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diff --git a/.gitattributes b/.gitattributes new file mode 100644 index 0000000..d7b82bc --- /dev/null +++ b/.gitattributes @@ -0,0 +1,4 @@ +*.txt text eol=lf +*.htm text eol=lf +*.html text eol=lf +*.md text eol=lf diff --git a/LICENSE.txt b/LICENSE.txt new file mode 100644 index 0000000..6312041 --- /dev/null +++ b/LICENSE.txt @@ -0,0 +1,11 @@ +This eBook, including all associated images, markup, improvements, +metadata, and any other content or labor, has been confirmed to be +in the PUBLIC DOMAIN IN THE UNITED STATES. + +Procedures for determining public domain status are described in +the "Copyright How-To" at https://www.gutenberg.org. + +No investigation has been made concerning possible copyrights in +jurisdictions other than the United States. Anyone seeking to utilize +this eBook outside of the United States should confirm copyright +status under the laws that apply to them. diff --git a/README.md b/README.md new file mode 100644 index 0000000..ea7f5a7 --- /dev/null +++ b/README.md @@ -0,0 +1,2 @@ +Project Gutenberg (https://www.gutenberg.org) public repository for +eBook #60872 (https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/60872) diff --git a/old/60872-0.txt b/old/60872-0.txt deleted file mode 100644 index c73c959..0000000 --- a/old/60872-0.txt +++ /dev/null @@ -1,4869 +0,0 @@ -The Project Gutenberg EBook of The Magical Chance, by Dallas Lore Sharp - -This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere in the United States and most -other parts of the world at no cost and with almost no restrictions -whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away or re-use it under the terms of -the Project Gutenberg License included with this eBook or online at -www.gutenberg.org. If you are not located in the United States, you'll have -to check the laws of the country where you are located before using this ebook. - -Title: The Magical Chance - -Author: Dallas Lore Sharp - -Release Date: December 7, 2019 [EBook #60872] - -Language: English - -Character set encoding: UTF-8 - -*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE MAGICAL CHANCE *** - - - - -Produced by Tim Lindell, David E. Brown, and the Online -Distributed Proofreading Team at http://www.pgdp.net (This -file was produced from images generously made available -by The Internet Archive/American Libraries.) - - - - - - - - - -THE MAGICAL CHANCE - - - - - THE - MAGICAL CHANCE - - BY - DALLAS LORE SHARP - AUTHOR OF “THE LAY OF THE LAND,” “THE HILLS OF - HINGHAM,” “EDUCATION IN A DEMOCRACY,” ETC. - - [Illustration] - - BOSTON AND NEW YORK - HOUGHTON MIFFLIN COMPANY - The Riverside Press Cambridge - 1923 - - - - - COPYRIGHT, 1923, BY DALLAS LORE SHARP - - ALL RIGHTS RESERVED - - - The Riverside Press - CAMBRIDGE, MASSACHUSETTS - PRINTED IN THE U.S.A. - - - - -CONTENTS - - - I. THE MAGICAL CHANCE 1 - - II. THE RADIUM OF ROMANCE 39 - - III. THE HUNT FOR “COPY” 69 - - IV. THE DUTY TO DIG 103 - - V. THE MAN AND THE BOOK 131 - - VI. A JANUARY SUMMER 153 - - VII. AFTER THE LOGGERS 173 - - VIII. WOODCHUCK LODGE AND LITERATURE 203 - - - - -THE MAGICAL CHANCE - - - - -CHAPTER I - -THE MAGICAL CHANCE - - - - -THE MAGICAL CHANCE - - - - -CHAPTER I - -THE MAGICAL CHANCE - - -“What are you going to say to the college girls?” my pretty niece -asked, as we motored down the valley. She was being graduated this -spring, and the snowy dogwoods and the purple Judas-trees against the -tender hillsides were not so fresh, nor half so full of bloom, as she. -But they were gayer far than she. - -“Don’t tell them, uncle, how wonderful they are! How the world waits -for them! Don’t say it, uncle! I have heard that sort of talk for these -four years, and here I am with nobody waiting for me; not fitted for -anything; nothing to do; and as wonderful--as thirty cents!” - -Poor thing! - -A few days before, I had seen an interview with the President of Yale, -in which the young writer said he had read in a book that all the -great devices had been invented; all the new lands explored; all the -great deeds done--all the adventure and romance forever gone from life, -and that only bread and butter remain with the odds against a young -man’s getting much of the butter. - -Poor thing! - -Have I been living fifty years--in America? or fifty cycles in -Cathay? I cannot still be young at fifty! nor can I be so old either -as modern two-and-twenty! Youth is a dry tree, these days; a sad -state--particularly youth bent with the burden of an A.B. degree. Out -of my fifty-odd years of existence I have taught college youth for -three-and-twenty, and never in all that time have they looked like -plain bread and butter to me. If they are not adventure and romance, -not better stories, sweeter songs, mightier deeds than any yet -recorded, then I am no judge of story matter and the stuff of epic song. - -But my pretty niece declares that she also knows a shoat when she sees -one; and she knows it is just pork. As for the college man of the -interview: he was not speaking by the book; out, rather, of the depths -of his heart. - -It is an evil thing to be born young into an old world! - -For the world seems very old. Its face is covered with doubt, its heart -is only ashes of burned-out fires. The River of Life which John saw -has dwindled into Spoon River; and his Book of Life is now a novel, -piddling and prurient. But John also saw the Scarlet Woman--and that -was long ago! The world was ever much the same; ever in need of an -Apocalypse; and never more in need than now. My pretty niece, and the -young man of the interview, are the world, and the college world at -that, the more’s the pity. They are its skepticism, its materialism, -its conventionalism, its fear and failure. They seem afraid to bid on -life, for fear it might be knocked off to them at something above par! -They do not dare. They won’t take a chance. They would, of course, if -there _were_ chances; they would dare, if only one giant were still -left stalking through the land. The giants are gone! - -The orator was celebrating the hundredth anniversary of Richard Henry -Dana, the author of “Two Years Before the Mast”: - - Life offered him a magical human chance and he took it. There was - something in him for which the decorous and conventional life of - Boston allowed no place in its scheme. “Two Years Before the Mast” - belongs to the Literature of Escape. - -Life offered him a magical chance--as if he were a special case! So he -was. So is every boy. Who was this boy? and what were the circumstances -under which Life offered him this magical chance? He was a Bostonian -to begin with, and that is bad enough; he was a Harvard undergraduate -also, which still further complicates the situation; and, besides, he -was a Dana! Here was a complex which should have staggered Life. Who -could escape from all of this? Leave that to Life. Up she comes boldly, -just as if she expected the boy to take her offer. And he did take it. -He fell ill with some affliction of the eyes; and, going down to the -Boston wharfs, shipped as a common sailor before the mast in the little -brig Pilgrim for a two years’ trip around the Horn. And out of that -escape from Boston and Harvard and the Danas, he brought back one of -the three greatest sea stories in literature--a book that all of Boston -and Harvard and the Danas combined could never have written except for -this escape. - -The question is: Does Life come along to-day, as then, and offer us, as -it offered Dana, such a magical chance? Is there any escape for us? - -We are not all Danas, and so we are certainly not worse off than -he was; but our circumstances are distinctly different, and rather -disquieting. This chance was given Dana far back in 1834, nearly one -hundred years ago, when escape was possible, and when Dana was a boy. -It was a young world a hundred years ago, and full of adventure. One -could escape then because there was some place to escape into; but to -round the Horn to-day is to land, not on wild Point Loma, but at San -Diego, with the single exception of Monte Carlo, the most decorous and -conventional city on the planet. - -Perhaps my niece and the college boy of the interview are right. - -About the time that Dana was escaping from Boston, a young man by the -name of Henry David Thoreau tried to escape from Concord, of the same -State. He had no deep-sea wharf, no brig like the Pilgrim, but, as -one must seize such things as are at hand in an escape, Thoreau took -a rowboat and the near-by river and started off. He rowed and rowed -for a week, and came to Concord, New Hampshire. Here he took to his -diary and wrote that there were no frontiers this way any longer. “This -generation has come into the world fatally late for some enterprises. -Go where we will on the surface of things, men have been there before -us. We cannot have the pleasure of erecting the last house; that was -long ago set up in the suburbs of Astoria City, and our boundaries have -literally been run to the South Sea.” - -Born in 1817, more than a hundred years ago, and still born fatally -late! How late, then, was I born? and you, my son? and you, my pretty -niece? - - “The rainbow comes and goes, - And lovely is the rose, - -but you and I have missed the early glory that hath passed forever from -the morning earth,” she makes reply. - -But I would say to her: It was ten years later, ten whole years after -Thoreau’s tame adventure on the Merrimac, that gold was discovered in -California. Here was a magical chance as late as the year ’Forty-Nine, -and Life offered it to a young man of Providence and Brooklyn by the -name of Bret Harte. He took it. There was something in him for which -the decorous and conventional round of these cities allowed no place in -their scheme. He went into the gold-fields and brought out “The Luck -of Roaring Camp,” another piece of the Literature of Escape. Then my -students answer: “Yes, but there are no more outcasts in Poker Flat, -and whom are we to write about?” - -Alas, ’tis true, they’re in their graves, that gentle race of gamblers. -With the wind-flower and the violet they perished long ago, as literary -material. Eighteen-Forty-Nine will be having its hundredth anniversary -soon. But, some fifty years later, gold was struck again--this time -on the Yukon. Here was another magical chance. And there was a young -fellow walking the streets of Boston along with me, literally begging -bread with me from editorial door to editorial door, by the name of -Jack London. Life came up to us and offered us this magical chance, -and Jack took it, bringing out of the Yukon a story called “Building a -Fire” which is surely a part of the immortal Literature of Escape. - -“Well, what would he write about now?” they ask. “What has happened -since?” - -“Peary has found the North Pole,” I reply. - -“Yes, and Amundsen, or somebody, has found the South Pole!” they cry. -“And what’s the use of living in a world of only two poles, and some -one finding both of them before we come along!” - -There is something in that. It is a bad sort of world that has only two -poles. It should be stuck full of poles, one for each of us. But there -are only two, and a flag flies from each of them; as a flag flies over -every terrestrial spot in between them: over Mount McKinley now; over -the River of Doubt now, so that we are stopped from singing, as once we -sang,-- - - “There’s one more river, - There’s one more river to cross.” - -There is no more river to cross. Theodore Roosevelt crossed it. There -is nothing to cross; no place to go where, on the surface of things, -men have not been there before us. Yes, yes, there is Mount Everest. No -one has yet stood on that peak; but there is an expedition climbing it, -camping to-day at about twenty-five thousand feet up, with only two or -three thousand feet more to go. And here we are in Hingham! - -It looks bad. My young niece is possibly right, after all. East, west, -north, south, where is a frontier? Where shall I go from here and find -an escape? - -Not overland any longer, for even Thoreau could find no frontier this -way; and not by sea now, for here comes John Masefield, poet and -sailor, saying the frontier has disappeared from off the sea; that the -clipper ship, the ship of dreams, has foundered and gone down; that you -can haunt the wharves these piping times of steam, - - “Yet never see those proud ones swaying home, - With mainyards backed and bows acream with foam. - - * * * * * - - As once, long since, when all the docks were filled - With that sea beauty man has ceased to build.” - -Listen, now, for this is the message of the poem: - - “They mark our passage as a race of men, - Earth will not see such ships again,--” - -which makes me thank Heaven for my farm, where the same old romantic -hoe remains about what it ever was--the first recorded wedding present. - -Mr. Masefield’s observations are dated 1912. Prior to that year real -clipper ships rode the deep, and real romance. It was prior to 1839 -that there were real frontiers and romance in the land, and a last -house (a government lighthouse) still to be set up in the suburbs of -Astoria City. Going a little farther back, we find that prior to 1491 -(B.C.), about the year 4000 according to the margin of the King James -Version, there were giants in the earth, and the stories in the Book of -Genesis show that there were romances as well as giants in those days. -But, like Thoreau and Masefield, Moses was born fatally late. I feel -sorry for Moses and my niece. - -Let us pause here for a sad brief moment in order to see just where -Moses was when Life sought him out and proffered him a magical chance -in the shape of a trip to Egypt. Where was Moses? and what was he -doing? To begin with, he was keeping goats, a fairly common occupation -in those days, though rather a rare job now. But that was not all: -Moses was keeping these goats for Jethro, his father-in-law. Now you -begin to get some inkling as to where Moses was. But this is not the -worst of it: for Moses was keeping the goats for his father-in-law -on “the _back_ side of the desert.” One would certainly say that the -_front_ side of any desert would be far enough away, and sterile enough -of romance, if one had to keep one’s father-in-law’s goats there; but -to keep the goats of your father-in-law on the _back_ side of a desert -is to be farther off than Hingham, or any place I know. And here was -Moses when Life came upon him offering him an escape into Egypt. - -He was born fatally late, Moses was, just like Thoreau and my niece. He -might have been one of my own college men, so like a college man’s was -his answer! - -“No, no!” he complained, “I don’t want to go down to Egypt. There is -nothing doing down in Egypt. I’m slow of speech; without imagination; -and it’s a hard job, anyway. Let me stay here and be goatherd to -Jethro, my father-in-law, and dream of the good old days of the giants, -when men began to multiply upon the face of the earth, when the sons -of God saw the daughters of men that they were fair. Ah!--there was -something doing in those days!” - -From Moses to Masefield the times have been fatally late. And so -mine are, with the clipper ships, the frontiers, the giants, and the -daughters of men that are fair, all gone! But I seem to see them fair. -I suppose I ought not, having been born so fatally late. And I wonder -if I might not find a giant, too, if I should hunt? and a clipper ship? -and a frontier? and even an escape from Hingham! - -Lumber is still brought in boats to one of Hingham’s old wharves, but -the rest of her wharves are deserted. Her citizens, who used to do -business in great waters, stop now in Hingham Harbor to catch smelts. -Change and some decay one can see all about Hingham, but little chance -of escape. - -Down at the foot of Mullein Hill, on which my house stands, there runs -a long, long trail awinding into that land of my dreams; but I ask: -Where does it cross the frontier? I have traveled it, going south, in -my Ford (if you are out for frontiers, take a Ford. We have a saying -here in Hingham that a Ford will take a man anywhere--except into good -society!)--I say I have gone south over this road which runs at the -foot of Mullein Hill as far as Philadelphia, and no frontier!--the next -stop was Chester. I have gone east over the same road until I came to -within ten miles of Skowhegan, Maine, where I ran into a steam-roller -on the road. When you meet a steam-roller on a road in Maine, you -are very near the frontier. If there is any adventure for you on the -trip, it will be on the détour around that steam-roller. But under the -roller ran the road and on into Skowhegan, and on out of Skowhegan into -Aroostook County, the richest county in the United States, where they -raise “spuds” enough to feed, not only Boston, but the rest of dear old -Ireland with her; and all the way from Hingham to Aroostook, except at -the steam-roller, there was no chance to get off. - -And this road, taking a turn among these glorious potato-fields of -Maine, starts over the mountains of New Hampshire, crosses the corn and -cattle belt in the central portion of the country, and, running on and -on, dips into the Imperial Valley in far-off California, the hottest -cultivated spot on earth. And all the way from Hingham, roundabout by -Maine, to the Imperial Valley, you may not stop, unless you run out -of “gas.” And the oil companies do not intend this magical chance to -attend you, for they have planted gasoline tanks under every second -telegraph pole all the way. - -This road, starting from Mullein Hill, Hingham, and running to -Aroostook, Maine, and to the Imperial Valley in California, takes a -new turn among the melon-fields there, works its way back along the -Gulf States, binding their ragged edge like a selvage, and, bending -into Florida, threads its way among the Everglades and out, heading off -across the cotton-fields, on across the corn and cattle belt again, -climbs Pike’s Peak and down, climbs Mount Hood and down, and, faring on -into the State of Washington, climbs the fruited slopes of old Tacoma, -“The Mountain that was God.” And all the way from Hingham some one has -been there before us, and laid an oiled road for us, and left us no -frontier. - -Surely we are born late; and my pretty niece fatally late. The frontier -is gone. The buffaloes are gone. I saw their ancient trails out of the -car windows as my train roared over the Canadian prairie, wavering -parallel paths in the virgin sod, a vivider green than the rest of the -grass, narrow meandering lines vanishing short of the far-off horizon -where hung a cloud not larger than a man’s hand, like the dust of the -last disappearing herd. - -“Hank” Monk is gone. This king of overland stage-drivers sleeps in -Carson City; and beside sleeps his Concord coach of split hickory. -Concord has ceased to make such coaches. - - They mark our passage as a race of men, - Earth will not see such coaches again. - -From Hell Gate now to Golden Gate there are only miles, and any machine -makes a mere holiday of the trip. - -A young acquaintance of mine has just made the coast-to-coast run, -driving her own car. She said to me on arriving here that “it was -an awful monotonous journey.” Didn’t anything happen? I asked -with considerable surprise. No, nothing happened. Didn’t she see -anything of interest? Wasn’t there any excitement? Didn’t she -have any adventures? No, she didn’t see anything; she didn’t get a -bit of excitement out of it; there wasn’t any adventure; just one -blinkety-blank mile after another! - -“Incredible!” I cried. - -“Oh, yes,” she said, her eyes brightening, something like a thrill in -her voice, “I did have three punctures!” - -All the way from Golden Gate to Hell Gate with three punctures to break -the cushioned tenor of her way. This is what life has come to. - -Then she said: “There were two things on the trip that did greatly -interest me. But I don’t exactly know why; and I am afraid to tell you -about them for fear you will think me such a big fool.” - -“No,” I answered, “I won’t think you any bigger fool than I do now, so -what were the two interesting things?” - -“Well,” she began (and I wish the reader would note the strictly -American touch in this description), “one of them was Luther Burbank’s -spineless cactus.” (Notice, I say, the spineless quality of this -cactus.) - -The girl read my face and exclaimed, much hurt: “There! I knew you -would poke fun at me.” - -“But tell what the other thing was,” I begged. “Let’s get the sordid -story over as fast as we can.” - -“I don’t know even yet what it all meant,” she went on, “but, as I was -crossing the Arizona desert, I saw a long petition being circulated by -the native Arizonians, praying the National Congress to preserve for -them and for posterity a portion of their original desert.” - -My poor niece! Moses saw the giants pass away; Thoreau saw the frontier -pass away; Masefield sees the clipper ship pass away; but it remains -for my niece and her day to see the Great American Desert wiped out -by the irrigation ditch, and the gila monster with the desert, and -the need of a shovel on the trip across the sands! Have we eaten the -cassaba melon and gone mad? Is it all of life to make the desert -blossom as the rose? To bring forth cassaba melons, and alligator -pears, and spineless cacti for cow feed? - -Ploughing the desert; turning the giant cactus into ensilage, as -if to live were a silo--for fear of this the native Arizonians are -asking Congress that a portion of their original desert and of Life’s -adventure and romance be saved to them and to their children. - -It is sad. But this is not the worst of it: for they have laid an oiled -road across that desert, as if it were the whole of life to get through -to San Diego on time. - -There is no hope for a man who gets through to San Diego on time. -He will strike Los Angeles on time, come to San Francisco on time. -Portland on time, Winnipeg, Chicago, Boston, and Hingham on time; where -he will die on time, be buried on time, rise on time, and keep going -on time, with never a chance to get off. But where is the adventure in -that? It is not the whole of life to get through to San Diego on time. -I had rather leave my bones to bleach beneath a bush than travel on and -on by schedule, always making life’s connections, and so missing always -life’s magical chances. Don’t you remember your Mother Goose, wise old -dear? - - “A dillar a dollar, - A ten-o’clock scholar, - Why have you come so soon? - You used to come at ten o’clock, - But now you come at noon.” - -And he was the only little duffer in the whole school to get a poem -written to him. The other children came on time and passed into -oblivion; this boy (he certainly was a boy) came late and has become -immortal. - -The desert is doomed, no doubt, but we shall always have détours; and -if “on the surface of things men have been there before us,” we must -go beneath. There are giants still in these days; the daughters of -men are still fair; there are frontiers for those who will find them; -and, clipper ships or no, I believe in the everlasting adventure of -rounding the Horn. I believe in magical chances of escape, born though -I was after my parents, which might have been fatally late had I not -happily come before my children, each of whom is an adventure and an -escape. Wherever I turn, I see a chance to sidestep the decorous, the -conventional, the scheduled, to dodge into the bushes and escape. Every -day is an adventure. - -There are magical human chances to go round; there is adventure and -escape for everybody who will seize it. Youth is as young, the world -as round, the earth as wild as ever. And, in spite of all those who -have grown old, it is still appareled in celestial light--sunlight, -starlight, moonlight--or else wrapped in ancient and adventurous dark. -The sun still knoweth his going down, thank Heaven! There are some -things that do not change nor pass away. - - Thou makest darkness, and it is night: wherein all the beasts of the - forest do creep forth. - - The young lions roar after their prey, and seek their meat from God. - - The sun ariseth, they gather themselves together, and lay them down - in their dens. - - Man goeth forth unto his work and to his labour until the evening. - -Then look out for your men-folks. For this is the end of the decorous -and conventional. This is the time wherein all the beasts of the forest -do creep forth. - -We are what we always were, and so are things what they always were, -though they look different. We have changed the spots of a few -leopards, the skins of a few Ethiopians, and shifted the frontier -from the dark wild heart of the forest to the wild dark heart of the -city; but we have not changed the darkness, or the wildness, or the -Ethiopian, or the leopard. - -I have seen the evening come over the city, a night deep with darkness -and wild with a great storm blowing salty from the sea. I have watched -the streets grow empty till the shadow feet of Midnight echoed as they -passed, and all the doors were shut. Then I have crept down along the -dark wet ways, bleak and steep-cut as cliffs, where I have heard the -beating of great wings above the roofs, the call of wild shrill voices -along the craggy covings, and the wash and splash of driving rains -aslant the walls; I have tasted brine, spume, and spindrift on the -level winds, flying through a city’s streets from far at sea--“one-way” -streets by day, and so clogged that traffic could barely move in that -one way--but here--in the hushed tumult of the storm and night--I could -hear the stones crying out of their walls, and the beams out of the -timbers answering them; the very cobbles of the pavement having tongues -that would speak when the din of the pounding hoofs was past. - -Some one complained to Browning that Italy is the only land of romance -now left to us. The poet answered promptly, “I should like to include -dear old Camberwell.” And I should like to include dear old Haleyville -and dear old Hingham. And you would like to include dear old Wig Lane, -if you were born there. - -But I started out from Hingham, pages back, to find the frontier. Have -I found it yet? So Abraham started out from Ur of the Chaldees to find -a frontier, which he called a “City without Foundations,” and did he -find it? Whether he did or not, he certainly had a plenty of adventure -by the way. Abraham was a hundred years old when Isaac was born. There -is something thrilling about that. Yet, narrow as that chance was, it -is nothing when compared with what happened to him next. For, when -Abraham was one hundred and _forty_ years old, he married Keturah. Here -was a man who would not be put down by a little circumstance like one -hundred and forty years. Life comes along at one hundred and forty and -offers Abraham Keturah, and he takes her! - -I say he may not have found his city. We know that he did find -Keturah--which is vastly more of an adventure. We may not have the -pleasure of erecting the last house in the suburbs of Astoria City, as -Thoreau says; but we might have the wilder adventure of living in it. -And as it happens to be a government lighthouse out on Tongue Point, -at the mouth of the Columbia; and as it happens to be where the night -and the rain and the fog are thickest on the face of the globe, life in -that last house is a constant frontier. - -One might never leave Ur were he not seeking a city. And one must never -find his city else he might cease his seeking. I do not know how old -Abraham was when he set out from Ur of the Chaldees. I left Haleyville -at the age of eight. I have only lately come to Hingham, having got in -on the wrong side of the railroad track some twenty years ago. (If one -is really to arrive in Hingham, one must come in with one’s ancestors, -and more than twenty years before.) I say, I was eight when I left -Haleyville; that I have hardly yet arrived in Hingham; but all the way -from Haleyville to Hingham, and all the way from Hingham to--Heaven, -dare I say?--there has been, and there shall be, held out, in both of -Life’s hands to me, the magical chance of escape. - -Did I start out from Hingham to find the frontier? That was wrong. -I will start back for Hingham. Hingham _is_ the frontier. So was -Haleyville. So will Heaven be. Life with the earth goes round, not -forward, except to complete a circuit established when the stars were -fixed, an orbit that all the forces of Heaven and human intelligence -have been unable to warp. The only variation or shadow of new turning -Earth herself can look forward to is from collision with some mad -comet, which, if she lasts long enough, may happen possibly within -fifteen million years--a square head-on smash it may be, or only a -side-swipe with a severe shaking up--and then fifteen million years -more of steady turning. Things outside are rather hard and fast despite -appearances, and we who are parts of this even scheme, we find that our -uprisings and downsittings have never varied much from rule, nor are -liable to. - -We are, I repeat, what we always were, and so are things what they -always were, though they look different. So is life what it always was -for adventures and frontiers. - -The wild frontier, like the hunted fox, has doubled on its trail, that -is all. Romance has slipped out of the woods into the deeper places -of the city; Adventure has turned commuter; and here are the three to -companion life, as they ever have--the Athos, Porthos, and Aramis to a -bebundled D’Artagnan. And already it is more than “Twenty Years Since.” - -Twenty years, or a hundred years-- - - “The year’s at the spring.” - -If you do not find your fill of adventure with Davy Balfour in Appin, -come down with him to Dean--to Edinburgh, and you shall see the face of -such danger “in the midst of what they call the safety of a town” as -may shake you, too, “beyond experience.” - -If you don’t find the frontier in the daylight, wait for the dark. -Every night is a fresh frontier. There are no landmarks of the day but -are blotted out by the dark as the lines are sponged in the wake of a -steamer’s keel. On the shortest night of this year wild rabbits were -in my garden, fox-hounds were baying beyond the quarries, and through -the thin early mist of the dawn we were all at the window watching a -wild doe behind the barn. She nipped the clover nervously, twitched her -tail, pricked her ears (for the day was approaching), and took the high -wire fence at a bound. She was as wild and free as the wind. - -A few Sunday nights ago I was at church when the minister announced -a series of evening sermons for young people, and, to my utter -astonishment, his first talk was to be “Against Sowing Wild Oats.” I -was greatly tempted to ask him if he intended to prevent his young -people from doing any more farming. If they couldn’t sow wild oats, -what kind of oats could they sow? Did he ever see any tame oats? Those -preachers imagine a vain thing who think we ever cease to sow wild oats -(at least, there is many a late crop, as Thackeray says). The truth is -there are no oats but wild ones. - -I do not know what seed catalogue you order your garden seeds out of; -I get mine out of one marked “Honest Seeds”; it is assuring to have an -order-book of this sort plainly stamped “honest” on the cover. In this -honest-seed catalogue for the current year the seedsman, on page 56, is -describing his oats. Let the preacher on wild oats note with critical -care the terms of this description. There is something theological, -at least, revivalistic, about them. It is the only oat described in -the catalogue; and it would be the only oat to plant in all the world, -if it were, as it is described, a “Regenerated Select Swedish Oat.” A -“regenerated” (that is Methodist) “select” (that is Presbyterian) oat! -But read on through this catalogue, and you will find that every seed -and tuber from artichoke to zinnia has been to a revival since last -summer and hit the “sawdust trail.” Great revivalists are the seedsmen! -Their work, however, is not permanent. For they know, and we all know, -that every regenerated select Swedish oat in their bins is a backslider -at heart, as wild as the wild ass of the wilderness that scorneth the -crying of the driver. - -It is true of the seed and true of the soil in which it grows. This -spring I brought in from the garden a frozen lump of earth which I -had been subduing, after the fashion of Scripture, with my hoe, these -twenty years. Nay, that lump of earth had been in process of being -subdued for nigh two hundred years, here on this ancient Hingham farm. -It was a bit of regenerated, select soil, which I had sweetened with -lime, had nourished with nitrogen and potash, and had planted with -nothing but regenerated, select seeds out of this honest catalogue. I -put this lump of soil in a pot by a south window and tenderly planted -more regenerated, select seeds within its breast--tomato seeds, Jewel, -Earliana, and Bonny Best. Then I looked that it should bring forth -tomato plants, and it brought forth within the pot, at the end of -two weeks, pig-weed, horse-weed, chick-weed, smart-weed, white-weed, -rag-weed, knot-weed, tumble-weed, milk-weed, silk-weed, sneeze-weed, -poke-weed; goose-grass, crab-grass, witch-grass, wire-grass, -spear-grass; burdock, sourdock, and _pusley_; to say nothing of the -swarm of things from Europe, whose infant cotyledons looked innocent -enough, but whose roots were altogether evil. - -Life offered that lump of mother earth its magical chance and the -lump took it. The innate badness of it, this cared-for, chemically -pure, subdued piece of garden soil! Its frozen heart a very furnace -of smouldering fires; its breast, that suckled the nursing salsify in -the summer, a bed of such wild spores as would sow a world to weeds! -Given tomato seeds, regenerated, select tomato seeds, Jewel, Earliana, -and Bonny Best, the lump of earth brings forth its own original -pig-weed, horse-weed, chick-weed, smart-weed, white-weed, rag-weed, -knot-weed, tumble-weed, milk-weed, silk-weed, sneeze-weed, poke-weed; -goose-grass, crab-grass, witch-grass, wire-grass, spear-grass; burdock, -sourdock, and pusley. That is what it brought forth a million years -ago. A million years from now, subdued and sweetened and nourished, -and planted with regenerated, select tomato seed, Jewel, Earliana, -and Bonny Best, and put in a pot in the sunshine of the south -window, that lump of earth will bring forth pig-weed, horse-weed, -chick-weed, smart-weed, white-weed, rag-weed, knot-weed, tumble-weed, -milk-weed, silk-weed, sneeze-weed, poke-weed, goose-grass, crab-grass, -witch-grass, wire-grass, spear-grass; burdock, sourdock, and pusley. - - “The Form remains, the Function never dies; - While we, the brave, the mighty, and the wise, - We Men, who in our morn of youth defied - The elements, must vanish;” - ---vanish, but not change. The heart of man is not less constant than a -clod of earth. - - “Lord, we are vile, conceived in sin, - And born unholy and unclean; - Sprung from the man, whose guilty fall - Corrupts his race and taints us all,” - ---sings Watts with Augustine, with gusto and with more unction and -consolation to me than in any other of his hymns. To know that we still -inherit a portion of the original Adam, if only the naughty of him, is -tremendously heartening. Anything original, if only original sin, in -this day of the decorous and the conventional, is stimulating. For, -if we do still come by all of Adam’s original badness, do we not, by -the same token, come by all of his original goodness, and are we not -then wholly original, as the original Adam? We must be; as surely as -the clod is; full, like the clod of wild weed-seed, and capable, like -the clod, under the proper care, of producing tomato plants: Jewel, -Earliana, and Bonny Best, regenerate and select. - -I say the heart of a man is of the same steady stuff as the other clay. -What it was, it is, and will be--wild, and ever seeking an escape from -the decorous, the conventional, the routine of his subdued and ordered -round. - -How constant the heart of nature is to itself I saw again the other day -at Walden Pond. Almost half a century before I came to this planet, -Thoreau wrote of Walden Pond: “But since I left those shores the -woodchoppers have still further laid them waste, and now for many a -year there will be no more rambling through the aisles of the wood, -with occasional vistas through which you see the water.” Those many -years have long since come and gone. Thoreau is gone; his cabin is -gone; and a cairn of stones marks the spot where it stood. Over the -stumps he saw, tall stranger trees now stand; and once more there is -rambling through their shadowy aisles, and vistas through which you -catch glimpses of the beloved face of Walden, calm and pure as when he -last looked upon it. - -“Why, here is Walden!” I hear him exclaim, “the same woodland lake -that I discovered so many years ago; where a forest was cut down last -winter another is springing up by its shore as lusty as ever; the same -thought is welling up to its surface as was then; it is the same liquid -joy and happiness to itself and its maker, aye”--and it has now been -set aside as a reservation that its liquid joy and happiness may be -ours forever. - -Change is constant, but it is the change of the ever-returning wheel. -Thoreau’s cabin is gone, and no other cabin can now be built on the -shores of Walden Pond. But the trees have come back to stay, and if, -“on the surface of things” Thoreau “has been there before us,” we must -go below or above the surface and find our frontier. - -“Magical chances?” a young aviator on the Pacific Coast wrote lately. -“I thought of them to-day as I flirted with a little bunch of -cotton-wool clouds eight thousand five hundred feet above Point Loma. -And I wondered what Dana would have thought had one of his shipmates -sauntered across the deck of the Pilgrim, and, clapping him on the -back, said: ‘I’ll meet you, old man, in fifteen minutes up there in -that fleet of little clouds; if they whift and drift into space, wait -for me at the five-thousand-foot altitude’?” - -So the frontier comes back. Pushed past the suburbs of Astoria City -into the Pacific, it is seen crawling out on the sandy shores of Cape -Cod with the next great storm. The single line of human footsteps -across the polar snows has not left too packed and plain a trail. New -snows have covered it, as new trees have shadowed the shores of Walden. - -Peary’s footprints, and Dr. Cook’s, too, would be very hard to follow. - -It was more than twenty-five years ago that I started from Savannah -over the old stage-road to Augusta, finding my way by faint uncertain -blazings on the tree-trunks through a hundred and thirty-odd miles of -swamp. They were solemn miles. Trees thicker than my body grew in the -ruts where wheels had run; more than once the great diamond rattlesnake -coiled in my path, chilling the silence of the river bottoms with his -shivering whirr. Once I heard the gobble of the wild turkey and the -scream of the bobcat; and at night, while sleeping in an old abandoned -church on the river bluff, I was awakened by the snuffling of a bear -which had thrust its muzzle underneath the church door in the foot-worn -hollow of the sill. - -It was a lonesome place. A faint road led away from it off through -the swamp; but, aside from the gravestones near by, there were no -other human signs around. How long since human feet had crossed the -threshold, I do not know. - -The chintz altar-cloth that I tried to draw over me (the night was -chill) crumbled at my touch and drifted off into a million dusty -fragments. I had meant no desecration. I was very weary and had crept -in through a window from the night and cold. A slow rain had settled -down with the dusk, attended by darkness indescribably profound. And -beneath the long-draped pines outside slept those whose feet had worn -the threshold--slept undisturbed by the soughing of the wind, wrapped -in the unutterable loneliness of the coiling river and the silent, -somber swamp. - -Yet here had passed a highway between two great cities just a few years -earlier, before the railroad was built farther out through the State. -Already the swamp and the river had taken the highway for their own, -and from human feet given it again to adventure, to the gliding form, -the swift wing, and the soft padded foot. - -The giants of old, the frontiers and clipper ships of old, are gone. -They went out with the ebb tide, and here already comes back the flood! -And with it the same old human chance, the magical chance of escape. -Lay aside the rifle and you pick up the camera--to creep with it into -the lion’s den; or to climb with it into the top of a towering oak, on -some sheer mountain wall; and, pushing it before you along a horizontal -limb, feet dangling in space, a stiff wind blowing, eagles screaming -overhead, canyon wall below you, and far, far down the narrow canyon -bottom, you hold on, body balancing camera, but nothing over against -the swaying brain, and grind out a hundred feet of movie film. This is -to shoot a good many lions. - -Life offers us all the chance of escape. Go where we will on the -surface of things, men have been there before us; but beneath the -surface we need go no deeper than our own hearts to find a frontier, -and that adventurous something for which the decorous and conventional -allows no place in its scheme. - - - - -CHAPTER II - -THE RADIUM OF ROMANCE - - - - -CHAPTER II - -THE RADIUM OF ROMANCE - - “Why thus longing, thus forever sighing?” - - -Because, I suppose, there were once two sides to her bread-board, -both of which she used for sketching. She brought the board from the -Fine Arts room at college to her new home, carrying it one day to the -kitchen to try her hand at modeling--in dough. There are several of -her early sketches about the house, of that period prior to the dough, -which show real talent. Her bread, however, had about it the touch of -genius. The loaves grew larger all the time, the bakings more frequent. -The walls of any house are rather quickly covered with pictures, but -there is no bottom to the bread-box. There are still two sides to her -bread-board, and she uses both sides for dough. - - “Why thus longing, thus forever sighing? - For the far-off, unattained and dim?” - -Because, I suppose, time was when I thought of other things than the -price of flour; not because of much money in those times, but because -she made angel-cake most of the time then, and what bread we did eat -was had of the baker; and because the price of flour was then a matter -of course. The price of flour now is a good deal more than a matter of -course, and the price of corn-meal even more than the price of flour; -so that we must count the slices now, and cut them thin. - -We shall have angel-cake again, I promise the children, with the -biggest kind of a hole in the middle, giving them a bran muffin to -munch meanwhile, and wondering in my heart if this fight for bread will -ever end in angel-cake. - -One can live on potatoes and bran muffins, although there was never any -romance about them, not even during the Great War when Wall Street took -them as collateral. We need cake. I don’t remember that I ever lacked -potatoes as a child, but, as a child, I do remember dancing while the -pickaninnies sang, - - “Mammy gwine make some short’nin’, short’nin’, - Mammy gwine make some short’nin’ cake. - Ay lak short’nin’, short’nin’, short’nin’, - Ay lak short’nin’, short’nin’ cake,” - -in an ecstasy of pure delight, which was not remotely induced by common -hunger. - -Short’nin’ cake, angel-cake, floating island, coffee jelly--are they -not victuals _spirituels_, drifted deep with frosting, honeyed over -with an amber-beaded sweat, with melting sweetness, insubstantial, -impalpable, ethereal, that vanish into the brain, that thrill along the -nerves, feeding not the body, not the mind, nor yet the spirit, for -these are but three of our four elements--we are also the stuff that -dreams are made of, and we cannot wholly subsist on more material fare. - -What makes pie pie is its four-and-twenty-blackbirds. Singing-blackbird -pie is the only pie, whether you make it of apples or rhubarb or -custard or squash, with one crust or two. He dreamed a dream who made -the original pie. And even now I cannot pass a baker in apron and paper -cap without a sense of frostings and méringues--of the white of life -separated from the yolk of life and stirred into a dream. I find the -same touch of romance on many faces, both young and old, as I find it -over the landscape at dusk and dawn, and on certain days even at high -noon. - -It was so this morning when a flock of migrating bluebirds went over, -calling down to me. They came out of the dawn, hovered idly over the -barn and the tops of the cedars in the pasture, then faded into the -blue about them and beyond them, where a fleet of great white clouds -was drifting slowly far off to the south. But their plaintive voices -floating down to me I still hear calling, with more yearning than a -man, perhaps, should allow himself to know. For at the first sip of -such sweet misery some poet chides, - - “Why thus longing, thus forever sighing - For the far-off, unattained and dim, - While the beautiful, all about us lying, - Offers up its low perpetual hymn?” - -As if longing were a weakness and not the heart’s hope; and our -sighing-- Shall I sigh for what I have? Or stop sighing? Some of my -possessions I may well sigh over, but there are very few to sigh for, -seeing none of them are farther off than the barn or the line fence, -except a few books that I have lent my friends, and now and then a few -dollars. - -And such is the magic in the morning light that I see the beautiful -all about me lying--in the bend of the road, on the sweep of the -meadow, across the commonplace dooryard asleep in the sun; and such -is the sweet silence of the autumn day that I hear the low perpetual -hymn--in the lingering notes of the bluebirds, in the strumming of the -crickets, in the curving stems of the goldenrods, the loud humming of -the aster-dusted bees, even in the wavering red leaves of the maples -singing in their fall. - -It lacks an hour of mail-time, and the newspaper, and the world. The -bluebirds are leaving before the mail-man comes, and everything with -wings is flying with them, or is poised for flight as if there were no -world, except a world for wings. - -The day is warm, with little breezes on the wing, hardly larger than -swallows. They stir the grasses of the knoll, and race with them up -the slope, to fly on over the wavy crest, following the bluebirds off -toward the deep-sea spaces among the drifting clouds. And the curving -knoll itself is in motion, a yellow-brown billow heaving against the -moving clouds where they ride along the sky. And over the knoll sweep -the hawking swallows, white bellies and brown and glinting steel-blue -backs aflash in the sun. Winging swallows, winging seeds, winging -winds, winging clouds and spheres, and my own soul winging away into -the beckoning blue where the bluebirds have gone! - -But I shall return--to the mail-box on this rural free delivery route, -to the newspaper, to the tariff, to the Turk. The Democratic State -Committee is assembled this day in Springfield. I am not there. I -also ran. I stumped the State for nomination to the National Senate, -and landed here on Mullein Hill, Hingham. Here I set out. Through -many years I have developed the safe habit of returning here. It was -a magical chance Life offered me; a dream of beating the protective -tariff devils. But Mullein Hill is clothed with dreams; and magical -chances make this their stopping-place. - -It is certainly true to-day. To begin with, I have this day bought the -field by the side of my house. For all the twenty years of my living -here I have dreamed of this rolling field with its pines and pointed -cedars, and rounded knoll against the sky. Not every day in the autumn -is like this for dreams; not many of them in all the year. I shall be -building fences about the field now for many days; and paying taxes -on the field every day from this time on. There are not many autumn -days like this for dreams. Yet to know one such day, one touched with -this golden melancholy, this sweet unrest and yearning, should it not -outlast the noon, is to know, - - “And one thing more that may not be, - Old earth were fair enough for me.” - -You say that I am still thinking of the United States Senate. Possibly. -“One thing more that may not be” I must be thinking on, for we all are. -After the nomination comes the election; and what chance has the sworn -enemy of a high protective tariff of election in Massachusetts? - -Old Earth is fair enough for me ordinarily, and she is passing fair -to-day. But even the dog, for all his appetite and growing years, is -not always satisfied with bread and play. He clings closer than ever to -me, as if sometimes frightened at inner voices calling him, which, like -deep waters, seem to widen between us, and which no love, though pure -and immeasurable, may be able to cross. He is nothing uncommon as a -dog, except in the size of his spirit and the quality of his love. He -will tackle anything, from a railroad train to a buzzing bumble-bee, -that he imagines has intentions inimical to me; and there is nothing on -the move, either coming or going, quite innocent of such intentions. -Without fear, or awe, or law, he wears his collar, and his license -number, 66, but not as a sign of bondage, for that sign he wears all -over his alert and fearless front. He growls in his sleep before the -fire at ghosts of things that have designs against the house; he risks -his life all day long. - -But he reserves a portion of his soul. He will deliberately chew off -his leash at night, and, making sure that nothing stirs about the -helpless house, will steal away to the woods, where he hears the baying -of some spectral pack down the forest’s high-arched halls. I do not -know what the little cross-bred terrier is hunting along the frosted -paths--fox or rabbit or wild mice; I cannot run the cold trails that -are so warm to his nose; but far ahead of his nose lope two panting -hearts, his and mine, following the Gleam. - -All dogs are dreamers, travelers by twilight, who wander toward a slow -deferring dawn. They cannot see in the white fire of noon. A lovelier -light, diffused and dim with dusk, is in the eyes of dogs and all dumb -creatures, through which they watch a world of shadows moving with them -like lantern-lighted shapes at night upon a wall. - - “Not of the sunlight, - Not of the moonlight, - Not of the starlight,” - -is the tender, troubled light in the eyes of dogs. - -There is a deposit, an infinitesimal deposit, it may be, of the radium -of romance in the slag of all souls. Call it by other names--optimism, -idealism, religion--you still leave it undefined; an inherent, -essential element, harder to separate from the spiritual dross of us -than radium from its carnotite; a kind of atomic property of the spirit -which breaks up its substance; which ionizes, energizes, and illumines -it. - -There may be souls that never knew its power, but I can hardly think -there ever was a soul shut in a cave so darksome, that romance never -entered with its touch of radiance, if only as - - “A little glooming light, much like a shade.” - -This is the light in the eyes of dogs, the light that birds and -bees follow, and the jellyfish steering round and round his course. -Something like its quivering flame burns down in the green, dismal -depths of the sea; down in the black subliminal depths; and on down in -the heart of the world. For what other light is it, that guides the -herring every spring, in from the ocean up Weymouth Back River? or the -salmon in from the Pacific, up, high up the Columbia to the Snake, and -higher up the Snake into the deep, dark gorges of the Imnaha? - -It is now long past October, and where is the bluebird’s mate of -June? She has forgotten him, and is forgotten by him, but he has -not forgotten his dream-of-her; for I saw him in the orchard, while -southward bound, going in and out of the apple-tree holes, the lover -still, the dream-of-her in his heart, holding over from the summer and -coming to meet him ahead of her, down the winter, out of the coming -spring. - -The dog and you and I and even the humble toad are dreamers at heart, -all of us, only we are deeper adream than they. - - “If nothing once, you nothing lose, - For when you die you are the same,” - -says Freneau to a flower. Yet the flowers are of the dust that I am -made of, and they too are the stuff of dreams. And the toad under the -kitchen-steps, what he knows of my heart! As if the unrequited pain -of lovers, the sweetest, saddest things of poets, had always been his -portion, and their vague melancholy the only measure of his tremulous -twilight song. When the soft spring dusk has stolen into the young eyes -of the day, as the first shadow of some sweet fear into the startled -eyes of a girl, then out of the hush, quavering through the tender -gloom, - - “A voice, a mystery!” - -From his earth-hole under the kitchen-steps I have known the toad, by -dint of stretching and hitching up on chance stones, to get nine inches -up, nine inches from the surface of the globe, up on the lowest of the -steps! Yet it is given him to pipe a serenade in the gloaming that no -other lover, bird or poet, ever quite equaled, even when he sang, - - “I arise from dreams of thee - In the first sweet sleep of night.” - -Life is always a romance. There is fire in its heart, even in the three -cold chambers of the toad’s heart; and the light of the fire flickers -fainter than the guttered candle before it will go out. This may not -be “the true light”; yet it lighteth every man that cometh into the -world, every man with a pen, and his brother with a hoe, though they -comprehend it not. One of our poets has written of “The Man With The -Hoe” and left the man out and put only the hoe in the poem. This poet -has written more than he has hoed, I am sure; as the painter of “The -Man with the Hoe” had painted more than he had hoed, I am sure. Here is -a poet who sees no light at all in “The Man with the Hoe,” because that -poet has written more than he has hoed, which is to gather where he -has not strawed. When a hoe looks as black as this to a pen, you will -search the premises of the pen in vain for hoes. I hoe; I know men who -hoe; and none of us knows Mr. Markham’s scarecrow for ourself. Here a -realist sees what another realist thought he saw; as if you could ever -_see_ life! - -Life is not what the realist sees, but what the realist is and knows, -plus what the man with the hoe is and knows; and he knows that, if -chained to a pick instead of a hoe, down in the black pit of some -Siberian mine, he could not work life out in the utter dark. - -Realism, if not a distortion and a disease, is at best only a -half-truth; and the realist, if more than a medical examiner for his -district, is but the undertaker besides. - -Whoever sings a true song, or pens the humblest plodding prose, whether -of Achilles, son of Peleus, or of John Gilley, a milkman down in Maine, -or of the toad, or of the bee, has essentially one story to tell, and -must be a Homer, truly to tell it. - -Here on my desk lies the story of John Gilley, and over in the next -farmhouse lingers the unwritten story of another milkman, my neighbor, -Joel Moore; and in the other neighbor-houses live like people--humble, -humdrum country people, with their stories, which, if lighted with -nothing but their own hovering gleam, would glow forever. - -The next man I meet would make a book; for either he is, or he knows, a -good-enough story, could I but come by the tale. - -O. Henry, pacing the streets in an agony of fear at having run out of -story-matter, is only a case of nerves. The one inexhaustible supply -of matter in the Universe that is of use to man is story-matter; for, -as the first human pair have been a perpetual song and story, so the -last pair shall be the theme for some recording angel, or else they -will leave a diary. - -The real ill with literature is writer’s cramp, an inability to seize -the story, all of it, its truth as well as its facts--an ill, not of -too much observation, but of too little imagination. Art does not watch -life and record it. Art loves life and creates it. - -“No one knows the stars,” says Stevenson, “who has not slept, as the -French happily put it, _à la belle étoile_. He may know all their -names, and distances, and magnitudes, and yet be ignorant of what alone -concerns mankind, their serene and gladsome influence on the mind.” - -Art and literature have turned scientist of late, as if our -magnitudes, names, and distances, as if the concern of psychologists, -physiologists, ethnologists, criminologists, and pathologists, were the -concern of mankind! These things all belong to the specialists. - -What does mankind reck of the revolution of the node and apsides? that -Neptune’s line of apsides completes its revolution in 540,000 years? -Instead of an astronomer, mankind is still the simple shepherd, keeping -watch by night, and all he knows of the stars is that they brood above -the sleeping hills, and now and then, in some holy hush, they sing -together. - -Science is concerned with the names, distances, and magnitudes of the -stars; and with problems touching the “intestinal parasites of the -flea.” Art, literature, and religion are concerned only with mankind; -with the elemental, the universal, the eternal; with the dream, the -defeat, the romance of life. - -I have much to do with writers--with great writers, could they only -think of something to write about. “There is nothing left,” they cry, -“to write about.” “But here am I. Take me,” I answer. Out come pads -and pencils flying. There is hard looking at me for a moment. Then a -cynical smile. I won’t do. Becky might have done, but Thackeray got -her; just as some one has got everybody! My tribe can never furnish her -like again. Yet my tribe is not infertile; it is Thackeray’s, rather, -that has run out. - -A sweet young thing in one of my extension courses, voicing the -literary despair of the class in a poem called “The Fairy Door,” made -this end of the whole matter: - - “The world seems black and ugly - When I shut the Fairy Door; - I want to go to Fairyland - And live forever more.” - -I was reading this effusion on my way in to college. When I reached the -climax in the stanza, - - “The world seems black and ugly” - -I thrust the manuscript back into my bag in disgust and turned for -relief to the morning paper. Here--for the young writer was the -daughter of a prominent Bostonian--I saw the announcement of her -engagement to a Chicago man, and I knew, of course, what ailed the -poetry; and I knew the medicine that I should administer. - -How far apart literature and life sometimes get! And how much more real -and romantic is ordinary life than ordinary literature! - -The girl was to meet me that afternoon in the university extension -lecture. The amphitheater was full of city folk, and there in the -middle of the hall sat the young poet. She was very pretty, one of the -daughters of men still fair. Taking her poem, I read it aloud to that -last stanza, when, turning sharply, and pointing the manuscript hard at -her, I demanded, - -“Is this so? Do you want to leave Boston for Fairyland, instead of -Chicago? Do you?” - -She was staggered by the suddenness and savageness of it all and rose -to her feet, adorably pink in her confusion, stammering, “No, no, I -beg--of course I--no, I don’t”--by this time so recovered that her -eyes flashed wrath as she dropped to her seat amid the gaping and the -twittering of the class. - -“If you don’t mean it,” I demanded, “why in the sacred name of -literature did you write it? Why don’t you ever write what you mean? -And you mean that Boston has suddenly become a back number for -literature; that the literary center has shifted to Chicago--that’s -what you mean. Chicago! the one romantic, fairy-like spot on earth! -Isn’t that what you mean? Then don’t you see how fresh, how thrilling -a theme you have in _your_ Chicago? No one else, perhaps, ever saw -Chicago in quite this rosy, romantic light before.” - -Hers is the enduring truth about Chicago; as against that set forth by -Mr. Armour in “The Packers, the Private Car Lines, and the People.” -Here she was, herself the very stuff of the eternal in literature, -and forced to Fairyland for something to write about! Sheer nonsense. -One need not take the wings of the morning to the uttermost sea, or -make one’s bed in Hell for “copy.” Chicago will do--or Boston--or even -Hingham. - -To be, if to be only a stock or a stone, beast or bird or man, is to be -a story, while to be any one of my neighbors is to be an epic. - -The day we moved out here, before our goods arrived, a strangely -youthful pair, far on in the eighties, struggled up the hill from the -old farm below to greet us. He was clad in overalls and topcoat, and -she in flowers, overflowing from both her arms, and in wild confusion -on the gayest Easter bonnet that ever bloomed. - -“How do you do, neighbors!” she began, extending her armfuls of -glorious mountain laurel; “Mr. White and I bring you the welcome of -the Hingham Hills”--Mr. White’s rough old hand grasping mine amid the -blossoms. - -“Why,” I cried, “I didn’t know the Hingham Hills could hold such a -welcome. I have tramped the woods about here, but I never found a bunch -of laurel.” - -“Ah, you didn’t get into Valley Swamp! Mr. White and I will show you, -won’t we, Georgie? We know where odes hang on hawthorns, don’t we? -We are busy farmers, and you know what farming is; but we have never -ploughed up our poetry-patch, have we, Georgie?” - -They never had; nor much of their other ninety-six acres either--the -whole farm a joyous riot of free verse: fences without line or meter: -cattle running where they liked; the farm kit--a mowing machine, a -sulky plough, and a stolid old grindstone--straying romantically about -the shy sweet fields. - -It was an ode of a carriage that the spoony old couple went to town in, -with wheels dactylic on one side and iambic on the other, and so broken -a line for a back spring that Mrs. White would slide into Mr. White’s -lap without cæsura or even a punctuation mark to hinder. - -I was at the village market one muddy March day, when Cupid and the -old mare, neither wearing blinders, brought this chariot to the curb. -Mr. White, descending to the street, reached up for Mrs. White, who, -giving him both her hands, put out a dainty foot to the carriage-step -and there poised, dismayed at the March mud. Instantly Mr. White, -disengaging one hand, lifted a folded blanket from the seat, shot it -grandly out across the mud, and with a bow as gallant as Sir Walter’s -own, handed the dear old shoes unblemished to the shop. - -Eighteen or eighty, it is just the same. Boston or Chicago or Hingham, -it is just the same. White or red or yellow or black, it is just the -same. The radium of romance is mixed with the slag of all our souls. -Here is my colored neighbor down toward the village. - -“Hello!” I called to him over the telephone, “aren’t you going to do -that job for me?” - -This neighbor is a most useful colored citizen, with a complete line of -avocations, cleaning cesspools nocturnally and on Saturday afternoons -being one of these sporadic and subsidiary callings. - -“Hello!” he answered; “I most assuredly am! And exceedingly sorry I am, -too, for this delay.” (He had been coming for one year and six months -now.) “But my business grows enormously. It is really more than I can -administer. The fact is, professor, I must increase my equipment. I -can’t dip any longer. I am rapidly approaching the proportions of a -pump.” - -“I am rapidly approaching the proportions of a pump.” Divine! I like -the sound. For it is the true measure of life as set over against that -which life may merely appear to be. To trudge along through life beside -your humble cart of the long-handled dipper, and to know that your -dipper is approaching the proportions of a pump is to know that you are -greater than you know. - -I saw yesterday in the Sunday newspaper the lovely face of a girl, who, -“rumor has it,” ran the legend, “will be the next Queen of England.” -She, too, like my colored neighbor, like us all, is approaching the -proportions of a pump. We are all the stuff that pumps and dreams are -made of, and great art, and great literature. - -I spoke of Joel Moore here in the next house to me. For twenty-six -years he was chained to a milk-route, covering Lovell’s Corner, East -Weymouth, and our back wood-road; but he always drove it in a trotting -sulky. - -From behind the bushes I have seen him calming the leg-weary team as it -labored up the humps in the road, his feet braced, his arms extended to -the slack lines, his eyes fixed on the Judge’s Stand ahead, while he -maneuvered against Ed Geers and Ben Hur and all the Weymouths for the -pole. - -He came home in that lumbering, rattling milk-cart as if it wore -winged wheels, and were being drawn by the steeds of Aurora around the -half-mile track at the great Brockton Fair. - -It was sixteen years ago that Joel drove home with Flora IV, a black -mare without a leg to stand on, but with a record of 2.12-3/4 There -was large fixing of the little barn for her, and much rubbing-down of -withers. - -One day Joel was seen wandering over the knoll here near the house, -kicking stones around. Something was the matter. I sauntered out toward -my barn casually and called to him. Picking up a piece of rock in the -pasture, he staggered with it to the fence, and fixing it into the -wall, said with labored breath, “Flora IV has a foal!” And, lifting -another stone off the wall, for ballast, he strode up the hill and -over, and down to his barn, not knowing the “Magnificat,” it may be, -but singing it in his heart all the way down. - -And this happened on the very hill which this day I bought with the -field by the side of the house. Joel owned the field then. But he -longed for a fast horse. I never set my heart on a fast horse; but I -cannot resist a field. I did not covet this field of Joel’s. I merely -dreamed of it as part of my dooryard, and waited--longer than Jacob -waited for Rachel. What a dream she must have been! - -But let me come back to Joel and Flora and the foal. - -My youngest boy was born that same summer--sixteen years ago--the -double event in Joel’s mind wearing the mixed complexion of twins. He -had had no children till the colt came, and naturally he spoiled her. -She was a willful little thing by inheritance, though--arch, skittish, -and very pretty; and long before she wore shoes had got the petulant -habit of kicking the siding off the barn at any delay of dinner. - -She should have been broken by her second birthday, but Joel would take -no risks; and in the third summer, though he “had her used to leather,” -he needed a steady old horse to hitch her with, and she came up to her -fourth birthday untrained. Then, the first time he took her out, she -behaved so badly, and cut herself so, forward, that it was necessary -to turn her loose for months. Then she was sent away to be broken, but -came back a little more willful than ever, and prettier than ever, if -possible. - -That winter Joel had to give up his milk-route on account of sickness, -and with the opening of spring got the blacksmith to take the colt in -hand. He took her, and threw her, dislocating her shoulder. Then he -pulled off her new shoes, and she was put into the boxstall to get well. - -After that, I don’t know just why, but we talked of other things than -the colt. She kicked a board off the back of the barn one day, sending -a splinter whizzing past my head, but neither of us noticed it. She was -seven years old now, a creature shaped for speed, but Joel was not -strong enough to manage her, and a horse like this could so easily be -harmed. In fact, he never harnessed her again. - -I urged him from time to time, with what directness I dared, to let me -take him into the hospital. But he had never left the farm and his wife -alone overnight in all these years. Then one day he sent for me. He -would go, he said, if I could arrange for him. - -A March snow lay on the fields the day before he was to go, and -all that day, at odd times, I would see him creeping like a shadow -about his place: to the hen-coops, up to the line fence, out to the -apple tree in the meadow, taking a last look at things. It was quite -impossible for me to work that day. - -The next morning the four boys, on their way to school, went down ahead -of me to say good-bye. They filed in, shook hands bravely, fighting -back their tears, and playing fine the game of bluff with him, though -the little fellow, born the summer the colt was born, nearly spoiled it -all. He is a dear impulsive child and had frankly been Joel’s favorite. - -“I’ve taken the eveners off the disk harrow,” he was saying as he came -out to the sleigh. “I gave the kittens a bed of fresh rowan. I drove -a nail under the shutter of the can-house, where you can hang the -key. You had better lock up a little till I get back”--his words half -muffled under the big robes of the sleigh. - -“I hate to leave home,” he said, as we went along; “but she couldn’t -stand it. She’s not well. It isn’t so bad for me with you along.” - -Two or three times he was about to say something else, but felt too -tired. I had him duly entered; introduced him to his surgeon; helped -him to his cot, where a cheery nurse made him easy; then gave him my -hand. - -“Good-day,” he said; “I’m going to pay you back some time. Only I -can’t.” He clung a moment longer to me. “I’ve never had many of the -luxuries. I’ve worked hard for all I’ve got--except for the little -colt. She was thrown in. I never fed her a quart of grain--the cleanest -little eater--as fat as butter--and on nothing but roughage all the -time!” - -Then, looking me straight in the eye, he said calmly, “You and I know -and the doctors know. But I couldn’t tell her. You tell her. You can. -And tell her I guess she had better sell the little colt.” - -He paused a moment. Something yet he wished to say--the thing he had -tried before to say. I hope the Recording Angel took it down, and the -_way_ he said it, down. Not quite daring to look into my eyes, he -asked, wistfully, “You don’t need a fast horse yourself, of course, -having your auto?” - -“Yes, I do, Joel,” I answered firmly; “I do need a fast horse. We all -do, or something like that.” And I bent over and kissed him, for his -wife, and for my little boy at home. - -There is balm in Gilead; but are there racetracks in Heaven?