Pastoral Days Part 4

Two hours later saw a demonstrative individual threatening to chop down the whole side of a bridge, while ten miles to the northward the placid surface of Waramaug rippled to the oars, and the lofty mountain-sides echoed with the shouts of a merry holiday.

But all things must have an end. The school-days ended, and so did this memorable vacation. A letter breaks the charm: insatiate publisher! Once more through the winding paths of the Housatonic, and I leave the loveliness of Hometown for the metropolis of brick and stone, there to resume the old routine.

AUTUMN.

[Ill.u.s.tration: THE WANING]

[Ill.u.s.tration]

I am sitting alone upon a wooded knoll at our old farm at Hometown.

Above me a venerable oak holds aloft its dome of bronze-green verdure, and on either side the gnarled and knotty branches bend low, and trail their rustling leaves among the tufts of waving gra.s.s that fringe the slope around me.

It is a spot endeared to me from earliest memory, a loved retreat whose every glimpse beneath the overhanging boughs has left its impress, whose every feature of undulating field, of wooded mountain, and winding meadow-brook I have long been able to summon up at will before my closed eyes, as though a mirror of the living picture now before me. And what is this picture?

It is an enchanted vision of nature's autumn loveliness--a vision of peace and tranquil resignation that lingers like a poem in the memory.

It is a glorious October day, one of those rarest and loveliest of days when all nature seems transfigured, when a golden, misty veil swings from the heavens in a charmed haze, through which the commonest and most prosaic thing seems spiritualized and glorified. The summer's full fruition is past and gone, the dross has been consumed; and in the lingering life, whose yielding flush now lends its sweet expression to the declining year, we see the type of perfect trust and hope that finds a fitting emblem in the dim horizon, where heaven and earth are wedded in a golden haze, where purple hills melt softly in the sky. It is a day when one may dream with open eyes, and whose day-dreams haunt the memory as sweet realities. The sky is filled with rolling, fleecy clouds, whose flat receding bases seem to float upon a transparent amber sea, from whose depths I look through into the blue air beyond.

Below me an ancient orchard skirts the borders of the knoll. Its boughs are crimson studded, and the ground beneath is strewn with the bright red fruit. They mark the minutes as they fall, running the gauntlet of the craggy twigs and bounding upon the slope beneath. Beyond the orchard stretch the low, flat meadow lands, set with alders and swamp-maples, with swaying willows, now enclosing, now revealing the graceful curves of the quiet stream as it winds in and out among the overhanging foliage. Soon it is lost beneath a wooded hill, where an old square tower and factory-bell betray the hiding-place of the gla.s.sy pond that sends its splas.h.i.+ng water-fall across the rocks beneath the old town bridge. Looking down upon this bridge, Mount Pisgah, with its rugged cliff, is seen rising bold and stern against the sky, above a broad and bright mosaic of elms and maples, spreading from the grove of oaks near by in an unbroken expanse, to the very foot of the precipice, with here and there a sunny cupola or gable peering out among the branches, or a snowy steeple lifting high its golden cross or weather-vane glittering in the sun. The mountain-side is lit up with its autumn glow of intermingled maples, oaks, and beeches, with its changeless ledges of jutting rock, and dense, defiant pines standing like veteran bearded sentinels in perpetual vigilance.

All this comes to me in a single glimpse beneath the branches. But there are others, where undulating meadows, with their flowing lines of walls and fences, lead the eye through soft gradations to distant purple hills, through thrifty farms, with barns and barracks and rowen fields with browsing cattle, and ruddy buckwheat patches, where the flocks of village pigeons congregate among the cradle marks, in quest of scattered kernels shaken from the sheaves.

There is a tiny lake near by that nestles among the hill-side farms, where sloping pastures and fields of yellow, rustling corn glide almost to the water's edge. So sensitive and sympathetic is this little sheet of water that I christened it one day Chameleon Lake, for it wears a different expression for every phase of season or freak of weather, and always dwells in harmony with the landscape which encloses it. In cloudy days it frowns as cold as steel. In days of suns.h.i.+ne it is as bright and blue as the sky itself, or s.h.i.+mmers like a s.h.i.+eld of burnished silver.

