Uttiaca, 9?tni lark 
 
 BOUGHT WITH THE INCOME OF THE 
 
 SAGE ENDOWMENT FUND 
 
 THE GIFT OF 
 
 HENRY W. SAGE 
 
 1891 
 
ND 237.T12"'"""'™""'"-"'"'* 
 
 Stowe notes, letters and verses / 
 
 3 1924 008 742 003 
 
B Cornell University 
 B Library 
 
 The original of tiiis book is in 
 tine Cornell University Library. 
 
 There are no known copyright restrictions in 
 the United States on the use of the text. 
 
 http://www.archive.org/details/cu31924008742003 
 
STOWE NOTES 
 LETTERS AND VERSES 
 
H 
 
 W 
 
STOWE NOTES 
 LETTERS AND VERSES 
 
 BY 
 
 EDWARD MARTIN TABER 
 
 • i 
 
 BOSTON AND NEW YORK 
 
 HOUGHTON MIFFLIN COMPANY 
 
 1913 
 
 f 
 
Copyright, 1913, by 
 Houghton Mifflin Company 
 
CONTENTS 
 
 Stowe Notes, i 890-1 893 : page 
 
 January 3 
 
 February 20 
 
 March 32 
 
 April 43 
 
 May 48 
 
 July 59 
 
 August 61 
 
 October 63 
 
 November 64 
 
 December 68 
 
 Extracts from Note-Books, 188 7-1 888 : 
 
 The South 85 
 
 Vermont (June to September) 112 
 
 The Adirondacks 132 
 
 New York 149 
 
 Vermont (October) 179 
 
 Fragments 189 
 
 Extracts from Letters, i 882-1 896 215 
 
 Verses 3^9 
 
 V 
 
LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS 
 
 Edward Martin Taber at Stowe. (From photograph) 
 
 Frontispiece 
 
 FACING PAGE 
 
 Mount Mansfield (Unfinished). Painted in 1895 . . 3 
 A February Afternoon (Hogback in Distance). 
 
 Painted in 1894 20 
 
 Lingering Snow (Looking North). Painted in 1893 . 32 
 
 Hemlock-Spruce (Late Spring). Painted in 1892 . . 43 
 
 June. Painted in 1890 59 
 
 Hogback at Sunset. Painted in 1895 ...... 68 
 
 Rosebud (Pencil Drawing) 85 
 
 Pansy (Pencil drawing) 104 
 
 Narcissus (Pencil drawing) 112 
 
 Distant Wood, Sapling in Foreground (Pencil drawing) 114 
 
 Pansies (Pencil drawing) 132 
 
 Carnations (Pencil drawing) 149 
 
 Carnations (Two pencil drawings) 172 
 
 Milkweed (Pencil drawing) 179 
 
 Yellow Birch in Hemlock Stump (Pencil drawing) . 181 
 
 Beech Tree (Pencil drawing) 183 
 
 Study OF Birch Tree Trunk (Pencil drawing) . . . 187 
 
 TiLAGic Mask (Pencil drawing) 189 
 
 Drawings in Pencil and Pen-and-Ink 212 
 
 Alice Pyncheon. Hawthorne (Pencil drawing) 
 
 vii 
 
viii LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS 
 
 PACING PAGE 
 
 Man with Sword. Man Seated (Two pencil sketches) 
 "The Tinder Box," Hans Andersen (Pencil drawing) 
 "The Swineherd," Hans Andersen (Pencil drawing) 
 Six Illustrations from Red Riding Hood (Pen-and-ink) 
 Dedication 
 The Departure 
 
 Red Riding Hood meeting Wolf 
 Red Riding Hood knocking at Grandmother's door 
 Hunter killing Wolf 
 The Return. The Account 
 
 Two Pencil sketches from "Twelfth Night," Sir Toby 
 Belch, Sir Andrew Ag^echeek 
 
 Two Pencil sketches from "Twelfth Night," Sir Toby 
 Belch, Maria 
 
 Head of Girl in Wind (Pencil sketch) 
 
 The Pied Piper (Pencil sketch) 
 
 Nude (Pencil drawing) 
 
 Romeo (Pen-and-ink) 
 
 Woman with Basket (Pencil drawing) 
 
 Seated Woman (Pencil drawing) 
 Old Orchard in Nantucket. Painted in 1882 . . . 215 
 Six Illustrations from "Cinderella" (Pen-and-ink) . 218 
 
 Spray of Holly 
 
 Introduction. The Trying-on 
 
 The Conjuring. The Proclamation 
 
 Children at the play 
 
 "Cinderella hears the clock strike" 
 
 "Cinderella taking her call" 
 
 Luna Moth (Pencil drawing) 220 
 
 Rose (Pencil drawing) 222 
 
LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS ix 
 
 FACING PAGE 
 
 Winter Costume at Stowe (Pen-and-ink sketch in Letter) 224 
 
 Costumes at Grist Mill (Water-color sketch in Letter) . 226 
 Collie Puppy Asleep. Toby on Fox Robe (Two pencil 
 
 drawings) 232 
 
 Canadian Mare (Pencil drawing) 234 
 
 Collie Dog (Pencil drawing) 236 
 
 "The French Teamster" (Water-color sketch in Letter) 238 
 "One of the Wood Choppers" (Water-color sketch in 
 
 Letter) 240 
 
 Three Pencil Sketches of Toby 254 
 
 Jack of all Trades. Devils of Procrastination and 
 
 Delay (Pen-and-ink sketches in Letter) 256 
 
 The Colts. Young Stallion (Two pencil sketches) . . 275 
 
 Audrey (Pencil drawing) 276 
 
 Tim. Toby (Two pencil sketches of dogs) 288 
 
 Pencil Sketch of Horses for Mount Mansfield Picture 290 
 
 Angel with Harp (Pencil drawing) ....... 319 
 
EDITOR'S PREFACE 
 
 The author of these Notes, Edward Martin Taber, 
 was born on Staten Island, July 21, 1863. As a youth 
 he showed his gift for painting, but on account of ill 
 health studied only a few months, with Abbott Thayer, 
 In 1887, after a journey to Europe and short trips to the 
 South and to the Adirondacks for his health, he was 
 exiled from New York, as his only chance for life, and 
 chose Stowe, Vermont, as his home, where, with the ex- 
 ception of one or two brief intervals, he lived to within a 
 few months of his death. He died on September 9, 1896, 
 at Washington, Connecticut. 
 
 His frail health made continuous work impossible, 
 but in the almost arctic winters of northern Vermont 
 he finished a number of paintings. These and many 
 sketches in oil and pencil, together with his Notes and 
 literary fragments, constitute his life's work; but those 
 who knew his singularly just and discriminating spirit 
 realize that this visible accomplishment is but part of 
 what he achieved; for in the solitude of his life, under 
 the suffering that was his portion, striving with undevi- 
 ating devotion to truth for his ideal, he developed a 
 character that is an undying possession to those who 
 knew him. 
 
 In one of his note-books I find these words: "We 
 built a fire in the parlor ; it shone cheerily ; it became the 
 
Xll 
 
 PREFACE 
 
 centre and gathering-point of the house. The building 
 that had before been a shelter, a soulless tenement, 
 became a home, in virtue of that sacred flame." So it 
 was with him; he was the centre of his little circle, his 
 was its vivifying spirit. Carlyle has said that "there is 
 no life of a man, faithfully recorded, but is a heroic 
 poem of its kind, rhymed or unrhymed." With the hope 
 that some glimpses of this short life, lived under such 
 severe and disheartening restrictions, may give to others a 
 part of the inspiration it gave to his friends, I have added 
 to the Stowe Notes and Verses some few personal records 
 and letters, fragmentary as they necessarily are, and elu- 
 sive as the gentle nature they reflect must remain. 
 
 His delicate perception and sensitiveness to all as- 
 pects of beauty show especially in his pencil sketches, 
 "executed with a conscientiousness almost reverential, 
 as though the intricate wonder of construction and the 
 fragrant daintiness of rose and carnation were sacred 
 in his imagination," but everything he touched bears 
 witness to his love for Nature; humbly, reverently he 
 transcribed her— his beloved North Countrie, his 
 adopted home. George de Forest Brush writes of these 
 oil paintings : " 'Pictures,' says Emerson, 'should not be 
 picturesque. I demand that they domesticate me.' This 
 is the feeling I have when I look on these canvases — 
 these pines casting their blue shadows on the snow, the 
 sparkling birches and clear-cut mountain lines, seem to 
 bring me home to the days when our vision was un- 
 affected by art, knowledge, and foreign travel, when 
 the landscape seen from our father's house in the clear 
 December air filled us with a sensation akin to human 
 
PREFACE ^jjj 
 
 affection. More than this, the faithfulness with which 
 these details are wrought is the outcome of the artist's 
 love for the facts, and the impression of beauty that 
 they give is enduring . . . they are the old rare kind 
 wrought in faithfulness and affection." And Abbott 
 Thayer adds : "Taber seems to me to have given himself 
 to Nature more trustfully than almost any other man. 
 His best landscapes thrill one with their look of having 
 been transported pure to the canvas from the beautiful 
 austere scene before him. His exquisite power of sight 
 brought him so close to those wild valleys that no tradi- 
 tion had come between him and their beauty, and it ran 
 through him on to the canvas, changed only in that look 
 of being recognized." But his keen perception looked 
 through and beyond the exquisite revelations of the 
 Universe he saw, into the soul of the Beauty he wor- 
 shipped ; and out of that deeper vision, all unconsciously, 
 he wrought his own character. 
 
 F. T. H. 
 
INTRODUCTION 
 
 These fragments will take their place in the world's 
 precious store of great men's journals, of all literature 
 perhaps the most thrilling. 
 
 Between these thin leaves await us the cool shades, 
 not only of the forests Taber loved, but of his own brave 
 and peaceful heart. His austerely beautiful portraits 
 of the scenery in which he passed the last years of his 
 life, and the following most precious records of what 
 was passing in his soul during the same period, both of 
 these, however fragmentary, achieved under the heavy 
 burden of illness, show faculties of the first order. His 
 exquisite perceptions come to us as clear of his earthly 
 vicissitudes as violets or crystals out of the sod. 
 
 Emerson's closing words upon Thoreau's death in- 
 sist upon associating themselves with Taber : 
 
 "The country knows not yet, or in the least part, how 
 great a son it has lost. It seems an injury that he should 
 leave in the midst of his broken task, which none else can 
 finish — a kind of indignity to so noble a soul, that it 
 should depart out of Nature before he has been really 
 shown to his peers for what he is. But he, at least, is 
 content. His soul was made for the noblest society; he 
 had in a short life exhausted the capabilities of this 
 world; wherever there is knowledge, wherever there is 
 virtue, wherever there is beauty, he will find a home." 
 
 Abbott H. Thayer 
 
STOWE NOTES 
 1890-1 893 
 
JANUARY 
 
 Even in the calmest summer day, or moonlight 
 night, or still autumn afternoon, I have never, it seems 
 to me, seen the landscape more tranquil. The hues are 
 soft and harmonious; all that was crude and harsh in 
 color has been gradually eliminated. The raw tints 
 of green in the winter fields have changed to a glowing, 
 subdued orange. 
 
 The woods no longer form a contrast, but blend 
 quietly into the scene. The Mountain,* under a pale 
 film-spread sky, rising a ponderous slaty-blue mass above 
 the warm-tinted valley, gives a fine eflfect of altitude. 
 The snow that remains in the rocky crevices, now that 
 it is melted in the valley below, suggests alpine heights. 
 This effect is enhanced by what little snow remains 
 clinging among the woods on the side; it is formed into 
 perpendicular whitish streaks, and conveys an impres- 
 sion of successive and precipitous cliffs. 
 
 A column of blue smoke rises on Luce's Hill, and 
 mounts up, swayed but not dispersed by the almost im- 
 perceptible breeze from the northwest. 
 
 Though the grasses bend, they give no sound. There 
 is absolute stillness, except for the distant rumble of 
 wagons on the iron-rutted road. 
 
 Coming home through the pasture, I notice the brook 
 
 * "The Mountain " always means Mansfield. 
 3 
 
4 STOWENOTES 
 
 has a broken icy border, opaque and frosty, except at 
 the inner edge washed by the running water, where it 
 sparkles like tinsel. 
 
 Walk in the afternoon. A strong south wind (which 
 they say is more potent to melt snow than the sun) ; a 
 moist feeling in the air, like an approaching summer 
 rain. 
 
 Rain began to fall heavily at about four p.m. 
 
 I think I never saw moonlight so brilliant as that 
 to-night : it is subdued day. 
 
 This morning and almost all day a fine snow has been 
 falling, beautiful crystals, floating down sometimes 
 singly, sometimes two or three together. 
 
 Late in the afternoon a warm golden light over the 
 bare woods and yellow fields of Sterling. 
 
 To-day out walking in the rocky west pasture. I 
 wear sheepskin boots with thick leather soles — very 
 agreeable to walk in — like moccasins. Particularly I 
 enjoy treading on the mossy rocks, where the crisp soft 
 lichens form a delightful carpet. Their colors come out 
 well to-day, in this even, subdued light. Pale green, 
 lilac, dark green, bronze-tinted, and orange. 
 
 The conical tufts of the sumach are a conspicuous 
 red— a glowing maroon— a rusty crimson. These are 
 the stag-horn sumach with the black downy branches. 
 
 The night of the eighth was windy and excessively 
 cold. From my window, looking up the slope of the hill. 
 
JANUARY 5 
 
 I see the wind lifting the fine snow Hke smoke, and blow- 
 ing it across the meadows. In the shadowed and strug- 
 gling moonlight it rises in waves, and sweeps like a 
 procession of phantoms along the windy ridge. The 
 little house, the orchard, and the pine near the crest are 
 enveloped and almost lost in the white gust. The solid 
 features of the scene appear like rocks smothered in 
 spray. There is a misty sparkle of the flying snow along 
 the ridge-pole of the barn. 
 
 The wind is lamentably loud. 
 
 It was zero at eight o'clock, six degrees at two p.m., 
 zero at four p.m. All day long there was a kind of white 
 mist on the horizon, somewhat like a hot summer haze. 
 
 To-day it is snowing — a soft fall of innumerable and 
 visibly beautiful crystals, forming a coating as light and 
 soft as down. 
 
 Wind in the northwest or north. At eight o'clock 
 two degrees, at twelve o'clock five degrees. 
 
 Snowing. 
 
 This morning a flock of snow buntings in the garden, 
 running about in the loose snow with the toddling 
 motion of pigeons. Not so white as I expected to see 
 them ; the males black and white, more distinctly marked 
 than females, but with brownish tinge on top of head. 
 As they took flight, it was with a chattering outcry, a 
 loud twittering. 
 
 Later several chickadees, on swift wings, darting 
 among the bare trees, and lisping their cheery note. 
 
 The thermometer is at about twenty-four degrees 
 (noon) ; the air is soft; the snow falls in minute flakes, 
 
6 STOWENOTES 
 
 but though light, is not very dry. There is a faint wind 
 from the southwest, not enough to stir the pine or shake 
 down the accumulating snow; but it gives direction to 
 the falling flakes, moving them northeasterly. 
 
 The inscrutable silence, the mystery of winter! 
 Through the muffled air comes the scream of blue jays. 
 The white fields and cloudy woods fade into the sky. I 
 notice the exquisite detail of lichens on the boughs of 
 the apple trees, gray and gold, sometimes orange or red- 
 gold. It is amusing to brush the snow from the fences 
 and beneath it find on the weather-beaten boards the 
 persistent green of these humble plants. They are 
 arranged with a decorative charm of position and color. 
 Blue-gray lichens will be relieved by a touch of pea-green 
 or olive, or occasionally the gray and gold tints that are 
 conspicuous on the apple trees. There is something 
 amusingly artificial about these crisp green disks. 
 
 This morning I noticed some redpolls flying near the 
 house. They utter a sweet note, a long-drawn "twee" — 
 several in succession, as a catiary often does in intro- 
 ductory fashion before breaking into song. It seems to 
 say, "Listen, listen, listen!" With the caged bird it is a 
 touching prelude, infinitely pathetic ; but there is some- 
 thing sweet and cheery in the note uttered in freedom. 
 This reminds me that in all bird notes, even the most 
 melancholy, as the wood pewee's and some phases of the 
 hermit thrush's song, there is nevertheless a cheerful 
 intimation. It is a tone that belongs to their free condi- 
 tion. The pewee seems to say, "I am sad— but oh, what 
 sweet sadness !" 
 
JANUARY 7 
 
 I saw a flock of birds fly across the garden— one lit 
 on a bean-pole, with a cry very harsh and peculiar. They 
 all took flight with a chattering like the snow buntings. 
 I could not see them well, as they flew against the sun* 
 but I think they were a flock of these birds. 
 
 It has been snowing intermittently all day ; this morn- 
 ing it was about thirty degrees ; much slush. 
 
 The wind at ten a.m. was blowing from the south, at 
 noon from the east, at three p.m. from the southwest, 
 bringing a heavy snow-storm— large whirling flakes that 
 came dancing against the western windows, white 
 against the earth, dusky spots out of the sky. 
 
 I walked in the west pasture. I found the brook 
 running half-hidden under snow-coated rotten ice. I 
 amused myself by breaking this crust and forming a 
 miniature ice-dam. The harsh gargle of the cascade 
 was silenced ; the water, with abated voice, seemed con- 
 spiring to seek some lower and secret exit. 
 
 The pasture presents a more even surface, now the 
 snow is drifted into the hollows. 
 
 I notice the stems of raspberry conspicuous upon the 
 snow. 
 
 I sat down to rest under the white pine ; at a rod or 
 two distant, as I drew toward it, I was aware of its 
 singing. It is said our civilization has not improved 
 on the wildness of the Indian in respect of the musical 
 quality in language. The Iroquois tongue is more rudi- 
 mentary than the English, perhaps on that account more 
 musical; but the famed music of the Onondaga I feel 
 sure is surpassed by the aboriginal conifer language— 
 which is the earliest voice of Nature. 
 
8 STOWENOTES 
 
 The pine speaks, solus; the little spruces that stand 
 darkly at his feet seem to listen. From time to time they 
 move their branches, and a faint sigh passes among 
 them. Even of the snowflakes whirling by, it seems as 
 if they lingered in the air, and their natural silence was 
 self-imposed. 
 
 If any human being were gifted with such tones, so 
 varied, so passionate, so deep, so gentle, he could move 
 men as a river carries a leaf. An actor with such power ! 
 
 The white pine is a king in eloquence, a wizard in 
 ventriloquism. Sometimes his voice is loud, surging in 
 my ears; it lessens, it fades, it seems to speak from 
 indefinable distance. 
 
 There is a fine sibilant tone in the louder and higher 
 notes, and yet there is a depth to them that the adjective 
 fails to touch. I have never attached much meaning to 
 the phrase "the soughing as of the wind," but it seems 
 adequately to describe this sound. 
 
 The pine falls to silence, and then a low and distant 
 moan, the rumble of the wind in the encircling woods, 
 is audible. The wind soughs in the tree, grows loud, 
 and dies; it reminds me of a great orchestra, when on 
 the inarticulate grumbling of the basses swells the eerie 
 plaint of violins. 
 
 The snow packs so readily that I can walk without 
 much difficulty up and down the sides of boulders, where 
 formerly I could hardly find footing. 
 
 It was amusing to scale such an eminence and see 
 below me the winding course of my footprints. Going 
 down I- could not tell how steep had been the inclines 
 I traversed, on account of the even, white surface pre- 
 
JANUARY 9 
 
 sented to my eye. It was only when I reached the 
 bottom, looking back at my footprints, that I could form 
 any idea. Finally with little difficulty, and slipping but 
 slightly, I descended the perpendicular face of a boulder 
 about twenty feet high. 
 
 The long tassels of the pine do not hold the snow 
 so naturally or in such quantity as the stiff spruce leaves. 
 Of these, some diminutive trees two to three feet high 
 have the appearance of monstrous crystals, absolutely 
 white from my three feet vantage, except that along the 
 edge of each twig there is the needle-etched outline. 
 
 The wind shifted toward the north at about five 
 o'clock, making the entire circuit of the compass, with 
 the exception of the northeast quarter, within twelve 
 hours. 
 
 It is clear and very cold, about four degrees, but there 
 is no wind. I tried my mare with sleigh-bells in the 
 morning. The jingling seemed greatly to exhilarate 
 her. 
 
 Beyond the village, on the Mountain road, I meet 
 numerous lumber sledges carrying large spruce logs 
 chained together — the aboriginal giant brought captive 
 from his native mountains. It is the first opportunity 
 the lumbermen have had to transport unsawed timber. 
 
 The sky is soft like a summer sky: there is none of 
 the cold sparkle of winter in it; the clouds toward the 
 north are faintly pink-tinged. 
 
 The Mountain during the morning was very white, 
 but at sunset, the light being behind it, it lost much of 
 
lo STOWENOTES 
 
 its hoary aspect ; and the Hogback, on the east, became 
 a ridge of gHstening silver. 
 
 A clear cold-hued sunset, against which Camel's 
 Hump stood in isolated beauty. Its altitude is imposing; 
 it lifts itself skyward with a grand and powerful mo- 
 tion; it shares with Mansfield the glory of the landscape; 
 the southern hills do it homage. How happy the coun- 
 try that can claim two such noble mountains ; how happy 
 the eye that includes them in a single glance ! 
 
 Returning home this afternoon, over the crest of the 
 hill eastward, I noticed the northern mountains, the 
 undulating line behind Eden, flushed by the sunset, the 
 shadows purple, the snowy ridge pink and losing its out- 
 line in the sky. These hills seemed actual clouds, resting 
 on the horizon. 
 
 I broke an icicle twenty-nine inches long off the rear 
 veranda. I set it upright on the stone fence opposite the 
 house ; the sunset tinged it golden. It shone a clear cold 
 gleam against the dull snow. 
 
 This morning there is a beautiful crystallization on 
 the boughs of trees, fences, etc., a white bloom, an in- 
 finity of minute plumy crystals. The stone fence, the 
 surface of the snow, everything, seems to bear this 
 wintry foliage. Last evening was mild, possibly below 
 freezing, and the sudden fall of the temperature (twen- 
 ty-two degrees at ten a.m. ) may have occasioned this. 
 
 There are fitful gleams of sunlight and shadows 
 trailing westward over the snow. The base of the 
 Mountain is lost in a purple haze, but the profile shines 
 palely, elevated high above the cloudy horizon. Its 
 aspect is awfully impressive. 
 
JANUARY II 
 
 It is a mosaic sky. 
 
