this, or near the end of August, a to me very
interesting genus of grasses, Andropogons, or Beard-Grasses, is in its
prime. Andropogon furcatus, Forked Beard-Grass, or call it Purple-Fingered
Grass; Andropogon scoparius, Purple Wood Grass; and Andropogon (now
called Sorghum) nutans, Indian-Grass. The first is a very tall and slender-
culmed grass, three to seven feet high, with four or five purple finger-like
spikes raying upward from the top. The second is also quite slender,
growing in tufts two feet high by one wide, with culms often somewhat
curving, which, as the spikes go out of bloom, have a whitish fuzzy look.
These two are prevailing grasses at this season on dry and sandy fields and
hillsides. The culms of both, not to mention their pretty flowers, reflect a
purple tinge, and help to declare the ripeness of the year. Perhaps I have the
more sympathy with them because they are despised by the farmer, and
occupy sterile and neglected soil. They are high-colored, like ripe grapes,
and express a maturity which the spring did not suggest. Only the August
sun could have thus burnished these culms and leaves. The farmer has long
since done his upland haying, and he will not condescend to bring his
scythe to where these slender wild grasses have at length flowered thinly;
you often see spaces of bare sand amid them. But I walk encouraged

between the tufts of Purple Wood-Grass, over the sandy fields, and along
the edge of the Shrub-Oaks, glad to recognize these simple contemporaries.
With thoughts cutting a broad swathe I “get” them, with horse-raking
thoughts I gather them into windrows. The fine-eared poet may hear the
whetting of my scythe. These two were almost the first grasses that I
learned to distinguish, for I had not known by how many friends I was
surrounded,—I had seen them simply as grasses standing. The purple of
their culms also excites me like that of the Poke-Weed stems.
Think what refuge there is for one, before August is over, from college
commencements and society that isolates! I can skulk amid the tufts of
Purple Wood-Grass on the borders of the “Great Fields.” Wherever I walk
these afternoons, the Purple-Fingered Grass also stands like a guide-board,
and points my thoughts to more poetic paths than they have lately travelled.
A man shall perhaps rush by and trample down plants as high as his head,
and cannot be said to know that they exist, though he may have cut many
tons of them, littered his stables with them, and fed them to his cattle for
years. Yet, if he ever favorably attends to them, he may be overcome by
their beauty. Each humblest plant, or weed, as we call it, stands there to
express some thought or mood of ours; and yet how long it stands in vain! I
had walked over those Great Fields so many Augusts, and never yet
distinctly recognized these purple companions that I had there. I had
brushed against them and trodden on them, forsooth; and now, at last, they,
as it were, rose up and blessed me. Beauty and true wealth are always thus
cheap and despised. Heaven might be defined as the place which men
avoid. Who can doubt that these grasses, which the farmer says are of no
account to him, find some compensation in your appreciation of them? I
may say that I never saw them before,—though, when I came to look them
face to face, there did come down to me a purple gleam from previous
years; and now, wherever I go, I see hardly anything else. It is the reign and
presidency of the Andropogons.
Almost the very sands confess the ripening influence of the August sun,
and methinks, together with the slender grasses waving over them, reflect a
purple tinge. The impurpled sands! Such is the consequence of all this
sunshine absorbed into the pores of plants and of the earth. All sap or blood
is now wine-colored. At last we have not only the purple sea, but the purple
land.

The Chestnut Beard-Grass, Indian-Grass, or Wood-Grass, growing here
and there in waste places, but more rare than the former, (from two to four
or five feet high,) is still handsomer and of more vivid colors than its
congeners, and might well have caught the Indian’s eye. It has a long,
narrow, one-sided, and slightly nodding panicle of bright purple and yellow
flowers, like a banner raised above its reedy leaves. These bright standards
are now advanced on the distant hill-sides, not in large armies, but in
scattered troops or single file, like the red men. They stand thus fair and
bright, representative of the race which they are named after, but for the
most part unobserved as they. The expression of this grass haunted me for a
week, after I first passed and noticed it, like the glance of an eye. It stands
like an Indian chief taking a last look at his favorite hunting-grounds.

THE RED MAPLE.
By the twenty-fifth of September, the Red Maples generally are
beginning to be ripe. Some large ones have been conspicuously changing
for a week, and some single trees are now very brilliant. I notice a small
one, half a mile off across a meadow, against the green wood-side there, a
far brighter red than the blossoms of any tree in summer, and more
conspicuous. I have observed this tree for several autumns invariably
changing earlier than its fellows, just as one tree ripens its fruit earlier than
another. It might serve to mark the season, perhaps. I should be sorry, if it
were cut down. I know of two or three such trees in different parts of our
town, which might, perhaps, be propagated from, as early ripeners or
September trees, and their seed be advertised in the market, as well as that
of radishes, if we cared as much about them.
At present these burning bushes stand chiefly along the edge of the
meadows, or I distinguish them afar on the hillsides here and there.
Sometimes you will see many small ones in a swamp turned quite crimson
when all other trees around are still perfectly green, and the former appear
so much the brighter for it. They take you by surprise, as you are going by
on one side, across the fields, thus early in the season, as if it were some
gay encampment of the red men, or other foresters, of whose arrival you
had not heard.
Some single trees, wholly bright scarlet, seen against others of their kind
still freshly green, or against evergreens, are more memorable than whole

groves will be by-and-by. How beautiful, when a whole tree is like one
great scarlet fruit full of ripe juices, every leaf, from lowest limb to topmost
spire, all aglow, especially if you look toward the sun! What more
remarkable object can there be in the landscape? Visible for miles, too fair
to be believed. If such a phenomenon occurred but once, it would be handed
down by tradition to posterity, and get into the mythology at last.
The whole tree thus ripening in advance of its fellows attains a singular
preeminence, and sometimes maintains it for a week or two. I am thrilled at
the sight of it, bearing aloft its scarlet standard for the regiment of green-
clad foresters around, and I go half a mile out of my way to examine it. A
single tree becomes thus the crowning beauty of some meadowy vale, and
the expression of the whole surrounding forest is at once more spirited for
it.
A small Red Maple has grown, perchance, far away at the head of some
retired valley, a mile from any road, unobserved. It has faithfully discharged
the duties of a Maple there, all winter and summer, neglected none of its
economies, but added to its stature in the virtue which belongs to a Maple,
by a steady growth for so many months, never having gone gadding abroad,
and is nearer heaven than it was in the spring. It has faithfully husbanded its
sap, and afforded a shelter to the wandering bird, has long since ripened its
seeds and committed them to the winds, and has the satisfaction of
knowing, perhaps, that a thousand little well-behaved Maples are already
settled in life somewhere. It deserves well of Mapledom. Its leaves have
been asking it from time to time, in a whisper, “When shall we redden?”
And now, in this month of September, this month of travelling, when men
are hastening to the sea-side, or the mountains, or the lakes, this modest
Maple, still without budging an inch, travels in its reputation,—runs up its
scarlet flag on that hillside, which shows that it has finished its summer’s
work before all other trees, and withdraws from the contest. At the eleventh
hour of the year, the tree which no scrutiny could have detected here when
it was most industrious is thus, by the tint of its maturity, by its very
blushes, revealed at last to the careless and distant traveller, and leads his
thoughts away from the dusty road into those brave solitudes which it
inhabits. It flashes out conspicuous with all the virtue and beauty of a
Maple,—Acer rubrum. We may now read its title, or rubric, clear. Its
virtues, not its sins, are as scarlet.

Notwithstanding the Red Maple is the most intense scarlet of any of our
trees, the Sugar-Maple has been the most celebrated, and Michaux in his
“Sylva” does not speak of the autumnal color of the former. About the
second of October, these trees, both large and small, are most brilliant,
though many are still green. In “sprout-lands” they seem to vie with one
another, and ever some particular one in the midst of the crowd will be of a
peculiarly pure scarlet, and by its more intense color attract our eye even at
a distance, and carry off the palm. A large Red-Maple swamp, when at the
height of its change, is the most obviously brilliant of all tangible things,
where I dwell, so abundant is this tree with us. It varies much both in form
and color. A great many are merely yellow, more scarlet, others scarlet
deepening into crimson, more red than common. Look at yonder swamp of
Maples mixed with Pines, at the base of a Pine-clad hill, a quarter of a mile
off, so that you get the full effect of the bright colors, without detecting the
imperfections of the leaves, and see their yellow, scarlet, and crimson fires,
of all tints, mingled and contrasted with the green. Some Maples are yet
green, only yellow or crimson-tipped on the edges of their flakes, like the
edges of a Hazel-Nut burr; some are wholly brilliant scarlet, raying out
regularly and finely every way, bilaterally, like the veins of a leaf; others, of
more irregular form, when I turn my head slightly, emptying out some of its
earthiness and concealing the trunk of the tree, seem to rest heavily flake on
flake, like yellow and scarlet clouds, wreath upon wreath, or like snowdrifts
driving through the air, stratified by the wind. It adds greatly to the beauty
of such a swamp at this season, that, even though there may be no other
trees interspersed, it is not seen as a simple mass of color, but, different
trees being of different colors and hues, the outline of each crescent tree-top
is distinct, and where one laps on to another. Yet a painter would hardly
venture to make them thus distinct a quarter of a mile off.
As I go across a meadow directly toward a low rising ground this bright
afternoon, I see, some fifty rods off toward the sun, the top of a Maple
swamp just appearing over the sheeny russet edge of the hill, a stripe
apparently twenty rods long by ten feet deep, of the most intensely brilliant
scarlet, orange, and yellow, equal to any flowers or fruits, or any tints ever
painted. As I advance, lowering the edge of the hill which makes the firm
foreground or lower frame of the picture, the depth of the brilliant grove
revealed steadily increases, suggesting that the whole of the inclosed valley
is filled with such color. One wonders that the tithing-men and fathers of

the town are not out to see what the trees mean by their high colors and
exuberance of spirits, fearing that some mischief is brewing. I do not see
what the Puritans did at this season, when the Maples blaze out in scarlet.
They certainly could not have worshipped in groves then. Perhaps that is
what they built meeting-houses and fenced them round with horse-sheds
for.
THE ELM.
Now, too, the first of October, or later, the Elms are at the height of their
autumnal beauty, great brownish-yellow masses, warm from their
September oven, hanging over the highway Their leaves are perfectly ripe. I
wonder if there is any answering ripeness in the lives of the men who live
beneath them. As I look down our street, which is lined with them, they
remind me both by their form and color of yellowing sheaves of grain, as if
the harvest had indeed come to the village itself, and we might expect to
find some maturity and flavor in the thoughts of the villagers at last. Under
those bright rustling yellow piles just ready to fall on the heads of the
walkers, how can any crudity or greenness of thought or act prevail? When
I stand where half a dozen large Elms droop over a house, it is as if I stood
within a ripe pumpkin-rind, and I feel as mellow as if I were the pulp,
though I may be somewhat stringy and seedy withal. What is the late
greenness of the English Elm, like a cucumber out of season, which does
not know when to have done, compared with the early and golden maturity
of the American tree? The street is the scene of a great harvest-home. It
would be worth the while to set out these trees, if only for their autumnal
value. Think of these great yellow canopies or parasols held over our heads
and houses by the mile together, making the village all one and compact,—
an ulmarium, which is at the same time a nursery of men! And then how
gently and unobserved they drop their burden and let in the sun when it is
wanted, their leaves not heard when they fall on our roofs and in our streets;
and thus the village parasol is shut up and put away! I see the market-man
driving into the village, and disappearing under its canopy of Elm-tops,
with his crop, as into a great granary or barn-yard. I am tempted to go
thither as to a husking of thoughts, now dry and ripe, and ready to be
separated from their integuments; but, alas! I foresee that it will be chiefly
husks and little thought, blasted pig-corn, fit only for cob-meal,—for, as
you sow, so shall you reap.