--and fast -horses there? Perhaps not. But I often wish that I had told Joel I -believed there were. Of course there are. There is romance in Heaven, -and the magical chance of escape there. - - - - -CHAPTER III - -THE HUNT FOR “COPY” - - - - -CHAPTER III - -THE HUNT FOR “COPY” - - -There never was a bigger, fatter, flabbier woodchuck than old -Tubby--among wild animals that I alone have known. Tubby is a fixture -of the farm. He was here when we came, or else it was his father or -his grandfather. He is fat and flabby and as broad as he is long, and -broader when full of beans. He is very much of a tub. When he sits in -the garden, he sits like a tub. When he runs, he runs like a tub. And -he holds beans like a tub. - -It is worth a few beans to see him run--a medley in motions: up and -down and round and round, the spinning of a top and the hop of a -saucepan on a hot stove with amazing progress forward. He knows which -end of him is head and which tail; but from a distance I can see -neither head nor tail, only sides, bulging, tubby sides spilling down -the garden. One seldom does see the ends of a thing from a distance. -Tubby has a head-end; and he has wits in that end. He also has a -tail-end; and the disturbing conclusion one reaches with close study -is that Tubby has wits also in this end. He is a beautifully capable -thing in his way. A cutworm is not more capable--if there is anything -so capable as a cutworm! Both are poems; old Tubby an epic poem--were I -as capable as Tubby, and a Homer-- - -A full-sized woodchuck is twenty-two inches long; and I presume that -Tubby is not more than twenty-two inches wide, though I have seen him -wobbling out of the garden and carrying off as mere ballast a cabbage -or two, and a watermelon, and a peck or two of beans, and all of the -Swiss chard in the three rows. There are several bushels of chard in -three such rows. - -The way he can run with his load! His little black heels twinkling -through the vines, his shapeless carcass flopping into his hole with me -on top of him! Then I will hear a chuckling deep down among the hickory -roots, a peculiar vegetarian chuckle quite unlike a carnivorous growl. -And then I will sit down on the hole and chuckle, having lost for the -moment my carnivorous growl. He is so bold, so impudent, so canny. The -old scamp rather likes me. And I am a fairly good gardener, if I do say -it myself. - -When I place a trap in one entrance to his burrow, he uses the other -opening; if I put another trap here, he promptly digs a passage around -it; if I block this with chunks of rock, he undermines the stones and -patiently moves to a new house farther along the ridge; and, if I set -traps for him here, he changes house again. It is a wide wooded ridge -around the garden, and honeycombed with woodchuck holes. By and by he -is back in his favorite house under the hickory--when the spiders have -hung the doors with signs that the traps are gone. - -But it happened once that I forgot the traps. Wood-earth and bits of -bark and dead leaves washed down till the wicked gins were covered, -and Tubby, coming back after weeks off on the ridge, tumbled into one -of the traps and got his thick fat fist fast. I heard him making a -dreadful racket, and rushed up with a club in my thick fat fist. - -Old Tubby stopped kicking and grunting, and looked at me. I don’t -believe that I was ever looked at by a woodchuck before. Stolid, -sullen, defiant, there was much more of the puzzled, of the world-old -wonder in the eyes gazing steadily into mine, as to what this situation -and this moment meant. The snarled body was all fight and fear, but the -blinking eyes sought mine for an answer to the riddle that I have asked -of God. And all that I could answer was, “You fat-head!” And he said, -“Fat-head yourself!” if ever a woodchuck spoke, and spoke the truth. -“Fat-head, to set this rotten thing here and forget it!” - -It was a rotten thing to do. Somehow he made me feel as if I had -trapped one of my neighbors. He saw how I was feeling, and took -advantage of me. - -“Whose woods are these, anyway?” he asked. “Whose ancestors were here -first, yours or mine? You didn’t even come over in the Mayflower. But I -came here in Noah’s Ark.” - -“I know it. But keep quiet,” I begged him, “and stop looking at me that -way.” - -“What way?” he asked. - -“Why, so much like my brother!” I exclaimed. - -“But I am your brother,” he retorted, “though I am ashamed to say it.” - -“Don’t say it, then,” I begged. - -But he was wound up. - -“Any man who is brute enough to set this sort of thing for his brother -has no soul. And any man who can’t share his beans with his brother -doesn’t deserve a soul. If I were as low-down and as lazy as you, I -would go over to the north side of this hill and dig a deep hole, and -crawl into it, and pull it in on top of me, I would.” And all the time -I was pressing down on the spring with my club, trying to free him. -Suddenly there was a flop in the hole, and away in the sub-cellar, -among the hickory roots, there was talk of me which I should have -heard, had I been able to understand. - -But I have much to learn. And so has Pup, our Scotch-Irish terrier. -Time and time again Pup has sent the old woodchuck tumbling over -himself for his hole. Once or twice they have come to blows at the -mouth of the burrow, and Pup has come off with a limp or a hurt ear, -but with only a mouthful of coarse reddish hair to growl over. He came -off with a deep experience lately, and a greatly enhanced respect for -woodchucks. But he is of stubborn stock. So is Tubby of stubborn stock. -Pup knows that here is an enemy of the people, and that he must get -him. He knows that Tubby is all hair and hide and bowels. He now knows -that Tubby is deeper than he is broad, which makes him pretty deep. - -The new light began to dawn on Pup when Tubby moved up from the -woods to a corner of the ice-house near the barn. The impudence, the -audacity of the thing stood Pup’s hair on end, and he took to the -blackberry-vines at the other corner of the ice-house to see what would -happen. - -Tubby’s raiding hour was about five in the afternoon. At that hour -the shadows of the ice-house and the barn lay wide across the -mowing-field--the proper time and color for things to happen. And there -in the close-cut field, as if he had come up out of a burrow, sat old -Tubby, looking as big as a bear! - -Pup stole softly out to meet him, moving over till he was between the -chuck and the ice-house hole. It was a deliberate act and one of -complete abandon. Things must this time be finished. And what a perfect -bit of strategy it was! Hugging the ground when the chuck rose high -on his haunches to reconnoiter, Pup would “freeze” till Tubby dropped -down and went to feeding, then, gliding like a snake forward, he would -flatten behind a stone or a tuft of grass, and work forward and wait. - -The ground rose slightly to Pup’s disadvantage, and he was maneuvering -to avoid the uphill rush when Tubby heard something off in the woods -and turned with a dash for his hole. It was head-on and terrific! And -the utter shock of it, the moral shock, was more terrific! Neither knew -for an instant just what had happened; the suddenness, the precision, -the amazing boldness and quality of the attack putting Pup almost out -of action. But it was precisely the jar old Tubby needed. Every flabby -fiber of him was fight. The stub feet snapped into action; the chunk of -a body shot forward, ramming Pup amidships, sending him to the bottom -of the slope, Tubby slashing like a pirate with his terrible incisors. - -But the touch of those long teeth brought Pup short about. He likes -the taste of pain. He is a son of battle. And in a moment like this he -is possessed of more than common powers of body and soul. The fur flew; -the grass flew; but there was scarcely a sound as the two fighters -tumbled and tossed a single black-brown body like a ball of pain. They -sprang apart and together again, whirled and dived and dodged as they -closed, each trying for a hold which neither dared allow. But Pup -got plenty of hair, choking, slippery hair, and leathery hide by the -mouthful, while the twisting, snapping woodchuck cut holes in Pup’s -thin skin with teeth which would punch holes in sheet steel. - -And Tubby was fighting with his head as well as with teeth and toes. He -was cooler than Pup. He had a single-track mind, and it ran straight to -his burrow. The head-work was perfectly clear; the whole powerful play -going forward with the nicest calculation, mad as it appeared to be in -the wild rough-and-tumble. There was method in Tubby’s madness. He was -fighting true to plan. But Pup was fighting to kill, and he lost his -head. It was to win his hole, and life, and the pursuit of happiness -on these ancestral acres that the woodchuck was fighting; and, as the -two laid about them and rolled over and over, they kept rolling nearer -and nearer to the ice-house and a burrow under the corner. - -Over and over, right and left, they lunged when the woodchuck, sent -spinning from Pup’s foreleg, came up with the dog chopping at his stub -nose, but, giving him all four of his mailed feet instead, he bounded -from the face of the dog, and, with a lightning somersault, landed plop -in his burrow, Pup raking the hair from the vanishing haunch. - -And now Pup knows that there is no bottom to a woodchuck’s burrow. But -do I fully realize that there is no bottom to the woodchuck? I have -been almost fatally slow over this lesson. Yet this is the writer’s -first and most important lesson, no matter what his theme. - -“I have been studying the woodchuck all my life,” said my old friend -Burroughs to me, “and there is no getting to the bottom of him!” He -made that great discovery early; eighty-four years of study confirmed -it; and from early to late Burroughs never lacked for things to write -about or failed of his urge to write. There was no bottom to his -woodchuck. - -Others have made this discovery concerning other things: the -philosophers, of truth; the poets, of men and flowers; the prophets, -of God. But the writer must find it true of all things, of all his own -things, from woodchucks to God. There is nothing new in this discovery. -It simply makes all things new to the discoverer. The skeptical, the -shallow, the fool who says in his heart there is nothing but bowels -to a woodchuck--what would he at four-and-eighty find at Woodchuck -Lodge to write about? He might have all knowledge and a pen with which -he could remove mountains, but, lacking wonder, that power to invest -things with new and infinite significance, he would see no use in -removing the mountains and turning them into steppes and pampas and -peopled plains. - -All creative work, whether by brush or pen or hoe, is somehow making -mountains into men, out of the dust an image, in our own likeness -created, in the likeness of God. It may be woodchuck dust, or dandelion -dust, or the shining dust of stars; touched with a creative, -interpreting pen the dust takes human shape and breathes a breath -divine. A woodchuck pelt makes an excellent fur for a winter coat; the -rest of him makes an excellent roast for a dinner; but it is what still -remains, the wonder of him, which makes for sermon and for song. - -How hard a lesson that has been for me to learn! And so slow have I -been learning it that little time is left for me to preach or sing. If -only I had known early that Mullein Hill was as good as Helicon; that -the people of Hingham were as interesting as the people of Cranford; -that Hingham has a natural history as rich and as varied as Selborne! -My very friends have helped to mislead and hinder me: “I don’t see -what you find to write about up here!” they exclaim, looking out with -commiseration over the landscape, as if Wellfleet or Washington or -Wausau were better for books than Hingham! Hanover may be better for -ducks than Scituate; but Hingham is as good as Hanover or Heaven for -books. - -One of my friends started for Hanover once for a day of hunting--but I -will let him tell the story: - -“We were on our way to Hanover, duck hunting,” he said, “and at -Assinippi took the left fork of the road and kept going. But was this -left fork the right road? [An ancient doubt which had brought many a -traveler before them to confusion and a halt.] It was early morning, -raw and dark and damp. No one was stirring in the farmhouses straggling -along the road, and we were turning to go back to the forks when -the kitchen door of the near-by house opened and a gray-bearded man -appeared with a milk-pail on his elbow. - -“‘Is this the road to Hanover?’ we called. - -“The man backed into the kitchen door, put down his milk-pail, came out -again, carefully closing the door behind him, and started down the walk -toward the front gate. He opened the gate, turned and latched it behind -him as carefully as he had latched the kitchen door, and, stepping out -into the road, approached our carryall. Looking up, then down the road -intently, he hitched his right foot to the hub of our front wheel, spat -precisely into the dust, and, fixing his face steadfastly toward Cape -Cod, answered: - -“‘No.’ - -“‘Say it with flowers!’ snapped our driver, wheeling about for the -other fork. - -“At the turn I looked back. There stood our guide in the road, his -right foot still in the air, I think; and there--though it is several -years since, he may still be standing--one foot planted on the road to -Scituate, the other foot resting on the hub of the wheel that should -have been on the road to Hanover.” - -The man in the road knew that this road ran to Scituate. He lived on -it. Had they asked him: “Master, which is the Great Commandment?” he -had answered: “Take this road for Scituate.” For were they not duck -hunting in Hanover? Then what profounder error could they have been in -than on the road to Scituate! - -But most people go that way for Hanover. Every young writer I know -hankers to get his Hanover ducks out of Scituate, as if, failing to get -ducks, he might get Scituate; novelty, the mere novelty of gunning in -Scituate when the ducks are in Hanover, making the best sort of “copy.” - -Is it some new thing that we should search out, or some deeper, truer -thing? Must we travel, or may we stay at home? Locomotion is certainly -a curse to literature. No one nowadays stays long enough in his own -place to know it and himself in it, which is about all that he can know -well enough to express. Let the writer stay at home. Drummers, actors, -circus-men, and Satan are free to go up and down the earth. And these -seem to be writing most of our books. - -For some years, now, I, also, have been going to and fro and up and -down in the earth thinking that I might find some better place than -Hingham. I have just returned from Wausau, Wisconsin, where they have -a very hard red granite, and a deep green granite, both of them the -loveliest tombstone stuff that, I think, I ever saw. Certainly they are -superior to our seam-face Hingham granite for tombstones. Up to the -time of my Wausau visit, I had never given much thought to tombstones; -but it shows how one’s thought expands with travel, and how easily -Wausau may surpass Hingham, not alone in gravestones, but in other, -even in literary, materials. - -But Hingham has one thing in the line of gravestones not found at all -in Wausau: I mean the boulders, great roundish glacial boulders, gray -granite boulders, old and gentle and mossy-grown, which lie strewn over -our hilly pastures among the roses and the hardhack and the sweetfern, -ready to be rolled to the tomb, and fit for any poet’s tomb. When that -shy spirit and bird-lover, Bradford Torrey, native of my neighbor town -of Weymouth, died in far-off California, he left but a single simple -request: that he be brought back to his birthplace for burial, and that -a Weymouth boulder be found and rolled up to mark his grave. Were mine -not Hingham boulders I would take one out of my wall, the one which -serves as a gatepost, and, with a yoke of Weymouth oxen, would draw it -to Bradford Torrey’s tomb, a tribute from Hingham to Weymouth, and a -gift out of the heart of one who knows and loves “The Foot-Path Way,” -“A Rambler’s Lease,” and “A World of Green Hills.” - -Perhaps one must needs go to California in order to come by this deep -desire for Weymouth. Then let him go early. For if he is to write “The -Natural History of Weymouth,” or of Selborne, he must return early and -stay a long time. Thoreau has been criticized for writing of Nature as -if she were born and brought up in Concord. So she was. Can one not see -all of the world out of the “Window in Thrums”?--that is, all of the -world of Thrums, which is all of the world, and just the world, one -goes to Thrums to see? “I have traveled a great deal in Concord,” says -Thoreau. - -This brings me back to Hingham. I wish that I could write “The Natural -History of Hingham”! A modest desire! There can never be another -Gilbert White--but not for lack of birds and beasts in Hingham. Were -I a novelist I would write a “Cranford”--and I could! I would call it -“Hingham,” not “Main Street,” though that is the name of perhaps the -longest street in Hingham. But there are many other streets in Hingham, -and all kinds of interesting people. - -And here I am on Mullein Hill, Hingham, with all of these streets, -and all of these people, and woodchucks a plenty to write about--and -planning this day a trip to California! I might have been the author of -a recent book whose theme and sub-title read: “In the plains and the -rolling country there is room for the individual to skip and frolic, -but all the peaks are preëmpted.” Come down from Mullein Hill; get out -of Hingham; go West, young writer, as far as California; you shall find -room to skip and frolic on the plains out there! - -It may be true in California, but the opposite of that is true in -Hingham. To be sure, I have tried to preëmpt Mullein Hill; I now own -the knoll outside my study window, and the seven-acre woodlot beyond; -but there are many other peaks here among the hills of Hingham, and -scarcely any of them occupied. The people of Hingham all crowd into the -plains. So did the people of Israel crowd into the plains--of Moab, -leaving Pisgah to Moses, who found it very lonesome. There is no one on -Pisgah now, I understand; no one on Ararat; no one on Popocatepetl; no -one on the top of Vesuvius, nor on the peak of Everest, peaks as well -known as White Plains or the Plains of Abraham, but not anything like -so crowded. Moses sleeps on Nebo, yet no man knows where he lies. Have -them lay you in Sleepy Hollow if you wish your friends and neighbors -to crowd in close and keep you company. - -Why has there been no Iliad of Hingham? There are Helens in Hingham, as -there were Helens of Troy. Hingham is short of Homers. Mute, inglorious -Miltons have we in Hingham. If one of them, however, should take his -pen in hand, would he dream, and if he dreamed, would he dare to cry to -the Heavenly Muse, - - “I thence - Invoke thy aid to my adventurous song, - That with no middle flight intends to soar - Above the Aonian mount, while it pursues - Things unattempted yet in prose or rhyme”? - -Which of our poets thinks any more of an adventurous song? Of -attempting any more the unattempted in either prose or rhyme? It is -as if everything had been attempted; everything dared; everything -accomplished--the peaks all preëmpted. Politics or religion or -literature, it matters not: the great days are gone, the great -things are done, the great men securely housed in the Hall of -Fame. Heaven offers us a League of Nations and we prefer the tried -and proved device of war; a famed evangelist comes to town, we -build him a vast tabernacle, and twenty thousand gather for the -quickening message--“Brighten the corner where you are!” And in the -corners, and over the walls of the nation, with poster and placard -the “Safety-First” sign warns us not to hold our little rushlight -over-high, or flare it over-far, for fear we set our brightened corner -of the world on fire. But the whole world is on fire! And wherever an -emperor has escaped the devouring flame, he is fiddling, as emperors -do; and his poet laureate is writing free verse; and all of his -faithful subjects are saying, over and over, “Day by day, in every way, -I am getting better and better.” - -“We are taught by great actions that the universe is the property of -every individual in it,” says Emerson. “Every rational creature has all -nature for his dowry and estate. It is his, if he will. He may divest -himself of it; he may creep into a corner, and abdicate his kingdom, as -most men do, but he is entitled to the world by his constitution.” I -have not spoken lately with a man who seemed to think he was entitled -to the world. That grand old faith has passed away. But I talk with no -man lately who does not think he is entitled to an automobile. Great -is Tin Lizzie of the Americans! Greater than Diana of the Ephesians. -But except for our worship of the Ford we are not over-religious. The -Ford is a useful little deity; she meets our needs to the last mile. -The individual can skip and frolic with her, for she is distinctly the -goddess of the plains and rolling country. Admirable to her winking -tail-light, she is one hundred per cent American, the work of one of -the supreme inventive geniuses of our time. She is the greatest thing -in America, chugging everywhere but up Parnassus. Fool-proof, the -universal car, she is the very sign and symbol of our antlike industry, -the motor-minded expression of our internal-combustion age. - -Even my quiet old friend Burroughs had his Ford. It was her creator -himself who gave her to him. The creature would climb around the slopes -and over the walls about Woodchuck Lodge like a side-hill gouger, -Burroughs in his long white beard driving her, as Father Time might -drive a merry-go-round. He nearly lost his life in her, too. But -everybody nearly loses his life so nowadays; and nearly everybody had -rather lose his life in a Ford than to drag out an endless existence -in a buggy or on foot or in a wooden swing at home, watching the Fords -go by. What is life, anyway? The Ford is cheap; the service station -is everywhere; so, pile into the little old “bug”--on the hood and -running-boards! “Let’s go!” - -Perhaps our machines are taking us--we wish to believe so--to some new -Arden, some far-off Avalon, where we shall heal us of our motor-minds, -our movie-nerves, our corner-light religion; where “Safety First” shall -give place to “Derring-Do” as a national motto; where we shall ascend -the empty peaks, and out of the thunder and smoke of shaking Sinai -bring down some daring commandment, done by the finger of God on new -tables of stone. - -We are not lacking courage. It is imagination that we lack. We dare. -But we do not think it worth while. We are shallow, skeptical, -conventional, out of tune with the Infinite, and out of touch with -spiritual things. If we do not try the unattempted, it is because we -believe it has already been tried. It is because Homer has preëmpted -Helicon that we tunnel it. Only Milton, among us moderns (and how -ancient Milton seems!), only Milton in his blindness has seen that -there is room and verge enough on Helicon, and deeps within the abyss -of Hades where Dante would be lost. No, Milton is not the only modern -to leave the plains, and, like a star, to dwell apart. Thoreau did it -at Walden; Lanier did it on the marshes of Glynn; Burroughs did it at -Woodchuck Lodge; and Hudson did it on the plains of Patagonia--proof -enough that ponds and plains and the low-lying marsh may be as high as -Helicon for poetry, if only the poet have the vision to see that - - “Like to the greatness of God is the greatness within - The range of the marshes, the liberal marshes of Glynn.” - -But here we fail. We no longer see the greatness of God in things. We -have covered God with an atom. We ask for bread, and Science gives -us a stone; for God, and Science gives us an electron. It was a -super-electron that created the heavens and the earth when it saw that -all of the other electrons were without form and void. Atomism has -taken the place of theism in our religion, if it is religion. Man is -only a bunch of willful atoms, or parts of atoms, not any longer the -crowning work of Creation, its center and circumference, its dominion -and destiny and glory, its divine expression, interpretation, and -immortal soul. Are we to be robbed of God? Inhibited forever from faith -by the lensed eyes of Science? - -“What is man?” I ask, and Science laughs and answers, “Electrons.” -That is its latest guess. But does man look like them? Does he feel -like them? Does he behave like them? Does he believe like them? In the -laboratory he may. But out here in the hills of Hingham, where I am -returned to the earth and the sky and to my own soul, I know that I AM, -and that I still hold to all of those first things which Science would -shame me out of, offering me electrons instead! - -I accept the electrons. Capering little deities, they are the sons -of God. But so are you and I the sons of God--and we are electrons, -trillions of electrons, if you like. - -Gods and atoms, we can dwell and think and feel as either, the two -realms distinct and far apart, the roads between in a continual state -of construction, dangerous but passable. The anatomist, laying down his -scalpel, cries, “Such knowledge is too wonderful for me. I am fearfully -and wonderfully made!”--his science passing into poetry, and from -poetry to religion, but not easily in our present frame and mood. - -Science clears the sight and widens its range; but Science can never -clear up the shadows at the bottom of a woodchuck. Only vision can -do that, and Science lacks vision, using a microtome instead, paring -its woodchuck till he is thinner than sliced sunlight before it can -see through so much as a single stained cell of him. Science turns -aside from shadows, walking by sight or else standing still. It deals -with the flesh, not the spirit; and is as impotent in literature and -art as in life and society. The potent thing among men and nations is -love. Love never faileth. Yet never were we so afraid of love as we -are to-day; and never did art and literature seem so fearful of the -imagination, of vision, of the eternal, the divine. - -“Go get me a bird,” the old scientist said to me; “I will give you a -lesson in skinning and mounting.” I was a young boy. Hurrying out to -the woods, I was soon back with a cuckoo. The face of the old scientist -darkened. “You should not have killed this bird, it is the friend of -man. See when I open this gizzard.” And with a dexterous twist of his -fingers turned inside out the gizzard, and showed it, like a piece of -plush, its fleshy walls penetrated with millions of caterpillar hairs. - -To this day I feel the wonder of that knowledge, and I thrill at the -meaning of that bird’s gizzard. Here was science and charity and -poetry and religion. What untold good to man! What greater possible -good to man? That was before I knew or understood the cuckoo’s song. -And neither the old scientist, nor yet his book, “Sixteen Weeks in -Zoölogy,” dealt with the song. Science is sure and beautiful with a -gizzard. Poetry is sure and beautiful with both gizzard and song. And I -wonder if the grinding gizzard or the singing throat is the better part -of the cuckoo, even in this world of worms? - - “Though babbling only to the vale, - Of sunshine and of flowers, - Thou bringest unto me a tale - Of visionary hours. - - “Thrice welcome, darling of the Spring! - Even yet thou art to me - No bird, but an invisible thing, - A voice, a mystery; - - “And I can listen to thee yet; - Can lie upon the plain - And listen, till I do beget - That golden time again. - - “O blessed Bird! the earth we pace - Again appears to be - An unsubstantial faëry place, - That is fit home for thee!” - -I have a great book, published by the Government, devoted entirely to -birds’ gizzards, mills of the gods, and their grindings. It is not a -dull book, though the mills grind slowly and grind exceeding small. -It is a book of bones, of broken beetles, seeds, hairs, feathers, and -fragments. It is a great work of science. One might not like to lay it -down unfinished; but, having finished it, one could hardly say: - - “And I can listen to thee yet; - Can lie upon the plain - And listen, till I do beget - That golden time again. - - “O blessed Bird! the earth we Pace - Again appears to be - An unsubstantial faëry place, - That is fit home for thee!” - -Nature will not do, nor all the truth of nature, for stuff of song and -story. As life is more than meat, so is literature more than life. -Nature conforms to art; and in fiction “the only real people are those -who never existed.” - -At Good-Will Farm, Maine, there is a rock marked with a copper plate. -It had been marked for drill and dynamite, until, one day, my car -swung up and over a sharp turn in the road before the schoolhouse, -skidding rather horribly on the smooth outcropping ledge which had been -uncovered and left as part of the roadbed. - -“You ought to blast that thing out,” I said, somewhat testily, to the -supervisor who came out to greet me, my nerves, strung a bit too tight -on the long day’s drive, snapping with the skid here at the very end of -the trip. - -“I’ll do it,” he replied, apologetically. “I had intended to do it from -the first.” - -The next day we were climbing this road on foot, and, standing on the -ledge to take in the wide landscape of the Kennebec below us, I chanced -to look down at my feet and saw, cut deep in the smooth surface of the -stone, several parallel lines. - -“Don’t blast out this rock!” I exclaimed. “Tear down your schoolhouse -rather. Build a new road through the grounds, but leave this stone. -This is part of a great book.” - -“I don’t understand,” said the supervisor. - -“Here is written a page of the greatest story ever penned. These lines -were done by the hand of the glacier who came this way in the Ice Age. -Don’t blot it out. Put a fence about it, and a copper plate upon it, -translating the story so that your students can read it and understand.” - -He did. There was no need of the fence; but he set the plate into the -rock, telling of the Ice Age, how the glacier came down, ploughing out -the valley of the Kennebec, rounding and smoothing this ledge, and -inditing this manuscript for Good-Will Farm School ages later. - -So much does the mere scratch of science enhance the virtue of a stone! -Now add to your science history. Instead of the scratch of a glacier, -let it be a chisel and a human hand, and let the marks be--“1620.” Now -read--if you can read and understand. - -I copy it verbatim from a Freshman college theme: - - PLYMOUTH ROCK - - Plymouth Rock is situated in Plymouth Mass. It is the rock upon which - the Mayflower landed in 1620. But it is not now where it was then. It - was moved many years ago up to the street. And when they moved it it - broke. But they cemented it together. It is four or five feet long; - and three or four feet wide; and it is inscribed with the famous - figures 1620, to celebrate the landing of the Puritans at that time. - It is enclosed within a canopy of stone and an iron fence; but the - gate is hardly ever closed. There are a great many famous stones in - the world but this is as famous as any. - -My mother was visiting me. She is a self-contained old Quaker, and -this was the second time in all of her eighty years that she had -even seen New England! What should we do first? What did she most -desire to see? “Take me to see Plymouth Rock first,” she said; and we -were off, mother as excited and as lively as a girl. As we entered -Plymouth, however, I noticed that mother had grown silent, and that -her doctor-daughter, beside her on the back seat, always sensitive to -her moods, was also silent. We descended the hill to the harbor, came -on in sight of the canopy over the Rock, and slowed down to stop. But -the car had not stopped, when mother, the back door open, her foot on -the running-board, was stepping off and through the open gate, where, -falling on her knees, with tears running down her face, she kissed the -blessed stone, her daughter calling, “O Mother, the germs! the germs!” - -When Science and Religion thus clash, Science must give way. Mother -knew as much about germs as her doctor-daughter. She had lived longer -than her daughter; she had lost more, and had loved more--some things -more than life itself. - -Science has marked every rock; but only those that are wet with such -tears and kissed with such lips are ripe for sermon and song. These are -the eyes and these the lips of those, who, passing through Bacca, make -it a well. Knowledge alone, though it course the very heavens, will -come back to earth without so much as one shining fleck of stardust in -its hair. - -The other day a great astronomer was delivering a lecture in Boston -on the stars. Wonder and awe held the audience as it traveled the -stellar spaces with the help of the astounding pictures on the screen. -The emotion was deep; the tension almost painful as the lecturer swept -on and on through the unthinkable vast, when, coming to his close, he -turned and asked lightly, “Now, what do you think of immortality? Is it -anything more than the neurotic hope of a very insignificant mote in -this immensity?” - -The effect was terrific. The scientific smiled. The simple left the -hall dazed and stunned. They lost all sense of time and space, they -lost sight of the very stars in this swift, far fall. They had been -carried up through the seven spheres to the very gate of heaven, -then hurled to earth. The lecture failed--not of instruction, not of -emotion, but of will, leaving the listeners powerless and undone. The -lecturer may be right--for astronomy; and yet be quite wrong, for -poetry. He may have uttered the last word--for science; but this end is -only the beginning for religion. - -How much greater an astronomer this college professor than that -shepherd psalmist on the far-off Syrian hills! Ranging the same astral -field as our scientist, sweeping the same stellar spaces, with only a -shepherd’s knowledge, the psalmist’s thought takes the same turn as the -scientist’s, down to man, but on different wings,--the wings of poetry: - - “When I consider thy heavens, - The work of thy fingers, - The moon and the stars - Which thou hast ordained; - What is man, that thou art mindful of him? - And the son of man, that thou visitest him?” - -Then, swinging upward on those mighty wings, past the reach of science, -out of the range of knowledge, up, up to the divinest height ever -touched by human thought, the psalmist-astronomer cries impiously, -exultantly, - - “For thou hast made him but little lower than God, - And crownest him with glory and honor!” - -This starts where the astronomer stopped. This is religion and -literature. And I have these very stars over my hilltop here in -Hingham! - - - - -CHAPTER IV - -THE DUTY TO DIG - - - - -CHAPTER IV - -THE DUTY TO DIG - - -I - -A young man sat by the roadside, milking. And as he milked, one drove -up in her limousine and stopped and said unto him: - -“Young man, why are you not at the front?” - -The young man milked on, for that was the thing to do. Then, with still -more slackers in her voice, the woman said a second time unto him: - -“Young man, why are you not at the front?” - -“Because, ma’am, the milk is at this end,” he answered. - -And the chauffeur, throwing the clutch of the limousine into third -speed ahead, drove off, thinking. - -But the young man milking had already thought. To milk is to think. If -“darning is premeditated poverty,” then there is no saner occupation -for human hands, none more thought-inducing, unless it be milking. -Anyhow, when the Great War came on, I went over to a neighbor’s and -bought a cow; I made me a new milking-stool with spread sturdy legs; -and I sat down to face the situation calmly, where I might see it -steadily and whole. I had tried the professorial chair; I had tried the -editorial chair; I had even tried that Siege Perilous, the high-backed, -soft-seated chair of plush behind the pulpit. I may never preach again; -but if I do, it will be on condition that I sit on a three-legged -milking stool instead of on that upholstered pillowy throne of plush. - -Whence cometh wisdom? and where is the place of understanding? The -flaming flambeaux on the Public Library say, “The light is in here”; -the [Greek: Ph B K] key in the middle of the professorial waistcoat -says, “It is in here.” But I say, let the flambeaux be replaced by -round-headed stocking-darners, as the sign of premeditated poverty; and -the dangling Key by a miniature milking-stool, as the symbol of the -wisdom that knows which end of a cow to milk. - -Not one of those students in the University who earned [Greek: Ph B -K] last year knew how to milk, and only a few, I believe, of their -professors. One of these, with a Ph.D. from Germany, whose key had -charmed his students across their whole college course, asked me what -breed of cattle heifers were. Might not his teaching have been quite -as practical, had there dangled from his watch-chain those four years, -not this key to the catacombs of knowledge, but a little jeweled -milking-stool? - -I too might wear a key, especially as I came innocently by mine, having -had one _thrust_ upon me; still, as I was born on a farm, and grew up -in the fields, and am likely to end my days as I have lived them, here -in the woods, this [Greek: Ph B K] key does not fit the lock to the -door of knowledge that opens widest to me. - -I have read a little on the aorist tense, and on the Ygdrasyl tree; -a little, I say, on many things, from the animal aardvark, here and -there, to zythum, a soft drink of the ancient Egyptians, picking a few -rusty locks with this skeleton key; but the doors that open wide at my -approach are those to my house, my barn, and the unwithholding fields. -I know the road home, clear to the end; I know profoundly to come in -when it rains; and I move with absolute certainty to the right end of -the cow when it is time to milk. - -I am aware of a certain arrogance in this, a show of pride, and that -unbottomed pomp of those who wear the [Greek: Ph B K] key dangling at -their vests,--as if I could milk _any_ cow! or might have in my barn -the world’s champion cow! I have only a grade Jersey in my barn; and as -for milking heifers with their first calves--I _have_ milked them. But -breaking in a heifer is really a young man’s job. - -So I find myself at the middle of my years, stripped of outward signs, -as I hope I am inwardly purged, of all vain shows of wisdom (quite too -humble, truly!), falling in as unnaturally as the birds with the fool -daylight-saving plan, the ways of the sun, who knoweth his going down, -being quite good enough for me. - - -II - -But how far run the ways of nature from the devious ways of men! The -ways of Mullein Hill from the ways of a military camp! The Great War -came and passed and left the earth a vast human grave. But through it -all seedtime and harvest came to Mullein Hill, leaving only more and -more abundant life. The Great War is an illustration on the grandest -scale of what man, departing from the simple ways of nature, will do to -man. War is the logic of our present way of living. I am not concerned -with war in this book, but with the sources of life and literature. I -have a cure for war, however, here on Mullein Hill; and this cure is -the very elixir of life and literature. - -War could have destroyed, but it did not change, my going or coming -here in the hills. My garden went on as it had for years gone on. There -was a little more of it, for there was more need in the village; there -was a little larger yield of its reasonableness and joy and beans. But -I did not plough up my front lawn for potatoes. Years before I had -provided myself with a back yard, and got it into tilth for potatoes, -keeping the front lawn green for the cow. - -Though she is only a grade Jersey, the cow is a pretty creature, -and gives a rural, ruminant touch to our approach, along with the -lilacs and the hens. Hitched here on the front lawn the cow suggests -economy, too. She is more than a wagon hitched to a star. She is a -mowing-machine, and a rake and tedder, and a churn. The gods with her -do my mowing, gather up and cure my hay, and turn it into cream. - -Every cow gives some skim milk--which we need for the chickens, for -cooking, and cottage cheese. Life is not all cream. If I speak of gods -doing my chores, I will say they do not milk for me in the mornings, -and that it is one of the boys who milks at night. A cow clipping your -lawn is poetry and cream too, but caring for the creature is often skim -milk and prose. Milking ought to be done regularly. Get a cow and you -find her cud a kind of pendulum to all creation, the time to milk being -synchronized twice daily to the stars. - -I did not plant war-potatoes on my front lawn, partly because they -would not grow there, and partly because, in times of peace, I had -prepared for war-potatoes; and partly because I think a front lawn -looks better in cows than in potatoes. If thou shouldst - - “So live, that when thy summons comes to join - The innumerable caravan ... - Thou go not, like the quarry-slave at night, - Scourged to his dungeon,” - ---should we not all live so that, when war comes, we need not plough up -the beds for potatoes where the portulaca and poppy ought to blow? - -But what a confession here! When war comes! As if I expected war to -come again! Many of us are fighting feebly against both the thought and -the hideous thing. But many more are preparing for it. Our generals of -the late war are going up and down the land preaching preparedness, -as they always have. We learn nothing. They know everything. Their -profession is war. Can a man lay down his life for a profession he does -not believe in? The military men believe in war. - -But so do we all as a people. War is the oldest, most honored -profession in the world. In all of the fifty years of its history, the -great University, of which, for almost half of that time, I have been a -teacher, had never conferred an honorary degree. For fifty years it had -carried a single laurel wreath in its hand to crown some honored head. -Prophets came and went; poets came and went; scientists came and went; -scholars came and went; but still the University, dedicated to life -and learning, waited with its single wreath a yet more honorable brow. - -Then came Foch, the professional soldier. Study for nearly ten thousand -students was suspended; a holiday was proclaimed; a great assembly was -called; and here, with speech and song and academic garb, with national -colors mingling and waving palms, the laurel wreath was placed upon -the soldier’s brow. And this University, founded in the name of the -Prince of Peace, dedicated to Christian life and learning, crowned the -profession of arms as it can crown no other profession, and gave its -highest sanction to bloody war. - -I do not fail of gratitude to Foch. I only stand in horror that he is, -and had to be. I would have had the Nation at the pier to meet him, -but clothed in sackcloth, and every citizen with ashes on his head. I, -too, would have suspended study and work everywhere for an hour; and, -stretching crape across the Arctic Circle till the sign of mourning -hid Matamoras and Cape Sable, I would have called an assembly of the -continent, and begged this half of the hemisphere to cry, “O God, the -foolishness and futility of war!” - -The Duty to Dig is older than the practice of war. It was designed to -prevent war; and to-day it is the only biological remedy certain to -cure war. I must not stop here to explain its therapeutics as applied -to war, for I am dealing with another theme. But just before the war -broke upon the world, I wrote an editorial for a paper I was serving, -advocating that a hive of my bees be sent to the German Emperor and -one also to the war lord of Austria. I had extra hives for the British -Prime Minister, the Tiger of France, Mr. William Randolph Hearst, and -Mr. Theodore Roosevelt. If I could have interested these gentlemen, and -a few others, in bee-keeping, I could save the world from war. - -The editorial and the offer of bees were both rejected by the careful -editor. “I must stay strictly neutral,” was his timid excuse. At the -very time I was writing, the Reverend Price Collier, a former Hingham -preacher, was publishing a book called “Germany and the Germans,” -in which he set forth the old theory of military preparedness as a -preventive of war. Speaking of the German army (this was in 1913), he -says: - - It is the best all-round democratic university in the world; it is - a necessary antidote for the physical lethargy of the German race; - it is essential to discipline; it is a cement for holding Germany - together; it gives a much-worried and many-times-beaten people - confidence; the poverty of the great bulk of its officers keeps - the level of social expenditure on a sensible scale; it offers a - brilliant example, in a material age, of men scorning ease for the - service of their country; it keeps the peace in Europe; and until - there is a second coming of a Christ of pity and patience and peace, - it is as good a substitute for that far-off divine event as puzzled - man has to offer. - -It is a minister of the Gospel who makes this profound observation. -But it sounds like our present Secretary of War, a banker, and like -our present Commanding General, a professional soldier. Here is sure -proof that the human race cannot learn the essential things, and so, is -doomed. - -But I wish I might try my bees. This old hoax of preventing war by -preparing men to fight has been so often tried! And we are at it again. -But no nation has tried my simple and inexpensive substitute of bees -and plough-shares, and pruning hooks. They have tried, from time out -of memory, to beat their swords and spears into garden tools, but a -sword makes a mighty poor ploughshare. It has never been successfully -done. The manufacturing process is wrong. It takes the temper out of -good garden steel first to heat it in the fires of war. We must reverse -the process: turn the virgin metal into garden steel first, and give -every man a hoe, and a ploughshare, and a pruning hook; then he will -never have need for sword and spear. - - -III - -Instead of universal military training, I would advocate a hive of -bees for everybody, or a backyard garden. A house should have both -lawn and garden, even though the gooseberries crowd the house out to -the roadside, where the human house instinctively edges to see the -neighbors in their new pony-coats go by. Let my front door stand open; -while over the back stoop the old-fashioned roses and the grape-vines -draw a screen. - -But give me a house with a yard rather than a hole in the wall, a city -tenement, or a flat. The whole trend of society is toward the city, or -camp, military, rather than agricultural. The modern city is a social -camp. Life is becoming a series of mass movements, military maneuvers, -at the command of social leaders. Industry has long been militarized -both in form and spirit, and is rapidly perfecting its organization. -Today, 1923, there are more than a hundred different automobile -manufacturing concerns in this country. Only those capable of “quantity -production” will survive. Already the manufacturers see the entire -industry reduced to five different concerns. This is strictly military, -the making of society into a vast, and vaster machine, which, too great -at last for control, will turn upon and crush its makers. - -We are all conscripted. The Draft Board of industrialism allows no -exemptions. The only way I see is to desert, to take to the woods, as -I have done, to return individually to a simple, elemental manner of -life out of the soil. But who can pay the social cost? Our social or -camp psychology is better understood and more easily handled than the -mind of the lone scout within us. We are gregarious by nature; we hunt -in packs, we collect into crowds. Yet we are selves, separate, single, -each of us a cave-man as well as cliff-dweller, a Remus as well as a -Romulus. The city-building brother killed his country brother. And the -murder still goes on. - -Out of a commentary on the Bible I take the following observation, -partly for its charm, but also because it holds a profound truth: - - God’s people from the earliest time had never been builders of - cities. The earliest account of city-building is that of the city of - Enoch by Cain, and all the subsequent mention of city-building is in - connection with the apostate families of the earth, such as Nimrod - and his descendants, the Canaanites and the Egyptians. Sodom is one - of the earliest mentioned cities properly so called, and the story of - it is not encouraging for the people of God. - -But which is the city whose story is encouraging to the people of -God? Not Boston’s, nor New York’s, nor London’s, nor Vienna’s. Vienna -is starving; the country is bankrupt Austria’s governmental machine -is a total wreck; but the peasant goes his way, suffering little -inconvenience, though the crown is not to-day worth the paper it is -printed on. The peasant lives on the land, not on the bank; he gets -his simple life directly out of the soil instead of a pay envelope; he -has no New York, New Haven and Hartford stock, worth one hundred and -eighty-six dollars yesterday, and ten dollars to-day, to-morrow, and -until he starves. He has a piece of land and, impossible as it sounds -on paper, lives on it, and out of it, and in it, an almost independent -life, as the wage-slave and the coupon-victim cannot live. - -We shall face a famine, so long as our door-yards are all lawn in -front and all garbage-can behind. We have farmers enough--one to every -eight of our population, I believe--who might produce sufficient raw -potatoes; but Aroostook County is barely contiguous to the United -States, and such a barrage of frost was laid down across its borders -this last winter that, if one brought potatoes out of Aroostook between -December and March, he had to bear them in his bosom. - -Aroostook County is the greatest potato-patch in the world; the -American imagination loves to hover over the tubered tracts of -Aroostook, the _richest_ county in the world; loves to feel that the -world could be fed from Aroostook, were it not for the triple alliance -of the cold and the contiguity and a railroad that runs, if not like -a broken tooth, then like a foot out of joint, into these remote -dreamlands of Maine. - -Woe to them that go down to the railroads for help; and stay on engines -and trust in empties, because they are many; and in officials, because -they are very strong. Now the officials are men and not God, and their -engines steel and not spirit. Why should a rational, spiritual human -society trust its well-being to such paltry powers, when all the forces -of nature are at its command? - -I will put more trust in an acre of land than in a Continental -Congress. I had rather have a hoe at my right hand than an army of -bank presidents. Give me the rising and the setting sun, the four -seasons, and the peasant’s portion; and you may have the portion of the -president. - -I said we have farmers enough to raise all we need. We have more -than enough. We have more than enough bankers; more than enough -automobile-makers; more than enough store-keepers; more than enough -coal-miners; more than enough cooks and janitors. But we have nowhere -near enough landowners and peasants. Nothing in the world would so -straighten out society as to declare next year a Year of Jubilee, and -give every man, not a job, but his birthright, a piece of land. - -We are over-organized and almost de-individualized. But the time must -again come when every man shall dig and every woman spin, and every -family build its own automobile, distill its own petrol, and work out -its taxes on the road. We shall always hold to the social principle of -the division of labor--I plough for you; and you shoe my horse for me. -But we have carried the principle, in our over-organization, to the -point where a man’s whole part in the world’s work consists in putting -on the left hind wheel of endless automobiles. - -An eight-hour day will not save that man. And he is typical of all men -to-day. Only by his acceptance of the duty to dig can he be saved, -and society with him. The principle of the division of labor has been -misapplied: instead of specialization and the narrowing of each man’s -portion, it should be applied broadly, multiplying his labors. Work is -creative; it is self-expression; and I should let no man do for me -what I can do. He robs me of living who robs me of doing. - -The theory of present-day society--specialization, organization, -combination, quantity production--is a fatal application of a perfectly -sound principle. Six automobile combinations which in a year can -destroy a hundred lesser combinations, can in another year destroy all -but one of each other; and that remaining one, having nothing now to -destroy, must turn and destroy itself. - - -IV - -But I am concerned with life and literature. How does the organization -of society affect books, admitting that it affects life? What is a book -but a life?