Part 4

It is the 2d of July, and my grass is all cut, and the last load is rolling into the barn while I write. How sweet it smells! How jolly the children are that have been mounted on the top of the load! And their little scarlet jackets peep out from their nest while Tim stands guard and nurse. A child that has not ridden up from the meadow to the barn on a load of hay has yet to learn one of the luxuries of exultant childhood. What care they for jolts, when the whole load is a vast and multiplex spring? The more the wagon jounces the better they like it! Then come the bars, leading into the lane with maple-trees on each side. The limbs reach down, and the green leaves kiss the children over and over again. So would I, if I were a green leaf, and not consider myself so green after all! And so the load slowly rolls up the bill. There is no such thing as momentum in an ox. He is always at a dead pull and at the very hardest. But the children like it. The slower they move the longer is the ride! Let them take all the comfort they can. By and by they will be grown, and own fine carriages, and roll in style through the streets. But there is many a fair face that rides in a silk-lined coach, with a sad heart, and would go back if she could, O, how gladly, to her joyous ride on a load of hay!

VII.

THE VALUE OF ROBINS.

_October 10th._

The game-law has relaxed its authority. The gun is set free. I hear it in the woods, in the fields, on the hills, Sundays and week-days, bang! bang! bang! as if it could not express its joy, and even celebrating its own emancipation.

Well, let them fire, only so they keep off my hill. It is true that the birds have finished their service, and are now of little use, either as songsters or as worm-exterminators—more’s the pity! But are their past services to be forgotten?

Let me speak of the robin.

He is an immense feeder, and omnivorous. Nothing seems to come amiss—fruit, worm, or seed. Glutton he is not, for he does not eat more than he really needs; but he needs more than most birds of his size.

It is a disputed question, among farmers, whether the robin is a profitable bird. Whether he does not damage the fruit crop out of all proportion to his services in the crusade against insects, I grieve to say, that my own household is divided, and that I am the only one that is openly and wholly a friend to the robin. He is an early riser, and no sooner has he sung his morning hymn than he begins breakfast. Now, in the month of June cherries ripen. I have a cherry orchard. When fully grown, there will be enough for robins and men. But at present my trees are like precocious children; they blossom enormously, but set little fruit. The question now is, Whose is that fruit? The people in the house declare that it belongs to us. The robins out of doors say little about it, but actions speak louder than words. Rising earlier than we do, they get their breakfast before the smoke rises from my chimneys. I will not permit them to be driven away, and still less to be shot. I plead their services. I recount their deeds of valor against insects; their service of song. But it is all in vain. I am voted down. All manner of threats are thrown out by the boys, “if I would only let them.” But I won’t let them!

There are two distinct grounds on which these birds are to be preserved and encouraged. The first ground is the refining pleasure which they give to every person of true susceptibility. Thousands there are who live in the country who will regard this as sheer sentimentality. They are robust people, who drive around all day with vigorous industry, and have always done so, until at length their very standard of manhood is made up of some kind of physical force. He is a man that can lift the largest weight, run the longest and fastest, cut the most grain, climb most lithely, wrestle the most dextrously. And if he can make a shrewd bargain, has an eye for the points in an ox or horse, has the knack of making money, and a good-natured way of pushing about among men, he is considered, and considers himself, to be a real up-and-down man!

But where are the finer traits? God made blossom bulbs in every nature, and if men do not blossom they are deficient in the higher elements.

To disregard qualities of beauty, in form, color, motion, and song, is so far to indicate a deformity of one’s own nature. We never think one to be more manly who cares nothing for the unmarketable graces of the natural world, than he who makes them a part of his daily enjoyment.

The argument is conclusive to a fine nature, when one says, “Birds are too beautiful to be killed.” It may be replied that noxious insects and animals are beautiful, too, and yet are destroyed by the humane and refined, because they are mischievous. We admit the statement, and are willing to apply it to birds. When they are really destructive to crops, or when they are, at proper seasons, needful for food, it is no inhumanity to take their lives. They must take their part and lot with the whole creation, which everywhere eats and is eaten.