FALLEN LEAVES.
By the sixth of October the leaves generally begin to fall, in successive
showers, after frost or rain; but the principal leaf-harvest, the acme of the
Fall, is commonly about the sixteenth. Some morning at that date there is
perhaps a harder frost than we have seen, and ice formed under the pump,
and now, when the morning wind rises, the leaves come down in denser
showers than ever. They suddenly form thick beds or carpets on the ground,
in this gentle air, or even without wind, just the size and form of the tree
above. Some trees, as small Hickories, appear to have dropped their leaves
instantaneously, as a soldier grounds arms at a signal; and those of the
Hickory, being bright yellow still, though withered, reflect a blaze of light
from the ground where they lie. Down they have come on all sides, at the
first earnest touch of autumn’s wand, making a sound like rain.
Or else it is after moist and rainy weather that we notice how great a fall
of leaves there has been in the night, though it may not yet be the touch that
loosens the Rock-Maple leaf. The streets are thickly strewn with the
trophies, and fallen Elm-leaves make a dark brown pavement under our
feet. After some remarkably warm Indian-summer day or days, I perceive
that it is the unusual heat which, more than anything, causes the leaves to
fall, there having been, perhaps, no frost nor rain for some time. The intense
heat suddenly ripens and wilts them, just as it softens and ripens peaches
and other fruits, and causes them to drop.
The leaves of late Red Maples, still bright, strew the earth, often crimson-
spotted on a yellow ground, like some wild apples,—though they preserve
these bright colors on the ground but a day or two, especially if it rains. On
causeways I go by trees here and there all bare and smoke-like, having lost
their brilliant clothing; but there it lies, nearly as bright as ever, on the
ground on one side, and making nearly as regular a figure as lately on the
tree, I would rather say that I first observe the trees thus flat on the ground
like a permanent colored shadow, and they suggest to look for the boughs
that bore them. A queen might be proud to walk where these gallant trees
have spread their bright cloaks in the mud. I see wagons roll over them as a
shadow or a reflection, and the drivers heed them just as little as they did
their shadows before.

Birds’-nests, in the Huckleberry and other shrubs, and in trees, are
already being filled with the withered leaves. So many have fallen in the
woods, that a squirrel cannot run after a falling nut without being heard.
Boys are raking them in the streets, if only for the pleasure of dealing with
such clean crisp substances. Some sweep the paths scrupulously neat, and
then stand to see the next breath strew them with new trophies. The swamp-
floor is thickly covered, and the Lycopodium lucidulum looks suddenly
greener amid them. In dense woods they half-cover pools that are three or
four rods long. The other day I could hardly find a well-known spring, and
even suspected that it had dried up, for it was completely concealed by
freshly fallen leaves; and when I swept them aside and revealed it, it was
like striking the earth, with Aaron’s rod, for a new spring. Wet grounds
about the edges of swamps look dry with them. At one swamp, where I was
surveying, thinking to step on a leafy shore from a rail, I got into the water
more than a foot deep. When I go to the river the day after the principal fall
of leaves, the sixteenth, I find my boat all covered, bottom and seats, with
the leaves of the Golden Willow under which it is moored, and I set sail
with a cargo of them rustling under my feet. If I empty it, it will be full
again to-morrow. I do not regard them as litter, to be swept out, but accept
them as suitable straw or matting for the bottom of my carriage. When I
turn up into the mouth of the Assabet, which is wooded, large fleets of
leaves are floating on its surface, as it were getting out to sea, with room to
tack; but next the shore, a little farther up, they are thicker than foam, quite
concealing the water for a rod in width, under and amid the Alders, Button-
Bushes, and Maples, still perfectly light and dry, with fibre unrelaxed; and
at a rocky bend where they are met and stopped by the morning wind, they
sometimes form a broad and dense crescent quite across the river. When I
turn my prow that way, and the wave which it makes strikes them, list what
a pleasant rustling from these dry substances grating on one another! Often
it is their undulation only which reveals the water beneath them. Also every
motion of the wood-turtle on the shore is betrayed by their rustling there. Or
even in mid-channel, when the wind rises, I hear them blown with a rustling
sound. Higher up they are slowly moving round and round in some great
eddy which the river makes, as that at the “Leaning Hemlocks,” where the
water is deep, and the current is wearing into the bank.
Perchance, in the afternoon of such a day, when the water is perfectly
calm and full of reflections, I paddle gently down the main stream, and,

turning up the Assabet, reach a quiet cove, where I unexpectedly find
myself surrounded by myriads of leaves, like fellow-voyagers, which seem
to have the same purpose, or want of purpose, with myself. See this great
fleet of scattered leaf-boats which we paddle amid, in this smooth river-bay,
each one curled up on every side by the sun’s skill, each nerve a stiff
spruce-knee,—like boats of hide, and of all patterns, Charon’s boat
probably among the rest, and some with lofty prows and poops, like the
stately vessels of the ancients, scarcely moving in the sluggish current,—
like the great fleets, the dense Chinese cities of boats, with which you
mingle on entering some great mart, some New York or Canton, which we
are all steadily approaching together. How gently each has been deposited
on the water! No violence has been used towards them yet, though,
perchance, palpitating hearts were present at the launching. And painted
ducks, too, the splendid wood-duck among the rest, often come to sail and
float amid the painted leaves,—barks of a nobler model still!
What wholesome herb-drinks are to be had in the swamps now! What
strong medicinal, but rich, scents from the decaying leaves! The rain falling
on the freshly dried herbs and leaves, and filling the pools and ditches into
which they have dropped thus clean and rigid, will soon convert them into
tea,—green, black, brown, and yellow teas, of all degrees of strength,
enough to set all Nature a gossiping. Whether we drink them or not, as yet,
before their strength is drawn, these leaves, dried on great Nature’s coppers,
are of such various pure and delicate tints as might make the fame of
Oriental teas.
How they are mixed up, of all species, Oak and Maple and Chestnut and
Birch! But Nature is not cluttered with them; she is a perfect husbandman;
she stores them all. Consider what a vast crop is thus annually shed on the
earth! This, more than any mere grain or seed, is the great harvest of the
year. The trees are now repaying the earth with interest what they have
taken from it. They are discounting. They are about to add a leaf’s thickness
to the depth of the soil. This is the beautiful way in which Nature gets her
muck, while I chaffer with this man and that, who talks to me about sulphur
and the cost of carting. We are all the richer for their decay. I am more
interested in this crop than in the English grass alone or in the corn. It
prepares the virgin mould for future cornfields and forests, on which the
earth fattens. It keeps our homestead in good heart.

For beautiful variety no crop can be compared with this. Here is not
merely the plain yellow of the grains, but nearly all the colors that we know,
the brightest blue not excepted: the early blushing Maple, the Poison-
Sumach blazing its sins as scarlet, the mulberry Ash, the rich chrome-
yellow of the Poplars, the brilliant red Huckleberry, with which the hills’
backs are painted, like those of sheep. The frost touches them, and, with the
slightest breath of returning day or jarring of earth’s axle, see in what
showers they come floating down! The ground is all party-colored with
them. But they still live in the soil, whose fertility and bulk they increase,
and in the forests that spring from it. They stoop to rise, to mount higher in
coming years, by subtle chemistry, climbing by the sap in the trees, and the
sapling’s first fruits thus shed, transmuted at last, may adorn its crown,
when, in after-years, it has become the monarch of the forest.
It is pleasant to walk over the beds of these fresh, crisp, and rustling
leaves. How beautifully they go to their graves! how gently lay themselves
down and turn to mould!—painted of a thousand hues, and fit to make the
beds of us living. So they troop to their last resting-place, light and frisky.
They put on no weeds, but merrily they go scampering over the earth,
selecting the spot, choosing a lot, ordering no iron fence, whispering all
through the woods about it,—some choosing the spot where the bodies of
men are mouldering beneath, and meeting them half-way. How many
flutterings before they rest quietly in their graves! They that soared so
loftily, how contentedly they return to dust again, and are laid low, resigned
to lie and decay at the foot of the tree, and afford nourishment to new
generations of their kind, as well as to flutter on high! They teach us how to
die. One wonders if the time will ever come when men, with their boasted
faith in immortality, will lie down as gracefully and as ripe,—with such an
Indian-summer serenity will shed their bodies, as they do their hair and
nails.
When the leaves fall, the whole earth is a cemetery pleasant to walk in. I
love to wander and muse over them in their graves. Here are no lying nor
vain epitaphs. What though you own no lot at Mount Auburn? Your lot is
surely cast somewhere in this vast cemetery, which has been consecrated
from of old. You need attend no auction to secure a place. There is room
enough here. The Loose-strife shall bloom and the Huckleberry-bird sing
over your bones. The woodman and hunter shall be your sextons, and the

children shall tread upon the borders as much as they will. Let us walk in
the cemetery of the leaves,—this is your true Greenwood Cemetery.
THE SUGAR-MAPLE.
But think not that the splendor of the year is over; for as one leaf does not
make a summer, neither does one falling leaf make an autumn. The smallest
Sugar-Maples in our streets make a great show as early as the fifth of
October, more than any other trees there. As I look up the Main Street, they
appear like painted screens standing before the houses; yet many are green.
But now, or generally by the seventeenth of October, when almost all Red
Maples, and some White Maples, are bare, the large Sugar-Maples also are
in their glory, glowing with yellow and red, and show unexpectedly bright
and delicate tints. They are remarkable for the contrast they often afford of
deep blushing red on one half and green on the other. They become at
length dense masses of rich yellow with a deep scarlet blush, or more than
blush, on the exposed surfaces. They are the brightest trees now in the
street.
The large ones on our Common are particularly beautiful. A delicate, but
warmer than golden yellow is now the prevailing color, with scarlet cheeks.
Yet, standing on the east side of the Common just before sundown, when
the western light is transmitted through them, I see that their yellow even,
compared with the pale lemon yellow of an Elm close by, amounts to a
scarlet, without noticing the bright scarlet portions. Generally, they are great
regular oval masses of yellow and scarlet. All the sunny warmth of the
season, the Indian-summer, seems to be absorbed in their leaves. The lowest
and inmost leaves next the bole are, as usual, of the most delicate yellow
and green, like the complexion of young men brought up in the house.
There is an auction on the Common to-day, but its red flag is hard to be
discerned amid this blaze of color.
Little did the fathers of the town anticipate this brilliant success, when
they caused to be imported from farther in the country some straight poles
with their tops cut off, which they called Sugar-Maples; and, as I remember,
after they were set out, a neighboring merchant’s clerk, by way of jest,
planted beans about them. Those which were then jestingly called bean-
poles are to-day far the most beautiful objects noticeable in our streets.
They are worth all and more than they have cost,—though one of the

selectmen, while setting them out, took the cold which occasioned his
death,—if only because they have filled the open eyes of children with their
rich color unstintedly so many Octobers. We will not ask them to yield us
sugar in the spring, while they afford us so fair a prospect in the autumn.
Wealth in-doors may be the inheritance of few, but it is equally distributed
on the Common. All children alike can revel in this golden harvest.
Surely trees should be set in our streets with a view to their October
splendor; though I doubt whether this is ever considered by the “Tree
Society.” Do you not think it will make some odds to these children that
they were brought up under the Maples? Hundreds of eyes are steadily
drinking in this color, and by these teachers even the truants are caught and
educated the moment they step abroad. Indeed, neither the truant nor the
studious is at present taught color in the schools. These are instead of the
bright colors in apothecaries’ shops and city windows. It is a pity that we
have no more Red Maples, and some Hickories, in our streets as well. Our
paint-box is very imperfectly filled. Instead of, or beside, supplying such
paint-boxes as we do, we might supply these natural colors to the young.
Where else will they study color under greater advantages? What School of
Design can vie with this? Think how much the eyes of painters of all kinds,
and of manufacturers of cloth and paper, and paper-stainers, and countless
others, are to be educated by these autumnal colors. The stationer’s
envelopes may be of very various tints, yet, not so various as those of the
leaves of a single tree. If you want a different shade or tint of a particular
color, you have only to look farther within or without the tree or the wood.
These leaves are not many dipped in one dye, as at the dye-house, but they
are dyed in light of infinitely various degrees of strength, and left to set and
dry there.
Shall the names of so many of our colors continue to be derived from
those of obscure foreign localities, as Naples yellow, Prussian blue, raw
Sienna, burnt Umber, Gamboge?—(surely the Tyrian purple must have
faded by this time),—or from comparatively trivial articles of commerce,—
chocolate, lemon, coffee, cinnamon, claret?—(shall we compare our
Hickory to a lemon, or a lemon to a Hickory?)—or from ores and oxides
which few ever see? Shall we so often, when describing to our neighbors
the color of something we have seen, refer them, not to some natural object
in our neighborhood, but perchance to a bit of earth fetched from the other
side of the planet, which possibly they may find at the apothecary’s, but