--and a more abundant life? Everybody who has lived has a -book to write. But only those who have lived abundantly should write -their books. Starve a nation spiritually, as ours is being starved; -reduce its life to a mechanical routine; rob its labor of all creative -quality, and how shall it write? - -The duty to dig applies first to the spirit. There is sound economy in -it if one’s political economy is sound. I do not say money. Economy -and money are not equivalent terms. I digged as a duty last year; and -as a result I did not buy a potato from the “combine” in Maine; I -nearly got on without a pound of beef from Chicago; and could have made -my honey serve for Cuban sugar. The same amount of time spent putting -left hind wheels on automobiles might have brought me more money, and -so, more beef and potatoes and sugar, and so, more gout and rheumatism. -The duty to dig comprehends a great deal more than ordinary economy. - -I would not imply that I can handle the Beef Trust and the potato -pirates and the sugar barons with my humble hoe; or snap my fingers -in the face of Standard Oil, and say, “Go to, I’ll have none of your -twenty-eight-cent gas!” I do say that several million bee-keepers and -potato-patchers, and hen-coopers, keeping busy in their back yards, as -I keep busy in mine, could mightily relieve the railroad congestion, -and save gasoline, and cut in on the demand for Chicago beef and -cold-storage eggs, and generally lower the high cost of living. - -It is not because there are “millions in it” that I would have the -banker plant his back yard to beans. Thoreau planted two acres and -a half to beans and potatoes (on a weak market, however), with a -“pecuniary profit of $8.71-1/2.” Here is no very great financial -inducement to a busy banker, or to a ward boss. Still, who better than -the ward boss or the banker could afford a private beanfield? - -I say it is not for the sake of this $8.71-1/2 profit of Thoreau’s that -we must dig; but rather for that chapter on the bean field in Walden -Pond, which proves the real worth of digging. - -There can hardly be a form of labor so elemental, so all-demanding, -so abundantly yielding of the fruits of life, as digging. Yet there -are those who doubt the wisdom of digging because things can be bought -cheaper at the store; and those who question their right to dig when -they can hire a man to dig for them; and there are those who hate to -dig, who contemn duty, who, if they plant, will plant a piece of fallow -land with golf-balls only, and hoe it with brassies, niblicks, cleeks, -and spooners, saying with Chaucer’s Monk: - - “... how shall the world be servèd? - Let Austyn have his swynk to his reservèd.” - -Golf is an ancient game, no doubt, but not so old as gardening, though -golf’s primordial club and vocabulary seem like things long left over, -bits of that Missing-Link Period between our arboreal and cave-day -past. Except for calling the cows from the meadow, or fighting in -war, there is nothing we do that requires words and weapons, tools, -instruments, implements, utensils, apparatus, machinery, or mechanisms -so lacking in character and comeliness as the words and clubs of -golf. The gurglings of infants seem articulate, even to unparental -ears, compared with the jargon of golf; and as for billiard-cues, -baseball-bats, pikes, spades, shillalahs, and teething-rings, they have -the touch of poetry on them; whereas the golf-club was conceived and -shaped in utter unimaginativeness. - -Golf is not an ancient game: it has the mark of the Machine upon it; -the Preadamites could not have figured the game out. Gardening, on -the other hand, if we trust Holy Writ, was an institution founded -before the Fall, incorporated with the social order from the start--an -inherent, essential element in the constitution of human things: - - “Great nature’s _primal_ course, - Chief nourisher in life’s feast,” - ---which civilization doth murder as Macbeth murdered sleep. - -Golf belongs to civilization strictly, not to the human race, being one -of life’s post-Edenic precautions, like psychopathic hospitals, jails, -and homes for the feeble-minded. A golf course is a little-wanderers’ -home; and if we must have golf courses, let their hazards be carefully -constructed on worthless land, and let the Civil Service Board examine -the caddies, whether they be fit guards for the golfers, lest some -small boy be wasted who might have tended real sheep on Norfolk Downs -or have weeded in a garden. - -It is a duty to dig, to nail the Stars and Stripes to a lima-bean pole, -and plant the banner square in the middle of the garden. Profits? -pleasures? Both sorts will grow, especially the pleasures, which really -are part of the profits, till they fairly smother the weeds; not the -least of these being your sense of living and your right to live, -which comes out of actually hoeing your own row--a literal row of -beans or corn or tomatoes. - -Somebody must feed the soldiers; but nobody must needs feed me. It is -not necessary that I live, however necessary I find it to eat; eating, -like sleeping and breathing and keeping warm, being strictly a private -enterprise that nobody but I need see as necessary or be responsible -for. - -The soldier must carry a shovel nowadays, but he will require a -hoe, too, and a pruning hook, and a ploughshare, before he will be -self-supporting. With such a kit war could support war forever, -which is the Rathenau plan of war, with everything German left out, -consequently everything of war left out. The soldier cannot feed -himself. The crew of a battleship cannot be expected to catch their own -cod and flounders. They must leave that to the trawlers, those human -boats, with human crews who fish for a living. Men of the navy must -die for a living. The captain of a United States destroyer, writing -to his wife, says, “I think that the only real anxiety is lest we -may not get into the big game at all. I do not think that any of us -are bloodthirsty or desirous of glory or advancement, but we have to -justify our existence.” - -So does every human being; yet an existence that can be justified -only by fighting and dying is too unproductive, too far from -self-supporting, to warrant the sure calling and election of many of -us. No Grand-Banker ever wrote so to his wife, though he might be -returning with all his salt unwet; no college professor ever wrote -so--not if he could get into his garden--in spite of his pupils, his -college president, the trustees, and Mr. Carnegie’s Efficiency Board. -Teaching may not justify a professor’s existence, though it ought to -justify his salary; so, every time I start for the University, I put a -dozen or two of eggs into my book-bag, that I may have a right to the -tree of life, and may enter in through the gates into the city. - -I am not independent of society. I do not wish to be independent. I -wish to be debtor to all and have all debtors to me. But we buy too -much and sell too much of life, and raise too little. We _pay_ for all -we get. Sometimes we get all we pay for, but not often; and if we never -did, still life has so thoroughly adopted the business standard, that -we had rather keep on paying than trying to grow our way. - -Business is a way of living by proxy; money is society’s proxy for -every sort of implement and tool. To produce something, however--some -actual wealth, a pennyweight of gold-dust, a pound of honey, a dozen -eggs, a book, a boy, a bunch of beets; some real wealth out of the -soil, out of my loins, out of my brains, out of my muscles and the sap -of the maple, the rains and sunshine and the soil, out of the rich -veins of the earth or the swarming waters of the sea--this is to be; -and to be myself, and not a proxy, is to lose my life and save it, and -to justify my existence. - -I have to buy a multitude of things--transportation, coal, dentistry, -news, flour, and clothes. I have paid in money for them. I have also -paid in real wealth, having given, to balance my charge on society, an -equivalent in raw cabbage, pure honey, fresh eggs, and the like, from -my own created store. I am doubtless in debt to society, but I have -tried to give wealth for wealth, not the symbol of it merely; and last -year, as I balanced my books, I think the world was in debt to me by -several bunches of beets. I do not boast of the beets, though they take -me out of the debtor’s prison where most of us live. I can face the -world, however, with those beets; I have gone over the top, have done -my bit, with beets. - -The oldest duty on the human conscience is the duty to dig. I am a -college teacher, and that is an honorable, if futile, profession. The -Scriptures say: “He gave some, apostles; and some, prophets; and some, -evangelists; and some, pastors and teachers”; but, before there were -any such multifarious and highly specialized needs, it was said unto -our first father: “Replenish the earth and subdue it”--a universal -human need, a call to duty, from which no Draft Board of civilization -can rightly exempt us. - -Wealth is not created, not even increased, in trade. When was one -pennyweight of gold on ’change by any magic metallurgy of trade made -two pennyweight? The magic of the second pennyweight is the metallurgy -of the pick and shovel and cradle rocking the shining sands of the -Yukon. Real wealth is only circulated in trade. It comes from primal -sources--from the gold-fields, the cotton-fields, the corn-fields, the -fir-clad sides of Katahdin, the wide gray waters of the Grand Banks, -the high valleys of the sheeped Sierras, and from back yards, like -mine, that bring forth thirty- and sixty- and an hundred-fold. - -And this is as profoundly true of life and literature as it is of -cotton and lumber and gold. - -Give me a garden and the wages of hoeing my row. And if not a garden, -then a little house of hens, a coop of pigeons, a colony of bees--even -in the city I should keep bees, if I had to keep them in the attic or -on the roof. Not every one can have a garden, but every one can either -plant a tree, or raise one pig, or keep a cow or goat, or feed a few -hens, or raise a flock of pigeons, or do something that will bring him -personally into contact with real things, and make it possible for him -to help pay his way with real wealth, and in part, at least, to justify -his existence, and his book. - - - - -CHAPTER V - -THE MAN AND THE BOOK - - - - -CHAPTER V - -THE MAN AND THE BOOK - - -Here on my desk lies a new book entitled, “For the Benefit of My -Creditors,” the autobiography of Hinckley Gilbert Mitchell, a scholar, -a teacher in a school of theology--and now this book, a simple, -sad book of human struggle and defeat, of spiritual and scientific -adventure and triumph and romance. - -The scholar is not the accepted stuff of literature. What of human -interest can come out of a classroom? Yet I have seen this scholar’s -classroom when it was wilder than ten nights in a barroom crowded into -one. I have seen some lively and human times in my own classroom; and -I know that there is as real a chance, and as magical a chance, there -as Dana found on the high seas. There are frontiers for the scholar, -especially in theology, as dangerous in their crossing as any to be met -with by the overland pioneer. - -Dana escaped from the decorous and the conventional life of social -Boston by way of the deep sea; Mitchell escaped from the decorous and -conventional dogma of his church by way of honest study; and his Church -tried him for heresy, and found him guilty, and would have burned him -at the stake had that been the decorous and conventional manner of -dealing with heretics at the moment. As it was, they only branded him, -and cast him out as a thing unclean. - -Perhaps that is not a life human enough, and abundant enough, for a -book. It is the simple story of a poor boy picking stones and building -walls on his father’s farm in New York State; then, as Director of the -American School of Oriental Research in Jerusalem, rebuilding “The -Wall of Nehemiah”; then, as scholar and professor, re-creating “The -World before Abraham”; and finally, as the storm center of one of -the bitterest theological controversies of recent years, dismissed, -dishonored, betrayed for less than thirty pieces of silver, a silent, -brokenhearted man. It is only another version of an old and very common -story. Prophets and pioneers are all alike; and their stories are much -alike, whether the pages turn westward, where new empires take their -way, or eastward, back along the scholar’s crossed and tangled trails -to a world before Abraham. - -As the manuscript of the book lay upon my table, I wondered if any -publisher would feel the human pathos of the struggle, and the mighty -meaning of it all for truth. Who would publish it? But here it is, -printed and bound, a book--“For the Benefit of My Creditors,” as if he -were debtor to all, his enemies included, and owed them only love. - -This is as modest and self-withholding a story as a man ever told of -himself. There are all too few of such human stories. This one would -never have been told had the author not hated intellectual cowardice -as he hated moral cowardice, with a perfect hatred. He sought the -truth--in the Bible, and in his own mind. The geologist seeks some -of the same truth in the rocks; the astronomer in the stars. The Old -Testament was this scholar’s field. And, laying aside tradition and the -spirit of dogma, he sought as a scientist seeks, patiently, fearlessly, -reverently, for what his long and thorough preparation made him -eminently able to find. - -This is the highest type of courage and daring. Who finds truth finds -trial and adventure. In his condemnation by the bishops of his Church, -he felt that truth had been assailed and the scientific method. He did -not write this book to defend the truth, nor to defend himself; but to -examine himself, as he would examine a difficult fragment of Hebrew -manuscript, and make himself easy for other men to read. - -His trial was long past, and most of his life had been lived, before a -page of his book was written. He came at it reluctantly: he might seem -personal--petty or selfish or egotistical; or he might say something -bitter and vindictive and do harm to the Church. But neither himself -nor his Church must stand in the way of truth; and in his trial, truth -had been tried, and the only way of knowing truth had been condemned. -So he sits down to write this story of his life exactly as he sat down -to write a commentary on the Book of Genesis--to account for his being -as a man and a scholar, his preparation, his methods of study, his -attitude, and approach. - -How much truth has he discovered? He makes no claims. Darwin may or may -not have the truth about Evolution; but we have a certain and a great -truth in Darwin--in his mind and method. It was _how_ Darwin tried to -solve the problem of life and its forms, rather than the solution, that -has changed the thinking of the world. - -For three years I was a student of Hebrew and Old Testament Exegesis -under this scholar. I have forgotten all he taught me, and more. But -the _way_ he taught me has changed forever my outlook upon life. His -attitude was truth, and it flooded not only the whole mind, but one’s -whole being, with light. Many a time I have sat in his classroom during -the discussion of some highly difficult and dangerous question of -doctrine, and said to myself, amid the drawn daggers of those who had -come to trap him, “Right or wrong his findings, he is himself truth, -its life and way.” - -Life enough for a book? He could have written a book on teaching. For -he loved to teach! He loved to teach young preachers. He could not -preach; but he was the teacher born. The classroom was his from the -foundation of the world. Here he was preaching truly--from a thousand -future pulpits at the very ends of the earth. He saw his students -scattered over the whole world preaching to the intelligences of men -as well as to their hearts; revealing the wisdom as well as the love -of God; and expounding a diviner Bible because it was a wholly human -Bible. In all of these pulpits he heard himself speaking with tongues -not his own, but the message was his own, the simple sincere faith of -his classroom. - -The thought of it thrilled him. It lifted him up. He dwelt in the -presence of the opportunity as in the very presence of the Most High. -As humble a man as ever lived, doubting his every power and gift, and -relying only on the truth to make him free, he would come into the -classroom and take his chair on the six-inch platform, which raised -him by so much above his students, as if that platform were the Mount -of Transfiguration. His face would shine; his voice, his gestures, his -attitude working with his careful words, made his whole being radiant -with zeal for the truth and love for us, his students, so mysteriously -given to his care. - -Then suddenly, after more than twenty years of this, he was -expelled--driven from this sacred classroom and branded as unsound, -unsafe, unfit! - -No, not suddenly. It was only the verdict of his judges that came -suddenly. No one nowadays could prepare his mind for a judgment like -that. For five or six of the years, during which the trouble-makers, -under pretense of study, had elected his courses at the Theological -School, I had either been a student under him or his close and -sympathetic friend. I knew, as he knew, that his enemies would stop at -nothing in their bitter zeal; still, I remember vividly the utter shock -and astonishment of the bishops’ decision. And I remember--for I cannot -forget--its strange numbing effect upon him. It came over him slowly, -else I think he might have died. It crept upon him like a dreadful -palsy, leaving him dazed and dumb. He was too simple a man to realize -it quickly, too entirely single in mind and heart to realize it wholly. -It slowly crushed him to the earth. And never in all the after years -was he whole again. His heart was broken. He rose up and taught, until -the very hour of his death, but never again in his old classroom nor -with his old spirit. Day after day he would pass by the Theological -School with its hundreds of eager students; he would see them gathering -at the hour of his lecture; but another teacher (one whom he had -trained) would come in and take his place, while he plodded down the -street and on, a shepherd without his sheep. - -Meantime he was called to teach in another graduate school. He welcomed -this new work. He found honor, and love, and fellowship among his new -colleagues. They gave him freedom. They created a place for him that -had not been before. He could teach what he wished and as he wished. -It was enough for them to have him among them, and many a time he told -me of how unworthy he felt of all this love and honor in his declining -years, and how it had stayed and steadied him in his deep defeat. But -they did not need him here--so he felt. It was more for the honor of -scholarship than for the good he would do them. But he felt that they -did need him at his own beloved school, whose policies he had helped to -shape, whose spirit he had helped to create, whose name and fame he -had so largely helped to establish, and whose students, crowding in -from the east and from the great west, he longed to take into his heart -and his home, as for so many happy years he had been in the habit of -doing. - -“O Jerusalem, Jerusalem,” he would cry as he passed by on the street, -a stranger, and saw the students going in and out, “O Jerusalem, -Jerusalem, which killeth the prophets, ... how often would I have -gathered thy children together, even as a hen gathereth her chickens -under her wings, and ye would not!” - -This, however, was not the doing of the school. Faculty and students, -with the exception of those few who came for the express purpose of -accusing him, were loyal. The president of the University, his close -friend, was loyal, and did all that lay in his power to prevent the -iniquity of the trial and the decision. This only added to the tragedy. -To have been tried by his peers and co-laborers, by those who knew -him and the field of his labors, would have been perfectly fair, but -to be accused by three or four narrow-minded students (one of whom -recanted later and all of whom deserve oblivion), who had come with -malice aforethought, whose very presence in the school was a lie, to be -accused by such as these, I say, and then tried by a board of judges, -to whom he was largely a stranger, not one of whom probably was his -equal as a scholar in the field involved--this made the shame to the -school, to himself, and to truth, doubly deep and sore. - -There remained one thing more for him to do; and as soon as he could do -it kindly, as a Christian, and dispassionately, as a scholar, without -bias or prejudice or any personal ends except the ends of gratitude -and truth, he set about his autobiography. And I wonder if, among -autobiographies, there is another that approaches his for detachment, -restraint, and self-negation; for absolute adherence to the facts for -the sake of the truth involved, a truth not of self at all, but wholly -of scholarship? This is more of a thesis than an autobiography--as if -the author were writing of another “Wall of Nehemiah,” and no more -involved in it, personally, than he was present in “The World before -Abraham”! - -This is one of the most remarkable evidences of severe and scientific -scholarship that I have ever seen; and it is equal evidence of the -inherent literary value of human life. No accusing word is here, -nothing bitter and unchristian. But just the opposite: “For the -Benefit of My Creditors” is a work of love. His very character had -been assailed by his enemies, but this, while it hurt, could not harm -him. He stood upon his conscious integrity, calm and silent. It was -not the attack upon himself that concerned him. It was that Truth had -been attacked. It was an attempt to make the Bible a denominational -book; to confound truth with tradition and give it a doctrinal color -or a denominational slant. The Church may compel its _theologians_ to -do that if it has to, but its scholars, those who discover truth, it -should leave free. God and truth are not denominational, nor Protestant -nor Catholic nor Hebrew. God is truth, and single or separate, God -and Truth belong to the fearless, the frank, and the pure--in science -not more than in religion. For “are ye not as the children of the -Ethiopians unto me, O children of Israel?... Have not I brought up -Israel out of the land of Egypt, and the Philistines from Caphtor, and -the Syrians from Kir?” - -I recall the day we came upon that wonderful passage in Amos in -our study of this prophet; and how for the first time in my life -the universality of truth dawned upon me out of that passage. I -had had a tribal, denominational God, up to that time. I had been -seeing different kinds of truth--like the different tribes of old in -Palestine--warring truths, each with its own territory, its own grip -upon me, when suddenly, as the “Rabbi” opened up this mighty saying -of Amos, I saw one God of us all, one truth for us all, and all of -us searching, under God’s leading, for the truth. Henceforth the -Philistines and the Syrians and the children of Israel were to be as -the Ethiopians to me, as they are to God--all of us led by him, and all -of us free. No teacher ever taught me a diviner lesson than that. - -It was not a body of truth that this great teacher was called to -expound. It was the spirit of truth--the desire for truth, the search -for truth, the nature of truth, _that it is God_--this was his high -calling. And in condemning him, his Church was confounding tradition -and truth, blocking the road to truth, and threatening, in this -example of him, to punish the daring who discover and bring us forward -into new realms of truth. In his trial and condemnation the Church was -saying: “Study, but study to perpetuate the past; to preserve the old; -to defend doctrine, and establish tradition. We have the truth, the -whole truth, and nothing but the truth. No new light can possibly break -forth from God’s word, or from any word. Revelation is closed. And if -you think you have new light, hide it, and if you discover new truth, -do not publish it, do not teach it, for among the three hundred men in -your school there are three who have closed their minds to light and -truth, and have sworn by all the past to keep them closed; and it would -jeopardize the Church if you should pry those three minds open to the -light and to the truth of to-day.” - -These are not his words. There is a tang of bitterness in them. They -are mine. Yet it was partly because he believed that the Church meant -to make him a warning to all scholars and honest thinkers within its -fold, that he set about his autobiography, which he died writing. - -“Rabbi,” we students called him affectionately, and strangely enough -he seemed to look the part. He was the thorough scholar. Careful, -methodical by nature, he was severely trained, and to all of this he -added a profound reverence for the Book which was his life’s study, -and felt a deep sense of his responsibility as its teacher. Had his -life’s task been a haystack with one single needle of divine truth lost -within it, he would have tirelessly taken it down, straw by straw, for -the needle of truth, just as Madame Curie, aware of some mysterious -power in the crude common bulk of slag, patiently eliminated pound -after pound, ton after ton of the gross elements until she held in her -hand the pulsing particle of radium, hardly larger than the head of a -pin, whose light illumines and almost blinds the groping world. Had -Professor Mitchell not been a student of the Bible, he might have been -a student of chemistry, for his methods and his zeal were exactly those -of the discoverer in any field, and it might have been his honor and -glory, as it chanced to be Madame Curie’s, to give radium to the world. - -Instead of glory, his was condemnation and defeat. Yet his very mind -and method, applied anywhere else, would have won him distinction and -honor. There is no other mind or method, except the closed mind and -the method of appeal to authority, as against the trial by experiment -and fact. Truth is truth whether in Theology or in Chemistry, and only -the open mind, the free, the bold, the experimenting mind finds it. -Traditions have to be defended. Truth is its own defense. The mind of -the great scholar is never on the defensive. Let “the Forts of Folly -fall,” he is far over the frontier where there is no need for forts. -So here in his life he writes not to defend himself, but to express -himself, his gratitude; and to explain himself, his position, his -purpose, his principles as to the way of truth. - -Here is a man who was as simple as he was sincere. But simplicity in -a great spirit is the sign, the very expression of sincerity. He was -interested in all human things. He could make wonderful coffee. He -could build a stone wall with the best of masons, and how he used to -tramp the woods with me for mushrooms! - -I was a stranger in Boston and had been in his classes for a week, -perhaps, when I met him downtown. It was a very real pleasure to be -stopped and called by name and quizzed by the great Rabbi. What was I -looking for in Boston? A hammer? “Come along,” he said, turning short -about, “there’s a good hardware store down this street. I’ll go with -you and see that you get a Maydole--a Maydole now--they’re the only -wear in hammers.” I got the Maydole; that was twenty-six years ago; I -have it yet. His was a little act. But I have drawn many a nail with -that hammer. Yea, I have built him a mansion with it. - -I speak of that little thing because it was a characteristic act. The -details of life tremendously interested him. He was entirely human -and as interested in the human side of his students as he was in -their intellectual and spiritual sides. From my study window here in -Hingham as I write, eight stone faces stare at me out of the retaining -wall in the driveway,--big granite chunks of boulder they were in my -meadow years ago. It was the Rabbi who rigged the tackle and helped -me put those stones here in the wall. He could fix a toggle, he could -“cut” and “pize” and “wop” a stone with lever and chain so as to “move -mountains.” “There! There!” he would say, “let the mare do the work; -let the mare do the work,” when I would rush up at a quarter-ton -chunk of solid granite and, bare-handed, try to hustle it on to the -stone-boat. - -He had built stone walls before--back on the hill farm in New York -State, where he was born and had his boyhood. Later he “restored” the -Wall of Nehemiah about Jerusalem, but not with any more zest than he -helped me build with actual stones the retaining wall for my driveway -up Mullein Hill in Hingham. Such is the man. Would he be substance for -a book? - -Theological students are as naturally full of trouble as rag-weeds -are of pollen. They know enough to doubt; they are old enough to be -married; they are poor; and they preach; and they would like to be -pious; but the world and the flesh and the devil are against them. They -are only as good as the average of mankind, but they have more than an -average share of tribulations. They need Hebrew--all of them--which -is one more terrible trouble! But they sorely need human sympathy and -wise counsel, and whether they got Hebrew or failed to get it, never a -man came into the Rabbi’s classroom who did not also enter at the same -moment into his open heart and open home. Classroom and heart and home -belonged to every man who would enter. His capacity for patience in the -classroom was only equaled by the boundless sympathy and the simple -hospitality of his near-by home. - -Is it a wonder that the great body of his students were confounded and -dismayed that he could be tried on some technical point or other and be -ejected from his chair as unfit to teach those who were to preach the -Gospel? - -After the trial the enforced leisure was immediately turned to new -studies and larger literary plans. Fresh fields were opened, too, for -lecturing--in the University of Chicago, in Harvard University; and -then soon came the invitation to join the staff of Tufts Theological -School as a member of the faculty. Life has its compensations and -rewards; and if there was no cure for the mortal wound he had received -at the hands of his brethren in his own Church, this invitation to -Tufts, and the perfect fellowship there to the day he died, was -a compensation and a satisfaction that gave to his life a sweet -reasonableness, completeness, and reward. - -There was no variableness nor shadow caused by turning in his -unhurried life. The loss of his chair did not mean the end of his -creative scholarship. He worked to the last, and was preparing for -the day’s work when death came. He knew our hearts, but we ourselves -hardly knew them till he had gone. Then the swift word reached us, -and we were told that we should see him no more, that he was to be -buried afar with no service of any kind for him here--here where he -had labored so many years! It could not be. On every hand his old -pupils appeared--Methodist, Universalist, Unitarian--in one mind, all -differences forgotten in their single love for the honest scholar, the -direct, the earnest, the sincere teacher, the simple man, whose life -had been devoted to learning and to doing good,--on every hand they app -eared and gave him “The Grammarian’s Funeral.” - - “Thither our path lies; wind we up the heights! - Wait ye the warning? - Our low life was the level’s and the night’s: - He’s for the morning. - Step to a tune, square chests, erect each head, - ’Ware the beholders! - This is our master, famous, calm, and dead, - Borne on our shoulders. - - “This, throws himself on God, and unperplexed - Seeking shall find him. - So, with the throttling hands of death at strife, - Ground he at grammar; - Still, through the rattle, parts of speech were rife: - While he could stammer - He settled _Hoti’s_ business--let it be!-- - Properly based _Oun_-- - Gave us the doctrine of the enclitic _De_, - Dead from the waist down. - - “Here’s the top-peak; the multitude below - Live, for they can, there: - This man decided not to Live but Know-- - Bury this man there? - Here--here’s his place, where meteors shoot, clouds form, - Lightnings are loosened, - Stars come and go! Let joy break with the storm, - Peace let the dew send! - Lofty designs must close in like effects: - Loftily lying, - Leave him--still loftier than the world suspects, - Living and dying.” - - - - -CHAPTER VI - -A JANUARY SUMMER - - - - -CHAPTER VI - -A JANUARY SUMMER - - _When winter winds blow cold and chill - And through the hawthorn howls the gale_ - - -The winter winds were truly cold and chill on this twenty-first of -January here in Massachusetts. And I chance to know they were chill -down along the Delaware this particular January day. I remember many a -January day like this on the wide marshes of the Delaware and in the -big woods along the Maurice River where I was a boy. But I was not -thinking of those days at all here in my New England home, for I was -busy at my desk. - -Some one was at my study door. More than one, for I heard low talking. -Then the door softly opened, and four bebundled boys stood before -me--with an axe, a long-handled shovel, a covered basket, and a very -big secret, which stuck out all over their faces. - -They were not big boys outside. But they were almost bursting inside -with their big secret. They were big with boots and coats and caps and -mittens; and they looked almost like monsters in my study door with -their axe and shovel and big basket. - -“Come on, father,” they whispered (as if _She_ hadn’t heard them -tramping through the hall and upstairs with their kit!), “come on! It’s -mother’s birthday to-morrow, and we’re going after the flowers.” - -“What!” I exclaimed. “Are you going to chop the flowers down with -an axe, and dig them up with a shovel?” And I tried to think what a -chopped-down and dug-up birthday bouquet would look like. But it was -too much for me. - -“You are going to give her a nice bunch of frost flowers,” I said, -feeling about in my puzzled mind for just what was afoot. “If you are -going to give her frost flowers, you had better get the ice-saw, too, -for we shall need a big block of ice to stick their stems in.” - -Not a word of comment! No sign on the four faces that they had even -heard my gentle banter. They knew what they were going to do; and all -they wanted of me was to come along. - -“Hurry up,” they answered, dropping my hip-boots on the floor. “Here -are your scuffs.” - -I hurried up! Scuffs and boots and cap and reefer on in a jiffy, and -the five of us were soon in single file upon the meadow, the dry snow -squealing under our feet, while the little imp-winds, capering fitfully -about us, blew the snowdust into our faces, or catching up the thin -drifts, sent them whirling and waltzing, like ghostly dancers, over the -meadow’s level glittering floor. - -I was beginning to warm up a little; but I was still guessing about the -flowers, and not yet in the spirit of the game. - -We were having a hard winter, and the novelty of zero weather was -beginning to wear off--at least to me. The fact was I had intended -to get the birthday flowers down at the greenhouse in the village. -January is an awkward time to have a birthday, anyhow. June is a much -more reasonable month for birthdays, if you gather wild flowers for -the celebration. The fields are full of flowers in June! But here in -January you must go with an axe and a shovel, mittens, rubber-boots, -and reefers! And I confess I couldn’t make head or tail of this festive -trip. - -It is a lucky man who has boys, or who knows and “trains,” as our New -Englanders say, with boys. They won’t let him freeze up. - -“Come, father,” they say, “get into your scuffs and boots, and hit -the old trail for the woods!” And father drops his pen; bundles up; -“clomps” out in his boots, grumbling at the weather and the boys and -the birthdays and the stiffness in his knees and in his soul--for a -whole hundred yards or more into the meadow! Then he begins to warm up. -Then he takes the axe from one of the boys and looks at its edge, and -“hefts” it; and looks about for a big birthday flower, about the size -of a hundred-year-old oak, to chop down. Something queer is happening -to father. He is forgetting his knees; he is capering about on the -snow; he is getting ahead of the boys; he hardly realizes it, but he is -beginning to feel like a birthday inside of him; and he will soon be in -danger of getting this January day mixed up with the days of June! - -But not right off. I was warming up, I do confess, yet it was a numb, -stiff world about us, and bleak and stark. It was a world that looked -all black and white, for there was not a patch of blue overhead. The -white underfoot ran off to meet the black of the woods, and the woods -in turn stood dark against a sky so heavy with snow as to shut us -apparently into some vast snow cave. A crow flapping over drew a black -pencil-line across the picture--the one sign of life that we could see -besides ourselves. Only small boys are likely to leave their firesides -on such a day; only small boys and those men who can’t grow up. Yet -never before, perhaps, had boys or men ever gone afield on such a tramp -with an axe, a shovel, and a basket. - -Suddenly one of the boys dashed off calling, “Let’s go see if the -muskrats have gone to bed yet!” And trailing after him away we went, -straight across the meadow. I knew what he was after; I could see the -little mound, hardly more than an anthill in size, standing up in the -meadow where the alder bushes and elderberry marked the bend in the -brook. If my farmer neighbor had forgotten a small haycock, when he cut -his rowen, it would have looked about as this muskrat lodge here buried -under the snow. I was glad the boys had seen it. For only a practiced -eye could have discovered it; and only a lover of bleak gray days would -have known what might be alive deep down under its thatch of cat-tails -and calamus here in the silent winter. - -But is there any day in the whole year out of doors that real live boys -and real live girls do not love? or any wild thing that they do not -love--flower or bird or beast or star or storm? - -We crept up softly, and surrounded the lodge; then with the axe we -struck the frozen, flinty roof several ringing blows. Instantly -_one_--_two_--_three_ muffled splashy “plunks” were heard, as three -little muskrats, frightened out of their naps and half out of their -wits, plunged into the open water of their doorways from off their damp -but cozy couch. - -It was a mean thing to do, but not very mean as wild animal life goes. -And it did warm me up so, in spite of the chilly plunge the little -sleepers took! Chilly to them? Not at all, and that is why it warmed -me. To hear the splash of water down under the two feet of ice and snow -that sealed the meadow like a sheet of steel! To hear the sound of -stirring life, and to picture that snug, steaming bed on the top of a -tough old tussock, with its open water-doors leading into freedom and -plenty below! “Why, it won’t be long before the arbutus is in bloom,” -I began to think. I looked at the axe and shovel, and said to myself, -“Well, the boys may know what they are doing, after all, though three -muskrats don’t make a spring or a bouquet.” - -But they did make me warmer inside and outside, too. Warm up your heart -and you soon feel warmer in your fingers and toes. - -We turned back from the muskrats’ lodge and headed again for the woods, -where the flowers must be. Hardly had we reached the cart-path before -another of the boys was off--this time to the left, going rapidly -toward a low piece of maple swamp perhaps a quarter of a mile away. - -“He’s going over to see if Hairy Woodpecker is in his hole,” said the -boys in answer to my question. “Hairy has a winter hole over there in a -big dead maple. Want to see him?” - -Of course I wanted to see him. The only live thing outside of ourselves -that we had seen (we had only _heard_ the muskrats) had been a crow. -Live birds on such days as these one would go far to see. So we all cut -across toward the swamp where the hairy woodpecker reigned solitary in -his bleak domain. - -The “hole” was almost twenty-five feet up in a dead maple stub that had -blown off and lodged against a live tree. The meadow had been bleak -and wind-swept, but the swamp was naked and dead, filled with ice, and -touched with a most forbidding emptiness and stillness. I was getting -cold again, when the boy ahead tapped lightly on the old stub. At the -hole upstairs appeared a head--a fierce black-and-white head, a sharp, -long bill, a flashing eye--as Hairy came forth to fight for his castle. -He was too wise a fighter to tackle all of us, however; so, slipping -out, he spread his wings, and galloped off with a loud wild call that -set all the swamp to ringing. - -It was a thrilling, defiant challenge that set my blood to leaping -again. Black and white, he was a part of the picture; but there was a -scarlet band in the nape of his neck that, like his call, had fire in -it and the warmth of life. - -As his shout went booming through the hollow walls of the swamp, it -woke a blue jay, which squalled back from a clump of pines, then, -wavering out into the open on curious wings--flashing ice-blue and -snow-white wings--he dived into the covert of pines again; and faint, -as if beyond the swamp, the cheep of chickadees! - -If anything was needed up to this moment to change my winter into -spring, it was this call of the chickadees. The dullest day in winter -smiles; the deepest, darkest woods speak cheerfully to me, if a -chickadee is there. And did you ever know a winter day or a dank, -gloomy forest hall without its chickadee? Give me a flower in my -buttonhole and a chickadee in my heart and I am proof against all gloom -and cold. - -“What is all this noise about?” the chickadees came forward asking. It -was a little troop of them, a family of them, possibly, last year’s -children and one, or both, of the parents, hunting the winter woods -together for mutual protection against the loneliness and long bitter -cold. - -How active and interested in life they were! A hard winter? Yes, of -course, but what is the blue jay squawking over, anyhow? And the little -troop of them came to peep into the racket, curious, but not excited, -discussing the disturbance of the solemn swamp in that sewing-bee -fashion of theirs, as if nipping off threads and squinting through -needle-eyes between their running comments. - -They too were gray and black, gray as the swamp beeches, black as the -spotted bark of the birches. And how tiny! But-- - - “Here was this atom in full breath - Hurling defiance at vast death; - This scrap of valor just for play - Fronts the north wind in waistcoat gray”; - -and this is what Emerson says he sings: - - “Good day, good sir! - Fine afternoon, old passenger! - Happy to meet you in these places - Where January brings few faces.” - -And as I brought to mind the poet’s lines, I forgot to shiver, and -quite warmed again to the idea of flowers, especially as one of the -boys just then brought up a spray of green holly with a burning red -berry on it. - -I laid the spray of green holly on the hard white crust of the January -snow. Then I stood a moment and spread my hands out over it to warm -them! It was like a little fire in the snow. The boys laughed at me. -They were warm enough in their mittens. But I had need of more than -mittens to warm my fingers. I had need of a fire,--a fire of green -pointed holly leaves and one glowing, flaming berry, a tiny red hot -coal of summer blazing here in the wide white ashes of the winter. - -We were tacking again now in order to get back on our course, and had -got into the edge of the swamp among the pines when the boy with the -shovel began to study the ground and the trees as if trying to find the -location of something. - -“Here it is,” he said, and began digging through the snow at the foot -of a big pine. I knew what he was after. It was goldthread, and here -was the only spot in all the woods about where we had ever found it, a -spot no larger than the top of a dining-room table. - -Soon we had a fistful of the delicate plants with their evergreen -leaflets and long golden, threadlike roots that, mixed with the red and -green of the partridge-berry in a finger-bowl, make a cheerful winter -bouquet. And here with the goldthread, about the butt of the pine, was -the partridge-berry, too, the dainty vines strung with the beads which -seemed to burn holes in the snow that covered and banked their tiny -fires. - -For this is all that the ice and snow had done. The winter had come -with enough wind to blow out every flame in the maple-tops, and with -enough snow to smother every little fire in the peat-bogs of the swamp; -but peat fires are hard to put out; and here and everywhere the winter -had only banked the fires of summer. Dig down through the snow ashes -anywhere, and the smouldering coals of life burst into blaze. - -When that red-beaded partridge-vine was hastily placed with the -goldthread in the covered basket, and the spray of holly put with -them, a ray of light began to dawn on my snow-clouded mind. Did I -begin to see the bouquet these boys were after? I said nothing. They -said nothing. They were watching me, though, I knew, to see how long I -should stumble blindly on through these glorious January woods, which -were so full of joy for them. - -I say I said nothing. I was thinking hard, however. “Holly, goldthread, -partridge-berry,” I thought to myself. “I see so much of the birthday -bouquet. But what else can they find?” - -The boy with the axe had again gone on ahead. And we were off again -after him, stopping to get a great armful of black alder branches that -were literally aflame with red berries. - -We were climbing a piny knoll when almost at our feet, jumping us -nearly out of our skins, and warming the very roots of our hair, was -a burrrr! burrrr! burrrr! burrrr!--four big partridges--as if four -snow-mines had exploded under us, hurling bunches of brown feathers on -graceful scaling wings over the dip of the hill! - -This was getting livelier all the time. From my study window how dead -and deserted, and windswept and bare the world had looked to me! -Nothing but a live crow winging wearily against the leaden sky! But -out here in the real woods and meadows--partridges, chickadees, hairy -woodpecker, blue jay, and muskrats as well as crows! And then I knew -a certain old apple tree where a pair of screech owls were wintering. -And, as for white-footed mice, I could find them in any stump. Besides, -here were rabbit holes in the snow, and up in a tall pine a gray -squirrel’s nest and-- - -But I was losing sight of the boy with the axe who was leading the -procession. On we went up over the knoll and down into a low bog where -in the summer we gathered high-bush blueberries, the boy with the axe -leading the way and going straight across the ice toward the middle of -the bog. - -My eye was keen for signs, and I soon saw he was heading for a -sweet-pepper bush with a broken branch. My eye took in another bush a -little to the right also with a broken branch. The boy with the axe -walked up to the sweet-pepper bush, and drew a line on the ice between -it and a bush off on the right, pacing off this line till he found the -middle; then he started at right angles from it, and paced off a line -to a clump of cat-tails sticking up through the ice on the flooded bog. -Halfway back on this line he stopped, threw off his coat, and began to -chop a hole about two feet square in the ice. Removing the block of ice -while I looked on, he rolled up his sleeve, and reached down the length -of his arm through the ice water. - -“Give me the shovel,” he said, “it’s down here.” And with a few -dexterous cuts he soon brought to the surface a beautiful cluster of -pitcher-plants, the strange, almost uncanny, leaves filled with muddy -water, but every pitcher of them intact, shaped and veined and tinted -by a master potter’s hand. - -Now at last I fully understood. Now I could see what those boys had -been seeing with their inward eyes all the time. Now I had faith, too. -But how late! The bouquet of flowers was now full. - -We wrapped the wonderful pitcher-plant carefully in newspapers, and put -it into the basket, starting back with our bouquet as cheerfully, and -as full of joy in the season, as we could possible have been in June. - -No, I did not say that we love January as much as we love June. -January here in New England is a mixture of rheumatism, chilblains, -frozen water-pipes, mittens, overshoes, blocked trains, and -automobile-troubles by the hoodsful, whereas any automobile will run in -June. It is so in Delaware and Texas and Oregon, too. - -What I was saying is that we started home all abloom with our -pitcher-plants and goldthread and partridge-berry and holly and glowing -black alder, and all aglow inside with our vigorous tramp, and with -the gray grave beauty of the landscape, and with the stern joy of -meeting and beating the cold, and with the signs of life--of the cozy -muskrats in their lodge beneath the ice-cap on the meadow; with the -hairy woodpecker in his deep warm hole in the heart of a tree; with the -red warm berries in our basket; with the chirping, the capable, the -conquering chickadee accompanying us and singing, - - “For well the soul, if stout within, - Can arm impregnably the skin; - And polar frost my form defied, - Made of the air that blows outside.” - -And actually as we came over the bleak meadow, one of the boys said -that he thought he heard a song-sparrow singing! And I said I thought -the pussy-willows by the brook had opened a little since we had passed -them coming out! And we all declared that the weather had changed, -and that there were signs of a break-up. But the thermometer stood at -fifteen above zero when we got home--one degree colder than when we -started! - -We had had a January thaw, however, and it had come off inside of us, -as the color on the four glowing faces showed. The birthday came off -on the morrow, and I wonder if there ever was a more interesting or a -more loving gift of flowers than those from the January woods? - - - - -CHAPTER VII - -AFTER THE LOGGERS - - - - -CHAPTER VII - -AFTER THE LOGGERS - - -I lay listening to the rain spattering against the fly of the tent and -dripping through the roof of birch leaves upon the sputtering fire and -soaking down into the deep, spongy bottom of the forest--softly, as -soft as something breathing and asleep. The guide and the boy beside -me were asleep, but I had been awakened by the rain. The rain always -wakens me. And in my grave, I think, if I lie sleeping under a roof -of forest leaves, I shall wake and listen when it rains. Before the -stars sang together the primordial waters made music to the rising -land; before the winds came murmuring through the trees the waves were -fingering the sweet-tuned sands strung down the sounding shores; and -before the birds found their tongues, or the crickets their little -fiddles, or even the toad had blown his quavering conch, it had rained! -And when it rained--and not until it rained--the whole earth woke into -song. Mother of music is the water, and, for me, the sweetest of her -daughters is the rain, and never sweeter, not even on the shingles, nor -down the rolled, fevered blades of the standing corn, than in the deep -woods at night upon the low slant roof of your tent. - -But suddenly the singing stopped, and the myriad rain-notes were turned -to feet, tiny, stirring feet, creeping down the tent, skipping across -the leaves, galloping over the forest floor, and jumping in and out of -the fire. Then a twig snapped. Was that what had awakened me? I rose -up on my elbow slowly. The tent flap was open; the woods were very -dark, the dim light from above the roof of leaves and rain showing -only shadows, and an ashen spot where the camp-fire still spluttered, -and beyond the ashen spot a shadow--different from the other shadows; -a shape--a doe with big ears forward toward the fire! A bit of birch -bark flared in the darkness, and the shape was gone. I could hear her -moving through the ferns; hear her jump a fallen log and step out -among the grating pebbles on the shore. Then all was still, except for -the scampering rain, and the little red-backed wood-mouse among the -camp tins, and the teeth of a porcupine chilled and chattering in the -darkness at the big wood-mouse among the tins, and the rain running -everywhere. - -I dropped back upon my pillow and left off listening. How good the -duffle-bag felt beneath my head! And the thick, springy bows of the fir -beneath the bag, how good they felt--springs and mattress in one, laid -underside up, evenly, and a foot deep, all over the tent floor! And how -good they smelled! A bed of balsam-fir boughs is more than a bed; it is -an oblation to Sleep, and not a vain oblation--after miles of paddling -in live water or a day of trailing through the spruce and fir. - - “There’s a long, long trail a-winding” - -runs the song-- - - “Into the land of my dreams.” - -But, speaking of sleep, there is no trail, except a forest trail, that -winds away to a land of such deep dreamlessness as that of a woodman’s -sleep; and no sleep, from which a man will waken, half so fragrant -and refreshing as his. I do not wish to be carried to the skies “on -flowery beds of ease,” but I should like this balsam-fir bed, for two -or three weeks every summer, in the woods of Maine. A reasonable and a -wholesome wish that, as I lay there wrapped in the fragrant mantle of -my couch, I coveted for city sleepers everywhere. - -The odors (we should spell them with a “u”)--the odo_u_rs of the big -woods are so clean and pure and prophylactic! They clear the clogged -senses, and keep them in a kind of antiseptic bath, washing a coated -tongue as no wine can wash it; and tingling along the most snarled of -nerves, straightening, tempering, tuning them till the very heart is -timed to the singing of the firs. My bed of boughs was a full foot -deep, covering every inch of the bottom of the tent, fresh cut that -evening, and so bruised with the treading as we laid them that their -smell, in the close, rainy air of the night, filled the tent like a -cloud. I lay and breathed--as if taking a cure, this tent being the -contagious ward of the great hospital, the Out-of-Doors. All around -me poured the heavy, penetrating vapor distilled from the gums, and -resins, and oils, and sweet healing essences of the woods, mingled here -in the tent with the aromatic balsam of the fir. I breathed it to the -bottom of my lungs; but my lungs were not deep enough; I must breathe -it with hands and feet to get it all; but they were not enough. Then a -breeze swept by the tent, pausing to lay its mouth over my mouth, and, -catching away my little breath, breathed for me its own big breath, -until my very bones, like the bones of the birds, were breathing, and -every vein ran redolent of the breath of the fir. - -That breeze blew the sharp, pungent smell of wood smoke past the -tent. I caught it eagerly--the sweet smoke of the cedar logs still -smouldering on the fire. There was no suggestion of hospitals in this -whiff, but camps, rather, and kitchens, altars, caves, the smoke of -whose ancient fires is still strong in our nostrils and cured into the -very substance of our souls. - -I wonder if our oldest racial memory may not be that of fire, and if -any other form of fire, a coal off any other altar, can touch the -imagination as the coals of a glowing camp-fire. And I wonder if any -other odor takes us farther down our ancestral past than the smell of -wood smoke, and if there is another smoke so sweet as cedar smoke, -when the thin, faint wraith from the smouldering logs curls past your -tent on the slow wind of the woods and drifts away. - -It does not matter of what the fire is built. I can still taste the -spicy smoke of the sagebrush in my last desert camp. And how hot that -sagebrush fire! And as sweet as the spicy sage is the smell in my -nostrils of the cypress and gum in my camp-fires of the South. Swamp -or desert or forest, the fire is the lure--the light, the warmth, the -crackle of the flames, and the mystic incense of the smoke rising as a -sweet savor to the deities of the woods and plains. - -It is the camp-fire that lures me to the woods when I might go down to -the sea. I love the sea. Perhaps I fear it more; and perhaps I have -not yet learned to pitch my tent and build my fire upon the waves; -certainly I have not yet got used to the fo’c’s’le smell. For, of all -foul odors known to beast or man, the indescribable stench of the -fo’c’s’le is to me the worst. What wild wind of the ocean can blow that -smell away? When bilges are sprayed with attar of roses, and fo’c’s’les -sheathed in sandalwood, and sailors given shower-baths and open fires, -I shall take a vacation before the mast; but until then give me the -woods and my fir-bough bed, and my fire of birch and cedar logs, and -the rain upon my tent. - -When I woke at dawn it was still raining; and off and on all day it -rained, spoiling our plans for the climb up Spencer Mountain and -keeping us close to camp and the drying fire. The forest here at the -foot of the mountain was a mixed piece of old-growth timber, that had -been logged for spruce and pine some years before--as every mile of the -forest of Maine has been logged--yet so low and spongy was the bottom -that the timber seems to have overgrown and long since ceased to be fit -for lumber, so that most of it was left standing when the lumber-jacks -went through. We were camped by the side of Spencer Pond in the thick -of these giant trees--yellow birch, canoe birch, maple and spruce, -hemlock and fir and pine--where the shade was so dense and the forest -floor so strewn with fallen trees that only the club mosses, and the -sphagnum, and a few of the deep-woods flowers could grow. The rain made -little difference to my passage here, so low were these lesser forest -forms under the perpetual umbrage of the mighty trees, and I came back -from as far in as I dared to venture on so dull a day, my clothes quite -dry, but my spirit touched with a spell of the forest, which I should -have missed had the sun been shining and the points of the compass -clear. - -For in the big woods one is ever conscious of direction, a sense -that is so exaggerated in the deepest bottoms, especially when only -indirect, diffused light fills the shadowy spaces, as to border on -fear. I am never free, in a strange forest, from its haunting Presence; -so close to it that I seem to hear it; seem able to touch it; and when, -for a moment of some minor interest or excitement, I have forgotten to -remember and, looking up, find the Presence gone from me, I am seized -with sudden fright. What other panic comes so softly, yet with more -terrible swiftness? And once the maze seizes you, once you begin to -meet yourself, find yourself running the circle of your back tracks, -the whole mind goes to pieces and madness is upon you. - -“Set where you be and holler till I come get ye, if ye’re lost,” the -guide would say. “Climb a tree and holler; don’t run around like a -side-hill gouger, or you’re gone.” - -I do not know what sort of animal is Johnny’s side-hill gouger; though -I saw, one day, far up on the side of the mountain a big bare spot -where he had been digging--according to the guide. It is enough for me -that there is such a beast in the woods, and that he gets those who -turn round and round in the forest on rainy days and forget to look up. - -The gouger was abroad in the woods to-day. The clouds hung at the base -of the mountains, just above the tops of the trees; the rain came -straight down; the huge fallen trunks lay everywhere criss-cross; and -once beyond the path to the spring the semi-gloom blurred every trail -and put at naught all certainty of direction. - -But how this fear sharpened the senses and quickened everything in the -scene about me! I was in the neighborhood of danger, and every dull and -dormant faculty became alert. Nothing would come from among the dusky -trees to harm me; no bear, or lynx, or moose, for they would run away; -it was the dusk itself, and the big trees that would not run away; and -I watched them furtively as they drew nearer and nearer and closed in -deeper about me. I knew enough to “set down and holler” if I got turned -hopelessly around; but this very knowledge of weakness, of inability -to cope alone with these silent, sinister forces, woke all my ancient -fears and called back that brood of more than fabled monsters from -their caves and fens and forest lairs. - -This was the real woods, however, deep, dark, and primeval, and no -mere fantasy of fear. It looked even older than its hoary years, for -the floor was strewn with its mouldering dead, not one generation, but -ages of them, form under form, till only long, faint lines of greener -moss told where the eldest of them had fallen an æon since and turned -to earth. Time leaves on nothing its failing marks so deeply furrowed -as upon men and trees, and here in the woods upon no other trees so -deeply as upon the birches. Lovely beyond all trees in their shining, -slender youth, they grow immeasurably aged with the years, especially -the yellow birch, whose grim, grizzled boles seemed more like weathered -columns of stone than living trees. - -One old monster, with a hole in his base that a bear might den in, -towering till his shoulders overtopped the tallest spruce, stood -leaning his gnarled hands upon the air, as a bent and aged man leans -with his knotty hands upon a cane. A hundred years he might have been -leaning so; a hundred years more he might continue in his slow decline, -till, with a crash, he falls to lie for a hundred years to come across -a prostrate form that fell uncounted years before. - -I was standing on the tough, hollow rind of such a birch, so long, -long dead that its carcass had gone to dust, leaving only this empty -shell that looked like a broken, half-buried piece of aqueduct. It was -neither tree nor pipe, however, but the House of Porcupines, as I could -plainly hear by the grunting inside. A pile of droppings at the door -of the house told the story of generations of porkies going in and out -before the present family came into their inheritance. I knocked on the -rubbery walls with my foot, but not hard, for I might break through and -hurt Mother or Father Porky, or possibly the baby that I saw along the -pond that night. No careful, right-minded person steps on or hurts a -porcupine in any manner. - -I went on out of the sound of their teeth, for chattering teeth are -not consoling, and the woods were gray enough. Gray and vast and -magnificently ruinous, yet eternally new they were, the old walls -slowly crumbling, and over them, out of their heaped disorder, the -fresh walls rising to the high-arched roof that never falls. To-day the -deep, hollow halls were shut to me by the arras of the gloom, and so -smoky rolled the rain beneath the roof that even the black rafters of -the birches were scarcely visible; but all the closer about me, in the -wildest wealth and splendor, lay the furniture of the forest floor. - -Never were wools dyed and woven with a pile so rich and deep as the -cover of mosses and lichens that carpeted this rude, cluttered floor. -Rolled and wrinkled and heaped up over the stumps, it lay, nowhere -stretched, nowhere swept, a bronze and green and gold ground, figured -and flowered endlessly; and down the longest, deepest wrinkle a -darkling little stream! It was a warp of sphagnum moss with woof of -lichens, liverworts, ferns, mushrooms, club mosses, and shier flowers -of the shadows, that was woven for the carpet--long, vivid runners -of lycopodium, the fingered sort, or club moss, and its fan-leaved -cousin, the ground pine, now in fruit, its clusters of spikes like -tiny candelabra standing ready to be lighted all over the floor; and -everywhere, on every tree-trunk, stump, and log, and stone the scale -mosses, myriads of them, in blotches of exquisite shapes and colors, -giving the gray-green tone to the walls as the sphagnums gave the -vivid bronze-green to the floor. Down to about the level of my head, -the dominant note in the color scheme of the walls, hung the gray -reindeer moss, tufts and shreds and pointed bunches of it like old -men’s grizzled beards. Some of the spruces and twisted cedars were -covered with it. Shorter in staple than the usnea of the South, stiffer -and lighter in color, it is far less somber and funereal; but a forest -bearded with it looks older than time. This moss is the favorite winter -food of the moose and caribou and deer, and so clean had the moose and -deer eaten it from the trees, up as high as they could reach, that the -effect on a clear day was as if a thin gray fog had settled in the -forest at an even six-foot level from the ground. - -Worked in among the lichens and mosses, quite without design, were the -deep-woods flowers--patches of goldthread, beds of foam-flower and -delicate wood-sorrel and the brilliant little bunchberry. Wherever the -sunlight had a chance to touch the cold, boggy bottom it seemed to set -the punk on fire and blaze up into these scarlet berries, stumps and -knolls and slopes aflame with them, to burn on through the gloom until -they should be smothered by the snow. Twin-flower and partridge-berry -were laced in little mats about the bases of the trees; here and there -the big red fruit of trillium and the nodding blue berries of clintonia -were mixed in a spot of gay color with berries of the twisted stalk, -the wild lily-of-the-valley, and the fiery seed-balls of the Indian -turnip. - -These touches of color were like the effect of flowers about a stately, -somber room, for this was an ancient and a solemn house of mighty folk. -If the little people came to dwell in the shadow of these noble great -they must be content with whatever crumbs of sunshine fell from the -heaven-spread table over them to the damp and mouldering floor. There -were corners so dark that only the coral orchid and the Indian pipe -pushed up through the mat of leaves; and other spots, half open to -the sky, where the cinnamon fern and the lady fern waved their lovely -plumes, and the wood fern, the beech, the oak, and the crested shield -ferns grew together, forced thus to share the scanty light dropped to -them from the overflowing feast above. - -But I never saw mushrooms in such marvelous shapes and colors and -in such indescribable abundance as here. The