But to return to our robin. There is no season of the year when the robin does not prevent more mischief than he accomplishes. He is an enormous eater, and, for the most part, he prefers a meat diet. No one who has not taken pains to observe and estimate can form any conception of the insects and worms devoured by the robin between March and August—that is, during the whole nesting period. One robin eats, in a single season, what, if built into a solid form, would be more than a whole ox. Fruit is but a small part of his diet; cherries, strawberries, and grapes, for a while, suffer from his depredations. Yet, if there were no birds these very things would suffer far more. Insects are more to be dreaded than birds. They elude our vigilance, they work secretly, they swarm in such numbers as to defy man’s power. But birds keep them down. They destroy myriads of eggs, of grubs, of tender worms, and of fruit-loving insects. To destroy birds for the sake of saving fruit is like throwing down the fence about one’s garden to keep the pigs out! Even admit, as some do and we do not, that blackbirds and crows deserve to be shot for destroying the planter’s seed. We claim that the robin does not belong to their company. He preserves a hundred-fold more than he destroys.

On every ground, then, of humanity, of good taste, and of thrift, robins should be spared. They are our best friends. They are, beyond all question, the finest song-bird of the temperate zone. They are a watch and guard against insect depredations in orchard and garden, and, with other birds, they make possible the raising of fruit, which, without them, it is no exaggeration to say, would be utterly impossible. They are, next to the wren and sparrows, the most companionable of birds, hovering about the dwellings of man, and following him, step by step, as he subdues the wilderness, and singing the song of triumph for the axe and the plow.

One word as to the robin’s song. Whoever has read Audubon’s description of the wood-thrush’s song, and the still more glowing account by a writer in the _Atlantic Monthly_ of two or three years ago, will surely be disappointed on first hearing it. In any proper sense, it has no _song_, but only a few sweet sentences, which it utters in a sad and almost melancholy way, sitting solitary in some forest edge, or tree overhanging a brook. The bird is a recluse. So, one imagines a tender-hearted woman, disappointed in love, yet not embittered, might sing from the casement of a nunnery a hymn of mingled resignation and regret. But, to compare this monosyllabic song of the wood-thrush to the robin’s, is like comparing a ballad to an oratorio, or the tinkling of a guitar to the sweet tone of a piano-forte under the hands of some Perabo.

The robin is an out-door bird. He lives in the sunshine. He attracts no sympathy by delicate ways. He is altogether robust, and full of dashing life. When twenty or thirty robins between three and four o’clock in a June morning are at full voice, it would be no exaggeration to compare it to a rain of music. It is no dainty thrumming,—no parceling out of a sweet note or two, with more rests than notes. It is a musical rush, the exultation of a healthy, hearty bird, that sings by the half-hour, without pause, and is ever ready to sing again.

The evening song of the robin I most love to hear. Heard from the top of some orchard tree, or of some meadow maple, while his note has the fire and brilliancy of his morning song, there is in it a slight undertone of sadness. Indeed, this evening song seems to be a mate-call. For ten or fifteen minutes the bird will send out its mellow call over all the region, if peradventure the truant mother may come home. A slight impatience mixes with its closing notes. He flies to a neighboring tree, utters two or three sharp single notes, and then, beginning again, swells out his long call louder than before, warbling five to ten minutes. He pauses. No bird returns. He sits silent.

Perhaps he remembers that there had been a little domestic quarrel during the day, and if his mate is dead, he may never be able to say to her, “I am sorry.” A nest full of little birds needs the mother. The twilight is deepening. Once more, its brilliance now toned down by an unmistakable sadness, he sends out far and near through the dew-damp air a song which is more a lamentation than a call. If there be no response, he flies silently away, and the air rests.

