Part 3

And this branched stem which we see is not fertile. ’Tis enough for it to support its waving green feather. The fertile stems are not branched. They appear above the earth, pale and shrinking; put forth no branches, but live a brief season, develop their spores and disappear ❧

The growth of the scouring-rush seems to me to show something beautiful, as well as interesting. There is a certain light-hearted gaiety in the waving, tree-like thing which makes one forget that it is a degenerate stock, and doomed to destruction. Still a little work remains for it to do: still some waste places and miasmatic bogs to be cleansed and purified, and so the little rush grows on, the merest shadow of its once opulent self. I am sure that the last horsetail to be seen on earth will grow just as breezily, as greenly and as cheerily as any now waving in this make-believe enchanted forest at my feet ❧

And who knows what may be the fate of that which was the real life of that ancient plant—the forces of light and heat set free in our furnaces and forges, to begin, again, their office of ministering use? ❧

Did the giant rush die? Does anything die? Ages have seen the rushes fall and pass from sight, to wake to glorious light in the leaping flames. We see leaves fall each year and turn to mold from which other life-forms spring. There will be other poppies, next year, where yonder orange-red blossoms nod in the breeze. The waving grain, already headed out and bowing under its burden of raindrops, was but a few months since a mere handful of dry kernels. They were cast upon the ground, and they died, if that tossing sea of green is death. We see these things recurring upon every side of us, yet we still go up and down the earth demanding of prophet, priest and poet: “If a man die shall he live again?” ☙

A far cry from the little sprigs of scouring-rush in my hand? But Life is a far cry, from Everlasting through Eternity, and who shall say, of the least of these, its manifestations, “It is no good?”

Down among the watercresses, an hour ago, studying the movements of a mammoth slug, I was startled by a shadow that fell directly across my hands. At the same moment there was an excited flurry and scurrying to shelter, among a tuneful mob of song-sparrows who, all unmindful of my presence, were teetering close beside me upon the tall mustard stalks that swayed beneath their weight ❧

Looking upward I saw, between me and the sun, a pigeon-hawk soaring on motionless wings in the freedom of the upper air. I watched him with a joy that had no touch of envy, as he circled widely against the sky, rising, falling, swerving, returning, with scarcely a dip of the strong, outstretched wings ☙ High though he poised, my thought could reach him; strong though his flight, my fancy could follow and outstrip him. He, high above the mountain-tops, gazed downward to the earth. His thoughts, his desires were here. To materialize them he mounted the air. With my feet upon the earth; with no palpable pinions wherewith to climb the ether, yet have I moments of being, more trusty than he, a creature of the sky ☙

Something of this ☘ passed through my brain as I watched the circling hawk. Once, with a flash of his strong wings, he made a downward turn and, swift and still, he dropped earthward ❧ Then, as if frustrated in whatever had been his design, he wheeled again and climbed as swiftly up the air ☙

I like that phrase as describing the flight of a bird. It is so literally what the creature does. A bird is not superior to gravitation. But for that force he would be the helpless victim of every little breeze, like a balloon, which is unable to shape a course or do anything but float helplessly before the wind. The balloon floats because it is lighter than the air, but the air which the bird displaces is lighter than he, and he only moves in it by virtue of his ability to extract from it, by the motion of his wings, sufficient recoil to propel himself forward. He rises, as do we humans, by means of that which resists him ❧

I love to watch the seagulls. They do this so perfectly, and seem to delight to give us lessons in ærial navigation as they dip and whirl and call about the steamers, on the Bay. Their wings are so easy to study while in action. The first joint, to where the wing bends back and outward, is strong and compact, cup shaped underneath. The second joint tapers. The feathers are long and do not overlap so closely as do those of the first joint, and at the free end they spread out and turn upward. The upper surface of the wing is convex, the lower surface concave. In flying the wings are thrown forward and downward. Flying is not a flapping of the wings up and down, and if a bird were to strike its wings backward and downward, as its manner of flight is so often pictured, it would turn a forward somersault in the air.