deep forest was like a -natural cavern for them, its cold, dank twilight feeding their elfin -lamps until the whole floor was lighted with their ghostly glow. -Clearest and coldest burned the pale-green amanita, and with it, -surpassingly beautiful in color and design, the egg-topped muscaria, -its baleful taper in a splotched and tinted shade of blended orange -yellows, fading softly toward the rim. Besides these, and shorter -on their stems, were white and green and purple russulas, and great -burning red ones, the size of large poinsettia blooms; and groups of -brown boletus, scattered golden chanterelles, puff-balls, exquisite -coral clusters, and, strangest of them all, like handfuls of frosted -fog, the snowy medusa. These last I gathered for my lunch, together -with some puff-balls and a few campestris, whose spores, I suppose, may -have been brought into the woods with the horses when this tract was -lumbered years ago. But I had little appetite for mushrooms. It was the -sight of them, dimly luminous in the rain, that held me, their squat -lamps burning with a spectral light which filled the dusky spaces of -the forest full of goblin gloom. - -As I sat watching the uncanny lights there was a rush of small feet -down the birch at my back, a short stop just above my head, and a -volley of windy talk that might have blown out every elf light in -the neighborhood. It was very sudden and, breaking into the utter -stillness, it was almost startling. A moose could hardly have made more -noise. I said nothing back nor took any notice of him. He could kick -up the biggest sort of a rumpus if he wished to, for the woods needed -it. I only wondered that he had a tongue, dwelling forever here in -this solitude. But a red squirrel’s tongue is equal to any solitude, -and more than once I have caught him talking against it, challenging -the silence of all outdoors, as I have seen small boys challenge each -other to a blatting-match. - -By and by I turned, and so startled him that he dropped a cluster of -green berries from his mouth almost upon my head. It was a large bunch -of arbor vitæ berries that he was going to store away, for, though -he sleeps much of the winter, he is an inveterate hoarder, working -overtime, down the summer, as if the approaching winter were to be -seven lean years long. - -I was glad he had not obtruded earlier, but now he reminded me properly -that it was long past noon, and high time for me to get back to camp. -It was later than I thought, for the woods had gradually grown lighter, -the rain had almost ceased, and by the time I reached camp had stopped -altogether. While we were at supper the sun broke through on the edge -of the west and ran the rounded basin of the pond over-full with gold. -I stepped down to the shore to watch the glorious closing of the day. -The clouds had lifted nearly to the tops of the mountains, where their -wings were still spread, feathering the sky with gray for far around; a -few fallen plumes lying snowy white upon the dark slopes of the lesser -hills; then pouring down the hills into the pond, splashing over the -gleaming mountains and up against the sky, burst the flood of golden -light with indescribable glory. - -“All ready,” said the guide, touching me on the arm, and I stepped into -the bow of the canoe as he pushed quietly off. An Indian never moved -with softer paddle, nor ever did a birch-bark canoe glide off with the -ease of this one under the hand of John Eastman, as we moved along in -the close shadows of the shore. - -The light was passing, but the flush of color still lay on the lovely -face of the water with a touch of warmth and life that seemed little -less than joy; a serene, but not a solemn joy, for there was too much -girlish roundness and freshness to the countenance of the water, too -much happiness in the little hills and woods that watched her, and in -the jealous old mountain that frowned darkly down. Mine, too, were the -eyes of a lover, and in my heart was the lover’s pain, for what had I -to offer this eternal youth and loveliness? - -The prow of the canoe swerved with a telling movement that sent my eyes -quick to the shore, to see a snow-shoe rabbit racing down a little -cove hard at me, with something--a stir of alder leaves, a sound of -long, leaping feet making off into the swamp--that had been pursuing -him. It was probably a wildcat that had leaped and missed the rabbit -and seen us from within his covert. What lightning eyes and lightning -legs, thus to leap and turn together! The rabbit had run almost to the -canoe, and sat listening from behind a root at the edge of the water, -ears straight up and body so tense with excitement that we nosed along -close enough to touch him with a paddle before he had eyes and ears -for us. Even then it was his twitching, sensitive nose that warned -him, for his keen ears caught no sound; and, floating down upon him -thus, we must have looked to his innocent eyes as much like a log or a -two-headed moose as like men. - -Softly in and out with the narrow fret of shadow that hemmed the margin -of the pond swam the gray canoe, a creature of the water, a very part -of our creature selves, our amphibious body, the form we swam with -before the hills were born. Brother to the muskrat and the beaver, I -stemmed along, as much at home as they among the pickerel-weed and the -cow-lilies, and leaving across the silvery patches of the open water as -silent a wake as they. - -Nothing could move across such silvery quiet without a trail. So -stirless was the water that the wake of a feeding fish was visible a -hundred yards away. Within the tarnished smooches of the lily-pads a -muskrat might move about and not be seen; but not a trout could swirl -close to the burnished surface of the open water without a ripple that -ran whispering into every little inlet around the shore. The circle of -the pond was almost perfect, so that I roved, at a glance, the whole -curving shore-line, watching keenly for whatever might come down to -feed or drink. - -We came up to a patch of pickerel-weed and frightened a brood of -half-grown sheldrakes that went rushing off across the water, kicking -up a streak of suds and making a noise like the launching of a fleet -of tiny ships. Heading into a little cove, we met a muskrat coming -straight across our bows. A dip of the paddle sent us almost into her. -A quicker dive she never made nor a more startling one, for the smack -as she struck the water jumped me half out of the canoe. Her head -broke the surface a dozen yards beyond us, and we followed her into the -mouth of a stream and on to a hummock into which she swam as a boat -swims under a bridge, or more as a train runs into a tunnel, for an -arching hole opened into the mound, just above the level of the stream, -through which she had glided out of sight. Hardly had she disappeared -before she popped up again from deep under the mound, at the other -side, and close to the canoe, starting back once more down-stream. She -had dodged us. Her nose and eyes and ears were just above the water and -a portion of her back; her bladelike tail was arched, its middle point, -only, above the surface, its sheering, perpendicular edges doing duty -as propeller, keel, and rudder all at once. - -As she made off the guide squeaked shrilly with his lips. Instantly -she turned and came back, swimming round and round the canoe, trying -to interpret the sounds, puzzled to know how they could come from the -canoe, and fearing that something might be wrong inside the house. She -dived to find out. By this time two young ones had floated into the -mouth of the tunnel, thinking their mother was calling them, blinking -there in the soft light so close that I might have reached them with my -hand. Satisfied that the family was in order, the old rat reappeared, -and no amount of false squeaking would turn her back. - -A few bends up the stream and we heard the sound of falling water at -the beaver dam. Fresh work had been done on the dam; but we waited -in vain for a sight of the workers. They would not go on with their -building. One of the colony (there were not more than two families of -them, I think) swam across the stream, and came swiftly down to within -a few feet of us, when, scenting us, perhaps, he warped short about -and vanished among the thick bushes that trailed from the bank of the -stream. - -A black duck came over, just above our heads, with wings whirring like -small airplane propellers, as she bore straight out toward the middle -of the pond. We were passing a high place along the shore when a dark -object, a mere spot of black, seemed to move off at the side of us -against the white line of the pebbles, and I found that I was already -being sent silently toward it. My pulse quickened, for the thing moved -very slowly; and behind it a lesser blur that also moved--very slowly; -so deep was the darkness of the overhanging trees, however, that the -nose of the canoe ploughed softly into the sand beside the creatures, -and I had not made out the fat old porcupine, and, creeping a foot or -two behind her, as if he might catch up by to-morrow, perhaps, the baby -porky. - -The old mother was feeding on bits of lily-pads washed up along the -shore, picking them from among the stones with her paws as if she -intended to finish her supper by to-morrow, perhaps, when her baby had -covered the foot or two of space between them and caught up with her. -She was so intent on this serious and deliberate business that she -never looked up as I stopped beside her; she only grunted and chattered -her teeth; but I disturbed the baby, apparently, for he speeded up, -and pretty soon came alongside his mother, who turned savagely upon -him and told him to mind his manners, which he did by humping into a -little heap, sticking his head down between two stones, and raying the -young quills out across his back in a fan of spines. He didn’t budge -for about five minutes. Then he hurried again--right up beside the old -one--a thing so highly improper in porkypinedom, and so deleterious to -porkypine health, that she turned and, with another growl, humped her -fat little porky again into a quiet and becoming bunch of quills. This -time she read him a lecture on the “Whole Duty of Children.” It was in -the porcupine-pig language, and her teeth clicked so that I am not sure -I got it verbatim, but I think she said, quite distinctly: - - “A child should always say what’s true, - And speak when he is spoken to, - And behave mannerly at table: - _At least as far as he is able_”-- - -for, seeing him so obediently and properly humped, she repented her of -her severity and, reaching out with her left paw, picked up a nice, -whole lily-pad and, turning half around, handed it to him as much as -to say, “There, now; but chew it up very thoroughly, as you did the -handle of the carving-knife in the camp last night.” - -It was a sweet glimpse into the family life of the woods; and as the -canoe backed off and turned again down-stream I was saying to myself: - - “Every night my prayers I say, - And get my dinner every day, - And every day that I’ve been good - I get an orange after food”-- - -or a nice, round lily-pad. - -The precious light was fading, and we had yet more than half the magic -circle of the shore to round. As we passed out into the pond again a -flock of roosting blackbirds whirred noisily from the “pucker-brush,” -or sweet-gale bushes, frightened by the squeal of the bushes against -the sides of the canoe; and hardly had their whirring ceased when, -ahead of me, his head up, his splendid antlers tipped with fire, stood -a magnificent buck. He had heard the birds, or had scented us, and, -whirling in his tracks, curiosity, defiance, and alarm in every line of -his tense, tawny body, stood for one eternal instant in my eye, when, -shaking off his amazement, he turned and, bounding over the sweet-gale -and alders, went crashing into the swamp. - -I had neither camera nor gun; but, better than both, I had eyes--not -such good eyes as John Eastman’s, for he could see in the dark--but -mine with my spectacles were better than a camera; for mine are a -moving-picture theater--screen, film, machine, and camera, all behind -my spectacles, and this glorious creature for the picture, with the -dark hills beyond, the meadowy margin of the pond in the foreground, -and over the buck, and the pond, and the dark green hills, and over me -a twilight that never was nor ever can be thrown upon a screen! - -I had come into the wilds of Maine without so much as a -fish-line--though I have fished months of my life away, and am not -unwilling to fish away a considerable portion of whatever time may -still be left me. But am I not able, in these later days, to spend my -time “in the solitude of this vast wilderness with other employments -than, these,--employments perfectly sweet and innocent and ennobling? -For one that comes with a pencil to sketch or sing, a thousand come -with an axe or rifle. What a coarse and imperfect use Indians and -hunters make of Nature!... Strange that so few ever come to the woods -to see how the pine lives and grows and spires, lifting its evergreen -arms to the light,--to see its perfect success; but most are content to -behold it in the shape of many broad boards brought to market, and deem -_that_ its true success!... Every creature is better alive than dead, -men and moose and pine trees, and he who understands it aright will -rather preserve its life than destroy it.” - -Thoreau did not teach me that truth, for every lover of life discovers -it himself; but how long before me it was that he found it out, -and how many other things besides it he found out here in the big -woods! Three-quarters of a century ago he camped on Katahdin, and on -Chesuncook, and down the Allegash; but now he camps wherever a tent is -pitched or a fire is lighted in the woods of Maine. His name is on the -tongue of every forest tree, and on every water; and over every carry -at twilight may be seen his gray canoe and Indian guide. - -And I wonder, a century hence, who will camp here where I am camping, -and here discover again the woods of Maine? For the native shall -return. And as “every creature is better alive than dead, man and -moose and pine tree”; and as “he who understands it aright will rather -preserve _his_ life than destroy it” so shall he seek his healing here. - -The light had gone out of the sky. It was after nine o’clock. A deep -purple had flowed in and filled the basin of the pond, thickening -about its margins till nothing but the long chalk-marks of the birches -showed double along the shore. The high, inverted cone of Spencer stood -just in front of the canoe as we headed out across the pond toward the -camp, its shadow and its substance only faint suggestions now, for all -things had turned to shadow, the solid substance of the day having been -dissolved in this purple flood and poured into the beaker of the night. -A moose “barked” off on a marshy point near the dam behind us; a loon -went laughing over, shaking the hollow sides of Spencer and all the -echoing walls of the woods with his weird and mirthless cry. Against -the black base of the mountain a faint bluish cloud appeared--the smoke -of our camp-fire that, slowly sinking through the heavy air, spread out -to meet us over the hushed and sleeping pond. - - - - -CHAPTER VIII - -WOODCHUCK LODGE AND LITERATURE - - - - -CHAPTER VIII - -WOODCHUCK LODGE AND LITERATURE - - -Have I proof of my contention here? Throughout this book, on many sides -of the question, I have argued that the earth is as young as it ever -was; that Nature, though it can all but be destroyed in spots, as in -New York City, cannot be tamed; that we are still the stuff of dreams, -if we could find rest for our souls and the chance to dream. We are -not lacking imagination and the power for high endeavor. We master -material things; we can also handle the raw materials of the spirit -and give them enduring form. But how can we come by the raw materials -of the spirit? And where shall we find new patterns on which to mould -our new and enduring forms? Matter and pattern are still to be found in -nature--substance, essence, presence, - - “Whose dwelling is the light of setting suns, - And the round ocean and the living air, - And the blue sky, and in the mind of man.” - -I have had much to do with young people, especially with those of -creative minds, divinely capable minds, could they be freed from the -doubt of their times, and the fear of their own powers. Here let me -give them a glimpse of an _old_ man of their own times, these evil -times when all of the raw material of books has been used up; an old -man with a boy’s eyes and a child’s heart and a pen and a bluebird or -two, and a woodchuck--and, of course, a magical chance. - -It was an October day. And how it rained that day! An October day in -the Catskills, and I was making my way, with my friend DeLoach, out of -the little village of Roxbury by the road that winds up the hills to -Woodchuck Lodge. Hardscrabble Creek knew it was raining, and met me -noisily at a turn of the road, just before I came to the square stone -schoolhouse (now a dwelling) where little Johnny Burroughs had gone for -his book learning some seventy-five years before. Leaving the creek, I -found myself on a roller-coaster road athwart the hills, making up with -spurt and dip to a low, weathered farmhouse, thin and gray and old, -that seemed to be resting by the roadside thus far over the mountain -on its way to the valley. - -I knew it from the distance and through the rain, only it seemed even -older, smaller, poorer than I had expected to find it. But how close -it sat to the roadside, and how eagerly it gazed down into the valley -where the store and the station and the meeting-house were--to see who -might be stirring, I thought, down there in the valley! Or perhaps it -sat here for the landscape. I was approaching Woodchuck Lodge, and it -seemed very old and lonely in the rain that slanted along the wide gray -slopes, and too frail to stand long against the pull of the valley and -the push of the heights crowding hard upon it from behind. - -A tiny kitchen garden at its corner, and across the road a stone wall, -an orchard of untrimmed apple trees bent with fruit, and a small barn -on the edge of a sharply falling field--this was the picture in the -rain, the immediate foreground of the picture, which stood out on a -field of hay-lands and pastures rolling out of the rainy sky and down, -far down where their stone walls ran into the mists at the bottom of -the valley. - -These were the ancestral fields. Burroughs was born a little farther -along this road, the house no longer standing. Here at the Lodge he was -now living, and in the old barn across the road he had a study. These -were his fields by right of pen, not plough; these were his buildings, -too, and they showed it. They sheltered him and gave him this outlook, -but they utterly lacked the pride of the gilded weathervane, the -stolid, four-square complacency, that well-fed, well-stocked security -of the prosperous American farm. An old pair of tramps were house -and barn, lovers of the hills, resting here above the valley. It was -in that old barn, on an overturned chicken-coop, with a door or some -other thing as humble for table, that Burroughs had written most of -the chapters in “The Summit of the Years,” in “Time and Change,” “The -Breath of Life,” and “Under the Apple-Trees.” - -So a literary farm should look, I suppose,--a farm that produces books -as abundantly as a prairie farm produces cattle and corn; yet every -farm, I think, should have a patch of poetry, as every professional -poet certainly needs to keep a garden and a pig. For years Burroughs -grew fancy grapes and celery for the New York market, along with his -literary essays for the reading public. - -As we came in on the vine-covered porch of the Lodge, we were met by -Dr. Barrus, Burroughs’s physician and biographer, who told us with -considerable anxiety that the old man was not at home. - -“He is out visiting his traps, I suppose,” she said. “He’s just like a -boy. I can’t do anything with him. He’ll come home wringing wet. And -he’s not a bit well.” - -He came home true to form. It was an hour later, perhaps, that I saw, -from the steps, a dim figure in the blur of the rain: an old man -plodding slowly down the hill road, a stick and a steel trap in his -left hand, and in his right hand a heavy woodchuck. - -It was John Burroughs, the real Burroughs, for I knew as I watched him -that I had never seen, never clearly seen, this man before--not exactly -this simple, rain-soaked man with the snow of more than eighty winters -on his head, with the song of eternal springtime in his heart, and a -woodchuck, like a lantern, in his hand. - -This figure in the rain should be seen coming down every page of -Burroughs’s books. Every line should be read in the light of this -lantern in his hand, for its wick is in his heart, and its flame -shines from “Wake-Robin” to “The Summit of the Years.” Burroughs was -the eternal boy--splashing through the puddles, wet to the skin; the -boy for whom these fields of his father’s farm were as wild as the -jungles of Africa; and this woodchuck in his hand (it _was_ a big one!) -a very elephant, except for the tusks. But to be like this is to be -both boy and philosopher--boy and writer, I should say. And to see him -thus--falling with the rain, whirling with the dust, singing with the -birds, growing with the grass, his whole being one with the elements, -earth and wild-life and weather--thus to see the man is to know how to -read his books. - -As he came up to the porch, his slouch hat spouting like an -eaves-trough, he greeted me cordially, but as a stranger, not -recognizing me for an instant; then dashing the rain from his eyes, -he dropped the woodchuck, drew off, and with a quick righthander to my -chest, which almost took me off my feet, he cried, “Sharp, we’ll have -woodchuck for dinner!” - -And we did--not the one he had just dropped on the floor, for that -one he skinned and salted and gave me to bring home to Boston. We had -canned woodchuck that noon at the Lodge. It was Burroughs’s custom to -serve his guests a real literary dinner; and of course it must savor of -the locality. - -This called for woodchuck, or “Roxbury Lamb,” as you preferred; and for -roast Roxbury Lamb the rule for rabbit-stew prevails: first get your -woodchuck; not always readily done, for the meat-market down at the -village is sometimes out of woodchuck. So the Laird of the Lodge keeps -them canned ahead. - -The clouds cleared in the afternoon, the sun came down upon the -mountains, and we looked out from the porch over a world so large and -new and lovely that I remember it still as a keen pain, so unprepared -was I for it, with my level background of meadow and marsh and bay. - -Endless reaches of river and bay, of wavy marshland and hazy barrens of -pine, were my heritage of landscape as a child. And I have never been -able to measure up to the mountains, nor to this scene, here from the -porch--this reach without level; space both deep and high as well as -wide; this valley completely hiding a village below you; ridges above -you where stone walls climb over the sky; mountains far across with -forests flung over their shoulders, and farms, like colored patchwork, -stitched into the rents of the forests; runnels singing down the -pastures; and roads, your road to school, so close to the verge that -only the stone wall stays you from stepping off the edge of the world! - -None of this had I known as a boy. “Who couldn’t write,” I muttered, -“born into this glorious world!” I have seen much grander mountains. -“Not a rugged, masculine touch in all the view,” Burroughs said to -me. “It is all sweet and feminine, and doubtless has had a feminizing -influence upon my character and writing.” It may be so. There is a -plenty of wilder, stormier landscape than this in these Western -Catskills, but certainly none that I ever saw that is lovelier for a -human home. And here Burroughs now sleeps, under the boulder where he -played as a child, and where all this beauty of winding valley and -blue, bending sky upon the mountains lies forever about him. - -There is something terribly important and lasting about childhood. -Almost any environment will do, if only the child is happy. It is the -child who counts. In every child the world is recreated and in his -memory stays recreated. More and more, as the years lengthen, do we -find ourselves longing--for the pine barrens, for the vast green reach -of the marshes; and were my feet free this summer day, they would run -with my heart to the river--not to the mountains; to the river, the -Maurice River, where the bubbling wrens build in the smother of reed -and calamus, and where this very day the pink-white marshmallows make, -at high noon, a gorgeous sunset over miles of the meadows. I love and -understand those great, green levels of marshland as I shall love and -understand no other face of nature, it may be. I know perfectly what -Lanier means when he sings, - - “Oh, what is abroad in the marsh and the terminal sea? - Somehow my soul seems suddenly free - From the weighing of fate and the sad discussion of sin, - By the length and the breadth and the sweep of the marshes of Glynn.” - -I said the clouds cleared late that afternoon, but it was still raining -when, after dinner, I brought a box from the woodshed to the front -porch for Burroughs to skin the woodchuck. Here we sat down together, -the flabby, flaccid marmot between us, the whole October afternoon our -own. - -Burroughs pulled a rudimentary whetstone out of his coat pocket and -touched up the blade of his knife--of his spirit, too, running his -thumb along the blade of every faculty as he settled to the skinning, -his shining eyes, his vibrant voice, his eager movements, all showing -how razor-keen an edge the old man was still capable of taking. He got -hold of a forefoot of the ’chuck and started to talk on the flight of -birds, reviewing the various stages of the controversy on the soaring -of hawks that he had been carrying on in the press, when, suddenly -dropping his knife, he disappeared through the door and returned in -a minute with a letter from some scientist, whose argument, as I -remember it, was wholly at variance with Burroughs’s theory, but which -closed with a strange word, a word the old man had never seen before -and could not find in his dictionary. It was some aeronautical term, I -think. Handing me the letter, his finger, as well as his eyes, fastened -to that stranger from beyond the dictionary, he said: - -“That chap doesn’t know much about soaring hawks; but there’s a new -word. See that! He knows a heap more than I do about the English -language.” - -He sat down to the skinning again. No cut had yet been made, nor ever -would be made, apparently, unless he used the back of his blade, for -it was plain that Burroughs kept that old whetstone for his wits only. -He sawed away and talked as if inspired. I held the other forefoot, a -short, broad foot, like a side-hill gouger’s, on the oldest, toughest -’chuck in the Catskills. - -“Do you know what I am going to do?” he asked, switching the -conversation into the hard-working knife. “I’m going to pickle this -old rascal and send him by you to your family. I want you all to have a -dish of ‘Roxbury Lamb.’” - -“But we have our own Hingham Lamb out on Mullein Hill,” I suggested -cautiously. “And I don’t like to rob you this way.” - -“No robbery at all. Besides, these are a better breed than yours in -Hingham.” - -“But my folks don’t seem very fond of ’em,” I protested. “They cook -with a rank odor.” - -“Oh, you don’t know how to prepare them,” he answered. “Let me show you -a trick,” and deftly cutting in between the neck and the shoulder, he -took out the thyroid glands. - -“Now you’re going to take this one home. There’ll be no strong smell -when you cook this fellow.” - - * * * * * - -Our talk turned to poetry--the skinning still going forward--the -woodchuck brimming full of verse; for Burroughs, at every other turn of -his knife, would seem to open up a vein of song. The beauty of nature -to Burroughs had always been more than skin deep. He wanted the skin -for a coat; the carcass he wanted for a roast; but here was a chance -for him to look into some of the hidden, fearful things of nature, and -the sight inside of that woodchuck made him stop and sing. - -But how old and frail he looked! And he was old, very old, eighty-four -the coming April 9. And he was suddenly sad. - -Resting a bit from his labor, he began to chant to the slackening rain: - - “’Tis a dull sight - To see the year dying. - When winter winds - Set yellow woods sighing, - Sighing, O sighing. - - “When such a time cometh, - I do retire - Into an old room - Beside a bright fire; - Oh, pile a bright fire! - - “I never look out - Nor attend to the blast, - For all to be seen - Is the leaves falling fast, - Falling, falling!” - -And he rubbed his thin hands together, spread them to the warmth, and -repeated two or three times, - - “Oh, pile a bright fire!” - “Oh, pile a bright fire!” - -More than once, I heard him returning to those lines; and saw him -several times reading the last stanzas of the poem from a typewritten -copy on his porch table, chafing his hands the while, and extending -them before the imaginary fire as if they were cold, or as if he felt -through his hands, so sensitive was he physically, an actual fire in -the written lines. The poem is Edward Fitzgerald’s “Old Song,” and I am -sure Burroughs was learning it by heart, and making rather hard work of -it, I thought, for one who had already in memory so much good poetry. -But he was getting very old. - -Then, at my request he said some of the lines of his own poem, -“Waiting.” “The only thing I ever did,” he remarked, “with real poetry -in it.” - -“How about the philosophy in it,” I inquired, “Do you find it sound -after all these years?” - -There was an audible chuckle inside of him. Then rather solemnly he -replied: “My father killed himself early trying to clear these acres -of debts and stones. I might have been in my grave, too, these forty -years had I tried to hurry it his way. I waited. By and by Henry Ford -came along and cleared up the whole farm for me. Here I am, and here - - “Serene, I fold my hands and wait, - Nor care for wind, nor tide, nor sea; - I rave no more ’gainst Time or Fate, - For lo! my own shall come to me.” - -We were soon deep in a discussion of free verse, no hungry trout -ever rising to the fly with more snap than Burroughs. He called the -free-verse writers the Reds of American literature, the figure sticking -to him, until some months later in California he worked the idea out -into a brief newspaper article under that title, the last piece, I -think, for publication from his pen. - -“Name me one good modern poem,” I said, “moulded on the old forms, with -rhyme and meter.” - -He let go his knife again, turned his face once more to the rain, -through which the mountains were now emerging, and asked, - -“Do you know Loveman’s ‘Raining’ and how he wandered up from Georgia -to find himself in New York City, his boat gone, or his money gone, -or something gone--for he was someway stranded, I believe--and it was -raining?” And the old man began-- - - “‘It isn’t raining rain to me, - It’s raining daffodils; - In every dimpled drop I see - Wild flowers on the hills. - The clouds of gray engulf the day, - And overwhelm the town, - It isn’t raining rain to me, - It’s raining roses down.,’” - -while the rain across the hills, shot through with sunset light, fell -all violets and clover-bloom and roses on the mountains and on the roof -of Woodchuck Lodge. - -The thing on the box between us was utterly forgotten, but only for the -moment. - -“Damn those fleas!” the old poet exploded, at the end of the -recitation, swinging with both hands at his long white whiskers, “That -’chuck’s alive with fleas!” - -So I had observed; and I had been speculating, as I watched them -quitting their sinking craft and boarding the sweeping beard of the -poet, how many of them it might take to halt the flow of song. I was -far off in my reckoning. Burroughs knocked them out and went on: - -“That’s a good poem because it goes straight to the heart. It’s an -experience. He lived it. And its form is perfect. You can’t change a -syllable in it. It’s on the old forms, yet it’s true to itself. And see -how simple, direct, and sincere it is! and how lovely! I call that good -poetry.” - - * * * * * - -We had been more than three hours getting the pelt off that woodchuck -and all of the poetry out of him. As I sat by, I saw what I had hardly -realized before: that the hand with the knife must often rest, though -the eager mind seemed almost incapable of resting. - -The national elections were approaching, and from poetry we plunged -into politics, where I feared we were bound to disagree, but where, -to my surprise, I found we were standing together on the League of -Nations, Burroughs having forsaken his party on that issue. - -“It’s the only thing!” he cried. “That’s what we fought for. Rob us of -that, and the whole terrible sacrifice is futile--criminal!” - -And later, after my return home, he wrote me: - -“Well, the elections did not go as both of us had hoped. DeLoach was -on the winning side, as I suppose all the great moneyed interests -were. But thank heaven I am not in that crowd. If it means an utter -repudiation of the League of Nations, then for the first time I am -ashamed that I am an American. If I were in Europe I could not hold up -my head and say, ‘I am from the United States!’ If we have failed to -see ourselves as a member of the great family of nations, with solemn -duties toward the rest of the world, to perform as such a member, then -we have slumped morally as badly as did the Germans when they set out -to enslave the rest of the world!” - -But to return to Woodchuck Lodge, to the old man with the boy’s -jack-knife in his hand, and the boy’s heart in his breast--and so, the -poet’s outlook in his eyes. For he was more poet than scientist, more -poet than theologian, though every poet, like all Gaul, is divided into -three parts, and these--science, music, and theology--are the parts. - -The theologian is the ultimate thinker. His chief attribute is -consistency--even unto death. Nothing will shatter a system of -theology as will a trifling inconsistency. Burroughs was a bad -theologian, the worst I know by the test of consistency. Yet who -among the theologians is more religious? Or leaves us with a realer -consciousness of the presence of God in nature? - -“You and I approach this thing from different angles,” he said to -me. “We come to God down different roads. Our terms differ. You say -‘Father.’ I say ‘Nature.’ But whatever we call Him, He is the same, and -the same for each of us. Our divergent paths at the start, come out -together at the end. We worship the same God.” - -We did differ radically in our approach, in our terminology, and as I -had always thought, must of necessity differ as radically in our faiths -and works. That was a foolish, vainglorious conceit. I wish every -disconcerted reader of “The Light of Day” and “Accepting the Universe” -had heard the old author interpret himself that day. That reader would -have understood, as he sat there watching the light of a real day -breaking in over the rainy autumn landscape, what Carruth meant by, - - “A haze on the far horizon, - The infinite tender sky, - The ripe rich tint of the corn-fields, - And the wild geese sailing high, - And all over upland and lowland - The charm of the goldenrod-- - Some of us call it Autumn, - And others call it God!” - -The pelt was finally off; the carcass in pickle for me; and the sun -was out, flooding Montgomery Valley and the heaving ranges beyond. An -automobile load of callers came, stopped a little time, and went away; -another load came and went away, and Burroughs, now quite rested, -brought out the manuscripts of two new books, which were about ready -for the publishers. - -I looked at the piles of work, then at the frail old man who had heaped -them up, and thought with shame of my own strength--and laziness. To -be approaching eighty-four with one book on the press and two other -books in manuscript! What a long steady stroke he had pulled across -these more than sixty years of writing to be bringing him in at the -finish, two full volumes ahead of the race! Three volumes indeed, for -“Accepting the Universe” had not yet come from the press. - -The quiet and calm of it all deeply impressed me. The extreme opposite -in temperament and action from his friend Roosevelt, there was nothing -“strenuous” about this plodding old man, nor ever had been. “Serene I -fold my hands and wait” he had written in his twenty-third year, and -had practiced all these four-and-eighty years. Yet look at this amount -of durable work accomplished. It is well for us Americans to remember -just now that there is another than the “strenuous” type of life, which -is just as worthy of emulation, and which is likely to be even more -effective. - -This was an October day at Woodchuck Lodge. Sixty-one years before -the “Atlantic Monthly” was actually printing Burroughs’s first essay, -“Expression.” I looked at the old man beside me with the pen in his -fingers. Was it the same man? the same pen? Lowell was the editor; -then Fields, Howells, Aldrich, Scudder, Page, Perry, to the present -editor, who has held his chair these dozen years; and I watched the -pen in Burroughs’s hand travel slowly across a corrected line of the -manuscript and I remembered that in all the years since Lowell was -editor, not for a single year had that pen failed to appear in the -pages of the “Atlantic.” Was it strange that as I looked from the -pen away to the Catskills surrounding me I wondered if I were really -looking into Montgomery Valley and not into Sleepy Hollow? - -We guests had a plenty that night, but Burroughs went to bed -supperless. We guests slept indoors, but Burroughs made his bed out on -the front porch, where he could see the stars come over the mountains, -and the gates of dawn swing wide on the wooded crests, when the new -sweet day should come through and down into Montgomery Valley. - -For Burroughs has lived and loved everything he has written. He cannot -write of anything else. Our present-day writers, especially our poets -and nature writers, take the wings of the morning (or of the night) -unto the uttermost parts of the earth for copy. Burroughs visited -distant places; but he always wrote about the things at home. “Fresh -Fields,” to be sure, is out of England; yet England was only an older -home. Burroughs had seen strange, extraordinary, tropical things; seen -them, to write little about them, however, for it is only the homely, -the ordinary, the familiar things that stirred his imagination and -moved his pen. These were his things, the furniture of his house, the -folks of his town; for it was the hearth where he lived, his home, that -he loved, and it was the creatures living on it with him that gave him -his great theme. “The whole gospel of my books,” he wrote, “is stay at -home, see the wonderful and beautiful and the simple things all about -you. Make the most of the near at hand.” - - * * * * * - -It was a constant wonder to me how one could be so simple as Burroughs, -and yet know so many places, persons, and books. Burroughs had met -many people; he had read many books, and had written more than a -score himself; yet he was the simplest man I ever knew, as simple -as a child,--simpler, indeed. For children may be suspicious and -self-conscious, and even uninterested; but Burroughs’s interest and -curiosity grew with the years. He carried his culture and his knife -and his whetstone in his pocket. They belonged to him; but he belonged -strictly to himself. He remained to the end what the Lord made him--and -that is to be original. - -Pietro, the sculptor, has made Burroughs in bronze, resting on a rock, -his arm shading his face, his eyes peering keenly into the future or -the far-away. Pietro has made him a seer or a prophet. He was much more -the lover and the poet. I sat with Burroughs on that same rock, the -morning after the rainy day at the Lodge, and talked with him of some -things long past, of many things round about us, but of few things of -the future. I saw him shield his face with his arm, and look far off -from the rock--to the rounded, green-crested hills in the distance, -and down into the beautiful valley below. But most of the time he was -watching a chipmunk near by, or scanning the pasture for woodchucks. -Had I been Pietro I should have made the old man flat on that boulder, -his beard a patch of lichen, his slouch hat hard down on his eyes, his -head just over the round of the rock--and down the slope, at the mouth -of his burrow, a big woodchuck on his haunches. - -“I’ve been studying the woodchuck all my life,” he said, as we sat -there on the rock, “and there is no getting to the bottom of him.” - -I do not know whether Burroughs climbed over the walls and up through -the field again to this favorite spot of his boyhood in the few -remaining days he had at the Lodge. This may have been the last time he -looked out with seeing eyes over this landscape of valley and mountain -that had been one of the deepest, most abiding influences of his life. -As we sat there together, the largeness and glory of the world: colors, -contours, the valley depths, the quiet hills, the wealth of life, the -full, deep flood of autumn light--almost too much for common human -eyes--the old man beside me said, with a sigh: - -“I love it. But it is hard to live up to it. Sometimes, especially of -late, I feel it a burden too great to bear.” Then, as if guilty of some -evil thought, he brightened instantly, pointed out a dam that he had -built as a boy in the field below us, for his own swimming-hole, the -ridge of sod and stone still showing; told me stories of his parents; -described his sugar-making in the “bush” behind us; nor referred again -to the burden of the years, weighing so heavily now upon him, until we -were leaving. Then, as he came out to the road to see us off, he said -with tears in his eyes: - -“I hate to have you go. I wish you could stay. You boys are life to me -now. Come again soon. Good-bye.” - -We promised we would, and we did--in April, the next April, when we -went up to say our last good-bye. Meantime he was off to California for -the winter months. Before leaving he wrote to me from West Park, his -home on the Hudson: - - I neglected to make any apologies for the long letter I wrote you - the other day. I promise not to do so again. I am sending you an old - notebook of mine, filled with all sorts of jottings, as you will see. - I send it as a keepsake. - - We are off for California to-morrow. Hope to be there in early - December. We leave Chicago on the 29th. My address there will be La - Jolla, San Diego. Good luck to you and yours. - - Ever your friend - - JOHN BURROUGHS - -He kept his promise. This was his last letter to me. They were not -very happy months in California. Visitors came to see him as usual; -he spoke in the schools; and wrote up to the very end; but he was -weak, often sick, and always longing for home. He knew if he was ever -to see home again he must not delay long; and he counted the days. -He wished to celebrate his birthday with his old friends, at the old -place; and he was on the way, speeding homeward, with most of the -long journey covered, when, suddenly, the end came. And is it at all -strange that his last uttered words, as he sank into unconsciousness, -should have been “How far are we from home?” - -On the front of the boulder which marks his grave, those last words -might well be cut, as expressing the real theme of all his books, the -dominant note in all his life. - -His old friends kept his birthday in the old place--in the “Nest” -at Riverby, for the funeral; and the next day, his eighty-fourth -birthday, they carried him into his beloved mountains, to his grave -by the rock, where so lately we had talked together, and where, since -childhood, he had found an altar for his soul. - -How great a man Burroughs was I do not know. Time knows. I know that -he had three of the elements of greatness as a writer: simplicity, -sincerity, and a true feeling for form. And he had these to an -uncommon degree. I know that great men and little children loved him; -and that three generations already have been led oftener and farther -into the out-of-doors by him than by any other American writer. -I know how Burroughs thought of himself and of Thoreau; for in a -letter, several years ago to me he wrote: - - Thoreau is nearer the stars than I am. I may be more human, but he is - as certainly more divine. His moral and ethical value I think is much - greater, and he has a heroic quality that I cannot approach. - -But I am not trying to estimate Burroughs. I am only sketching, through -the gray rain and in the golden light at the far end of the autumn, one -whom thousands of us read and love. - - -THE END - - - - -TRANSCRIBER’S NOTES: - - - Italicized text is surrounded by underscores: _italics_. - - Obvious typographical errors have been corrected. - - Inconsistencies in hyphenation have been standardized. - - - - - -End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of The Magical Chance, by Dallas Lore Sharp - -*** END OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE MAGICAL CHANCE *** - -***** This file should be named 60872-0.txt or 60872-0.zip ***** -This and all associated files of various formats will be found in: - http://www.gutenberg.org/6/0/8/7/60872/ - -Produced by Tim Lindell, David E. 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You may copy it, give it away or re-use it under the terms of -the Project Gutenberg License included with this eBook or online at -www.gutenberg.org. If you are not located in the United States, you'll have -to check the laws of the country where you are located before using this ebook. - -Title: The Magical Chance - -Author: Dallas Lore Sharp - -Release Date: December 7, 2019 [EBook #60872] - -Language: English - -Character set encoding: ISO-8859-1 - -*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE MAGICAL CHANCE *** - - - - -Produced by Tim Lindell, David E. Brown, and the Online -Distributed Proofreading Team at http://www.pgdp.net (This -file was produced from images generously made available -by The Internet Archive/American Libraries.) - - - - - - -</pre> - - -<div class="figcenter"><img src="images/cover.jpg" alt="" /></div> - - - - -<hr class="chap" /> - - - -<h1>THE MAGICAL CHANCE</h1> - -<hr class="chap" /> - -<div class="figcenter"><img src="images/i_title.jpg" alt="" /></div> - -<hr class="tb" /> - -<div class="titlepage"> - -<p><b><span class="xxlarge">THE<br /> -MAGICAL CHANCE</span></b></p> - -<p>BY<br /> -<span class="xlarge">DALLAS LORE SHARP</span><br /> -<small>AUTHOR OF “THE LAY OF THE LAND,” “THE HILLS OF<br /> -HINGHAM,” “EDUCATION IN A DEMOCRACY,” ETC.</small></p> - -<div class="figcenter"><img src="images/i_titlelogo.jpg" alt="" /></div> - -<p>BOSTON AND NEW YORK<br /> -<span class="xlarge">HOUGHTON MIFFLIN COMPANY</span><br /> -<span class="antiqua">The Riverside Press Cambridge</span><br /> -1923</p> -</div> - -<hr class="chap" /> - -<p class="center">COPYRIGHT, 1923, BY DALLAS LORE SHARP<br /> -<br /> -ALL RIGHTS RESERVED<br /> -<br /> -<br /> -<span class="antiqua">The Riverside Press</span><br /> -CAMBRIDGE, MASSACHUSETTS<br /> -PRINTED IN THE U.S.A.</p> - -<hr class="chap" /> - - -<div class="chapter"> - -<h2 class="nobreak">CONTENTS</h2></div> - - - -<table border="0" cellpadding="2" cellspacing="2" summary="table"> - -<tr><td class="tdr">I.</td><td> <span class="smcap">The Magical Chance</span></td><td class="tdr"><a href="#Page_1">1</a></td></tr> - -<tr><td class="tdr">II.</td><td> <span class="smcap">The Radium of Romance</span></td><td class="tdr"><a href="#Page_39">39</a></td></tr> - -<tr><td class="tdr">III.</td><td> <span class="smcap">The Hunt for “Copy”</span></td><td class="tdr"><a href="#Page_69">69</a></td></tr> - -<tr><td class="tdr">IV.</td><td> <span class="smcap">The Duty to Dig</span></td><td class="tdr"><a href="#Page_103">103</a></td></tr> - -<tr><td class="tdr">V.</td><td> <span class="smcap">The Man and the Book</span></td><td class="tdr"><a href="#Page_131">131</a></td></tr> - -<tr><td class="tdr">VI.</td><td> <span class="smcap">A January Summer</span></td><td class="tdr"><a href="#Page_153">153</a></td></tr> - -<tr><td class="tdr">VII.</td><td> <span class="smcap">After the Loggers</span></td><td class="tdr"><a href="#Page_173">173</a></td></tr> - -<tr><td class="tdr">VIII.</td><td> <span class="smcap">Woodchuck Lodge and Literature </span></td><td class="tdr"><a href="#Page_203">203</a></td></tr> -</table> - -<hr class="chap" /> - - -<div class="chapter"> -<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_1" id="Page_1">[1]</a></span> - - -<p class="ph1">THE MAGICAL CHANCE</p> - -<p class="center"><span class="xxxlarge">∵</span></p> - - -<p class="ph2">CHAPTER I</p> - -<p class="ph2">THE MAGICAL CHANCE</p></div> - - - -<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_2" id="Page_2">[2]</a></span></p> - - - -<hr class="chap" /> - -<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_3" id="Page_3">[3]</a></span></p> -<p class="ph1">THE MAGICAL CHANCE</p> - -<p class="center"><span class="xxxlarge">∵</span></p> - -<h2 class="nobreak">CHAPTER I<br /> - -<small>THE MAGICAL CHANCE</small></h2> - - -<p><span class="smcap">“What</span> are you going to say to the college -girls?” my pretty niece asked, as we motored -down the valley. She was being graduated this -spring, and the snowy dogwoods and the purple -Judas-trees against the tender hillsides were -not so fresh, nor half so full of bloom, as she. -But they were gayer far than she.</p> - -<p>“Don’t tell them, uncle, how wonderful they -are! How the world waits for them! Don’t -say it, uncle! I have heard that sort of talk -for these four years, and here I am with nobody -waiting for me; not fitted for anything; -nothing to do; and as wonderful—as thirty -cents!”</p> - -<p>Poor thing!</p> - -<p>A few days before, I had seen an interview -with the President of Yale, in which the young<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_4" id="Page_4">[4]</a></span> -writer said he had read in a book that all the -great devices had been invented; all the new -lands explored; all the great deeds done—all -the adventure and romance forever gone from -life, and that only bread and butter remain with -the odds against a young man’s getting much -of the butter.</p> - -<p>Poor thing!</p> - -<p>Have I been living fifty years—in America? -or fifty cycles in Cathay? I cannot still be young -at fifty! nor can I be so old either as modern -two-and-twenty! Youth is a dry tree, these -days; a sad state—particularly youth bent -with the burden of an A.B. degree. Out of my -fifty-odd years of existence I have taught college -youth for three-and-twenty, and never in all -that time have they looked like plain bread and -butter to me. If they are not adventure and -romance, not better stories, sweeter songs, -mightier deeds than any yet recorded, then I -am no judge of story matter and the stuff of -epic song.</p> - -<p>But my pretty niece declares that she also -knows a shoat when she sees one; and she knows -it is just pork. As for the college man of the<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_5" id="Page_5">[5]</a></span> -interview: he was not speaking by the book; -out, rather, of the depths of his heart.</p> - -<p>It is an evil thing to be born young into an -old world!</p> - -<p>For the world seems very old. Its face is -covered with doubt, its heart is only ashes of -burned-out fires. The River of Life which John -saw has dwindled into Spoon River; and his -Book of Life is now a novel, piddling and prurient. -But John also saw the Scarlet Woman—and -that was long ago! The world was ever -much the same; ever in need of an Apocalypse; -and never more in need than now. My pretty -niece, and the young man of the interview, are -the world, and the college world at that, the -more’s the pity. They are its skepticism, its -materialism, its conventionalism, its fear and -failure. They seem afraid to bid on life, for fear -it might be knocked off to them at something -above par! They do not dare. They won’t take -a chance. They would, of course, if there <i>were</i> -chances; they would dare, if only one giant were -still left stalking through the land. The giants -are gone!</p> - -<p>The orator was celebrating the hundredth anniversary<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_6" id="Page_6">[6]</a></span> -of Richard Henry Dana, the author of -“Two Years Before the Mast”:</p> - -<blockquote> - -<p>Life offered him a magical human chance and he -took it. There was something in him for which the -decorous and conventional life of Boston allowed no -place in its scheme. “Two Years Before the Mast” -belongs to the Literature of Escape.</p></blockquote> - -<p>Life offered him a magical chance—as if he -were a special case! So he was. So is every boy. -Who was this boy? and what were the circumstances -under which Life offered him this magical -chance? He was a Bostonian to begin with, and -that is bad enough; he was a Harvard undergraduate -also, which still further complicates the -situation; and, besides, he was a Dana! Here -was a complex which should have staggered -Life. Who could escape from all of this? Leave -that to Life. Up she comes boldly, just as if she -expected the boy to take her offer. And he did -take it. He fell ill with some affliction of the eyes; -and, going down to the Boston wharfs, shipped -as a common sailor before the mast in the little -brig Pilgrim for a two years’ trip around the -Horn. And out of that escape from Boston and -Harvard and the Danas, he brought back one of<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_7" id="Page_7">[7]</a></span> -the three greatest sea stories in literature—a -book that all of Boston and Harvard and the -Danas combined could never have written except -for this escape.</p> - -<p>The question is: Does Life come along to-day, -as then, and offer us, as it offered Dana, such a -magical chance? Is there any escape for us?</p> - -<p>We are not all Danas, and so we are certainly -not worse off than he was; but our circumstances -are distinctly different, and rather disquieting. -This chance was given Dana far back in 1834, -nearly one hundred years ago, when escape was -possible, and when Dana was a boy. It was a -young world a hundred years ago, and full of -adventure. One could escape then because there -was some place to escape into; but to round the -Horn to-day is to land, not on wild Point Loma, -but at San Diego, with the single exception -of Monte Carlo, the most decorous and conventional -city on the planet.</p> - -<p>Perhaps my niece and the college boy of the -interview are right.</p> - -<p>About the time that Dana was escaping from -Boston, a young man by the name of Henry -David Thoreau tried to escape from Concord,<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_8" id="Page_8">[8]</a></span> -of the same State. He had no deep-sea wharf, -no brig like the Pilgrim, but, as one must seize -such things as are at hand in an escape, Thoreau -took a rowboat and the near-by river and -started off. He rowed and rowed for a week, -and came to Concord, New Hampshire. Here -he took to his diary and wrote that there were -no frontiers this way any longer. “This generation -has come into the world fatally late for some -enterprises. Go where we will on the surface of -things, men have been there before us. We cannot -have the pleasure of erecting the last house; -that was long ago set up in the suburbs of Astoria -City, and our boundaries have literally been run -to the South Sea.”</p> - -<p>Born in 1817, more than a hundred years ago, -and still born fatally late! How late, then, was -I born? and you, my son? and you, my pretty -niece?</p> - -<div class="poetry-container"> -<div class="poetry"> -<div class="versefirst">“The rainbow comes and goes,</div> -<div class="verse">And lovely is the rose,</div> -</div></div> - -<p>but you and I have missed the early glory that -hath passed forever from the morning earth,” -she makes reply.</p> - -<p>But I would say to her: It was ten years later,<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_9" id="Page_9">[9]</a></span> -ten whole years after Thoreau’s tame adventure -on the Merrimac, that gold was discovered in -California. Here was a magical chance as late -as the year ’Forty-Nine, and Life offered it to a -young man of Providence and Brooklyn by the -name of Bret Harte. He took it. There was -something in him for which the decorous and -conventional round of these cities allowed no -place in their scheme. He went into the gold-fields -and brought out “The Luck of Roaring -Camp,” another piece of the Literature of -Escape. Then my students answer: “Yes, but -there are no more outcasts in Poker Flat, and -whom are we to write about?”</p> - -<p>Alas, ’tis true, they’re in their graves, that -gentle race of gamblers. With the wind-flower -and the violet they perished long ago, as literary -material. Eighteen-Forty-Nine will be having -its hundredth anniversary soon. But, some -fifty years later, gold was struck again—this -time on the Yukon. Here was another magical -chance. And there was a young fellow walking -the streets of Boston along with me, literally -begging bread with me from editorial door to -editorial door, by the name of Jack London.<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_10" id="Page_10">[10]</a></span> -Life came up to us and offered us this magical -chance, and Jack took it, bringing out of the -Yukon a story called “Building a Fire” which -is surely a part of the immortal Literature of -Escape.</p> - -<p>“Well, what would he write about now?” -they ask. “What has happened since?”</p> - -<p>“Peary has found the North Pole,” I reply.</p> - -<p>“Yes, and Amundsen, or somebody, has -found the South Pole!” they cry. “And what’s -the use of living in a world of only two poles, -and some one finding both of them before we -come along!”</p> - -<p>There is something in that. It is a bad sort -of world that has only two poles. It should be -stuck full of poles, one for each of us. But there -are only two, and a flag flies from each of them; -as a flag flies over every terrestrial spot in between -them: over Mount McKinley now; over -the River of Doubt now, so that we are stopped -from singing, as once we sang,—</p> - -<div class="poetry-container"> -<div class="poetry"> -<div class="versefirst">“There’s one more river,</div> -<div class="verse">There’s one more river to cross.”</div> -</div></div> - -<p>There is no more river to cross. Theodore -Roosevelt crossed it. There is nothing to cross;<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_11" id="Page_11">[11]</a></span> -no place to go where, on the surface of things, -men have not been there before us. Yes, yes, -there is Mount Everest. No one has yet stood -on that peak; but there is an expedition climbing -it, camping to-day at about twenty-five thousand -feet up, with only two or three thousand -feet more to go. And here we are in Hingham!</p> - -<p>It looks bad. My young niece is possibly -right, after all. East, west, north, south, where -is a frontier? Where shall I go from here and -find an escape?</p> - -<p>Not overland any longer, for even Thoreau -could find no frontier this way; and not by sea -now, for here comes John Masefield, poet and -sailor, saying the frontier has disappeared from -off the sea; that the clipper ship, the ship of -dreams, has foundered and gone down; that you -can haunt the wharves these piping times of -steam,</p> - -<div class="poetry-container"> -<div class="poetry"> -<div class="versefirst">“Yet never see those proud ones swaying home,</div> -<div class="verse">With mainyards backed and bows acream with foam.</div> - -<div class="verse"> · · · · · · · ·</div> - -<div class="verse">As once, long since, when all the docks were filled</div> -<div class="verse">With that sea beauty man has ceased to build.”</div> -</div></div> - -<p>Listen, now, for this is the message of the -poem:</p> - -<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_12" id="Page_12">[12]</a></span></p> - -<div class="poetry-container"> -<div class="poetry"> -<div class="versefirst">“They mark our passage as a race of men,</div> -<div class="verse">Earth will not see such ships again,—”</div> -</div></div> - -<p>which makes me thank Heaven for my farm, -where the same old romantic hoe remains about -what it ever was—the first recorded wedding -present.</p> - -<p>Mr. Masefield’s observations are dated 1912. -Prior to that year real clipper ships rode the deep, -and real romance. It was prior to 1839 that -there were real frontiers and romance in the land, -and a last house (a government lighthouse) -still to be set up in the suburbs of Astoria City. -Going a little farther back, we find that prior -to 1491 (<small>B.C.</small>), about the year 4000 according to -the margin of the King James Version, there -were giants in the earth, and the stories in the -Book of Genesis show that there were romances -as well as giants in those days. But, like -Thoreau and Masefield, Moses was born fatally -late. I feel sorry for Moses and my niece.</p> - -<p>Let us pause here for a sad brief moment in -order to see just where Moses was when Life -sought him out and proffered him a magical -chance in the shape of a trip to Egypt. Where -was Moses? and what was he doing? To begin<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_13" id="Page_13">[13]</a></span> -with, he was keeping goats, a fairly common -occupation in those days, though rather a rare -job now. But that was not all: Moses was keeping -these goats for Jethro, his father-in-law. -Now you begin to get some inkling as to where -Moses was. But this is not the worst of it: for -Moses was keeping the goats for his father-in-law -on “the <i>back</i> side of the desert.” One would -certainly say that the <i>front</i> side of any desert -would be far enough away, and sterile enough -of romance, if one had to keep one’s father-in-law’s -goats there; but to keep the goats of your -father-in-law on the <i>back</i> side of a desert is to be -farther off than Hingham, or any place I know. -And here was Moses when Life came upon him -offering him an escape into Egypt.</p> - -<p>He was born fatally late, Moses was, just like -Thoreau and my niece. He might have been one -of my own college men, so like a college man’s -was his answer!</p> - -<p>“No, no!” he complained, “I don’t want to -go down to Egypt. There is nothing doing down -in Egypt. I’m slow of speech; without imagination; -and it’s a hard job, anyway. Let me stay -here and be goatherd to Jethro, my father-in-law,<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_14" id="Page_14">[14]</a></span> -and dream of the good old days of the -giants, when men began to multiply upon the -face of the earth, when the sons of God saw the -daughters of men that they were fair. Ah!—there -was something doing in those days!”</p> - -<p>From Moses to Masefield the times have been -fatally late. And so mine are, with the clipper -ships, the frontiers, the giants, and the daughters -of men that are fair, all gone! But I seem to see -them fair. I suppose I ought not, having been -born so fatally late. And I wonder if I might -not find a giant, too, if I should hunt? and a -clipper ship? and a frontier? and even an escape -from Hingham!