which probably neither they nor we ever saw? Have we not an earth under
our feet,—ay, and a sky over our heads? Or is the last all ultramarine? What
do we know of sapphire, amethyst, emerald, ruby, amber, and the like,—
most of us who take these names in vain? Leave these precious words to
cabinet-keepers, virtuosos, and maids-of-honor,— to the Nabobs, Begums,
and Chobdars of Hindostan, or wherever else. I do not see why, since
America and her autumn woods have been discovered, our leaves should
not compete with the precious stones in giving names to colors; and,
indeed, I believe that in course of time the names of some of our trees and
shrubs, as well as flowers, will get into our popular chromatic
nomenclature.
But of much more importance than a knowledge of the names and
distinctions of color is the joy and exhilaration which these colored leaves
excite. Already these brilliant trees throughout the street, without any more
variety, are at least equal to an annual festival and holiday, or a week of
such. These are cheap and innocent gala-days, celebrated by one and all
without the aid of committees or marshals, such a show as may safely be
licensed, not attracting gamblers or rum-sellers, not requiring any special
police to keep the peace. And poor indeed must be that New-England
village’s October which has not the Maple in its streets. This October
festival costs no powder, nor ringing of bells, but every tree is a living
liberty-pole on which a thousand bright flags are waving.
No wonder that we must have our annual Cattle-Show, and Fall Training,
and perhaps Cornwallis, our September Courts, and the like. Nature herself
holds her annual fair in October, not only in the streets, but in every hollow
and on every hill-side. When lately we looked into that Red-Maple swamp
all ablaze, where the trees were clothed in their vestures of most dazzling
tints, did it not suggest a thousand gypsies beneath,—a race capable of wild
delight,—or even the fabled fawns, satyrs, and wood-nymphs come back to
earth? Or was it only a congregation of wearied wood-choppers, or of
proprietors come to inspect their lots, that we thought of? Or, earlier still,
when we paddled on the river through that fine-grained September air, did
there not appear to be something new going on under the sparkling surface
of the stream, a shaking of props, at least, so that we made haste in order to
be up in time? Did not the rows of yellowing Willows and Button-Bushes
on each side seem like rows of booths, under which, perhaps, some
fluviatile egg-pop equally yellow was effervescing? Did not all these

suggest that man’s spirits should rise as high as Nature’s,—should hang out
their flag, and the routine of his life be interrupted by an analogous
expression of joy and hilarity?
No annual training or muster of soldiery, no celebration with its scarfs
and banners, could import into the town a hundredth part of the annual
splendor of our October. We have only to set the trees, or let them stand,
and Nature will find the colored drapery,—flags of all her nations, some of
whose private signals hardly the botanist can read,—while we walk under
the triumphal arches of the Elms. Leave it to Nature to appoint the days,
whether the same as in neighboring States or not, and let the clergy read her
proclamations, if they can understand them. Behold what a brilliant drapery
is her Woodbine flag! What public-spirited merchant, think you, has
contributed this part of the show? There is no handsomer shingling and
paint than this vine, at present covering a whole side of some houses. I do
not believe that the Ivy never sere is comparable to it. No wonder it has
been extensively introduced into London. Let us have a good many Maples
and Hickories and Scarlet Oaks, then, I say. Blaze away! Shall that dirty roll
of bunting in the gun-house be all the colors a village can display? A village
is not complete unless it have these trees to mark the season in it. They are
important, like the town-clock. A village that has them not will not be found
to work well. It has a screw loose, an essential part is wanting. Let us have
Willows for spring, Elms for summer, Maples and Walnuts and Tupeloes for
autumn, Evergreens for winter, and Oaks for all seasons. What is a gallery
in a house to a gallery in the streets, which every market-man rides through,
whether he will or not? Of course, there is not a picture-gallery in the
country which would be worth so much to us as is the western view at
sunset under the Elms of our main street. They are the frame to a picture
which is daily painted behind them. An avenue of Elms as large as our
largest and three miles long would seem to lead to some admirable place,
though only C—— were at the end of it.
A village needs these innocent stimulants of bright and cheering
prospects to keep off melancholy and superstition. Show me two villages,
one embowered in trees and blazing with all the glories of October, the
other a merely trivial and treeless waste, or with only a single tree or two
for suicides, and I shall be sure that in the latter will be found the most
starved and bigoted religionists and the most desperate drinkers. Every
washtub and milkcan and gravestone will be exposed. The inhabitants will

disappear abruptly behind their barns and houses, like desert Arabs amid
their rocks, and I shall look to see spears in their hands. They will be ready
to accept the most barren and forlorn doctrine,—as that the world is
speedily coming to an end, or has already got to it, or that they themselves
are turned wrong side outward. They will perchance crack their dry joints at
one another and call it a spiritual communication.
But to confine ourselves to the Maples. What if we were to take half as
much pains in protecting them as we do in setting them out,—not stupidly
tie our horses to our dahlia-stems?
What meant the fathers by establishing this perfectly living institution
before the church,—this institution which needs no repairing nor repainting,
which is continually enlarged and repaired by its growth? Surely they
“Wrought in a sad sincerity;
Themselves from God they could not free;
They planted better than they knew;—
The conscious trees to beauty grew.”

Verily these Maples are cheap preachers, permanently settled, which
preach their half-century, and century, ay, and century-and-a-half sermons,
with constantly increasing unction and influence, ministering to many
generations of men; and the least we can do is to supply them with suitable
colleagues as they grow infirm.
THE SCARLET OAK.
Belonging to a genus which is remarkable for the beautiful form of its
leaves, I suspect that some Scarlet-Oak leaves surpass those of all other
Oaks in the rich and wild beauty of their outlines. I judge from an
acquaintance with twelve species, and from drawings which I have seen of
many others.
Stand under this tree and see how finely its leaves are cut against the sky,
—as it were, only a few sharp points extending from a midrib. They look
like double, treble, or quadruple crosses. They are far more ethereal than the
less deeply scolloped Oak-leaves. They have so little leafy terra firma that
they appear melting away in the light, and scarcely obstruct our view. The
leaves of very young plants are, like those of full-grown Oaks of other
species, more entire, simple, and lumpish in their outlines; but these, raised
high on old trees, have solved the leafy problem. Lifted higher and higher,

and sublimated more and more, putting off some earthiness and cultivating
more intimacy with the light each year, they have at length the least
possible amount of earthy matter, and the greatest spread and grasp of skyey
influences. There they dance, arm in arm with the light,—tripping it on
fantastic points, fit partners in those aerial halls. So intimately mingled are
they with it, that, what with their slenderness and their glossy surfaces, you
can hardly tell at last what in the dance is leaf and what is light. And when
no zephyr stirs, they are at most but a rich tracery to the forest-windows.
I am again struck with their beauty, when, a month later, they thickly
strew the ground in the woods, piled one upon another under my feet. They
are then brown above, but purple beneath. With their narrow lobes and their
bold deep scollops reaching almost to the middle, they suggest that the
material must be cheap, or else there has been a lavish expense in their
creation, as if so much had been cut out. Or else they seem to us the
remnants of the stuff out of which leaves have been cut with a die. Indeed,
when they lie thus one upon another, they remind me of a pile of scrap-tin.
Or bring one home, and study it closely at your leisure, by the fireside. It
is a type, not from any Oxford font, not in the Basque nor the arrow-headed
character, not found on the Rosetta Stone, but destined to be copied in
sculpture one day, if they ever get to whittling stone here. What a wild and
pleasing outline, a combination of graceful curves and angles! The eye rests
with equal delight on what is not leaf and on what is leaf,—on the broad,
free, open sinuses, and on the long, sharp, bristle-pointed lobes. A simple
oval outline would include it all, if you connected the points of the leaf; but
how much richer is it than that, with its half-dozen deep scollops, in which
the eye and thought of the beholder are embayed! If I were a drawing-
master, I would set my pupils to copying these leaves, that they might learn
to draw firmly and gracefully.
Regarded as water, it is like a pond with half a dozen broad rounded
promontories extending nearly to its middle, half from each side, while its
watery bays extend far inland, like sharp friths, at each of whose heads
several fine streams empty in,—almost a leafy archipelago.
But it oftener suggests land, and, as Dionysius and Pliny compared the
form of the Morea to that of the leaf of the Oriental Plane-tree, so this leaf
reminds me of some fair wild island in the ocean, whose extensive coast,
alternate rounded bays with smooth strands, and sharp-pointed rocky capes,

mark it as fitted for the habitation of man, and destined to become a centre
of civilization at last. To the sailor’s eye, it is a much-indented shore. Is it
not, in fact, a shore to the aerial ocean, on which the windy surf beats? At
sight of this leaf we are all mariners,—if not vikings, buccaneers, and
filibusters. Both our love of repose and our spirit of adventure are
addressed. In our most casual glance, perchance, we think, that, if we
succeed in doubling those sharp capes, we shall find deep, smooth, and
secure havens in the ample bays. How different from the White-Oak leaf,
with its rounded headlands, on which no lighthouse need be placed! That is
an England, with its long civil history, that may be read. This is some still
unsettled New-found Island or Celebes. Shall we go and be rajahs there?
By the twenty-sixth of October the large Scarlet Oaks are in their prime,
when other Oaks are usually withered. They have been kindling their fires
for a week past, and now generally burst into a blaze. This alone of our
indigenous deciduous trees (excepting the Dogwood, of which I do not
know half a dozen, and they are but large bushes) is now in its glory. The
two Aspens and the Sugar-Maple come nearest to it in date, but they have
lost the greater part of their leaves. Of evergreens, only the Pitch-Pine is
still commonly bright.
But it requires a particular alertness, if not devotion to these phenomena,
to appreciate the wide-spread, but late and unexpected glory of the Scarlet
Oaks. I do not speak here of the small trees and shrubs, which are
commonly observed, and which are now withered, but of the large trees.
Most go in and shut their doors, thinking that bleak and colorless November
has already come, when some of the most brilliant and memorable colors
are not yet lit.
This very perfect and vigorous one, about forty feet high, standing in an
open pasture, which was quite glossy green on the twelfth, is now, the
twenty-sixth, completely changed to bright dark scarlet,—every leaf,
between you and the sun, as if it had been dipped into a scarlet dye. The
whole tree is much like a heart in form, as well as color. Was not this worth
waiting for? Little did you think, ten days ago, that that cold green tree
would assume such color as this. Its leaves are still firmly attached, while
those of other trees are falling around it. It seems to say,—“I am the last to
blush, but I blush deeper than any of ye. I bring up the rear in my red coat.
We Scarlet ones, alone of Oaks, have not given up the fight.”

The sap is now, and even far into November, frequently flowing fast in
these trees, as in Maples in the spring; and apparently their bright tints, now
that most other Oaks are withered, are connected with this phenomenon.
They are full of life. It has a pleasantly astringent, acorn-like taste, this
strong Oak-wine, as I find on tapping them with my knife.
Looking across this woodland valley, a quarter of a mile wide, how rich
those Scarlet Oaks, embosomed in Pines, their bright red branches
intimately intermingled with them! They have their full effect there. The
Pine-boughs are the green calyx to their red petals. Or, as we go along a
road in the woods, the sun striking endwise through it, and lighting up the
red tents of the Oaks, which on each side are mingled with the liquid green
of the Pines, makes a very gorgeous scene. Indeed, without the evergreens
for contrast, the autumnal tints would lose much of their effect.
The Scarlet Oak asks a clear sky and the brightness of late October days.
These bring out its colors. If the sun goes into a cloud, they become
comparatively indistinct. As I sit on a cliff in the southwest part of our
town, the sun is now getting low, and the woods in Lincoln, south and east
of me, are lit up by its more level rays; and in the Scarlet Oaks, scattered so
equally over the forest, there is brought out a more brilliant redness than I
had believed was in them. Every tree of this species which is visible in
those directions, even to the horizon, now stands out distinctly red. Some
great ones lift their red backs high above the woods, in the next town, like
huge roses with a myriad of fine petals; and some more slender ones, in a
small grove of White Pines on Pine Hill in the east, on the very verge of the
horizon, alternating with the Pines on the edge of the grove, and
shouldering them with their red coats, look like soldiers in red amid hunters
in green. This time it is Lincoln green, too. Till the sun got low, I did not
believe that there were so many red coats in the forest army. Theirs is an
intense burning red, which would lose some of its strength, methinks, with
every step you might take toward them; for the shade that lurks amid their
foliage does not report itself at this distance, and they are unanimously red.
The focus of their reflected color is in the atmosphere far on this side. Every
such tree becomes a nucleus of red, as it were, where, with the declining
sun, that color grows and glows. It is partly borrowed fire, gathering
strength from the sun on its way to your eye. It has only some
comparatively dull red leaves for a rallying-point, or kindling-stuff, to start
it, and it becomes an intense scarlet or red mist, or fire, which finds fuel for