And now it is a flood of autumn gold, carrying from sh.o.r.e to sh.o.r.e a maze of ripples laden with opaline reflections of intermingled glints from cloud and sky, and of the gold and ruby colored foliage along its banks.

But this knoll and all these farms are not mine alone. They are such as I should hope might lurk in the memory of almost any one who looks back to early days among New England hills.

[Ill.u.s.tration: AN OCTOBER DAY.]

This old oak-tree, whose furrowed bark I lean upon, was a hardy patriarch when first I sought its shade. Its added years have scarcely changed a feature or modified a line in its old-time n.o.ble expression.

As I look up, its great open arms spread out against the sky exactly as they did when I lolled beneath their shelter and watched the drifting clouds of twenty years ago sail through them in the blue above. Even the jagged furrows in the bark I seem to recognize. Here, too, is that same spreading scale of greenish lichen that fain will grow upon the trunk, as if I had not often picked it all to pieces in my early idling. The same round oak-gall rests on the bed of leaves in the hollow between the rocks near by, as though it had forgotten how a dozen years ago I cracked its polished sh.e.l.l and sent its spongy contents to the winds.

And here comes that veritable ant creeping through the gra.s.s at my elbow--now on the root, now on the bark, exploring every crack and crevice in his hurried search. I wonder if the little fellow will ever find what he has been looking for so long. And here's a friend of his coming down. They stop and wag their antennae in a moment's conversation.

I wonder what they said. I always _did_ wonder when I watched them do the same thing on this very spot a score of years ago. The soft waving gra.s.s whispers about my ears as it did then, and I hear the low trumpet of the nuthatch as he creeps about in the tree o'erhead. Easily may one forget the lapse of time in such a place as this, where every leaf, and twig, and blade of gra.s.s conspire to breed forgetfulness of later years.

Hark! that shrill tattoo again! The tree-toad. Yes, that same recluse in his mysterious hiding-place, seeking by his tantalizing trill to renew that game of hide-and-seek we left off so long ago--in those eager days when every stick and stone upon the knoll was overturned in my zeal to find his whereabouts. There he goes again! louder and more shrill. But now I realize the effect of time, for I only sit and listen to his oft-repeated call. Formerly that sound was like a galvanic thrill that electrified every nerve and muscle in my physiology. No, I'll not hunt for you again, my musical young friend; besides, the odds would be against you now, for I know more about tree-toads than I once did, and you wouldn't see me hunting on the ground as in the olden days. Besides, you're getting bold; there is no need of hunting, for in that last toot you gave yourself away. Even now my eyes are fixed upon the hole in yonder hollow limb, and I see your tiny form clinging to the rotten wood within the opening. What _would_ I not have given _once_ to have thought of that soggy hole!

[Ill.u.s.tration: A WAY-SIDE PASTORAL.]

Near by a spreading yew monopolizes a rocky bit of ground, its foliage creeping above a silvery gray bed of branching moss, whose pillowy tufts spread almost to my feet. This was my fairy forest of tiny trees. Here I found the fairies' cups and torches, and even now I can see their scarlet tips scattered here and there among the gray; and fragile little parasols, too--it were an insult, indeed, to designate such dainty things as these by the name of toadstools. Beyond this bed of moss a scrubby growth of whortleberry takes possession of the ground. The bushes are now bare of fruit, but ruddy with their autumn blushes, tingeing the surface of the knoll with a delicate coral pink. This thicket extends far down upon the slope, even encroaching upon the wheel-ruts of the lane, and across again, until cut short by an ancient tumbling line of lichen-covered stones, a landmark which has long since yielded up its claim as a barrier of protection to the old orchard it encloses, now only a moss-grown pile, with every c.h.i.n.k and crevice a nestling-place of some searching tendril, fern, or clambering vine. For rods and rods it creeps along beneath the laden apple-trees, skirting the borders of this old farm lane, and finally hides away among a clump of cedars a few hundred feet away.

Of all the picturesque in nature, what is there, after all, that so wins one's deeper sympathies as the ever-changing pictures of a rustic lane or roadside, with its weather-beaten walls and fences, and their rambling growth of weeds and creeping vines? How sweet the sense of near companions.h.i.+p awakened by these charming way-side pastorals that accompany you in your saunterings, and reach out to touch you as you pa.s.s--a sense of friendly fellows.h.i.+p that breathes a silent greeting in the most deserted paths or loneliest of by-ways!