 The jays have a comic aspect — a kind of goblin look, 
 with their pointed caps and long noses. 
 
 In the afternoon, drove around by Gold Brook. We 
 descended into a sheltered and woody spot on the north 
 side of the hill. It was a fall out of the familiar world 
 into the phenomena of Fairyland. Every twig was 
 white with snow, every stalk and weed stood a branch- 
 ing crystal. It was like a plunge under the ocean into 
 the forests of coral. So strange it was, and so beautiful ! 
 Or might it not have been a glimpse at a scene earlier 
 than the carboniferous period presented— a fantastic 
 variation of crystalline forms ? 
 
 The brook at this point makes a bend toward the 
 road, and the eye, following the curve, sees the dark 
 stream, clogged with green ice and snow-bordered, dis- 
 appear behind a boulder hoary with snow and icicles. 
 
 Coming home about half an hour before sunset, I 
 noticed a magenta flush along the summit of a snowy 
 mound. 
 
 The morning was cloudy, but at eleven o'clock the 
 clouds broke in the northwest, and sunshine followed. 
 A slight southwesterly wind in the afternoon. 
 
 Walking in the west pasture, and resting under the 
 white pine. 
 
 When I last walked here, in a snow-storm, I was 
 struck by the beauty of the snow-powdered foliage of 
 the spruces; the more heavily coated, the more beauti- 
 ful it appeared to me. I remember shaking the snow 
 
12 STOWENOTES 
 
 from a bough, to contrast it with its snowy neighbors, 
 and giving my verdict in favor of the latter. To-day, 
 forgetful of yesterday's conclusions, I found myself re- 
 marking particularly the beauty and vividness of these 
 evergreens, now disencumbered of snow. 
 
 Nature has no degrees of beauty; in the supposition 
 of the contrary we are governed by our own degrees of 
 appreciation. Nature in all her aspects is complete 
 beauty. This is trite, but in making the statement it is 
 common to attribute to Nature an unsympathetic inevi- 
 tableness. This is, I think, no less partial. Nature is 
 debonair. She has comfort for whoever can disembar- 
 rass himself of egotism sufficiently to accept it. Hers is 
 an undistinguishing charity. She does not stand aloof 
 waiting the approach of the deserving ; but how generally 
 and in how many sweet and subtle ways she offers con- 
 solation ! 
 
 The velvety red cones of the sumach are beautiful 
 against the exquisite blue of the sky, and lower the green 
 of the spruces. They have a military suggestion— the 
 red cockade. 
 
 Especially do I delight in looking northward on the 
 shining winter landscape. 
 
 The Pilgrims,* beyond a cloudy patch of red maple 
 saplings, rise to a seemingly great height. They are 
 motionless ; they seem, in common with all the features 
 of the scene, to be attentive to the prompting of a con- 
 trolling and sublime presence— to look for inspiration to 
 the Mountain, the crowning and presiding glory of the 
 landscape. That portion hidden by interposing ridges 
 
 * A group of maples on a hill. 
 
JANUARY 13 
 
 from a direct communication seems, in its serenity, to be 
 conscious of this majestic vicinity. 
 
 While I stood quite motionless looking at the land- 
 scape, I heard the lisp and the "day-day-day" of a tit- 
 mouse rapidly approaching. The neat httle buff-breasted 
 fellow swept so close to me that I could hear the sharp 
 sibilant whir of his wings. 
 
 His excess of good spirits seemed to make him rest- 
 less. He lit for an instant on a sumach near at hand, and 
 again in passing made an inclination toward me, as if he 
 were half disposed to investigate a new quality of stump. 
 
 I watched his skipping flight for some little time, and 
 long after he had disappeared I could hear his elastic 
 chip and his hoarse little "day-day-day." 
 
 Although he is less strictly a winter bird than the 
 redpolls, he seems more at home. I never see him hunt- 
 ing the stable-yard, the house, and the garden, as is their 
 custom; he gets his living quite independent of the 
 farmer, flitting about the pastures and hugging the 
 windy side of the woods. 
 
 The agitated twittering of the redpolls, and the hud- 
 dled flocks in which they invariably move, suggest a 
 want of confidence, whereas he speaks in the cheeriest 
 accents, and flies alone and undaunted. 
 
 We collected some pine cones, and used them to per- 
 fume the sitting-room, placing them on the top of the 
 stove. Some we burned in the stove, which is an open 
 one. The scales glowed like red-hot copper ; sometimes 
 they were tipped with a fiery rim. Without diminution 
 or loss of form, they turned from copper to silver, and 
 finally collapsed, a filmy ash. 
 
14 STOWENOTES 
 
 In the afternoon the wind dropped. As in the pre- 
 vious very cold and windy day, I notice a haze on the 
 horizon. At about four o'clock this became southward 
 a golden mist. 
 
 I went out just before sunset to a rocky knoll north 
 of the farm, in order to have an unbroken view of the sky. 
 
 Beyond the ragged tops of the sugar- wood (north) 
 lay rosy clouds. The hills were of a delicate rose-purple. 
 Mount Mansfield a mass of vapors ; a heavy cloud like a 
 snow-drift overlaid and smothered the Mountain from 
 crown to base. This was opal-tinted. 
 
 The outlines of the mountains south and southwest- 
 ward were softened and blurred by this singular rosy 
 haze ; the hills were as soft as when they bore their sum- 
 mer foliage. Camel's Hump, like the Mountain, is 
 hidden in a purple cloud. 
 
 What earthly spectacle can rival in solemnity and 
 mystery mountains thus cloud-obscured? The Holy 
 Spirit in the form of a dove, descending upon the elect. 
 Dove-hued, white, and opalescent, the clouds settle on 
 the mountains, that, separated from the earth by this 
 interposition of vapors, are caught up into a celestial 
 atmosphere. 
 
 Later, on the embers of this sunset, the crescent moon 
 appears, a cold scimitar. 
 
 A bleak day, but windless. The sky a uniform gray 
 cloud. 
 
 A jay, shooting between an apple tree and the corn- 
 bin, establishes a color relation with the distant slaty-blue 
 hills. 
 
JANUARY IS 
 
 Yesterday, coming up from the swatnp, out of a 
 gloomy hollow, to the slope of the pasture, over which 
 was the pale green evening sky and light rose-tinted 
 clouds, I saw a small flock of snow buntings, some dozen 
 or so. They flew low, sweeping up from the meadows on 
 the opposite slope, and as they passed, almost over my 
 head, I noticed how white they were beneath, and felt 
 (as I always do when I see them) that they must be some 
 kin to sea birds. Certainly they fly on the edge of the 
 storm, breasting the inanimate waves of the snow-drifts 
 as the sea gull and the stormy petrel breast the face of 
 the sea. I heard their twittering— I cannot find a word 
 to describe the note— but it came to me like a faint ripple 
 of sound in the intense and cold silence. It spoke to me 
 more movingly than any articulate utterance I know. 
 My heart swelled— with my eyes I followed them until 
 they were lost in the distance — I was almost breathless 
 with emotion, with delight. 
 
 Night sounds : 
 
 Of the winds, there is much variety in tone and char- 
 acter. 
 
 The most frequent here, the west wind, is a wild 
 spirit. All the wind voices that thrill and startle are his— 
 wailing cries in despairing accents, sounds of hooting 
 and moaning, and shriller screams and whistlings. His 
 attacks are fierce, and persistent too. When at night I 
 hear a loud rumbling under the eaves, and the trees be- 
 ginning to roar, I know there'll be no cessation until either 
 the clouds, that must be heavy on the mountains, are 
 broken and scattered, or the wind changes its direction. 
 
i6 STOWENOTES 
 
 If from the north, it comes with a cold and steady 
 flow, almost voiceless, slipping through the bare branches 
 without a perceptible sound, perhaps moaning softly at 
 the corners of the house, but always in the pine that 
 stands in the dooryard, arousing a voice that sighs and 
 murmurs with ceaseless sweetness, rising to a thin and 
 airy whisper, and again gathering power, until it sinks 
 to a deep sonorous soughing— a monody infinitely sad 
 and soothing. 
 
 The south wind is at once blustering and stealthy. 
 His onset is almost as terrific as the wild west wind, but 
 when you wait for the full force of the gale this outburst 
 presages, there comes a sudden lull, a moment of silence 
 almost, when some airy voice in the distance, scarcely 
 audible, dies on the ear, and there comes some light and 
 startling sound, as of the lift of the slats in the shutter, 
 or as if deft and invisible fingers tried the fastenings of 
 the window. These bursts of the south wind through a 
 leafless orchard, will pass like the roll of muffled drums. 
 
 Yesterday was like a March day— windy, and yet not 
 very cold. Lakes of blue sky, and dark veils of mist 
 shrouding the mountains, and snowflakes floating in the 
 air. 
 
 The afternoon I spent in the south wood, where 
 Henry and Arthur were cutting up the fallen timber. I 
 don't know of any manual work that I think I should 
 enjoy so much as wood-chopping. It is a most interest- 
 ing thing to see a tree dismembered, the smaller limbs 
 and twigs lopped off, the boughs cut into fagots, the 
 trunk sawed into lengths. 
 
JANUARY 17 
 
 The axe is in itself the most inviting weapon, an 
 exceeding handy tool. The environment is so charming, 
 and there are pleasures connected with it that result 
 from the work itself, as of the echo that wakes the wood 
 on every stroke of the axe, a sound that satisfies the ear, 
 neither too harsh nor too loud, but full of a certain 
 primitive music, ringing, conclusive. I stood for over 
 an hour watching the process of the work, over knees in 
 wet snow. 
 
 We came out at about half past five; there was a 
 break in the clouds southwest, and irregular lines of 
 flame-color behind the tree-tops. 
 
 The day before was unusual in its character. It was 
 mild— at noon the thermometer registered something 
 like thirty-six degrees; There was a pleasant wind, 
 and although the sky was overcast, the light shone 
 through it as through water, with a suggestion of inter- 
 cepted but not remote sunshine. The wind was more 
 southerly than southwesterly, and, notwithstanding the 
 rise of temperature, had nothing of the spring quality 
 that is common during a thaw. It was rather like the 
 air of an early autumn day, cool, pleasant, soft, but not 
 enervating, with a quality in it that is the secret of those 
 strange sensations of revival, of longing, that come 
 sometimes in the fall of the year, but always with the 
 spring. That sense of mental and moral release that the 
 April thaws bring — there is something in it more than 
 the revival of life, the loosing of the waters, the relaxa- 
 tion of Winter's stricture. It is a quality in the air, in 
 its freshness and temperance, that whispers of wider 
 horizons, that leads the thoughts beyond the range of the 
 
i8 STOWENOTES 
 
 eye, to the unseen valleys, mountains, and forests over 
 which it blows ; more than a local wind controlled by the 
 geographical conditions of some particular state or 
 country, it seems to come over half the round of the 
 earth. 
 
 What is it that suggests and governs the migrations 
 of birds? Ornithologists explain it by the h3rpothesis 
 that birds return in summer to their original home, which 
 they have learned to desert in winter-time in pursuit of 
 a warmer and more propitious climate. However it be, 
 I'm sure it's this subtle invitation in the spring and 
 autumnal winds that tempts them and keeps alive the 
 migratory impulse that suggests the half-forgotten 
 images of other lands. The thrush, now in the warmth 
 of the West Indies, will remember the cool silence of 
 these damp northern woods ; the robin, in the Gulf States, 
 be reminded of his New England farm. 
 
 So in autumn, when they gather for flight, it will be 
 interesting to fancy what sweet and sudden revival of 
 memory charms them southward. 
 
 Spring and early fall, those are times to travel in. 
 
 To-day is cloudy before noon, with a very delicate 
 light dust of snow on the boughs, giving the wood, espe- 
 cially where an evergreen shows on the edge, a most 
 interesting aspect. 
 
 There is the freshness and stillness of early summer 
 morning in the air. 
 
 At noon the clouds break, detaching into mackerel 
 shoals, and the turquoise blue of the sky appears. 
 
 They are taking ice out of the pond, and the clear, 
 
JANUARY 19 
 
 green-blue, peacock-blue cakes, shot and veined with 
 light, present a sight as rich and satisfying as if they 
 were indeed of the so-called precious minerals. 
 
 To-day in the wood, that characteristic sound of cold, 
 the cracking of the trees, like the pop of an air-gun, in 
 more subdued quality, and sharper, like a small revolver 
 report; sometimes even a heavier, more impressive 
 sound. 
 
 After an hour's hard work, succeeded in bringing 
 down the large basswood ; it fell with much splintering, 
 and threw a dense cloud from the soft snow into which 
 it plunged. 
 
 A lovely effect of light, looking eastward (there was 
 a very fine drifting of little snow-crystals, and an over- 
 cast sky, no bright sunlight), a most soft, dove-colored 
 world; the snow on the boughs the lightest of all the 
 tones, and that a subdued yellowish white, against a 
 purple-blue sky, mauve clouds, and the richer and deeper 
 purple of the distant hillside. 
 
FEBRUARY 
 
 Two nights of last week were interesting, the moon 
 then growing to the full: first, windy, and clear moon- 
 light ; second, the breaking away of clouds that, pushed 
 eastward by the rising west wind, trailed swift shadows 
 across the white country. The air was fresh and cold, 
 like the breath of young Winter— a December or late 
 November wind, icy and vitalizing. The collies ranged 
 the farm, clamorous against the moon, galloping with the 
 flying shadows, or, distinctly seen, black wolfish forms in 
 the moonlight. 
 
 Last night the wind was more southerly, less boister- 
 ous, but full of many blended sounds. The moon (nearly 
 full) was hidden, but the clouds were not very dense, and 
 a pale and uniform light, aided by the reflection from the 
 snow, pervaded the scene. 
 
 Whenever the wind shook the little cherry trees 
 below my window, there was a high-pitched rushing 
 sound, with a kind of ghastly brightness, like a thin gush 
 of water, and with this, at times, the soughing of the 
 pine mingled distinctly. In the pauses, the sugar-wood 
 roared like the distant sea, and when this sound fell, the 
 vox humana of the storm, the eerie plaintive murmur, 
 unlocalized, unaccountable, seeming to come from inde- 
 finable distance, a whisper in the horizon, crept in among 
 the subsiding sounds. Laying my ear close to the win- 
 
A Februar)' Afternoon (Hogback in Distance) 
 
FEBRUARY 21 
 
 dow was as if to the mouth of a shell. The night was 
 hollow, reverberant. There was no wailing and hooting 
 in the wind — a more mysterious agency seemed at work. 
 The slats of my shutter were rattled and fingered ; there 
 were sudden gusts and quick subsidence— the wind 
 seemed to be feeling its way; it was a reconnaissance, a 
 scouting, on the advance of the storm. 
 
 Mr. Cobb says that sometimes, cutting trees, he has 
 come across a deermouse's nest in some hollow trunk, 
 where he found stored as much as a quart of beech nuts, 
 or even more. 
 
 This morning, which is windless,, clear, and cold 
 (eighteen degrees), has a freshness like an early June 
 morning. 
 
 Camel's Hump and the Mountain are white-capped, 
 and below, a third of the slope, is a frosty band, sharply 
 defined, where the clouds rested yesterday. Out driv- 
 ing, I noticed the extraordinary blueness of mountain- 
 sides seen through pine branches, now somewhat dull in 
 color — yellowish. 
 
 I remarked several days ago that the hemlocks and 
 spruces in the pastures were faded, and I fancied the 
 pines retained their color much better. This is the case 
 of the pine in the dooryard, whose tassels are a vivid and, 
 in some lights, bluish green. 
 
 Last night the rush of the wind, the tinkle of rain, 
 reminded me of summer. 
 
 Getting up in the darkness, I saw a salmon-colored 
 
22 STOWENOTES 
 
 square on the near comer of the barn, and knew it to be 
 early morning, and this indication a lantern gone with 
 the hired man to the milking. Later I saw its rays swing 
 and tremble on my ceiling, and heard the house door 
 closed. 
 
 At half past nine, thermometer forty-five degrees, 
 wind getting to the west, signs of clearing— a complete 
 thaw. I notice in the house little gnats, some with 
 straight antennae; some, I think, plumed— these smaller. 
 
 Overcast and excessively windy during the morning. 
 At about three p.m. went out walking. The thaw had 
 melted the snow, and left more than half the surface of 
 the fields and pastures bare. It lies in hollows, and on 
 the north sides of little slopes, rocks, or eminences of 
 any sort. The ice, over the surface of which flows a thin 
 stream of water, is rotten. 
 
 There is a sense of relief, of revival, in this relaxing 
 of Winter's grasp, this reappearance of the earth out of 
 her shroud. A pleasant perfume is in the air. A posi- 
 tive pleasure is the pressure of the foot upon the soft 
 saturated mould, grass, and mosses. Something in the 
 air and the sunshine of summer. 
 
 Among the spruces in the west pasture : on the north 
 side of a group of these I see the sunlight, admitted 
 through the interposing foliage, fall in spots upon the 
 this-way-spreading branches, vivifying the rich green. 
 How precious now is every hint of this loveliest color ! 
 
 Mounting the slope of a long boulder, over its top, in 
 the hollow on the further side I saw a salmon-colored 
 bird that, observing me, took refuge in the thick boughs 
 
FEBRUARY 23 
 
 of a spruce near at hand. Standing perfectly still, I was 
 presently aware of another fluttering out from the same 
 tree, this an olive-gray, somewhat tinged with yellow. 
 At first I took them for a pair of pine grosbeaks, but 
 they seemed too small. On further investigation, I in- 
 clined to believe them crossbills. 
 
 I must have spent three quarters of an hour in watch- 
 ing this pretty couple. They having gone to the opposite 
 side of the tree, I made a cautious and silent detour, and 
 was rewarded by a sight of the male, on the bough of a 
 hemlock, pecking at a spruce cone which he held with 
 one claw. On his dropping the cone and flitting away, 
 I made my advance into the clump (a spruce and a hem- 
 lock growing close together and spreading as one tree), 
 hoping to gain a view near enough to satisfy my doubts. 
 So silent they were, that at length, believing them flown, 
 I discarded caution and began to push through the 
 branches, when, bending forward, I saw in the little 
 hollow where I had first come upon them, the salmon- 
 colored head of the male, twitching uneasily from side to 
 side, the feathers of the crest ruifling. 
 
 A cautious retreat, a wide circuit, and I again ap- 
 proached from the same side as at first. 
 
 I came within full view, scarcely fifteen feet away. 
 I never saw bird so tame. The male seemed uneasy, and 
 would flutter oflf from time to time, and call in a husky, 
 subdued twitter, from the obscurity of the spruce, to his 
 more confiding mate. At length I sat down within ten 
 feet of them ; they took wing on my motion, but soon re- 
 turned, and fell to work upon the cones, sometimes peck- 
 ing them on the ground, sometimes flying with one to a 
 
24 STOWENOTES 
 
 bough near at hand, and bending over, with ruffled 
 necks, searching out the seeds ; the ground was littered 
 with the detached scales. They appeared plump, well- 
 fed little creatures, the female in particular. Though 
 both were business-like feeders, the latter seemed to 
 devote herself to it to the exclusion even of fear. 
 
 Though I looked carefully at such close quarters, I 
 could not distinguish the cross bill ; the bill seemed long, 
 rather heavy ; I fancied not stout enough at the base for 
 a grosbeak ; in the male, black ; in the female, light horn- 
 colored (both?). I noticed the downward curve of the 
 upper mandible. 
 
 The male was rosy or salmon-colored; back darker- 
 dusky; wings and tail black (two bars of white in wing 
 — sharply marked) ; a wash of bluish ash on flanks and 
 grayish below; rump bright salmon; dark line through 
 eye, and dark crescent on cheeks; bill dark. Female 
 grayish olive; wash of yellow on breast and back; dusky 
 and broader crescent on cheeks, and dusky head faintly 
 streaked with dusky (brown?). Wing and tail darker.. 
 White ( cloudy-buff y) in wings; rump bright yellow. 
 I think they were white-winged crossbills. 
 
 Five o'clock : Twenty-three degrees ; freezing again ; 
 the little rills checked. 
 
 A snow-storm coming down from the west over the 
 mountains, white wreaths— bluish, blown like smoke, 
 with the dark blue Mountain beyond; it seems a vast 
 forest fire ; you almost expect to see flames burst out at 
 the base of these wavering columns. 
 
 The storm gives a misty appearance to the southern 
 
FEBRUARY 25 
 
 horizon, where the sun is shining under the clouds. 
 Camel's Hump, far away south beyond the storm, is seen 
 through a purple veil. 
 
 On the crest of the hill I again heard a distant 
 "tweet." Twice during the morning the same note, 
 faint, uncertain, had caught my attention, but on each 
 occasion I saw nothing. As I faced toward the sound, 
 over the plowed crest came a flurry of wings, a large 
 flock of snow buntings passed close over my headj their 
 black-barred white wings flashing in the sunlight. They 
 flew with a fine sweep, reminding me of sea birds, and 
 passed northward, floating down toward the wood with 
 something of the graceful descent of pigeons. 
 
 For an instant the air was full of their weak twitter- 
 ing notes, and then the profound winter silence again 
 settled upon the scene. 
 
 It was very cold, but there was little wind, and few 
 clouds in the perfect blue sky. The mountains were 
 bathed in sunlight. Mansfield, hollowed with deep blue 
 shadows, crowned by glittering snow, seemed to sleep in 
 enchantment. A feeling of exaltation and of loneliness 
 crept over me. Sometimes I thought I heard the distant 
 stroke of an axe. Looking across the road, I became 
 conscious of a strict but unobtrusive scrutiny. In the 
 doorway of the shed attached to the upper barn were set 
 the faces of two sheep, the noses in sunlight, the eyes in 
 shadow. 
 
 A mass of ice, a mimic glacier, stretches down the 
 middle of the meadow from the springs. 
 
 The Mountain is seen at its best in winter, with snow 
 
26 STOWENOTES 
 
 and ice along the rocky summit— the "bald." In this 
 hoary coating it seems like some great Colossus, maimed 
 and time-eaten, more majestic, more inscrutable, with 
 loftier riddles than the Sphinx. 
 
 Pleasant, windless day— a thin cloud. Saw a pair of 
 redpolls ; had, I fancied, less of sulphur yellow in plum- 
 age. Greenland redpolls? — quite gray. 
 
 Out driving, the sleigh slipped along with an easy 
 motion ; the minute hailstones stung as they flew into my 
 eyes. Coming up the hill, we startled a flock of snow 
 buntings; they rose silently, made a graceful curve in 
 the air, and settled verily like snowflakes. 
 
