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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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