But, sometimes, just as his song is ending, it breaks out into a sharp note of surprise. A flutter is heard, and two birds fly hastily away. The wanderer has come home again!

Can one, all summer long, follow birds with sympathy, and enter into their gentle life, throwing around it, by the imagination, the charm of the affections, and then consent to their destruction as if they had been mere birds from a coop? Shoot and eat my birds? It is but a step this side of cannibalism. The next step beyond, and one would hanker after Jenny Lind or Miss Kellogg.

VIII.

SOUNDS OF TREES.

_July 24th._

The sounds and motions of trees constitute subtle but important elements of pleasure. It is not enough that a tree have a comely form as a whole; that it cast a dense shade in the sultry days of summer; that, perhaps, it yield a nut or fruit; and that, finally, when it gives up its life to the inevitable ax, its prostrate trunk shall furnish good timber. Besides these uses of bodily comfort and of economy, a tree, like a rich-hearted person, has a hundred nameless ways which we hardly stop to analyze, but which, were they suddenly taken away, we should miss.

The murmuring of trees is profoundly affecting to a sensitive spirit. In some moods of imagination one cannot help feeling that trees have a low song, or a conversation of leaves. They whisper, or speak, or cry out, and even roar. No one knows this last quality so well as those who have been in old oak forests in a storm, with violent wind. A dense forest opposes such a resistance to the free passage of the air, that the sound is much deadened. But in a park or oak-opening, where spaces are left for the motion of the air, and among open-branched trees, a storm moves with such power and majesty, that not even the battles of thunder-clouds are more sublime, and, under certain circumstances, it becomes terrific. At the beginning of the tempest, the trees sway and toss as if seeking to escape; as the violence increases, the branches bounce back, the leaves, turning their white under sides to the light, fairly scream. The huge boughs creak and strain like a ship in a storm. Now and then some branches which have grown across each other are drawn back and forth, as if demons were scraping infernal bass-viols. Occasionally a branch breaks with a wild crash, or some infirm tree, caught unawares in a huge puff of the storm, goes down with crashing as it falls, and with a thunder-stroke when it reaches the ground. I would go farther to hear a storm-concert in an old forest, than any music that man ever made. No one who is familiar with forest sounds but is sure, when he hears Beethoven’s music, that much of it was inspired by the sounds of winds among trees.

There are milder joys, however, in tree converse. Only this morning I awakened to hear it rain. That steady splash of drops which a northeast wind brings on is not easily mistaken. I flatter myself that my ear is too well trained to all the ordinary sounds of nature to be easily deceived. I rise, and throw back the blinds, when lo! not a drop is falling. It is the wind in my maple-trees. I had thought of that, and listened with the most discriminating attention, and was sure that it was rain!

Twice in our life we lived in houses built on the edge of the original forests. These had been thinned out, and recesses opened up. It happened in both cases that an ash and a hickory had been left, which shot up, without side branches, to a great height. The trunks were supple and tough. Whenever the winds moved gently, these long and lithe trees moved with singular grace and beauty. As there was no perceptible wind along the ground, their movements seemed voluntary. And yet there was in it that kind of irresolution which one sees in sleep-walking. But as soon as the breath became a breeze, the wide circles through which these rooted gymnasts moved was wonderful. They seemed going forth in every direction, and yet surely and quickly springing back to position again. And in every motion, such was their elasticity, they manifested the utmost grace. The sighing of winds in a pine forest has no parallel sound except upon the sea-shore. Of all sounds of leaves it is the sweetest and saddest, to certain moods of summer leisure.

The pine sings, like the poet, with no every-day voice, but in a tone apart from all common sounds. It has the power to change the associations, and to quicken the poetic sensibility, as no other singing tree can do. Every one should have this old harper, like a seer or a priest among trees, about his dwelling. Under an old pine would naturally be found the young maiden, whose new lover was far across the seas. In the sounds that would descend she could not fail to hear the voices of the sea,—the roar of winds, the plash of waves running in upon the shore. A young mother, whose first-born had returned to God who gave it, would go at twilight to the pines; for, to her ear, the whole air must needs seem full of spirit voices. They would sing to her thoughts in just such sad strains as soothe sorrow. Nor would it be strange if, in the rise and fall of these sylvan syllables, she should imagine that she heard her babe again, calling to her from the air.