 The blueness of shadows : 
 
 On Luce's Hill the long shadows from the afternoon 
 sun, on the open fields of snow, are so intensely blue that 
 by comparison the sky appears green — a delicate trans- 
 parent green. 
 
 Our shadows, that step with us, are transmuted from 
 dusky and sinister adherents to gay companions, making 
 much of their brilliant tint, stretching over the snow. 
 
 This day is perfect winter, clear as a bell, whelmed 
 and softened in sunlight, with an icy-flowing north wind, 
 to which the pines sing, though bare boughs are silent. 
 The trees on the mountains are completely snow-covered 
 — with the sun upon them, even the evergreens show no 
 trace or hint of green. Hogback is a frosted cake, a 
 coral reef — its spots of shadow deep purple-blue. 
 
 How beautifully Luce's Hill descends to meet the 
 
FEBRUARY 27 
 
 nearer ridge, the crumbling edge of its snow-fields 
 rounding down into a blue hollow, against which is im- 
 posed the cloudy wood with its dark points of evergreen 
 onCady'sHiU! 
 
 Are the shadows bluer looking north than south ? I 
 think so; especially when they are thrown along an in- 
 cline at a more obtuse angle with the ray, on a north 
 slope. 
 
 I was rather disappointed in the sunset, which was a 
 trifle obscured ; only the more northerly end of Hogback 
 was touched, and that lightly, by a pale magenta tinge. 
 The rest lay white, and after the sunset faded, looked 
 wintry, cold as the uninhabited North. But the more 
 easterly pyramidal point of Sterling was flushed on its 
 southern side. Below was the blue shadow that en- 
 veloped all the range as far south as Camel's Hump, and 
 this, the last peak, marking the southern limit, alone 
 caught the sunset. 
 
 Far away to the north Eden lay in a rosy haze, so soft 
 as to suggest summer. This distant country, which 
 floats forever in a celestial atmosphere, azure-tinted, 
 empurpled, pale blue spaces, and darker bars and 
 patches, which are its woodlands, now fades from rose to 
 lilac, lilac to blue — transitions of color as subtle and deli- 
 cate as are seen in sunset clouds. 
 
 It has been thawing slightly to-day. The sun is set; 
 long purple bright-bordered clouds — streaks across the 
 sky— float on the limpid golden horizon. The tassels of 
 the pine stir and sway in the south wind, which now 
 blows chilly, and moans at the corner of the house. 
 
28 STOWENOTES 
 
 This month of this year will be memorable for its 
 sunsets. Yesterday what glory, what tender charm! 
 Such phenomena can have no adequate expression in 
 art : they are too transient, as are the emotions they ex- 
 cite. 
 
 To-day, looking south across snow-drifts to the 
 mountains, I observed that the value of the drift shadow 
 was the same as that of the distant mountains, and the 
 difference in color was very slight, the shadow being 
 slightly purple. 
 
 Several nights ago, I heard an owl. It was a still 
 dark night, no star visible, but what looked like one— 
 the light in a farmhouse miles away on Luce's Hill. 
 Still the broad snowy fields made a kind of light: it was 
 possible to detect the limits of the south wood. The 
 thermometer stood at about twenty degrees, but there 
 was a damp feeling in the air, as of a thaw; and out of 
 this still, cold, and moist darkness came a muffled hoot- 
 ing. It sounded near at hand, and seemed uttered in a 
 low and melancholy tone, but it may have been the dis- 
 tance that softened it: "Hobhoo, ho6, hoo!" 
 
 This morning, the poultry being let out to wander 
 around the yard, the cocks began crowing to Spring. 
 
 They rub their eyes and yawn out : "Winter is over. 
 Hurrah for Spring!" — the last with sleepy enthusiasm, 
 cheerfully, but with slurred and inarticulate utterance, 
 like the fervor of drunkards. 
 
 It is an undeniable thaw, a continuance of yesterday's 
 melting work. Thermometer forty degrees or there- 
 
FEBRUARY 29 
 
 abouts; the air mild but damp; the stable-yard repulsive, 
 muddy and manury, but there is a pleasant smell of hay 
 from somewhere. 
 
 Leon tapped a maple yesterday, and the sap ran, drip, 
 drip, into the tin pail. This is my first sight of it— thin, 
 limpid, like water, slightly sweetish. Some maples, they 
 tell me, run as sweet as syrup, but these give a less quan- 
 tity generally. 
 
 It is a strange thing to see a gnat dance in the lamp- 
 light on this, the night of the twenty-fifth of February. 
 
 Out of doors it is overcast, thawing, dismal. 
 
 Last night, about nine o'clock, as I looked out of the 
 window after putting out the light, I saw the moon, a 
 broad crescent hanging in the southwest; its rays en- 
 tered at the window and shone upon the table. The dense 
 furry bough of the pine was dark against this illumina- 
 tion. The wind stirred its tassels. 
 
 This morning, which was overcast, and presented in 
 a sombre light the pied landscape of a thaw, I walked in 
 the west pasture. A mist, a. kind of drizzling vapor, 
 made a false distance most soft and charming. The 
 lichens on the rocks were vivid. 
 
 Sounds carried far on the air — signs of a storm. The 
 screaming of jays, the creak of the ox-sledge carrying 
 logs from the wood, the call of the driver. 
 
 Beyond the scattered evergreens I started up a hare. 
 Gaunt, meagre, of a dirty white color, he seemed to em- 
 body the sentiment of the thaw— an aspect of it, at least. 
 He bounded away easily, leaping sometimes about ten 
 
30 STOWENOTES 
 
 feet, and disappeared in a thicket of maple saplings. I 
 noticed the print of his hind feet just in front of the 
 fore feet, not straddling them, so I conclude the fore feet 
 had already left ground as the hind feet fell. 
 
 I also saw the tracks of squirrels, and, I think, of 
 foxes. 
 
 Coming home, I noticed the lichens — miniature 
 forests of evergreen, here and there some gray variety, 
 much branched and divided, rising like the crown of an 
 ancient and leafless oak. Some of these mimic trees 
 were vermilion-tipped — to the pigmy inhabitants ferns 
 springing to a vast and brilliant florescence, others 
 (palms?) cup-shaped, simple, of a salad green. A 
 strange country this, that gives fertile forests upon bare 
 rocks ! 
 
 May not this earth have something the same aspect 
 seen from a balloon ? 
 
 At times, contrasted with the cold cry of the jays, 
 came a broken note, less shrill, less frozen, a sound more 
 appropriate to the thaw. Yet I think it was a jay that 
 uttered it 
 
 Last night, after I had opened my window and was 
 about to get into bed, I noticed the curtain fluttering, 
 and heard a slight rumble under the eaves. The wind 
 was getting up. Presently there began a most lamen- 
 table moaning, most human, most demoniac. Lessening, 
 it fell to a low angry mutter, threatening, bovine. 
 
 The morning was cloudy; cold showers from the 
 south. I walked out past the pond, where the ice is sunk 
 and a new thin coating formed. I noticed some cracks 
 
FEBRUARY 31 
 
 made in the embankment by the frost. The sugar-wood 
 beyond is a dull red with the rain-brightened buds. 
 
 The walking is difficult. Sometimes I am knee-deep 
 in snow, sometimes ankle-deep in mud. I passed by the 
 old sugar-house in the swamp ; numerous tracks of squir- 
 rels, foxes ( ?), and hares, the latter quite fresh, and of 
 the second some rather curious, the fore feet separated, 
 the hind feet falling almost together, so as to form a 
 single indenture in the snow, a triangular track. 
 
 Passed beside a dusky copse of evergreens, and 
 against the black hemlock boughs, the diamond-hung 
 boughs. 
 
MARCH 
 
 This morning about ten o'clock the thermometer 
 stood at four degrees, and I think it did not go much 
 higher in the course of the day, which was overcast, 
 snowing, and with a steady north wind. I noticed it 
 again at five, and it had gone down a degree. 
 
 From about three to four o'clock I walked in the west 
 pasture; I went for the purpose of collecting some bal- 
 sam boughs, which, being laid on the top of the stove, 
 exhaled a pleasant odor. 
 
 The walking was very difficult, owing to the loose 
 snow drifted in between the hummocks and hiding the 
 underlying ice. 
 
 The brook could be heard but faintly, muttering 
 under a double covering of ice and snow. 
 
 The spruces and balsams were heavily weighted; a 
 touch would send the feathery mass scattered like pow- 
 der from the ends of the branches. 
 
 I passed up on the edge of the old road through a 
 small group of balsams, and on to the ridge among the 
 branching sumachs. The position of the sun might be 
 occasionally detected by an obscure gleam in the gray 
 expanse of the sky. The fine snow sped almost hori- 
 zontally on the steady wind. Coming home by the pines, 
 I was stopped by a faint note. I saw a bird that I took 
 at first for a blue jay rise from the ground and slip 
 
 32 
 
MARCH 33 
 
 behind an evergreen. Almost at the same moment, with 
 a soft and broken cry, a vermilion-hued bird flew close 
 above my head, swerved suddenly to one side, and disap- 
 peared in the boughs of a spruce close on my left hand. 
 In the swift glance upward I saw distinctly the reddish 
 chest, pale belly, and ashy under tail-coverts. 
 
 This disappearance was immediately followed by the 
 passage of one darker tinted, that with a powerful and 
 easy flight swept across the pasture and settled in the 
 top branches of a sumach. I waited patiently for the 
 reappearance of the first, for although I felt convinced 
 they were the male and female pine grosbeak, I wanted 
 another glimpse of the vermilion plumage. Had I not 
 seen them, I think I should have recognized the note, so 
 strange, so plaintive. 
 
 Casting a glance after the one departed (the female), 
 I was startled to see a flock rise suddenly above the 
 thicket of sumach where she had settled. They rose 
 high into the air, and descended fluttering among the 
 evergreens on the crest of the hill. I immediately set 
 out in pursuit, but before I had retraced my steps to the 
 pine, they were up again, this time sweeping down to- 
 ward me, over the snowy undulations. They passed 
 within a rod of me, a considerable flock flying rather 
 low. The males were brilliantly tinted — a deep red, 
 almost crimson, on the crown ; the females flying showed 
 an orange spot on the rump. Sometimes a thin lisp inter- 
 mingled with their twitter, which latter sound reminded 
 me somewhat of the distant chant of frogs, sometimes a 
 cry, like the jay's, but fainter and softened, more like a 
 sea bird's, but not so plaintive. They appeared to me 
 
34 STOWENOTES 
 
 to be as large as robins. They seemed mightily at home. 
 It was a beautiful spectacle. They lit in the pine's sway- 
 ing boughs, scattering the snow, the bright males con- 
 trasting finely with the dark green foliage. It was 
 somewhat difficult to tell these latter, at a little distance, 
 from the sumach cockades, off which I noticed them 
 feeding. 
 
 My last sight of them was in the air, making another 
 descent a little farther along the slope, fluttering, falling, 
 changing place, much as I have seen snow buntings do. 
 There certainly is a resemblance in their flight, and also 
 in their twittering note. 
 
 The windows are heavily frosted — ferns and stars. 
 I found a corner to peep through at the moon, which is 
 to-night at the full, and rose overclouded, a dusky yellow 
 spot. 
 
 The snow still sweeps over the white fields, but the 
 wind is gone down somewhat. I cannot hear the pine. 
 
 The moon, shining on the frosted windows, stars the 
 pane with glittering sapphires. 
 
 Moonrise : 
 
 First, the large, round, flat, silver-gilt surface of the 
 moon, behind the trees on the crest of the hill, shining 
 through the bare boughs. 
 
 Second, a faint, indefinable glistening in the snow in 
 some places— on the eastern faces of drifts. 
 
 Third, the shadows taking form, dimly. 
 
 Fourth, shadows growing darker and contracting. 
 
 The other day the golden sunlight, just before the 
 
MARCH 35 
 
 setting, on the twigs of the little cherry tree at the west 
 end of the garden, gave it the effect of being hung with 
 shreds of gold tinsel. 
 
 Again I have seen the pine grosbeaks. This time it 
 was among some small evergreens on the edge of the 
 swamp, a quarter of a mile southeasterly from the farm- 
 house. 
 
 I wandered among the stumps in the clearing, amused 
 by the tracks of mice, making a kind of running pattern 
 on the snow, the line of the long tail twisting about be- 
 tween the little footprints. 
 
 It was clear and pleasant, even warm in this spot, 
 sheltered by the rising ground from the keen-edged 
 north wind that had made my ears burn as I crossed over 
 the fields. 
 
 Near the group of evergreens before mentioned, I 
 heard a soft twittering — conversational, cheery. I crept 
 around the side of a small spruce, but before I had 
 moved sufficiently to obtain a glimpse of these chatterers, 
 one lit in the tree above my head, a female, followed 
 almost immediately by the salmon-colored male. 
 
 Of the plumage of the latter, I was startled by its 
 brilliancy. The crown and the spot on the rump were 
 almost crimson. A wash of rose-color over the breast 
 and on the sides. 
 
 The poetry of a thaw— the singing world, the first 
 rippling voice. 
 The wet woods. 
 The frost-formed spring-holes in the ice. 
 
36 STOWENOTES 
 
 Every year winter subsides like the flood— a repeti- 
 tion of such scenes, a renewal of such hopes. 
 
 The young shoots and buds of the striped maple a 
 waxy pink. 
 
 To-day thirty-seven degrees. Snow, rain, and low 
 mist. Roads in a terrible condition. Drove to Moscow 
 and back, mists creeping low among the ragged tops of 
 hemlock and bare branches. Woods a dull red. Ice in 
 large blocks stranded along the river edge: yesterday's 
 thaw must have raised the river a great deal. 
 
 Agonized squeal of wood going into the circular saw, 
 and afterward a hollow deep sound, like the bassest 
 strings of a bass violin, the bow drawn slowly across; 
 something like muffled thunder, but more sonorous. This 
 sound is the recover of the saw-frame rumbling. 
 
 Diamond-hung boughs again. 
 
 There's so strong a spring feeling, so little prospect 
 of a rally on the part of the defeated Winter, that I fear 
 I have had my last sight for the year of the porphyry 
 mountains— the blue, blue, snow-covered hills sleeping 
 in the golden afternoon sunlight. 
 
 In the valley the cocks are crowing. 
 
 I was in the sugar-wood for some time, both in the 
 morning and afternoon. Active preparations for sugar- 
 ing had begun. A tub was set on a slight eminence 
 about fifty yards from the sugar-house, and in this the 
 sap is to be emptied from a wagon in which the pails are 
 collected. A tin pipe runs from this tub to the large 
 wooden vats serving as reservoirs, stationary in the 
 
MARCH 37 
 
 building. This pipe was coated with snow, and made a 
 straight white line, singular among the contorted 
 branches, the more conspicuous as every twig was made 
 evident by its snow coating. The temperature was about 
 twenty-nine degrees, the wind was raw, from the north- 
 east a slight snowfall sifted through the boughs. A 
 strange, silent, echoless place was the sugar-wood. The 
 men were there drawing out lumber — shadowless but 
 substantial forms, they concentrated in their persons all 
 the color of the colorless scene — the leathery hue of their 
 faces, the yellow of their sheepskin leggings, their home- 
 spun blue overalls and blouses ; the oxen were a yellowish 
 white, the red flecking was conspicuous. 
 
 As they moved about at their work, a bush, a twig 
 would interfere between them and me. Ordinarily the 
 neutral-tinted and open twigs would hardly be noted as 
 an impediment to sight; but now, thickly outlined with 
 snow, the smallest of them was a distinct white line to 
 shut away the object. 
 
 It gave the wood something of the depth and mystery 
 of summer ; the snow served for foliage. Behind a bush 
 the men lost form and feature and became patches of 
 color. They had the appearance of divers in a forest 
 of coral. 
 
 From the fields I hear the strokes of an axe, which 
 the echo doubles and lengthens ; shudderingly the wood 
 rings vast and hollow. 
 
 Driving. 
 
 In the afternoon the wind came up sharp and bluster- 
 ing from the northwest, dispersing the clouds. The 
 
38 STOWENOTES 
 
 fields looked dry and gray ; the ruts began to freeze. But 
 after I got home the wind had gone down. The air was 
 pleasantly cold. I walked through the swamp and across 
 the rocky part of the west pasture, following a fox's 
 track. 
 
 The golden afternoon light brought out colors 
 vividly. I rested leaning on the fence. An old road 
 winds here, and just at this point the land is level; it is 
 slightly marshy in summer ; young hemlocks grow scat- 
 teringly, and a kind of willow and swamp maples. 
 
 It was profoundly silent, except that the escape of 
 air or water below the ice I stood upon made a soft 
 popping sound. There was a singing in my ears like the 
 hum of flies; the air was slightly damp; I was in some 
 way reminded of a summer evening. 
 
 I looked at the trees illuminated by the mellow light, 
 with the sense of pleasure and almost relief I have often 
 felt then, after the glare of the day. 
 
 There was an indescribable suggestion of spring in 
 the air. Until lately I have never had any experience of 
 this season, which has passed while I have been in the 
 city. I have seen a spring in Georgia, in South Carolina, 
 but never in my native country. 
 
 Its charm is more delicate than that of any other 
 season. The sad but exquisite intimations of Autumn 
 have hitherto been to me the subtlest expression of 
 Nature. She speaks to the human heart; her voice is 
 pathetic, lovely; but Spring is all sweetness and tender- 
 ness ; hers is the strong and vital charm of youth, hers 
 the indefinable delicacy and loveliness of childhood. 
 
 Even while these thoughts were in my mind, the note 
 
MARCH 39 
 
 of a chickadee, its winter note, the faint lisp and "day- 
 day-day," came as a voice recaUing the dehght of 
 autumn, a warning, perhaps, against a vain compar- 
 ison. 
 
 The slender tops of the hemlocks, with delicate beck- 
 oning fingers, wave against the blue sky and cream- 
 tinted clouds. The new shoots of the swamp maples are 
 bright red upon the green foliage; the twigs of the 
 willows, too, are red, but darker. 
 
 Coming home, I noticed the tracks of hares. 
 
 The sun made the sumach cockades a glowing crim- 
 son. I see the little white birch catkins. 
 
 Two gnats danced in the room at twilight, up and 
 down, up and down, up and down, then suddenly hori- 
 zontally, then the vertical motion again, like visible 
 points on an invisible leader's baton. 
 
 After dinner, somewhere about seven o'clock, the 
 west was still alight. A singular arrangement of clouds. 
 There seemed to be an enormous black bat, with eared 
 head and membranous ribbed wings outspread, hovering 
 over the Mountain; to the right a cloud rose over the 
 summit in the form of an eagle's wing. 
 
 The bat dwindled and scattered, changed into many 
 forms and was dissolved; but chancing to glance up, I 
 saw the same form repeated with singular exactness 
 higher in the sky. 
 
 Over Sterling there was a white mist like snow ; the 
 north looked bleak and inhospitable. 
 
 Twilight has closed in early. The snow is sifting 
 over the fields on a southwest wind, that about three 
 
40 STOWENOTES 
 
 o'clock blew boisterously. I went out driving around 
 by Gold Brook. It was typical March weather; the 
 roads were actually drying off in the wind; the fields 
 looked their palest; most dry and colorless was all the 
 landscape. It being Monday, which I take to be a uni- 
 versal washing day, clothing flapped upon the lines. The 
 fantastical spirits of the wind filled out these convulsed 
 garments in grotesque and malicious caricature of 
 humanity. 
 
 Found a moth in one of the sap pails, also small flies 
 and gnats. 
 
 The moth was a sphinx, of a terra-cotta color, or 
 pink — an imitation clearly of dead leaves. It was dead, 
 drowned — a Clarence-like ending — "washed to death in 
 fulsome wine." 
 
 At the sugar-house I tasted the sap, and found it 
 decidedly sweet, which is owing, I understand, to the 
 freezing of the day previous. The pails are full, with 
 a frozen cake of ice, the mould of the pail, swimming in 
 liquid, and it seems that the water part of the sap freezes, 
 leaving the sweeter part fluid. The early runs are not 
 so sweet as the later, the trees being full of frost. 
 
 It began to snow as I crossed the pastures to the 
 south wood, a dense and blinding storm. 
 
 At the edge of the wood I heard a wiry chirp, and 
 after much difficulty, so heavy was the snowfall, I 
 caught a glimpse of the bird, high on a tree-top, so small 
 among the large flakes that I took it for a kinglet. From 
 this part of the wood came a strange note, precisely such 
 
MARCH 41 
 
 a sound as the tight-strung wires of a piano will give 
 being picked, and this I followed (believing it to be a 
 nuthatch) more in the hope of seeing the other bird, for 
 its twitter was less easy to locate than this more pro- 
 nounced sound, and I have before seen kinglets in the 
 company of nuthatches. I lost them continually ; I stum- 
 bled on in the snowy wood, trying to work around to the 
 south of their course to obtain a view unobscured by the 
 falling flakes. 
 
 Through young beeches and maples I reached a 
 slight eminence. From this point two large basswood 
 trees tower above the rest, and on the incline of their 
 massive trunks snow was settling, emphasizing the va- 
 riety of movement, and producing an effect of hoary 
 and imposing age. Here the faint note of the nuthatch 
 reached me, mingled occasionally with its hoarser 
 "quah-quah," and a half-articulated "chickadee" re- 
 vealed the character of its little companion, whom I 
 straightway acknowledged a tricksy spirit indeed. The 
 bird I took to be the nuthatch was small, even smaller, I 
 think, than its companion — the red-breasted, doubtless. 
 It flew with wonderful rapidity, darting from tree to 
 tree, and once circled twice around the trunks of the 
 basswood trees without alighting, and with the dusky 
 swiftness of a bat. 
 
 The large and slowly falling flakes, whirling down 
 out of the gray sky, seemed to weigh down my eyelids, 
 causing my glance to decline with them to the ground. 
 
 Of late, on these, gray cloud-tattered skies, an Indian 
 file of crows, clamoring as they go, gives a wild kind of 
 charm. 
 
42 STOWENOTES 
 
 In the barn : 
 
 Lambs. Maternal fullness and softness in the 
 sheep's ordinarily cold eye; eyes of cows and of the 
 sheep in the interior pen glowing like jewels. The low- 
 ing of the cows suppressed, exactly like the low notes of 
 a bass viol, sonorous and vibrant. 
 
APRIL 
 
 The distant fields in the valley are changing color 
 ever so slightly, from gray to a faint raw greenish tinge. 
 
 Hermit thrushes heard to-day in a woody hillside 
 near Moscow, from the river road. 
 
 To-night it is warm and windy. The wind comes 
 blowing gustily from the south. 
 