itself in the very atmosphere. So vivacious is redness. The very rails reflect
a rosy light at this hour and season. You see a redder tree than exists.
If you wish to count the Scarlet Oaks, do it now. In a clear day stand thus
on a hill-top in the woods, when the sun is an hour high, and every one
within range of your vision, excepting in the west, will be revealed. You
might live to the age of Methuselah and never find a tithe of them,
otherwise. Yet sometimes even in a dark day I have thought them as bright
as I ever saw them. Looking westward, their colors are lost in a blaze of
light; but in other directions the whole forest is a flower-garden, in which
these late roses burn, alternating with green, while the so-called
“gardeners,” walking here and there, perchance, beneath, with spade and
water-pot, see only a few little asters amid withered leaves.
These are my China-asters, my late garden-flowers. It costs me nothing
for a gardener. The falling leaves, all over the forest, are protecting the roots
of my plants. Only look at what is to be seen, and you will have garden
enough, without deepening the soil in your yard. We have only to elevate
our view a little, to see the whole forest as a garden. The blossoming of the
Scarlet Oak,—the forest-flower, surpassing all in splendor, (at least since
the Maple)! I do not know but they interest me more than the Maples, they
are so widely and equally dispersed throughout the forest; they are so hardy,
a nobler tree on the whole;—our chief November flower, abiding the
approach of winter with us, imparting warmth to early November prospects.
It is remarkable that the latest bright color that is general should be this
deep, dark scarlet and red, the intensest of colors. The ripest fruit of the
year; like the cheek of a hard, glossy, red apple, from the cold Isle of
Orleans, which will not be mellow for eating till next spring! When I rise to
a hilltop, a thousand of these great Oak roses, distributed on every side, as
far as the horizon! I admire them four or five miles off! This my unfailing
prospect for a fortnight past! This late forest-flower surpasses all that spring
or summer could do. Their colors were but rare and dainty specks
comparatively, (created for the near-sighted, who walk amid the humblest
herbs and underwoods,) and made no impression on a distant eye. Now it is
an extended forest or a mountain-side, through or along which we journey
from day to day, that bursts into bloom. Comparatively, our gardening is on
a petty scale,—the gardener still nursing a few asters amid dead weeds,
ignorant of the gigantic asters and roses, which, as it were, overshadow
him, and ask for none of his care. It is like a little red paint ground on a

saucer, and held up against the sunset sky. Why not take more elevated and
broader views, walk in the great garden, not skulk in a little “debauched”
nook of it? consider the beauty of the forest, and not merely of a few
impounded herbs?
Let your walks now be a little more adventurous; ascend the hills. If,
about the last of October, you ascend any hill in the outskirts of our town,
and probably of yours, and look over the forest, you may see—well, what I
have endeavored to describe. All this you surely will see, and much more, if
you are prepared to see it,—if you look for it. Otherwise, regular and
universal as this phenomenon is, whether you stand on the hill-top or in the
hollow, you will think for threescore years and ten that all the wood is, at
this season, sere and brown. Objects are concealed from our view, not so
much because they are out of the course of our visual ray as because we do
not bring our minds and eyes to bear on them; for there is no power to see
in the eye itself, any more than in any other jelly. We do not realize how far
and widely, or how near and narrowly, we are to look. The greater part of
the phenomena of Nature are for this reason concealed from us all our lives.
The gardener sees only the gardener’s garden. Here, too, as in political
economy, the supply answers to the demand. Nature does not cast pearls
before swine. There is just as much beauty visible to us in the landscape as
we are prepared to appreciate,—not a grain more. The actual objects which
one man will see from a particular hill-top are just as different from those
which another will see as the beholders are different. The Scarlet Oak must,
in a sense, be in your eye when you go forth. We cannot see anything until
we are possessed with the idea of it, take it into our heads,—and then we
can hardly see anything else. In my botanical rambles, I find, that, first, the
idea, or image, of a plant occupies my thoughts, though it may seem very
foreign to this locality,—no nearer than Hudson’s Bay,—and for some
weeks or months I go thinking of it, and expecting it, unconsciously, and at
length I surely see it. This is the history of my finding a score or more of
rare plants, which I could name. A man sees only what concerns him. A
botanist absorbed in the study of grasses does not distinguish the grandest
Pasture Oaks. He, as it were, tramples down Oaks unwittingly in his walk,
or at most sees only their shadows. I have found that it required a different
intention of the eye, in the same locality, to see different plants, even when
they were closely allied, as Juncaceoe and Gramineoe: when I was looking
for the former, I did not see the latter in the midst of them. How much more,

then, it requires different intentions of the eye and of the mind to attend to
different departments of knowledge! How differently the poet and the
naturalist look at objects!
Take a New-England selectman, and set him on the highest of our hills,
and tell him to look,—sharpening his sight to the utmost, and putting on the
glasses that suit him best, (ay, using a spy-glass, if he likes,)—and make a
full report. What, probably, will he spy?—what will he select to look at? Of
course, he will see a Brocken spectre of himself. He will see several
meeting-houses, at least, and, perhaps, that somebody ought to be assessed
higher than he is, since he has so handsome a wood-lot. Now take Julius
Caesar, or Immanuel Swedenborg, or a Fegee-Islander, and set him up
there. Or suppose all together, and let them compare notes afterward. Will it
appear that they have enjoyed the same prospect? What they will see will be
as different as Rome was from Heaven or Hell, or the last from the Fegee
Islands. For aught we know, as strange a man as any of these is always at
our elbow.
Why, it takes a sharp-shooter to bring down even such trivial game as
snipes and woodcocks; he must take very particular aim, and know what he
is aiming at. He would stand a very small chance, if he fired at random into
the sky, being told that snipes were flying there. And so is it with him that
shoots at beauty; though he wait till the sky falls, he will not bag any, if he
does not already know its seasons and haunts, and the color of its wing,—if
he has not dreamed of it, so that he can anticipate it; then, indeed, he
flushes it at every step, shoots double and on the wing, with both barrels,
even in cornfields. The sportsman trains himself, dresses and watches
unweariedly, and loads and primes for his particular game. He prays for it,
and offers sacrifices, and so he gets it. After due and long preparation,
schooling his eye and hand, dreaming awake and asleep, with gun and
paddle and boat he goes out after meadow-hens, which most of his
townsmen never saw nor dreamed of, and paddles for miles against a head-
wind, and wades in water up to his knees, being out all day without his
dinner, and therefore he gets them. He had them half-way into his bag when
he started, and has only to shove them down. The true sportsman can shoot
you almost any of his game from his windows: what else has he windows or
eyes for? It comes and perches at last on the barrel of his gun; but the rest of
the world never see it with the feathers on. The geese fly exactly under his
zenith, and honk when they get there, and he will keep himself supplied by

firing up his chimney; twenty musquash have the refusal of each one of his
traps before it is empty. If he lives, and his game-spirit increases, heaven
and earth shall fail him sooner than game; and when he dies, he will go to
more extensive, and, perchance, happier hunting-grounds. The fisherman,
too, dreams of fish, sees a bobbing cork in his dreams, till he can almost
catch them in his sink-spout. I knew a girl who, being sent to pick
huckleberries, picked wild gooseberries by the quart, where no one else
knew that there were any, because she was accustomed to pick them up
country where she came from. The astronomer knows where to go star-
gathering, and sees one clearly in his mind before any have seen it with a
glass. The hen scratches and finds her food right under where she stands;
but such is not the way with the hawk.

These bright leaves which I have mentioned are not the exception, but the
rule; for I believe that all leaves, even grasses and mosses, acquire brighter
colors just before their fall. When you come to observe faithfully the
changes of each humblest plant, you find that each has, sooner or later, its
peculiar autumnal tint; and if you undertake to make a complete list of the
bright tints, it will be nearly as long as a catalogue of the plants in your
vicinity.

WILD APPLES.

(1862.)

THE HISTORY OF THE APPLE-TREE.
It is remarkable how closely the history of the Apple-tree is connected
with that of man. The geologist tells us that the order of the Rosaceae,
which includes the Apple, also the true Grasses, and the Labiatae or Mints,
were introduced only a short time previous to the appearance of man on the
globe.
It appears that apples made a part of the food of that unknown primitive
people whose traces have lately been found at the bottom of the Swiss
lakes, supposed to be older than the foundation of Rome, so old that they
had no metallic implements. An entire black and shrivelled Crab-Apple has
been recovered from their stores.
Tacitus says of the ancient Germans, that they satisfied their hunger with
wild apples (agrestia poma) among other things.
Niebuhr observes that “the words for a house, a field, a plough,
ploughing, wine, oil, milk, sheep, apples, and others relating to agriculture
and the gentler way of life, agree in Latin and Greek, while the Latin words
for all objects pertaining to war or the chase are utterly alien from the
Greek.” Thus the apple-tree may be considered a symbol of peace no less
than the olive.
The apple was early so important, and generally distributed, that its name
traced to its root in many languages signifies fruit in general. Μῆλον, in
Greek, means an apple, also the fruit of other trees, also a sheep and any
cattle, and finally riches in general.
The apple-tree has been celebrated by the Hebrews, Greeks, Romans, and
Scandinavians. Some have thought that the first human pair were tempted

by its fruit. Goddesses are fabled to have contended for it, dragons were set
to watch it, and heroes were employed to pluck it.
The tree is mentioned in at least three places in the Old Testament, and its
fruit in two or three more. Solomon sings,—“As the apple-tree among the
trees of the wood, so is my beloved among the sons.” And again,—“Stay
me with flagons, comfort me with apples.” The noblest part of man’s
noblest feature is named from this fruit, “the apple of the eye.”
The apple-tree is also mentioned by Homer and Herodotus. Ulysses saw
in the glorious garden of Alcinous “pears and pomegranates, and apple-trees
bearing beautiful fruit” (καὶ μηλέαι ἀγλαόκαρποι). And according to
Homer, apples were among the fruits which Tantalus could not pluck, the
wind ever blowing their boughs away from him. Theophrastus knew and
described the apple-tree as a botanist.
According to the Prose Edda, “Iduna keeps in a box the apples which the
gods, when they feel old age approaching, have only to taste of to become
young again. It is in this manner that they will be kept in renovated youth
until Ragnarök” (or the destruction of the gods).
I learn from Loudon that “the ancient Welsh bards were rewarded for
excelling in song by the token of the apple-spray;” and “in the Highlands of
Scotland the apple-tree is the badge of the-clan Lamont.”
The apple-tree (Pyrus malus) belongs chiefly to the northern temperate
zone. Loudon says, that “it grows spontaneously in every part of Europe
except the frigid zone, and throughout Western Asia, China, and Japan.” We
have also two or three varieties of the apple indigenous in North America.
The cultivated apple-tree was first introduced into this country by the
earliest settlers, and is thought to do as well or better here than anywhere
else. Probably some of the varieties which are now cultivated were first
introduced into Britain by the Romans.
Pliny, adopting the distinction of Theophrastus, says,—“Of trees there are
some which are altogether wild (sylvestres), some more civilized
(urbaniores).” Theophrastus includes the apple among the last; and, indeed,
it is in this sense the most civilized of all trees. It is as harmless as a dove,
as beautiful as a rose, and as valuable as flocks and herds. It has been longer
cultivated than any other, and so is more humanized; and who knows but,
like the dog, it will at length be no longer traceable to its wild original? It
migrates with man, like the dog and horse and cow: first, perchance, from

Greece to Italy, thence to England, thence to America; and our Western
emigrant is still marching steadily toward the setting sun with the seeds of
the apple in his pocket, or perhaps a few young trees strapped to his load. At
least a million apple-trees are thus set farther westward this year than any
cultivated ones grew last year. Consider how the Blossom-Week, like the
Sabbath, is thus annually spreading over the prairies; for when man
migrates, he carries with him not only his birds, quadrupeds, insects,
vegetables, and his very sward, but his orchard also.
The leaves and tender twigs are an agreeable food to many domestic
animals, as the cow, horse, sheep, and goat; and the fruit is sought after by
the first, as well as by the hog. Thus there appears to have existed a natural
alliance between these animals and this tree from the first. “The fruit of the
Crab in the forests of France” is said to be “a great resource for the wild-
boar.”
Not only the Indian, but many indigenous insects, birds, and quadrupeds,
welcomed the apple-tree to these shores. The tent-caterpillar saddled her
eggs on the very first twig that was formed, and it has since shared her
affections with the wild cherry; and the canker-worm also in a measure
abandoned the elm to feed on it. As it grew apace, the bluebird, robin,
cherry-bird, king-bird, and many more, came with haste and built their nests
and warbled in its boughs, and so became orchard-birds, and multiplied
more than ever. It was an era in the history of their race. The downy
woodpecker found such a savory morsel under its bark, that he perforated it
in a ring quite round the tree, before he left it,—a thing which he had never
done before, to my knowledge. It did not take the partridge long to find out
how sweet its buds were, and every winter eve she flew, and still flies, from
the wood, to pluck them, much to the farmer’s sorrow. The rabbit, too, was
not slow to learn the taste of its twigs and bark; and when the fruit was ripe,
the squirrel half-rolled, half-carried it to his hole; and even the musquash
crept up the bank from the brook at evening, and greedily devoured it, until
he had worn a path in the grass there; and when it was frozen and thawed,
the crow and the jay were glad to taste it occasionally. The owl crept into
the first apple-tree that became hollow, and fairly hooted with delight,
finding it just the place for him; so, settling down into it, he has remained
there ever since.