</p> - -<p>Lumber is still brought in boats to one of -Hingham’s old wharves, but the rest of her -wharves are deserted. Her citizens, who used to -do business in great waters, stop now in Hingham -Harbor to catch smelts. Change and some -decay one can see all about Hingham, but little -chance of escape.</p> - -<p>Down at the foot of Mullein Hill, on which -my house stands, there runs a long, long trail -awinding into that land of my dreams; but I -ask: Where does it cross the frontier? I have<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_15" id="Page_15">[15]</a></span> -traveled it, going south, in my Ford (if you are -out for frontiers, take a Ford. We have a saying -here in Hingham that a Ford will take a man -anywhere—except into good society!)—I say -I have gone south over this road which runs at -the foot of Mullein Hill as far as Philadelphia, -and no frontier!—the next stop was Chester. -I have gone east over the same road until I came -to within ten miles of Skowhegan, Maine, where -I ran into a steam-roller on the road. When you -meet a steam-roller on a road in Maine, you are -very near the frontier. If there is any adventure -for you on the trip, it will be on the dtour -around that steam-roller. But under the roller -ran the road and on into Skowhegan, and on out -of Skowhegan into Aroostook County, the -richest county in the United States, where they -raise “spuds” enough to feed, not only Boston, -but the rest of dear old Ireland with her; and all -the way from Hingham to Aroostook, except at -the steam-roller, there was no chance to get off.</p> - -<p>And this road, taking a turn among these -glorious potato-fields of Maine, starts over the -mountains of New Hampshire, crosses the corn -and cattle belt in the central portion of the<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_16" id="Page_16">[16]</a></span> -country, and, running on and on, dips into the -Imperial Valley in far-off California, the hottest -cultivated spot on earth. And all the way from -Hingham, roundabout by Maine, to the Imperial -Valley, you may not stop, unless you run -out of “gas.” And the oil companies do not -intend this magical chance to attend you, for -they have planted gasoline tanks under every -second telegraph pole all the way.</p> - -<p>This road, starting from Mullein Hill, Hingham, -and running to Aroostook, Maine, and to -the Imperial Valley in California, takes a new -turn among the melon-fields there, works its -way back along the Gulf States, binding their -ragged edge like a selvage, and, bending into -Florida, threads its way among the Everglades -and out, heading off across the cotton-fields, on -across the corn and cattle belt again, climbs -Pike’s Peak and down, climbs Mount Hood and -down, and, faring on into the State of Washington, -climbs the fruited slopes of old Tacoma, -“The Mountain that was God.” And all the -way from Hingham some one has been there -before us, and laid an oiled road for us, and left -us no frontier.</p> - - - -<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_17" id="Page_17">[17]</a></span>Surely we are born late; and my pretty niece -fatally late. The frontier is gone. The buffaloes -are gone. I saw their ancient trails out of the car -windows as my train roared over the Canadian -prairie, wavering parallel paths in the virgin -sod, a vivider green than the rest of the grass, -narrow meandering lines vanishing short of the -far-off horizon where hung a cloud not larger -than a man’s hand, like the dust of the last disappearing -herd.</p> - -<p>“Hank” Monk is gone. This king of overland -stage-drivers sleeps in Carson City; and -beside sleeps his Concord coach of split hickory. -Concord has ceased to make such coaches.</p> - -<div class="poetry-container"> -<div class="poetry"> -<div class="verse">They mark our passage as a race of men,</div> -<div class="verse">Earth will not see such coaches again.</div> -</div></div> - -<p>From Hell Gate now to Golden Gate there are -only miles, and any machine makes a mere -holiday of the trip.</p> - -<p>A young acquaintance of mine has just made -the coast-to-coast run, driving her own car. -She said to me on arriving here that “it was an -awful monotonous journey.” Didn’t anything -happen? I asked with considerable surprise. -No, nothing happened. Didn’t she see anything<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_18" id="Page_18">[18]</a></span> -of interest? Wasn’t there any excitement? -Didn’t she have any adventures? No, she didn’t -see anything; she didn’t get a bit of excitement -out of it; there wasn’t any adventure; just one -blinkety-blank mile after another!</p> - -<p>“Incredible!” I cried.</p> - -<p>“Oh, yes,” she said, her eyes brightening, -something like a thrill in her voice, “I did have -three punctures!”</p> - -<p>All the way from Golden Gate to Hell Gate -with three punctures to break the cushioned -tenor of her way. This is what life has come to.</p> - -<p>Then she said: “There were two things on the -trip that did greatly interest me. But I don’t -exactly know why; and I am afraid to tell you -about them for fear you will think me such a big -fool.”</p> - -<p>“No,” I answered, “I won’t think you any -bigger fool than I do now, so what were the two -interesting things?”</p> - -<p>“Well,” she began (and I wish the reader -would note the strictly American touch in this -description), “one of them was Luther Burbank’s -spineless cactus.” (Notice, I say, the spineless -quality of this cactus.)</p> - - - -<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_19" id="Page_19">[19]</a></span>The girl read my face and exclaimed, much -hurt: “There! I knew you would poke fun at -me.”</p> - -<p>“But tell what the other thing was,” I begged. -“Let’s get the sordid story over as fast as we -can.”</p> - -<p>“I don’t know even yet what it all meant,” -she went on, “but, as I was crossing the Arizona -desert, I saw a long petition being circulated by -the native Arizonians, praying the National -Congress to preserve for them and for posterity -a portion of their original desert.”</p> - -<p>My poor niece! Moses saw the giants pass -away; Thoreau saw the frontier pass away; -Masefield sees the clipper ship pass away; but it -remains for my niece and her day to see the -Great American Desert wiped out by the -irrigation ditch, and the gila monster with the -desert, and the need of a shovel on the trip -across the sands! Have we eaten the cassaba -melon and gone mad? Is it all of life to make -the desert blossom as the rose? To bring forth -cassaba melons, and alligator pears, and spineless -cacti for cow feed?</p> - -<p>Ploughing the desert; turning the giant cactus<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_20" id="Page_20">[20]</a></span> -into ensilage, as if to live were a silo—for fear -of this the native Arizonians are asking Congress -that a portion of their original desert and of -Life’s adventure and romance be saved to them -and to their children.</p> - -<p>It is sad. But this is not the worst of it: for -they have laid an oiled road across that desert, -as if it were the whole of life to get through to -San Diego on time.</p> - -<p>There is no hope for a man who gets through -to San Diego on time. He will strike Los -Angeles on time, come to San Francisco on time. -Portland on time, Winnipeg, Chicago, Boston, -and Hingham on time; where he will die on time, -be buried on time, rise on time, and keep going -on time, with never a chance to get off. But -where is the adventure in that? It is not the -whole of life to get through to San Diego on -time. I had rather leave my bones to bleach -beneath a bush than travel on and on by schedule, -always making life’s connections, and so -missing always life’s magical chances. Don’t you -remember your Mother Goose, wise old dear?</p> - - - -<div class="poetry-container"> -<div class="poetry"> -<div class="versefirst">“A dillar a dollar,</div> -<div class="verse">A ten-o’clock scholar,</div><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_21" id="Page_21">[21]</a></span> -<div class="verse">Why have you come so soon?</div> -<div class="verse">You used to come at ten o’clock,</div> -<div class="verse">But now you come at noon.”</div> -</div></div> - -<p>And he was the only little duffer in the whole -school to get a poem written to him. The other -children came on time and passed into oblivion; -this boy (he certainly was a boy) came late and -has become immortal.</p> - -<p>The desert is doomed, no doubt, but we shall -always have dtours; and if “on the surface of -things men have been there before us,” we must -go beneath. There are giants still in these days; -the daughters of men are still fair; there are -frontiers for those who will find them; and, -clipper ships or no, I believe in the everlasting -adventure of rounding the Horn. I believe in -magical chances of escape, born though I was -after my parents, which might have been fatally -late had I not happily come before my children, -each of whom is an adventure and an escape. -Wherever I turn, I see a chance to sidestep the -decorous, the conventional, the scheduled, to -dodge into the bushes and escape. Every day -is an adventure.</p> - -<p>There are magical human chances to go round;<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_22" id="Page_22">[22]</a></span> -there is adventure and escape for everybody who -will seize it. Youth is as young, the world as -round, the earth as wild as ever. And, in spite -of all those who have grown old, it is still appareled -in celestial light—sunlight, starlight, -moonlight—or else wrapped in ancient and -adventurous dark. The sun still knoweth his -going down, thank Heaven! There are some -things that do not change nor pass away.</p> - -<blockquote> - -<p>Thou makest darkness, and it is night: wherein all -the beasts of the forest do creep forth.</p> - -<p>The young lions roar after their prey, and seek their -meat from God.</p> - -<p>The sun ariseth, they gather themselves together, -and lay them down in their dens.</p> - -<p>Man goeth forth unto his work and to his labour -until the evening.</p></blockquote> - -<p>Then look out for your men-folks. For this -is the end of the decorous and conventional. -This is the time wherein all the beasts of the -forest do creep forth.</p> - -<p>We are what we always were, and so are things -what they always were, though they look different. -We have changed the spots of a few -leopards, the skins of a few Ethiopians, and -shifted the frontier from the dark wild heart<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_23" id="Page_23">[23]</a></span> -of the forest to the wild dark heart of the city; -but we have not changed the darkness, or the -wildness, or the Ethiopian, or the leopard.</p> - -<p>I have seen the evening come over the city, a -night deep with darkness and wild with a great -storm blowing salty from the sea. I have watched -the streets grow empty till the shadow feet of -Midnight echoed as they passed, and all the -doors were shut. Then I have crept down along -the dark wet ways, bleak and steep-cut as cliffs, -where I have heard the beating of great wings -above the roofs, the call of wild shrill voices along -the craggy covings, and the wash and splash of -driving rains aslant the walls; I have tasted -brine, spume, and spindrift on the level winds, -flying through a city’s streets from far at sea—“one-way” -streets by day, and so clogged that -traffic could barely move in that one way—but -here—in the hushed tumult of the storm -and night—I could hear the stones crying out -of their walls, and the beams out of the timbers -answering them; the very cobbles of the pavement -having tongues that would speak when -the din of the pounding hoofs was past.</p> - -<p>Some one complained to Browning that Italy is<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_24" id="Page_24">[24]</a></span> -the only land of romance now left to us. The poet -answered promptly, “I should like to include -dear old Camberwell.” And I should like to -include dear old Haleyville and dear old Hingham. -And you would like to include dear old -Wig Lane, if you were born there.</p> - -<p>But I started out from Hingham, pages back, -to find the frontier. Have I found it yet? So -Abraham started out from Ur of the Chaldees -to find a frontier, which he called a “City without -Foundations,” and did he find it? Whether -he did or not, he certainly had a plenty of adventure -by the way. Abraham was a hundred -years old when Isaac was born. There is something -thrilling about that. Yet, narrow as that -chance was, it is nothing when compared with -what happened to him next. For, when Abraham -was one hundred and <i>forty</i> years old, he -married Keturah. Here was a man who would -not be put down by a little circumstance like -one hundred and forty years. Life comes along -at one hundred and forty and offers Abraham -Keturah, and he takes her!</p> - -<p>I say he may not have found his city. We -know that he did find Keturah—which is<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_25" id="Page_25">[25]</a></span> -vastly more of an adventure. We may not have -the pleasure of erecting the last house in the -suburbs of Astoria City, as Thoreau says; but -we might have the wilder adventure of living in -it. And as it happens to be a government lighthouse -out on Tongue Point, at the mouth of the -Columbia; and as it happens to be where the -night and the rain and the fog are thickest on -the face of the globe, life in that last house is -a constant frontier.</p> - -<p>One might never leave Ur were he not seeking -a city. And one must never find his city else -he might cease his seeking. I do not know how -old Abraham was when he set out from Ur of -the Chaldees. I left Haleyville at the age of -eight. I have only lately come to Hingham, -having got in on the wrong side of the railroad -track some twenty years ago. (If one is really to -arrive in Hingham, one must come in with one’s -ancestors, and more than twenty years before.) -I say, I was eight when I left Haleyville; that -I have hardly yet arrived in Hingham; but all -the way from Haleyville to Hingham, and all -the way from Hingham to—Heaven, dare I -say?—there has been, and there shall be, held<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_26" id="Page_26">[26]</a></span> -out, in both of Life’s hands to me, the magical -chance of escape.</p> - -<p>Did I start out from Hingham to find the -frontier? That was wrong. I will start back for -Hingham. Hingham <i>is</i> the frontier. So was -Haleyville. So will Heaven be. Life with the -earth goes round, not forward, except to complete -a circuit established when the stars were -fixed, an orbit that all the forces of Heaven and -human intelligence have been unable to warp. -The only variation or shadow of new turning -Earth herself can look forward to is from collision -with some mad comet, which, if she lasts long -enough, may happen possibly within fifteen -million years—a square head-on smash it -may be, or only a side-swipe with a severe -shaking up—and then fifteen million years -more of steady turning. Things outside are -rather hard and fast despite appearances, -and we who are parts of this even scheme, -we find that our uprisings and downsittings -have never varied much from rule, nor are -liable to.</p> - -<p>We are, I repeat, what we always were, and so -are things what they always were, though they<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_27" id="Page_27">[27]</a></span> -look different. So is life what it always was for -adventures and frontiers.</p> - -<p>The wild frontier, like the hunted fox, has -doubled on its trail, that is all. Romance has -slipped out of the woods into the deeper places -of the city; Adventure has turned commuter; -and here are the three to companion life, as they -ever have—the Athos, Porthos, and Aramis to -a bebundled D’Artagnan. And already it is -more than “Twenty Years Since.”</p> - -<p>Twenty years, or a hundred years—</p> - -<p class="center">“The year’s at the spring.”</p> - -<p>If you do not find your fill of adventure with -Davy Balfour in Appin, come down with him to -Dean—to Edinburgh, and you shall see the face -of such danger “in the midst of what they call -the safety of a town” as may shake you, too, -“beyond experience.”</p> - -<p>If you don’t find the frontier in the daylight, -wait for the dark. Every night is a fresh -frontier. There are no landmarks of the day but -are blotted out by the dark as the lines are -sponged in the wake of a steamer’s keel. On the -shortest night of this year wild rabbits were in<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_28" id="Page_28">[28]</a></span> -my garden, fox-hounds were baying beyond the -quarries, and through the thin early mist of the -dawn we were all at the window watching a wild -doe behind the barn. She nipped the clover -nervously, twitched her tail, pricked her ears -(for the day was approaching), and took the -high wire fence at a bound. She was as wild and -free as the wind.</p> - -<p>A few Sunday nights ago I was at church -when the minister announced a series of evening -sermons for young people, and, to my utter -astonishment, his first talk was to be “Against -Sowing Wild Oats.” I was greatly tempted to ask -him if he intended to prevent his young people -from doing any more farming. If they couldn’t -sow wild oats, what kind of oats could they sow? -Did he ever see any tame oats? Those preachers -imagine a vain thing who think we ever cease -to sow wild oats (at least, there is many a late -crop, as Thackeray says). The truth is there -are no oats but wild ones.</p> - -<p>I do not know what seed catalogue you order -your garden seeds out of; I get mine out of one -marked “Honest Seeds”; it is assuring to have -an order-book of this sort plainly stamped<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_29" id="Page_29">[29]</a></span> -“honest” on the cover. In this honest-seed -catalogue for the current year the seedsman, -on page 56, is describing his oats. Let the -preacher on wild oats note with critical care -the terms of this description. There is something -theological, at least, revivalistic, about -them. It is the only oat described in the catalogue; -and it would be the only oat to plant in -all the world, if it were, as it is described, a -“Regenerated Select Swedish Oat.” A “regenerated” -(that is Methodist) “select” (that -is Presbyterian) oat! But read on through this -catalogue, and you will find that every seed -and tuber from artichoke to zinnia has been to -a revival since last summer and hit the “sawdust -trail.” Great revivalists are the seedsmen! -Their work, however, is not permanent. For -they know, and we all know, that every regenerated -select Swedish oat in their bins is a -backslider at heart, as wild as the wild ass of -the wilderness that scorneth the crying of the -driver.</p> - -<p>It is true of the seed and true of the soil in -which it grows. This spring I brought in from -the garden a frozen lump of earth which I had<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_30" id="Page_30">[30]</a></span> -been subduing, after the fashion of Scripture, -with my hoe, these twenty years. Nay, that -lump of earth had been in process of being subdued -for nigh two hundred years, here on this -ancient Hingham farm. It was a bit of regenerated, -select soil, which I had sweetened with -lime, had nourished with nitrogen and potash, -and had planted with nothing but regenerated, -select seeds out of this honest catalogue. I put -this lump of soil in a pot by a south window and -tenderly planted more regenerated, select seeds -within its breast—tomato seeds, Jewel, Earliana, -and Bonny Best. Then I looked that it -should bring forth tomato plants, and it brought -forth within the pot, at the end of two weeks, -pig-weed, horse-weed, chick-weed, smart-weed, -white-weed, rag-weed, knot-weed, tumble-weed, -milk-weed, silk-weed, sneeze-weed, poke-weed; -goose-grass, crab-grass, witch-grass, wire-grass, -spear-grass; burdock, sourdock, and <i>pusley</i>; to -say nothing of the swarm of things from Europe, -whose infant cotyledons looked innocent enough, -but whose roots were altogether evil.</p> - -<p>Life offered that lump of mother earth its -magical chance and the lump took it. The<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_31" id="Page_31">[31]</a></span> -innate badness of it, this cared-for, chemically -pure, subdued piece of garden soil! Its frozen -heart a very furnace of smouldering fires; its -breast, that suckled the nursing salsify in the -summer, a bed of such wild spores as would sow -a world to weeds! Given tomato seeds, regenerated, -select tomato seeds, Jewel, Earliana, -and Bonny Best, the lump of earth brings forth -its own original pig-weed, horse-weed, chick-weed, -smart-weed, white-weed, rag-weed, knot-weed, -tumble-weed, milk-weed, silk-weed, -sneeze-weed, poke-weed; goose-grass, crab-grass, -witch-grass, wire-grass, spear-grass; burdock, -sourdock, and pusley. That is what it -brought forth a million years ago. A million -years from now, subdued and sweetened and -nourished, and planted with regenerated, select -tomato seed, Jewel, Earliana, and Bonny Best, -and put in a pot in the sunshine of the south -window, that lump of earth will bring forth -pig-weed, horse-weed, chick-weed, smart-weed, -white-weed, rag-weed, knot-weed, tumble-weed, -milk-weed, silk-weed, sneeze-weed, poke-weed, -goose-grass, crab-grass, witch-grass, wire-grass, -spear-grass; burdock, sourdock, and pusley.</p> - -<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_32" id="Page_32">[32]</a></span></p> - -<div class="poetry-container"> -<div class="poetry"> -<div class="versefirst">“The Form remains, the Function never dies;</div> -<div class="verse">While we, the brave, the mighty, and the wise,</div> -<div class="verse">We Men, who in our morn of youth defied</div> -<div class="verse">The elements, must vanish;”</div> -</div></div> - -<p>—vanish, but not change. The heart of man is -not less constant than a clod of earth.</p> - -<div class="poetry-container"> -<div class="poetry"> -<div class="versefirst">“Lord, we are vile, conceived in sin,</div> -<div class="verse">And born unholy and unclean;</div> -<div class="verse">Sprung from the man, whose guilty fall</div> -<div class="verse">Corrupts his race and taints us all,”</div> -</div></div> - -<p>—sings Watts with Augustine, with gusto and -with more unction and consolation to me than -in any other of his hymns. To know that we -still inherit a portion of the original Adam, -if only the naughty of him, is tremendously -heartening. Anything original, if only original -sin, in this day of the decorous and the conventional, -is stimulating. For, if we do still -come by all of Adam’s original badness, do we -not, by the same token, come by all of his original -goodness, and are we not then wholly original, -as the original Adam? We must be; as surely -as the clod is; full, like the clod of wild weed-seed, -and capable, like the clod, under the proper -care, of producing tomato plants: Jewel, Earliana, -and Bonny Best, regenerate and select.</p> - - - -<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_33" id="Page_33">[33]</a></span>I say the heart of a man is of the same steady -stuff as the other clay. What it was, it is, and -will be—wild, and ever seeking an escape from -the decorous, the conventional, the routine of -his subdued and ordered round.</p> - -<p>How constant the heart of nature is to itself -I saw again the other day at Walden Pond. -Almost half a century before I came to this -planet, Thoreau wrote of Walden Pond: “But -since I left those shores the woodchoppers have -still further laid them waste, and now for many -a year there will be no more rambling through -the aisles of the wood, with occasional vistas -through which you see the water.” Those many -years have long since come and gone. Thoreau -is gone; his cabin is gone; and a cairn of stones -marks the spot where it stood. Over the stumps -he saw, tall stranger trees now stand; and once -more there is rambling through their shadowy -aisles, and vistas through which you catch -glimpses of the beloved face of Walden, calm -and pure as when he last looked upon it.</p> - -<p>“Why, here is Walden!” I hear him exclaim, -“the same woodland lake that I discovered so -many years ago; where a forest was cut down<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_34" id="Page_34">[34]</a></span> -last winter another is springing up by its shore -as lusty as ever; the same thought is welling up -to its surface as was then; it is the same liquid -joy and happiness to itself and its maker, aye”—and -it has now been set aside as a reservation -that its liquid joy and happiness may be ours -forever.</p> - -<p>Change is constant, but it is the change of -the ever-returning wheel. Thoreau’s cabin is -gone, and no other cabin can now be built on the -shores of Walden Pond. But the trees have -come back to stay, and if, “on the surface of -things” Thoreau “has been there before us,” -we must go below or above the surface and find -our frontier.</p> - -<p>“Magical chances?” a young aviator on the -Pacific Coast wrote lately. “I thought of them -to-day as I flirted with a little bunch of cotton-wool -clouds eight thousand five hundred feet -above Point Loma. And I wondered what Dana -would have thought had one of his shipmates -sauntered across the deck of the Pilgrim, and, -clapping him on the back, said: ‘I’ll meet you, -old man, in fifteen minutes up there in that -fleet of little clouds; if they whift and drift into<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_35" id="Page_35">[35]</a></span> -space, wait for me at the five-thousand-foot -altitude’?”</p> - -<p>So the frontier comes back. Pushed past the -suburbs of Astoria City into the Pacific, it is -seen crawling out on the sandy shores of Cape -Cod with the next great storm. The single line -of human footsteps across the polar snows has -not left too packed and plain a trail. New snows -have covered it, as new trees have shadowed the -shores of Walden.</p> - -<p>Peary’s footprints, and Dr. Cook’s, too, would -be very hard to follow.</p> - -<p>It was more than twenty-five years ago that -I started from Savannah over the old stage-road -to Augusta, finding my way by faint uncertain -blazings on the tree-trunks through a hundred -and thirty-odd miles of swamp. They were -solemn miles. Trees thicker than my body grew -in the ruts where wheels had run; more than -once the great diamond rattlesnake coiled in my -path, chilling the silence of the river bottoms -with his shivering whirr. Once I heard the gobble -of the wild turkey and the scream of the bobcat; -and at night, while sleeping in an old abandoned -church on the river bluff, I was awakened by<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_36" id="Page_36">[36]</a></span> -the snuffling of a bear which had thrust its -muzzle underneath the church door in the foot-worn -hollow of the sill.</p> - -<p>It was a lonesome place. A faint road led -away from it off through the swamp; but, aside -from the gravestones near by, there were no other -human signs around. How long since human -feet had crossed the threshold, I do not know.</p> - -<p>The chintz altar-cloth that I tried to draw -over me (the night was chill) crumbled at my -touch and drifted off into a million dusty fragments. -I had meant no desecration. I was very -weary and had crept in through a window from -the night and cold. A slow rain had settled down -with the dusk, attended by darkness indescribably -profound. And beneath the long-draped -pines outside slept those whose feet had worn -the threshold—slept undisturbed by the soughing -of the wind, wrapped in the unutterable -loneliness of the coiling river and the silent, -somber swamp.</p> - -<p>Yet here had passed a highway between two -great cities just a few years earlier, before the -railroad was built farther out through the State. -Already the swamp and the river had taken the<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_37" id="Page_37">[37]</a></span> -highway for their own, and from human feet -given it again to adventure, to the gliding form, -the swift wing, and the soft padded foot.</p> - -<p>The giants of old, the frontiers and clipper -ships of old, are gone. They went out with the -ebb tide, and here already comes back the flood! -And with it the same old human chance, the -magical chance of escape. Lay aside the rifle -and you pick up the camera—to creep with it -into the lion’s den; or to climb with it into the -top of a towering oak, on some sheer mountain -wall; and, pushing it before you along a horizontal -limb, feet dangling in space, a stiff wind -blowing, eagles screaming overhead, canyon wall -below you, and far, far down the narrow canyon -bottom, you hold on, body balancing camera, -but nothing over against the swaying brain, -and grind out a hundred feet of movie film. This -is to shoot a good many lions.</p> - -<p>Life offers us all the chance of escape. Go -where we will on the surface of things, men have -been there before us; but beneath the surface we -need go no deeper than our own hearts to find -a frontier, and that adventurous something for -which the decorous and conventional allows no -place in its scheme.</p> - - - -<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_38" id="Page_38">[38]</a></span></p> - -<hr class="chap" /> - -<div class="chapter"> -<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_39" id="Page_39">[39]</a></span> - - - -<p class="ph2">CHAPTER II</p> - -<p class="ph2">THE RADIUM OF ROMANCE</p></div> - - - -<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_40" id="Page_40">[40]</a></span></p> - -<hr class="chap" /> - -<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_41" id="Page_41">[41]</a></span></p> -<h2 class="nobreak">CHAPTER II<br /> - -<small>THE RADIUM OF ROMANCE</small></h2> - -<p class="center">“Why thus longing, thus forever sighing?”</p> - - -<p><span class="smcap">Because,</span> I suppose, there were once two sides -to her bread-board, both of which she used for -sketching. She brought the board from the Fine -Arts room at college to her new home, carrying it -one day to the kitchen to try her hand at modeling—in -dough. There are several of her early -sketches about the house, of that period prior to -the dough, which show real talent. Her bread, -however, had about it the touch of genius. -The loaves grew larger all the time, the bakings -more frequent. The walls of any house are rather -quickly covered with pictures, but there is no -bottom to the bread-box. There are still two sides -to her bread-board, and she uses both sides for -dough.</p> - -<div class="poetry-container"> -<div class="poetry"> -<div class="versefirst">“Why thus longing, thus forever sighing?</div> -<div class="verse">For the far-off, unattained and dim?”</div> -</div></div> - -<p>Because, I suppose, time was when I thought of -other things than the price of flour; not because<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_42" id="Page_42">[42]</a></span> -of much money in those times, but because she -made angel-cake most of the time then, and -what bread we did eat was had of the baker; -and because the price of flour was then a matter -of course. The price of flour now is a good deal -more than a matter of course, and the price of -corn-meal even more than the price of flour; so -that we must count the slices now, and cut them -thin.</p> - -<p>We shall have angel-cake again, I promise the -children, with the biggest kind of a hole in the -middle, giving them a bran muffin to munch -meanwhile, and wondering in my heart if this -fight for bread will ever end in angel-cake.</p> - -<p>One can live on potatoes and bran muffins, -although there was never any romance about -them, not even during the Great War when -Wall Street took them as collateral. We need -cake. I don’t remember that I ever lacked potatoes -as a child, but, as a child, I do remember -dancing while the pickaninnies sang,</p> - -<div class="poetry-container"> -<div class="poetry"> -<div class="versefirst">“Mammy gwine make some short’nin’, short’nin’,</div> -<div class="verse">Mammy gwine make some short’nin’ cake.</div> -<div class="verse">Ay lak short’nin’, short’nin’, short’nin’,</div> -<div class="verse">Ay lak short’nin’, short’nin’ cake,”</div> -</div></div> - -<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_43" id="Page_43">[43]</a></span></p> - -<p>in an ecstasy of pure delight, which was not -remotely induced by common hunger.</p> - -<p>Short’nin’ cake, angel-cake, floating island, -coffee jelly—are they not victuals <i>spirituels</i>, -drifted deep with frosting, honeyed over with an -amber-beaded sweat, with melting sweetness, -insubstantial, impalpable, ethereal, that vanish -into the brain, that thrill along the nerves, feeding -not the body, not the mind, nor yet the -spirit, for these are but three of our four elements—we -are also the stuff that dreams are -made of, and we cannot wholly subsist on more -material fare.</p> - -<p>What makes pie pie is its four-and-twenty-blackbirds. -Singing-blackbird pie is the only -pie, whether you make it of apples or rhubarb -or custard or squash, with one crust or two. -He dreamed a dream who made the original pie. -And even now I cannot pass a baker in apron -and paper cap without a sense of frostings and -mringues—of the white of life separated from -the yolk of life and stirred into a dream. I find -the same touch of romance on many faces, both -young and old, as I find it over the landscape at -dusk and dawn, and on certain days even at -high noon.</p> - - - -<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_44" id="Page_44">[44]</a></span>It was so this morning when a flock of migrating -bluebirds went over, calling down to me. -They came out of the dawn, hovered idly over -the barn and the tops of the cedars in the pasture, -then faded into the blue about them and -beyond them, where a fleet of great white clouds -was drifting slowly far off to the south. But their -plaintive voices floating down to me I still hear -calling, with more yearning than a man, perhaps, -should allow himself to know. For at the -first sip of such sweet misery some poet chides,</p> - -<div class="poetry-container"> -<div class="poetry"> -<div class="versefirst">“Why thus longing, thus forever sighing</div> -<div class="verse">For the far-off, unattained and dim,</div> -<div class="verse">While the beautiful, all about us lying,</div> -<div class="verse">Offers up its low perpetual hymn?”</div> -</div></div> - -<p>As if longing were a weakness and not the heart’s -hope; and our sighing— Shall I sigh for what -I have? Or stop sighing? Some of my possessions -I may well sigh over, but there are very -few to sigh for, seeing none of them are farther -off than the barn or the line fence, except a -few books that I have lent my friends, and -now and then a few dollars.</p> - -<p>And such is the magic in the morning light -that I see the beautiful all about me lying—in<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_45" id="Page_45">[45]</a></span> -the bend of the road, on the sweep of the -meadow, across the commonplace dooryard -asleep in the sun; and such is the sweet silence of -the autumn day that I hear the low perpetual -hymn—in the lingering notes of the bluebirds, -in the strumming of the crickets, in the curving -stems of the goldenrods, the loud humming of -the aster-dusted bees, even in the wavering red -leaves of the maples singing in their fall.</p> - -<p>It lacks an hour of mail-time, and the newspaper, -and the world. The bluebirds are leaving -before the mail-man comes, and everything with -wings is flying with them, or is poised for flight -as if there were no world, except a world for -wings.</p> - -<p>The day is warm, with little breezes on the -wing, hardly larger than swallows. They stir -the grasses of the knoll, and race with them up -the slope, to fly on over the wavy crest, following -the bluebirds off toward the deep-sea spaces -among the drifting clouds. And the curving -knoll itself is in motion, a yellow-brown billow -heaving against the moving clouds where they -ride along the sky. And over the knoll sweep -the hawking swallows, white bellies and brown<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_46" id="Page_46">[46]</a></span> -and glinting steel-blue backs aflash in the sun. -Winging swallows, winging seeds, winging winds, -winging clouds and spheres, and my own soul -winging away into the beckoning blue where -the bluebirds have gone!</p> - -<p>But I shall return—to the mail-box on this -rural free delivery route, to the newspaper, to -the tariff, to the Turk. The Democratic State -Committee is assembled this day in Springfield. -I am not there. I also ran. I stumped the State -for nomination to the National Senate, and -landed here on Mullein Hill, Hingham. Here -I set out. Through many years I have developed -the safe habit of returning here. It was a magical -chance Life offered me; a dream of beating the -protective tariff devils. But Mullein Hill is -clothed with dreams; and magical chances make -this their stopping-place.</p> - -<p>It is certainly true to-day. To begin with, -I have this day bought the field by the side of -my house. For all the twenty years of my living -here I have dreamed of this rolling field with its -pines and pointed cedars, and rounded knoll -against the sky. Not every day in the autumn -is like this for dreams; not many of them in all<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_47" id="Page_47">[47]</a></span> -the year. I shall be building fences about the -field now for many days; and paying taxes on the -field every day from this time on. There are -not many autumn days like this for dreams. -Yet to know one such day, one touched with -this golden melancholy, this sweet unrest and -yearning, should it not outlast the noon, is to -know,</p> - -<div class="poetry-container"> -<div class="poetry"> -<div class="versefirst">“And one thing more that may not be,</div> -<div class="verse">Old earth were fair enough for me.”</div> -</div></div> - -<p>You say that I am still thinking of the United -States Senate. Possibly. “One thing more that -may not be” I must be thinking on, for we all -are. After the nomination comes the election; -and what chance has the sworn enemy of a high -protective tariff of election in Massachusetts?</p> - -<p>Old Earth is fair enough for me ordinarily, -and she is passing fair to-day. But even the -dog, for all his appetite and growing years, is -not always satisfied with bread and play. He -clings closer than ever to me, as if sometimes -frightened at inner voices calling him, which, -like deep waters, seem to widen between us, and -which no love, though pure and immeasurable, -may be able to cross. He is nothing uncommon<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_48" id="Page_48">[48]</a></span> -as a dog, except in the size of his spirit and the -quality of his love. He will tackle anything, -from a railroad train to a buzzing bumble-bee, -that he imagines has intentions inimical to me; -and there is nothing on the move, either coming -or going, quite innocent of such intentions. Without -fear, or awe, or law, he wears his collar, and -his license number, 66, but not as a sign of bondage, -for that sign he wears all over his alert and -fearless front. He growls in his sleep before the -fire at ghosts of things that have designs against -the house; he risks his life all day long.</p> - -<p>But he reserves a portion of his soul. He will -deliberately chew off his leash at night, and, -making sure that nothing stirs about the helpless -house, will steal away to the woods, where he -hears the baying of some spectral pack down the -forest’s high-arched halls. I do not know what -the little cross-bred terrier is hunting along the -frosted paths—fox or rabbit or wild mice; I -cannot run the cold trails that are so warm to -his nose; but far ahead of his nose lope two -panting hearts, his and mine, following the -Gleam.</p> - -<p>All dogs are dreamers, travelers by twilight,<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_49" id="Page_49">[49]</a></span> -who wander toward a slow deferring dawn. They -cannot see in the white fire of noon. A lovelier -light, diffused and dim with dusk, is in the eyes -of dogs and all dumb creatures, through which -they watch a world of shadows moving with them -like lantern-lighted shapes at night upon a wall.</p> - -<div class="poetry-container"> -<div class="poetry"> -<div class="versefirst">“Not of the sunlight,</div> -<div class="verse">Not of the moonlight,</div> -<div class="verse">Not of the starlight,”</div> -</div></div> - -<p>is the tender, troubled light in the eyes of dogs.</p> - -<p>There is a deposit, an infinitesimal deposit, -it may be, of the radium of romance in the slag -of all souls. Call it by other names—optimism, -idealism, religion—you still leave it undefined; -an inherent, essential element, harder to separate -from the spiritual dross of us than radium from -its carnotite; a kind of atomic property of the -spirit which breaks up its substance; which -ionizes, energizes, and illumines it.</p> - -<p>There may be souls that never knew its -power, but I can hardly think there ever was a -soul shut in a cave so darksome, that romance -never entered with its touch of radiance, if only as</p> - -<p class="center">“A little glooming light, much like a shade.”</p> - -<p>This is the light in the eyes of dogs, the light<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_50" id="Page_50">[50]</a></span> -that birds and bees follow, and the jellyfish -steering round and round his course. Something -like its quivering flame burns down in the green, -dismal depths of the sea; down in the black -subliminal depths; and on down in the heart of -the world. For what other light is it, that guides -the herring every spring, in from the ocean up -Weymouth Back River? or the salmon in from -the Pacific, up, high up the Columbia to the -Snake, and higher up the Snake into the deep, -dark gorges of the Imnaha?</p> - -<p>It is now long past October, and where is the -bluebird’s mate of June? She has forgotten him, -and is forgotten by him, but he has not forgotten -his dream-of-her; for I saw him in the orchard, -while southward bound, going in and out of the -apple-tree holes, the lover still, the dream-of-her -in his heart, holding over from the summer and -coming to meet him ahead of her, down the -winter, out of the coming spring.</p> - -<p>The dog and you and I and even the humble -toad are dreamers at heart, all of us, only we are -deeper adream than they.</p> - -<div class="poetry-container"> -<div class="poetry"> -<div class="versefirst">“If nothing once, you nothing lose,</div> -<div class="verse">For when you die you are the same,”</div> -</div></div> - - - -<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_51" id="Page_51">[51]</a></span>says Freneau to a flower. Yet the flowers are of -the dust that I am made of, and they too are -the stuff of dreams. And the toad under the -kitchen-steps, what he knows of my heart! As -if the unrequited pain of lovers, the sweetest, -saddest things of poets, had always been his -portion, and their vague melancholy the only -measure of his tremulous twilight song. When -the soft spring dusk has stolen into the young -eyes of the day, as the first shadow of some sweet -fear into the startled eyes of a girl, then out of -the hush, quavering through the tender gloom,</p> - -<p class="center">“A voice, a mystery!”</p> - -<p>From his earth-hole under the kitchen-steps -I have known the toad, by dint of stretching -and hitching up on chance stones, to get nine -inches up, nine inches from the surface of the -globe, up on the lowest of the steps! Yet it is -given him to pipe a serenade in the gloaming -that no other lover, bird or poet, ever quite -equaled, even when he sang,</p> - -<div class="poetry-container"> -<div class="poetry"> -<div class="versefirst">“I arise from dreams of thee</div> -<div class="verse">In the first sweet sleep of night.”</div> -</div></div> - -<p>Life is always a romance. There is fire in its -heart, even in the three cold chambers of the<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_52" id="Page_52">[52]</a></span> -toad’s heart; and the light of the fire flickers -fainter than the guttered candle before it will go -out. This may not be “the true light”; yet it -lighteth every man that cometh into the world, -every man with a pen, and his brother with a -hoe, though they comprehend it not. One of -our poets has written of “The Man With The -Hoe” and left the man out and put only the -hoe in the poem. This poet has written more -than he has hoed, I am sure; as the painter of -“The Man with the Hoe” had painted more -than he had hoed, I am sure. Here is a poet who -sees no light at all in “The Man with the Hoe,” -because that poet has written more than he has -hoed, which is to gather where he has not -strawed. When a hoe looks as black as this to a -pen, you will search the premises of the pen in -vain for hoes. I hoe; I know men who hoe; and -none of us knows Mr. Markham’s scarecrow for -ourself. Here a realist sees what another realist -thought he saw; as if you could ever <i>see</i> life!</p> - -<p>Life is not what the realist sees, but what the -realist is and knows, plus what the man with -the hoe is and knows; and he knows that, if -chained to a pick instead of a hoe, down in the<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_53" id="Page_53">[53]</a></span> -black pit of some Siberian mine, he could not -work life out in the utter dark.</p> - -<p>Realism, if not a distortion and a disease, is -at best only a half-truth; and the realist, if more -than a medical examiner for his district, is but -the undertaker besides.</p> - -<p>Whoever sings a true song, or pens the humblest -plodding prose, whether of Achilles, son of -Peleus, or of John Gilley, a milkman down in -Maine, or of the toad, or of the bee, has essentially -one story to tell, and must be a Homer, -truly to tell it.</p> - -<p>Here on my desk lies the story of John Gilley, -and over in the next farmhouse lingers the unwritten -story of another milkman, my neighbor, -Joel Moore; and in the other neighbor-houses -live like people—humble, humdrum country -people, with their stories, which, if lighted with -nothing but their own hovering gleam, would -glow forever.</p> - -<p>The next man I meet would make a book; -for either he is, or he knows, a good-enough -story, could I but come by the tale.</p> - -<p>O. Henry, pacing the streets in an agony of -fear at having run out of story-matter, is only<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_54" id="Page_54">[54]</a></span> -a case of nerves. The one inexhaustible supply -of matter in the Universe that is of use to -man is story-matter; for, as the first human -pair have been a perpetual song and story, so the -last pair shall be the theme for some recording -angel, or else they will leave a diary.</p> - -<p>The real ill with literature is writer’s cramp, -an inability to seize the story, all of it, its truth -as well as its facts—an ill, not of too much -observation, but of too little imagination. Art -does not watch life and record it. Art loves life -and creates it.</p> - -<p>“No one knows the stars,” says Stevenson, -“who has not slept, as the French happily put -it, <i> la belle toile</i>. He may know all their names, -and distances, and magnitudes, and yet be ignorant -of what alone concerns mankind, their -serene and gladsome influence on the mind.”</p> - -<p>Art and literature have turned scientist of -late, as if our magnitudes, names, and distances, -as if the concern of psychologists, physiologists, -ethnologists, criminologists, and pathologists, -were the concern of mankind! These things all -belong to the specialists.</p> - -<p>What does mankind reck of the revolution of<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_55" id="Page_55">[55]</a></span> -the node and apsides? that Neptune’s line of apsides -completes its revolution in 540,000 years? -Instead of an astronomer, mankind is still the -simple shepherd, keeping watch by night, and -all he knows of the stars is that they brood above -the sleeping hills, and now and then, in some -holy hush, they sing together.</p> - -<p>Science is concerned with the names, distances, -and magnitudes of the stars; and with problems -touching the “intestinal parasites of the flea.” -Art, literature, and religion are concerned only -with mankind; with the elemental, the universal, -the eternal; with the dream, the defeat, the -romance of life.</p> - -<p>I have much to do with writers—with great -writers, could they only think of something to -write about. “There is nothing left,” they cry, -“to write about.” “But here am I. Take me,” -I answer. Out come pads and pencils flying. -There is hard looking at me for a moment. Then -a cynical smile. I won’t do. Becky might have -done, but Thackeray got her; just as some one -has got everybody! My tribe can never furnish -her like again. Yet my tribe is not infertile; it is -Thackeray’s, rather, that has run out.</p> - - - -<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_56" id="Page_56">[56]</a></span>A sweet young thing in one of my extension -courses, voicing the literary despair of the class -in a poem called “The Fairy Door,” made this -end of the whole matter:</p> - -<div class="poetry-container"> -<div class="poetry"> -<div class="versefirst">“The world seems black and ugly</div> -<div class="verse">When I shut the Fairy Door;</div> -<div class="verse">I want to go to Fairyland</div> -<div class="verse">And live forever more.”</div> -</div></div> - -<p>I was reading this effusion on my way in to -college. When I reached the climax in the -stanza,</p> - -<p class="center">“The world seems black and ugly”</p> - -<p>I thrust the manuscript back into my bag in -disgust and turned for relief to the morning -paper. Here—for the young writer was the -daughter of a prominent Bostonian—I saw -the announcement of her engagement to a -Chicago man, and I knew, of course, what ailed -the poetry; and I knew the medicine that I -should administer.</p> - -<p>How far apart literature and life sometimes -get! And how much more real and romantic is -ordinary life than ordinary literature!</p> - -<p>The girl was to meet me that afternoon in the -university extension lecture. The amphitheater<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_57" id="Page_57">[57]</a></span> -was full of city folk, and there in the middle of -the hall sat the young poet. She was very pretty, -one of the daughters of men still fair. Taking her -poem, I read it aloud to that last stanza, when, -turning sharply, and pointing the manuscript -hard at her, I demanded,</p> - -<p>“Is this so? Do you want to leave Boston for -Fairyland, instead of Chicago? Do you?”</p> - -<p>She was staggered by the suddenness and -savageness of it all and rose to her feet, adorably -pink in her confusion, stammering, “No, no, -I beg—of course I—no, I don’t”—by this -time so recovered that her eyes flashed wrath -as she dropped to her seat amid the gaping -and the twittering of the class.</p> - -<p>“If you don’t mean it,” I demanded, “why -in the sacred name of literature did you write -it? Why don’t you ever write what you mean? -And you mean that Boston has suddenly become -a back number for literature; that the -literary center has shifted to Chicago—that’s -what you mean. Chicago! the one romantic, -fairy-like spot on earth! Isn’t that what you -mean? Then don’t you see how fresh, how -thrilling a theme you have in <i>your</i> Chicago?<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_58" id="Page_58">[58]</a></span> -No one else, perhaps, ever saw Chicago in quite -this rosy, romantic light before.”</p> - -<p>Hers is the enduring truth about Chicago; as -against that set forth by Mr. Armour in “The -Packers, the Private Car Lines, and the People.” -Here she was, herself the very stuff of the eternal -in literature, and forced to Fairyland for something -to write about! Sheer nonsense. One need -not take the wings of the morning to the uttermost -sea, or make one’s bed in Hell for “copy.” -Chicago will do—or Boston—or even Hingham.</p> - -<p>To be, if to be only a stock or a stone, beast -or bird or man, is to be a story, while to be any -one of my neighbors is to be an epic.</p> - -<p>The day we moved out here, before our goods -arrived, a strangely youthful pair, far on in the -eighties, struggled up the hill from the old farm -below to greet us. He was clad in overalls and -topcoat, and she in flowers, overflowing from -both her arms, and in wild confusion on the -gayest Easter bonnet that ever bloomed.</p> - -<p>“How do you do, neighbors!” she began, -extending her armfuls of glorious mountain -laurel; “Mr. White and I bring you the welcome<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_59" id="Page_59">[59]</a></span> -of the Hingham Hills”—Mr. White’s rough -old hand grasping mine amid the blossoms.</p> - -<p>“Why,” I cried, “I didn’t know the Hingham -Hills could hold such a welcome. I have tramped -the woods about here, but I never found a bunch -of laurel.”</p> - -<p>“Ah, you didn’t get into Valley Swamp! Mr. -White and I will show you, won’t we, Georgie? -We know where odes hang on hawthorns, don’t -we? We are busy farmers, and you know what -farming is; but we have never ploughed up our -poetry-patch, have we, Georgie?”</p> - -<p>They never had; nor much of their other -ninety-six acres either—the whole farm a joyous -riot of free verse: fences without line or meter: -cattle running where they liked; the farm kit—a -mowing machine, a sulky plough, and a stolid -old grindstone—straying romantically about -the shy sweet fields.</p> - -<p>It was an ode of a carriage that the spoony -old couple went to town in, with wheels dactylic -on one side and iambic on the other, and so -broken a line for a back spring that Mrs. White -would slide into Mr. White’s lap without csura -or even a punctuation mark to hinder.</p> - - - -<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_60" id="Page_60">[60]</a></span>I was at the village market one muddy March -day, when Cupid and the old mare, neither -wearing blinders, brought this chariot to the -curb. Mr. White, descending to the street, -reached up for Mrs. White, who, giving him -both her hands, put out a dainty foot to the -carriage-step and there poised, dismayed at the -March mud. Instantly Mr. White, disengaging -one hand, lifted a folded blanket from the seat, -shot it grandly out across the mud, and with a -bow as gallant as Sir Walter’s own, handed the -dear old shoes unblemished to the shop.</p> - -<p>Eighteen or eighty, it is just the same. Boston -or Chicago or Hingham, it is just the same. -White or red or yellow or black, it is just the -same. The radium of romance is mixed with -the slag of all our souls. Here is my colored -neighbor down toward the village.</p> - -<p>“Hello!” I called to him over the telephone, -“aren’t you going to do that job for me?”</p> - -<p>This neighbor is a most useful colored citizen, -with a complete line of avocations, cleaning cesspools -nocturnally and on Saturday afternoons -being one of these sporadic and subsidiary callings.</p> - - - -<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_61" id="Page_61">[61]</a></span>“Hello!” he answered; “I most assuredly -am! And exceedingly sorry I am, too, for this -delay.” (He had been coming for one year and -six months now.) “But my business grows -enormously. It is really more than I can administer. -The fact is, professor, I must increase -my equipment. I can’t dip any longer. I am -rapidly approaching the proportions of a pump.”</p> - -<p>“I am rapidly approaching the proportions -of a pump.” Divine! I like the sound. For it -is the true measure of life as set over against -that which life may merely appear to be. To -trudge along through life beside your humble -cart of the long-handled dipper, and to know -that your dipper is approaching the proportions -of a pump is to know that you are greater than -you know.</p> - -<p>I saw yesterday in the Sunday newspaper the -lovely face of a girl, who, “rumor has it,” ran -the legend, “will be the next Queen of England.” -She, too, like my colored neighbor, like us all, is -approaching the proportions of a pump. We -are all the stuff that pumps and dreams are -made of, and great art, and great literature.</p> - -<p>I spoke of Joel Moore here in the next house<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_62" id="Page_62">[62]</a></span> -to me. For twenty-six years he was chained to -a milk-route, covering Lovell’s Corner, East -Weymouth, and our back wood-road; but he -always drove it in a trotting sulky.</p> - -<p>From behind the bushes I have seen him -calming the leg-weary team as it labored up the -humps in the road, his feet braced, his arms extended -to the slack lines, his eyes fixed on the -Judge’s Stand ahead, while he maneuvered -against Ed Geers and Ben Hur and all the -Weymouths for the pole.</p> - -<p>He came home in that lumbering, rattling -milk-cart as if it wore winged wheels, and were -being drawn by the steeds of Aurora around the -half-mile track at the great Brockton Fair.</p> - -<p>It was sixteen years ago that Joel drove home -with Flora IV, a black mare without a leg to -stand on, but with a record of 2.12¾ There -was large fixing of the little barn for her, and -much rubbing-down of withers.</p> - -<p>One day Joel was seen wandering over the -knoll here near the house, kicking stones around. -Something was the matter. I sauntered out -toward my barn casually and called to him. -Picking up a piece of rock in the pasture, he<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_63" id="Page_63">[63]</a></span> -staggered with it to the fence, and fixing it into -the wall, said with labored breath, “Flora IV -has a foal!” And, lifting another stone off the -wall, for ballast, he strode up the hill and over, -and down to his barn, not knowing the “Magnificat,” -it may be, but singing it in his heart all -the way down.</p> - -<p>And this happened on the very hill which this -day I bought with the field by the side of the -house. Joel owned the field then. But he longed -for a fast horse. I never set my heart on a fast -horse; but I cannot resist a field. I did not -covet this field of Joel’s. I merely dreamed of -it as part of my dooryard, and waited—longer -than Jacob waited for Rachel. What a dream -she must have been!</p> - -<p>But let me come back to Joel and Flora and -the foal.</p> - -<p>My youngest boy was born that same summer—sixteen -years ago—the double event -in Joel’s mind wearing the mixed complexion -of twins. He had had no children till the colt -came, and naturally he spoiled her. She was -a willful little thing by inheritance, though—arch, -skittish, and very pretty; and long before<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_64" id="Page_64">[64]</a></span> -she wore shoes had got the petulant habit of -kicking the siding off the barn at any delay of -dinner.</p> - -<p>She should have been broken by her second -birthday, but Joel would take no risks; and in -the third summer, though he “had her used to -leather,” he needed a steady old horse to hitch -her with, and she came up to her fourth birthday -untrained. Then, the first time he took her out, -she behaved so badly, and cut herself so, forward, -that it was necessary to turn her loose for -months. Then she was sent away to be broken, -but came back a little more willful than ever, -and prettier than ever, if possible.</p> - -<p>That winter Joel had to give up his milk-route -on account of sickness, and with the opening -of spring got the blacksmith to take the colt -in hand. He took her, and threw her, dislocating -her shoulder. Then he pulled off her new shoes, -and she was put into the boxstall to get well.</p> - -<p>After that, I don’t know just why, but we -talked of other things than the colt. She kicked -a board off the back of the barn one day, sending -a splinter whizzing past my head, but neither -of us noticed it. She was seven years old now,<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_65" id="Page_65">[65]</a></span> -a creature shaped for speed, but Joel was not -strong enough to manage her, and a horse like -this could so easily be harmed. In fact, he never -harnessed her again.</p> - -<p>I urged him from time to time, with what -directness I dared, to let me take him into the -hospital. But he had never left the farm and his -wife alone overnight in all these years. Then -one day he sent for me. He would go, he said, -if I could arrange for him.</p> - -<p>A March snow lay on the fields the day before -he was to go, and all that day, at odd times, -I would see him creeping like a shadow about -his place: to the hen-coops, up to the line fence, -out to the apple tree in the meadow, taking a -last look at things. It was quite impossible for -me to work that day.</p> - -<p>The next morning the four boys, on their way -to school, went down ahead of me to say good-bye. -They filed in, shook hands bravely, fighting -back their tears, and playing fine the game of -bluff with him, though the little fellow, born -the summer the colt was born, nearly spoiled -it all. He is a dear impulsive child and had -frankly been Joel’s favorite.</p> - - - -<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_66" id="Page_66">[66]</a></span>“I’ve taken the eveners off the disk harrow,” -he was saying as he came out to the sleigh. -“I gave the kittens a bed of fresh rowan. I -drove a nail under the shutter of the can-house, -where you can hang the key. You had better -lock up a little till I get back”—his words half -muffled under the big robes of the sleigh.</p> - -<p>“I hate to leave home,” he said, as we went -along; “but she couldn’t stand it. She’s not -well. It isn’t so bad for me with you along.”</p> - -<p>Two or three times he was about to say something -else, but felt too tired. I had him duly -entered; introduced him to his surgeon; helped -him to his cot, where a cheery nurse made him -easy; then gave him my hand.</p> - -<p>“Good-day,” he said; “I’m going to pay you -back some time. Only I can’t.” He clung a -moment longer to me. “I’ve never had many -of the luxuries. I’ve worked hard for all I’ve -got—except for the little colt. She was thrown -in. I never fed her a quart of grain—the -cleanest little eater—as fat as butter—and on -nothing but roughage all the time!”</p> - -<p>Then, looking me straight in the eye, he said -calmly, “You and I know and the doctors know.<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_67" id="Page_67">[67]</a></span> -But I couldn’t tell her. You tell her. You can. -And tell her I guess she had better sell the little -colt.”</p> - -<p>He paused a moment. Something yet he -wished to say—the thing he had tried before -to say. I hope the Recording Angel took it -down, and the <i>way</i> he said it, down. Not quite -daring to look into my eyes, he asked, wistfully, -“You don’t need a fast horse yourself, of course, -having your auto?”</p> - -<p>“Yes, I do, Joel,” I answered firmly; “I do -need a fast horse. We all do, or something like -that.” And I bent over and kissed him, for his -wife, and for my little boy at home.</p> - -<p>There is balm in Gilead; but are there racetracks -in Heaven?—and fast horses there? -Perhaps not. But I often wish that I had told -Joel I believed there were. Of course there are. -There is romance in Heaven, and the magical -chance of escape there.