 After supper, at about seven, I went out on the 
 piazza, and heard the longed-for and expected note. I 
 went to the edge of the west pasture, which was very 
 obscure in the shadow of the hill, where along the ridge 
 the evergreens were darkly mingled in a cloud of still 
 leafless twigs. Behind were the dusky mountains and 
 the pale salmon strip of sky above them, and floating 
 across this dim expanse, sometimes stifled and carried 
 away in faint murmurs in the gusts of the south wind, 
 came the notes of the hermit thrushes. 
 
 When I am dead and buried, or dead and burned, I 
 think something of what was once me will respond at the 
 first spring song of the thrushes. It is the immortal 
 voice that speaks to something dumb and nameless in the 
 human breast, and is answered by a dumb and nameless 
 yearning. 
 
 It conveys a kind of immortality upon the listener — 
 it comes out of an immeasurable past, and carries the 
 soul into the immeasurable future. They sing in blissful 
 eternity. 
 
 43 
 
44 STOWENOTES 
 
 Wonderful notes ! 
 
 Like the precious moments in life and in art, that are 
 thrilling with emotion, full to the brink of tears. 
 
 Notes so varied, clear, and full, or faint as an echo 
 lisping softly, like a comment on the thrilling sweetness 
 of the last, sometimes high almost to shrillness, and 
 again uttered low and with a melodiousness ineffable. 
 
 It is not so much like the answering notes of birds, 
 as like a converse of happy spirits. 
 
 There's nothing of the mirth of bird songs in this 
 one, neither joyousness nor hurry, but something serene 
 and infinitely sweet, that is neither joy nor sorrow. The 
 notes fall deliberately, as if there were a consciousness 
 on the part of the singers of the precious quality of their 
 utterances— golden drops from the very fount of all sad 
 delight and chastened joy. 
 
 Sometimes I hear the purring of a tree toad (Pick- 
 ering's), the first I have heard this spring. 
 
 The piping of the frogs is like a continual and dis- 
 tant jingle of sleigh-bells, but now and again from one, 
 a little nearer, comes distinctly the sustained and melan- 
 choly whistle. It is the simplest kind of utterance, a 
 single sad little interrogative pipe, forever uttered in the 
 same key.* 
 
 The moon must be almost full to-night. I walked up 
 the road a little way; the air is very dry and warm. 
 There are two sounds that puzzle me — one that seems 
 
 * The notes of the common toad and Pickering's hyla or tree toad appear to 
 be confused. The "piping" referred to here, and on page 49, is undoubtedly 
 the note of Pickering's hyla, while the "purring" and (on page 49) "low, pro- 
 longed and tremulous sound " are probably the trill of the common toad. 
 
APRIL 45 
 
 like the faint buzz of a beetle, recurring at frequent in- 
 tervals and enduring but an instant; this at length, 
 heard in proximity sufficient to detect its real character, 
 discovers itself to be the singular bursting or twanging 
 note of the nighthawk. The other is a ripple, a faint 
 tinkling, that reminds one at once of cricket and tree 
 toad; and as I listen, the tinkle grows louder, and there 
 are intermingled twitterings as of birds. It seems to 
 come from the stone wall or the trench at the side of the 
 road, and I am beginning to wonder if it is not the voices 
 of field mice, and to fancy I see little stealthy creatures 
 gliding among the stalks of weeds and the dead grasses, 
 when suddenly the explanation occurs to me in a burst 
 of memory or some association of ideas, and I recognize 
 in this mysterious sound the peculiar twitter of swifts, 
 passing rapidly overhead, whose notes are softened and 
 carried over in the wind.* 
 
 The pine soughs, and tosses its boughs wildly; 
 clouds have gathered over the face of the moon ; the dead 
 leaves in the road give an occasional skip of somewhat 
 ghastly sprightliness, and rustle with a crisp and ex- 
 ceedingly dry sound. Truly it seems almost too much 
 to expect of these long-buried leaves, that have danced 
 all summer on the bough, skipped in the high winds of 
 last autumn, and have since lain out of sight and mind 
 for four long months under a heavy covering of snow, 
 
 * Those familiar with the flight-song of the woodcock will recognize this as a 
 very good description of the impression made by that performance — the nasal 
 nighthawk-like "peeping" uttered on the ground, followed by the confused med- 
 ley of wing-whistling and liquid vocal notes as the bird soars in the air. April is 
 much too early for a nighthawk in northern Vermont, and some of the woodcock's 
 notes might easily be mistaken for the swift's. 
 
46 STOWENOTES 
 
 now to revive and sport on the same terms with the tire- 
 less wind. 
 
 The obscuring of the moon gives point to a certain 
 wildness that is in the night, a sense of hurry that is 
 almost like alarm. Dark forms, dark places, if it is no 
 more than a hole in the ground, seem to beckon, move, 
 and run in the uncertain light. 
 
 March would be the date, or even February, in a 
 warmer climate. Last night, heavy south wind— a cold 
 raw air, driving half-melted snow with a level drift. 
 Usual developments of a heavy wind from this quar- 
 ter, turning the gable with a loud, lamentable cry; hiss- 
 ing of driven snow in the pauses, mingling with the 
 large roar of the wood, the jumping of shutters in their 
 fastenings, the gusty approach, followed by the silent 
 and stupendous push,. as of a vast soft body, against the 
 side of the house, that trembles. Accompanying all this, 
 brilliant and rapid flashes of sheet lightning that showed 
 the white snowy country with an effect peculiarly 
 ghastly. Occasionally, following the brighter flashes, 
 was a low rumble of thunder. 
 
 The snow tapped and hissed against the pane, and 
 once after a brilliant flash a crackling as of fire seemed 
 to run from roof to cellar ; it was a sudden burst of hail. 
 Between the flashes the night was dark, beyond the usual 
 of dark nights : for no glimmer seemed to take from the 
 snow— the result of the contrast perhaps. 
 
 Later it turned to rain or sleet, and the flashes 
 heaved and fluttered in the impending cloud, like heat 
 lightning in summer. 
 
 Morning under these conditions' wild and strange. 
 
APRIL 47 
 
 Six inches of soft, clinging "sugar snow" having 
 fallen yesterday, the country has resumed its winter 
 aspect, even to the Mountain's heavily frosted silver 
 ridges. But above is a soft sunny spring sky, and 
 robins, snowbirds, and song sparrows flit over the snow- 
 fields and perch on the snow- weighted spruces — a sin- 
 gular and fairyland combination. Especially strong is 
 the song sparrow's song, so full of spring and sunny 
 suggestions. Indeed the other birds, less courageous, 
 find no heart for singing. 
 
 What delicate snow-tints, purple, pink, changing to 
 a blue so clear that it becomes greenish in contrast — in- 
 deed it may be green rather than blue — I cannot tell. 
 How light, how transparent are the shadows ! 
 
 [Two years later] 
 In the wood, where the snow has left a flattened 
 surface of compressed and soggy leaves. 
 
 Many voices — that of the white-crowned sparrow, is 
 it ? so long-drawn, strange, and solemn ; and a rippling, 
 tinkling sound, a varied song, wonderfully sustained— 
 the winter wren? Robins everywhere, inarticulately 
 cheery. And for the first time this year a hermit thrush, 
 from far in the darkness of the hemlocks, faint and yet 
 distinct, that immemorial voice. 
 
 The squeal of a hawk, the mew of a nuthatch, and 
 later, after sunset, the hoarse crowing and hooting of an 
 owl. A day or two ago everything was silent, dead: 
 to-night the wood echoes and rings with innumerable 
 sounds. 
 
MAY 
 
 On the road from Moscow to the Waterbury stage 
 road, by the edge of the yellow and brimming river, two 
 uproarious red-winged starlings that gave every now 
 and then, among harsher cries, a sweet flute-like note, 
 somewhat in character (though the comparison is an in- 
 justice) like the piping fluty sound of some stop of a 
 melodeon— coagulated sweetness, the very honey of 
 sound. Here also, in the green-tipped willows, flitted 
 myrtle warblers. 
 
 Warm spring rains fall, white mist and clouds cling 
 to the woods and overflow the valleys ; through the rifts 
 the farm-dotted slope of Sterling grows daily a softer 
 and more vivid green. 
 
 Spring-beauty, pale but rosy-veined, shows in wood, 
 pasture, and along the highways. 
 
 All day long the little ringing call of tree sparrows 
 is heard, and robins sing, and song sparrows. 
 
 Two days ago the lilac leaves were fairly out. The 
 maples have flowered. 
 
 One seems to be in a vast greenhouse in this moist 
 spring weather. I cannot hear the fall of the rain as it 
 drifts so fine, but I hear the splash from the eaves. 
 
 Last night at about half past nine I looked out of my 
 window. A heavy white mist obscured everything below, 
 except the near acclivity, the rocky crown of the west 
 
 48 
 
MAY 49 
 
 pasture. From this cloud that enveloped the horizon and 
 hid the landscape, fine web-like mists floated up and 
 overspread the sky, that seemed illumined by a white 
 boreal glory. Behind and between this veil, the stars 
 shone with varying brightness. 
 
 As I entered my bedroom, through the window 
 (which opens eastward) I saw a cloud on the shoulder 
 of Hogback that seemed to be a source of light in itself, 
 so impregnated was it with moonlight. 
 
 A dense mist hung over the garden and in the neigh- 
 boring fields. Before the moon had risen, half the 
 shining round appeared, a faint prismatic ring, Saturn- 
 like, surrounding it. The mists disappeared like magic, 
 and like magic they returned, overwhelmed the scene, 
 hid the garden, hid the large dim outlines of the barns, 
 hid the mountain, and, slowly thickening, smothered up 
 the moon herself. She turned from gold to yellow, from 
 yellow to green, from green to a pale colorless gleam, 
 and so went out. 
 
 The murky night rang with piping of frogs and a 
 low, prolonged, and tremulous sound, the trill of Pick- 
 ering's tree toad. 
 
 And once so faintly as to be almost unrecognizable, 
 but the second time quite clearly, I heard the broken 
 melodious note of a song sparrow. 
 
 Little blue butterflies now. 
 
 It has been threatening rain all day— and now it 
 falls. The end being accomplished, the noisy south wind 
 is less wild. 
 
 The mountains are partly obscured in the mist, indi- 
 
so STOWENOTES 
 
 cated so faintly that their outline is undiscoverable to 
 half-shut eyes— their color is the color of mist, but above, 
 the sky is of the most delicate purple, and in this in- 
 definable tint suggests sunshine behind the veil. 
 
 The fresh cool spring wind fanning the plants, the 
 young hemlock bushes, along free, joyous, and singing 
 water-courses. 
 
 Yesterday afternoon, bright green shadows — strong 
 afternoon rays— on yellowish field. 
 
 There's a heavy cloud lying in the dip between 
 Sterling and Luce's Hill, which hides all the Mountain, 
 except high up, where, like a chain of celestial islands, 
 or darker clouds on the universal gray, is the edge of 
 the great profile. This heavy mass of vapor has over- 
 lapped the serrate crescent of Sterling, and is slipping 
 down into the enchanted hollow. A faint reddish light 
 kindles in the grayness, lighting up with a sombre gleam 
 the sky behind the waving and indistinct outlines of the 
 mountains. The gleam deepens to a dull glow, and as 
 rapidly and as mysteriously vanishes. The heavy 
 vapors rise about the Mountain, and hide all but the last 
 and highest point of the chin. 
 
 Out of doors (though it is so cold that I had closed 
 the windows and kindled the fire) I heard the melodious 
 lisp of hermit thrushes. 
 
 To-night heaven is divided in light ; the east has few 
 stars, and a red and angry planet glows on the horizon ; 
 but the west flashes light— sparkles and clashes— beams 
 cold and brilliant as swords. One might hear the scintil- 
 lations—keen, musical as an icicle shattering on ice. 
 
MAY 51 
 
 Driving up the hill on my way home, I heard a kind 
 of flicker cry above me, and a dark bird (it seemed to 
 me black as a blackbird, from the view I had of it, its 
 back only) swept over my head and lit, woodpecker-like, 
 on the trunk of an elm in the pasture. A broad bar of 
 white in the wings (edged with red?) and a crimson 
 occiput and crown. I think it must have been a logcock 
 (pileated woodpecker), so-called woodcock in these 
 parts. 
 
 After reaching the house I hurried out into the 
 pasture to obtain, if possible, another glimpse of it, but 
 I was too late. 
 
 The sky had become overcast, and a strong but warm 
 wind blew from the south. The distant woods, their 
 rounding tops, took a stronger tint under the darkening 
 sky. 
 
 The delicate foliage made an inviting mystery, half 
 hiding, half revealing the lovely nakedness of Nature. 
 
 The white-spotted buff hides of Jersey cows showed 
 among the tender greens, as they moved quietly, crop- 
 ping the soft herbage, violet-studded. Their eyes of 
 luxurious contentment, lustrous, with the purple gleams 
 and soft brown lights of a mountain brook, its depths 
 and shallows. As I descended the hill, with the velvet 
 touch of the caressing south wind upon my cheek, I felt 
 with intensity the delight of living. The joy of life was 
 like a glory around me. So should one feel at all times— 
 such a mood should be the mental habit of a healthy 
 creature. One should not need this sweet-scented wind, 
 this heart-lifting spring season, for an inspiration. 
 There should be no times of indifference, or unfulfilled 
 
52 STOWENOTES 
 
 desire. Every hour should give enough to exalt it ; every 
 season should have its peculiar and equally appreciated 
 delights. 
 
 Later I saw a picture of Spring. 
 
 It was about half past four. The rain had ceased, 
 but the wind blew fresh and vigorous from the south- 
 west. The cows were huddled near the bars. The old 
 sorrel horse galloped restlessly along by the fence, neigh- 
 ing to some mares in the opposite pasture. The white 
 pine tossed in the wind, and above, vast golden-white 
 clouds sailed in the clear light-blue sky. 
 
 I climbed over the rocks, in among thickets of young 
 maples, red and sugar, and aspens. 
 
 As I walk by the edge of the wood and listen to the 
 thrushes, they seem like spirits conversing in some 
 unearthly language, a tongue of unearthly beauty. 
 
 One of the charms, perhaps the principal charm, of 
 their song is its variableness. By this I don't mean 
 variety, but a difference in the degree of excellence of 
 various notes uttered by the same bird. It seems as if 
 the singer were striving to re-utter some exquisitely 
 melodious note; sometimes in a high, sometimes in a 
 lower key. One attempt follows the other, all most 
 dulcet, but lacking some quality of the preeminent utter- 
 ance. Each time you listen with an increasing interest— 
 you hold your breath, expecting the promised marvel, 
 and when finally that perfection of melodious sound is 
 reached, you feel a creeping, a shiver of intense and 
 strange delight. The precious inf requency of the note ! 
 
MAY 53 
 
 I welcome the freshness, the coolness, the softening 
 and intensifying charm that is in this gentle spring rain. 
 
 In the wood the veery calls, and darts across the road, 
 slipping among the dense undergrowth. I see, I think, 
 a three-toed woodpecker, dodging behind a tree trunk, 
 taking furtive peeps at me, like a tricksy goblin. 
 
 Now is the mystery of the wood reestablished. The 
 eye is invited, baffled, and charmed amid a quivering, 
 fluttering, living sea of green. Voice, life, expression, 
 have returned to Nature. 
 
 May evenings. 
 
 To-night the sun set in a limpid sea of gold. It was 
 chilly for the time of year; stars quivered in the pale 
 glow of evening; there was a leaf-fluttering wind, and 
 a sense of hurry, a breathless delight, almost alarm, in 
 the impending night. 
 
 The hired man is walking toward the barn, whistling 
 a quick tune, a hornpipe ; he takes lengthy strides, a more 
 forcible accompaniment than a brisk step. Above the 
 palings of the garden his shoulders move with deliberate 
 emphasis. 
 
 I say to myself, "The curtain rises. Rustic crosses 
 over the stage." He enters the barn ; his whistling, sub- 
 dued, finally ceases. 
 
 A pause. Swifts and swallows twitter, circle, and 
 dip. Song sparrows gurgle on fence posts; from the 
 wood the wiry song of the veery, the serene and melo- 
 dious voice of the hermit thrush ; and, somewhere out of 
 the air, scattered tinkling harp-strings and honey-drop- 
 
54 STOWENOTES 
 
 pings of sound, shaken out over the meadows in the mad 
 and merry flight of boboHnks. 
 
 Suddenly on the crown of the hill appear two little 
 shapes. They are on the scene with a run. They pause, 
 they clasp hands, and four nimble and soundless naked 
 feet twinkle on the slope. Two little boys, as frolic as 
 elves or brownies, impelled to the liveliest motion by an 
 excess of life— life at its quickest, flashing swift and 
 sparkling from the fount. They put a constraint upon 
 themselves to walk three yards — their steps quicken— in 
 an instant it is a run. Seeing me, they advance more 
 slowly, but not without evidences of the brimming and 
 effervescing energy within; the too sober pace of walk- 
 ing is broken by sudden hops and bounds. 
 
 They are arrayed in what are but too evidently the 
 garments of an elder generation, curtailed to their lesser 
 dimensions. One wears a round stiff-brimmed hat ; the 
 other's hat is brimless, but he has on a shirt with a design 
 of large round black spots. They have concealed about 
 their persons whistles (of leatherwood, probably), from 
 which, bounding, turning, hopping as they approach, 
 they produce a low and hollow piping. They neither 
 speak nor look at one another, other than in a chance and 
 passing glance— outward communication seems super- 
 fluous, their spirits leap in such perfect sympathy. 
 
 To-night, just before sunset, pine linnets and gold- 
 finches flitting about in the boughs of the apple trees, 
 among the blossoms. The goldfinch utters a sweet 
 canary-like "twee, twe-it." 
 
 In the pasture, where the dusk of evening is gather- 
 
MAY 55 
 
 ing, the melodious harshness, the ringing, wiry chant of 
 the veery, beside which the sweet lisp of the hermit 
 thrush is almost insipid. Through the misty dimness on 
 the opposite slope, moving down into the hollow, Henry 
 leads the mare, and the stalking colt follows with awk- 
 ward bounds. 
 
 The three-quarter moon is gleaming silvery-bright 
 among the top leaves of the maples in the dooryard. 
 
 A twilight walk. 
 
 The grove of young and densely growing sugar 
 maples east of the Pilgrim wood was in almost full and 
 fresh leaf ; the slender stems shone palely in the shadow 
 of the deep foliage. Even in open places the prevailing 
 twilight ( for the sun had set some time since, and only a 
 dull glow remained on the clouds behind the mountains) 
 obscured and confused the features of the ground; it 
 was as if a shallow wave from the concentrated dark- 
 ness in woody places had overflowed the surface of the 
 earth — the turn of the tide. 
 
 In among this heavy leafage, the hermit thrushes 
 answered one another in their measured and thrilling 
 tones; and there, also, the tawny thrush, the veery, 
 sounded its loud emphatic call, and from time to time its 
 strange song. 
 
 No note that I have ever heard, not even the hermit 
 thrush's, seems to me so sylvan a sound as this ; the very 
 word suggests it— sylvan. It can only be described by 
 the conjunction of opposite terms : it is sweetly harsh ; a 
 ringing, wiry sound ; a succession of notes, blended, yet 
 distinct, beginning softly and slightly increasing in vol- 
 
56 STOWENOTES 
 
 ume, like the circling ripples where a stone has fallen in 
 still water ; and as the ripples swell, so every repetition of 
 this enchanting song seems to widen to the imagination 
 the cool and dim vista in which it is uttered. 
 
 It is the spell that opens the mystery of the woods, 
 and, like the notes of all thrushes, except the robins, it 
 has the precious quality of deliberate and cherished utter- 
 ance. The song is pitched much lower than the single 
 note or call, which, sounding close at hand, startles one 
 with the revelation of the singer's nearness, so like a 
 ventriloquist's trick is the change of tone; the song hav- 
 ing seemed to the listener to come from some little dis- 
 tance, subdued by a leafy passage. 
 
 On the higher places in the west pasture a wind is 
 stirring, although below the air is still and heavy, and 
 every pause brings the high-pitched pipe of mosquitoes. 
 But on the higher places the wind frees me of these 
 unwelcome companions ; and there I sit down to rest on 
 a steep rock, the summit of which is on a level with the 
 tops of the young trees beneath. 
 
 There is no sound so significant of summer, I think, 
 as the rustle of leaves — the very voice of Nature, low, 
 but almost ceaseless. Yet it is too level and unvaried a 
 sound for speech, but still so intensely expressive of 
 being— of life, that no other simile would suffice to de- 
 scribe it, unless it should be called the very breath of 
 Nature, and this seems the more just, that listening to it 
 I find myself trying to exclude all other sounds, just as 
 when one listens to the breathing of a sleeper. 
 
 A robin chucks and chatters and flies close to me in 
 evident distrust, but finally alights in a tree-top, and 
 
MAY 57 
 
 bursts into his broken, cheery daylight warble— a 
 strange note at this time, when the solitary thrushes are 
 silenced. 
 
 Returning, I pass down the southern slope of the 
 pasture, where, not far from the large pine, the flock 
 of sheep are gathered and have settled themselves for 
 the night — dim whitish forms huddled here and there 
 among the sweet-scented hollows ; ewes with their lambs 
 lie sometimes in little encampments apart from the main 
 body. A few are alarmed, and move away as I pass 
 close by them ; one lamb follows me with an expression 
 of intense and foolish curiosity. 
 
 Leaving the small growth behind, and approaching 
 the open, I hear the bizzing of nighthawks, and the 
 piping of frogs is very loud; but the little awful voice 
 of the spring tree toad is hushed— perhaps the night is 
 too dry.* 
 
 The sneezing and hoof-beats of a horse in the pasture 
 opposite, across the road, are exceedingly loud and near, 
 although the animal is invisible, so thick is the air. 
 
 Far down in the valley lights tremble and palpitate ; 
 the stars, less bright, are peeping out. 
 
 Two or three times lately (sitting alone in my ro6m 
 at night, or lying awake in bed) I have been startled by 
 the clear loud jingle of a song sparrow; and last night I 
 heard suddenly a field sparrow's long rippling note. 
 
 If the large-eyed hermit thrush presents an elfish 
 aspect, there is also something freakish and sprite-like 
 in the demeanor of the veery, in its general appearance 
 
 * "The piping of frogs " must be the notes of the hylas, and the " spring tree 
 toad" was probably the common toad. 
 