My theme being the Wild Apple, I will merely glance at some of the
seasons in the annual growth of the cultivated apple, and pass on to my
special province.
The flowers of the apple are perhaps the most beautiful of any tree’s, so
copious and so delicious to both sight and scent. The walker is frequently
tempted to turn and linger near some more than usually handsome one,
whose blossoms are two thirds expanded. How superior it is in these
respects to the pear, whose blossoms are neither colored nor fragrant!
By the middle of July, green apples are so large as to remind us of
coddling, and of the autumn. The sward is commonly strewed with little
ones which fall still-born, as it were,—Nature thus thinning them for us.
The Roman writer Palladius said,—“If apples are inclined to fall before
their time, a stone placed in a split root will retain them.” Some such notion,
still surviving, may account for some of the stones which we see placed to
be overgrown in the forks of trees. They have a saying in Suffolk, England,
—
“At Michaelmas time, or a little before,
Half an apple goes to the core.”

Early apples begin to be ripe about the first of August; but I think that
none of them are so good to eat as some to smell. One is worth more to
scent your handkerchief with than any perfume which they sell in the shops.
The fragrance of some fruits is not to be forgotten, along with that of
flowers. Some gnarly apple which I pick up in the road reminds me by its
fragrance of all the wealth of Pomona,—carrying me forward to those days
when they will be collected in golden and ruddy heaps in the orchards and
about the cider-mills.
A week or two later, as you are going by orchards or gardens, especially
in the evenings, you pass through a little region possessed by the fragrance
of ripe apples, and thus enjoy them without price, and without robbing
anybody.
There is thus about all natural products a certain volatile and ethereal
quality which represents their highest value, and which cannot be
vulgarized, or bought and sold. No mortal has ever enjoyed the perfect
flavor of any fruit, and only the godlike among men begin to taste its
ambrosial qualities. For nectar and ambrosia are only those fine flavors of

every earthly fruit which our coarse palates fail to perceive,—just as we
occupy the heaven of the gods without knowing it. When I see a particularly
mean man carrying a load of fair and fragrant early apples to market, I seem
to see a contest going on between him and his horse, on the one side, and
the apples on the other, and, to my mind, the apples always gain it. Pliny
says that apples are the heaviest of all things, and that the oxen begin to
sweat at the mere sight of a load of them. Our driver begins to lose his load
the moment he tries to transport them to where they do not belong, that is,
to any but the most beautiful. Though he gets out from time to time, and
feels of them, and thinks they are all there, I see the stream of their
evanescent and celestial qualities going to heaven from his cart, while the
pulp and skin and core only are going to market. They are not apples, but
pomace. Are not these still Iduna’s apples, the taste of which keeps the gods
forever young? and think you that they will let Loki or Thjassi carry them
off to Jötunheim, while they grow wrinkled and gray? No, for Ragnarök, or
the destruction of the gods, is not yet.
There is another thinning of the fruit, commonly near the end of August
or in September, when the ground is strewn with windfalls; and this
happens especially when high winds occur after rain. In some orchards you
may see fully three quarters of the whole crop on the ground, lying in a
circular form beneath the trees, yet hard and green,—or, if it is a hill-side,
rolled far down the hill. However, it is an ill wind that blows nobody any
good. All the country over, people are busy picking up the windfalls, and
this will make them cheap for early apple-pies.
In October, the leaves falling, the apples are more distinct on the trees. I
saw one year in a neighboring town some trees fuller of fruit than I
remember to have ever seen before, small yellow apples hanging over the
road. The branches were gracefully drooping with their weight, like a
barberry-bush, so that the whole tree acquired a new character. Even the
topmost branches, instead of standing erect, spread and drooped in all
directions; and there were so many poles supporting the lower ones, that
they looked like pictures of banian-trees. As an old English manuscript
says, “The mo appelen the tree bereth, the more sche boweth to the folk.”
Surely the apple is the noblest of fruits. Let the most beautiful or the
swiftest have it. That should be the “going” price of apples.

Between the fifth and twentieth of October I see the barrels lie under the
trees. And perhaps I talk with one who is selecting some choice barrels to
fulfil an order. He turns a specked one over many times before he leaves it
out. If I were to tell what is passing in my mind, I should say that every one
was specked which he had handled; for he rubs off all the bloom, and those
fugacious ethereal qualities leave it. Cool eveings prompt the farmers to
make haste, and at length I see only the ladders here and there left leaning
against the trees.
It would be well, if we accepted these gifts with more joy and gratitude,
and did not think it enough simply to put a fresh load of compost about the
tree. Some old English customs are suggestive at least. I find them
described chiefly in Brand’s “Popular Antiquities.” It appears that “on
Christmas eve the farmers and their men in Devonshire take a large bowl of
cider, with a toast in it, and carrying it in state to the orchard, they salute the
apple-trees with much ceremony, in order to make them bear well the next
season.” This salutation consists in “throwing some of the cider about the
roots of the tree, placing bits of the toast on the branches,” and then,
“encircling one of the best bearing trees in the orchard, they drink the
following toast three several times:—
‘Here’s to thee, old apple-tree,
Whence thou mayst bud, and whence thou mayst blow,
And whence thou mayst bear apples enow!
Hats-full! caps-full!
Bushel, bushel, sacks-full!
And my pockets full, too! Hurra!’”

Also what was called “apple-howling” used to be practised in various
counties of England on New-Year’s eve. A troop of boys visited the
different orchards, and, encircling the apple-trees, repeated the following
words:—
“Stand fast, root! bear well, top!
Pray God send us a good howling crop:
Every twig, apples big;
Every bow, apples enow!”

“They then shout in chorus, one of the boys accompanying them on a cow’s
horn. During this ceremony they rap the trees with their sticks.” This is
called “wassailing” the trees, and is thought by some to be “a relic of the
heathen sacrifice to Pomona.”

Herrick sings,—
“Wassaile the trees that they may beare
You many a plum and many a peare;
For more or less fruits they will bring
As you so give them wassailing.”

Our poets have as yet a better right to sing of cider than of wine; but it
behooves them to sing better than English Phillips did, else they will do no
credit to their Muse.

THE WILD APPLE.
So much for the more civilized apple-trees (urbaniores, as Pliny calls
them). I love better to go through the old orchards of ungrafted apple-trees,
at whatever season of the year,—so irregularly planted: sometimes two trees
standing close together; and the rows so devious that you would think that
they not only had grown while the owner was sleeping, but had been set out
by him in a somnambulic state. The rows of grafted fruit will never tempt
me to wander amid them like these. But I now, alas, speak rather from
memory than from any recent experience, such ravages have been made!
Some soils, like a rocky tract called the Easterbrooks Country in my
neighborhood, are so suited to the apple, that it will grow faster in them
without any care, or if only the ground is broken up once a year, than it will
in many places with any amount of care. The owners of this tract allow that
the soil is excellent for fruit, but they say that it is so rocky that they have
not patience to plough it, and that, together with the distance, is the reason
why it is not cultivated. There are, or were recently, extensive orchards
there standing without order. Nay, they spring up wild and bear well there in
the midst of pines, birches, maples, and oaks. I am often surprised to see
rising amid these trees the rounded tops of apple-trees glowing with red or
yellow fruit; in harmony with the autumnal tints of the forest.
Going up the side of a cliff about the first of November, I saw a vigorous
young apple-tree, which, planted by birds or cows, had shot up amid the
rocks and open woods there, and had now much fruit on it, uninjured by the
frosts, when all cultivated apples were gathered. It was a rank wild growth,
with many green leaves on it still, and made an impression of thorniness.
The fruit was hard and green, but looked as if it would be palatable in the
winter. Some was dangling on the twigs, but more half-buried in the wet

leaves under the tree, or rolled far down the hill amid the rocks. The owner
knows nothing of it. The day was not observed when it first blossomed, nor
when it first bore fruit, unless by the chickadee. There was no dancing on
the green beneath it in its honor, and now there is no hand to pluck its fruit,
—which is only gnawed by squirrels, as I perceive. It has done double duty,
—not only borne this crop, but each twig has grown a foot into the air. And
this is such fruit! bigger than many berries, we must admit, and carried
home will be sound and palatable next spring. What care I for Iduna’s
apples so long as I can get these?
When I go by this shrub thus late and hardy, and see its dangling fruit, I
respect the tree, and I am grateful for Nature’s bounty, even though I cannot
eat it. Here on this rugged and woody hill-side has grown an apple-tree, not
planted by man, no relic of a former orchard, but a natural growth, like the
pines and oaks. Most fruits which we prize and use depend entirely on our
care. Corn and grain, potatoes, peaches, melons, etc., depend altogether on
our planting; but the apple emulates man’s independence and enterprise. It
is not simply carried, as I have said, but, like him, to some extent, it has
migrated to this New World, and is even, here and there, making its way
amid the aboriginal trees; just as the ox and dog and horse sometimes run
wild and maintain themselves.
Even the sourest and crabbedest apple, growing in the most unfavorable
position, suggests such thoughts as these, it is so noble a fruit.

THE CRAB.
Nevertheless, our wild apple is wild only like myself, perchance, who
belong not to the aboriginal race here, but have strayed into the woods from
the cultivated stock. Wilder still, as I have said, there grows elsewhere in
this country a native and aboriginal Crab-Apple, Malus coronaria, “whose
nature has not yet been modified by cultivation.” It is found from Western
New-York to Minnesota, and southward. Michaux says that its ordinary
height “is fifteen or eighteen feet, but it is sometimes found twenty-five or
thirty feet high,” and that the large ones “exactly resemble the common
apple-tree.” “The flowers are white mingled with rose-color, and are
collected in corymbs.” They are remarkable for their delicious odor. The
fruit, according to him, is about an inch and a half in diameter, and is
intensely acid. Yet they make fine sweetmeats, and also cider of them. He

concludes, that “if, on being cultivated, it does not yield new and palatable
varieties, it will at least be celebrated for the beauty of its flowers, and for
the sweetness of its perfume.”
I never saw the Crab-Apple till May, 1861. I had heard of it through
Michaux, but more modern botanists, so far as I know, have not treated it as
of any peculiar importance. Thus it was a half-fabulous tree to me. I
contemplated a pilgrimage to the “Glades,” a portion of Pennsylvania where
it was said to grow to perfection. I thought of sending to a nursery for it, but
doubted if they had it, or would distinguish it from European varieties. At
last I had occasion to go to Minnesota, and on entering Michigan I began to
notice from the cars a tree with handsome rose-colored flowers. At first I
thought it some variety of thorn; but it was not long before the truth flashed
on me, that this was my long-sought Crab-Apple. It was the prevailing
flowering shrub or tree to be seen from the cars at that season of the year,—
about the middle of May. But the cars never stopped before one, and so I
was launched on the bosom of the Mississippi without having touched one,
experiencing the fate of Tantalus. On arriving at St. Anthony’s Falls, I was
sorry to be told that I was too far north for the Crab-Apple. Nevertheless I
succeeded in finding it about eight miles west of the Falls; touched it and
smelled it, and secured a lingering corymb of flowers for my herbarium.
This must have been near its northern limit.

HOW THE WILD APPLE GROWS.
But though these are indigenous, like the Indians, I doubt whether they
are any hardier than those backwoodsmen among the apple-trees, which,
though descended from cultivated stocks, plant themselves in distant fields
and forests, where the soil is favorable to them. I know of no trees which
have more difficulties to contend with, and which more sturdily resist their
foes. These are the ones whose story we have to tell. It oftentimes reads
thus:—
Near the beginning of May, we notice little thickets of apple-trees just
springing up in the pastures where cattle have been,—as the rocky ones of
our Easterbrooks Country, or the top of Nobscot Hill, in Sudbury. One or
two of these perhaps survive the drought and other accidents,—their very
birthplace defending them against the encroaching grass and some other
dangers, at first.

In two years’ time ’t had thus
Reached the level of the rocks,
Admired the stretching world,
Nor feared the wandering flocks.

But at this tender age
Its sufferings began:
There came a browsing ox
And cut it down a span.