Structurally the wing of a bird is a screw. It twists in opposite directions during the up and down strokes, and describes a figure of 8 in the air. The bird throws its wings forward and downward. The air is forced back and compressed in the cup-shaped hollows of the wings, and these latter, by the recoil thus obtained, drag the body forward ☙ This resistance of the air is absolutely essential to flight. We who think that, but for the buffetings of hard fate, we, too, might soar high and fly free in the upper realm of endeavor, should watch the efforts of the birds in a calm. We shall scarcely see them flying. If impelled to flight, by necessity, the process is a most laborious one. There being no resisting wind on which to climb (birds always fly against the wind) the climber must, by the rapid action of his wings, establish a recoil that will send him along. Watch the little mud-hen, flying close to the surface of the water, ready to dive the instant its timidity takes fright. Its wings vibrate swiftly, unceasingly, for it rarely rises high enough above the water to have advantage of the air currents. For it there are no long, soaring sweeps through the air; no freedom from the labors of its cautious flight. It is a very spendthrift of effort because of the timidity that never lets it rise to the sustaining forces just above its head. To climb the sky is not for him who hugs cover.

To fly! The very thought sets the nerves atingle. It is joy to be afloat, “with a wet sheet and a flowing sea and a wind that follows fast.” It is a joy to be on the back of a swiftly running horse, with the wind rushing away from your face as you ride, bearing every care from your brain ❧ But to traverse the air—to fly! This joy we long for: we have an indisputable, an inalienable right to long for it. To what heights may we rise? This, after all, is the question that concerns us. Sordid, creeping wights that we are, constantly referring our heavenward aspiration to the desire of the mortal, we still

“To man propose this test— Thy body, at its best, How far can that project its soul on its lone way?”

Our very protests, our kicking against the pricks that would incite us to higher effort are but our blind fear lest, after all, they should not mean flight. We are afraid of our moments of faith; ashamed of our aspiring impulse, the upward impulse that throbbed through all life since the world was born. We send forward our souls if haply they should find God, while we remain behind to weigh and test their evidence when they return to us—if they ever do, hugging the surface the while, lest a sustaining breath of spiritual force lift us clean above the safe shelter in which we may dive altogether should our returning souls bring back news of the meanings of life, scaring us to cover, after all, by the thought that we ourselves, are heaven and hell ❧

Usually we are content to grovel. We traverse our little round and declare it to be destiny. We prate of the limitations of our humanity, forgetful of that humanity’s limitless capacity to receive. With insincere self-abasement we declare ourselves to be worms of the dust, and the spirits of light who look upon us may readily believe our assertions ☙

But there are moments when the scales fall from our eyes. We get fleeting glimpses, then, of the meaning and the end of our human nature. We know that it is in the skies. We know that we have ourselves fashioned the chain that binds us to earth. We know that we were made for flight, and we know that we know all this. Still afar in the sky the hawk soars, with downward gaze seeking his desire. Still, tho’ my feet are upon the earth, my spirit fares upward in its flight toward its desire, above and beyond its strong wings’ farthest flight.

I wonder whether the restless impulse that sends city folks hill-ward in the springtime is not a part of the Divine Plan that would lead us all to lift up our eyes to the hills whence our help cometh. They flock up here, the city folks, during these first spring days, to eat their luncheons by the roadside and to fill their hands with the poppies and wild hyacinth, the blue-eyed grass and pimpernel that everywhere dot the young meadows’ glowing green. I hear, at night-fall, mother’s voices calling the little ones to prepare for home-going, and I love to see the contented parties go wandering down, the tiniest tired climber usually sound asleep in his father’s arms with the sun’s last rays caressing the small face. It is good for them to be here. There is, in the dumbest of us, a faint stirring of recognition that the hope and promise of life are in the young year. This love of the childhood of things is the best thing our human nature knows: the best because there is in it the least of self. It is a different thing from the love of new beginnings. It is not new beginnings, but first principles that the soul seeks, now, and so we climb the hills, as naturally as the daisies look upward, leaving behind us the pitiful aims that end in self and belong to the dead level.