58 STOWENOTES 
 
 and expression closely resembling the hermit thrush. If 
 it is less shy, it is more startling : its swift short flights, 
 its cheat of ventriloquism, the loud abrupt note heard 
 here, there, on every hand, which the ear can hardly 
 reconcile as coming from the same source that gives so 
 strange, caressing, and almost musing an utterance in 
 the song. 
 
 Verily the thrushes have inherited the spirit of the 
 elves and the dryads. 
 
 The hermit thrush sings not long after his arrival, 
 but the veery allows a long interval to elapse between his 
 coming and his song. He cannot sing in bare open 
 branches; he must flit unrecognized, silent, except for 
 a loud and vibrant call, until the leaves have come. He 
 must have the mystery of the leaves, a hiding— the 
 sylvan singer whose voice is the heart of the mystery. 
 
 To-night I heard his song ring up from the swamp, 
 that dreamy and ecstatic tone, that swooning sweetness, 
 spiced with a bitterness. His is the last exquisite touch, 
 the crowning charm, the very flower of bird song— and 
 yet, as I write this, I feel as if I did wrong to the im- 
 mortal spirit of the hermit thrush. 
 
June 
 
JULY 
 
 After the tornado of yesterday, walk in the South 
 wood, where branches are strewn, and trunks prostrate ; 
 even while there I hear a tree come down with a splinter- 
 ing sound— a prolonged crash. 
 
 As I cross the mowing in the long grass, the ripe 
 nodding heads of timothy look like a purple ripple on a 
 green sea. 
 
 The strange and elfin look of the thrush. Its large 
 eye — its looks are no less distinguished than its song. 
 
 The other night a hoot owl in the sugar-wood. 
 
 A flock of snowbirds uttering a hard unfamiliar cry, 
 and I hear the chickadees make their winter note. Ther- 
 mometer all day fifty-eight degrees at highest. 
 
 Few stars in moon-flooded sky. Stars shone dim, 
 fainting in the pale sky. Moonlight — almost full moon. 
 
 What a walk in the cool night air— so ample a night ! 
 Such refreshing air, with a hint, a tinge of iciness. "One 
 star of such abundant lustre hung low above that pallid 
 gleam" — faint suggestion of a semi-sunset hue above 
 the western hills — a pale dawning at nine o'clock. 
 
 Loud sound of running water, wherever water runs, 
 falling of a sudden on the ear— difference of degrees of 
 silence, even in country, by day and night. At a quarter 
 
 59 
 
6o STOWENOTES 
 
 past eight, birds — mountain-side, the valley, ringing 
 with answering calls. Later (a thrush?) a soft musical 
 call out of the darkening woods. 
 
 Spider webs in the air; winged things— moths- 
 flying, a large one fluttering in front of my eyes. Sweet 
 scents. Gurgling, tinkling waterfalls. Quantities of 
 fireflies— hillside spangled — on grassy mound, dancing 
 under the moon. 
 
AUGUST 
 
 Yesterbay, under a sky of portentous rain, I walked 
 in the west pasture; indeed a scattering of cold drops 
 was in the air, and the wind blew by puffs and flurries 
 from the south. I stopped before a thicket of sumach 
 that stood arrayed on the slope like a band of green- 
 coated warriors, each crest conspicuous with its crimson- 
 red cockade. Suddenly there was a stir and commotion 
 in the silent ranks, and the gust, upturning the pale 
 under sides of the leaves, passed like a shivering gleam 
 of swords among them — a martial salute, most thrilling 
 and dramatic. 
 
 On the Mountain I saw young redpolls among the 
 dwarfed balsams at the very summit. It is curious that 
 they should breed there.* 
 
 Here, from the tent the other day, young snowbirds 
 in the branches of the pine. And yesterday evening, fol- 
 lowing a high frog-like note, I found on the twigs of a 
 raspberry bush a little round soft yellow-brown ball, 
 checked ofif like a large variety of raspberry. It was a 
 little goldfinch, its note an exceeding high-pitched, in- 
 fantile, innocent sound, an unmodulated repetition of 
 
 * Possibly these were pine siskins, as there is no record of redpolls breeding 
 in New England. [ The editor is indebted to Mr. Francis H. Allen for sugges- 
 tions in footnotes on pages 44, 45, 57, 61, and 163.] 
 
 61 
 
62 STOWENOTES 
 
 "ba-bee, ba-bee, ba-bee." It made no effort to avoid my 
 grasp, and nestled quietly in the hollow of my hand. 
 Only when I showed it the canaries in their cage did it 
 struggle and utter its little call, evidently mistaking the 
 canary for its parent. 
 
 Griming back into the road to replace this one on its 
 raspberry bush, I found another; but the second, though 
 apparently of the same brood, was larger and better able 
 to use its wings. 
 
 I think perhaps at this time of year that the ash is the 
 most vividly green of any tree. 
 
OCTOBER 
 
 This afternoon in the swamp, where the south wind 
 stirred the remaining leaves of the birches and lifted the 
 flat sprays of hemlock and fir, looking southward the 
 light was soft and glittering on the moving foliage, and 
 made of the naked twigs a silver net, like a spider's web. 
 The voices of the red squirrel, of the snowbird, and the 
 nuthatch and the drum of the woodpecker were heard. 
 From beneath a fallen spruce a rabbit started and leaped 
 in a wide circle, pausing at shelter by a hemlock stump or 
 among the debris of a fallen tree, sitting erect with ears 
 laid back. No hint yet of winter in her coat. A young 
 white pine tree, smooth of bark, slim and tapering, with 
 boughs of a bright green — the brightest piece of color in 
 the swamp — lay half-uprooted by the heavy wind of last 
 Saturday. 
 
 To-night a filmy thickening of the air, a blue haze 
 upon the mountains, soft but bright; against this, the 
 dark forms of young spruces, the curving lines and 
 triangles of bare boughs, the pale surface of the pasture ; 
 above, a moon less bright, but more golden in color, and 
 surrounded by a circle of faint radiance. 
 
 The sunset very beautiful, lilac, purple, magenta, 
 those reposeful combinations of red and blue predomi- 
 nating—the clouds long, flimsy, scattered and wild in 
 distribution, like mares'-tails. 
 
 Much charm in the evening, something caressing, 
 yet startling, in the soft but gusty wind ; there is mystery 
 with repose, and yet a sense of hurry and flutter. 
 
 63 
 
NOVEMBER 
 
 To-day has been cloudy, with a southeast wind. 
 Passed over elevated and lonely road that commands an 
 extended view— to-day a waste of cloudy darkness. The 
 hills, when not wholly obscured in the mist, were dark 
 purple below an inky sky; sometimes the patches of 
 naked woods showed pale upon the landscape, which 
 about sunset time was sunk in portentous gloom. 
 
 Later the wind increased, the air was filled with the 
 roar of the distant woods. The pine before the door 
 tossed and surged, and the wind rushed through it with 
 the sound of a mighty torrent. The naked trees joined 
 the uproar in a hollow rumble, like the roll of drums. 
 Dead leaves rose and spun in the air, speeding toward 
 one out of the darkening mist. 
 
 To-day saw a young or very tame snow bunting. 
 
 This morning showed a gray world and a heavy sky. 
 Out driving, the loose snow proved a difficulty, balling 
 heavily on Polly's hoofs. Clearing in afternoon ; shafts 
 of gleaming sunlight across the valley. Little hemlocks 
 and conical spruces snow-encrusted, snow tracing on the 
 edge of the woods following branch and twig. Later, 
 patches of blue sky, and beautiful towering cloud- forms. 
 Went down the road, tempted by the tameness of the 
 snow bunting that for several days has made it her 
 
 64 
 
NOVEMBER 65 
 
 haunt. I took bread with me in the hope of feeding her. 
 She would allow me to approach within a few yards and 
 throw crumbs almost upon her, when, taking fright, she 
 would spread her glancing white wings and gain a safer 
 distance with a swift low flight. 
 
 On the promise of a fine sunset, walked toward the 
 Governor's woods. There, among bare trees, still in the 
 cold twilight, beyond their black boughs I saw the "cold 
 fire" of a winter sunset— Romeo's fantastic coupling of 
 opposites made truth. 
 
 The wood was silent; although a faint wind was 
 blowing, the delicate twigs were stiff and motionless, 
 finely drawn on the sunset, where the general amber dis- 
 persion of light was broken by dark and solid clouds, and 
 on the crown of the hills glowed a bright metallic red— 
 almost rosy. 
 
 Across the fields, home. Little grassy tracks in the 
 snow mark the peregrinations of the calves and horses. 
 The Mountain shows vast and hoary. The eye with de- 
 liig'ht follows on, over snowy track and dusky wood, far 
 to the blue wave of the northern hills. 
 
 I look back at the glowing sky and the leafless tree- 
 tops; then at the dark rich loam, newly turned by the 
 plow, at the snow-covered pasture— its wide sweep and 
 cold bare outline against the sky. Winter ! it is a word 
 to conjure with. I felt an impulse of delight, vague as 
 instinct, tugging at my heart. Almost I begin to hold 
 opinion with Pythagoras, that in some previous exis- 
 tence I knew another life— that of some wood-haunting, 
 winter-loving creature. 
 
 To-day Mr. Cobb showed me a mink and a fox skin ; 
 
66 STOWENOTES 
 
 Henry trapped both animals near the farm. The foxes 
 cross the ridge of the hill, passing from one wood to the 
 other. Henry caught two last night. 
 
 Went with Mr. Cobb to his sugar-house, which is 
 being fitted to receive a second evaporator. He has eight 
 hundred tin buckets and pipes. Last year tapped nine 
 hundred trees. Sometimes, he says, when the sap is 
 running well, one can hear it fall, tap, tap, into the pails 
 all about one in the wood. 
 
 A rainy dull November day ; wind from the south. 
 
 About a quarter past three, walk. Thermometer in 
 the neighborhood of forty-two degrees. No rain. 
 Slightly condensing mists, hanging low on the hills. 
 Over the wet and leathery surface of fallen leaves in the 
 dim and indistinct wood, the faint light, in the absence 
 of shadow that so helps the eye in relation to form and 
 limit, made the wood as indecisive as twilight. 
 
 Southward I heard voices and the fall of an axe — 
 sometimes clear and sharp, stroke on stroke, with a slight 
 ringing reverberation, sometimes muffled. 
 
 I came out on the pasture, which I call the region of 
 Christmas trees. The small full spruces looked soft and 
 furry in the mist, and very dark. The woods in the dis- 
 tance were a pale mauve tint, the evergreens bluish ; they 
 seem taller. 
 
 Sounds : 
 
 The voice of the hired man directing the plow. Below 
 a certain degree in the sound the voice occasions no re- 
 sponse, but when raised loud and harsh the echo rattles 
 in the thin belt of trees by the swamp. The grinding of 
 
NOVEMBER 67 
 
 the plow in the furrows can be distinctly heard a hundred 
 yards away. It is the voice of angry expostulation that 
 forces the echo. A note of satisfaction, of cheery en- 
 couragement, drops musically and sinks on the damp air. 
 
 A squirrel's bark from the swamp sounds clear and 
 loud, but the whistling and purring interlude comes very 
 faintly. The note of a chickadee, so indistinct as to be a 
 characterless sibilant, something like the "answering 
 shrill of the gauze-winged katydid" heard from a dis- 
 tance of a summer night. 
 
 Home by the road, passing the meadow, where some 
 cows are waiting at the gate. Among them is a partly 
 Jersey heifer with a peculiar development of a winter 
 coat, a growth of longish hairs on the forehead, like a 
 horse's forelock. They are very tame, gentle, and 
 curious. They press up to the fence, thrust their heads 
 through the bars to sniff my boots and lick my coat. 
 
 While I was watching the cows, the oxen came down 
 the road over the hill from plowing. Being large, white, 
 red-flecked Durhams, they are conspicuous gaunt forms 
 in the muffling twilight, the large iron ring on the yoke 
 clanking louder as they approach. 
 
DECEMBER 
 
 This morning there was a high wind from the south- 
 southwest. Nature in these moods is satisfying: no 
 matter how high she raves, she cannot rant ; you are al- 
 ways conscious of reserved power, as actors say. The 
 leaping snowflakes vaulting the stone wall opposite, and 
 flying straight at the windows, seem intelligently par- 
 ticipant in the exultation of the storm, and yet, out of the 
 direct force of the wind, they circle slowly, and meet the 
 ground with a soft conclusive touch that seems to indi- 
 cate a grateful sense of repose. 
 
 This southwest wind sometimes develops a spirit too 
 boisterous for the comfort and safety of many of Na- 
 ture's children. The white pine in front of the door lost 
 one of its heavy under branches, which, being weighted 
 with ice, snapped in too rough a greeting of the wind. 
 Yet they seem on excellent terms— nevertheless it is the 
 steady icy flow of the north wind that induces the pine's 
 best music. 
 
 Among the Pilgrims. I sit on a stump at the north- 
 ern edge of the wood, and look far over the dun fields 
 and white roads to the Eden mountains. The northern 
 sky imitates the colors of the landscape, dun and dark 
 blue, and just at the very point of north there is a break 
 in the clouds, and a clear and precious glimpse of pale 
 
 68 
 
DECEMBER 69 
 
 blue sky. The northeastern horizon has the appearance 
 of a summer storm, the black ragged curtain overhang- 
 ing a blank illuminated sheet of gray, as of rain. Against 
 this, the bare boughs and few tawny beech leaves present 
 a picture that is a very vivid recalling of autumn. 
 
 There is an old boulder in the Pilgrim woods, and 
 the mouldering mossy sides are further softened by the 
 powdery ridges of snow. I saw some green ferns. 
 
 A small but half -blasted ironwood (hop-hornbeam) 
 punctured in circles with most curious precision. Wood- 
 peckers ? I noticed the newer punctures followed on the 
 trunk in spirals. 
 
 On the rocky pasture, the mosses in part absorb the 
 snow, which falls mostly in a half-melted form more like 
 hail, into their spongy interstices. They are therefore 
 partly on the surface of things, enough to hint at their 
 form and color. The dry pale green, the purplish brown, 
 and the lilac have thus the most beautiful appearance, 
 apparently just silvered over by the snow. As a surface 
 to walk upon, they are a luxury greater than a Turkey 
 carpet, being as soft, and of more elasticity. 
 
 Under the large and generous-reaching white pine 
 I sit, leaning against the trunk, and listen to the wind. 
 There is no tree that gives so soft, so sonorous a sound, 
 particularly in the higher (tenor?) tones. 
 
 The other day I saw a pine grosbeak in the cranberry 
 bush in front of the house. He seemed very tame. I 
 was stealing past him to go in and get my glass, but just 
 then two flew out from the pine close at hand, and he 
 took flight with them. The suddenness of their flight 
 
70 STOWENOTES 
 
 suggested the alacrity of alarm ; they sprang into the air, 
 and flew rapidly southward, with a plaintive and broken 
 cry. 
 
 This morning clear and beautiful; thermometer 
 about thirty-two degrees, cold steady northwest wind. 
 
 In the afternoon to the village. At the blacksmith's 
 shop, waiting for Polly's shoes to be changed and the 
 points sharpened. The forges worked by means of old- 
 fashioned bellows ; the accumulation of odd bits of scrap- 
 iron, the inevitable environment of every blacksmith, so 
 universal and so unused that it seems a kind of conven- 
 tional setting— stage properties. 
 
 I took the opportunity to walk up F.'s hill, where I 
 have not been now for over a year. The moment I set 
 foot in the little plateau, its peculiar charm was upon 
 me. I think of all places this must always seem the most 
 beautiful to me. I picked a few white violet leaves half 
 hidden under the snow, where the white violets have 
 never failed me before. 
 
 I took off my coat, for it is always warm and balmy 
 in this spot, sheltered from winds (all except the north- 
 east), and sat down at the foot of one of the naked old 
 maples. The view was at once strange and familiar. 
 The bare trees threw open much that was formerly ob- 
 scure, the course of the river in particular. The only 
 snow visible from this point lies along the pastures on 
 the higher slopes of Hogback, the valley a stretch of 
 bare fields, in which the evergreens of the graveyard are 
 prominent. I walked around the plateau and renewed 
 my acquaintance with the trees, the gnarled old apple 
 trees, the majestic group of maples in the centre, the 
 
DECEMBER 71 
 
 white birch, aspens, and cherries that crown the knoll at 
 the southern extremity, and the alder bush near by. 
 
 I even climbed the crest in search of a beech that I 
 once thought of painting, and so had a view of snow- 
 crowned Mansfield. I was sorry to see one of the old 
 ashes on the slope uprooted and prostrate. But nowhere 
 was there the trace of an axe. It is this retired repose- 
 ful character that makes this hilt so charming. It seems 
 to be a place overlooked and neglected — a forgotten 
 nook. The farm is too much a farm, the fields are 
 fenced carefully to their limit, and every woody spot has 
 its barrier close in its shadow; but here fences are a 
 decayed institution: the pasture gives freely upon wood 
 and orchard. 
 
 What lends an added charm to this solitary nook and 
 makes its repose doubly appreciable is that although it is 
 so cozily hidden, and seems to lie lonely, belted with hill 
 and wood and open only to the sky, yet the sounds of the 
 village penetrate its quiet; they rise to it softened by 
 distance — the crowing of cocks, the rattle of wagons, 
 the ringing of forges. 
 
 Waiting for Leon at the schoolhouse, looking across 
 the hotel grounds, I saw the clouds rosy-tinged over the 
 western hills. This was no less the revivifying of old 
 and lovely impressions. 
 
 Coming out from the wood on the meadow east of 
 the farm buildings, elevated much above them, a perfect 
 picture of Winter— the sky a uniform leaden gray, the 
 mountains slaty-blue against it, the snowy outline of 
 Mansfield, that from this point holds the centre of the 
 
72 STOWENOTES 
 
 picture with an effect of towering grandeur, faintly in- 
 dicated. The sun must already have set; there is no 
 light in the southwest, but directly south there is a faint 
 gleam. The thin smoke from the farm rises against the 
 Mountain; the picture is rapidly dissolved into the 
 wintry dusk. 
 
 One of the men came down from the barn, and before 
 going indoors brushed his boots off with a broom that is 
 set in the back porch for that purpose, accompanying 
 himself with his tuneless jerky whistling— a primitive 
 strain, a few notes doubtfully accordant, which, like the 
 jarring tones of the hard-handed men of Athens, seemed 
 the air expressive of the hired man. After he had closed 
 the door, some disjointed notes came somewhat fainter, 
 "heard off," as after an exit, when the stage is left 
 vacant. 
 
 This afternoon the, wind blew steadily, but with a 
 soft touch, from the southwest. Out walking in the 
 west pasture. The evergreens are tossed violently in the 
 wind, the pines turn pale, the hemlocks are touched with 
 silver, only the spruces never change color; there is 
 something admirable in their unchanging vividness of 
 hue, a suggestion of sturdy indifference. The hemlocks 
 seem to acknowledge a chill in the wind; as it stirs in 
 their branches with a silvery gleam, they seem to shiver. 
 How velvety they appear, looking north on the side ex- 
 posed to the rufifling gust ! 
 
 The mountains are sharply outlined— Camel's Hump 
 rises into the exultant windy sky, against the broken 
 golden lights, under the clouds southward. To the north 
 
DECEMBER 73 
 
 the sky is open, crossed by massive scattered clouds. 
 From time to time the sun bursts out, with a strength 
 that fairly makes one open one's eyes. The landscape 
 glows; every hint of color is revealed to the utmost. I 
 come upon two old balsam poplars of considerable size, 
 whose ragged acute-angled boughs are interesting 
 against the sky — the moving clouds. I notice a chick- 
 adee on a dead tree, and afterward flying among the 
 evergreens. He is not lugubrious to-day, with his 
 hoarse "deedeedeedee" ; he flies blithely, uttering an 
 elastic chirp. He is busy earning his living— or getting 
 his dessert. He earns it by his beauty and his courage. 
 He is an admirable spectacle of courageous innocence; 
 a lovely little bird. 
 
 It is an unspeakable delight to be out to-day, to feel 
 the rush and hear the tumult of the wind. 
 
 At the farm are two fan-tailed pigeons, late importa- 
 tions from Ohio. They are out sunning themselves and 
 fluttering on the windy ridge of the stable. They per- 
 haps think it is spring. 
 
 Just before sunset there was a strong golden glow 
 upon the woods northward, and the shadows became, by 
 contrast, a clear blue. 
 
 I was going to say a memorable sunset; but it is 
 difiicult to keep a sunset in memory, no matter how 
 deeply one may be impressed at the time. It is as if an 
 exquisite and complex melody should be played once, and 
 only once. 
 
 There are sunsets that seem peculiar to the season, 
 and some that express a mood appealing to certain emo- 
 tions : it may be that it is a matter of memory and asso- 
 
74 STOWENOTES 
 
 ciation. But this sunset (as all sunsets that disclose, 
 beyond heavy clouds, a clear and pale illumined space— 
 an unfathomable, illimitable sea of light) is, in my mind, 
 as the background and atmosphere of Romance. 
 
 I was suddenly aware of the crescent moon, white 
 when I first spied it, but after I had gone indoors it shone 
 with a clear and cold splendor. 
 
 Long after the heavier masses of clouds had lost 
 their gold edges and were left in outer darkness, small 
 shredded fragments, apparently behind them, were of a 
 delicate pink, against the blue and lovely green of the 
 illumined sky. 
 
 Last night an exceedingly high wind with some snow 
 —a good deal drifted. 
 
 At noon to-day I saw a flock of whitewings sweep 
 across the garden, truly like large snowflakes, only they 
 sped in the eye of the wind. The direction they took was 
 southwesterly. I walked over the south pasture to the 
 wood, in hope of getting another glimpse of them, but 
 without success. As soon as the thermometer sinks to 
 the neighborhood of zero (its highest was eight degrees 
 to-day, from noon to half past three) and the winds 
 bluster, as soon as the climate becomes temperate from 
 their point of view, they come speeding down from the 
 terrible arctic solitudes. 
 
 Stepping out into the wind to-day was like a plunge 
 in cold water — it took my breath away. 
 
 This evening the wind seems to have abated its force ; 
 the stars and the crescent moon shine tranquil and bril- 
 liant. 
 
DECEMBER 75 
 
 Yesterday was cold but windless, with a slow con- 
 tinuous fall of minute star-shaped crystals, the flake at 
 its finest. 
 
 To-day a high wind; I notice again that hollow 
 sound, as of the roll of muffled drums, that the wind 
 makes in near leafless trees. The sugar-wood roared 
 like the surf after a storm, with an underlying deep tone, 
 and sometimes angrily as the grasping undertow on a 
 pebbly strand. 
 