This time, perhaps, the ox does not notice it amid the grass; but the next
year, when it has grown more stout, he recognizes it for a fellow-emigrant
from the old country, the flavor of whose leaves and twigs he well knows;
and though at first he pauses to welcome it, and express his surprise, and
gets for answer, “The same cause that brought you here brought me,” he
nevertheless browses it again, reflecting, it may be, that he has some title to
it.
Thus cut down annually, it does not despair; but, putting forth two short
twigs for every one cut off, it spreads out low along the ground in the
hollows or between the rocks, growing more stout and scrubby, until it
forms, not a tree as yet, but a little pyramidal, stiff, twiggy mass, almost as
solid and impenetrable as a rock. Some of the densest and most
impenetrable clumps of bushes that I have ever seen, as well on account of
the closeness and stubbornness of their branches as of their thorns, have
been these wild-apple scrubs. They are more like the scrubby fir and black
spruce on which you stand, and sometimes walk, on the tops of mountains,
where cold is the demon they contend with, than anything else. No wonder
they are prompted to grow thorns at last, to defend themselves against such
foes. In their thorniness, however, there is no malice, only some malic acid.
The rocky pastures of the tract I have referred to,—for they maintain
their ground best in a rocky field,—are thickly sprinkled with these little
tufts, reminding you often of some rigid gray mosses or lichens, and you
see thousands of little trees just springing up between them, with the seed
still attached to them.
Being regularly clipped all around each year by the cows, as a hedge with
shears, they are often of a perfect conical or pyramidal form, from one to
four feet high, and more or less sharp, as if trimmed by the gardener’s art.
In the pastures on Nobscot Hill and its spurs, they make fine dark shadows
when the sun is low. They are also an excellent covert from hawks for many

small birds that roost and build in them. Whole flocks perch in them at
night, and I have seen three robins’ nests in one which was six feet in
diameter.
No doubt many of these are already old trees, if you reckon from the day
they were planted, but infants still when you consider their development
and the long life before them. I counted the annual rings of some which
were just one foot high, and as wide as high, and found that they were about
twelve years old, but quite sound and thrifty! They were so low that they
were unnoticed by the walker, while many of their contemporaries from the
nurseries were already bearing considerable crops. But what you gain in
time is perhaps in this case, too, lost in power,—that is, in the vigor of the
tree. This is their pyramidal state.
The cows continue to browse them thus for twenty years or more,
keeping them down and compelling them to spread, until at last they are so
broad that they become their own fence, when some interior shoot, which
their foes cannot reach, darts upward with joy: for it has not forgotten its
high calling, and bears its own peculiar fruit in triumph.
Such are the tactics by which it finally defeats its bovine foes. Now, if
you have watched the progress of a particular shrub, you will see that it is
no longer a simple pyramid or cone, but that out of its apex there rises a
sprig or two, growing more lustily perchance than an orchard-tree, since the
plant now devotes the whole of its repressed energy to these upright parts.
In a short time these become a small tree, an inverted pyramid resting on
the apex of the other, so that the whole has now the form of a vast hour-
glass. The spreading bottom, having served its purpose, finally disappears,
and the generous tree permits the now harmless cows to come in and stand
in its shade, and rub against and redden its trunk, which has grown in spite
of them, and even to taste a part of its fruit, and so disperse the seed.
Thus the cows create their own shade and food; and the tree, its hour-
glass being inverted, lives a second life, as it were.
It is an important question with some nowadays, whether you should trim
young apple-trees as high as your nose or as high as your eyes. The ox trims
them up as high as he can reach, and that is about the right height, I think.
In spite of wandering kine, and other adverse circumstances, that
despised shrub, valued only by small birds as a covert and shelter from

hawks, has its blossom-week at last, and in coarse of time its harvest,
sincere, though small.
By the end of some October, when its leaves have fallen, I frequently see
such a central sprig, whose progress I have watched, when I thought it had
forgotten its destiny, as I had, bearing its first crop of small green or yellow
or rosy fruit, which the cows cannot get at over the bushy and thorny hedge
which surrounds it, and I make haste to taste the new and undescribed
variety. We have all heard of the numerous varieties of fruit invented by Van
Mons and Knight. This is the system of Van Cow, and she has invented far
more and more memorable varieties than both of them.
Through what hardships it may attain to bear a sweet fruit! Though
somewhat small, it may prove equal, if not superior, in flavor to that which
has grown in a garden,—will perchance be all the sweeter and more
palatable for the very difficulties it has had to contend with. Who knows but
this chance wild fruit, planted by a cow or a bird on some remote and rocky
hillside, where it is as yet unobserved by man, may be the choicest of all its
kind, and foreign potentates shall hear of it, and royal societies seek to
propagate it, though the virtues of the perhaps truly crabbed owner of the
soil may never be heard of,—at least, beyond the limits of his village? It
was thus the Porter and the Baldwin grew.
Every wild-apple shrub excites our expectation thus, somewhat as every
wild child. It is, perhaps, a prince in disguise. What a lesson to man! So are
human beings, referred to the highest standard, the celestial fruit which they
suggest and aspire to bear, browsed on by fate; and only the most persistent
and strongest genius defends itself and prevails, sends a tender scion
upward at last, and drops its perfect fruit on the ungrateful earth. Poets and
philosophers and statesmen thus spring up in the country pastures, and
outlast the hosts of unoriginal men.
Such is always the pursuit of knowledge. The celestial fruits, the golden
apples of the Hesperides, are ever guarded by a hundred-headed dragon
which never sleeps, so that it is an Herculean labor to pluck them.
This is one, and the most remarkable way, in which the wild apple is
propagated; but commonly it springs up at wide intervals in woods and
swamps, and by the sides of roads, as the soil may suit it, and grows with
comparative rapidity. Those which grow in dense woods are very tall and
slender. I frequently pluck from these trees a perfectly mild and tamed fruit.

As Palladius says, “Et injussu consternitur ubere mali”: And the ground is
strewn with the fruit of an unbidden apple-tree.
It is an old notion, that, if these wild trees do not bear a valuable fruit of
their own, they are the best stocks by which to transmit to posterity the most
highly prized qualities of others. However, I am not in search of stocks, but
the wild fruit itself, whose fierce gust has suffered no “inteneration.” It is
not my
“highest plot
To plant the Bergamot.”

THE FRUIT, AND ITS FLAVOR.
The time for wild apples is the last of October and the first of November.
They then get to be palatable, for they ripen late, and they are still perhaps
as beautiful as ever. I make a great account of these fruits, which the
farmers do not think it worth the while to gather,—wild flavors of the
Muse, vivacious and inspiriting. The farmer thinks that he has better in his
barrels, but he is mistaken, unless he has a walker’s appetite and
imagination, neither of which can he have.
Such as grow quite wild, and are left out till the first of November, I
presume that the owner does not mean to gather. They belong to children as
wild as themselves,—to certain active boys that I know,—to the wild-eyed
woman of the fields, to whom nothing comes amiss, who gleans after all the
world,—and, moreover, to us walkers. We have met with them, and they are
ours. These rights, long enough insisted upon, have come to be an
institution in some old countries, where they have learned how to live. I
hear that “the custom of grippling, which may be called apple-gleaning, is,
or was formerly, practised in Herefordshire. It consists in leaving a few
apples, which are called the gripples, on every tree, after the general
gathering, for the boys, who go with climbing-poles and bags to collect
them.”
As for those I speak of, I pluck them as a wild fruit, native to this quarter
of the earth,—fruit of old trees that have been dying ever since I was a boy
and are not yet dead, frequented only by the woodpecker and the squirrel,
deserted now by the owner, who has not faith enough to look under their
boughs. From the appearance of the tree-top, at a little distance, you would
expect nothing but lichens to drop from it, but your faith is rewarded by

finding the ground strewn with spirited fruit,—some of it, perhaps,
collected at squirrel-holes, with the marks of their teeth by which they
carried them,—some containing a cricket or two silently feeding within,
and some, especially in damp days, a shelless snail. The very sticks and
stones lodged in the tree-top might have convinced you of the savoriness of
the fruit which has been so eagerly sought after in past years.
I have seen no account of these among the “Fruits and Fruit-Trees of
America,” though they are more memorable to my taste than the grafted
kinds; more racy and wild American flavors do they possess, when October
and November, when December and January, and perhaps February and
March even, have assuaged them somewhat. An old farmer in my
neighborhood, who always selects the right word, says that “they have a
kind of bow-arrow tang.”
Apples for grafting appear to have been selected commonly, not so much
for their spirited flavor, as for their mildness, their size, and bearing
qualities,—not so much for their beauty, as for their fairness and soundness.
Indeed, I have no faith in the selected lists of pomological gentlemen. Their
“Favorites” and “None-suches” and “Seek-no-farthers,” when I have fruited
them, commonly turn out very tame and forgetable. They are eaten with
comparatively little zest, and have no real tang nor smack to them.
What if some of these wildings are acrid and puckery, genuine verjuice,
do they not still belong to the Pomaceae, which are uniformly innocent and
kind to our race? I still begrudge them to the cider-mill. Perhaps they are
not fairly ripe yet.
No wonder that these small and high-colored apples are thought to make
the best cider. Loudon quotes from the “Herefordshire Report,” that “apples
of a small size are always, if equal in quality, to be preferred to those of a
larger size, in order that the rind and kernel may bear the greatest proportion
to the pulp, which affords the weakest and most watery juice.” And he says,
that, “to prove this, Dr. Symonds, of Hereford, about the year 1800, made
one hogshead of cider entirely from the rinds and cores of apples, and
another from the pulp only, when the first was found of extraordinary
strength and flavor, while the latter was sweet and insipid.”
Evelyn says that the “Red-strake” was the favorite cider-apple in his day;
and he quotes one Dr. Newburg as saying, “In Jersey ’t is a general
observation, as I hear, that the more of red any apple has in its rind, the

more proper it is for this use. Pale-faced apples they exclude as much as
may be from their cider-vat.” This opinion still prevails.
All apples are good in November. Those which the farmer leaves out as
unsalable, and unpalatable to those who frequent the markets, are choicest
fruit to the walker. But it is remarkable that the wild apple, which I praise as
so spirited and racy when eaten in the fields or woods, being brought into
the house, has frequently a harsh and crabbed taste. The Saunterer’s Apple
not even the saunterer can eat in the house. The palate rejects it there, as it
does haws and acorns, and demands a tamed one; for there you miss the
November air, which is the sauce it is to be eaten with. Accordingly, when
Tityrus, seeing the lengthening shadows, invites Meliboeus to go home and
pass the night with him, he promises him mild apples and soft chestnuts,—
mitia poma, castaneae molles. I frequently pluck wild apples of so rich and
spicy a flavor that I wonder all orchardists do not get a scion from that tree,
and I fail not to bring home my pockets full. But perchance, when I take
one out of my desk and taste it in my chamber, I find it unexpectedly crude,
—sour enough to set a squirrel’s teeth on edge and make a jay scream.
These apples have hung in the wind and frost and rain till they have
absorbed the qualities of the weather or season, and thus are highly
seasoned, and they pierce and sting and permeate us with their spirit. They
must be eaten in season, accordingly,—that is, out-of-doors.
To appreciate the wild and sharp flavors of these October fruits, it is
necessary that you be breathing the sharp October or November air. The
out-door air and exercise which the walker gets give a different tone to his
palate, and he craves a fruit which the sedentary would call harsh and
crabbed. They must be eaten in the fields, when your system is all aglow
with exercise, when the frosty weather nips your fingers, the wind rattles
the bare boughs or rustles the few remaining leaves, and the jay is heard
screaming around. What is sour in the house a bracing walk makes sweet.
Some of these apples might be labelled, “To be eaten in the wind.”
Of course no flavors are thrown away; they are intended for the taste that
is up to them. Some apples have two distinct flavors, and perhaps one-half
of them must be eaten in the house, the other out-doors. One Peter Whitney
wrote from Northborough in 1782, for the Proceedings of the Boston
Academy, describing an apple-tree in that town “producing fruit of opposite
qualities, part of the same apple being frequently sour and the other sweet;”

also some all sour, and others all sweet, and this diversity on all parts of the
tree.
There is a wild apple on Nawshawtuck Hill in my town which has to me
a peculiarly pleasant bitter tang, not perceived till it is three-quarters tasted.
It remains on the tongue. As you eat it, it smells exactly like a squash-bug.
It is a sort of triumph to eat and relish it.
I hear that the fruit of a kind of plum-tree in Provence is “called Prunes
sibarelles, because it is impossible to whistle after having eaten them, from
their sourness.” But perhaps they were only eaten in the house and in
summer, and if tried out-of-doors in a stinging atmosphere, who knows but
you could whistle an octave higher and clearer?
In the fields only are the sours and bitters of Nature appreciated; just as
the wood-chopper eats his meal in a sunny glade, in the middle of a winter
day, with content, basks in a sunny ray there and dreams of summer in a
degree of cold which, experienced in a chamber, would make a student
miserable. They who are at work abroad are not cold, but rather it is they
who sit shivering in houses. As with temperatures, so with flavors; as, with
cold and heat, so with sour and sweet. This natural raciness, the sours and
bitters which the diseased palate refuses, are the true condiments.
Let your condiments be in the condition of your senses. To appreciate the
flavor of these wild apples requires vigorous and healthy senses, papillae
firm and erect on the tongue and palate, not easily flattened and tamed.
From my experience with wild apples, I can understand that there may be
reason for a savage’s preferring many kinds of food which the civilized man
rejects. The former has the palate of an out-door man. It takes a savage or
wild taste to appreciate a wild fruit.
What a healthy out-of-door appetite it takes to relish the apple of life, the
apple of the world, then!
“Nor is it every apple I desire,
Nor that which pleases every palate best;
’T is not the lasting Deuxan I require,
Nor yet the red-cheeked Greening I request,
Nor that which first beshrewed the name of wife,
Nor that whose beauty caused the golden strife:
No, no I bring me an apple from the tree of life.”