Every country place should have that very coquette among trees, the aspen. It seems never to sleep. Its twinkling fingers are playing in the air at some arch fantasy almost without pause. If you sit at a window with a book, it will wink and blink, and beckon, and coax, till you cannot help speaking to it! That must be a still day that does not see the aspen quiver! A single leaf sometimes will begin to wag, and not another on the whole tree will move. Sometimes a hidden breath will catch at a lower branch, then, shifting, will leave that still, while it shakes a topmost twig. Though the air may move so gently that your cheek does not feel it, this sensitive tree will seem all a shiver, and turn its leaves upward with shuddering chill. It is the daintiest fairy of all the trees. One should have an aspen on every side of his house, that no window should be without a chance to look upon its nods and becks, and to rejoice in its innocent witcheries. I have seen such fair sprites, too, in human form. But one does not get off so easily, if he sports too much with them. The aspen leaf makes no wounds. Its frolics spin no silken threads which one cannot follow, and which will not break!

The musical qualities of trees have not been considered enough, in planting around our dwellings. The great-leaved magnolias have no fine sound. Willows have but little. Cedars, yew-trees, and Lombardy poplars are almost silent. It is said that the Lombardy poplar is the male tree, the female having never come over. It is very likely. It is stiff enough to be an old bachelor. It spreads out no side branches. Its top dies early. It casts a penurious shadow.

But my hand is tired. The winds move; all the leaves call me. Let me go forth.

This ocean above me is sure to cure trouble. The winds sound, the trees sing. My soul yearns. Its thoughts and moods below may roll like a disturbed sea; but, drawn up into the heavenly air, like the waters of the sea, they forget their wrath, and descend again in gentle dews and nourishing rains.

IX.

UNVEILED NONSENSE.

_August 28th._

MY DEAR MR. BONNER: Are you not a censor of all your contributors? Do you not read cautiously all matter sent to the _Ledger_, to prevent the entrance thereinto of any injurious sentiments? And yet you have allowed _blasphemy_ in your columns? You have! Or else the _Christian Intelligencer_, the Dutch Reformed religious journal of New York, by one of its contributors, is greatly mistaken. An article appears there signed “Puritan,” and entitled “Veiled Profanity.” It begins with an extract from an article of one of your contributors:—

“Henry Ward Beecher says, ‘The only way to exterminate the Canada thistle is to plant it for a crop, and propose to make money out of it. Then worms will gnaw it, bugs will bite it, beetles will bore it, aphides will suck it, birds will peck it, heat will scorch it, rains will drown it, and mildew and blight will cover it.’”

And now guess, if you can, what harm lies couched in these words. Put on your spectacles. Nothing wrong, do you say? O, but there is! _You_, a Scotch-Irish Presbyterian, and can’t see heresy! Fie, for shame, to be beaten by a Dutchman! Now, let our _Intelligencer’s_ man express himself. The italics are his, not mine:—

“These bugs, beetles, aphides, heat, rain, and mildew are the messengers of God. If they are sent, they _are on an errand for God_! Now, if the above extract has a point, it is that when mankind plant a crop of any kind of grain or seed, _God_ takes _a malicious pleasure in defeating such schemes_.”

This is exquisite! If mildew attacks my grape-vines, _it is on an errand for God_, and if I sprinkle it with sulphur as a remedy, I put brimstone into the very face of God’s messenger! When it _rains_—is not rain, too, God’s messenger?—does “Puritan” dare to open a blasphemous umbrella, and push it up in the very face of this divine messenger? When a child is attacked by one of “God’s messengers”—measles, canker-rash, dysentery, scarlet-fever—would it be a very great sin to send for a doctor on purpose that he might resist these divine messengers? There are insects which attack men, against one of which we set up combs, and against another sulphur. “Nay,” says Puritan. “If they are sent, _they are on an errand for God_.”