 To-day noticed a blue jay hopping about in the door- 
 yard. The black crest is velvety; the blue along the 
 neck, shoulders, and back is a beautiful color, but dull 
 and purplish. The brilliancy of the plumage is in the 
 bright gleaming metallic blue of the wings and tail. A 
 gorgeous bird; its splendid plumage is a delight to the 
 eye, but its sly ways, its dandified air, and its harsh note 
 destroy your sympathy. It is not classed among the 
 cherished of Nature's wild creatures. 
 
 The other night, after sunset, a man passed down 
 the road, a muffled figure, dark and obscure; the moon 
 had not yet risen, but there was a kind of pale brightness 
 that seemed rather to emanate from the ground (snow- 
 covered) than from the sky; and the indistinct form re- 
 ceived a singular significance from the gleaming steel 
 head of the axe slung over his shoulder. The more ob- 
 scure the man's form, the more significant this cold and 
 sinister gleam. 
 
 In the afternoon a flock of snow buntings in the 
 mowing, toddling in the snow, fighting, flirting their 
 
76 STOWENOTES 
 
 wings, and suddenly taking fright, or on a common im- 
 pulse rising in a cloud and sweeping over the fields. In 
 the snow they did not appear to be very white— their 
 brown markings and the black wing-bars were most ap- 
 parent; but in flight, against the dark sky and darker 
 wood, the display of white wings was dazzling. 
 
 This morning there was a soft feeling in the air, a 
 moist touch in the wind, that was spring-like. 
 
 This afternoon the sun came out and threw lines of 
 brilliant light across the dark hills. A slight and inter- 
 mittent fall of snow, a few flakes floating on the edge of 
 the sunshine. The deep yellows of the near fields and 
 the excessive blueness of the distance give the landscape 
 at this time of the year peculiar interest, the transitions 
 being sudden. 
 
 The farms in the valley on the road that crosses to 
 West Hill lie very pleasantly. A farm ought to suggest, 
 better than any other collection of buildings whatever, a 
 reposeful permanence. These farms that lie in the very 
 palm and peaceful centre of the valley give this impres- 
 sion, lacking to those that seem to cling uneasily to hill- 
 sides. 
 
 Besides this, the formation of the land at this spot 
 helps the impression. The mountains rise high on the 
 east and west, and yet at breathing distances; to the 
 south they dip and meet and seem to form a notch, or 
 narrow and difficult channel to the outer world, and 
 crowning the depression, of a fainter blue to indicate its 
 distance, rises the peak of Camel's Hump. The valley 
 
DECEMBER 77 
 
 widens and lies open to the north, bounded by a blue 
 wave of hills, low on the distant horizon. 
 
 Looking north gives wings to the imagination, and, 
 lacking this outlet, the present nestling would be perhaps 
 imprisonment. 
 
 There are beautiful patches of woodland here, the 
 maples much intermixed with evergreens, which show 
 in interesting contrast upon the purple shadow of the 
 underwood scenes. 
 
 Rain and mist. 
 
 The evergreens along the ridge east of the Iron 
 Spring road are beautiful. They assert themselves 
 nobly on this naked landscape. The deciduous trees 
 among them are faint as smoke— a reddish cloud that 
 hovers in among the solid green branches. There are 
 several openings into this wood, that yawn like the 
 mouths of caverns and are infinitely suggestive — they 
 invite your fancy, they seem the openings into Fairy- 
 land, the introduction to a thrilling robber story. 
 
 Mingled with the purple cloud of twigs, wreaths of 
 mist float among the spruces and hemlocks. 
 
 Of the cloudy appearance of twigs, the best effect is 
 perhaps in apple orchards, where the trunks (grayish in 
 clear, and black in rainy weather) seem set about by a 
 kind of dusky halo. 
 
 The sober hues of this landscape, especially of the 
 distance, are very restful, the proper tone after the glare 
 of snow-covered fields. The first thaw revealed green 
 grass in many places; this time (thaw number two) 
 there are none such, but all a dull and sombre dun color. 
 
78 STOWENOTES 
 
 The fields where grain has been cut, wheat or barley or 
 oats, show the whitish stalks, like the edge of ruffled 
 velvet. The pastures (palest in summer) are richest in 
 color now ; where a kind of sorrel has grown they show a 
 dull orange, the once green brakes now brown and 
 orange in hue. 
 
 The willows are yellow — a point of color in the land- 
 scape ; among them are many alders, with their dark red 
 catkins, that Thoreau held so dear. 
 
 Not long ago, on looking out at my window facing 
 eastward toward the sun, I saw the trees in a delicate 
 frost foliage of a cloudy whiteness in the distance, and 
 near at hand the boughs were ropes of silver, flashing 
 forth brilliant diamond sparkles. 
 
 On examining this phenomenon an hour later, I 
 found every branch and twig set with flat crystals, 
 disposed at every conceivable angle, and, in whatever 
 view regarded, reflecting the light with dazzling bril- 
 liancy. 
 
 This strange appearance may have been due to a 
 sudden fall of temperature, this crystal shower with 
 which the air is filled adhering as it touched, the tem- 
 perature of the trees being gradually affected by the 
 increased cold. 
 
 It is not at all remarkable that these winter 
 phenomena of frosts should be in popular fancy attrib- 
 uted to an unnatural agency, for the effect is so artificial, 
 or strikes one as so, in the suddenness of its execution, 
 and in its suggestion of forms achieved in the deliberate 
 
DECEMBER 79 
 
 processes of Nature or Art. So the arboreal world 
 seemed in a night to have sprouted into spring foliage, 
 or on nearer observation to have been, by some miracle 
 of Art, silvered and bejewelled. 
 
 Every day I am delighted at the appearance of the 
 cranberry bush in the dooryard. Every leaf has left 
 long ago, but the clustering crimson cranberries remain, 
 defying frost and thaw, unwithered, and of as bright a 
 color as when they first ripened in the autumn. 
 
 Two geese or loons flying north-northwest, high, in 
 a bee-line to the Mountain. Is a thaw at hand ? Have 
 they any notification that the lake will open to receive 
 them? 
 
 It was at sunset when I drove up the hill, and sud- 
 denly, startled by the sound of sleigh-bells, a large flock 
 of birds left the ground, springing up from the snowy 
 undulations of a pasture, and by the sudden display of 
 white wings I knew them for snow buntings. They flew 
 vigorously, some fluttering, dropping down the air, and 
 dashing on again like flakes on a wild northwest wind, 
 precipitated southward. 
 
 The moon is well named Diana— of so cold and im- 
 passive a countenance. The stars seem to express much 
 more : they twinkle with a friendly brightness. 
 
 I learn that it was twelve degrees this morning in the 
 village. 
 
 The geese were no geese in respect of their wisdom— 
 they were well informed: a soft south wind, rain, and 
 thawing follow on their flight 
 
8o STOWENOTES 
 
 The thaw has a purple-blue sky, and a glassiness and 
 somewhat yellowish tint on the face of the snow. 
 
 No blue jays. To exemplify the rarity of birds just 
 now, I may mention that my horse shied at a chickadee 
 that darted down from a barn roof abutting on the side 
 of the road. 
 
 A sudden change to extreme cold. Last night the 
 south wind made a great deal of noise in the trees out- 
 side of my window and under the eaves, but it did not 
 seem, after all, to be blowing very hard. The air was 
 soft, and not cold. The rain pattered on the glass. The 
 moonlight that filtered through the clouds, by reflection 
 from the melting snow, gave considerable brightness to 
 the night. There were light suggestive noises in and 
 out of doors. 
 
 A note for clear days : Smoke in a winter landscape, 
 against the earth, blue ; against the sky, purple. 
 
 Windless, still, absolutely clear. 
 
 The transitions in color on the even surface of the 
 snow being sharper, more sudden, than such variations 
 in summer, or at any other time of year, give the impres- 
 sion of an unusual amount of color in a winter landscape ; 
 the distance is more complex than at other seasons. 
 Shadows thrown from the belts of purple woodland are 
 a clear light blue ; where the wind has packed the snow 
 to form a crust, the surface presents a purple or pinkish 
 shade ; the drifting surface snow is a yellow-white near 
 at hand, in the distance threading the blue or purple 
 fields with lines of golden pink. 
 
DECEMBER 8i 
 
 How colorless are these winter skies ! It is only by 
 looking at the very apex of the sky that you are fully 
 convinced of its blueness. The mountains bathe in a 
 cold glory. It falls upon them breathlessly cold. They 
 are frozen, as completely tranced in it as the sapless trees. 
 
 The horizon sparkles in a flood of sunshine, cold, 
 cold as the streamers of the northern lights. 
 
EXTRACTS FROM NOTE-BOOKS 
 
 1887-1888 
 
THE SOUTH 
 
 Thomasville, Georgia, 
 March. 
 
 The trains loiter in as leisurely a fashion as in Ver- 
 mont. Since from Wilmington, North Carolina, the 
 country has undergone no change in general charac- 
 teristics — the inevitable pine, the clearing half cleared, 
 with blackened stumps protruding at short intervals ; the 
 wretched negro hovels, in so many cases no better than 
 the Irish shanties of the vacant upper part of New York, 
 often in appearance of as evil a construction as the out- 
 buildings, which for the most part seem to consist of a 
 chicken-house, etc. ; the glassless windows, wooden shut- 
 ters being the substitute; the mud chimneys; the en- 
 closure of rail fences. Peach trees, with their soft 
 rose-colored blossoms, alone give any touch of comfort 
 to the dismal scenery. 
 
 The atmosphere was hazy with the continual burning 
 for clearings, which goes on day and night. In many 
 places, where the pertinacity with which the pines have 
 held their ground has triumphed over the feeble enemy, 
 the trunks stand blackened; the method seems to be to 
 kindle a fire and trust that a clearing may be effected. 
 The pines, growing densely, branch meagrely even at 
 the summit. Many of them are marked— the wide open 
 
 8s 
 
86 STOWENOTES 
 
 scar cut with a hatchet. This cutting is made at various 
 heights from about eight feet down to two. Is this the 
 turpentine tapping, or is it preparatory to burning out 
 the trunk for clearing? 
 
 The land along the route seemed inhabited almost 
 exclusively by negroes. After Charlestown there was 
 an average of about two white men to every station, 
 Saturday evening at that. In South Carolina, a little 
 distance north of Florence, whenever the train came to 
 a standstill — it is hardly accurate to say "arrived at a 
 station" — troops of little negroes assailed those who 
 stood upon the platform, with entreaties to buy the wilted 
 handfuls of flowers they offered for sale. Among these, 
 a half -grown, hulking, dull specimen had added to his 
 ragged apparel something novel in the shape of an old 
 Confederate uniform coat, the brass buttons all intact. 
 These boys swarmed and struggled for the pennies 
 thrown them, hung upon the steps as the car started, and 
 dropped away one by one like a swarm of bees, always 
 loud and for the most part mirthful. 
 
 Here at Thomasville they look to me a good shade 
 darker than along by Charlestown. There was a min- 
 gling and a wide variation of types, but withal in general 
 an element of red observable, a decided flesh tint— how 
 local this expression appears here! Sometimes there 
 was a certain suggestion of the Arab rather than the 
 negro, but the combination of Caucasian feature and 
 light coloring is rare. The race characteristics gener- 
 ally assert themselves either in form or color. 
 
 Sunrise seen from back of train along the track. The 
 swamps on either hand, pines, and brooding buzzards. 
 
THESOUTH 87 
 
 Walk in pines; some of great height, crowned by a 
 comparatively insignificant tangle of branches, so wiry 
 and contorted ! They are to the character and direction 
 of ordinary branches (those of deciduous trees and most 
 evergreens that I know) as the antennae of Orthoptera 
 are to the antennae of Coleoptera. 
 
 These are loblolly pines — a few yellow said to be 
 intermixed. Down the glimpses on either hand, but 
 mostly where it lies lower on the edge of a marshy bit, 
 the lateral white bloom of the dogwood shows. In these 
 gloomy recesses of the wood the moss hangs from the 
 boughs of the pines and oaks, and the smooth white 
 trunks and heavy, dark, large-leaved, glassy foliage of 
 the magnolias offers a variety to the eye, weary with the 
 endless stretches of vertical trunks. 
 
 The odor of the pines met us like a welcome on the 
 threshold of the wood— sweet! There was a steady 
 breeze from the north. 
 
 Came suddenly upon an old friend among many 
 aliens — a beech; the leaves small, tenderly green; the 
 trunk lichen-stained. Of the unfamiliar trees the holly 
 is far the most amusing, one vine-hung, with the crisp, 
 sharp-edged, glassy, green leaves starting through the 
 dry netted twigs of the seemingly dead vine. The tree 
 about eleven feet high ; the trunk gray, straight, like the 
 trunk of a young forest maple growing under conditions 
 of damp and shadow. 
 
 At half past four this morning there was a great 
 piping utterance of birds. Trills, harsher low notes, and 
 a floating, thin, melodious cry— mockingbirds perhaps. 
 
88 STOWENOTES 
 
 I saw them a-plenty yesterday toward evening, silently 
 flitting from tree to tree, showing the white in wings and 
 tail. 
 
 The mockingbird's true note, is it not a note in the 
 higher scale of Pan's pipe, the veritable whistle of a reed 
 instrument ? A thin flute-like utterance ? 
 
 Spring is a rejuvenator everywhere, and works the 
 same jugglery in these sombre swamps. There is the 
 background, or rather setting (in the theatrical sense of 
 the word), of a strong, a Southern decadence. 
 
 Toward hotel through the dreary village, where 
 above in the hot sky the ragged buzzards sailed lazily. 
 This morning the court house was opened by a loud 
 crying on the porch— an official singsong, apparently. 
 Saw a large man in a light gray suit, to whom several 
 negroes touched their hats, and whom I guessed to be 
 the judge. 
 
 The pines everywhere. In a swampy bit, among 
 blackened trunks and charred stumps, the most beautiful 
 crocuses, so delicately white-stemmed, as large almost as 
 tulips. 
 
 Beautiful sunset, the sun as usual sinking a fiery disk. 
 Soft little clouds, thin wreaths and diminutive shoals (a 
 sky like the sandy shallow of a brook) all drawn ob- 
 liquely to the point of disappearance. Beautiful star- 
 light. 
 
 The upper branches of a little holly tree seen to-day 
 were in new and tenderly green leaf, from the extremity 
 of the twigs. 
 
THESOUTH 89 
 
 After tea we watched the children dancing in the 
 parlor of the Piney Woods Hotel. One little girl, whose 
 short curling brown hair, straight profile, strong chin, 
 long hands and feet, suggested the earlier Italian type 
 (the mediaeval) transmitted. She was a beautiful figure, 
 so gay, so gracious, so tenderly graceful. She moved, 
 or, better, flashed, with such harmonious speed through 
 the dance that it ceased to be a commonplace perform- 
 ance. The entire scene — the hotel ball-room, the little 
 merry figures, the rollicking old-fashioned dance — be- 
 came poetic in the light of her smiles, her bright side 
 glances, her quick elastic step, the dainty dignity of her 
 first bow to her partner, a very small boy, at the com- 
 mencement of the lancers. 
 
 The loveliness of her mien, her childish abandon, 
 that was always tempered by the refinement of a mani- 
 festly delicate nature, breathed a music that would have 
 shamed the unmelodious notes of the band, had it not 
 reclaimed these also with some touch of her magic. This 
 unconscious little magician, waving her fairy wand in 
 the prosaic environment of the Piney Woods — its four 
 walls ! 
 
 She seemed to have a pretty sense of humor also, as 
 when in the processional figure of the lancers she caught 
 the long locks of the little girl in front of her and pre- 
 tended to be driving. So clearly a vagrant impulse, so 
 daintily and merrily done, and without offense to the 
 child ! They were all smaller than she, and all seemed to 
 feel her gentle influence. She was kind, lively, and 
 withal wise in her management of them. She uncon- 
 sciously held the gaze of many in the room, without a 
 
90 STOWENOTES 
 
 touch of restraint or embarrassment. What a sight was 
 this, worth all the eloquence of the greatest modern 
 preacher— a sermon, a poem, a thing to thank God for, 
 a sight to reconcile a cynic! For myself, who am not 
 one, I acknowledge the Creation a success, since this lit- 
 tle girl dances the lancers of nights. 
 
 This morning I inquired my way of a fine-looking 
 man of the strong lean Southern type. He declared the 
 way I had come to be the only route, but being prompted 
 in a low tone by the negro, an intelligent-looking speci- 
 men, who occupied the front seat with him, he directed 
 me to take the road (pointing) "back of Mis' Mil- 
 ler's." 
 
 My second inquiry of a like nature was addressed to 
 a wagon-load of darkies, among whom, lazily at full 
 length, a heavy, rather brutal white man was lying— a 
 light-haired, light-eyed, planter-looking individual, who 
 raised himself on his elbow to reply. He was clearly the 
 presiding genius of the group, and lay so slothfuUy 
 among his black comrades, who were perched here and 
 there where they could find room for themselves, that 
 the whole scene in its sentiment and detail might have 
 occurred before the war. 
 
 Rain. Cleared off in the afternoon, and I walked in 
 the direction of the pines. The rain seemed to have done 
 a great deal for the scenery — given it depth, color, mys- 
 tery, thrown a poetic glamour over it that is foreign to 
 its dry, dusty, every-day aspect. 
 
 The mockingbirds sang exquisitely after the rain. 
 
THESOUTH 91 
 
 They are prodigal of their song; they almost cheapen it, 
 pouring it out to unappreciative ears, from porch, roof- 
 tree, and gable-end, with such unwearying skill, now 
 soft, now harsh, now loud, now low, liquid and shrill — 
 the most varied song that bird ever gave utterance to. 
 In the pauses of the song of the nearest, the far-away 
 whistling, or, better, piping, of others could be heard. 
 
 The tree toads seemed also to lift a voice of delight, 
 low, thrilling with the joy of existence. 
 
 By the negro cabins, heard voices and laughter and a 
 kind of chant, a musical singsong like the strange song 
 of the little negro boy heard crossing the clearing out in 
 the woods the evening before yesterday. His was a wild 
 kind of utterance, a succession of long-drawn notes of a 
 certain thrilling quality, that ceased with a melancholy 
 cadence. 
 
 Sunset, a breaking away of clouds in the west, deli- 
 cate fleecy points touched with gold, and later the 
 crescent moon clear and palely suggesting the full, and 
 the evening star extraordinarily bright. The moon 
 hangs with the horns upward, almost on a level — is this 
 due to our geographical position ? A clear night ; at half 
 past eight all traces of the clouds had disappeared, and 
 an hour later there was a film over all, with only a pale 
 gleam, like the memory of hidden stars. A wind stirred 
 in the pear trees, rustling the thick foliage. 
 
 Walk at five o'clock. Blue jays flashing like blue 
 flame through the dark foliage of cedars. Returning, 
 the air cold, a strong wind from the west, a fading sun- 
 
92 STOWENOTES 
 
 set, and the crescent moon faint upon it. March re- 
 asserting itself. 
 
 April. 
 
 Painting this morning among pitch pines— a great 
 relief to be rid, if it is only temporarily, of the loblolly 
 variety. This is a tree I admit I do not like; there is 
 something snake-like in the writhing direction of its 
 branches, to which the scaly bark gives a peculiar sig- 
 nificance. The color of the bark is crude also, and the 
 long tassels catch the sky light with a peculiar glassiness. 
 
 The trunks and branches of the Chinese umbrella 
 trees along the lanes are very interesting; they carry a 
 straight line almost to the limit of grace. The trunks, 
 purplish in color, are grained like a willow. They start 
 abruptly from the soil without divergent roots visible — 
 in this also like a willow. 
 
 A warm day. Walk in the afternoon about five. 
 Slight wind from southeast. Through pine woods, 
 out on the open road to the woody walk of March 30th. 
 Five o'clock in the afternoon is certainly the poetic hour 
 of the day. 
 
 Turning into the wood, where it is dusky, pass by 
 dogwood, sweet gimi, maple (soft), all in bloom — that 
 is to say, in comparative maturity of leaf ; the sweet gum 
 at a distance strongly suggesting rock maple. 
 
 A tender sky — I sometimes think the skies are of a 
 more delicate tint in April. The air soft as summer, 
 none of the rawness of spring, as indeed at no time, even 
 when we first arrived in the middle of March, have we 
 
THESOUTH 93 
 
 felt the discomfort of the wet raw air of a Northern 
 April. 
 
 It suddenly occurs to me to make a pilgrimage to my 
 beautiful friends, the beeches. Through brush and brier 
 to their locality. There they stand, environed by mag- 
 nolias and pitch pines, their smooth boles crowned by the 
 feathery spray of vivid green leaves; that dappled fell 
 looks so soft in the faint light that I fancy it must be as 
 velvet to the touch. The magnolias, whose smooth, 
 gray, and lichen-variegated bark I have so often seen 
 with satisfaction and likened to the beech, look cheap by 
 comparison. It maintains its preeminence without any 
 strain of prejudice or imagination. The most beautiful 
 tree in the world — Fagus americanus. Old friends in a 
 new habit ; for my previous acquaintance has been with 
 the summer-darkened hue of their leaves. 
 
 Home by a sandy half-obliterated road, pitch pines 
 (small) on the one hand, tanglewood on the other, the 
 red glow of the sunset ahead. 
 
 The light almost faded, and a shadow keeping pace 
 with me that owes its being to the moon, now drawing 
 the wild scattering of mares'-tails that have swept the 
 sky to-day. 
 
 Half past eight, wind gone around to west, soft mild 
 moonlit night. Something in the elastic and delicate air 
 —what, I don't know— keeps calling to my mind Her- 
 rick's poem, "Night Piece to Julia." There's a tropical 
 suggestion in it, as in so many English poems and poets ; 
 Shakespeare, Tennyson, Keats, Shelley, and others had 
 it. Under the surface ice there's a warmth in that 
 national life, strong and tenacious, luxuriant almost, so 
 
94 STOWENOTES 
 
 widely different from the healthy sterility of America, 
 of Germany too, perhaps even of France ; this heat in the 
 blood, this fire of poetry, has burst into flame at times in 
 the history of England. 
 
 The foliage very summer-like. The oaks, Spanish, 
 water, filling out solidly; the willows somewhat tardy. 
 On an afternoon, looking away from the sun, down one 
 of the streets, the distance is as blue as indigo, the shad- 
 ows also, even comparatively near. 
 
 I have seen several beautiful beeches. The other day 
 in the wood, a bark like a panther's skin, wrinkled at the 
 joining of the branches. 
 