So there is one thought for the field, another for the house. I would have
my thoughts, like wild apples, to be food for walkers, and will not warrant
them to be palatable, if tasted in the house.
THEIR BEAUTY.
Almost all wild apples are handsome. They cannot be too gnarly and
crabbed and rusty to look at. The gnarliest will have some redeeming traits
even to the eye. You will discover some evening redness dashed or
sprinkled on some protuberance or in some cavity. It is rare that the summer
lets an apple go without streaking or spotting it on some part of its sphere. It
will have some red stains, commemorating the mornings and evenings it
has witnessed; some dark and rusty blotches, in memory of the clouds and
foggy, mildewy days that have passed over it; and a spacious field of green
reflecting the general face of Nature,—green even as the fields; or a yellow
ground, which implies a milder flavor,—yellow as the harvest, or russet as
the hills.
Apples, these I mean, unspeakably fair,—apples not of Discord, but of
Concord! Yet not so rare but that the homeliest may have a share. Painted
by the frosts, some a uniform clear bright yellow, or red, or crimson, as if
their spheres had regularly revolved, and enjoyed the influence of the sun
on all sides alike,—some with the faintest pink blush imaginable,— some
brindled with deep red streaks like a cow, or with hundreds of fine blood-
red rays running regularly from the stem-dimple to the blossom-end, like
meridional lines, on a straw-colored ground,—some touched with a
greenish rust, like a fine lichen, here and there, with crimson blotches or
eyes more or less confluent and fiery when wet,—and others gnarly, and
freckled or peppered all over on the stem side with fine crimson spots on a
white ground, as if accidentally sprinkled from the brush of Him who paints
the autumn leaves. Others, again, are sometimes red inside, perfused with a
beautiful blush, fairy food, too beautiful to eat,—apple of the Hesperides,
apple of the evening sky! But like shells and pebbles on the sea-shore, they
must be seen as they sparkle amid the withering leaves in some dell in the
woods, in the autumnal air, or as they lie in the wet grass, and not when
they have wilted and faded in the house.

THE NAMING OF THEM.

It would be a pleasant pastime to find suitable names for the hundred
varieties which go to a single heap at the cider-mill. Would it not tax a
man’s invention,—no one to be named after a man, and all in the lingua
vernacula? Who shall stand godfather at the christening of the wild apples?
It would exhaust the Latin and Greek languages, if they were used, and
make the lingua vernacula flag. We should have to call in the sunrise and
the sunset, the rainbow and the autumn woods and the wild flowers, and the
woodpecker and the purple finch and the squirrel and the jay and the
butterfly, the November traveller and the truant boy, to our aid.
In 1836 there were in the garden of the London Horticultural Society
more than fourteen hundred distinct sorts. But here are species which they
have not in their catalogue, not to mention the varieties which our Crab
might yield to cultivation.
Let us enumerate a few of these. I find myself compelled, after all, to
give the Latin names of some for the benefit of those who live where
English is not spoken,—for they are likely to have a world-wide reputation.
There is, first of all, the Wood-Apple (Malus sylvatica); the Blue-Jay
Apple; the Apple which grows in Dells in the Woods, (sylvestrivallis,) also
in Hollows in Pastures (campestrivallis); the Apple that grows in an old
Cellar-Hole (Malus cellaris); the Meadow-Apple; the Partridge-Apple; the
Truant’s Apple, (Cessatoris,) which no boy will ever go by without
knocking off some, however late it may be; the Saunterer’s Apple,—you
must lose yourself before you can find the way to that; the Beauty of the Air
(Decus Aeris); December-Eating; the Frozen-Thawed (gelato-soluta), good
only in that state; the Concord Apple, possibly the same with the
Musketaquidensis; the Assabet Apple; the Brindled Apple; Wine of New
England; the Chickaree Apple; the Green Apple (Malus viridis);—this has
many synonymes; in an imperfect state, it is the Cholera morbifera aut
dysenterifera, puerulis dilectissima;—the Apple which Atalanta stopped to
pick up; the Hedge-Apple (Malus Sepium); the Slug-Apple (limacea); the
Railroad-Apple, which perhaps came from a core thrown out of the cars; the
Apple whose Fruit we tasted in our Youth; our Particular Apple, not to be
found in any catalogue,—Pedestrium Solatium; also the Apple where hangs
the Forgotten Scythe; Iduna’s Apples, and the Apples which Loki found in
the Wood; and a great many more I have on my list, too numerous to

mention,—all of them good. As Bodaeus exclaims, referring to the
cultivated kinds, and adapting Virgil to his case, so I, adapting Bodaeus,—
“Not if I had a hundred tongues, a hundred mouths,
An iron voice, could I describe all the forms
And reckon up all the names of these wild apples.”

THE LAST GLEANING.
By the middle of November the wild apples have lost some of their
brilliancy, and have chiefly fallen. A great part are decayed on the ground,
and the sound ones are more palatable than before. The note of the
chickadee sounds now more distinct, as you wander amid the old trees, and
the autumnal dandelion is half-closed and tearful. But still, if you are a
skilful gleaner, you may get many a pocket-full even of grafted fruit, long
after apples are supposed to be gone out-of-doors. I know a Blue-Pearmain
tree, growing within the edge of a swamp, almost as good as wild. You
would not suppose that there was any fruit left there, on the first survey, but
you must look according to system. Those which lie exposed are quite
brown and rotten now, or perchance a few still show one blooming cheek
here and there amid the wet leaves. Nevertheless, with experienced eyes, I
explore amid the bare alders and the huckleberry-bushes and the withered
sedge, and in the crevices of the rocks, which are full of leaves, and pry
under the fallen and decaying ferns, which, with apple and alder leaves,
thickly strew the ground. For I know that they lie concealed, fallen into
hollows long since and covered up by the leaves of the tree itself,—a proper
kind of packing. From these lurking-places, anywhere within the
circumference of the tree, I draw forth the fruit, all wet and glossy, maybe
nibbled by rabbits and hollowed out by crickets and perhaps with a leaf or
two cemented to it (as Curzon an old manuscript from a monastery’s
mouldy cellar), but still with a rich bloom on it, and at least as ripe and well
kept, if not better than those in barrels, more crisp and lively than they. If
these resources fail to yield anything, I have learned to look between the
bases of the suckers which spring thickly from some horizontal limb, for
now and then one lodges there, or in the very midst of an alder-clump,
where they are covered by leaves, safe from cows which may have smelled
them out. If I am sharp-set, for I do not refuse the Blue-Pearmain, I fill my
pockets on each side; and as I retrace my steps in the frosty eve, being

perhaps four or five miles from home, I eat one first from this side, and then
from that, to keep my balance.
I learn from Topsell’s Gesner, whose authority appears to be Albertus,
that the following is the way in which the hedgehog collects and carries
home his apples. He says,—“His meat is apples, worms, or grapes: when he
findeth apples or grapes on the earth, he rolleth himself upon them, until he
have filled all his prickles, and then carrieth them home to his den, never
bearing above one in his mouth; and if it fortune that one of them fall off by
the way, he likewise shaketh off all the residue, and walloweth upon them
afresh, until they be all settled upon his back again. So, forth he goeth,
making a noise like a cart-wheel; and if he have any young ones in his nest,
they pull off his load wherewithal he is loaded, eating thereof what they
please, and laying up the residue for the time to come.”

THE “FROZEN-THAWED” APPLE.
Toward the end of November, though some of the sound ones are yet
more mellow and perhaps more edible, they have generally, like the leaves,
lost their beauty, and are beginning to freeze. It is finger-cold, and prudent
farmers get in their barrelled apples, and bring you the apples and cider
which they have engaged; for it is time to put them into the cellar. Perhaps a
few on the ground show their red cheeks above the early snow, and
occasionally some even preserve their color and soundness under the snow
throughout the winter. But generally at the beginning of the winter they
freeze hard, and soon, though undecayed, acquire the color of a baked
apple.
Before the end of December, generally, they experience their first
thawing. Those which a month ago were sour, crabbed, and quite
unpalatable to the civilized taste, such at least as were frozen while sound,
let a warmer sun come to thaw them, for they are extremely sensitive to its
rays, are found to be filled with a rich, sweet cider, better than any bottled
cider that I know of, and with which I am better acquainted than with wine.
All apples are good in this state, and your jaws are the cider-press. Others,
which have more substance, are a sweet and luscious food,—in my opinion
of more worth than the pine-apples which are imported from the West
Indies. Those which lately even I tasted only to repent of it,—for I am semi-
civilized,—which the farmer willingly left on the tree, I am now glad to

find have the property of hanging on like the leaves of the young oaks. It is
a way to keep cider sweet without boiling. Let the frost come to freeze them
first, solid as stones, and then the rain or a warm winter day to thaw them,
and they will seem to have borrowed a flavor from heaven through the
medium of the air in which they hang. Or perchance you find, when you get
home, that those which rattled in your pocket have thawed, and the ice is
turned to cider. But after the third or fourth freezing and thawing they will
not be found so good.
What are the imported half-ripe fruits of the torrid South, to this fruit
matured by the cold of the frigid North? These are those crabbed apples
with which I cheated my companion, and kept a smooth face that I might
tempt him to eat. Now we both greedily fill our pockets with them,—
bending to drink the cup and save our lappets from the overflowing juice,—
and grow more social with their wine. Was there one that hung so high and
sheltered by the tangled branches that our sticks could not dislodge it?
It is a fruit never carried to market, that I am aware of,—quite distinct
from the apple of the markets, as from dried apple and cider,—and it is not
every winter that produces it in perfection.

The era of the Wild Apple will soon be past. It is a fruit which will
probably become extinct in New England. You may still wander through old
orchards of native fruit of great extent, which for the most part went to the
cider-mill, now all gone to decay. I have heard of an orchard in a distant
town, on the side of a hill, where the apples rolled down and lay four feet
deep against a wall on the lower side, and this the owner cut down for fear
they should be made into cider. Since the temperance reform and the
general introduction of grafted fruit, no native apple-trees, such as I see
everywhere in deserted pastures, and where the woods have grown up
around them, are set out. I fear that he who walks over these fields a century
hence will not know the pleasure of knocking off wild apples. Ah, poor
man, there are many pleasures which he will not know! Notwithstanding
the prevalence of the Baldwin and the Porter, I doubt if so extensive
orchards are set out to-day in my town as there were a century ago, when
those vast straggling cider-orchards were planted, when men both ate and
drank apples, when the pomace-heap was the only nursery, and trees cost
nothing but the trouble of setting them out. Men could afford then to stick a

tree by every wall-side and let it take its chance. I see nobody planting trees
to-day in such out-of-the-way places, along the lonely roads and lanes, and
at the bottom of dells in the wood. Now that they have grafted trees, and
pay a price for them, they collect them into a plat by their houses, and fence
them in,—and the end of it all will be that we shall be compelled to look for
our apples in a barrel.
This is “The word of the Lord that came to Joel the son of Pethuel.
“Hear this, ye old men, and give ear, all ye inhabitants of the land!
Hath this been in your days, or even in the days of your fathers?…
“That which the palmer-worm hath left hath the locust eaten; and that
which the locust hath left hath the canker-worm eaten; and that which the
canker-worm hath left hath the caterpillar eaten.
“Awake, ye drunkards, and weep! and howl, all ye drinkers of wine,
because of the new wine! for it is cut off from your mouth.
“For a nation is come up upon my land, strong, and without number,
whose teeth are the teeth of a lion, and he hath the cheek-teeth of a great
lion.
“He hath laid my vine waste, and barked my fig-tree; he hath made it
clean bare, and cast it away; the branches thereof are made white….
“Be ye ashamed, O ye husbandmen! howl, O ye vine-dressers!…
“The vine is dried up, and the fig-tree languisheth; the pomegranate-tree,
the palm-tree also, and the apple-tree, even all the trees of the field, are
withered: because joy is withered away from the sons of men.”

NIGHT AND MOONLIGHT.