</p> - - - - -<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_68" id="Page_68">[68]</a></span></p> - -<hr class="chap" /> - -<div class="chapter"> - - -<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_69" id="Page_69">[69]</a></span> - -<p class="ph2">CHAPTER III</p> - -<p class="ph2">THE HUNT FOR “COPY”</p></div> - -<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_70" id="Page_70">[70]</a></span></p> - -<hr class="chap" /> - -<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_71" id="Page_71">[71]</a></span></p> - -<h2 class="nobreak">CHAPTER III<br /> - -<small>THE HUNT FOR “COPY”</small></h2> - - -<p><span class="smcap">There</span> never was a bigger, fatter, flabbier -woodchuck than old Tubby—among wild -animals that I alone have known. Tubby is a -fixture of the farm. He was here when we came, -or else it was his father or his grandfather. He -is fat and flabby and as broad as he is long, and -broader when full of beans. He is very much -of a tub. When he sits in the garden, he sits -like a tub. When he runs, he runs like a tub. -And he holds beans like a tub.</p> - -<p>It is worth a few beans to see him run—a -medley in motions: up and down and round -and round, the spinning of a top and the hop -of a saucepan on a hot stove with amazing -progress forward. He knows which end of him -is head and which tail; but from a distance I -can see neither head nor tail, only sides, bulging, -tubby sides spilling down the garden. One -seldom does see the ends of a thing from a distance. -Tubby has a head-end; and he has wits<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_72" id="Page_72">[72]</a></span> -in that end. He also has a tail-end; and the -disturbing conclusion one reaches with close -study is that Tubby has wits also in this end. -He is a beautifully capable thing in his way. A -cutworm is not more capable—if there is anything -so capable as a cutworm! Both are poems; -old Tubby an epic poem—were I as capable as -Tubby, and a Homer—</p> - -<p>A full-sized woodchuck is twenty-two inches -long; and I presume that Tubby is not more -than twenty-two inches wide, though I have -seen him wobbling out of the garden and carrying -off as mere ballast a cabbage or two, and a -watermelon, and a peck or two of beans, and all -of the Swiss chard in the three rows. There are -several bushels of chard in three such rows.</p> - -<p>The way he can run with his load! His little -black heels twinkling through the vines, his -shapeless carcass flopping into his hole with me -on top of him! Then I will hear a chuckling -deep down among the hickory roots, a peculiar -vegetarian chuckle quite unlike a carnivorous -growl. And then I will sit down on the hole and -chuckle, having lost for the moment my carnivorous -growl. He is so bold, so impudent, so<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_73" id="Page_73">[73]</a></span> -canny. The old scamp rather likes me. And -I am a fairly good gardener, if I do say it -myself.</p> - -<p>When I place a trap in one entrance to his -burrow, he uses the other opening; if I put another -trap here, he promptly digs a passage -around it; if I block this with chunks of rock, -he undermines the stones and patiently moves -to a new house farther along the ridge; and, if -I set traps for him here, he changes house again. -It is a wide wooded ridge around the garden, -and honeycombed with woodchuck holes. By -and by he is back in his favorite house under -the hickory—when the spiders have hung the -doors with signs that the traps are gone.</p> - -<p>But it happened once that I forgot the traps. -Wood-earth and bits of bark and dead leaves -washed down till the wicked gins were covered, -and Tubby, coming back after weeks off on the -ridge, tumbled into one of the traps and got his -thick fat fist fast. I heard him making a dreadful -racket, and rushed up with a club in my thick -fat fist.</p> - -<p>Old Tubby stopped kicking and grunting, -and looked at me. I don’t believe that I was<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_74" id="Page_74">[74]</a></span> -ever looked at by a woodchuck before. Stolid, -sullen, defiant, there was much more of the -puzzled, of the world-old wonder in the eyes -gazing steadily into mine, as to what this -situation and this moment meant. The snarled -body was all fight and fear, but the blinking -eyes sought mine for an answer to the riddle -that I have asked of God. And all that I could -answer was, “You fat-head!” And he said, -“Fat-head yourself!” if ever a woodchuck -spoke, and spoke the truth. “Fat-head, to set -this rotten thing here and forget it!”</p> - -<p>It was a rotten thing to do. Somehow he -made me feel as if I had trapped one of my -neighbors. He saw how I was feeling, and took -advantage of me.</p> - -<p>“Whose woods are these, anyway?” he asked. -“Whose ancestors were here first, yours or -mine? You didn’t even come over in the Mayflower. -But I came here in Noah’s Ark.”</p> - -<p>“I know it. But keep quiet,” I begged him, -“and stop looking at me that way.”</p> - -<p>“What way?” he asked.</p> - -<p>“Why, so much like my brother!” I exclaimed.</p> - - - -<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_75" id="Page_75">[75]</a></span>“But I am your brother,” he retorted, -“though I am ashamed to say it.”</p> - -<p>“Don’t say it, then,” I begged.</p> - -<p>But he was wound up.</p> - -<p>“Any man who is brute enough to set this -sort of thing for his brother has no soul. And -any man who can’t share his beans with his -brother doesn’t deserve a soul. If I were as -low-down and as lazy as you, I would go over -to the north side of this hill and dig a deep hole, -and crawl into it, and pull it in on top of me, -I would.” And all the time I was pressing down -on the spring with my club, trying to free him. -Suddenly there was a flop in the hole, and away -in the sub-cellar, among the hickory roots, there -was talk of me which I should have heard, had -I been able to understand.</p> - -<p>But I have much to learn. And so has Pup, -our Scotch-Irish terrier. Time and time again -Pup has sent the old woodchuck tumbling over -himself for his hole. Once or twice they have -come to blows at the mouth of the burrow, and -Pup has come off with a limp or a hurt ear, but -with only a mouthful of coarse reddish hair to -growl over. He came off with a deep experience<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_76" id="Page_76">[76]</a></span> -lately, and a greatly enhanced respect for woodchucks. -But he is of stubborn stock. So is -Tubby of stubborn stock. Pup knows that here -is an enemy of the people, and that he must -get him. He knows that Tubby is all hair and -hide and bowels. He now knows that Tubby is -deeper than he is broad, which makes him -pretty deep.</p> - -<p>The new light began to dawn on Pup when -Tubby moved up from the woods to a corner -of the ice-house near the barn. The impudence, -the audacity of the thing stood Pup’s hair on -end, and he took to the blackberry-vines at the -other corner of the ice-house to see what would -happen.</p> - -<p>Tubby’s raiding hour was about five in the -afternoon. At that hour the shadows of the -ice-house and the barn lay wide across the -mowing-field—the proper time and color for -things to happen. And there in the close-cut -field, as if he had come up out of a burrow, sat -old Tubby, looking as big as a bear!</p> - -<p>Pup stole softly out to meet him, moving -over till he was between the chuck and the ice-house -hole. It was a deliberate act and one of<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_77" id="Page_77">[77]</a></span> -complete abandon. Things must this time be -finished. And what a perfect bit of strategy it -was! Hugging the ground when the chuck rose -high on his haunches to reconnoiter, Pup would -“freeze” till Tubby dropped down and went to -feeding, then, gliding like a snake forward, he -would flatten behind a stone or a tuft of grass, -and work forward and wait.</p> - -<p>The ground rose slightly to Pup’s disadvantage, -and he was maneuvering to avoid the uphill -rush when Tubby heard something off in the -woods and turned with a dash for his hole. It -was head-on and terrific! And the utter shock -of it, the moral shock, was more terrific! Neither -knew for an instant just what had happened; -the suddenness, the precision, the amazing -boldness and quality of the attack putting Pup -almost out of action. But it was precisely the -jar old Tubby needed. Every flabby fiber of -him was fight. The stub feet snapped into -action; the chunk of a body shot forward, ramming -Pup amidships, sending him to the bottom -of the slope, Tubby slashing like a pirate -with his terrible incisors.</p> - -<p>But the touch of those long teeth brought<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_78" id="Page_78">[78]</a></span> -Pup short about. He likes the taste of pain. -He is a son of battle. And in a moment like this -he is possessed of more than common powers -of body and soul. The fur flew; the grass flew; -but there was scarcely a sound as the two -fighters tumbled and tossed a single black-brown -body like a ball of pain. They sprang apart -and together again, whirled and dived and -dodged as they closed, each trying for a hold -which neither dared allow. But Pup got plenty -of hair, choking, slippery hair, and leathery -hide by the mouthful, while the twisting, snapping -woodchuck cut holes in Pup’s thin skin -with teeth which would punch holes in sheet -steel.</p> - -<p>And Tubby was fighting with his head as well -as with teeth and toes. He was cooler than -Pup. He had a single-track mind, and it ran -straight to his burrow. The head-work was -perfectly clear; the whole powerful play going -forward with the nicest calculation, mad as it -appeared to be in the wild rough-and-tumble. -There was method in Tubby’s madness. He was -fighting true to plan. But Pup was fighting to -kill, and he lost his head. It was to win his<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_79" id="Page_79">[79]</a></span> -hole, and life, and the pursuit of happiness on -these ancestral acres that the woodchuck was -fighting; and, as the two laid about them and -rolled over and over, they kept rolling nearer -and nearer to the ice-house and a burrow under -the corner.</p> - -<p>Over and over, right and left, they lunged -when the woodchuck, sent spinning from Pup’s -foreleg, came up with the dog chopping at his -stub nose, but, giving him all four of his mailed -feet instead, he bounded from the face of the -dog, and, with a lightning somersault, landed -plop in his burrow, Pup raking the hair from the -vanishing haunch.</p> - -<p>And now Pup knows that there is no bottom -to a woodchuck’s burrow. But do I fully realize -that there is no bottom to the woodchuck? I -have been almost fatally slow over this lesson. -Yet this is the writer’s first and most important -lesson, no matter what his theme.</p> - -<p>“I have been studying the woodchuck all my -life,” said my old friend Burroughs to me, “and -there is no getting to the bottom of him!” He -made that great discovery early; eighty-four -years of study confirmed it; and from early to<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_80" id="Page_80">[80]</a></span> -late Burroughs never lacked for things to write -about or failed of his urge to write. There was -no bottom to his woodchuck.</p> - -<p>Others have made this discovery concerning -other things: the philosophers, of truth; the -poets, of men and flowers; the prophets, of -God. But the writer must find it true of all -things, of all his own things, from woodchucks -to God. There is nothing new in this discovery. -It simply makes all things new to the discoverer. -The skeptical, the shallow, the fool who says -in his heart there is nothing but bowels to a -woodchuck—what would he at four-and-eighty -find at Woodchuck Lodge to write about? -He might have all knowledge and a pen with -which he could remove mountains, but, lacking -wonder, that power to invest things with new -and infinite significance, he would see no use in -removing the mountains and turning them -into steppes and pampas and peopled plains.</p> - -<p>All creative work, whether by brush or pen or -hoe, is somehow making mountains into men, -out of the dust an image, in our own likeness -created, in the likeness of God. It may be -woodchuck dust, or dandelion dust, or the shining<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_81" id="Page_81">[81]</a></span> -dust of stars; touched with a creative, interpreting -pen the dust takes human shape and -breathes a breath divine. A woodchuck pelt -makes an excellent fur for a winter coat; the -rest of him makes an excellent roast for a dinner; -but it is what still remains, the wonder of him, -which makes for sermon and for song.</p> - -<p>How hard a lesson that has been for me to -learn! And so slow have I been learning it that -little time is left for me to preach or sing. If only -I had known early that Mullein Hill was as good -as Helicon; that the people of Hingham were -as interesting as the people of Cranford; that -Hingham has a natural history as rich and -as varied as Selborne! My very friends have -helped to mislead and hinder me: “I don’t see -what you find to write about up here!” they -exclaim, looking out with commiseration over -the landscape, as if Wellfleet or Washington or -Wausau were better for books than Hingham! -Hanover may be better for ducks than Scituate; -but Hingham is as good as Hanover or Heaven -for books.</p> - -<p>One of my friends started for Hanover once for -a day of hunting—but I will let him tell the story:</p> - - - -<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_82" id="Page_82">[82]</a></span>“We were on our way to Hanover, duck -hunting,” he said, “and at Assinippi took the -left fork of the road and kept going. But was -this left fork the right road? [An ancient doubt -which had brought many a traveler before them -to confusion and a halt.] It was early morning, -raw and dark and damp. No one was stirring -in the farmhouses straggling along the road, -and we were turning to go back to the forks -when the kitchen door of the near-by house -opened and a gray-bearded man appeared with -a milk-pail on his elbow.</p> - -<p>“‘Is this the road to Hanover?’ we called.</p> - -<p>“The man backed into the kitchen door, put -down his milk-pail, came out again, carefully -closing the door behind him, and started down -the walk toward the front gate. He opened -the gate, turned and latched it behind him as -carefully as he had latched the kitchen door, -and, stepping out into the road, approached our -carryall. Looking up, then down the road intently, -he hitched his right foot to the hub of -our front wheel, spat precisely into the dust, -and, fixing his face steadfastly toward Cape -Cod, answered:</p> - - - -<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_83" id="Page_83">[83]</a></span>“‘No.’</p> - -<p>“‘Say it with flowers!’ snapped our driver, -wheeling about for the other fork.</p> - -<p>“At the turn I looked back. There stood our -guide in the road, his right foot still in the air, -I think; and there—though it is several years -since, he may still be standing—one foot -planted on the road to Scituate, the other foot -resting on the hub of the wheel that should have -been on the road to Hanover.”</p> - -<p>The man in the road knew that this road ran -to Scituate. He lived on it. Had they asked -him: “Master, which is the Great Commandment?” -he had answered: “Take this road for -Scituate.” For were they not duck hunting in -Hanover? Then what profounder error could -they have been in than on the road to Scituate!</p> - -<p>But most people go that way for Hanover. -Every young writer I know hankers to get his -Hanover ducks out of Scituate, as if, failing to -get ducks, he might get Scituate; novelty, the -mere novelty of gunning in Scituate when the -ducks are in Hanover, making the best sort of -“copy.”</p> - -<p>Is it some new thing that we should search<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_84" id="Page_84">[84]</a></span> -out, or some deeper, truer thing? Must we -travel, or may we stay at home? Locomotion is -certainly a curse to literature. No one nowadays -stays long enough in his own place to know it -and himself in it, which is about all that he can -know well enough to express. Let the writer -stay at home. Drummers, actors, circus-men, -and Satan are free to go up and down the earth. -And these seem to be writing most of our books.</p> - -<p>For some years, now, I, also, have been going -to and fro and up and down in the earth thinking -that I might find some better place than Hingham. -I have just returned from Wausau, -Wisconsin, where they have a very hard red -granite, and a deep green granite, both of them -the loveliest tombstone stuff that, I think, I -ever saw. Certainly they are superior to our -seam-face Hingham granite for tombstones. -Up to the time of my Wausau visit, I had never -given much thought to tombstones; but it shows -how one’s thought expands with travel, and -how easily Wausau may surpass Hingham, not -alone in gravestones, but in other, even in literary, -materials.</p> - -<p>But Hingham has one thing in the line of<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_85" id="Page_85">[85]</a></span> -gravestones not found at all in Wausau: I mean -the boulders, great roundish glacial boulders, -gray granite boulders, old and gentle and mossy-grown, -which lie strewn over our hilly pastures -among the roses and the hardhack and the -sweetfern, ready to be rolled to the tomb, and -fit for any poet’s tomb. When that shy spirit -and bird-lover, Bradford Torrey, native of my -neighbor town of Weymouth, died in far-off -California, he left but a single simple request: -that he be brought back to his birthplace for -burial, and that a Weymouth boulder be found -and rolled up to mark his grave. Were mine not -Hingham boulders I would take one out of my -wall, the one which serves as a gatepost, and, -with a yoke of Weymouth oxen, would draw it -to Bradford Torrey’s tomb, a tribute from -Hingham to Weymouth, and a gift out of the -heart of one who knows and loves “The Foot-Path -Way,” “A Rambler’s Lease,” and “A -World of Green Hills.”</p> - -<p>Perhaps one must needs go to California in -order to come by this deep desire for Weymouth. -Then let him go early. For if he is to write “The -Natural History of Weymouth,” or of Selborne,<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_86" id="Page_86">[86]</a></span> -he must return early and stay a long time. -Thoreau has been criticized for writing of -Nature as if she were born and brought up in -Concord. So she was. Can one not see all of the -world out of the “Window in Thrums”?—that -is, all of the world of Thrums, which is all of the -world, and just the world, one goes to Thrums -to see? “I have traveled a great deal in Concord,” -says Thoreau.</p> - -<p>This brings me back to Hingham. I wish that -I could write “The Natural History of Hingham”! -A modest desire! There can never be -another Gilbert White—but not for lack of -birds and beasts in Hingham. Were I a novelist -I would write a “Cranford”—and I could! I -would call it “Hingham,” not “Main Street,” -though that is the name of perhaps the longest -street in Hingham. But there are many other -streets in Hingham, and all kinds of interesting -people.</p> - -<p>And here I am on Mullein Hill, Hingham, -with all of these streets, and all of these people, -and woodchucks a plenty to write about—and -planning this day a trip to California! I might -have been the author of a recent book whose<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_87" id="Page_87">[87]</a></span> -theme and sub-title read: “In the plains and the -rolling country there is room for the individual -to skip and frolic, but all the peaks are prempted.” -Come down from Mullein Hill; get -out of Hingham; go West, young writer, as far -as California; you shall find room to skip and -frolic on the plains out there!</p> - -<p>It may be true in California, but the opposite -of that is true in Hingham. To be sure, I have -tried to prempt Mullein Hill; I now own the -knoll outside my study window, and the seven-acre -woodlot beyond; but there are many other -peaks here among the hills of Hingham, and -scarcely any of them occupied. The people of -Hingham all crowd into the plains. So did the -people of Israel crowd into the plains—of -Moab, leaving Pisgah to Moses, who found it -very lonesome. There is no one on Pisgah now, -I understand; no one on Ararat; no one on -Popocatepetl; no one on the top of Vesuvius, -nor on the peak of Everest, peaks as well known -as White Plains or the Plains of Abraham, but -not anything like so crowded. Moses sleeps on -Nebo, yet no man knows where he lies. Have -them lay you in Sleepy Hollow if you wish your<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_88" id="Page_88">[88]</a></span> -friends and neighbors to crowd in close and -keep you company.</p> - -<p>Why has there been no Iliad of Hingham? -There are Helens in Hingham, as there were -Helens of Troy. Hingham is short of Homers. -Mute, inglorious Miltons have we in Hingham. -If one of them, however, should take his pen -in hand, would he dream, and if he dreamed, -would he dare to cry to the Heavenly Muse,</p> - -<div class="poetry-container"> -<div class="poetry"> -<div class="indent16">“I thence</div> -<div class="verse">Invoke thy aid to my adventurous song,</div> -<div class="verse">That with no middle flight intends to soar</div> -<div class="verse">Above the Aonian mount, while it pursues</div> -<div class="verse">Things unattempted yet in prose or rhyme”?</div> -</div></div> - -<p>Which of our poets thinks any more of an -adventurous song? Of attempting any more the -unattempted in either prose or rhyme? It is as -if everything had been attempted; everything -dared; everything accomplished—the peaks -all prempted. Politics or religion or literature, -it matters not: the great days are gone, the -great things are done, the great men securely -housed in the Hall of Fame. Heaven offers us -a League of Nations and we prefer the tried and -proved device of war; a famed evangelist comes<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_89" id="Page_89">[89]</a></span> -to town, we build him a vast tabernacle, and -twenty thousand gather for the quickening -message—“Brighten the corner where you -are!” And in the corners, and over the walls -of the nation, with poster and placard the -“Safety-First” sign warns us not to hold our -little rushlight over-high, or flare it over-far, -for fear we set our brightened corner of the -world on fire. But the whole world is on fire! -And wherever an emperor has escaped the devouring -flame, he is fiddling, as emperors do; -and his poet laureate is writing free verse; and -all of his faithful subjects are saying, over and -over, “Day by day, in every way, I am getting -better and better.”</p> - -<p>“We are taught by great actions that the -universe is the property of every individual in -it,” says Emerson. “Every rational creature -has all nature for his dowry and estate. It is -his, if he will. He may divest himself of it; he -may creep into a corner, and abdicate his kingdom, -as most men do, but he is entitled to the -world by his constitution.” I have not spoken -lately with a man who seemed to think he was -entitled to the world. That grand old faith has<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_90" id="Page_90">[90]</a></span> -passed away. But I talk with no man lately -who does not think he is entitled to an automobile. -Great is Tin Lizzie of the Americans! -Greater than Diana of the Ephesians. But -except for our worship of the Ford we are not -over-religious. The Ford is a useful little deity; -she meets our needs to the last mile. The individual -can skip and frolic with her, for she is -distinctly the goddess of the plains and rolling -country. Admirable to her winking tail-light, -she is one hundred per cent American, the work -of one of the supreme inventive geniuses of our -time. She is the greatest thing in America, chugging -everywhere but up Parnassus. Fool-proof, -the universal car, she is the very sign and symbol -of our antlike industry, the motor-minded expression -of our internal-combustion age.</p> - -<p>Even my quiet old friend Burroughs had his -Ford. It was her creator himself who gave her -to him. The creature would climb around the -slopes and over the walls about Woodchuck -Lodge like a side-hill gouger, Burroughs in his -long white beard driving her, as Father Time -might drive a merry-go-round. He nearly lost -his life in her, too. But everybody nearly loses<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_91" id="Page_91">[91]</a></span> -his life so nowadays; and nearly everybody had -rather lose his life in a Ford than to drag out an -endless existence in a buggy or on foot or in a -wooden swing at home, watching the Fords go -by. What is life, anyway? The Ford is cheap; -the service station is everywhere; so, pile into the -little old “bug”—on the hood and running-boards! -“Let’s go!”</p> - -<p>Perhaps our machines are taking us—we -wish to believe so—to some new Arden, some -far-off Avalon, where we shall heal us of our -motor-minds, our movie-nerves, our corner-light -religion; where “Safety First” shall give -place to “Derring-Do” as a national motto; -where we shall ascend the empty peaks, and out -of the thunder and smoke of shaking Sinai bring -down some daring commandment, done by the -finger of God on new tables of stone.</p> - -<p>We are not lacking courage. It is imagination -that we lack. We dare. But we do not think -it worth while. We are shallow, skeptical, conventional, -out of tune with the Infinite, and out -of touch with spiritual things. If we do not try -the unattempted, it is because we believe it has -already been tried. It is because Homer has<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_92" id="Page_92">[92]</a></span> -prempted Helicon that we tunnel it. Only -Milton, among us moderns (and how ancient -Milton seems!), only Milton in his blindness has -seen that there is room and verge enough on -Helicon, and deeps within the abyss of Hades -where Dante would be lost. No, Milton is not -the only modern to leave the plains, and, like a -star, to dwell apart. Thoreau did it at Walden; -Lanier did it on the marshes of Glynn; Burroughs -did it at Woodchuck Lodge; and Hudson did it -on the plains of Patagonia—proof enough that -ponds and plains and the low-lying marsh may -be as high as Helicon for poetry, if only the poet -have the vision to see that</p> - -<div class="poetry-container"> -<div class="poetry"> -<div class="versefirst">“Like to the greatness of God is the greatness within</div> -<div class="verse">The range of the marshes, the liberal marshes of Glynn.”</div> -</div></div> - -<p>But here we fail. We no longer see the greatness -of God in things. We have covered God -with an atom. We ask for bread, and Science -gives us a stone; for God, and Science gives us -an electron. It was a super-electron that created -the heavens and the earth when it saw that all -of the other electrons were without form and -void. Atomism has taken the place of theism -in our religion, if it is religion. Man is only a<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_93" id="Page_93">[93]</a></span> -bunch of willful atoms, or parts of atoms, not -any longer the crowning work of Creation, its -center and circumference, its dominion and -destiny and glory, its divine expression, interpretation, -and immortal soul. Are we to be -robbed of God? Inhibited forever from faith by -the lensed eyes of Science?</p> - -<p>“What is man?” I ask, and Science laughs -and answers, “Electrons.” That is its latest -guess. But does man look like them? Does he -feel like them? Does he behave like them? -Does he believe like them? In the laboratory he -may. But out here in the hills of Hingham, -where I am returned to the earth and the sky -and to my own soul, I know that I AM, and -that I still hold to all of those first things which -Science would shame me out of, offering me -electrons instead!</p> - -<p>I accept the electrons. Capering little deities, -they are the sons of God. But so are you and I -the sons of God—and we are electrons, trillions -of electrons, if you like.</p> - -<p>Gods and atoms, we can dwell and think and -feel as either, the two realms distinct and far -apart, the roads between in a continual state<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_94" id="Page_94">[94]</a></span> -of construction, dangerous but passable. The -anatomist, laying down his scalpel, cries, “Such -knowledge is too wonderful for me. I am fearfully -and wonderfully made!”—his science passing -into poetry, and from poetry to religion, -but not easily in our present frame and mood.</p> - -<p>Science clears the sight and widens its range; -but Science can never clear up the shadows at the -bottom of a woodchuck. Only vision can do -that, and Science lacks vision, using a microtome -instead, paring its woodchuck till he is -thinner than sliced sunlight before it can see -through so much as a single stained cell of him. -Science turns aside from shadows, walking by -sight or else standing still. It deals with the -flesh, not the spirit; and is as impotent in literature -and art as in life and society. The potent -thing among men and nations is love. Love -never faileth. Yet never were we so afraid of -love as we are to-day; and never did art and -literature seem so fearful of the imagination, of -vision, of the eternal, the divine.</p> - -<p>“Go get me a bird,” the old scientist said to -me; “I will give you a lesson in skinning and -mounting.” I was a young boy. Hurrying out<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_95" id="Page_95">[95]</a></span> -to the woods, I was soon back with a cuckoo. -The face of the old scientist darkened. “You -should not have killed this bird, it is the friend -of man. See when I open this gizzard.” And -with a dexterous twist of his fingers turned inside -out the gizzard, and showed it, like a piece -of plush, its fleshy walls penetrated with millions -of caterpillar hairs.</p> - -<p>To this day I feel the wonder of that knowledge, -and I thrill at the meaning of that bird’s -gizzard. Here was science and charity and -poetry and religion. What untold good to man! -What greater possible good to man? That was -before I knew or understood the cuckoo’s song. -And neither the old scientist, nor yet his book, -“Sixteen Weeks in Zology,” dealt with the -song. Science is sure and beautiful with a gizzard. -Poetry is sure and beautiful with both -gizzard and song. And I wonder if the grinding -gizzard or the singing throat is the better part -of the cuckoo, even in this world of worms?</p> - -<div class="poetry-container"> -<div class="poetry"> -<div class="stanza"> -<div class="versefirst">“Though babbling only to the vale,</div> -<div class="verse">Of sunshine and of flowers,</div> -<div class="verse">Thou bringest unto me a tale</div> -<div class="verse">Of visionary hours.</div> -</div> -<div class="stanza"><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_96" id="Page_96">[96]</a></span> -<div class="versefirst">“Thrice welcome, darling of the Spring!</div> -<div class="verse">Even yet thou art to me</div> -<div class="verse">No bird, but an invisible thing,</div> -<div class="verse">A voice, a mystery;</div> -</div> -<div class="stanza"> -<div class="versefirst">“And I can listen to thee yet;</div> -<div class="verse">Can lie upon the plain</div> -<div class="verse">And listen, till I do beget</div> -<div class="verse">That golden time again.</div> -</div> -<div class="stanza"> -<div class="versefirst">“O blessed Bird! the earth we pace</div> -<div class="verse">Again appears to be</div> -<div class="verse">An unsubstantial fary place,</div> -<div class="verse">That is fit home for thee!”</div> -</div></div></div> - -<p>I have a great book, published by the Government, -devoted entirely to birds’ gizzards, mills -of the gods, and their grindings. It is not a dull -book, though the mills grind slowly and grind -exceeding small. It is a book of bones, of broken -beetles, seeds, hairs, feathers, and fragments. -It is a great work of science. One might not -like to lay it down unfinished; but, having -finished it, one could hardly say:</p> - -<div class="poetry-container"> -<div class="poetry"> -<div class="stanza"> -<div class="versefirst">“And I can listen to thee yet;</div> -<div class="verse">Can lie upon the plain</div> -<div class="verse">And listen, till I do beget</div> -<div class="verse">That golden time again.</div> -</div> -<div class="stanza"> - -<div class="versefirst">“O blessed Bird! the earth we Pace</div> -<div class="verse">Again appears to be</div><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_97" id="Page_97">[97]</a></span> -<div class="verse">An unsubstantial fary place,</div> -<div class="verse">That is fit home for thee!”</div> -</div></div></div> - -<p>Nature will not do, nor all the truth of nature, -for stuff of song and story. As life is more than -meat, so is literature more than life. Nature -conforms to art; and in fiction “the only real -people are those who never existed.”</p> - -<p>At Good-Will Farm, Maine, there is a rock -marked with a copper plate. It had been marked -for drill and dynamite, until, one day, my car -swung up and over a sharp turn in the road -before the schoolhouse, skidding rather horribly -on the smooth outcropping ledge which had -been uncovered and left as part of the roadbed.</p> - -<p>“You ought to blast that thing out,” I said, -somewhat testily, to the supervisor who came -out to greet me, my nerves, strung a bit too -tight on the long day’s drive, snapping with the -skid here at the very end of the trip.</p> - -<p>“I’ll do it,” he replied, apologetically. “I -had intended to do it from the first.”</p> - -<p>The next day we were climbing this road on -foot, and, standing on the ledge to take in the -wide landscape of the Kennebec below us, I -chanced to look down at my feet and saw, cut<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_98" id="Page_98">[98]</a></span> -deep in the smooth surface of the stone, several -parallel lines.</p> - -<p>“Don’t blast out this rock!” I exclaimed. -“Tear down your schoolhouse rather. Build a -new road through the grounds, but leave this -stone. This is part of a great book.”</p> - -<p>“I don’t understand,” said the supervisor.</p> - -<p>“Here is written a page of the greatest story -ever penned. These lines were done by the hand -of the glacier who came this way in the Ice Age. -Don’t blot it out. Put a fence about it, and a -copper plate upon it, translating the story so -that your students can read it and understand.”</p> - -<p>He did. There was no need of the fence; but -he set the plate into the rock, telling of the Ice -Age, how the glacier came down, ploughing -out the valley of the Kennebec, rounding and -smoothing this ledge, and inditing this manuscript -for Good-Will Farm School ages later.</p> - -<p>So much does the mere scratch of science -enhance the virtue of a stone! Now add to your -science history. Instead of the scratch of a -glacier, let it be a chisel and a human hand, -and let the marks be—“1620.” Now read—if -you can read and understand.</p> - - - -<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_99" id="Page_99">[99]</a></span>I copy it verbatim from a Freshman college -theme:</p> - -<blockquote> - -<p class="center"><span class="smcap">Plymouth Rock</span></p> - -<p>Plymouth Rock is situated in Plymouth Mass. It -is the rock upon which the Mayflower landed in -1620. But it is not now where it was then. It was -moved many years ago up to the street. And when -they moved it it broke. But they cemented it together. -It is four or five feet long; and three or four -feet wide; and it is inscribed with the famous figures -1620, to celebrate the landing of the Puritans at that -time. It is enclosed within a canopy of stone and an -iron fence; but the gate is hardly ever closed. There -are a great many famous stones in the world but this -is as famous as any.</p></blockquote> - -<p>My mother was visiting me. She is a self-contained -old Quaker, and this was the second -time in all of her eighty years that she had even -seen New England! What should we do first? -What did she most desire to see? “Take me to -see Plymouth Rock first,” she said; and we -were off, mother as excited and as lively as a -girl. As we entered Plymouth, however, I -noticed that mother had grown silent, and that -her doctor-daughter, beside her on the back seat, -always sensitive to her moods, was also silent.<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_100" id="Page_100">[100]</a></span> -We descended the hill to the harbor, came on -in sight of the canopy over the Rock, and slowed -down to stop. But the car had not stopped, -when mother, the back door open, her foot on -the running-board, was stepping off and through -the open gate, where, falling on her knees, with -tears running down her face, she kissed the -blessed stone, her daughter calling, “O Mother, -the germs! the germs!”</p> - -<p>When Science and Religion thus clash, Science -must give way. Mother knew as much about -germs as her doctor-daughter. She had lived -longer than her daughter; she had lost more, -and had loved more—some things more than -life itself.</p> - -<p>Science has marked every rock; but only -those that are wet with such tears and kissed -with such lips are ripe for sermon and song. -These are the eyes and these the lips of those, -who, passing through Bacca, make it a well. -Knowledge alone, though it course the very -heavens, will come back to earth without so -much as one shining fleck of stardust in its hair.</p> - -<p>The other day a great astronomer was delivering -a lecture in Boston on the stars. Wonder<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_101" id="Page_101">[101]</a></span> -and awe held the audience as it traveled the -stellar spaces with the help of the astounding -pictures on the screen. The emotion was deep; -the tension almost painful as the lecturer swept -on and on through the unthinkable vast, when, -coming to his close, he turned and asked lightly, -“Now, what do you think of immortality? Is -it anything more than the neurotic hope of a -very insignificant mote in this immensity?”</p> - -<p>The effect was terrific. The scientific smiled. -The simple left the hall dazed and stunned. -They lost all sense of time and space, they lost -sight of the very stars in this swift, far fall. -They had been carried up through the seven -spheres to the very gate of heaven, then hurled -to earth. The lecture failed—not of instruction, -not of emotion, but of will, leaving the -listeners powerless and undone. The lecturer -may be right—for astronomy; and yet be -quite wrong, for poetry. He may have uttered -the last word—for science; but this end is only -the beginning for religion.</p> - -<p>How much greater an astronomer this college -professor than that shepherd psalmist on the far-off -Syrian hills! Ranging the same astral field as<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_102" id="Page_102">[102]</a></span> -our scientist, sweeping the same stellar spaces, -with only a shepherd’s knowledge, the psalmist’s -thought takes the same turn as the scientist’s, -down to man, but on different wings,—the -wings of poetry:</p> - -<div class="poetry-container"> -<div class="poetry"> -<div class="versefirst">“When I consider thy heavens,</div> -<div class="verse">The work of thy fingers,</div> -<div class="verse">The moon and the stars</div> -<div class="verse">Which thou hast ordained;</div> -<div class="verse">What is man, that thou art mindful of him?</div> -<div class="verse">And the son of man, that thou visitest him?”</div> -</div></div> - -<p>Then, swinging upward on those mighty wings, -past the reach of science, out of the range of -knowledge, up, up to the divinest height ever -touched by human thought, the psalmist-astronomer -cries impiously, exultantly,</p> - -<div class="poetry-container"> -<div class="poetry"> -<div class="versefirst">“For thou hast made him but little lower than God,</div> -<div class="verse">And crownest him with glory and honor!”</div> -</div></div> - -<p>This starts where the astronomer stopped. This -is religion and literature. And I have these -very stars over my hilltop here in Hingham!</p> - -<hr class="chap" /> - -<div class="chapter"> -<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_103" id="Page_103">[103]</a></span> - - -<p class="ph2">CHAPTER IV</p> - -<p class="ph2">THE DUTY TO DIG</p></div> - - - -<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_104" id="Page_104">[104]</a></span></p> -<hr class="chap" /> - -<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_105" id="Page_105">[105]</a></span></p> - - - - -<h2 class="nobreak">CHAPTER IV<br /> - -<small>THE DUTY TO DIG</small></h2> - - -<h3>I</h3> - -<p><span class="smcap">A young</span> man sat by the roadside, milking. And -as he milked, one drove up in her limousine and -stopped and said unto him:</p> - -<p>“Young man, why are you not at the front?”</p> - -<p>The young man milked on, for that was the -thing to do. Then, with still more slackers in -her voice, the woman said a second time unto -him:</p> - -<p>“Young man, why are you not at the front?”</p> - -<p>“Because, ma’am, the milk is at this end,” -he answered.</p> - -<p>And the chauffeur, throwing the clutch of -the limousine into third speed ahead, drove off, -thinking.</p> - -<p>But the young man milking had already -thought. To milk is to think. If “darning is -premeditated poverty,” then there is no saner -occupation for human hands, none more thought-inducing, -unless it be milking. Anyhow, when<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_106" id="Page_106">[106]</a></span> -the Great War came on, I went over to a neighbor’s -and bought a cow; I made me a new -milking-stool with spread sturdy legs; and I -sat down to face the situation calmly, where -I might see it steadily and whole. I had tried -the professorial chair; I had tried the editorial -chair; I had even tried that Siege Perilous, the -high-backed, soft-seated chair of plush behind -the pulpit. I may never preach again; but if I -do, it will be on condition that I sit on a three-legged -milking stool instead of on that upholstered -pillowy throne of plush.</p> - -<p>Whence cometh wisdom? and where is the -place of understanding? The flaming flambeaux -on the Public Library say, “The light is in here”; -the Φ B K key in the middle of the professorial -waistcoat says, “It is in here.” But I say, let -the flambeaux be replaced by round-headed -stocking-darners, as the sign of premeditated -poverty; and the dangling Key by a miniature -milking-stool, as the symbol of the wisdom that -knows which end of a cow to milk.</p> - -<p>Not one of those students in the University -who earned Φ B K last year knew how to milk, -and only a few, I believe, of their professors.<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_107" id="Page_107">[107]</a></span> -One of these, with a Ph.D. from Germany, whose -key had charmed his students across their whole -college course, asked me what breed of cattle -heifers were. Might not his teaching have been -quite as practical, had there dangled from his -watch-chain those four years, not this key to -the catacombs of knowledge, but a little jeweled -milking-stool?</p> - -<p>I too might wear a key, especially as I came -innocently by mine, having had one <i>thrust</i> upon -me; still, as I was born on a farm, and grew up -in the fields, and am likely to end my days as I -have lived them, here in the woods, this Φ B K -key does not fit the lock to the door of knowledge -that opens widest to me.</p> - -<p>I have read a little on the aorist tense, and on -the Ygdrasyl tree; a little, I say, on many things, -from the animal aardvark, here and there, to -zythum, a soft drink of the ancient Egyptians, -picking a few rusty locks with this skeleton key; -but the doors that open wide at my approach -are those to my house, my barn, and the unwithholding -fields. I know the road home, clear -to the end; I know profoundly to come in when -it rains; and I move with absolute certainty to<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_108" id="Page_108">[108]</a></span> -the right end of the cow when it is time to -milk.</p> - -<p>I am aware of a certain arrogance in this, a -show of pride, and that unbottomed pomp of -those who wear the Φ B K key dangling at their -vests,—as if I could milk <i>any</i> cow! or might -have in my barn the world’s champion cow! I -have only a grade Jersey in my barn; and as for -milking heifers with their first calves—I <i>have</i> -milked them. But breaking in a heifer is really -a young man’s job.</p> - -<p>So I find myself at the middle of my years, -stripped of outward signs, as I hope I am inwardly -purged, of all vain shows of wisdom -(quite too humble, truly!), falling in as unnaturally -as the birds with the fool daylight-saving -plan, the ways of the sun, who knoweth -his going down, being quite good enough for me.</p> - - -<h3>II</h3> - -<p><span class="smcap">But</span> how far run the ways of nature from the -devious ways of men! The ways of Mullein Hill -from the ways of a military camp! The Great -War came and passed and left the earth a vast -human grave. But through it all seedtime and<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_109" id="Page_109">[109]</a></span> -harvest came to Mullein Hill, leaving only more -and more abundant life. The Great War is an -illustration on the grandest scale of what man, -departing from the simple ways of nature, will -do to man. War is the logic of our present way -of living. I am not concerned with war in this -book, but with the sources of life and literature. -I have a cure for war, however, here on Mullein -Hill; and this cure is the very elixir of life and -literature.</p> - -<p>War could have destroyed, but it did not -change, my going or coming here in the hills. -My garden went on as it had for years gone on. -There was a little more of it, for there was more -need in the village; there was a little larger yield -of its reasonableness and joy and beans. But I -did not plough up my front lawn for potatoes. -Years before I had provided myself with a back -yard, and got it into tilth for potatoes, keeping -the front lawn green for the cow.</p> - -<p>Though she is only a grade Jersey, the cow is -a pretty creature, and gives a rural, ruminant -touch to our approach, along with the lilacs and -the hens. Hitched here on the front lawn the -cow suggests economy, too. She is more than<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_110" id="Page_110">[110]</a></span> -a wagon hitched to a star. She is a mowing-machine, -and a rake and tedder, and a churn. -The gods with her do my mowing, gather up -and cure my hay, and turn it into cream.</p> - -<p>Every cow gives some skim milk—which we -need for the chickens, for cooking, and cottage -cheese. Life is not all cream. If I speak of gods -doing my chores, I will say they do not milk -for me in the mornings, and that it is one of the -boys who milks at night. A cow clipping your -lawn is poetry and cream too, but caring for the -creature is often skim milk and prose. Milking -ought to be done regularly. Get a cow and you -find her cud a kind of pendulum to all creation, -the time to milk being synchronized twice daily -to the stars.</p> - -<p>I did not plant war-potatoes on my front lawn, -partly because they would not grow there, and -partly because, in times of peace, I had prepared -for war-potatoes; and partly because I -think a front lawn looks better in cows than in -potatoes. If thou shouldst</p> - -<div class="poetry-container"> -<div class="poetry"> -<div class="versefirst">“So live, that when thy summons comes to join</div> -<div class="verse">The innumerable caravan ...</div> -<div class="verse">Thou go not, like the quarry-slave at night,</div> -<div class="verse">Scourged to his dungeon,”</div> -</div></div> - - - -<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_111" id="Page_111">[111]</a></span>—should we not all live so that, when war -comes, we need not plough up the beds for potatoes -where the portulaca and poppy ought to -blow?</p> - -<p>But what a confession here! When war -comes! As if I expected war to come again! -Many of us are fighting feebly against both the -thought and the hideous thing. But many more -are preparing for it. Our generals of the late war -are going up and down the land preaching preparedness, -as they always have. We learn nothing. -They know everything. Their profession -is war. Can a man lay down his life for a profession -he does not believe in? The military men -believe in war.</p> - -<p>But so do we all as a people. War is the oldest, -most honored profession in the world. In all -of the fifty years of its history, the great University, -of which, for almost half of that time, -I have been a teacher, had never conferred an -honorary degree. For fifty years it had carried -a single laurel wreath in its hand to crown some -honored head. Prophets came and went; poets -came and went; scientists came and went; -scholars came and went; but still the University,<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_112" id="Page_112">[112]</a></span> -dedicated to life and learning, waited -with its single wreath a yet more honorable -brow.</p> - -<p>Then came Foch, the professional soldier. -Study for nearly ten thousand students was -suspended; a holiday was proclaimed; a great -assembly was called; and here, with speech and -song and academic garb, with national colors -mingling and waving palms, the laurel wreath -was placed upon the soldier’s brow. And this -University, founded in the name of the Prince -of Peace, dedicated to Christian life and learning, -crowned the profession of arms as it can -crown no other profession, and gave its highest -sanction to bloody war.</p> - -<p>I do not fail of gratitude to Foch. I only -stand in horror that he is, and had to be. I -would have had the Nation at the pier to meet -him, but clothed in sackcloth, and every citizen -with ashes on his head. I, too, would have -suspended study and work everywhere for an -hour; and, stretching crape across the Arctic -Circle till the sign of mourning hid Matamoras -and Cape Sable, I would have called an assembly -of the continent, and begged this half of the<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_113" id="Page_113">[113]</a></span> -hemisphere to cry, “O God, the foolishness and -futility of war!”</p> - -<p>The Duty to Dig is older than the practice -of war. It was designed to prevent war; and -to-day it is the only biological remedy certain -to cure war. I must not stop here to explain -its therapeutics as applied to war, for I am -dealing with another theme. But just before -the war broke upon the world, I wrote an -editorial for a paper I was serving, advocating -that a hive of my bees be sent to the German -Emperor and one also to the war lord of Austria. -I had extra hives for the British Prime Minister, -the Tiger of France, Mr. William Randolph -Hearst, and Mr. Theodore Roosevelt. If I -could have interested these gentlemen, and a -few others, in bee-keeping, I could save the -world from war.</p> - -<p>The editorial and the offer of bees were both -rejected by the careful editor. “I must stay -strictly neutral,” was his timid excuse. At the -very time I was writing, the Reverend Price -Collier, a former Hingham preacher, was publishing -a book called “Germany and the Germans,” -in which he set forth the old theory of<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_114" id="Page_114">[114]</a></span> -military preparedness as a preventive of war. -Speaking of the German army (this was in -1913), he says:</p> - -<blockquote> - -<p>It is the best all-round democratic university in the -world; it is a necessary antidote for the physical lethargy -of the German race; it is essential to discipline; -it is a cement for holding Germany together; it gives -a much-worried and many-times-beaten people confidence; -the poverty of the great bulk of its officers -keeps the level of social expenditure on a sensible -scale; it offers a brilliant example, in a material age, -of men scorning ease for the service of their country; -it keeps the peace in Europe; and until there is a -second coming of a Christ of pity and patience and -peace, it is as good a substitute for that far-off divine -event as puzzled man has to offer.</p></blockquote> - -<p>It is a minister of the Gospel who makes this -profound observation. But it sounds like our -present Secretary of War, a banker, and like -our present Commanding General, a professional -soldier. Here is sure proof that the human -race cannot learn the essential things, and so, -is doomed.</p> - -<p>But I wish I might try my bees. This old -hoax of preventing war by preparing men to -fight has been so often tried! And we are at -it again. But no nation has tried my simple -and inexpensive substitute of bees and plough-shares,<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_115" id="Page_115">[115]</a></span> -and pruning hooks. They have tried, -from time out of memory, to beat their swords -and spears into garden tools, but a sword makes -a mighty poor ploughshare. It has never been -successfully done. The manufacturing process -is wrong. It takes the temper out of good garden -steel first to heat it in the fires of war. We must -reverse the process: turn the virgin metal into -garden steel first, and give every man a hoe, and -a ploughshare, and a pruning hook; then he will -never have need for sword and spear.</p> - - -<h3>III</h3> - -<p><span class="smcap">Instead</span> of universal military training, I would -advocate a hive of bees for everybody, or a backyard -garden. A house should have both lawn -and garden, even though the gooseberries crowd -the house out to the roadside, where the human -house instinctively edges to see the neighbors -in their new pony-coats go by. Let my front -door stand open; while over the back stoop the -old-fashioned roses and the grape-vines draw -a screen.</p> - -<p>But give me a house with a yard rather than a -hole in the wall, a city tenement, or a flat. The<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_116" id="Page_116">[116]</a></span> -whole trend of society is toward the city, or -camp, military, rather than agricultural. The -modern city is a social camp. Life is becoming -a series of mass movements, military maneuvers, -at the command of social leaders. Industry has -long been militarized both in form and spirit, -and is rapidly perfecting its organization. Today, -1923, there are more than a hundred different -automobile manufacturing concerns in this -country. Only those capable of “quantity production” -will survive. Already the manufacturers -see the entire industry reduced to five different -concerns. This is strictly military, the making -of society into a vast, and vaster machine, -which, too great at last for control, will turn -upon and crush its makers.</p> - -<p>We are all conscripted. The Draft Board of -industrialism allows no exemptions. The only -way I see is to desert, to take to the woods, as I -have done, to return individually to a simple, -elemental manner of life out of the soil. But who -can pay the social cost? Our social or camp -psychology is better understood and more easily -handled than the mind of the lone scout within -us. We are gregarious by nature; we hunt in<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_117" id="Page_117">[117]</a></span> -packs, we collect into crowds. Yet we are selves, -separate, single, each of us a cave-man as well -as cliff-dweller, a Remus as well as a Romulus. -The city-building brother killed his country -brother. And the murder still goes on.</p> - -<p>Out of a commentary on the Bible I take the -following observation, partly for its charm, but -also because it holds a profound truth:</p> - -<blockquote> - -<p>God’s people from the earliest time had never been -builders of cities. The earliest account of city-building -is that of the city of Enoch by Cain, and all the -subsequent mention of city-building is in connection -with the apostate families of the earth, such as -Nimrod and his descendants, the Canaanites and the -Egyptians. Sodom is one of the earliest mentioned -cities properly so called, and the story of it is not -encouraging for the people of God.</p></blockquote> - -<p>But which is the city whose story is encouraging -to the people of God? Not Boston’s, -nor New York’s, nor London’s, nor Vienna’s. -Vienna is starving; the country is bankrupt -Austria’s governmental machine is a total wreck; -but the peasant goes his way, suffering little -inconvenience, though the crown is not to-day -worth the paper it is printed on. The peasant -lives on the land, not on the bank; he gets his<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_118" id="Page_118">[118]</a></span> -simple life directly out of the soil instead of a -pay envelope; he has no New York, New Haven -and Hartford stock, worth one hundred and -eighty-six dollars yesterday, and ten dollars to-day, -to-morrow, and until he starves. He has a -piece of land and, impossible as it sounds on -paper, lives on it, and out of it, and in it, an -almost independent life, as the wage-slave and -the coupon-victim cannot live.</p> - -<p>We shall face a famine, so long as our door-yards -are all lawn in front and all garbage-can -behind. We have farmers enough—one to -every eight of our population, I believe—who -might produce sufficient raw potatoes; but -Aroostook County is barely contiguous to the -United States, and such a barrage of frost was -laid down across its borders this last winter that, -if one brought potatoes out of Aroostook between -December and March, he had to bear them in -his bosom.</p> - -<p>Aroostook County is the greatest potato-patch -in the world; the American imagination loves to -hover over the tubered tracts of Aroostook, the -<i>richest</i> county in the world; loves to feel that the -world could be fed from Aroostook, were it not<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_119" id="Page_119">[119]</a></span> -for the triple alliance of the cold and the contiguity -and a railroad that runs, if not like a broken -tooth, then like a foot out of joint, into these -remote dreamlands of Maine.</p> - -<p>Woe to them that go down to the railroads for -help; and stay on engines and trust in empties, -because they are many; and in officials, because -they are very strong. Now the officials are men -and not God, and their engines steel and not -spirit. Why should a rational, spiritual human -society trust its well-being to such paltry powers, -when all the forces of nature are at its command?</p> - -<p>I will put more trust in an acre of land than -in a Continental Congress. I had rather have -a hoe at my right hand than an army of bank -presidents. Give me the rising and the setting -sun, the four seasons, and the peasant’s portion; -and you may have the portion of the president.</p> - -<p>I said we have farmers enough to raise all we -need. We have more than enough. We have -more than enough bankers; more than enough -automobile-makers; more than enough store-keepers; -more than enough coal-miners; more -than enough cooks and janitors. But we have -nowhere near enough landowners and peasants.<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_120" id="Page_120">[120]</a></span> -Nothing in the world would so straighten out -society as to declare next year a Year of Jubilee, -and give every man, not a job, but his birthright, -a piece of land.</p> - -<p>We are over-organized and almost de-individualized. -But the time must again come when -every man shall dig and every woman spin, and -every family build its own automobile, distill -its own petrol, and work out its taxes on the -road. We shall always hold to the social principle -of the division of labor—I plough for -you; and you shoe my horse for me. But we -have carried the principle, in our over-organization, -to the point where a man’s whole part in -the world’s work consists in putting on the left -hind wheel of endless automobiles.</p> - -<p>An eight-hour day will not save that man. -And he is typical of all men to-day. Only by his -acceptance of the duty to dig can he be saved, -and society with him. The principle of the division -of labor has been misapplied: instead of -specialization and the narrowing of each man’s -portion, it should be applied broadly, multiplying -his labors. Work is creative; it is self-expression; -and I should let no man do for me<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_121" id="Page_121">[121]</a></span> -what I can do. He robs me of living who robs -me of doing.</p> - -<p>The theory of present-day society—specialization, -organization, combination, quantity -production—is a fatal application of a perfectly -sound principle. Six automobile combinations -which in a year can destroy a hundred lesser -combinations, can in another year destroy all -but one of each other; and that remaining one, -having nothing now to destroy, must turn and -destroy itself.</p> - - -<h3>IV</h3> - -<p><span class="smcap">But</span> I am concerned with life and literature. -How does the organization of society affect -books, admitting that it affects life? What is -a book but a life?—and a more abundant life? -Everybody who has lived has a book to write. -But only those who have lived abundantly -should write their books. Starve a nation -spiritually, as ours is being starved; reduce its -life to a mechanical routine; rob its labor of all -creative quality, and how shall it write?</p> - -<p>The duty to dig applies first to the spirit. -There is sound economy in it if one’s political<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_122" id="Page_122">[122]</a></span> -economy is sound. I do not say money. Economy -and money are not equivalent terms. I -digged as a duty last year; and as a result I did -not buy a potato from the “combine” in Maine; -I nearly got on without a pound of beef from -Chicago; and could have made my honey serve -for Cuban sugar. The same amount of time -spent putting left hind wheels on automobiles -might have brought me more money, and so, -more beef and potatoes and sugar, and so, more -gout and rheumatism. The duty to dig comprehends -a great deal more than ordinary -economy.</p> - -<p>I would not imply that I can handle the Beef -Trust and the potato pirates and the sugar -barons with my humble hoe; or snap my fingers -in the face of Standard Oil, and say, “Go to, -I’ll have none of your twenty-eight-cent gas!” -I do say that several million bee-keepers and -potato-patchers, and hen-coopers, keeping busy -in their back yards, as I keep busy in mine, -could mightily relieve the railroad congestion, -and save gasoline, and cut in on the demand for -Chicago beef and cold-storage eggs, and generally -lower the high cost of living.</p> - - - -<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_123" id="Page_123">[123]</a></span>It is not because there are “millions in it” -that I would have the banker plant his back -yard to beans. Thoreau planted two acres and -a half to beans and potatoes (on a weak market, -however), with a “pecuniary profit of $8.71½.” -Here is no very great financial inducement to a -busy banker, or to a ward boss. Still, who better -than the ward boss or the banker could afford -a private beanfield?</p> - -<p>I say it is not for the sake of this $8.71½ -profit of Thoreau’s that we must dig; but rather -for that chapter on the bean field in Walden -Pond, which proves the real worth of digging.