Show me a ruined wall or a rutted zigzag fence, and I will show you a string of pearls, or rather, if in these later months, a fringe of gems, for the autumn fence is set in wreaths of rubies and glowing sapphires.

Follow its rambling course, now through the field, now skirting swampy fallows, now by rustic lanes and cornfields and over rocky pastures, and you will follow a lead that will take you through the rarest bits of nature's autumn landscape.

Even in this lane, at the foot of the knoll below us, see the brilliant luxuriance of cl.u.s.tered bitter-sweet draping the side of that clump of cedars! It is only an indication of the beauty that envelops this lane for a full half mile beyond. Every angle of its rude rail fence encloses a lovely pastoral, each a surprise and a contrast to its neighbor.

Right here before us, what a beginning! Hold up your hands on either side, and shut out the surroundings. Such is the glimpse I always long to paint from nature, and yet how almost maddening is the result! Rather would I drink it all in and fix its every feature in my mind, and paint it from its memory, when the presence of the living thing before me shall not mock my efforts and put to shame the crude creations of oil and pigment.

See how the cool gray rails are relieved against that rich dark background of dense olive juniper, how they hide among the p.r.i.c.kly foliage! Look at that low-hanging branch which so exquisitely conceals the lowest rail as it emerges from its other side, and spreads out among the creeping briers that wreathe the ground with their s.h.i.+ning leaves of crimson and deep bronze! Could any art more daringly concentrate a rhapsody of color than nature has here done in bringing up that gorgeous spray of scarlet sumach, whose fern-like pinnate leaves are so richly ma.s.sed against that background of dark evergreens? And even in that single branch see the wondrous gradation of color, from purest green to purplish olive, and olive melting into crimson, and then to scarlet, and through orange into yellow, and all sustaining in its midst the cl.u.s.tered cone of berries of rich maroon! Verily, it were almost an affront to sit down before such a shrine and attempt to match it in material pigment. A pa.s.sing sketch, perhaps, that shall serve to aid the memory in the retirement of the studio, but a careful copy, _never!_ until we can have a tenfold lease of life, and paint with sunbeams. But there is more still in this tantalizing ideal, for a luxuriant wild grape-vine, that shuts in the fence near by, sends toward us an adventurous branch that climbs the upright rail, and festoons itself from fence to tree, and hangs its luminous canopy over the crest of the yielding juniper. Even from where we stand we can see the pendant cl.u.s.ters of tiny grapes clearly shadowed against the translucent golden screen. Add to all this the charm of life and motion, with trembling leaves and branches bending in the breeze, with here and there a flitting shadow playing across the half hidden rails, and where can you find another such picture, its counterpart in beauty--where? perhaps its very neighbor, for all roadside pictures are "hung upon the line," they are all by the same great Master, and it is often difficult to choose.

Here we have a contrast. A dappled rock has taken possession of this little corner, or the corner has been built around it, if you choose--a "gray" rock we would call it in common parlance, but it is a gray composed of a checkered mult.i.tude of tints, colors which upon a rock, it would seem, were hardly worth an appreciative glance; but only let them be exhibited upon a fold of Lyons silk or Jouvin kid glove, and dignify them by the compliments of "ashes of roses," or "London smoke," and how eagerly they are sought, how exquisite they become. I speak in moderation when I say that I have often sat and counted as many as thirty just such tints upon the surface of a small "gray" rock, each _distinct_, and all so _refined_ and exquisite in shade. This rounded bowlder is no exception; and with its tufted spots of jetty moss, and outcroppings of glistening quartz, its rounded, spreading blots of greenish lichens, and mottled groundwork, it may well defy the craft of the most skilled palette. And when these grays are contrasted with tender yellow greens and browns of fading ferns, such as fringe the borders of the one before me, with a background of scarlet whortleberry bushes and deep-green sprays of blackberry cl.u.s.tering about the loosening bark of a crumbling stump, with its shelving growth of fungus hiding among its brown debris, one may well pause and wonder which to choose, or where a single touch is wanting in the perfect unity and harmony of either.