Chancing to take a memorable walk by moonlight some years ago, I
resolved to take more such walks, and make acquaintance with another side
of nature: I have done so.
According to Pliny, there is a stone in Arabia called Selenites, “wherein
is a white, which increases and decreases with the moon.” My journal for
the last year or two, has been selenitic in this sense.
Is not the midnight like Central Africa to most of us? Are we not tempted
to explore it,—to penetrate to the shores of its lake Tchad, and discover the
source of its Nile, perchance the Mountains of the Moon? Who knows what
fertility and beauty, moral and natural, are there to be found? In the
Mountains of the Moon, in the Central Africa of the night, there is where all
Niles have their hidden heads. The expeditions up the Nile as yet extend but
to the Cataracts, or perchance to the mouth of the White Nile; but it is the
Black Nile that concerns us.
I shall be a benefactor if I conquer some realms from the night, if I report
to the gazettes anything transpiring about us at that season worthy of their
attention,—if I can show men that there is some beauty awake while they
are asleep,—if I add to the domains of poetry.
Night is certainly more novel and less profane than day. I soon
discovered that I was acquainted only with its complexion, and as for the
moon, I had seen her only as it were through a crevice in a shutter,
occasionally. Why not walk a little way in her light?
Suppose you attend to the suggestions which the moon makes for one
month, commonly in vain, will it not be very different from anything in
literature or religion? But why not study this Sanscrit? What if one moon
has come and gone with its world of poetry, its weird teachings, its oracular
suggestions,—so divine a creature freighted with hints for me, and I have
not used her? One moon gone by unnoticed?

I think it was Dr. Chalmers who said, criticising Coleridge, that for his
part he wanted ideas which he could see all round, and not such as he must
look at away up in the heavens. Such a man, one would say, would never
look at the moon, because she never turns her other side to us. The light
which comes from ideas which have their orbit as distant from the earth,
and which is no less cheering and enlightening to the benighted traveller
than that of the moon and stars, is naturally reproached or nicknamed as
moonshine by such. They are moonshine, are they? Well, then do your
night-travelling when there is no moon to light you; but I will be thankful
for the light that reaches me from the star of least magnitude. Stars are
lesser or greater only as they appear to us so. I will be thankful that I see so
much as one side of a celestial idea,—one side of the rainbow,—and the
sunset sky.
Men talk glibly enough about moonshine, as if they knew its qualities
very well, and despised them; as owls might talk of sunshine. None of your
sunshine,—but this word commonly means merely something which they
do not understand,—which they are abed and asleep to, however much it
may be worth their while to be up and awake to it.
It must be allowed that the light of the moon, sufficient though it is for
the pensive walker, and not disproportionate to the inner light we have, is
very inferior in quality and intensity to that of the sun. But the moon is not
to be judged alone by the quantity of light she sends to us, but also by her
influence on the earth and its inhabitants. “The moon gravitates toward the
earth, and the earth reciprocally toward the moon.” The poet who walks by
moonlight is conscious of a tide in his thought which is to be referred to
lunar influence. I will endeavor to separate the tide in my thoughts from the
current distractions of the day. I would warn my hearers that they must not
try my thoughts by a daylight standard, but endeavor to realize that I speak
out of the night. All depends on your point of view. In Drake’s “Collection
of Voyages,” Wafer says of some Albinoes among the Indians of Darien,
“They are quite white, but their whiteness is like that of a horse, quite
different from the fair or pale European, as they have not the least tincture
of a blush or sanguine complexion. * * * Their eyebrows are milk-white, as
is likewise the hair of their heads, which is very fine. * * * They seldom go
abroad in the daytime, the sun being disagreeable to them, and causing their
eyes, which are weak and poring, to water, especially if it shines towards

them, yet they see very well by moonlight, from which we call them moon-
eyed.”
Neither in our thoughts in these moonlight walks, methinks, is there “the
least tincture of a blush or sanguine complexion,” but we are intellectually
and morally Albinoes,—children of Endymion,—such is the effect of
conversing much with the moon.
I complain of Arctic voyagers that, they do not enough remind us of the
constant peculiar dreariness of the scenery, and the perpetual twilight of the
Arctic night. So he whose theme is moonlight, though he may find it
difficult, must, as it were, illustrate it with the light of the moon alone.
Many men walk by day; few walk by night. It is a very different season.
Take a July night, for instance. About ten o’clock,—when man is asleep,
and day fairly forgotten,—the beauty of moonlight is seen over lonely
pastures where cattle are silently feeding. On all sides novelties present
themselves. Instead of the sun there are the moon and stars, instead of the
wood-thrush there is the whip-poor-will,—instead of butterflies in the
meadows, fire-flies, winged sparks of fire! who would have believed it?
What kind of cool deliberate life dwells in those dewy abodes associated
with a spark of fire? So man has fire in his eyes, or blood, or brain. Instead
of singing birds, the half-throttled note of a cuckoo flying over, the croaking
of frogs, and the intenser dream of crickets. But above all, the wonderful
trump of the bull-frog, ringing from Maine to Georgia. The potato-vines
stand upright, the corn grows apace, the bushes loom, the grain-fields are
boundless. On our open river terraces once cultivated by the Indian, they
appear to occupy the ground like an army,— their heads nodding in the
breeze.
Small trees and shrubs are seen in the midst, overwhelmed as by an
inundation. The shadows of rocks and trees, and shrubs and hills, are more
conspicuous than the objects themselves. The slightest irregularities in the
ground are revealed by the shadows, and what the feet find comparatively
smooth, appears rough and diversified in consequence. For the same reason
the whole landscape is more variegated and picturesque than by day. The
smallest recesses in the rocks are dim and cavernous; the ferns in the wood
appear of tropical size. The sweet fern and indigo in overgrown wood-paths
wet you with dew up to your middle. The leaves of the shrub-oak are
shining as if a liquid were flowing over them. The pools seen through the

trees are as full of light as the sky. “The light of the day takes refuge in their
bosoms,” as the Purana says of the ocean. All white objects are more
remarkable than by day. A distant cliff looks like a phosphorescent space on
a hillside. The woods are heavy and dark. Nature slumbers. You see the
moonlight reflected from particular stumps in the recesses of the forest, as if
she selected what to shine on. These small fractions of her light remind one
of the plant called moon-seed,—as if the moon were sowing it in such
places.
In the night the eyes are partly closed or retire into the head. Other senses
take the lead. The walker is guided as well by the sense of smell. Every
plant and field and forest emits its odor now, swamp-pink in the meadow
and tansy in the road; and there is the peculiar dry scent of corn which has
begun to show its tassels. The senses both of hearing and smelling are more
alert. We hear the tinkling of rills which we never detected before. From
time to time, high up on the sides of hills, you pass through a stratum of
warm air. A blast which has come up from the sultry plains of noon. It tells
of the day, of sunny noon-tide hours and banks, of the laborer wiping his
brow and the bee humming amid flowers. It is an air in which work has
been done,—which men have breathed. It circulates about from wood-side
to hill-side like a dog that has lost its master, now that the sun is gone. The
rocks retain all night the warmth of the sun which they have absorbed. And
so does the sand. If you dig a few inches into it you find a warm bed. You
lie on your back on a rock in a pasture on the top of some bare hill at
midnight, and speculate on the height of the starry canopy. The stars are the
jewels of the night, and perchance surpass anything which day has to show.
A companion with whom I was sailing one very windy but bright moonlight
night, when the stars were few and faint, thought that a man could get along
with them,—though he was considerably reduced in his circumstances,—
that they were a kind of bread and cheese that never failed.
No wonder that there have been astrologers, that some have conceived
that they were personally related to particular stars. Dubartas, as translated
by Sylvester, says he’ll
“not believe that the great architect
With all these fires the heavenly arches decked
Only for show, and with these glistering shields,
T’ awake poor shepherds, watching in the fields.”
He’ll “not believe that the least flower which pranks
Our garden borders, or our common banks,

And the least stone, that in her warming lap
Our mother earth doth covetously wrap,
Hath some peculiar virtue of its own,
And that the glorious stars of heav’n have none.”

And Sir Walter Raleigh well says, “the stars are instruments of far greater
use, than to give an obscure light, and for men to gaze on after sunset;” and
he quotes Plotinus as affirming that they “are significant, but not efficient;”
and also Augustine as saying, “Deus regit inferiora corpora per superiora:”
God rules the bodies below by those above. But best of all is this which
another writer has expressed: “Sapiens adjuvabit opus astrorum
quemadmodum agricola terrae naturam:” a wise man assisteth the work of
the stars as the husbandman helpeth the nature of the soil.
It does not concern men who are asleep in their beds, but it is very
important to the traveller, whether the moon shines brightly or is obscured.
It is not easy to realize the serene joy of all the earth, when she commences
to shine unobstructedly, unless you have often been abroad alone in
moonlight nights. She seems to be waging continual war with the clouds in
your behalf. Yet we fancy the clouds to be her foes also. She comes on
magnifying her dangers by her light, revealing, displaying them in all their
hugeness and blackness, then suddenly casts them behind into the light
concealed, and goes her way triumphant through a small space of clear sky.
In short, the moon traversing, or appearing to traverse, the small clouds
which lie in her way, now obscured by them, now easily dissipating and
shining through them, makes the drama of the moonlight night to all
watchers and night-travellers. Sailors speak of it as the moon eating up the
clouds. The traveller all alone, the moon all alone, except for his sympathy,
overcoming with incessant victory whole squadrons of clouds above the
forests and lakes and hills. When she is obscured he so sympathizes with
her that he could whip a dog for her relief, as Indians do. When she enters
on a clear field of great extent in the heavens, and shines unobstructedly, he
is glad. And when she has fought her way through all the squadron of her
foes, and rides majestic in a clear sky unscathed, and there are no more any
obstructions in her path, he cheerfully and confidently pursues his way, and
rejoices in his heart, and the cricket also seems to express joy in its song.
How insupportable would be the days, if the night with its dews and
darkness did not come to restore the drooping world. As the shades begin to
gather around us, our primeval instincts are aroused, and we steal forth

from our lairs, like the inhabitants of the jungle, in search of those silent
and brooding thoughts which are the natural prey of the intellect.
Richter says that “The earth is every day overspread with the veil of night
for the same reason as the cages of birds are darkened, viz: that we may the
more readily apprehend the higher harmonies of thought in the hush and
quiet of darkness. Thoughts which day turns into smoke and mist, stand
about us in the night as light and flames; even as the column which
fluctuates above the crater of Vesuvius, in the daytime appears a pillar of
cloud, but by night a pillar of fire.”
There are nights in this climate of such serene and majestic beauty, so
medicinal and fertilizing to the spirit, that methinks a sensitive nature would
not devote them to oblivion, and perhaps there is no man but would be
better and wiser for spending them out of doors, though he should sleep all
the next day to pay for it; should sleep an Endymion sleep, as the ancients
expressed it,—nights which warrant the Grecian epithet ambrosial, when, as
in the land of Beulah, the atmosphere is charged with dewy fragrance, and
with music, and we take our repose and have our dreams awake,—when the
moon, not secondary to the sun,
“gives us his blaze again,
Void of its flame, and sheds a softer day.
Now through the passing cloud she seems to stoop,
Now up the pure cerulean rides sublime.”

Diana still hunts in the New England sky.
“In Heaven queen she is among the spheres.
She, mistress-like, makes all things to be pure.
Eternity in her oft change she bears;
She Beauty is; by her the fair endure.

Time wears her not; she doth his chariot guide;
Mortality below her orb is placed;
By her lie virtues of the stars down slide;
By her is Virtue’s perfect image cast.”

The Hindoos compare the moon to a saintly being who has reached the
last stage of bodily existence.
Great restorer of antiquity, great enchanter. In a mild night, when the
harvest or hunter’s moon shines unobstructedly, the houses in our village,
whatever architect they may have had by day, acknowledge only a master.

The village street is then as wild as the forest. New and old things are
confounded. I know not whether I am sitting on the ruins of a wall, or on
the material which is to compose a new one. Nature is an instructed and
impartial teacher, spreading no crude opinions, and flattering none; she will
be neither radical nor conservative. Consider the moonlight, so civil, yet so
savage!
The light is more proportionate to our knowledge than that of day. It is no
more dusky in ordinary nights, than our mind’s habitual atmosphere, and
the moonlight is as bright as our most illuminated moments are.
“In such a night let me abroad remain
Till morning breaks, and all’s confused again.”

Of what significance the light of day, if it is not the reflection of an
inward dawn?—to what purpose is the veil of night withdrawn, if the
morning reveals nothing to the soul? It is merely garish and glaring.
When Ossian in his address to the sun exclaims,
“Where has darkness its dwelling?
Where is the cavernous home of the stars,
When thou quickly followest their steps,
Pursuing them like a hunter in the sky,—
Thou climbing the lofty hills,
They descending on barren mountains?”

who does not in his thought accompany the stars to their “cavernous
home,” “descending” with them “on barren mountains?”
Nevertheless, even by night the sky is blue and not black, for we see
through the shadow of the earth into the distant atmosphere of day, where
the sunbeams are revelling.
THE END.

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