In the springtime love awakens, born anew in the green wonder of the season’s childhood. Yonder where the road climbs the hill the sunlight is sifting in long bars through the eucalyptus trees, making a brown and golden ladder all along the way. In everything is the fresh, tender suggestion of a Sunday afternoon in the springtime. The air is full of the scent of swamp-willow and laurel, and the breath of feeding cattle on the hills ❧

By the roadside He and She walk shyly apart. They could scarcely clasp hands across the space that separates them, yet one seeing them knows their hearts are close together. The blue sky arches over them: the soft clouds pass lightly above their heads: the sunbeams bring brighter rounds for the brown and golden ladder his feet and hers tread lightly. They are palpably “of the people.” Her hands are roughened and red from toil. His shoulders are bent by the early bearings of heavy burdens. Neither He nor She is over twenty years old, and they are poor, as some count riches, but to them, together, has come the sweetness of life, and He and She are walking on the heights ❧

Yesterday they were but a boy and a girl, but today He to her is Manhood; She, to him, is Womanhood, and in this great human wilderness they have reached out and found each other. Could anything be more wonderful than this? Could anything exceed in beauty this secret of theirs that he who runs may read in every line of their illumined faces? ❧

Students versed in the ’ologies: sociologists, philanthropists, economists and progressionists of every sort, we know all that you would say. We have heard your arguments time and again. We have listened to your statistics and watched the shaking of your head over these unions of the poor. But the wisdom of life is wiser than men, else He and She would do well to listen to you instead of walking together here on the hill road. They do not know these things that we are seeking to reduce to what we call social science; and if they should know them, what then? Are they not of more value than many sparrows? ❧

The afternoon shadows lengthen. Home-going groups are beginning the long descent. The voices of little children calling to one another silverly over the hillside. He and She are not hastening. They have loitered along to where a bend in the road affords a wide outlook upon the city below, the gleaming bay, the white-winged ships coming in through the Golden Gate, the distant hills. In her hand are some poppies which he gathered.

Down to the western horizon sinks the sun. The gold has faded from the road, leaving it a winding ribbon of grey. The crests of the hills and the gently swelling uplands are flooded with crimson light. It touches the eucalyptus trees into glory and flames in splendor along the western sky. It lights her face and his as they stand transformed before each other. They do not know that the crimson light has made them beautiful. They think the beauty each sees is the other’s, a part of their wonderful discovery, and who shall say that either is wrong? It is we who are blind, and not love. Indeed, love, alone, sees clearly. External, temporal conditions have made his body less than noble; have crossed his face with dull, heavy lines. They have narrowed her mental horizon and imprisoned her soul in a poor little cage, but He and She are held above these, now. They have been touched by the finger of God, and have seen each other’s beauty, the beauty that is their human right; that once seen is never, again, wholly lost.

The crimson has faded to rose, the rose to ☘ wonderful green—the green has turned to ❧ white. The early moon has come out to light the hill. Hand in hand they are passing down the road. Hand in hand they are going through life, toiling together, bearing together the burdens Fate brings to them. They know not what these may be. It is not given them to know the future, or by taking thought to lighten its ills or explain the blunders that have heaped these up. They have no strength or power, but to them has been given love ❦

Will love be theirs when Spring is gone and the summer drouth is upon them; when Autumn’s harvest time is passed them by and Winter’s breath has chilled their blood? Will love be theirs when, hand in hand, in the uncertain white light, they journey down the hill of life? ❧

The cynic smiles at the question. The scientist deprecates it. Philanthropist and sociologist shake their heads ⚜

Let it pass. Love is theirs now. The universe is theirs, for each to each is universal. The Life of the universe is in them, and in the shimmering radiance that lights the way, silvering the city and making long, shining paths across the distant water as they go walking down the hill road.

SO HERE THEN ENDETH UPLAND ☘ PASTURES BY ADELINE KNAPP AS PRINTED BY ME, ELBERT HUBBARD, AT THE ROYCROFT PRINTING SHOP IN EAST AURORA, NEW YORK, U.S.A.

TRANSCRIBER’S NOTES

1. Silently corrected typographical errors and variations in spelling. 2. Archaic, non-standard, and uncertain spellings retained as printed. 3. The author often used the small plant symbols as end of sentence punctuation. 4. Enclosed italics font in _underscores_.