 Night, moon well toward the full, an exquisite soft 
 air. At half past nine very silent ; a little tremulous tree 
 toad sound, the distant barking of dogs, no sound of 
 frogs. The sand in the street along the foot-paths white, 
 almost, as snow. Two or three cows walking along the 
 street, and a little white calf that gambols, almost si- 
 lently, on the sandy roadway. A mistiness over the 
 ground, rising dim against the pines, the stars bright 
 with softened brightness. 
 
 Walked under the large magnolia which forms the 
 principal object in my picture, and stood looking up 
 through the leaves, that are wonderfully heavy, leathery. 
 The light penetrates them, and the upward view is 
 through a sun-suffused, opaque green. This looking up 
 from the base of a tree through the leaves at the sky is 
 the most impressive view one can take of them — the 
 variety of color, the cool filtered sunlight caught on the 
 
THESOUTH 95 
 
 upper leaf surfaces and transmitted through the thin- 
 veined and delicate plates. Last evening at sunset, 
 standing under the oaks at the edge of the pine wood just 
 after the red glow had partly faded, and as the moon, 
 almost full, hanging too high to be dependent for color 
 on the west, began faintly to indicate the shadows of the 
 trees — looking up at the delicate clusters, darkened by 
 overlying leaves, fading to a faint transparent green at 
 the extremities, the capes, bays, and promontories that 
 bordered on the pale ocean of the sky — to see the leafy 
 continent shaken in the soft breathing of the air, shat- 
 tered and reuniting and beautiful in all its transitions, 
 was like looking into Dreamland. 
 
 The oaks are beautiful; the leaves grow straight to 
 the sun, so flat, and withal so feathery light. Herein 
 maples (soft maples) are disappointing, the broad green 
 leaf seeming to droop upon the stalk. The black gum 
 leaves, starting out in tiny clusters, make me think of 
 butterflies, as if the slender twigs might suddenly take 
 to wing. 
 
 At night. Misty moonlight; the moon seemingly 
 larger here than it is North. Heard a mockingbird sing- 
 ing—curious. They sing often on the wing — a short 
 flight. Their song rings all day through the village, and 
 is answered with notes as wild and beautiful from nu- 
 merous cages hung under piazza roofs and windows, but 
 I have never heard them in the wood. 
 
 Out riding to-day; passed through a wild kind of 
 country, by a log cabin (windowless) set in the midst of 
 the clearing. Three beautiful live oaks stood before it. 
 A great hound rushed out at me, snarling and barking, 
 
96 STOWENOTES 
 
 but was recalled by some one unseen. Passing the same 
 spot later, at about five, a little brown-haired girl sat in 
 the doorway, and in the lighted interior— for the sun, 
 entering at the open door in the rear, shone with a strong 
 white light on the objects within— sat an old woman. 
 The little girl seemed to be reading; a book lay in her 
 lap. 
 
 Down in a dusky corner of the clearing a white man 
 and a negro were plowing ; they were well in the shadow, 
 for the sun was then on the crown of the pines. The 
 place was indescribably dreary ; the trunks of dead trees 
 fifteen feet tall stood close in the plowed soil. 
 
 Later passed two white children, who tremulously, 
 with deft, nimble, naked feet, started out of the road, 
 and stood gazing at me with round eyes, like startled 
 woodland creatures. 
 
 Dark and dismal turns in the woods; in the many 
 swampy places tall yellow flowers, orchid-like, of a great 
 size ; the long afternoon rays searching the wood. 
 
 Home— the delicate-tinted sky, dusk, the round 
 forms and various colors of the oaks. 
 
 This afternoon out riding. Struck into the wood, 
 along a narrow sandy tract, and came upon a singularly 
 impressive and sombre scene. The brush had evidently 
 been lately burned, for all the tree trunks were black- 
 ened. They stood at long intervals, and a green mould 
 rather than grass, a level sward dotted with the great 
 fallen cones, stretched beneath. The trees were large 
 loblolly pines. The twisted and snake-like branches 
 stood out against the clouded sky. No bright gleam of 
 
THESOUTH 97 
 
 deciduous foliage lit up the scene; trunk behind trunk, 
 tall, straight as columns, the pines stretched away into 
 apparently endless vistas shut in by the blue of distance 
 and the confusion of this multiplied form — this closing 
 rank of giant trees. The land fell away, and then rose 
 opposite in a long and gentle swell, and the eye could 
 trace a winding way hundreds upon hundreds of yards 
 into the forest, over the even turf. The sun, triumphing 
 over the gathering clouds, cast long shades, straight 
 shadows that met in the gloom of a swampy recess, where 
 the brook, sluggish as are all the streams here, took its 
 course in silence. 
 
 Passed several deserted log cabins. Behind one, 
 with a void, black, and gaping door — windows they 
 have none— stood a mournful cedar. 
 
 In the wood to-day there was not a solitary bird note, 
 not even the tapping of a woodpecker. There was the 
 kind of resonance, a rumor of thin and airy sound, which 
 in summer seems a ringing in the ears, and likens the 
 circle of the atmosphere, the world, to a shell. 
 
 The summer here is more beautiful than the spring, 
 I am inclined to think, owing to the great mingling of 
 evergreens. There is no spontaneity in the laugh of 
 Spring ; it rings hollow among the pines. 
 
 The other night, passing the church on my way home 
 from the hotel, where I left a tinkling of dance music, I 
 heard the voices of the congregation rising to the long- 
 drawn notes of a hymn. Then, as often before, I felt the 
 force of the poetry in the common fate. There seemed 
 something fine, and severe to asceticism, in the barren 
 
98 STOWENOTES 
 
 life of the country. The Puritan impulse in my blood 
 rose at the sound. 
 
 Listening to this music, I realize for the first time 
 how little I have perceived the lonely and pathetic side 
 of the peasant life, the sad fate that attends the tiller of 
 the soil, the melancholy that gathers like darkness upon 
 the coming night. 
 
 I feel no common thrill of joy and sorrow; it is no- 
 where here. The people are alien, and have made the 
 country strange. Would to God that I were back in 
 New England ! 
 
 Beautiful, soft, hanging, floating, and mackerel 
 cloud ; sky faintly purple on horizon. 
 
 The other morning these oaks, now so full and 
 beautiful, stretched cool shadows across the white road. 
 
 There is rain in the air. A temperate, almost sultry 
 pause. A buzzard wheeling heavily. 
 
 This looking up at the leaves — a reminder of Fairy- 
 land—its fragile texture and vanishing shores. 
 
 Two nights ago a bat circling among the pines ; they 
 are interesting in their silent habit and their love of the 
 dusk. 
 
 Beautiful moonlight. The moon rising large, red- 
 dish, behind the pyramidal pear trees and the thin and 
 delicate branches of a little oak. 
 
 Walk at night (Saturday) along the Broad Street, 
 among the tatterdemalion throng of negroes coming in 
 
THE SOUTH 99 
 
 from the country for supplies. Last night the dancing, 
 surging negroes, the banjo and the cello, the parti- 
 colored costumes and the guffawing crowd. 
 
 The light greens of April under the dark blue, brood- 
 ing, cloudy sky, crossed with lighter white blown frag- 
 ments. 
 
 Beautiful sunny blue morning, with light floating 
 fleecy clouds. 
 
 Last night no mist, clear, with stars overpowered, 
 and some hanging low, pointing strange geometrical 
 figures like the hieroglyphics of the mystical Chaldean 
 lore. The low points of light, that seem to connect and 
 bring near to the earth the close tangle of the light 
 above, topping the dense dark masses of trees. 
 
 On the way from Camden to Columbia we travelled 
 under a lowering and melancholy sky, and leaving behind 
 us the dreary, dry, open wastes of sand, the level barrens 
 of oak and pine, we came into a wild and dreadful region, 
 a "desert inaccessible, under the shade of melancholy 
 boughs." 
 
 A dense cane-brake clogged the depths of the forest ; 
 it rose to the height of six or seven feet, and intertwined 
 among the stalks, and hanging on the meeting heads, 
 were leafy vines. Young trees started up in the midst of 
 the tangle, and the whole formed an impenetrable thicket. 
 Dark pools showed in among the brake, and winding 
 through the dismal forest were sluggish brown canals in 
 which rotting trunks were visible, their mud-coated 
 
100 STOWENOTES 
 
 slimy bulk thrust as alligators, or some other swamp 
 denizen, half out of water. 
 
 Sweet and black gum, post oaks, live oaks, and 
 cypress were conspicuous among the trees ; they rose to 
 a gloomy height, and thrust their haggard branches, 
 gnarled and moss-hung, against the cold dark sky. 
 
 Sometimes the bulk of foliage, the tangle of vines, 
 was a barrier to the eye; sometimes vistas opened to a 
 depth of heavier gloom. Such is a Southern swamp. 
 
 From Spartanburg to Asheville. Almost on the 
 boundary of North Carolina the mountains sprung up, 
 blue, indistinct — the air full of smoke. As the train 
 passed through the thick woody tangle, tiny fires, kindled 
 probably from the sparks and burning fragments from 
 the engine, were wavering in the strong southwest wind. 
 Sometimes we passed by larger fires, seemingly attempts 
 at clearing — charred and red smouldering logs, and here 
 and there a bright burst of flames. 
 
 In the cuttings through which we passed— the walls 
 clay and brown, earth-stained, slaty rock — the air 
 seemed damp like the air of a grotto. The road ran 
 partly on trestlework and high embankments shelving 
 precipitously from the ends of the sleepers ; once with a 
 dark lily-mottled pond below, down some forty feet 
 Streams on the mountain-sides, dashing over the brown 
 rocks. The pines that show here and there among the 
 still naked deciduous trees (oaks mostly) seem to express 
 the poetic conception of the tree — to stand, dark and 
 wild, striking root with adventurous courage, on barren 
 and inaccessible places. 
 
THESOUTH loi 
 
 The houses are very few, log cabins with the outside 
 mud chimney, sometimes clapboard buildings. Here a 
 house seems a settlement; three afiford a sufficient apol- 
 ogy for stopping, the third often being the unpainted, 
 rough, barn-like little station, with its platform in front, 
 close upon the track, the only architectural feature that 
 could in any way indicate the peculiar nature of its use- 
 fulness. The track twists and turns, and seems to writhe 
 its way into the mountains ; from the platform behind the 
 baggage car I can see the leaning wheels and the work- 
 ing piston as the engine sweeps some sudden curve, and, 
 following the direction of the track, I can see the rails 
 vanish into the hillside. 
 
 Oaks and, I think, tulip trees seem to be the largest 
 growth. Before reaching Hendersonville dogwood was 
 common, the white blossoms shining in the woods while 
 as yet the leaf-buds were hardly out. Some small oaks 
 retain their last year's leaves, but vegetation seems little 
 advanced, though it is now almost the middle of April. 
 It is about what one would expect in March. Scaly buds, 
 etc. ; the apple trees, some gnarled old specimens strag- 
 gling along the route, were in blossom. Wild honey- 
 suckles here and there showed prettily, and there was 
 sometimes dense undergrowth, a small shrub-like laurel 
 with longer (I think oblong) descending, seemingly 
 digitate leaves. 
 
 The sides of the hills unsheltered by the trees were 
 grayish or slightly colored by the mould of dead leaves. 
 Some of these brown skeletons (narrow and cut oak) 
 danced with a rustling sound in the windy wake. 
 
 The sun set round and red in the heavy air. It 
 
102 STOWENOTES 
 
 glowed behind the thin fringe of deciduous trees on the 
 mountain shoulders, and again, at a turn of the track, 
 would swing out and hang between the diverging hills. 
 It set several times that day, and finally, when it had 
 quite disappeared, a faint pink flush suffused the west- 
 ern sky. 
 
 Fastened to the last car was a truck on which sat two 
 mountaineers and a negro. The two former, stolid, 
 apathetic, with a rustic bearing, something more than 
 country awkwardness, that was the slow, meaning, 
 powerful attitude that is a kind of grace and is an at- 
 tribute of the peasant. They were of the evil, strong, 
 picturesque animal, such as one never sees in the North. 
 They represented the European peasant, and redeemed 
 the likeness with a saving kind of wildness. The feat- 
 ures of both were well moulded rather than cut; long 
 thin faces, rather long noses, eyes small, close, giving 
 them a furtive, watchful, rather than contemplative ex- 
 pression — the look of a wild animal — thin lips and small 
 chins, thoroughly American. Both sat with their hats 
 drawn over their eyes. 
 
 They never spoke to one another, they never even 
 smiled; they let their eyes wander, and occasionally 
 turned their heads from side to side, but otherwise they 
 were still as wooden images. This was the more re- 
 markable in the negro, whose pose, though it seemed 
 restful in the quietude he maintained, was a little con- 
 strained. He sat with his right leg extended, his left 
 crossed over it at a right angle with the knee, supporting 
 himself in an upright position by his right arm a little 
 bent, the palm extended flat upon the floor of the truck. 
 
THESOUTH 103 
 
 Around his thick swarthy wrist was a narrow black band 
 hke a strip of court-plaster, possibly a charm. 
 
 Another man, somewhat better dressed though less 
 picturesquely, a bearded fine figure with a rather intelli- 
 gent face, a foreman evidently, was standing on the back 
 platform. Arriving at the station, this one got off the 
 train, and the negro uncoupled the truck. They ran it 
 back a few yards, threw the shovels, etc., hastily upon 
 the ground, and finally lifted the truck bodily oif the 
 rails. They were interesting to watch, so silent and so 
 handy at their work. 
 
 In the course of the run, passing through the narrow 
 and sometimes steep cuttings, the dense black smoke 
 from the engine would pour down and hang in the open- 
 ing, so that as we left it we seemed to have escaped from 
 the infernal regions. The smoke cloud would fall with 
 the blackness of a thunder-storm, and on several occa- 
 sions threatened to envelop the little truck; at which the 
 two drew their hats further over their eyes, but other- 
 wise sat unmoved. 
 
 The twilight was cold, the evening cheerless on ac- 
 count of the gray smoky sky. Far away on either hand, 
 at a break in the hills, one could catch glimpses of further 
 mountains, ghostly thin. 
 
 There was a sweet smell from the earth. While in 
 the train I could hear a shrill whistling kind of note that 
 I took for a frog's, and later (at night) when we stopped 
 they were piping loud. A weird sound, almost like the 
 note of a bird, it was impossible to locate. The stars 
 shone very dim. 
 
 Far down in the narrow valleys were some log cabins. 
 
104 STOWENOTES 
 
 Could these cuttings be the "coves" of Miss Murfree's 
 Tennessee mountains ? 
 
 AsHEviLLE, North Carolina, 
 
 April. 
 
 Mountains rising on all hands, with a crowning 
 fringe of thin, leafless, deciduous stems, and pines. Air 
 cool, soft, very thick — smoke? 
 
 The red clay in a measure destroying the poetic sig- 
 nificance of the distant, far-stretching, and vanishing 
 roads. 
 
 A view (of a kind) from the hotel, but to us who 
 have so long pined on the Georgia levels, it opened with 
 a wide and pleasant effect. The sight of the mountains 
 put us at home. 
 
 Strong west wind ; beautiful effect of breaking clouds 
 over Pisgah and westward toward Tennessee. 
 
 Old farmhouse on the bank of the Swannanoa, with 
 one chimney matted with ivy stems carrying the leaves 
 to the very top. This is the first real glimpse of farms 
 and civilization that I have had as yet. It is delightful 
 in that it makes me think of home. 
 
 Road winding up the mountain-side; distance blue, 
 nearer hills purple, so soft with their clothing of decidu- 
 ous trees— like the withered goldenrods' stems in a 
 November field. 
 
 Chestnuts, red and white oaks, black birch, dogwood, 
 yellow and Table Mountain ( ?) pines, and occasionally 
 the beautiful, dark, gleaming, feathery foliage of the 
 white pines. The oaks are magnificent— their rugged 
 
7 
 
THESOUTH 105 
 
 boughs, growing gnarled and misdirected, having a sym- 
 metry of strength; they are imposing. Everywhere, 
 more especially in the wood, grow mountain laurel and 
 rhododendron. 
 
 The mountains to the north are the Rugged, Craggy, 
 and Black ranges. 
 
 The wind was blowing strong at sunset. Clouds, 
 aping the mountain shapes and extending the ranges in- 
 definitely, growing heavy and towering in the southwest, 
 caught the light. The sun sank round and red, and a hot 
 glow, as bright as blood, burned for a little behind the 
 western mountains. 
 
 Hot Springs, North Carolina, 
 
 April. 
 
 At night, the rush of the river. 
 
 Thunder-storm about half past four — hail, and a 
 driving wind that blew white storm-wraiths through the 
 rain. Clear again at five, the heavy mass of clouds 
 lifting like a curtain and disclosing the blue sky and 
 sparkling hilltops westward. 
 
 Swallows flew along the surface of the river; the 
 opposite bank was alive with bird notes. A pleasant 
 sound from the dripping rocks. The sun obscured ; the 
 scattered clouds, fragments again concentrating in the 
 west; the east clear and blue. The creek brawling 
 hoarsely. 
 
 On the way home, passed by some evergreens — some 
 cedars or junipers, whose foliage held the tiny raindrops, 
 sparkling amid the boughs like a beautiful iridescent 
 fruit, crystalline berries. 
 
io6 STOWENOTES 
 
 Clear windy morning. Wandered over to the little 
 island. Under the yellow pines ; the forget-me-nots star- 
 ring their mossy cushions— on such delicate fairy stems, 
 tremulously erect, growing so close in little oval patches, 
 like pools that mirror a delicate blue, an April sky. 
 White and blue violets growing rank as daisies ; exquisite 
 purple flowers, larkspur and ice-moss. 
 
 On visiting this spot before, the afternoon sun was 
 from time to time hidden in the clouds, so that there was 
 a beautiful play of light and shade on the moss. 
 
 Further on, at the edge of the shadow, where the road 
 gave out upon a bright sandy stretch sloping to the river, 
 the pines were replaced by a growth of young hemlocks, 
 under whose dark foliage the shade took on a cooler sug- 
 gestion. Of all evergreens, not excepting even my 
 friends the white pines, these appeal to me the most, with 
 their beautiful, graceful, and delicate branches tapering 
 to such fragile twigs — so smooth and light-hued in 
 saplings — their bright yet sombre foliage, their delicate 
 tiny cones. The poetic habiliment of the pine is theirs by 
 right. 
 
 Two old trees, a sweet gum and a sycamore, share the 
 guardianship of the little beach. Opposite, the rocky 
 bank rises precipitously; the river sweeps in an arc, of 
 which the beach is the centre, coming tumbling, yellow 
 and turbulent, from the east, and sweeping westward 
 under the rugged wall. 
 
 May. 
 Ride toward Paint Rock ; windy morning, but a burn- 
 ing summer heat out of the wind. Trees well out— red 
 
THESOUTH 107 
 
 oaks, black birches, buckeye, chestnut. Saw several in- 
 teresting birds— a cardinal, flashing like flame in the 
 dark boughs of a cedar ; though the simile is worn, the 
 wonderful brilliance of the bird plumage gave life to it. 
 Alders line the river — a natural hedge. 
 
 Several snakes lying dead in the road. Is it Long- 
 fellow, in "Miles Standish," who likens an Indian to a 
 snake ? The comparison seems very fit ; the strange and 
 varied markings of the skins suggest a fashion of war- 
 paint, for a snake is sinister in every habit of life— its 
 comings and goings seem to be directed along the war- 
 path. 
 
 Terribly hot in the morning ; a beautiful, mysterious 
 summer night. 
 
 The suggestiveness of summer!— a word that is so 
 weighted with the fullness of existence — means more to 
 me than any other word in the language, I think. 
 
 A strong wind from the east; near Paint Rock the 
 baying of hounds, deep, bell-like, with a full, prolonged, 
 and startling cry. 
 
 Home, facing the wind. A cold and shrouded sun- 
 set, the moon riding high, slightly tinged. 
 
 The butterflies gather and hover on this road, circling 
 and whirling like a dance of the fairies, the volatiles ! 
 
 Cloudy afternoon, rain about half past three. The 
 road beautiful, crossed by light and shadow, the foliage 
 almost summer-like. A beech exquisitely illumined ; the 
 boughs light transparent green in the shade, fairly glit- 
 
io8 STOWENOTES 
 
 taring with a white metallic sparkle in the sunshine. 
 The moss-stained face of the gray rock, over which 
 trickles the oozing of some tiny spring. A strong wind 
 and a threat of rain bring me home at the double quick. 
 
 A rainy outlook ; heavy, moist clouds stretching gray 
 across the sky, lifting low above the western horizon to 
 admit a pale yellow strip of light. 
 
 Crossing the ferry, I heard the thin elastic cry of the 
 nighthawks and saw them whirling high above. 
 
 Note the beauty of parallel lines, in the trunk of a 
 tree, in branches— the charm of bare and simple facts. 
 
 The devil's darning-needles that flew across my path 
 appeared more like the handiwork of a miraculously 
 skilful jeweller than Nature's production, so glistening, 
 so unreal. 
 
 Rather damp evening, misty. On the ride home the 
 wall-like hill from which the river seems to spring was 
 blank, desolately void in the obliterating mist. The 
 island is in full leaf, the trees round and green, of won- 
 derful variety of shade and form. 
 
 Yesterday, out riding, saw another dragon-fly, whose 
 wings were bronze-gold. The body was of the color and 
 iridescent glow of opaque glass, such as one sees often 
 in the stem of a goblet of Venetian ware. If it is true 
 that insects take their color and general appearance from 
 their surroundings, dragon-flies would seem to be relics 
 of the ages of brass and iron. Among such scenes they 
 might have winged a less startling flight. 
 
THESOUTH 109 
 
 Beautiful moonlight; moon almost on the full, I 
 think. The air, cleared by the rain, is crystalline. 
 
 The hills that rim this basin are clearly defined, 
 sharp, just under the moon, where a pyramidal pine- 
 crowned hill rises against the sky. In the clefts and 
 gorges the white mist-wreaths are gathering; to the 
 north a cloud rests on the mountains. High, high above, 
 almost in the apex of the arch, swings the Dipper, and 
 lower, pale but steadfast, trembles the Northern Star. 
 The planets shine with a deep and splendid radiance ; low 
 in the west, one, wonderfully luminous, flashes through 
 the branches of a locust. 
 
 My shadow lies as black and clear as if thrown by 
 some brilliant artificial light. A slight and cool wind is 
 stirring; it gently waves the branches of the trees. Fur- 
 ther to the west the line of the ridge is a little blurred. 
 The moon seeks out the masses of foliage, and wraps the 
 hills in an added shade of mystery. The eye, turned 
 away from the source of light, finds the scene gradually 
 growing, the details shaping out of the void. There is a 
 continuous and strange iteration. Can it be the cry of a 
 whippoorwill that comes up from the river ? 
 