“Puritan” goes on:—

“Such a sentiment is far deeper in its tone than a mere _murmur_. Especially as Mr. Beecher’s farm at Fishkill is well known to be cultivated with reference to making money.”

Yes, we confess it. A “murmur” very imperfectly expresses our feelings as we dig at a Canada thistle, or squirt whale-oil soapsuds over a myriad of “Puritan’s” divine messengers, called aphides. A _grumble_ would not be too strong a word to use on such occasions. Nay, the reverend gentleman has been known to say, in a paroxysm of horticultural impiety, “I wish every rose-bug on the place was dead!” which must seem to “Puritan” a piece of horrible depravity.

I did not before know that I had a farm in _Fishkill_. My experience with the farm at Peekskill, “which is well known to be cultivated with reference to making money,” is such, that if it be true that I own another farm at Fishkill, I shall consider myself on the straight road to the poor-house!

But there is more coming:—

“The charge of the reverend gentleman amounts to this,—that whenever he attempts to raise a crop of wheat, corn, flax, or grass, God sends beetles, bugs, aphides, heat, rain, and mildew, to blast his designs.

“This has the _ring_ of Cain when his sacrifice was rejected. That primeval sinner vented his anger towards God on his holy brother. Mr. H. W. Beecher vents his anger towards the real cause of his mildewed crops, by charging the innocent instruments in their Maker’s hand. If this is not blasphemy in one as well informed as Mr. Beecher is, we have read his words amiss. “PURITAN.”

I may have been mistaken, but it has seemed to me that every crop that I have ever attempted to raise has had swarms of “messengers” sent upon it. But, until now, I never suspected that God sent them, in any other sense than that in which he sends diseases, famines, tyrants, literary “Puritans,” and all other evils which afflict humanity.

But what is to be done about this matter? If it be “blasphemy” to speak against bugs, it can be little short of sacrilege to smash them. Here have I been, in the blindness of unrepented depravity, slaughtering millions of “the messengers of God” called aphides! I have ruthlessly slain those other angelic “messengers” called mosquitoes, who came singing to me with misplaced confidence. I have even railed at fleas, and spoken irreverently of gnats. I have gone further: on a sultry summer’s day, after dinner, I have turned out of my room every one of those “messengers of God” which wicked boys call flies—every one but one, I mean; and, just as the sounds grew faint and sight dim, and I was sinking into that entrancing experience, the first virgin moments of slumber, an affectionate fly settled on my nose, ran down to kiss my lips, and, like a traveler on a new continent, set about exploring my whole face. Instead of greeting this “messenger” divine as “Puritan” would, I confess to a lively vexation. And if speaking of flies in a very disrespectful manner is blasphemous, I must confess to the charge!

But soberly, Mr. Bonner, is it not pitiable to have among us men pretending to intelligence, who bring religion into discredit by such hopeless stupidity?

In the velocipede rinks, besides those for speed, premiums are offered to the men who can ride the _slowest_. “Puritan” should enter himself. If anybody can go slower, he must be a marvel of torpidity.

X.

NATURAL ORDER OF FLOWERS.

_May 21st._

He must have an artist’s eye for color and form who can arrange a hundred flowers as tastefully, in any other way, as by strolling through a garden, picking here one and there one, and adding them to the bouquet in the accidental order in which they chance to come. Thus we see every summer day the fair lady coming in from the breezy side-hill with gorgeous colors, and most witching effects. If only she could be changed to alabaster, was ever a finer show of flowers in so fine a vase? But instead, allowed to remain as they were gathered, the flowers are laid upon the table, divided and rearranged on some principle of taste, I know not what, but never regain that charming naturalness and grace which they first had.