</p> - -<p>There can hardly be a form of labor so elemental, -so all-demanding, so abundantly yielding -of the fruits of life, as digging. Yet there are -those who doubt the wisdom of digging because -things can be bought cheaper at the store; and -those who question their right to dig when they -can hire a man to dig for them; and there are -those who hate to dig, who contemn duty, who, -if they plant, will plant a piece of fallow land -with golf-balls only, and hoe it with brassies, -niblicks, cleeks, and spooners, saying with -Chaucer’s Monk:</p> - -<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_124" id="Page_124">[124]</a></span></p> - -<div class="poetry-container"> -<div class="poetry"> -<div class="versefirst">“... how shall the world be servd?</div> -<div class="verse">Let Austyn have his swynk to his reservd.”</div> -</div></div> - -<p>Golf is an ancient game, no doubt, but not -so old as gardening, though golf’s primordial -club and vocabulary seem like things long left -over, bits of that Missing-Link Period between -our arboreal and cave-day past. Except for calling -the cows from the meadow, or fighting in -war, there is nothing we do that requires words -and weapons, tools, instruments, implements, -utensils, apparatus, machinery, or mechanisms -so lacking in character and comeliness as the -words and clubs of golf. The gurglings of infants -seem articulate, even to unparental ears, compared -with the jargon of golf; and as for billiard-cues, -baseball-bats, pikes, spades, shillalahs, -and teething-rings, they have the touch of poetry -on them; whereas the golf-club was conceived -and shaped in utter unimaginativeness.</p> - -<p>Golf is not an ancient game: it has the mark -of the Machine upon it; the Preadamites could -not have figured the game out. Gardening, on -the other hand, if we trust Holy Writ, was an -institution founded before the Fall, incorporated -with the social order from the start—an inherent,<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_125" id="Page_125">[125]</a></span> -essential element in the constitution of -human things:</p> - -<div class="poetry-container"> -<div class="poetry"> -<div class="versefirst">“Great nature’s <i>primal</i> course,</div> -<div class="verse">Chief nourisher in life’s feast,”</div> -</div></div> - -<p>—which civilization doth murder as Macbeth -murdered sleep.</p> - -<p>Golf belongs to civilization strictly, not to -the human race, being one of life’s post-Edenic -precautions, like psychopathic hospitals, jails, -and homes for the feeble-minded. A golf course -is a little-wanderers’ home; and if we must have -golf courses, let their hazards be carefully constructed -on worthless land, and let the Civil -Service Board examine the caddies, whether -they be fit guards for the golfers, lest some -small boy be wasted who might have tended -real sheep on Norfolk Downs or have weeded in -a garden.</p> - -<p>It is a duty to dig, to nail the Stars and Stripes -to a lima-bean pole, and plant the banner square -in the middle of the garden. Profits? pleasures? -Both sorts will grow, especially the pleasures, -which really are part of the profits, till they fairly -smother the weeds; not the least of these being -your sense of living and your right to live, which<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_126" id="Page_126">[126]</a></span> -comes out of actually hoeing your own row—a -literal row of beans or corn or tomatoes.</p> - -<p>Somebody must feed the soldiers; but nobody -must needs feed me. It is not necessary that I -live, however necessary I find it to eat; eating, -like sleeping and breathing and keeping warm, -being strictly a private enterprise that nobody -but I need see as necessary or be responsible -for.</p> - -<p>The soldier must carry a shovel nowadays, -but he will require a hoe, too, and a pruning -hook, and a ploughshare, before he will be self-supporting. -With such a kit war could support -war forever, which is the Rathenau plan of war, -with everything German left out, consequently -everything of war left out. The soldier cannot -feed himself. The crew of a battleship cannot -be expected to catch their own cod and flounders. -They must leave that to the trawlers, those -human boats, with human crews who fish for a -living. Men of the navy must die for a living. -The captain of a United States destroyer, writing -to his wife, says, “I think that the only -real anxiety is lest we may not get into the big -game at all. I do not think that any of us are<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_127" id="Page_127">[127]</a></span> -bloodthirsty or desirous of glory or advancement, -but we have to justify our existence.”</p> - -<p>So does every human being; yet an existence -that can be justified only by fighting and dying -is too unproductive, too far from self-supporting, -to warrant the sure calling and election of many -of us. No Grand-Banker ever wrote so to his -wife, though he might be returning with all his -salt unwet; no college professor ever wrote so—not -if he could get into his garden—in spite of -his pupils, his college president, the trustees, -and Mr. Carnegie’s Efficiency Board. Teaching -may not justify a professor’s existence, though -it ought to justify his salary; so, every time I -start for the University, I put a dozen or two of -eggs into my book-bag, that I may have a right -to the tree of life, and may enter in through the -gates into the city.</p> - -<p>I am not independent of society. I do not -wish to be independent. I wish to be debtor to -all and have all debtors to me. But we buy too -much and sell too much of life, and raise too -little. We <i>pay</i> for all we get. Sometimes we -get all we pay for, but not often; and if we never -did, still life has so thoroughly adopted the<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_128" id="Page_128">[128]</a></span> -business standard, that we had rather keep on -paying than trying to grow our way.</p> - -<p>Business is a way of living by proxy; money -is society’s proxy for every sort of implement -and tool. To produce something, however—some -actual wealth, a pennyweight of gold-dust, -a pound of honey, a dozen eggs, a book, a boy, -a bunch of beets; some real wealth out of the soil, -out of my loins, out of my brains, out of my -muscles and the sap of the maple, the rains and -sunshine and the soil, out of the rich veins of the -earth or the swarming waters of the sea—this -is to be; and to be myself, and not a proxy, is -to lose my life and save it, and to justify my -existence.</p> - -<p>I have to buy a multitude of things—transportation, -coal, dentistry, news, flour, and -clothes. I have paid in money for them. I have -also paid in real wealth, having given, to balance -my charge on society, an equivalent in raw cabbage, -pure honey, fresh eggs, and the like, from -my own created store. I am doubtless in debt -to society, but I have tried to give wealth for -wealth, not the symbol of it merely; and last -year, as I balanced my books, I think the world<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_129" id="Page_129">[129]</a></span> -was in debt to me by several bunches of beets. -I do not boast of the beets, though they take me -out of the debtor’s prison where most of us live. -I can face the world, however, with those beets; -I have gone over the top, have done my bit, with -beets.</p> - -<p>The oldest duty on the human conscience is -the duty to dig. I am a college teacher, and that -is an honorable, if futile, profession. The Scriptures -say: “He gave some, apostles; and some, -prophets; and some, evangelists; and some, pastors -and teachers”; but, before there were any -such multifarious and highly specialized needs, -it was said unto our first father: “Replenish the -earth and subdue it”—a universal human -need, a call to duty, from which no Draft Board -of civilization can rightly exempt us.</p> - -<p>Wealth is not created, not even increased, in -trade. When was one pennyweight of gold on -’change by any magic metallurgy of trade made -two pennyweight? The magic of the second -pennyweight is the metallurgy of the pick and -shovel and cradle rocking the shining sands of -the Yukon. Real wealth is only circulated in -trade. It comes from primal sources—from the<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_130" id="Page_130">[130]</a></span> -gold-fields, the cotton-fields, the corn-fields, the -fir-clad sides of Katahdin, the wide gray waters -of the Grand Banks, the high valleys of the -sheeped Sierras, and from back yards, like mine, -that bring forth thirty- and sixty- and an hundred-fold.</p> - -<p>And this is as profoundly true of life and literature -as it is of cotton and lumber and gold.</p> - -<p>Give me a garden and the wages of hoeing my -row. And if not a garden, then a little house of -hens, a coop of pigeons, a colony of bees—even -in the city I should keep bees, if I had to keep -them in the attic or on the roof. Not every one -can have a garden, but every one can either plant -a tree, or raise one pig, or keep a cow or goat, or -feed a few hens, or raise a flock of pigeons, or -do something that will bring him personally into -contact with real things, and make it possible -for him to help pay his way with real wealth, -and in part, at least, to justify his existence, and -his book.</p> - -<hr class="chap" /> - -<div class="chapter"> - -<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_131" id="Page_131">[131]</a></span></p> - - - - -<p class="ph2">CHAPTER V</p> - -<p class="ph2">THE MAN AND THE BOOK</p></div> - - - -<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_132" id="Page_132">[132]</a></span></p> - -<hr class="chap" /> - -<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_133" id="Page_133">[133]</a></span></p> - - - - -<h2 class="nobreak">CHAPTER V<br /> - -<small>THE MAN AND THE BOOK</small></h2> - - -<p><span class="smcap">Here</span> on my desk lies a new book entitled, “For -the Benefit of My Creditors,” the autobiography -of Hinckley Gilbert Mitchell, a scholar, -a teacher in a school of theology—and now -this book, a simple, sad book of human struggle -and defeat, of spiritual and scientific adventure -and triumph and romance.</p> - -<p>The scholar is not the accepted stuff of literature. -What of human interest can come out -of a classroom? Yet I have seen this scholar’s -classroom when it was wilder than ten nights -in a barroom crowded into one. I have seen -some lively and human times in my own classroom; -and I know that there is as real a chance, -and as magical a chance, there as Dana found -on the high seas. There are frontiers for the -scholar, especially in theology, as dangerous in -their crossing as any to be met with by the -overland pioneer.</p> - -<p>Dana escaped from the decorous and the conventional<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_134" id="Page_134">[134]</a></span> -life of social Boston by way of the -deep sea; Mitchell escaped from the decorous -and conventional dogma of his church by way -of honest study; and his Church tried him for -heresy, and found him guilty, and would have -burned him at the stake had that been the decorous -and conventional manner of dealing with -heretics at the moment. As it was, they only -branded him, and cast him out as a thing unclean.</p> - -<p>Perhaps that is not a life human enough, and -abundant enough, for a book. It is the simple -story of a poor boy picking stones and building -walls on his father’s farm in New York -State; then, as Director of the American School -of Oriental Research in Jerusalem, rebuilding -“The Wall of Nehemiah”; then, as scholar -and professor, re-creating “The World before -Abraham”; and finally, as the storm center of -one of the bitterest theological controversies of -recent years, dismissed, dishonored, betrayed for -less than thirty pieces of silver, a silent, brokenhearted -man. It is only another version of an -old and very common story. Prophets and -pioneers are all alike; and their stories are much<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_135" id="Page_135">[135]</a></span> -alike, whether the pages turn westward, where -new empires take their way, or eastward, back -along the scholar’s crossed and tangled trails to -a world before Abraham.</p> - -<p>As the manuscript of the book lay upon my -table, I wondered if any publisher would feel the -human pathos of the struggle, and the mighty -meaning of it all for truth. Who would publish -it? But here it is, printed and bound, a book—“For -the Benefit of My Creditors,” as if he -were debtor to all, his enemies included, and -owed them only love.</p> - -<p>This is as modest and self-withholding a -story as a man ever told of himself. There are -all too few of such human stories. This one -would never have been told had the author not -hated intellectual cowardice as he hated moral -cowardice, with a perfect hatred. He sought -the truth—in the Bible, and in his own mind. -The geologist seeks some of the same truth in -the rocks; the astronomer in the stars. The -Old Testament was this scholar’s field. And, -laying aside tradition and the spirit of dogma, -he sought as a scientist seeks, patiently, fearlessly, -reverently, for what his long and thorough<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_136" id="Page_136">[136]</a></span> -preparation made him eminently able to -find.</p> - -<p>This is the highest type of courage and daring. -Who finds truth finds trial and adventure. In -his condemnation by the bishops of his Church, -he felt that truth had been assailed and the -scientific method. He did not write this book -to defend the truth, nor to defend himself; but -to examine himself, as he would examine a -difficult fragment of Hebrew manuscript, and -make himself easy for other men to read.</p> - -<p>His trial was long past, and most of his life -had been lived, before a page of his book was -written. He came at it reluctantly: he might -seem personal—petty or selfish or egotistical; -or he might say something bitter and vindictive -and do harm to the Church. But neither himself -nor his Church must stand in the way of truth; -and in his trial, truth had been tried, and the -only way of knowing truth had been condemned. -So he sits down to write this story of his life -exactly as he sat down to write a commentary -on the Book of Genesis—to account for his -being as a man and a scholar, his preparation, -his methods of study, his attitude, and approach.</p> - - - -<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_137" id="Page_137">[137]</a></span>How much truth has he discovered? He -makes no claims. Darwin may or may not have -the truth about Evolution; but we have a certain -and a great truth in Darwin—in his mind and -method. It was <i>how</i> Darwin tried to solve the -problem of life and its forms, rather than the -solution, that has changed the thinking of the -world.</p> - -<p>For three years I was a student of Hebrew -and Old Testament Exegesis under this scholar. -I have forgotten all he taught me, and more. -But the <i>way</i> he taught me has changed forever -my outlook upon life. His attitude was truth, -and it flooded not only the whole mind, but -one’s whole being, with light. Many a time I -have sat in his classroom during the discussion -of some highly difficult and dangerous question -of doctrine, and said to myself, amid the drawn -daggers of those who had come to trap him, -“Right or wrong his findings, he is himself truth, -its life and way.”</p> - -<p>Life enough for a book? He could have written -a book on teaching. For he loved to teach! He -loved to teach young preachers. He could not -preach; but he was the teacher born. The classroom<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_138" id="Page_138">[138]</a></span> -was his from the foundation of the world. -Here he was preaching truly—from a thousand -future pulpits at the very ends of the earth. He -saw his students scattered over the whole world -preaching to the intelligences of men as well as -to their hearts; revealing the wisdom as well as -the love of God; and expounding a diviner -Bible because it was a wholly human Bible. In -all of these pulpits he heard himself speaking -with tongues not his own, but the message was -his own, the simple sincere faith of his classroom.</p> - -<p>The thought of it thrilled him. It lifted him -up. He dwelt in the presence of the opportunity -as in the very presence of the Most High. As -humble a man as ever lived, doubting his every -power and gift, and relying only on the truth -to make him free, he would come into the classroom -and take his chair on the six-inch platform, -which raised him by so much above his -students, as if that platform were the Mount of -Transfiguration. His face would shine; his voice, -his gestures, his attitude working with his careful -words, made his whole being radiant with zeal -for the truth and love for us, his students, so -mysteriously given to his care.</p> - - - -<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_139" id="Page_139">[139]</a></span>Then suddenly, after more than twenty years -of this, he was expelled—driven from this -sacred classroom and branded as unsound, unsafe, -unfit!</p> - -<p>No, not suddenly. It was only the verdict of -his judges that came suddenly. No one nowadays -could prepare his mind for a judgment like -that. For five or six of the years, during which -the trouble-makers, under pretense of study, had -elected his courses at the Theological School, I -had either been a student under him or his close -and sympathetic friend. I knew, as he knew, -that his enemies would stop at nothing in their -bitter zeal; still, I remember vividly the utter -shock and astonishment of the bishops’ decision. -And I remember—for I cannot forget—its -strange numbing effect upon him. It came over -him slowly, else I think he might have died. It -crept upon him like a dreadful palsy, leaving -him dazed and dumb. He was too simple a man -to realize it quickly, too entirely single in mind -and heart to realize it wholly. It slowly crushed -him to the earth. And never in all the after -years was he whole again. His heart was broken. -He rose up and taught, until the very hour of<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_140" id="Page_140">[140]</a></span> -his death, but never again in his old classroom -nor with his old spirit. Day after day he would -pass by the Theological School with its hundreds -of eager students; he would see them gathering -at the hour of his lecture; but another teacher -(one whom he had trained) would come in and -take his place, while he plodded down the street -and on, a shepherd without his sheep.</p> - -<p>Meantime he was called to teach in another -graduate school. He welcomed this new work. -He found honor, and love, and fellowship -among his new colleagues. They gave him freedom. -They created a place for him that had -not been before. He could teach what he wished -and as he wished. It was enough for them to -have him among them, and many a time he told -me of how unworthy he felt of all this love and -honor in his declining years, and how it had -stayed and steadied him in his deep defeat. But -they did not need him here—so he felt. It was -more for the honor of scholarship than for the -good he would do them. But he felt that they -did need him at his own beloved school, whose -policies he had helped to shape, whose spirit he -had helped to create, whose name and fame he<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_141" id="Page_141">[141]</a></span> -had so largely helped to establish, and whose -students, crowding in from the east and from -the great west, he longed to take into his heart -and his home, as for so many happy years he -had been in the habit of doing.</p> - -<p>“O Jerusalem, Jerusalem,” he would cry as -he passed by on the street, a stranger, and saw -the students going in and out, “O Jerusalem, -Jerusalem, which killeth the prophets, ... how -often would I have gathered thy children together, -even as a hen gathereth her chickens -under her wings, and ye would not!”</p> - -<p>This, however, was not the doing of the school. -Faculty and students, with the exception of -those few who came for the express purpose of -accusing him, were loyal. The president of the -University, his close friend, was loyal, and did -all that lay in his power to prevent the iniquity -of the trial and the decision. This only added -to the tragedy. To have been tried by his peers -and co-laborers, by those who knew him and -the field of his labors, would have been perfectly -fair, but to be accused by three or four narrow-minded -students (one of whom recanted later -and all of whom deserve oblivion), who had<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_142" id="Page_142">[142]</a></span> -come with malice aforethought, whose very -presence in the school was a lie, to be accused by -such as these, I say, and then tried by a board -of judges, to whom he was largely a stranger, -not one of whom probably was his equal as a -scholar in the field involved—this made the -shame to the school, to himself, and to truth, -doubly deep and sore.</p> - -<p>There remained one thing more for him to do; -and as soon as he could do it kindly, as a Christian, -and dispassionately, as a scholar, without -bias or prejudice or any personal ends except -the ends of gratitude and truth, he set about his -autobiography. And I wonder if, among autobiographies, -there is another that approaches -his for detachment, restraint, and self-negation; -for absolute adherence to the facts for the sake -of the truth involved, a truth not of self at all, -but wholly of scholarship? This is more of a -thesis than an autobiography—as if the author -were writing of another “Wall of Nehemiah,” -and no more involved in it, personally, than he -was present in “The World before Abraham”!</p> - -<p>This is one of the most remarkable evidences -of severe and scientific scholarship that I have<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_143" id="Page_143">[143]</a></span> -ever seen; and it is equal evidence of the inherent -literary value of human life. No accusing word -is here, nothing bitter and unchristian. But -just the opposite: “For the Benefit of My Creditors” -is a work of love. His very character had -been assailed by his enemies, but this, while it -hurt, could not harm him. He stood upon his -conscious integrity, calm and silent. It was not -the attack upon himself that concerned him. -It was that Truth had been attacked. It was an -attempt to make the Bible a denominational -book; to confound truth with tradition and give -it a doctrinal color or a denominational slant. -The Church may compel its <i>theologians</i> to do -that if it has to, but its scholars, those who discover -truth, it should leave free. God and truth -are not denominational, nor Protestant nor -Catholic nor Hebrew. God is truth, and single -or separate, God and Truth belong to the fearless, -the frank, and the pure—in science not -more than in religion. For “are ye not as the -children of the Ethiopians unto me, O children -of Israel?... Have not I brought up Israel out -of the land of Egypt, and the Philistines from -Caphtor, and the Syrians from Kir?”</p> - -<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_144" id="Page_144">[144]</a></span>I recall the day we came upon that wonderful -passage in Amos in our study of this prophet; -and how for the first time in my life the universality -of truth dawned upon me out of that -passage. I had had a tribal, denominational -God, up to that time. I had been seeing different -kinds of truth—like the different tribes of old -in Palestine—warring truths, each with its own -territory, its own grip upon me, when suddenly, -as the “Rabbi” opened up this mighty saying -of Amos, I saw one God of us all, one truth for -us all, and all of us searching, under God’s leading, -for the truth. Henceforth the Philistines -and the Syrians and the children of Israel were -to be as the Ethiopians to me, as they are to -God—all of us led by him, and all of us free. -No teacher ever taught me a diviner lesson than -that.</p> - -<p>It was not a body of truth that this great -teacher was called to expound. It was the spirit -of truth—the desire for truth, the search for -truth, the nature of truth, <i>that it is God</i>—this -was his high calling. And in condemning him, -his Church was confounding tradition and truth, -blocking the road to truth, and threatening, in<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_145" id="Page_145">[145]</a></span> -this example of him, to punish the daring who -discover and bring us forward into new realms of -truth. In his trial and condemnation the Church -was saying: “Study, but study to perpetuate the -past; to preserve the old; to defend doctrine, and -establish tradition. We have the truth, the -whole truth, and nothing but the truth. No -new light can possibly break forth from God’s -word, or from any word. Revelation is closed. -And if you think you have new light, hide it, and -if you discover new truth, do not publish it, do -not teach it, for among the three hundred men -in your school there are three who have closed -their minds to light and truth, and have sworn -by all the past to keep them closed; and it would -jeopardize the Church if you should pry those -three minds open to the light and to the truth -of to-day.”</p> - -<p>These are not his words. There is a tang of -bitterness in them. They are mine. Yet it was -partly because he believed that the Church -meant to make him a warning to all scholars -and honest thinkers within its fold, that he set -about his autobiography, which he died writing.</p> - -<p>“Rabbi,” we students called him affectionately,<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_146" id="Page_146">[146]</a></span> -and strangely enough he seemed to look -the part. He was the thorough scholar. Careful, -methodical by nature, he was severely trained, -and to all of this he added a profound reverence -for the Book which was his life’s study, and felt -a deep sense of his responsibility as its teacher. -Had his life’s task been a haystack with one -single needle of divine truth lost within it, he -would have tirelessly taken it down, straw by -straw, for the needle of truth, just as Madame -Curie, aware of some mysterious power in the -crude common bulk of slag, patiently eliminated -pound after pound, ton after ton of the gross -elements until she held in her hand the pulsing -particle of radium, hardly larger than the head -of a pin, whose light illumines and almost blinds -the groping world. Had Professor Mitchell not -been a student of the Bible, he might have -been a student of chemistry, for his methods -and his zeal were exactly those of the discoverer -in any field, and it might have been his honor -and glory, as it chanced to be Madame Curie’s, -to give radium to the world.</p> - -<p>Instead of glory, his was condemnation and -defeat. Yet his very mind and method, applied<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_147" id="Page_147">[147]</a></span> -anywhere else, would have won him distinction -and honor. There is no other mind or method, -except the closed mind and the method of appeal -to authority, as against the trial by experiment -and fact. Truth is truth whether in Theology -or in Chemistry, and only the open mind, the -free, the bold, the experimenting mind finds it. -Traditions have to be defended. Truth is its -own defense. The mind of the great scholar is -never on the defensive. Let “the Forts of Folly -fall,” he is far over the frontier where there is no -need for forts. So here in his life he writes not -to defend himself, but to express himself, his -gratitude; and to explain himself, his position, -his purpose, his principles as to the way of truth.</p> - -<p>Here is a man who was as simple as he was -sincere. But simplicity in a great spirit is the -sign, the very expression of sincerity. He was -interested in all human things. He could make -wonderful coffee. He could build a stone wall -with the best of masons, and how he used to -tramp the woods with me for mushrooms!</p> - -<p>I was a stranger in Boston and had been in -his classes for a week, perhaps, when I met him -downtown. It was a very real pleasure to be<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_148" id="Page_148">[148]</a></span> -stopped and called by name and quizzed by the -great Rabbi. What was I looking for in Boston? -A hammer? “Come along,” he said, turning -short about, “there’s a good hardware store -down this street. I’ll go with you and see that -you get a Maydole—a Maydole now—they’re -the only wear in hammers.” I got the Maydole; -that was twenty-six years ago; I have it yet. -His was a little act. But I have drawn many a -nail with that hammer. Yea, I have built him -a mansion with it.</p> - -<p>I speak of that little thing because it was a -characteristic act. The details of life tremendously -interested him. He was entirely human -and as interested in the human side of his students -as he was in their intellectual and spiritual -sides. From my study window here in Hingham -as I write, eight stone faces stare at me out of -the retaining wall in the driveway,—big granite -chunks of boulder they were in my meadow years -ago. It was the Rabbi who rigged the tackle -and helped me put those stones here in the wall. -He could fix a toggle, he could “cut” and -“pize” and “wop” a stone with lever and -chain so as to “move mountains.” “There!<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_149" id="Page_149">[149]</a></span> -There!” he would say, “let the mare do the -work; let the mare do the work,” when I would -rush up at a quarter-ton chunk of solid granite -and, bare-handed, try to hustle it on to the -stone-boat.</p> - -<p>He had built stone walls before—back on the -hill farm in New York State, where he was born -and had his boyhood. Later he “restored” the -Wall of Nehemiah about Jerusalem, but not -with any more zest than he helped me build -with actual stones the retaining wall for my -driveway up Mullein Hill in Hingham. Such -is the man. Would he be substance for a -book?</p> - -<p>Theological students are as naturally full of -trouble as rag-weeds are of pollen. They know -enough to doubt; they are old enough to be married; -they are poor; and they preach; and they -would like to be pious; but the world and the -flesh and the devil are against them. They are -only as good as the average of mankind, but they -have more than an average share of tribulations. -They need Hebrew—all of them—which is -one more terrible trouble! But they sorely need -human sympathy and wise counsel, and whether<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_150" id="Page_150">[150]</a></span> -they got Hebrew or failed to get it, never a man -came into the Rabbi’s classroom who did not -also enter at the same moment into his open heart -and open home. Classroom and heart and home -belonged to every man who would enter. His -capacity for patience in the classroom was only -equaled by the boundless sympathy and the -simple hospitality of his near-by home.</p> - -<p>Is it a wonder that the great body of his students -were confounded and dismayed that he -could be tried on some technical point or other -and be ejected from his chair as unfit to teach -those who were to preach the Gospel?</p> - -<p>After the trial the enforced leisure was immediately -turned to new studies and larger literary -plans. Fresh fields were opened, too, for lecturing—in -the University of Chicago, in Harvard -University; and then soon came the invitation -to join the staff of Tufts Theological School as a -member of the faculty. Life has its compensations -and rewards; and if there was no cure for -the mortal wound he had received at the hands -of his brethren in his own Church, this invitation -to Tufts, and the perfect fellowship there to the -day he died, was a compensation and a satisfaction<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_151" id="Page_151">[151]</a></span> -that gave to his life a sweet reasonableness, -completeness, and reward.</p> - -<p>There was no variableness nor shadow caused -by turning in his unhurried life. The loss of his -chair did not mean the end of his creative -scholarship. He worked to the last, and was -preparing for the day’s work when death came. -He knew our hearts, but we ourselves hardly -knew them till he had gone. Then the swift -word reached us, and we were told that we -should see him no more, that he was to be buried -afar with no service of any kind for him here—here -where he had labored so many years! It -could not be. On every hand his old pupils appeared—Methodist, -Universalist, Unitarian—in -one mind, all differences forgotten in their single -love for the honest scholar, the direct, the earnest, -the sincere teacher, the simple man, whose -life had been devoted to learning and to doing -good,—on every hand they app -eared and gave -him “The Grammarian’s Funeral.”</p> - -<div class="poetry-container"> -<div class="poetry"> -<div class="stanza"> -<div class="versefirst">“Thither our path lies; wind we up the heights!</div> -<div class="indent4">Wait ye the warning?</div> -<div class="verse">Our low life was the level’s and the night’s:</div> -<div class="indent4">He’s for the morning.</div><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_152" id="Page_152">[152]</a></span> -<div class="verse">Step to a tune, square chests, erect each head,</div> -<div class="indent4">’Ware the beholders!</div> -<div class="verse">This is our master, famous, calm, and dead,</div> -<div class="indent4">Borne on our shoulders.</div> -</div> -<div class="stanza"> -<div class="versefirst">“This, throws himself on God, and unperplexed</div> -<div class="indent4">Seeking shall find him.</div> -<div class="verse">So, with the throttling hands of death at strife,</div> -<div class="indent4">Ground he at grammar;</div> -<div class="verse">Still, through the rattle, parts of speech were rife:</div> -<div class="indent4">While he could stammer</div> -<div class="verse">He settled <i>Hoti’s</i> business—let it be!—</div> -<div class="indent4">Properly based <i>Oun</i>—</div> -<div class="verse">Gave us the doctrine of the enclitic <i>De</i>,</div> -<div class="indent4">Dead from the waist down.</div> -</div> -<div class="stanza"> -<div class="versefirst">“Here’s the top-peak; the multitude below</div> -<div class="indent4">Live, for they can, there:</div> -<div class="verse">This man decided not to Live but Know—</div> -<div class="indent4">Bury this man there?</div> -<div class="verse">Here—here’s his place, where meteors shoot, clouds form,</div> -<div class="indent4">Lightnings are loosened,</div> -<div class="verse">Stars come and go! Let joy break with the storm,</div> -<div class="indent4">Peace let the dew send!</div> -<div class="verse">Lofty designs must close in like effects:</div> -<div class="indent4">Loftily lying,</div> -<div class="verse">Leave him—still loftier than the world suspects,</div> -<div class="indent4">Living and dying.”</div> -</div></div></div> - -<hr class="chap" /> - -<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_153" id="Page_153">[153]</a></span></p> - - -<div class="chapter"> - -<p class="ph2">CHAPTER VI</p> - -<p class="ph2">A JANUARY SUMMER</p></div> - - - -<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_154" id="Page_154">[154]</a></span></p> - - - -<hr class="chap" /> - -<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_155" id="Page_155">[155]</a></span></p> - - -<h2 class="nobreak">CHAPTER VI<br /> - -<small>A JANUARY SUMMER</small></h2> - -<div class="poetry-container"> -<div class="poetry"> -<div class="verse"><i>When winter winds blow cold and chill</i></div> -<div class="verse"><i>And through the hawthorn howls the gale</i></div> -</div></div> - - -<p><span class="smcap">The</span> winter winds were truly cold and chill on -this twenty-first of January here in Massachusetts. -And I chance to know they were chill down -along the Delaware this particular January day. -I remember many a January day like this on the -wide marshes of the Delaware and in the big -woods along the Maurice River where I was a -boy. But I was not thinking of those days at -all here in my New England home, for I was -busy at my desk.</p> - -<p>Some one was at my study door. More than -one, for I heard low talking. Then the door -softly opened, and four bebundled boys stood -before me—with an axe, a long-handled shovel, -a covered basket, and a very big secret, which -stuck out all over their faces.</p> - -<p>They were not big boys outside. But they -were almost bursting inside with their big<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_156" id="Page_156">[156]</a></span> -secret. They were big with boots and coats and -caps and mittens; and they looked almost like -monsters in my study door with their axe and -shovel and big basket.</p> - -<p>“Come on, father,” they whispered (as if -<i>She</i> hadn’t heard them tramping through the -hall and upstairs with their kit!), “come on! -It’s mother’s birthday to-morrow, and we’re -going after the flowers.”</p> - -<p>“What!” I exclaimed. “Are you going to -chop the flowers down with an axe, and dig them -up with a shovel?” And I tried to think what a -chopped-down and dug-up birthday bouquet -would look like. But it was too much for me.</p> - -<p>“You are going to give her a nice bunch of -frost flowers,” I said, feeling about in my puzzled -mind for just what was afoot. “If you are going -to give her frost flowers, you had better get the -ice-saw, too, for we shall need a big block of ice -to stick their stems in.”</p> - -<p>Not a word of comment! No sign on the four -faces that they had even heard my gentle banter. -They knew what they were going to do; and all -they wanted of me was to come along.</p> - -<p>“Hurry up,” they answered, dropping my<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_157" id="Page_157">[157]</a></span> -hip-boots on the floor. “Here are your scuffs.”</p> - -<p>I hurried up! Scuffs and boots and cap and -reefer on in a jiffy, and the five of us were soon -in single file upon the meadow, the dry snow -squealing under our feet, while the little imp-winds, -capering fitfully about us, blew the snowdust -into our faces, or catching up the thin -drifts, sent them whirling and waltzing, like -ghostly dancers, over the meadow’s level glittering -floor.</p> - -<p>I was beginning to warm up a little; but I was -still guessing about the flowers, and not yet in -the spirit of the game.</p> - -<p>We were having a hard winter, and the novelty -of zero weather was beginning to wear off—at -least to me. The fact was I had intended to get -the birthday flowers down at the greenhouse -in the village. January is an awkward time to -have a birthday, anyhow. June is a much more -reasonable month for birthdays, if you gather -wild flowers for the celebration. The fields are -full of flowers in June! But here in January you -must go with an axe and a shovel, mittens, -rubber-boots, and reefers! And I confess I -couldn’t make head or tail of this festive trip.</p> - - - - -<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_158" id="Page_158">[158]</a></span>It is a lucky man who has boys, or who knows -and “trains,” as our New Englanders say, with -boys. They won’t let him freeze up.</p> - -<p>“Come, father,” they say, “get into your -scuffs and boots, and hit the old trail for the -woods!” And father drops his pen; bundles up; -“clomps” out in his boots, grumbling at the -weather and the boys and the birthdays and -the stiffness in his knees and in his soul—for -a whole hundred yards or more into the -meadow! Then he begins to warm up. Then he -takes the axe from one of the boys and looks -at its edge, and “hefts” it; and looks about for -a big birthday flower, about the size of a hundred-year-old -oak, to chop down. Something queer -is happening to father. He is forgetting his -knees; he is capering about on the snow; he is -getting ahead of the boys; he hardly realizes it, -but he is beginning to feel like a birthday inside -of him; and he will soon be in danger of getting -this January day mixed up with the days of -June!</p> - -<p>But not right off. I was warming up, I do -confess, yet it was a numb, stiff world about -us, and bleak and stark. It was a world that<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_159" id="Page_159">[159]</a></span> -looked all black and white, for there was not a -patch of blue overhead. The white underfoot -ran off to meet the black of the woods, and the -woods in turn stood dark against a sky so heavy -with snow as to shut us apparently into some -vast snow cave. A crow flapping over drew a -black pencil-line across the picture—the one -sign of life that we could see besides ourselves. -Only small boys are likely to leave their firesides -on such a day; only small boys and those men -who can’t grow up. Yet never before, perhaps, -had boys or men ever gone afield on such a tramp -with an axe, a shovel, and a basket.</p> - -<p>Suddenly one of the boys dashed off calling, -“Let’s go see if the muskrats have gone to bed -yet!” And trailing after him away we went, -straight across the meadow. I knew what he -was after; I could see the little mound, hardly -more than an anthill in size, standing up in the -meadow where the alder bushes and elderberry -marked the bend in the brook. If my farmer -neighbor had forgotten a small haycock, when -he cut his rowen, it would have looked about as -this muskrat lodge here buried under the snow. -I was glad the boys had seen it. For only a<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_160" id="Page_160">[160]</a></span> -practiced eye could have discovered it; and only -a lover of bleak gray days would have known -what might be alive deep down under its thatch -of cat-tails and calamus here in the silent winter.</p> - -<p>But is there any day in the whole year out of -doors that real live boys and real live girls do not -love? or any wild thing that they do not love—flower -or bird or beast or star or storm?</p> - -<p>We crept up softly, and surrounded the lodge; -then with the axe we struck the frozen, flinty -roof several ringing blows. Instantly <i>one</i>—<i>two</i>—<i>three</i> -muffled splashy “plunks” were heard, -as three little muskrats, frightened out of their -naps and half out of their wits, plunged into the -open water of their doorways from off their -damp but cozy couch.</p> - -<p>It was a mean thing to do, but not very mean -as wild animal life goes. And it did warm me up -so, in spite of the chilly plunge the little sleepers -took! Chilly to them? Not at all, and that is -why it warmed me. To hear the splash of water -down under the two feet of ice and snow that -sealed the meadow like a sheet of steel! To hear -the sound of stirring life, and to picture that -snug, steaming bed on the top of a tough old<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_161" id="Page_161">[161]</a></span> -tussock, with its open water-doors leading into -freedom and plenty below! “Why, it won’t be -long before the arbutus is in bloom,” I began -to think. I looked at the axe and shovel, and -said to myself, “Well, the boys may know what -they are doing, after all, though three muskrats -don’t make a spring or a bouquet.”</p> - -<p>But they did make me warmer inside and outside, -too. Warm up your heart and you soon feel -warmer in your fingers and toes.</p> - -<p>We turned back from the muskrats’ lodge and -headed again for the woods, where the flowers -must be. Hardly had we reached the cart-path -before another of the boys was off—this time -to the left, going rapidly toward a low piece of -maple swamp perhaps a quarter of a mile away.</p> - -<p>“He’s going over to see if Hairy Woodpecker -is in his hole,” said the boys in answer to my -question. “Hairy has a winter hole over there -in a big dead maple. Want to see him?”</p> - -<p>Of course I wanted to see him. The only live -thing outside of ourselves that we had seen (we -had only <i>heard</i> the muskrats) had been a crow. -Live birds on such days as these one would go -far to see. So we all cut across toward the swamp<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_162" id="Page_162">[162]</a></span> -where the hairy woodpecker reigned solitary in -his bleak domain.</p> - -<p>The “hole” was almost twenty-five feet up -in a dead maple stub that had blown off and -lodged against a live tree. The meadow had -been bleak and wind-swept, but the swamp was -naked and dead, filled with ice, and touched -with a most forbidding emptiness and stillness. -I was getting cold again, when the boy ahead -tapped lightly on the old stub. At the hole upstairs -appeared a head—a fierce black-and-white -head, a sharp, long bill, a flashing eye—as -Hairy came forth to fight for his castle. He -was too wise a fighter to tackle all of us, however; -so, slipping out, he spread his wings, and galloped -off with a loud wild call that set all the swamp -to ringing.</p> - -<p>It was a thrilling, defiant challenge that set -my blood to leaping again. Black and white, -he was a part of the picture; but there was a -scarlet band in the nape of his neck that, like his -call, had fire in it and the warmth of life.</p> - -<p>As his shout went booming through the hollow -walls of the swamp, it woke a blue jay, which -squalled back from a clump of pines, then,<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_163" id="Page_163">[163]</a></span> -wavering out into the open on curious wings—flashing -ice-blue and snow-white wings—he -dived into the covert of pines again; and faint, -as if beyond the swamp, the cheep of chickadees!</p> - -<p>If anything was needed up to this moment -to change my winter into spring, it was this call -of the chickadees. The dullest day in winter -smiles; the deepest, darkest woods speak cheerfully -to me, if a chickadee is there. And did you -ever know a winter day or a dank, gloomy forest -hall without its chickadee? Give me a flower -in my buttonhole and a chickadee in my heart -and I am proof against all gloom and cold.</p> - -<p>“What is all this noise about?” the chickadees -came forward asking. It was a little troop -of them, a family of them, possibly, last year’s -children and one, or both, of the parents, hunting -the winter woods together for mutual protection -against the loneliness and long bitter cold.</p> - -<p>How active and interested in life they were! -A hard winter? Yes, of course, but what is the -blue jay squawking over, anyhow? And the little -troop of them came to peep into the racket, -curious, but not excited, discussing the disturbance -of the solemn swamp in that sewing-bee<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_164" id="Page_164">[164]</a></span> -fashion of theirs, as if nipping off threads -and squinting through needle-eyes between their -running comments.</p> - -<p>They too were gray and black, gray as the -swamp beeches, black as the spotted bark of the -birches. And how tiny! But—</p> - -<div class="poetry-container"> -<div class="poetry"> -<div class="versefirst">“Here was this atom in full breath</div> -<div class="verse">Hurling defiance at vast death;</div> -<div class="verse">This scrap of valor just for play</div> -<div class="verse">Fronts the north wind in waistcoat gray”;</div> -</div></div> - -<p>and this is what Emerson says he sings:</p> - -<div class="poetry-container"> -<div class="poetry"> -<div class="indent3">“Good day, good sir!</div> -<div class="verse">Fine afternoon, old passenger!</div> -<div class="verse">Happy to meet you in these places</div> -<div class="verse">Where January brings few faces.”</div> -</div></div> - -<p>And as I brought to mind the poet’s lines, I -forgot to shiver, and quite warmed again to the -idea of flowers, especially as one of the boys -just then brought up a spray of green holly with -a burning red berry on it.</p> - -<p>I laid the spray of green holly on the hard -white crust of the January snow. Then I stood -a moment and spread my hands out over it to -warm them! It was like a little fire in the snow. -The boys laughed at me. They were warm -enough in their mittens. But I had need of more<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_165" id="Page_165">[165]</a></span> -than mittens to warm my fingers. I had need of -a fire,—a fire of green pointed holly leaves and -one glowing, flaming berry, a tiny red hot coal -of summer blazing here in the wide white ashes -of the winter.</p> - -<p>We were tacking again now in order to get -back on our course, and had got into the edge of -the swamp among the pines when the boy with -the shovel began to study the ground and the -trees as if trying to find the location of something.</p> - -<p>“Here it is,” he said, and began digging -through the snow at the foot of a big pine. I -knew what he was after. It was goldthread, and -here was the only spot in all the woods about -where we had ever found it, a spot no larger -than the top of a dining-room table.</p> - -<p>Soon we had a fistful of the delicate plants -with their evergreen leaflets and long golden, -threadlike roots that, mixed with the red and -green of the partridge-berry in a finger-bowl, -make a cheerful winter bouquet. And here with -the goldthread, about the butt of the pine, was -the partridge-berry, too, the dainty vines strung -with the beads which seemed to burn holes in<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_166" id="Page_166">[166]</a></span> -the snow that covered and banked their tiny -fires.</p> - -<p>For this is all that the ice and snow had done. -The winter had come with enough wind to blow -out every flame in the maple-tops, and with -enough snow to smother every little fire in the -peat-bogs of the swamp; but peat fires are hard -to put out; and here and everywhere the winter -had only banked the fires of summer. Dig down -through the snow ashes anywhere, and the -smouldering coals of life burst into blaze.</p> - -<p>When that red-beaded partridge-vine was -hastily placed with the goldthread in the -covered basket, and the spray of holly put with -them, a ray of light began to dawn on my snow-clouded -mind. Did I begin to see the bouquet -these boys were after? I said nothing. They -said nothing. They were watching me, though, -I knew, to see how long I should stumble blindly -on through these glorious January woods, which -were so full of joy for them.</p> - -<p>I say I said nothing. I was thinking hard, -however. “Holly, goldthread, partridge-berry,” -I thought to myself. “I see so much of the birthday -bouquet. But what else can they find?”</p> - -<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_167" id="Page_167">[167]</a></span>The boy with the axe had again gone on -ahead. And we were off again after him, stopping -to get a great armful of black alder branches that -were literally aflame with red berries.</p> - -<p>We were climbing a piny knoll when almost at -our feet, jumping us nearly out of our skins, -and warming the very roots of our hair, was a -burrrr! burrrr! burrrr! burrrr!—four big partridges—as -if four snow-mines had exploded -under us, hurling bunches of brown feathers on -graceful scaling wings over the dip of the hill!</p> - -<p>This was getting livelier all the time. From -my study window how dead and deserted, and -windswept and bare the world had looked to -me! Nothing but a live crow winging wearily -against the leaden sky! But out here in the real -woods and meadows—partridges, chickadees, -hairy woodpecker, blue jay, and muskrats as -well as crows! And then I knew a certain old -apple tree where a pair of screech owls were -wintering. And, as for white-footed mice, I -could find them in any stump. Besides, here -were rabbit holes in the snow, and up in a tall -pine a gray squirrel’s nest and—</p> - -<p>But I was losing sight of the boy with the<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_168" id="Page_168">[168]</a></span> -axe who was leading the procession. On we went -up over the knoll and down into a low bog where -in the summer we gathered high-bush blueberries, -the boy with the axe leading the way -and going straight across the ice toward the -middle of the bog.</p> - -<p>My eye was keen for signs, and I soon saw -he was heading for a sweet-pepper bush with a -broken branch. My eye took in another bush -a little to the right also with a broken branch. -The boy with the axe walked up to the sweet-pepper -bush, and drew a line on the ice between -it and a bush off on the right, pacing off this line -till he found the middle; then he started at right -angles from it, and paced off a line to a clump -of cat-tails sticking up through the ice on the -flooded bog. Halfway back on this line he -stopped, threw off his coat, and began to chop -a hole about two feet square in the ice. Removing -the block of ice while I looked on, he rolled -up his sleeve, and reached down the length of -his arm through the ice water.</p> - -<p>“Give me the shovel,” he said, “it’s down -here.” And with a few dexterous cuts he soon -brought to the surface a beautiful cluster of<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_169" id="Page_169">[169]</a></span> -pitcher-plants, the strange, almost uncanny, -leaves filled with muddy water, but every pitcher -of them intact, shaped and veined and tinted -by a master potter’s hand.</p> - -<p>Now at last I fully understood. Now I could -see what those boys had been seeing with their -inward eyes all the time. Now I had faith, too. -But how late! The bouquet of flowers was now -full.</p> - -<p>We wrapped the wonderful pitcher-plant -carefully in newspapers, and put it into the basket, -starting back with our bouquet as cheerfully, -and as full of joy in the season, as we -could possible have been in June.</p> - -<p>No, I did not say that we love January as -much as we love June. January here in New -England is a mixture of rheumatism, chilblains, -frozen water-pipes, mittens, overshoes, blocked -trains, and automobile-troubles by the hoodsful, -whereas any automobile will run in June. It -is so in Delaware and Texas and Oregon, too.</p> - -<p>What I was saying is that we started home all -abloom with our pitcher-plants and goldthread -and partridge-berry and holly and glowing -black alder, and all aglow inside with our vigorous<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_170" id="Page_170">[170]</a></span> -tramp, and with the gray grave beauty of the -landscape, and with the stern joy of meeting -and beating the cold, and with the signs of life—of -the cozy muskrats in their lodge beneath the -ice-cap on the meadow; with the hairy woodpecker -in his deep warm hole in the heart of a -tree; with the red warm berries in our basket; -with the chirping, the capable, the conquering -chickadee accompanying us and singing,</p> - -<div class="poetry-container"> -<div class="poetry"> -<div class="versefirst">“For well the soul, if stout within,</div> -<div class="verse">Can arm impregnably the skin;</div> -<div class="verse">And polar frost my form defied,</div> -<div class="verse">Made of the air that blows outside.”</div> -</div></div> - -<p>And actually as we came over the bleak meadow, -one of the boys said that he thought he heard -a song-sparrow singing! And I said I thought -the pussy-willows by the brook had opened a -little since we had passed them coming out! -And we all declared that the weather had -changed, and that there were signs of a break-up. -But the thermometer stood at fifteen above -zero when we got home—one degree colder -than when we started!</p> - -<p>We had had a January thaw, however, and it -had come off inside of us, as the color on the four<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_171" id="Page_171">[171]</a></span> -glowing faces showed. The birthday came off -on the morrow, and I wonder if there ever was -a more interesting or a more loving gift of -flowers than those from the January woods?</p> - - -<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_172" id="Page_172">[172]</a></span></p> - -<hr class="chap" /> - -<div class="chapter"> - -<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_173" id="Page_173">[173]</a></span> - -<p class="ph2">CHAPTER VII</p> - -<p class="ph2">AFTER THE LOGGERS</p></div> - - - -<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_174" id="Page_174">[174]</a></span></p> - -<hr class="chap" /> - -<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_175" id="Page_175">[175]</a></span></p> - - - - -<h2 class="nobreak">CHAPTER VII<br /> - -<small>AFTER THE LOGGERS</small></h2> - - -<p><span class="smcap">I lay</span> listening to the rain spattering against the -fly of the tent and dripping through the roof of -birch leaves upon the sputtering fire and soaking -down into the deep, spongy bottom of the forest—softly, -as soft as something breathing and -asleep. The guide and the boy beside me -were asleep, but I had been awakened by the -rain. The rain always wakens me. And in my -grave, I think, if I lie sleeping under a roof of -forest leaves, I shall wake and listen when it -rains. Before the stars sang together the primordial -waters made music to the rising land; -before the winds came murmuring through the -trees the waves were fingering the sweet-tuned -sands strung down the sounding shores; and -before the birds found their tongues, or the -crickets their little fiddles, or even the toad had -blown his quavering conch, it had rained! And -when it rained—and not until it rained—the -whole earth woke into song. Mother of music<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_176" id="Page_176">[176]</a></span> -is the water, and, for me, the sweetest of her -daughters is the rain, and never sweeter, not -even on the shingles, nor down the rolled, fevered -blades of the standing corn, than in the deep -woods at night upon the low slant roof of your -tent.</p> - -<p>But suddenly the singing stopped, and the -myriad rain-notes were turned to feet, tiny, -stirring feet, creeping down the tent, skipping -across the leaves, galloping over the forest floor, -and jumping in and out of the fire. Then a twig -snapped. Was that what had awakened me? I -rose up on my elbow slowly. The tent flap was -open; the woods were very dark, the dim light -from above the roof of leaves and rain showing -only shadows, and an ashen spot where the -camp-fire still spluttered, and beyond the ashen -spot a shadow—different from the other shadows; -a shape—a doe with big ears forward toward -the fire! A bit of birch bark flared in the -darkness, and the shape was gone. I could hear -her moving through the ferns; hear her jump -a fallen log and step out among the grating -pebbles on the shore. Then all was still, except -for the scampering rain, and the little red-backed<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_177" id="Page_177">[177]</a></span> -wood-mouse among the camp tins, and the -teeth of a porcupine chilled and chattering in -the darkness at the big wood-mouse among the -tins, and the rain running everywhere.</p> - -<p>I dropped back upon my pillow and left off -listening. How good the duffle-bag felt beneath -my head! And the thick, springy bows of the -fir beneath the bag, how good they felt—springs -and mattress in one, laid underside up, -evenly, and a foot deep, all over the tent floor! -And how good they smelled! A bed of balsam-fir -boughs is more than a bed; it is an oblation -to Sleep, and not a vain oblation—after miles -of paddling in live water or a day of trailing -through the spruce and fir.</p> - -<p class="center">“There’s a long, long trail a-winding”</p> - -<p>runs the song—</p> - -<p class="center">“Into the land of my dreams.”</p> - -<p>But, speaking of sleep, there is no trail, except -a forest trail, that winds away to a land of such -deep dreamlessness as that of a woodman’s -sleep; and no sleep, from which a man will waken, -half so fragrant and refreshing as his. I do not -wish to be carried to the skies “on flowery beds<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_178" id="Page_178">[178]</a></span> -of ease,” but I should like this balsam-fir bed, -for two or three weeks every summer, in the -woods of Maine. A reasonable and a wholesome -wish that, as I lay there wrapped in the fragrant -mantle of my couch, I coveted for city sleepers -everywhere.</p> - -<p>The odors (we should spell them with a “u”)—the -odo<i>u</i>rs of the big woods are so clean and -pure and prophylactic! They clear the clogged -senses, and keep them in a kind of antiseptic -bath, washing a coated tongue as no wine can -wash it; and tingling along the most snarled of -nerves, straightening, tempering, tuning them -till the very heart is timed to the singing of the -firs. My bed of boughs was a full foot deep, -covering every inch of the bottom of the tent, -fresh cut that evening, and so bruised with the -treading as we laid them that their smell, in the -close, rainy air of the night, filled the tent like a -cloud. I lay and breathed—as if taking a cure, -this tent being the contagious ward of the great -hospital, the Out-of-Doors. All around me -poured the heavy, penetrating vapor distilled -from the gums, and resins, and oils, and sweet -healing essences of the woods, mingled here in<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_179" id="Page_179">[179]</a></span> -the tent with the aromatic balsam of the fir. -I breathed it to the bottom of my lungs; but my -lungs were not deep enough; I must breathe it -with hands and feet to get it all; but they were -not enough. Then a breeze swept by the tent, -pausing to lay its mouth over my mouth, and, -catching away my little breath, breathed for me -its own big breath, until my very bones, like the -bones of the birds, were breathing, and every -vein ran redolent of the breath of the fir.</p> - -<p>That breeze blew the sharp, pungent smell -of wood smoke past the tent. I caught it eagerly—the -sweet smoke of the cedar logs still smouldering -on the fire. There was no suggestion of -hospitals in this whiff, but camps, rather, and -kitchens, altars, caves, the smoke of whose -ancient fires is still strong in our nostrils and -cured into the very substance of our souls.</p> - -<p>I wonder if our oldest racial memory may not -be that of fire, and if any other form of fire, a -coal off any other altar, can touch the imagination -as the coals of a glowing camp-fire. And I -wonder if any other odor takes us farther down -our ancestral past than the smell of wood smoke, -and if there is another smoke so sweet as cedar<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_180" id="Page_180">[180]</a></span> -smoke, when the thin, faint wraith from the -smouldering logs curls past your tent on the slow -wind of the woods and drifts away.</p> - -<p>It does not matter of what the fire is built. -I can still taste the spicy smoke of the sagebrush -in my last desert camp. And how hot that sagebrush -fire! And as sweet as the spicy sage is the -smell in my nostrils of the cypress and gum in -my camp-fires of the South. Swamp or desert -or forest, the fire is the lure—the light, the -warmth, the crackle of the flames, and the mystic -incense of the smoke rising as a sweet savor to -the deities of the woods and plains.</p> - -<p>It is the camp-fire that lures me to the woods -when I might go down to the sea. I love the sea. -Perhaps I fear it more; and perhaps I have not -yet learned to pitch my tent and build my fire -upon the waves; certainly I have not yet got -used to the fo’c’s’le smell. For, of all foul odors -known to beast or man, the indescribable stench -of the fo’c’s’le is to me the worst. What wild -wind of the ocean can blow that smell away? -When bilges are sprayed with attar of roses, and -fo’c’s’les sheathed in sandalwood, and sailors -given shower-baths and open fires, I shall take a<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_181" id="Page_181">[181]</a></span> -vacation before the mast; but until then give -me the woods and my fir-bough bed, and my -fire of birch and cedar logs, and the rain upon -my tent.