[Ill.u.s.tration: WAIFS.]

Another jutting corner, and we confront a swaying ma.s.s of gold and purple--that magnificent regal combination of graceful golden-rod and asters that glorifies our autumn from September to the falling leaf.

There are a number of species of golden-rod, varying as much in their intensity of color as in their time of bloom. The earliest appear in the heart of summer, in wood and meadow; while others, larger and more stately, lift up in their midst their plumy, undeveloped tips, and wait until their predecessors are old and gray ere they roll out their wreaths of gold. For weeks the roads and by-ways have been lit up with their brilliant glow, that parting sunset gleam that lingers with the closing year. This splendid cl.u.s.ter is full six feet in height, and towers above the highest rail, or rather where the rail ought to be, for it is lost from sight beneath a dense fret-work of p.r.i.c.kly smilax--and such brilliant, polished leaves! how they glitter in the sun! almost as though wet with dew.

And to think how those p.r.i.c.kly canes, denuded of their leaves, are sold upon our city thoroughfares as "Spanish rose-trees" to the unsuspecting pa.s.ser-by! Those guileless venders, too! I remember one that sought to enrich my store of botanical knowledge by telling me they "bloomed in winter!" and had a flower as "big as a saucer," and "kinder like a holy hawk!!!?" I looked him straight in the eye, but he was the picture of innocence. "Can you tell me the botanical name," I asked. "Oh yes," he glibly replied, "I think they call it the _Rubus epistaxis_." Eheu! but this was _too much_, and he saw it, and with a wink of his foxy eye and a shrewd grin, he whispered along the palm of his hand, "Got to git a livin' _somehow_, boss; now _don't_ give me away." "Here you are, lady, Spanish roses, lady, fresh from the steamer." I never see a thicket of green-brier without thinking of its "winter blossom;" and, by-the-way, did you ever notice a thicket of this shrub, what a defiant, arbitrary tyrant it is--shutting out the very life-breath and light of day from its enc.u.mbered victims, monopolizing everything within its power, and even reaching out for more with searching tips in mid-air, and a couple of greedy tendrils at every leaf? And did you ever notice along the road that delicious whiff that comes to you every now and then, that pungent breath of the sweet-fern? We get it now; the air is laden with it from the dark-green beds across the road. The sweet-fern, as I remember it, was the simpler's panacea and the small boy's joy--an aromatic shrub, whose inhaled fumes, together with its corn-silk rival, seem destined by an all-wise Providence as a preparatory tonic to the more ambitious fumigation of after-years. Many a time have I sat upon this bank and tried to imagine in my domestic product the racy flavor of the famed Havana!

Between old Aunt Huldy, with her mania for the simples, and the demand of the village boys, I wonder there is any of it left. But Aunt Huldy has long since died; all her "yarbs," and "yarrer tea," and "paowerful gud stimmilants" could not give her the lease of eternal earthly life which she said lurked in the "everlastin' flaowers;" and after she had reached the age of one hundred and three, her tansy decoctions and boneset potions ceased in their efficacy--the feeble pulse grew feebler, and one winter's eve, sitting in her rocker by her kettle and andirons, she fell into a deep sleep, from which she never awoke. Aunt Huldy was as strange and eccentric a character as one rarely meets in the walks of life. Some said she was crazy; others said she was a witch; but whatever she may have been, this aged dame was picturesque with her bent figure, her long white hair and scarlet hood. And who shall describe the ancient withered face that looked out from the shadow of that hood, the small gray eyes and heavy white eyebrows, the toothless jaws and receding lips, and ma.s.sive chin that made its appalling ascent across the face? But I cannot describe that face: think of how a witch should look, and old Huldy's features will rise up before you. She knew every herb that grew, but her great stand-by was "sweet-fern:" she smoked it, she chewed it, she drank it, and even wore a little bag of it around her neck, "to charm away the rheumatiz."

[Ill.u.s.tration: IN THE CORNFIELD.]