</p> - -<p>When I woke at dawn it was still raining; and -off and on all day it rained, spoiling our plans -for the climb up Spencer Mountain and keeping -us close to camp and the drying fire. The forest -here at the foot of the mountain was a mixed -piece of old-growth timber, that had been logged -for spruce and pine some years before—as -every mile of the forest of Maine has been logged—yet -so low and spongy was the bottom that -the timber seems to have overgrown and long -since ceased to be fit for lumber, so that most -of it was left standing when the lumber-jacks -went through. We were camped by the side of -Spencer Pond in the thick of these giant trees—yellow -birch, canoe birch, maple and spruce, -hemlock and fir and pine—where the shade -was so dense and the forest floor so strewn with -fallen trees that only the club mosses, and the -sphagnum, and a few of the deep-woods flowers -could grow. The rain made little difference to -my passage here, so low were these lesser forest<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_182" id="Page_182">[182]</a></span> -forms under the perpetual umbrage of the -mighty trees, and I came back from as far in as -I dared to venture on so dull a day, my clothes -quite dry, but my spirit touched with a spell of -the forest, which I should have missed had the -sun been shining and the points of the compass -clear.</p> - -<p>For in the big woods one is ever conscious of -direction, a sense that is so exaggerated in the -deepest bottoms, especially when only indirect, -diffused light fills the shadowy spaces, as to -border on fear. I am never free, in a strange -forest, from its haunting Presence; so close to -it that I seem to hear it; seem able to touch it; -and when, for a moment of some minor interest -or excitement, I have forgotten to remember -and, looking up, find the Presence gone from -me, I am seized with sudden fright. What other -panic comes so softly, yet with more terrible -swiftness? And once the maze seizes you, once -you begin to meet yourself, find yourself running -the circle of your back tracks, the whole mind -goes to pieces and madness is upon you.</p> - -<p>“Set where you be and holler till I come get -ye, if ye’re lost,” the guide would say. “Climb<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_183" id="Page_183">[183]</a></span> -a tree and holler; don’t run around like a side-hill -gouger, or you’re gone.”</p> - -<p>I do not know what sort of animal is Johnny’s -side-hill gouger; though I saw, one day, far up -on the side of the mountain a big bare spot where -he had been digging—according to the guide. -It is enough for me that there is such a beast -in the woods, and that he gets those who turn -round and round in the forest on rainy days -and forget to look up.</p> - -<p>The gouger was abroad in the woods to-day. -The clouds hung at the base of the mountains, -just above the tops of the trees; the rain came -straight down; the huge fallen trunks lay everywhere -criss-cross; and once beyond the path to -the spring the semi-gloom blurred every trail -and put at naught all certainty of direction.</p> - -<p>But how this fear sharpened the senses and -quickened everything in the scene about me! I -was in the neighborhood of danger, and every -dull and dormant faculty became alert. Nothing -would come from among the dusky trees to -harm me; no bear, or lynx, or moose, for they -would run away; it was the dusk itself, and the -big trees that would not run away; and I watched<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_184" id="Page_184">[184]</a></span> -them furtively as they drew nearer and nearer -and closed in deeper about me. I knew enough -to “set down and holler” if I got turned hopelessly -around; but this very knowledge of weakness, -of inability to cope alone with these silent, -sinister forces, woke all my ancient fears and -called back that brood of more than fabled monsters -from their caves and fens and forest lairs.</p> - -<p>This was the real woods, however, deep, dark, -and primeval, and no mere fantasy of fear. It -looked even older than its hoary years, for the -floor was strewn with its mouldering dead, not -one generation, but ages of them, form under -form, till only long, faint lines of greener moss -told where the eldest of them had fallen an on -since and turned to earth. Time leaves on nothing -its failing marks so deeply furrowed as upon -men and trees, and here in the woods upon no -other trees so deeply as upon the birches. Lovely -beyond all trees in their shining, slender youth, -they grow immeasurably aged with the years, -especially the yellow birch, whose grim, grizzled -boles seemed more like weathered columns of -stone than living trees.</p> - -<p>One old monster, with a hole in his base that a<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_185" id="Page_185">[185]</a></span> -bear might den in, towering till his shoulders -overtopped the tallest spruce, stood leaning his -gnarled hands upon the air, as a bent and aged -man leans with his knotty hands upon a cane. A -hundred years he might have been leaning so; a -hundred years more he might continue in his -slow decline, till, with a crash, he falls to lie for a -hundred years to come across a prostrate form -that fell uncounted years before.</p> - -<p>I was standing on the tough, hollow rind of -such a birch, so long, long dead that its carcass -had gone to dust, leaving only this empty shell -that looked like a broken, half-buried piece of -aqueduct. It was neither tree nor pipe, however, -but the House of Porcupines, as I could -plainly hear by the grunting inside. A pile of -droppings at the door of the house told the story -of generations of porkies going in and out before -the present family came into their inheritance. -I knocked on the rubbery walls with my foot, -but not hard, for I might break through and hurt -Mother or Father Porky, or possibly the baby -that I saw along the pond that night. No careful, -right-minded person steps on or hurts a -porcupine in any manner.</p> - - - -<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_186" id="Page_186">[186]</a></span>I went on out of the sound of their teeth, -for chattering teeth are not consoling, and the -woods were gray enough. Gray and vast and -magnificently ruinous, yet eternally new they -were, the old walls slowly crumbling, and over -them, out of their heaped disorder, the fresh -walls rising to the high-arched roof that never -falls. To-day the deep, hollow halls were shut -to me by the arras of the gloom, and so smoky -rolled the rain beneath the roof that even the -black rafters of the birches were scarcely visible; -but all the closer about me, in the wildest -wealth and splendor, lay the furniture of the -forest floor.</p> - -<p>Never were wools dyed and woven with a pile -so rich and deep as the cover of mosses and -lichens that carpeted this rude, cluttered floor. -Rolled and wrinkled and heaped up over the -stumps, it lay, nowhere stretched, nowhere -swept, a bronze and green and gold ground, figured -and flowered endlessly; and down the longest, -deepest wrinkle a darkling little stream! -It was a warp of sphagnum moss with woof -of lichens, liverworts, ferns, mushrooms, club -mosses, and shier flowers of the shadows, that<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_187" id="Page_187">[187]</a></span> -was woven for the carpet—long, vivid runners -of lycopodium, the fingered sort, or club moss, -and its fan-leaved cousin, the ground pine, now -in fruit, its clusters of spikes like tiny candelabra -standing ready to be lighted all over the floor; -and everywhere, on every tree-trunk, stump, -and log, and stone the scale mosses, myriads of -them, in blotches of exquisite shapes and colors, -giving the gray-green tone to the walls as the -sphagnums gave the vivid bronze-green to the -floor. Down to about the level of my head, the -dominant note in the color scheme of the walls, -hung the gray reindeer moss, tufts and shreds -and pointed bunches of it like old men’s grizzled -beards. Some of the spruces and twisted cedars -were covered with it. Shorter in staple than the -usnea of the South, stiffer and lighter in color, -it is far less somber and funereal; but a forest -bearded with it looks older than time. This -moss is the favorite winter food of the moose -and caribou and deer, and so clean had the -moose and deer eaten it from the trees, up as -high as they could reach, that the effect on a clear -day was as if a thin gray fog had settled in the -forest at an even six-foot level from the ground.</p> - - - -<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_188" id="Page_188">[188]</a></span>Worked in among the lichens and mosses, -quite without design, were the deep-woods -flowers—patches of goldthread, beds of foam-flower -and delicate wood-sorrel and the brilliant -little bunchberry. Wherever the sunlight had -a chance to touch the cold, boggy bottom it -seemed to set the punk on fire and blaze up into -these scarlet berries, stumps and knolls and -slopes aflame with them, to burn on through the -gloom until they should be smothered by the -snow. Twin-flower and partridge-berry were -laced in little mats about the bases of the trees; -here and there the big red fruit of trillium and -the nodding blue berries of clintonia were mixed -in a spot of gay color with berries of the twisted -stalk, the wild lily-of-the-valley, and the fiery -seed-balls of the Indian turnip.</p> - -<p>These touches of color were like the effect of -flowers about a stately, somber room, for this -was an ancient and a solemn house of mighty -folk. If the little people came to dwell in the -shadow of these noble great they must be content -with whatever crumbs of sunshine fell from -the heaven-spread table over them to the damp -and mouldering floor. There were corners so dark<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_189" id="Page_189">[189]</a></span> -that only the coral orchid and the Indian pipe -pushed up through the mat of leaves; and other -spots, half open to the sky, where the cinnamon -fern and the lady fern waved their lovely plumes, -and the wood fern, the beech, the oak, and the -crested shield ferns grew together, forced thus -to share the scanty light dropped to them from -the overflowing feast above.</p> - -<p>But I never saw mushrooms in such marvelous -shapes and colors and in such indescribable -abundance as here. The deep forest was like a -natural cavern for them, its cold, dank twilight -feeding their elfin lamps until the whole floor -was lighted with their ghostly glow. Clearest -and coldest burned the pale-green amanita, and -with it, surpassingly beautiful in color and design, -the egg-topped muscaria, its baleful taper -in a splotched and tinted shade of blended orange -yellows, fading softly toward the rim. Besides -these, and shorter on their stems, were white -and green and purple russulas, and great burning -red ones, the size of large poinsettia blooms; -and groups of brown boletus, scattered golden -chanterelles, puff-balls, exquisite coral clusters, -and, strangest of them all, like handfuls of frosted<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_190" id="Page_190">[190]</a></span> -fog, the snowy medusa. These last I gathered -for my lunch, together with some puff-balls and -a few campestris, whose spores, I suppose, may -have been brought into the woods with the -horses when this tract was lumbered years ago. -But I had little appetite for mushrooms. It -was the sight of them, dimly luminous in the -rain, that held me, their squat lamps burning -with a spectral light which filled the dusky -spaces of the forest full of goblin gloom.</p> - -<p>As I sat watching the uncanny lights there -was a rush of small feet down the birch at my -back, a short stop just above my head, and a -volley of windy talk that might have blown out -every elf light in the neighborhood. It was very -sudden and, breaking into the utter stillness, it -was almost startling. A moose could hardly -have made more noise. I said nothing back nor -took any notice of him. He could kick up the -biggest sort of a rumpus if he wished to, for the -woods needed it. I only wondered that he had -a tongue, dwelling forever here in this solitude. -But a red squirrel’s tongue is equal to any -solitude, and more than once I have caught him -talking against it, challenging the silence of all<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_191" id="Page_191">[191]</a></span> -outdoors, as I have seen small boys challenge -each other to a blatting-match.</p> - -<p>By and by I turned, and so startled him that -he dropped a cluster of green berries from his -mouth almost upon my head. It was a large -bunch of arbor vit berries that he was going to -store away, for, though he sleeps much of the -winter, he is an inveterate hoarder, working -overtime, down the summer, as if the approaching -winter were to be seven lean years long.</p> - -<p>I was glad he had not obtruded earlier, but -now he reminded me properly that it was long -past noon, and high time for me to get back to -camp. It was later than I thought, for the woods -had gradually grown lighter, the rain had almost -ceased, and by the time I reached camp -had stopped altogether. While we were at supper -the sun broke through on the edge of the -west and ran the rounded basin of the pond -over-full with gold. I stepped down to the shore -to watch the glorious closing of the day. The -clouds had lifted nearly to the tops of the mountains, -where their wings were still spread, -feathering the sky with gray for far around; a -few fallen plumes lying snowy white upon the<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_192" id="Page_192">[192]</a></span> -dark slopes of the lesser hills; then pouring down -the hills into the pond, splashing over the gleaming -mountains and up against the sky, burst the -flood of golden light with indescribable glory.</p> - -<p>“All ready,” said the guide, touching me on -the arm, and I stepped into the bow of the canoe -as he pushed quietly off. An Indian never -moved with softer paddle, nor ever did a birch-bark -canoe glide off with the ease of this one -under the hand of John Eastman, as we moved -along in the close shadows of the shore.</p> - -<p>The light was passing, but the flush of color -still lay on the lovely face of the water with a -touch of warmth and life that seemed little less -than joy; a serene, but not a solemn joy, for -there was too much girlish roundness and freshness -to the countenance of the water, too much -happiness in the little hills and woods that -watched her, and in the jealous old mountain -that frowned darkly down. Mine, too, were the -eyes of a lover, and in my heart was the lover’s -pain, for what had I to offer this eternal youth -and loveliness?</p> - -<p>The prow of the canoe swerved with a telling -movement that sent my eyes quick to the shore,<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_193" id="Page_193">[193]</a></span> -to see a snow-shoe rabbit racing down a little -cove hard at me, with something—a stir of -alder leaves, a sound of long, leaping feet making -off into the swamp—that had been pursuing -him. It was probably a wildcat that had -leaped and missed the rabbit and seen us from -within his covert. What lightning eyes and -lightning legs, thus to leap and turn together! -The rabbit had run almost to the canoe, and -sat listening from behind a root at the edge of -the water, ears straight up and body so tense -with excitement that we nosed along close -enough to touch him with a paddle before he -had eyes and ears for us. Even then it was his -twitching, sensitive nose that warned him, for -his keen ears caught no sound; and, floating -down upon him thus, we must have looked to his -innocent eyes as much like a log or a two-headed -moose as like men.</p> - -<p>Softly in and out with the narrow fret of -shadow that hemmed the margin of the pond -swam the gray canoe, a creature of the water, -a very part of our creature selves, our amphibious -body, the form we swam with before -the hills were born. Brother to the muskrat and<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_194" id="Page_194">[194]</a></span> -the beaver, I stemmed along, as much at home -as they among the pickerel-weed and the cow-lilies, -and leaving across the silvery patches of -the open water as silent a wake as they.</p> - -<p>Nothing could move across such silvery quiet -without a trail. So stirless was the water that -the wake of a feeding fish was visible a hundred -yards away. Within the tarnished smooches of -the lily-pads a muskrat might move about and -not be seen; but not a trout could swirl close to -the burnished surface of the open water without -a ripple that ran whispering into every little -inlet around the shore. The circle of the pond -was almost perfect, so that I roved, at a glance, -the whole curving shore-line, watching keenly -for whatever might come down to feed or drink.</p> - -<p>We came up to a patch of pickerel-weed and -frightened a brood of half-grown sheldrakes that -went rushing off across the water, kicking up a -streak of suds and making a noise like the -launching of a fleet of tiny ships. Heading into -a little cove, we met a muskrat coming straight -across our bows. A dip of the paddle sent us -almost into her. A quicker dive she never made -nor a more startling one, for the smack as she<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_195" id="Page_195">[195]</a></span> -struck the water jumped me half out of the -canoe. Her head broke the surface a dozen -yards beyond us, and we followed her into the -mouth of a stream and on to a hummock into -which she swam as a boat swims under a bridge, -or more as a train runs into a tunnel, for an -arching hole opened into the mound, just above -the level of the stream, through which she had -glided out of sight. Hardly had she disappeared -before she popped up again from deep under -the mound, at the other side, and close to the -canoe, starting back once more down-stream. -She had dodged us. Her nose and eyes and -ears were just above the water and a portion -of her back; her bladelike tail was arched, its -middle point, only, above the surface, its sheering, -perpendicular edges doing duty as propeller, -keel, and rudder all at once.</p> - -<p>As she made off the guide squeaked shrilly -with his lips. Instantly she turned and came -back, swimming round and round the canoe, -trying to interpret the sounds, puzzled to know -how they could come from the canoe, and fearing -that something might be wrong inside the -house. She dived to find out. By this time two<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_196" id="Page_196">[196]</a></span> -young ones had floated into the mouth of the -tunnel, thinking their mother was calling them, -blinking there in the soft light so close that I -might have reached them with my hand. Satisfied -that the family was in order, the old rat -reappeared, and no amount of false squeaking -would turn her back.</p> - -<p>A few bends up the stream and we heard the -sound of falling water at the beaver dam. Fresh -work had been done on the dam; but we waited -in vain for a sight of the workers. They would -not go on with their building. One of the colony -(there were not more than two families of them, -I think) swam across the stream, and came -swiftly down to within a few feet of us, when, -scenting us, perhaps, he warped short about -and vanished among the thick bushes that -trailed from the bank of the stream.</p> - -<p>A black duck came over, just above our -heads, with wings whirring like small airplane -propellers, as she bore straight out toward the -middle of the pond. We were passing a high -place along the shore when a dark object, a -mere spot of black, seemed to move off at the -side of us against the white line of the pebbles,<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_197" id="Page_197">[197]</a></span> -and I found that I was already being sent silently -toward it. My pulse quickened, for the thing -moved very slowly; and behind it a lesser blur -that also moved—very slowly; so deep was -the darkness of the overhanging trees, however, -that the nose of the canoe ploughed softly into -the sand beside the creatures, and I had not -made out the fat old porcupine, and, creeping a -foot or two behind her, as if he might catch up -by to-morrow, perhaps, the baby porky.</p> - -<p>The old mother was feeding on bits of lily-pads -washed up along the shore, picking them -from among the stones with her paws as if she -intended to finish her supper by to-morrow, -perhaps, when her baby had covered the foot -or two of space between them and caught up -with her. She was so intent on this serious and -deliberate business that she never looked up as -I stopped beside her; she only grunted and -chattered her teeth; but I disturbed the baby, -apparently, for he speeded up, and pretty soon -came alongside his mother, who turned savagely -upon him and told him to mind his manners, -which he did by humping into a little heap, -sticking his head down between two stones, and<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_198" id="Page_198">[198]</a></span> -raying the young quills out across his back in a -fan of spines. He didn’t budge for about five -minutes. Then he hurried again—right up -beside the old one—a thing so highly improper -in porkypinedom, and so deleterious to porkypine -health, that she turned and, with another -growl, humped her fat little porky again into a -quiet and becoming bunch of quills. This time -she read him a lecture on the “Whole Duty of -Children.” It was in the porcupine-pig language, -and her teeth clicked so that I am not sure I got -it verbatim, but I think she said, quite distinctly:</p> - -<div class="poetry-container"> -<div class="poetry"> -<div class="versefirst">“A child should always say what’s true,</div> -<div class="verse">And speak when he is spoken to,</div> -<div class="verse">And behave mannerly at table:</div> -<div class="verse"><i>At least as far as he is able</i>”—</div> -</div></div> - -<p>for, seeing him so obediently and properly -humped, she repented her of her severity and, -reaching out with her left paw, picked up a -nice, whole lily-pad and, turning half around, -handed it to him as much as to say, “There, -now; but chew it up very thoroughly, as you did -the handle of the carving-knife in the camp last -night.”</p> - -<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_199" id="Page_199">[199]</a></span>It was a sweet glimpse into the family life of -the woods; and as the canoe backed off and -turned again down-stream I was saying to myself:</p> - -<div class="poetry-container"> -<div class="poetry"> -<div class="versefirst">“Every night my prayers I say,</div> -<div class="verse">And get my dinner every day,</div> -<div class="verse">And every day that I’ve been good</div> -<div class="verse">I get an orange after food”—</div> -</div></div> - -<p>or a nice, round lily-pad.</p> - -<p>The precious light was fading, and we had yet -more than half the magic circle of the shore to -round. As we passed out into the pond again -a flock of roosting blackbirds whirred noisily -from the “pucker-brush,” or sweet-gale bushes, -frightened by the squeal of the bushes against -the sides of the canoe; and hardly had their -whirring ceased when, ahead of me, his head up, -his splendid antlers tipped with fire, stood a -magnificent buck. He had heard the birds, or -had scented us, and, whirling in his tracks, -curiosity, defiance, and alarm in every line of his -tense, tawny body, stood for one eternal instant -in my eye, when, shaking off his amazement, he -turned and, bounding over the sweet-gale and -alders, went crashing into the swamp.</p> - - - -<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_200" id="Page_200">[200]</a></span>I had neither camera nor gun; but, better -than both, I had eyes—not such good eyes -as John Eastman’s, for he could see in the dark—but -mine with my spectacles were better than -a camera; for mine are a moving-picture theater—screen, -film, machine, and camera, all behind -my spectacles, and this glorious creature for the -picture, with the dark hills beyond, the meadowy -margin of the pond in the foreground, and -over the buck, and the pond, and the dark green -hills, and over me a twilight that never was nor -ever can be thrown upon a screen!</p> - -<p>I had come into the wilds of Maine without -so much as a fish-line—though I have fished -months of my life away, and am not unwilling -to fish away a considerable portion of whatever -time may still be left me. But am I not able, -in these later days, to spend my time “in the -solitude of this vast wilderness with other employments -than, these,—employments perfectly -sweet and innocent and ennobling? For one -that comes with a pencil to sketch or sing, a -thousand come with an axe or rifle. What a -coarse and imperfect use Indians and hunters -make of Nature!... Strange that so few ever<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_201" id="Page_201">[201]</a></span> -come to the woods to see how the pine lives and -grows and spires, lifting its evergreen arms to -the light,—to see its perfect success; but most -are content to behold it in the shape of many -broad boards brought to market, and deem <i>that</i> -its true success!... Every creature is better -alive than dead, men and moose and pine trees, -and he who understands it aright will rather -preserve its life than destroy it.”</p> - -<p>Thoreau did not teach me that truth, for -every lover of life discovers it himself; but how -long before me it was that he found it out, and -how many other things besides it he found out -here in the big woods! Three-quarters of a century -ago he camped on Katahdin, and on Chesuncook, -and down the Allegash; but now he -camps wherever a tent is pitched or a fire is -lighted in the woods of Maine. His name is on -the tongue of every forest tree, and on every -water; and over every carry at twilight may be -seen his gray canoe and Indian guide.</p> - -<p>And I wonder, a century hence, who will camp -here where I am camping, and here discover -again the woods of Maine? For the native shall -return. And as “every creature is better alive<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_202" id="Page_202">[202]</a></span> -than dead, man and moose and pine tree”; and -as “he who understands it aright will rather -preserve <i>his</i> life than destroy it” so shall he seek -his healing here.</p> - -<p>The light had gone out of the sky. It was -after nine o’clock. A deep purple had flowed in -and filled the basin of the pond, thickening about -its margins till nothing but the long chalk-marks -of the birches showed double along the shore. -The high, inverted cone of Spencer stood just -in front of the canoe as we headed out across the -pond toward the camp, its shadow and its substance -only faint suggestions now, for all things -had turned to shadow, the solid substance of the -day having been dissolved in this purple flood -and poured into the beaker of the night. A -moose “barked” off on a marshy point near -the dam behind us; a loon went laughing over, -shaking the hollow sides of Spencer and all the -echoing walls of the woods with his weird and -mirthless cry. Against the black base of the -mountain a faint bluish cloud appeared—the -smoke of our camp-fire that, slowly sinking -through the heavy air, spread out to meet us -over the hushed and sleeping pond.</p> - -<hr class="chap" /> - -<div class="chapter"> - -<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_203" id="Page_203">[203]</a></span> - - - - -<p class="ph2">CHAPTER VIII</p> - -<p class="ph2">WOODCHUCK LODGE AND LITERATURE</p></div> - - - -<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_204" id="Page_204">[204]</a></span></p> - -<hr class="chap" /> - -<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_205" id="Page_205">[205]</a></span></p> - - - - -<h2 class="nobreak">CHAPTER VIII<br /> - -<small>WOODCHUCK LODGE AND LITERATURE</small></h2> - - -<p><span class="smcap">Have</span> I proof of my contention here? Throughout -this book, on many sides of the question, I -have argued that the earth is as young as it -ever was; that Nature, though it can all but be -destroyed in spots, as in New York City, cannot -be tamed; that we are still the stuff of -dreams, if we could find rest for our souls and -the chance to dream. We are not lacking imagination -and the power for high endeavor. We -master material things; we can also handle the -raw materials of the spirit and give them enduring -form. But how can we come by the raw -materials of the spirit? And where shall we -find new patterns on which to mould our new -and enduring forms? Matter and pattern are -still to be found in nature—substance, essence, -presence,</p> - -<div class="poetry-container"> -<div class="poetry"> -<div class="versefirst">“Whose dwelling is the light of setting suns,</div> -<div class="verse">And the round ocean and the living air,</div> -<div class="verse">And the blue sky, and in the mind of man.”</div> -</div></div> - - - -<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_206" id="Page_206">[206]</a></span>I have had much to do with young people, -especially with those of creative minds, divinely -capable minds, could they be freed from the -doubt of their times, and the fear of their own -powers. Here let me give them a glimpse of an -<i>old</i> man of their own times, these evil times when -all of the raw material of books has been used -up; an old man with a boy’s eyes and a child’s -heart and a pen and a bluebird or two, and -a woodchuck—and, of course, a magical -chance.</p> - -<p>It was an October day. And how it rained -that day! An October day in the Catskills, and -I was making my way, with my friend DeLoach, -out of the little village of Roxbury by the road -that winds up the hills to Woodchuck Lodge. -Hardscrabble Creek knew it was raining, and -met me noisily at a turn of the road, just before -I came to the square stone schoolhouse (now a -dwelling) where little Johnny Burroughs had -gone for his book learning some seventy-five -years before. Leaving the creek, I found myself -on a roller-coaster road athwart the hills, making -up with spurt and dip to a low, weathered -farmhouse, thin and gray and old, that seemed<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_207" id="Page_207">[207]</a></span> -to be resting by the roadside thus far over the -mountain on its way to the valley.</p> - -<p>I knew it from the distance and through the -rain, only it seemed even older, smaller, poorer -than I had expected to find it. But how close -it sat to the roadside, and how eagerly it gazed -down into the valley where the store and the -station and the meeting-house were—to see -who might be stirring, I thought, down there -in the valley! Or perhaps it sat here for -the landscape. I was approaching Woodchuck -Lodge, and it seemed very old and lonely in the -rain that slanted along the wide gray slopes, -and too frail to stand long against the pull of -the valley and the push of the heights crowding -hard upon it from behind.</p> - -<p>A tiny kitchen garden at its corner, and across -the road a stone wall, an orchard of untrimmed -apple trees bent with fruit, and a small barn -on the edge of a sharply falling field—this was -the picture in the rain, the immediate foreground -of the picture, which stood out on a field -of hay-lands and pastures rolling out of the rainy -sky and down, far down where their stone walls -ran into the mists at the bottom of the valley.</p> - - - -<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_208" id="Page_208">[208]</a></span>These were the ancestral fields. Burroughs -was born a little farther along this road, the -house no longer standing. Here at the Lodge he -was now living, and in the old barn across the -road he had a study. These were his fields by -right of pen, not plough; these were his buildings, -too, and they showed it. They sheltered -him and gave him this outlook, but they utterly -lacked the pride of the gilded weathervane, -the stolid, four-square complacency, that -well-fed, well-stocked security of the prosperous -American farm. An old pair of tramps were -house and barn, lovers of the hills, resting here -above the valley. It was in that old barn, on an -overturned chicken-coop, with a door or some -other thing as humble for table, that Burroughs -had written most of the chapters in “The Summit -of the Years,” in “Time and Change,” -“The Breath of Life,” and “Under the Apple-Trees.”</p> - -<p>So a literary farm should look, I suppose,—a -farm that produces books as abundantly as a -prairie farm produces cattle and corn; yet every -farm, I think, should have a patch of poetry, as -every professional poet certainly needs to keep<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_209" id="Page_209">[209]</a></span> -a garden and a pig. For years Burroughs grew -fancy grapes and celery for the New York -market, along with his literary essays for the -reading public.</p> - -<p>As we came in on the vine-covered porch of -the Lodge, we were met by Dr. Barrus, Burroughs’s -physician and biographer, who told -us with considerable anxiety that the old man -was not at home.</p> - -<p>“He is out visiting his traps, I suppose,” -she said. “He’s just like a boy. I can’t do anything -with him. He’ll come home wringing -wet. And he’s not a bit well.”</p> - -<p>He came home true to form. It was an hour -later, perhaps, that I saw, from the steps, a -dim figure in the blur of the rain: an old man -plodding slowly down the hill road, a stick and -a steel trap in his left hand, and in his right hand -a heavy woodchuck.</p> - -<p>It was John Burroughs, the real Burroughs, -for I knew as I watched him that I had never -seen, never clearly seen, this man before—not -exactly this simple, rain-soaked man with the -snow of more than eighty winters on his head, -with the song of eternal springtime in his<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_210" id="Page_210">[210]</a></span> -heart, and a woodchuck, like a lantern, in his -hand.</p> - -<p>This figure in the rain should be seen coming -down every page of Burroughs’s books. Every -line should be read in the light of this lantern -in his hand, for its wick is in his heart, and -its flame shines from “Wake-Robin” to “The -Summit of the Years.” Burroughs was the -eternal boy—splashing through the puddles, -wet to the skin; the boy for whom these fields of -his father’s farm were as wild as the jungles of -Africa; and this woodchuck in his hand (it <i>was</i> -a big one!) a very elephant, except for the tusks. -But to be like this is to be both boy and philosopher—boy -and writer, I should say. And to -see him thus—falling with the rain, whirling -with the dust, singing with the birds, growing -with the grass, his whole being one with the -elements, earth and wild-life and weather—thus -to see the man is to know how to read his -books.</p> - -<p>As he came up to the porch, his slouch hat -spouting like an eaves-trough, he greeted me -cordially, but as a stranger, not recognizing me -for an instant; then dashing the rain from his<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_211" id="Page_211">[211]</a></span> -eyes, he dropped the woodchuck, drew off, and -with a quick righthander to my chest, which -almost took me off my feet, he cried, “Sharp, -we’ll have woodchuck for dinner!”</p> - -<p>And we did—not the one he had just dropped -on the floor, for that one he skinned and salted -and gave me to bring home to Boston. We had -canned woodchuck that noon at the Lodge. It -was Burroughs’s custom to serve his guests a -real literary dinner; and of course it must savor -of the locality.</p> - -<p>This called for woodchuck, or “Roxbury -Lamb,” as you preferred; and for roast Roxbury -Lamb the rule for rabbit-stew prevails: first get -your woodchuck; not always readily done, for -the meat-market down at the village is sometimes -out of woodchuck. So the Laird of the -Lodge keeps them canned ahead.</p> - -<p>The clouds cleared in the afternoon, the sun -came down upon the mountains, and we looked -out from the porch over a world so large and -new and lovely that I remember it still as a -keen pain, so unprepared was I for it, with my -level background of meadow and marsh and -bay.</p> - - - -<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_212" id="Page_212">[212]</a></span>Endless reaches of river and bay, of wavy -marshland and hazy barrens of pine, were my -heritage of landscape as a child. And I have -never been able to measure up to the mountains, -nor to this scene, here from the porch—this -reach without level; space both deep and high -as well as wide; this valley completely hiding a -village below you; ridges above you where stone -walls climb over the sky; mountains far across -with forests flung over their shoulders, and -farms, like colored patchwork, stitched into -the rents of the forests; runnels singing down -the pastures; and roads, your road to school, -so close to the verge that only the stone wall -stays you from stepping off the edge of the -world!</p> - -<p>None of this had I known as a boy. “Who -couldn’t write,” I muttered, “born into this -glorious world!” I have seen much grander -mountains. “Not a rugged, masculine touch in -all the view,” Burroughs said to me. “It is all -sweet and feminine, and doubtless has had a -feminizing influence upon my character and writing.” -It may be so. There is a plenty of wilder, -stormier landscape than this in these Western<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_213" id="Page_213">[213]</a></span> -Catskills, but certainly none that I ever saw that -is lovelier for a human home. And here Burroughs -now sleeps, under the boulder where he -played as a child, and where all this beauty of -winding valley and blue, bending sky upon the -mountains lies forever about him.</p> - -<p>There is something terribly important and -lasting about childhood. Almost any environment -will do, if only the child is happy. It is -the child who counts. In every child the world -is recreated and in his memory stays recreated. -More and more, as the years lengthen, do we -find ourselves longing—for the pine barrens, -for the vast green reach of the marshes; and -were my feet free this summer day, they would -run with my heart to the river—not to the -mountains; to the river, the Maurice River, -where the bubbling wrens build in the smother -of reed and calamus, and where this very day -the pink-white marshmallows make, at high -noon, a gorgeous sunset over miles of the meadows. -I love and understand those great, green -levels of marshland as I shall love and understand -no other face of nature, it may be. I know -perfectly what Lanier means when he sings,</p> - -<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_214" id="Page_214">[214]</a></span></p> - -<div class="poetry-container"> -<div class="poetry"> -<div class="versefirst">“Oh, what is abroad in the marsh and the terminal sea?</div> -<div class="verse">Somehow my soul seems suddenly free</div> -<div class="verse">From the weighing of fate and the sad discussion of sin,</div> -<div class="verse">By the length and the breadth and the sweep of the marshes of Glynn.”</div> -</div></div> - -<p>I said the clouds cleared late that afternoon, -but it was still raining when, after dinner, I -brought a box from the woodshed to the front -porch for Burroughs to skin the woodchuck. -Here we sat down together, the flabby, flaccid -marmot between us, the whole October afternoon -our own.</p> - -<p>Burroughs pulled a rudimentary whetstone -out of his coat pocket and touched up the blade -of his knife—of his spirit, too, running his -thumb along the blade of every faculty as he -settled to the skinning, his shining eyes, his -vibrant voice, his eager movements, all showing -how razor-keen an edge the old man was still -capable of taking. He got hold of a forefoot of -the ’chuck and started to talk on the flight of -birds, reviewing the various stages of the controversy -on the soaring of hawks that he had -been carrying on in the press, when, suddenly -dropping his knife, he disappeared through the -door and returned in a minute with a letter from<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_215" id="Page_215">[215]</a></span> -some scientist, whose argument, as I remember -it, was wholly at variance with Burroughs’s -theory, but which closed with a strange word, -a word the old man had never seen before and -could not find in his dictionary. It was some -aeronautical term, I think. Handing me the -letter, his finger, as well as his eyes, fastened to -that stranger from beyond the dictionary, he -said:</p> - -<p>“That chap doesn’t know much about soaring -hawks; but there’s a new word. See that! -He knows a heap more than I do about the -English language.”</p> - -<p>He sat down to the skinning again. No cut -had yet been made, nor ever would be made, -apparently, unless he used the back of his blade, -for it was plain that Burroughs kept that old -whetstone for his wits only. He sawed away -and talked as if inspired. I held the other forefoot, -a short, broad foot, like a side-hill gouger’s, -on the oldest, toughest ’chuck in the Catskills.</p> - -<p>“Do you know what I am going to do?” he -asked, switching the conversation into the hard-working -knife. “I’m going to pickle this old -rascal and send him by you to your family. I<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_216" id="Page_216">[216]</a></span> -want you all to have a dish of ‘Roxbury -Lamb.’”</p> - -<p>“But we have our own Hingham Lamb out -on Mullein Hill,” I suggested cautiously. “And -I don’t like to rob you this way.”</p> - -<p>“No robbery at all. Besides, these are a better -breed than yours in Hingham.”</p> - -<p>“But my folks don’t seem very fond of -’em,” I protested. “They cook with a rank -odor.”</p> - -<p>“Oh, you don’t know how to prepare them,” -he answered. “Let me show you a trick,” and -deftly cutting in between the neck and the -shoulder, he took out the thyroid glands.</p> - -<p>“Now you’re going to take this one home. -There’ll be no strong smell when you cook this -fellow.”</p> - -<hr class="tb" /> - -<p>Our talk turned to poetry—the skinning -still going forward—the woodchuck brimming -full of verse; for Burroughs, at every other turn -of his knife, would seem to open up a vein of -song. The beauty of nature to Burroughs had -always been more than skin deep. He wanted -the skin for a coat; the carcass he wanted for a<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_217" id="Page_217">[217]</a></span> -roast; but here was a chance for him to look into -some of the hidden, fearful things of nature, and -the sight inside of that woodchuck made him -stop and sing.</p> - -<p>But how old and frail he looked! And he was -old, very old, eighty-four the coming April 9. -And he was suddenly sad.</p> - -<p>Resting a bit from his labor, he began to chant -to the slackening rain:</p> - -<div class="poetry-container"> -<div class="poetry"> -<div class="stanza"> -<div class="versefirst">“’Tis a dull sight</div> -<div class="indent">To see the year dying.</div> -<div class="verse">When winter winds</div> -<div class="indent">Set yellow woods sighing,</div> -<div class="verse">Sighing, O sighing.</div> -</div> -<div class="stanza"> -<div class="versefirst">“When such a time cometh,</div> -<div class="indent">I do retire</div> -<div class="verse">Into an old room</div> -<div class="indent">Beside a bright fire;</div> -<div class="verse">Oh, pile a bright fire!</div> -</div> -<div class="stanza"> -<div class="versefirst">“I never look out</div> -<div class="indent">Nor attend to the blast,</div> -<div class="verse">For all to be seen</div> -<div class="indent">Is the leaves falling fast,</div> -<div class="verse">Falling, falling!”</div> -</div></div></div> - -<p>And he rubbed his thin hands together, spread -them to the warmth, and repeated two or three -times,</p> - -<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_218" id="Page_218">[218]</a></span></p> - -<div class="poetry-container"> -<div class="poetry"> -<div class="verse">“Oh, pile a bright fire!”</div> -<div class="verse">“Oh, pile a bright fire!”</div> -</div></div> - -<p>More than once, I heard him returning to -those lines; and saw him several times reading -the last stanzas of the poem from a typewritten -copy on his porch table, chafing his hands the -while, and extending them before the imaginary -fire as if they were cold, or as if he felt through -his hands, so sensitive was he physically, an -actual fire in the written lines. The poem is -Edward Fitzgerald’s “Old Song,” and I am -sure Burroughs was learning it by heart, and -making rather hard work of it, I thought, for -one who had already in memory so much good -poetry. But he was getting very old.</p> - -<p>Then, at my request he said some of the lines -of his own poem, “Waiting.” “The only thing -I ever did,” he remarked, “with real poetry in -it.”</p> - -<p>“How about the philosophy in it,” I inquired, -“Do you find it sound after all these years?”</p> - -<p>There was an audible chuckle inside of him. -Then rather solemnly he replied: “My father -killed himself early trying to clear these acres -of debts and stones. I might have been in my<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_219" id="Page_219">[219]</a></span> -grave, too, these forty years had I tried to hurry -it his way. I waited. By and by Henry Ford -came along and cleared up the whole farm for -me. Here I am, and here</p> - -<div class="poetry-container"> -<div class="poetry"> -<div class="versefirst">“Serene, I fold my hands and wait,</div> -<div class="indent">Nor care for wind, nor tide, nor sea;</div> -<div class="verse">I rave no more ’gainst Time or Fate,</div> -<div class="indent">For lo! my own shall come to me.”</div> -</div></div> - -<p>We were soon deep in a discussion of free -verse, no hungry trout ever rising to the fly -with more snap than Burroughs. He called -the free-verse writers the Reds of American -literature, the figure sticking to him, until some -months later in California he worked the idea -out into a brief newspaper article under that -title, the last piece, I think, for publication from -his pen.</p> - -<p>“Name me one good modern poem,” I said, -“moulded on the old forms, with rhyme and -meter.”</p> - -<p>He let go his knife again, turned his face once -more to the rain, through which the mountains -were now emerging, and asked,</p> - -<p>“Do you know Loveman’s ‘Raining’ and -how he wandered up from Georgia to find himself<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_220" id="Page_220">[220]</a></span> -in New York City, his boat gone, or his -money gone, or something gone—for he was -someway stranded, I believe—and it was raining?” -And the old man began—</p> - -<div class="poetry-container"> -<div class="poetry"> -<div class="versefirst">“‘It isn’t raining rain to me,</div> -<div class="verse">It’s raining daffodils;</div> -<div class="verse">In every dimpled drop I see</div> -<div class="verse">Wild flowers on the hills.</div> -<div class="verse">The clouds of gray engulf the day,</div> -<div class="verse">And overwhelm the town,</div> -<div class="verse">It isn’t raining rain to me,</div> -<div class="verse">It’s raining roses down.,’”</div> -</div></div> - -<p>while the rain across the hills, shot through with -sunset light, fell all violets and clover-bloom -and roses on the mountains and on the roof of -Woodchuck Lodge.</p> - -<p>The thing on the box between us was utterly -forgotten, but only for the moment.</p> - -<p>“Damn those fleas!” the old poet exploded, -at the end of the recitation, swinging with both -hands at his long white whiskers, “That ’chuck’s -alive with fleas!”</p> - -<p>So I had observed; and I had been speculating, -as I watched them quitting their sinking craft -and boarding the sweeping beard of the poet, -how many of them it might take to halt the<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_221" id="Page_221">[221]</a></span> -flow of song. I was far off in my reckoning. -Burroughs knocked them out and went on:</p> - -<p>“That’s a good poem because it goes straight -to the heart. It’s an experience. He lived it. -And its form is perfect. You can’t change a -syllable in it. It’s on the old forms, yet it’s true -to itself. And see how simple, direct, and sincere -it is! and how lovely! I call that good poetry.”</p> - -<hr class="tb" /> - -<p>We had been more than three hours getting -the pelt off that woodchuck and all of the poetry -out of him. As I sat by, I saw what I had hardly -realized before: that the hand with the knife -must often rest, though the eager mind seemed -almost incapable of resting.</p> - -<p>The national elections were approaching, -and from poetry we plunged into politics, where -I feared we were bound to disagree, but where, -to my surprise, I found we were standing together -on the League of Nations, Burroughs -having forsaken his party on that issue.</p> - -<p>“It’s the only thing!” he cried. “That’s -what we fought for. Rob us of that, and the -whole terrible sacrifice is futile—criminal!”</p> - -<p>And later, after my return home, he wrote me:</p> - - - -<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_222" id="Page_222">[222]</a></span>“Well, the elections did not go as both of us -had hoped. DeLoach was on the winning side, -as I suppose all the great moneyed interests -were. But thank heaven I am not in that crowd. -If it means an utter repudiation of the League -of Nations, then for the first time I am ashamed -that I am an American. If I were in Europe I -could not hold up my head and say, ‘I am from -the United States!’ If we have failed to see -ourselves as a member of the great family of -nations, with solemn duties toward the rest of -the world, to perform as such a member, then -we have slumped morally as badly as did the -Germans when they set out to enslave the rest -of the world!”</p> - -<p>But to return to Woodchuck Lodge, to the -old man with the boy’s jack-knife in his hand, -and the boy’s heart in his breast—and so, the -poet’s outlook in his eyes. For he was more -poet than scientist, more poet than theologian, -though every poet, like all Gaul, is divided into -three parts, and these—science, music, and -theology—are the parts.</p> - -<p>The theologian is the ultimate thinker. His -chief attribute is consistency—even unto death.<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_223" id="Page_223">[223]</a></span> -Nothing will shatter a system of theology as -will a trifling inconsistency. Burroughs was a -bad theologian, the worst I know by the test -of consistency. Yet who among the theologians -is more religious? Or leaves us with a realer -consciousness of the presence of God in nature?</p> - -<p>“You and I approach this thing from different -angles,” he said to me. “We come to God -down different roads. Our terms differ. You -say ‘Father.’ I say ‘Nature.’ But whatever -we call Him, He is the same, and the same for -each of us. Our divergent paths at the start, -come out together at the end. We worship the -same God.”</p> - -<p>We did differ radically in our approach, in our -terminology, and as I had always thought, must -of necessity differ as radically in our faiths and -works. That was a foolish, vainglorious conceit. -I wish every disconcerted reader of “The Light -of Day” and “Accepting the Universe” had -heard the old author interpret himself that day. -That reader would have understood, as he sat -there watching the light of a real day breaking -in over the rainy autumn landscape, what -Carruth meant by,</p> - -<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_224" id="Page_224">[224]</a></span></p> - -<div class="poetry-container"> -<div class="poetry"> -<div class="versefirst">“A haze on the far horizon,</div> -<div class="verse">The infinite tender sky,</div> -<div class="verse">The ripe rich tint of the corn-fields,</div> -<div class="verse">And the wild geese sailing high,</div> -<div class="verse">And all over upland and lowland</div> -<div class="verse">The charm of the goldenrod—</div> -<div class="verse">Some of us call it Autumn,</div> -<div class="verse">And others call it God!”</div> -</div></div> - -<p>The pelt was finally off; the carcass in pickle -for me; and the sun was out, flooding Montgomery -Valley and the heaving ranges beyond. -An automobile load of callers came, stopped a -little time, and went away; another load came -and went away, and Burroughs, now quite -rested, brought out the manuscripts of two new -books, which were about ready for the publishers.</p> - -<p>I looked at the piles of work, then at the frail -old man who had heaped them up, and thought -with shame of my own strength—and laziness. -To be approaching eighty-four with one book -on the press and two other books in manuscript! -What a long steady stroke he had pulled -across these more than sixty years of writing -to be bringing him in at the finish, two full -volumes ahead of the race! Three volumes<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_225" id="Page_225">[225]</a></span> -indeed, for “Accepting the Universe” had not -yet come from the press.</p> - -<p>The quiet and calm of it all deeply impressed -me. The extreme opposite in temperament -and action from his friend Roosevelt, there was -nothing “strenuous” about this plodding old -man, nor ever had been. “Serene I fold my -hands and wait” he had written in his twenty-third -year, and had practiced all these four-and-eighty -years. Yet look at this amount of -durable work accomplished. It is well for us -Americans to remember just now that there is -another than the “strenuous” type of life, -which is just as worthy of emulation, and which -is likely to be even more effective.</p> - -<p>This was an October day at Woodchuck -Lodge. Sixty-one years before the “Atlantic -Monthly” was actually printing Burroughs’s -first essay, “Expression.” I looked at the old -man beside me with the pen in his fingers. -Was it the same man? the same pen? Lowell -was the editor; then Fields, Howells, Aldrich, -Scudder, Page, Perry, to the present editor, -who has held his chair these dozen years; and I -watched the pen in Burroughs’s hand travel<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_226" id="Page_226">[226]</a></span> -slowly across a corrected line of the manuscript -and I remembered that in all the years since -Lowell was editor, not for a single year had that -pen failed to appear in the pages of the “Atlantic.” -Was it strange that as I looked from the -pen away to the Catskills surrounding me I -wondered if I were really looking into Montgomery -Valley and not into Sleepy Hollow?</p> - -<p>We guests had a plenty that night, but Burroughs -went to bed supperless. We guests slept -indoors, but Burroughs made his bed out on the -front porch, where he could see the stars come -over the mountains, and the gates of dawn -swing wide on the wooded crests, when the new -sweet day should come through and down into -Montgomery Valley.</p> - -<p>For Burroughs has lived and loved everything -he has written. He cannot write of anything -else. Our present-day writers, especially -our poets and nature writers, take the wings of -the morning (or of the night) unto the uttermost -parts of the earth for copy. Burroughs -visited distant places; but he always wrote about -the things at home. “Fresh Fields,” to be sure, -is out of England; yet England was only an<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_227" id="Page_227">[227]</a></span> -older home. Burroughs had seen strange, extraordinary, -tropical things; seen them, to write -little about them, however, for it is only the -homely, the ordinary, the familiar things that -stirred his imagination and moved his pen. -These were his things, the furniture of his house, -the folks of his town; for it was the hearth where -he lived, his home, that he loved, and it was the -creatures living on it with him that gave him -his great theme. “The whole gospel of my -books,” he wrote, “is stay at home, see the -wonderful and beautiful and the simple things -all about you. Make the most of the near at -hand.”</p> - -<hr class="tb" /> - -<p>It was a constant wonder to me how one could -be so simple as Burroughs, and yet know so -many places, persons, and books. Burroughs -had met many people; he had read many books, -and had written more than a score himself; yet -he was the simplest man I ever knew, as simple -as a child,—simpler, indeed. For children may -be suspicious and self-conscious, and even uninterested; -but Burroughs’s interest and curiosity -grew with the years. He carried his culture and<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_228" id="Page_228">[228]</a></span> -his knife and his whetstone in his pocket. They -belonged to him; but he belonged strictly to -himself. He remained to the end what the Lord -made him—and that is to be original.</p> - -<p>Pietro, the sculptor, has made Burroughs in -bronze, resting on a rock, his arm shading his -face, his eyes peering keenly into the future or -the far-away. Pietro has made him a seer or a -prophet. He was much more the lover and the -poet. I sat with Burroughs on that same rock, -the morning after the rainy day at the Lodge, -and talked with him of some things long past, -of many things round about us, but of few -things of the future. I saw him shield his face -with his arm, and look far off from the rock—to -the rounded, green-crested hills in the distance, -and down into the beautiful valley below. -But most of the time he was watching a chipmunk -near by, or scanning the pasture for woodchucks. -Had I been Pietro I should have made -the old man flat on that boulder, his beard a -patch of lichen, his slouch hat hard down on -his eyes, his head just over the round of the rock—and -down the slope, at the mouth of his -burrow, a big woodchuck on his haunches.</p> - - - -<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_229" id="Page_229">[229]</a></span>“I’ve been studying the woodchuck all my -life,” he said, as we sat there on the rock, “and -there is no getting to the bottom of him.”</p> - -<p>I do not know whether Burroughs climbed -over the walls and up through the field again -to this favorite spot of his boyhood in the few -remaining days he had at the Lodge. This may -have been the last time he looked out with seeing -eyes over this landscape of valley and mountain -that had been one of the deepest, most -abiding influences of his life. As we sat there -together, the largeness and glory of the world: -colors, contours, the valley depths, the quiet -hills, the wealth of life, the full, deep flood of -autumn light—almost too much for common -human eyes—the old man beside me said, -with a sigh:</p> - -<p>“I love it. But it is hard to live up to it. -Sometimes, especially of late, I feel it a burden -too great to bear.” Then, as if guilty of some -evil thought, he brightened instantly, pointed -out a dam that he had built as a boy in the field -below us, for his own swimming-hole, the ridge -of sod and stone still showing; told me stories -of his parents; described his sugar-making in the<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_230" id="Page_230">[230]</a></span> -“bush” behind us; nor referred again to the -burden of the years, weighing so heavily now -upon him, until we were leaving. Then, as he -came out to the road to see us off, he said with -tears in his eyes:</p> - -<p>“I hate to have you go. I wish you could -stay. You boys are life to me now. Come again -soon. Good-bye.”</p> - -<p>We promised we would, and we did—in -April, the next April, when we went up to say -our last good-bye. Meantime he was off to -California for the winter months. Before leaving -he wrote to me from West Park, his home on -the Hudson:</p> - -<blockquote> - -<p>I neglected to make any apologies for the long letter -I wrote you the other day. I promise not to do -so again. I am sending you an old notebook of mine, -filled with all sorts of jottings, as you will see. I send -it as a keepsake.</p> - -<p>We are off for California to-morrow. Hope to be -there in early December. We leave Chicago on the -29th. My address there will be La Jolla, San Diego. -Good luck to you and yours.</p> - -<p class="right"><span class="gap">Ever your friend</span></p> - -<p class="right"><span class="smcap">John Burroughs</span></p></blockquote> - -<p>He kept his promise. This was his last letter -to me. They were not very happy months in<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_231" id="Page_231">[231]</a></span> -California. Visitors came to see him as usual; -he spoke in the schools; and wrote up to the -very end; but he was weak, often sick, and -always longing for home. He knew if he was -ever to see home again he must not delay long; -and he counted the days. He wished to celebrate -his birthday with his old friends, at the -old place; and he was on the way, speeding -homeward, with most of the long journey covered, -when, suddenly, the end came. And is it -at all strange that his last uttered words, as he -sank into unconsciousness, should have been -“How far are we from home?”</p> - -<p>On the front of the boulder which marks his -grave, those last words might well be cut, as -expressing the real theme of all his books, the -dominant note in all his life.</p> - -<p>His old friends kept his birthday in the old -place—in the “Nest” at Riverby, for the -funeral; and the next day, his eighty-fourth -birthday, they carried him into his beloved -mountains, to his grave by the rock, where so -lately we had talked together, and where, since -childhood, he had found an altar for his soul.</p> - -<p>How great a man Burroughs was I do not<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_232" id="Page_232">[232]</a></span> -know. Time knows. I know that he had three -of the elements of greatness as a writer: simplicity, -sincerity, and a true feeling for form. -And he had these to an uncommon degree. I -know that great men and little children loved -him; and that three generations already have -been led oftener and farther into the out-of-doors -by him than by any other American -writer. I know how Burroughs thought of himself -and of Thoreau; for in a letter, several -years ago to me he wrote:</p> - -<blockquote> - -<p>Thoreau is nearer the stars than I am. I may be -more human, but he is as certainly more divine. -His moral and ethical value I think is much greater, -and he has a heroic quality that I cannot approach.</p></blockquote> - -<p>But I am not trying to estimate Burroughs. -I am only sketching, through the gray rain and -in the golden light at the far end of the autumn, -one whom thousands of us read and love.</p> - - -<p class="center">THE END</p> - - - -<hr class="chap" /> - -<div class="transnote"> -<p class="ph3">TRANSCRIBER’S NOTES:</p> - - -<p>Obvious typographical errors have been corrected.</p> - -<p>Inconsistencies in hyphenation have been standardized.</p> - -</div> - - - - - - - - -<pre> - - - - - -End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of The Magical Chance, by Dallas Lore Sharp - -*** END OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE MAGICAL CHANCE *** - -***** This file should be named 60872-h.htm or 60872-h.zip ***** -This and all associated files of various formats will be found in: - http://www.gutenberg.org/6/0/8/7/60872/ - -Produced by Tim Lindell, David E. 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