Since her time, however, the sweet-fern has had a chance to recuperate, and, as far as we can see along the road, the banks are covered with it; and there's a clump of teazles in its midst! I wonder if that old carding-mill still stands. You also, perhaps, will wonder what relation can exist between the two, that should make my thoughts jump half a mile at the sight of a roadside weed. But that old woollen-mill offered a premium on the extermination of one weed at least, for all the teasels of the neighborhood were required to keep its cloth brushes in thorough repair; but I fear its buzzing wheels are silent, for in olden times no such splendid clump as this could have remained to go to seed upon the highway. This old mill lies right upon our path, only a short walk down the road beyond. It nestles among a bower of willows in a picturesque ravine known as the "Devil's Hollow"--an umbrageous, rocky glen, by far too cool and comfortable a place to justify the name it bears.

Following the road, we now descend into a long, low stretch, hedged in between two tall banks of alder, overtopped with interwoven tangles of clematis, with its cloudy autumn cl.u.s.ters--that graceful vine which, like the dandelion, is even more beautiful in death than in the fulness of its bloom. And so, indeed, are nearly all those plants whose final state is thus endowed by nature with feathery wings to lift them from the earth.

When has this swamp milk-weed by the roadside looked so fair as now, with its bursting pods and silky seeds--those little waifs thrown out upon the world with every pa.s.sing breeze. How tenderly they seem to cling to the little cosy home where they have been so snugly cradled and protected; and see how they sail away, two or three together, loth to part, until some rude gust shall separate them forever.

And here's the great spiny thistle, too, that armed highwayman with florid face and pompon in his cap. But he has had his day, and now we see him old and seedy; his spears are broken, and his silvery gray hairs are floating everywhere and glistening in the sun.

Now we leave the alders, and another roadside mosaic of rich color opens up before us, where the old half-wall fence, with its overtopping rails, is luminous with a crimson glow of ampelopsis. It covers all the stones for yards and yards; it swings from every jutting rail; it clambers up the tree trunks and envelops them in fire, and hangs its waving fringe from all the branches.

Above the wall, like an encampment of thatched wigwams, the corn-shocks lift their heads; a prospecting colony encamped among a field rich with outcroppings of gold--a wealth of great round nuggets all in sight. And were we to tear away that thatch, we might see where they have stowed away their acc.u.mulated grains of wealth. We hear their rustling whispers: "Hus.h.!.+ hus.h.!.+" they seem to say to each other as we approach; but their wariness is gratuitous, for a tell-tale vine is creeping away upon the fence near-by, and has stopped to rest its golden burden on the summit of the wall, half hiding among the scarlet creepers.

Here yellow brakes abound, spreading their broad, triangular fronds on every side amid the brilliant berries of wild-rose, and pink leaves of blueberry. And here are thickets of black-alder, where every twig is studded with scarlet beads, that cling so close that even winter's bl.u.s.ter cannot shake them off. No matter where we look in these October days, nature is burning itself away in a blaze of color that dazzles the eyes; and now we approach its very crowning touch.

I wish every one might see this gorgeous combination of oak and maples; see it and go no farther, for a further search were fruitless in finding its equal. It is the pride of the entire community; towns-people and visitors ride from miles around to see its final flush--a magnificent climax in the way of concentration of vivid color, in which nature seems to have grouped with distinct purpose and design, producing a piece of natural landscape-gardening such as no art could have approached. The background is a ma.s.sive precipice of rock towering to the height of eighty feet, itself a perfect medley of tone.

The group is composed of eight maples, each a distinct contrast of pure color. In their midst a superb large oak presents one ma.s.sive breadth of deep purple green; and spreading up one side like a flood of yellow light, a rock-maple lifts its splendid array of foliage. These two trees concentrate the effect, and the others are arranged around them like colors on a palette: one is a flaming scarlet, another beside it is always a rich green, even to the falling leaf--with only a single branch, that every year, even as early as August, persists in turning to a peculiar salmon pink; another, a red-maple, is so deep a red as to appear almost maroon, and its branches intermingle with the pale-pink verdure of another growing by its side. There is one that combines every intermediate color, from deep crimson to the palest saffron; while its neighbor flutters in the wind with every leaf a brilliant b.u.t.terfly of pure green, with spots and splashes of deep carmine.

This whole a.s.semblage of color fairly blazes in the landscape, and even from the top of Mount Pisgah, a half a mile away, it looks like a glowing coal dropped down upon a bed of smouldering ashes in the valley; for the surrounding meadow is thick-set with great gray rocks and crimson viburnum, as though it had caught fire from the flaming trees.

What other country can boast the glory of a tree which, taken all in all, can hold its own beside our lovely maple? From the time when first it hangs its silken ta.s.sels to the awakening spring breeze until its autumn fire has burned away its leaves, it presents an everchanging phase that lends a distinct expression to American landscape. It affords us grateful shade in summer; and with its trickling bounty in the spring we can all unite in a hearty toast, "A health to the glorious maple."

[Ill.u.s.tration: THE ROAD TO THE MILL.]

But there is another tree which should not be forgotten, and if once seen in a New England autumn landscape there is little danger of its escaping from the memory. Of course, I refer to the pepperidge, or tupelo, that nondescript among trees; for who ever saw two pepperidge-trees alike? They seem to scorn a reputation for symmetry, or even the idea of establis.h.i.+ng among themselves the recognition of a type of character. Novelty or grotesqueness is their only aim, and they hit the bull's-eye every time. There is one I have in mind that has always been a perfect curiosity. Its height is fully seventy feet, and its crown is as flat as though cut off with a mammoth pair of pruning-shears. The central trunk runs straight up to the summit, from which it squirms off into six or seven snake-like branches, that dip downward and writhe among the other limbs, all falling in the same direction. One gets the impression, on looking at it, that originally it might have been a respectable-looking tree, but that in some rude storm in its early days it had been struck by lightning, torn up by the roots, and afterward had taken root at the top. The tupelo, whenever seen, is always one of our most picturesque trees, and a never-failing source of surprise, twisting and turning into some unheard-of shape, and seeming always to say, "There! beat that if you can!" Near the coast it a.s.sumes the form of a crazy Italian pine, with spindling trunk and ma.s.sive head of foliage. Sometimes it divides in the middle, like an hour-gla.s.s, and again mimics a fir-tree in caricature; but he who would keep track of the acrobatic capers of the tupelo would have his hands full. Whatever its shape, however, its brilliant, glossy crimson foliage forms one of the most striking features of our October landscape.

But I believe we were on the road to that carding-mill. We had almost forgotten it; and now, as we look ahead, we see the old lumber-shed that marks the upper ledge of Devil's Hollow. From this old shed a trout-brook plunges through a series of rocky terraces, now winding among prostrate moss-grown trunks, now gurgling through the bare roots of great white birches, or spreading in a swift, gla.s.sy sheet as it pours across some broad shelving rock, and plunges from its edge in a filmy water-fall. It roars pent up in narrow canons, and out again it swirls in a smooth basin worn in the solid rock. At almost every rod or two along its precipitous course there is a mill somewhere hid among the trees--queer, quaint little mills, some built up on high stone walls, others fed with trickling flumes which span from rock to rock, supporting on every beam a rounded cus.h.i.+on of velvety green moss, and hanging a fringe of ferns from almost every crevice. And one there is in ruins, fallen from its lofty perch, and piled in chaos in the stream.

There are saw-mills, and shook-mills, and carding-mills, seven altogether in this one descent of about three hundred feet. The water enters the ravine as pure as crystal; but in its wild booming through race-ways, dams, and water-wheels, it gradually a.s.sumes a rich sienna hue from the _debris_ of sawdust everywhere along its course. The interior of the ravine is musical with the trebles of the falling water and the accompaniment of the rumbling mills. Tiny rainbows gleam beneath the water-falls, and swarms of glistening bubbles and little islands of saffron-colored foam float away upon the dark-brown eddies.

At last we reach the carding-mill, which is the lowest of them all--in every sense, it seems, for it is as I had feared: the flume is but a pile of brown and mouldy timbers in the bed of the stream, and the old box-wheel has rotted and fallen from its spokes, almost obscured beneath a rank growth of weeds. No sound of buzzing teasels, no rumbling of the water-wheel, no happy carder singing at his work: _nothing_--but a couple of boys, kneeling in a corner, sucking cider through a straw.

Yes, the old mill has fallen from grace; but what else might one expect from a mill in "Devil's Hollow," where all its neighbors are engaged in making hogshead staves, and the very water has turned to ruddy wine?