 Listen to the negroes singing. How they love a slow 
 and melancholy cadence! Their songs were well sung, 
 and fell sweetly on the wilder far-off murmurs of the 
 night — the weird complaining of whippoorwills, the 
 shrilling of frogs, and the strong continuous rush of 
 the river. 
 
 On the beach the old sycamore has drawn an en- 
 chanted circle of shade about his whitened trunk. The 
 
no STOWENOTES 
 
 leaves catch the sky lights less glassily than the foliage 
 of other trees; the upper surfaces are often of a very 
 perceptible blue; they seem rather to absorb the color 
 than to reflect the light. 
 
 I had intended making my walk a short one, but the 
 charm of the place led me. Any summer afternoon will 
 suffice to elucidate the myths of the wood spirits— allur- 
 ing fairies, will-o'-the-wisps — the dumb welcome, the 
 detaining of invisible hands, the enticing of soundless 
 voices. When one has once become a familiar of the 
 woodland greens, one has in a measure lost the power to 
 refuse; every waving leaf and grass blade seems to 
 beckon — all the senses are under the spell, and conspire 
 to lead one astray. 
 
 Reentering the wood was like stepping into the dim 
 interior of a cathedral. The place was solemn ; the sun 
 had gone under a cloud, and the light came sadly in. 
 
 A pale sunset, seen from my window. High above 
 I see the nighthawks, the size of gnats, yet their cry is 
 distinct. The air is full of bird notes, and far away a 
 clear silvery sound that startles me with its likeness to 
 the music of a wood thrush. 
 
 To-day in the wood, out riding, saw a crested cardi- 
 nal dart through the foliage. It is by observation of the 
 ornamental in nature that one can arrive at some reason 
 in the Indian methods. 
 
 I walked this morning about half past nine o'clock 
 along the near river bank southeastward. Followed the 
 same sandy way that was my first pedestrian venture on 
 
T H E S O U T H III 
 
 my arrival. What a change has been accompUshed in a 
 little more than two weeks ! The road, then open, is now 
 shut in by a growth of summer verdure ; the air is heavy 
 with a summer fragrance. The bright sunlit boles of 
 the beeches are now dim in the shadow recesses of their 
 own foliage. The young sycamores along the way, start- 
 ing up out of the sand, are now perhaps the most inter- 
 esting of all surrounding trees. Every leaf has a 
 particular interest, some individual charm ; between those 
 through which the light penetrates and those reflecting 
 it there is a marked contrast of color. I retract anything 
 I may have said hitherto in dispraise of them. 
 
 The holly trees are putting out fresh sprouts, ten- 
 derly green. At the grove of birches and alders, where 
 formerly a bank of violets showed purple in the shadow, 
 I find some few remaining, hid under the leaves. Fur- 
 ther on, I rest under a hemlock, the branches tipped with 
 a bright crown of new yellow-green leaves. The little 
 cones hang prettily on the under side of the branches. 
 
 There is no delight so intense, I think, unless it is the 
 hearing of music, as this of looking the day in the face 
 and basking in its smile. All nature seems to jump with 
 my mood. An impulse animates me, as strong perhaps, 
 though the direct reverse, as that which caused Chris- 
 tian to shut out the voices of his wife and children and 
 hurry away, crying out, "Life ! Life ! Eternal life !" 
 
VERMONT 
 
 Stowe, Vermont, 
 
 June. 
 
 Saw to-day in the meadows bobolinks and bluebirds, 
 also woodpeckers. Yesterday a thrush, singing on the 
 boughs of a little aspen. Numerous little barn swallows, 
 often seen on fence rails and ridge-pole of barns, display- 
 ing their buckskin vests. 
 
 I could duplicate my last year's notes. Last night the 
 moon set about half past eleven ; at ten it was descend- 
 ing toward the barn. The air was warm and sweet with 
 the smell of hay that was gathered in little hummocks, 
 arranged with rectangular precision, and each haycock 
 casting its little arc of shadow. A softly lighted, odor- 
 breathing night. 
 
 The other day, speaking of the hermit thrush's song, 
 so far differing from the bobolink's in the spirit of its 
 utterance that, while both are without effort, one is the 
 unconscious, uncounted, and prodigal scatterings of a 
 blithe heart ; the other seems conscious of the unutterable 
 sweetness of his song, and although the utterance of its 
 notes is as easy as the flow of water, they are heard only 
 at intervals. Yet he is no niggard, but a constant singer 
 ringing his changes when the fount of aerial song is dry 
 at noon. He is less heedless ; it seems as if he must par- 
 

VERMONT 113 
 
 take somewhat of the deep joy that falls upon his lis- 
 tener; his pauses thus seem breathless— he is rapt in the 
 delight and wonder of his strange power of song. Who 
 has not heard him, in many successive efforts, pitching 
 his voice high and low, striving to strike again the thrill- 
 ing note that still lingers in one's ears? His are jewels 
 of song that cannot be squandered lightly, whether he 
 would or no. There is here no jingle of current coin, 
 but each note falls with the weight of precious metal. 
 
 A quality that adds to its especial charm is that it is 
 so strong and searching a note that one is at once able to 
 locate it. It is not scattered in the air like the song of 
 most birds, but is confined to stricter limits than some 
 quarter of the horizon. 
 
 Standing in my mossy road, I hear it chiming in the 
 wood ; in the open field I can even locate it, tracing it to 
 a certain tree. Though not as vague as other bird notes, 
 it loses nothing of its mysterious charm ; it becomes more 
 suggestive, and leads the thought a sylvan dance. 
 
 July. 
 
 A little brown squirrel seen on the trunk of a black 
 walnut, chirping, sneezing, and darting — a creature of 
 electric impulse. A pretty fellow this, that jerks himself 
 down to within easy reach of me, and then whirls up the 
 tree again with a whistling exclamation. 
 
 A young chipmunk crosses the road, and I afterward 
 discover it in the fork of a great maple. It is pretty, less 
 wild and flighty, with a more innocent expression, as 
 becomes its years. With its plump striped body, its high 
 narrow head, and the little markings of white above its 
 
114 S T O W E N O T E S 
 
 eyes, it has the look of a Lilliputian semi-wild pig, such 
 as one sees South— of a guinea pig really, I suppose. It 
 remained perfectly still watching me for some moments, 
 and then at a sudden movement scampered up the tree 
 and disappeared. At that moment, down the woody 
 slope on the bole of towering basswood, I saw a wood- 
 pecker, black, marked with white, circling about the 
 trunk, hopping stiffly with thin shanks stretched wide 
 apart, like a witch around a cauldron. There is some- 
 thing impish in the manner of these birds. 
 
 Further on, a rocky mossy pasture, with glades sur- 
 rounded by a growth of old maples, basswood, ash, beech. 
 Onward through the old road, afterward sitting on the 
 fallen log, listening to the hermit thrush. 
 
 A deep wooded road with ferns and mosses, large 
 forest trees. 
 
 The leaf descending with the swaying motion of a 
 butterfly. 
 
 Clouds have been gathering in the south all the even- 
 ing, now advancing on the moon, that, vainly striving, 
 at length is lost and muffled in the towering vapors. 
 
 Earlier, on a pale blue sky, she shone fair-faced and 
 mellow in the reflected sunset, haloed in the melting of 
 the lighter clouds — forerunners of this gathering 
 tempest, this mounting darkness that holds above us 
 the threat of fire and water, that lowers, peals, and 
 flashes. This is sheet lightning, that gleams steely 
 bright, leaping along the southern horizon behind the 
 dark rack, and blinds the struggling moon. Once she 
 rolls out, round and glorious, to the eye of the wistful 
 
<*|K 
 
 I* I 
 
 
 r 
 
 
VERMONT IIS 
 
 world, and again is lapped and lost in darkness. The 
 head of the great thunder-cloud, pushing to the very 
 apex of the heavens and encompassing the dim stars one 
 by one, is a vast cone, its broken ridge silvered by the 
 imprisoned moonbeams. 
 
 Northward, paler than the dwindling moonshine 
 behind the church spire, seeming to mock its form with 
 a ghostly challenge, spear after spear darts up among 
 the stars. What a silent play of seraph swords ! Rising 
 and falling so swiftly, so mysteriously, now in far- 
 reaching and isolated rays, now in a widening horizontal 
 wave, the northern lights dispute the night with the 
 storm. 
 
 The lightning flashes bright along the spire — 
 for an instant reconstructs the scene. The columns of 
 the church gleam white before me ; above the glistening 
 steeple the sky is blue, full of white clouds. The trees 
 stand green ; the road, the hills, the houses, for one brief 
 and brilliant moment are released from the black thral- 
 dom of the night. Following slowly on the flashes, a 
 deep and sullen rumble crosses the sky. 
 
 Windy night, wind southwest ; moon rising behind a 
 thin veil of clouds ; air temperate, soft, a rustling wind. 
 Moon on the summit of a strange dense pyramidal cloud- 
 form just appearing above the hill. The moon rides to 
 the south, and the cloud is swept northward. The voice 
 of the wind has the hollow rushing that is heard in an 
 empty shell. The upper sky is clear and starlit. 
 
 The other day, whitening of the trees in the wind- 
 willows, a white tossing sea. The lilac under side of 
 
Ii6 STOWENOTES 
 
 alder, apple, and raspberry leaves. The white gleaming 
 of the soft maples; the aspens like the trembling of 
 moonlight on water; and all the surging sounds. The 
 wind crying around a hillside. 
 
 Last night, evening pleasant, cool ; bat flying on silent 
 though fluttering wings, passing into the shadow of the 
 trees, and then out again against the light. The hills 
 sharp against the amber sky. Something in the air— a 
 coolness — that suggests a coming storm. Venus beauti- 
 ful and wonderfully large. 
 
 Wind rising at half past eight, at ten blowing hard. 
 No wild and dying voices, but a great commotion and 
 rustling among the trees; a bell, a deep and stirring 
 sound along the wind. 
 
 In the high pasture. An old dead tree — rock maple; 
 looking through its branches off toward the hills of 
 Sterling. How it covers miles of country! The naked 
 bony finger-tips stretch till they touch the woods on the 
 east ; a mass of leaves, some dead and coppery, hide the 
 looming face of Mansfield; a hanging branch shows 
 white against the tree-tops in the valley; black shadows 
 in the elbows of the boughs, etc. ; rustling leaves. Wintry 
 suggestion in the air. 
 
 Moss Glen Falls. Start at about half past six, July 
 31st. Sun already set. A strong red-golden light behind 
 the hills. Reached Falls when the sunset had burned 
 from yellow to red, the dusky red of a dwindling fire. 
 
 Standing upon the acclivity that commands the first 
 
VERMONT 117 
 
 view of the Falls, we felt cold upon our faces the wind 
 out of the gorge, and the leaves of the little shrubs of 
 maple shivered and fluttered with the fearful joy that 
 the wildness of the place inspires. Pale, on the apex of 
 the cutting, between the boughs of hemlock the wide disk 
 of the moon appeared. Higher up, in the evergreen 
 wood, she seemed to peer from among the tree trunks, 
 rising as one advanced slowly up the ascent step by step, 
 as if striving to detect what intruder lurked in the gloom 
 of her demesne. Westward, the stream beyond the saw- 
 mill, so far below us, reflected the pallor of the sky, and 
 lay a gleaming serpentine track in the shadowy valley. 
 Spider webs spun across the path swept the face with a 
 faint tingling, like the contact of some subtile quality 
 in the air— some mesmeric touch of ghostly fingers. 
 
 Out of the black abyss the tireless voice of the water 
 rose to our straining ears. To the soughing of the wind, 
 to the rustling of the trees, to music, to the sound of 
 human voices — raised in sorrow or in laughter — running 
 water is never out of tune. 
 
 Our feet were noiseless on the mould. An instinct 
 led us along the path that at one point descended into a 
 little hollow below the overhanging trunk of a fallen 
 hemlock. We were come to the edge of the wood ; the 
 path had given out upon a grass-grown road. We saw 
 the moon above the mountains. A little lozenge-shaped 
 plateau lay before us, the lower point a watery triangle — 
 the large upper dam. Its far extremity was shrunk to a 
 hollow between the hills, in the misty depths of which 
 the gray roof of a dilapidated barn shone in the pale 
 light. 
 
ii8 STOWENOTES 
 
 The tarn lay deathly calm, and down in the depths 
 was the picture of the mountains and the moon. Tiny 
 ripples from time to time broke the perfect oval of the 
 moon's reflection. The night was cool; the air was al- 
 most imperceptible, but the leaves of an aspen on the 
 margin danced and shivered. 
 
 It was eight o'clock. Bullfrogs stationed at various 
 points along the shore, like drowsy sentinels, from time 
 to time passed a hoarse and guttural watchword. 
 
 The water seemed high, and lost a definite margin in 
 the rushes and tall grasses of the meadow. On the 
 further shore, to the right, some dead trees, white 
 birches, displayed the slender twigs of their topmost 
 branches against the sky. A bat fluttered across the 
 moonlight. We stood by the log dam and looked down 
 into the black and cavernous depth of the water-worn 
 gorge. Far below in the shadow the foam of the torrent 
 shone a misty white. 
 
 The ride home. Up through the dense shadows of 
 the road, where the moonbeams shone on the trunks of 
 the birches. Here and there in the wood they gleamed 
 with a pale phosphorescent fire. Up high on the slope 
 of the Hogback one came into more intimate terms with 
 the moon and the stars. By lighted farmhouses, where 
 the inmates might be seen through the unshuttered win- 
 dows. The baying of house-dogs. The lonely road— 
 across the fields in the white moonshine, and again 
 plunging into the seemingly absolute darkness of the 
 wooded hollows. Trailing wreaths of clematis on bush 
 and rotten log. The dark and lonely house. The open 
 pasture, with the ill-defined and grassy track winding 
 
VERMONT 119 
 
 by brake and boulder— a wide space with the scattered 
 gleam of stone. Far away westward the mountains rose 
 vast and dim. 
 
 Last night at ten o'clock, the crescent moon, just be- 
 fore setting, shone bright in the sky. The frogs were 
 loud, and in this muttering bass string accompaniment 
 and the thin long call of the locusts the frosty piping of 
 a cricket trilled in the cold moonshine. It has a kind of 
 sadness, as a sound of the latter end of summer, but is, 
 in association as in quality, a cheering friendly music. 
 
 The night was cold. This morning crisp and au- 
 tumnal — the cricket note was prophetic. At half past 
 six small mists fading on the hillsides. Cobwebs, like 
 the broken bits of Hans Andersen's Magic Mirror, lying 
 scattered in the grass — a heavy dew-wet grass. It 
 seems, later, when this white spangling has disappeared, 
 that the cobwebs were of so ethereal a quality as to have 
 been absorbed alike with the dew. 
 
 This afternoon a ride. Oh, the beauty of these damp 
 woods— ferns and leafy underbrush! 
 
 August. 
 Last night dense clouds that seemed pierced and 
 edged, instinct with a phosphorescent light— the hidden 
 moon. There was a raving wind with an angry stifled 
 crying, its voice in a keyhole breathing with a deep and 
 terrible utterance, the low forbidding mutter of an angry 
 bull. Its lost and lonely wailing on the distant hillsides— 
 the rush of its coming, the howl of its baffled rage. It 
 growled, mingling the noise with a hoarse and labored 
 
120 STOWENOTES 
 
 breathing, like some giant watch-dog. But most inter- 
 esting of all, mingled with its changing asthmatic voices, 
 is the awed and changeless utterance of the trees. 
 
 The cold spell. Yesterday afternoon I rode with H. 
 through the woody stretch on the road toward Elmore, 
 by great hemlocks and graceful saplings of moosewood. 
 There I let my eyes feast upon the familiar and beautiful 
 sight of lighted spray and tree trunk. 
 
 Does not the mossy bole of the beech hold as much of 
 that oblique illumination as the silver columns of the 
 birches reflect? The other night, when the moonbeams 
 penetrated the wood in this fashion, perhaps the beeches 
 contributed to the phosphorescent glow that I concluded 
 was due solely to the birches. 
 
 At the further extremity of this wood we stopped 
 our horses to listen to the exquisite song of the thrushes 
 —two hermit thrushes, I think, answering one another 
 from hidden places in the leafy realm above. As we 
 emerged upon the open and looked back at the moun- 
 tains, we saw a dark congregation of clouds crowded 
 over the summit of Mansfield, and through them distinct 
 and widening rays of light descending far into the val- 
 ley. The wind began blowing cold from the northwest. 
 A magnificent sunset: cumulus clouds floated in all di- 
 rections, and, stretched along the ridge of the sky, like a 
 daylight manifestation of the Milky Way, was the varia- 
 tion of cloud- forms that constitute a mackerel sky— a 
 shoal of celestial silver fish. 
 
 For the first time this summer we heard tree toads — 
 a familiar, sweet, but sorrowful sound. It gives voice to 
 
VERMONT 121 
 
 the vague regret that mourns over the wasting Hght of 
 every day that brings the summer nearer to its end. 
 
 This morning the wind is from the north, cold as if it 
 blew straight from ice of Hudson Bay. The Great Stone 
 Face is hidden in a white wreath of cloud ; a snowy mass 
 crowns the dark woody height of Sterling. 
 
 Thank Heaven, our outlook is still northward ! The 
 Hogback closes in on the southeast, and makes an im- 
 penetrable mystery of that region; far to the south the 
 cloud-mountain [Camel's Hump] marks the limit, and 
 rises as a rest and conjectural point for the eye. Mans- 
 field shuts out the west like a wall, but the long slopes of 
 Sterling and the straight horizon eastward of its final 
 pyramidal crest give scope to fancy and the play of the 
 imagination. 
 
 The rock maples on the side of the street are rustling 
 in the wind. I fancy these rugged old trees feel a great 
 joy in the vital quality of this air. They seem to have 
 awakened from the slumber induced by the soft south- 
 western winds and the long warm days of the past sum- 
 mer, and to be moving their limbs and drawing great 
 breaths of this their native air. The rustling of their 
 leaves seems to speak with clear and living tones, no 
 longer a drowsy murmur. 
 
 The thermometer stands as low as fifty-seven— this 
 at half past eight. To-day we realize that the sun is a 
 true friend. 
 
 Smugglers' Notch. A hot hazy day in the Notch, 
 notwithstanding the air is cool. A logging track, and 
 
122 STOWENOTES 
 
 further a path leading up, up to the cave. Fording the 
 streams — the wonderful clearness and icy rush of the 
 water. Beeches; birches; mountain, red, and rock 
 maple ; tall and graceful saplings of the exquisite enam- 
 elled-stemmed and broad-leafed striped maple; ferns, 
 and a matted undergrowth that completely hides the 
 leaf-strewn mould. 
 
 So far as I went beyond the road one might easily 
 ride, even at night. The path lay partly along the bed of 
 a dry stream that is clearly a torrent in the spring. Small 
 dams of netted forest-drift lay here and there across the 
 track of the water. The roots of trees along the margin 
 are washed as bare and colorless as bones. Enormous 
 boulders, probably hurled long since into this narrow 
 chasm from the overhanging side of Mansfield, obstruct 
 the path. They are moss-grown, and plumed with ferns ; 
 birch saplings have sprung up on their sides. Along the 
 sloping side of one of these great rocks the trunk of a 
 black birch tree, writhing root-like among the ferns, 
 traverses the length of the incline and rises erect upon 
 the apex. 
 
 There are black and ragged openings where the rocks 
 lie piled together. 
 
 The largest trees are black birches and maples. A 
 coppery gleam pierces the foliage above and shines on 
 the tree trunks. Far off I hear, faint and thin, the call 
 of a thrush. The trees, hoary in their coverings of gray 
 lichens, stand deathly still, scarcely moving a leaf. They 
 look so white and old that their singular quietude seems 
 an habitual attitude of expectation, as if they listened 
 for the rush of the wind, the crash of the falling rock. 
 
VERMONT 123 
 
 or the roar of the flood that should stretch them lifeless 
 on the mould. 
 
 The stream takes its rise from a spring, a welling crys- 
 tal basin hollowed in the slope of thebank—amossy cradle. 
 
 Mount Mansfield. Started at about half past three. 
 The morning was dense with mist and heavy with a 
 canopy of clouds, since cleared away in rain and a strong 
 north-northwestern wind. There was life in the air. 
 Up through the wood at the base, where innumerable 
 saplings of birch, maple, and beech rise, shining gray 
 and serpentine in the lessened light admitted through the 
 boughs of the taller trees. The black birches far out- 
 grow the others. They rise, massive, twisted, and scaly 
 shapes, over the tops of the surrounding trees. Ferns 
 and mosses flourish in the gloom; there also the broad 
 leaves of the striped maple are displayed. Among the 
 mosses and the fallen leaves the little red clusters of the 
 bunch-berries appear. 
 
 The spruces are mingled among the deciduous trees, 
 hemlocks also occasionally, but as we near the summit 
 the hemlock disappears altogether. The openings into 
 the wood upon either hand were most beautiful, for there 
 gleamed the birches, and, caressed by the moving sun- 
 shine, the blue lichen-stained boles of the beeches stood 
 ankle-deep in the damp green mosses. 
 
 Over our heads the wind "with a monarch's voice" 
 swept through the tree-tops — the sonorous trumpets of 
 the North. 
 
 Presently a dog appeared in the road before us, and 
 at a turning we came upon a logging party. A team of 
 
124 STOWENOTES 
 
 oxen stood in a small clearing on the edge of the road ; 
 great spruce logs, chained together, lay from axle to 
 axle. Two men, brown, lean, taciturn, clad in jean over- 
 alls and cowhide boots, brought the beasts to a standstill 
 and stood by to see us pass. They were hauling logs to 
 Bruce's sawmill at the foot of the Mountain. 
 
 As we go higher the air becomes colder. The beeches 
 and maples are all left below, but among the evergreens, 
 to the rocky summit indeed, as high as the trees dare 
 clamber, the hardy birches have taken root. 
 
 Now we stand and look down at all Vermont below 
 us. Far away are the faint tops of the White Moun- 
 tains. To our right Smugglers' Notch, wild and rugged, 
 lay sunk in the cold gloom of a wintry twilight. A dark 
 cloud stretched over Mansfield, but in the west the sun 
 was sinking untroubled. Up on the nose the wind was 
 strong, and as one turned to look into the Champlain 
 valley it passed the ear with a loud tearing noise. The 
 sun sank behind the most northward of the Adirondacks ; 
 it gleamed along the waters of Lake Champlain. 
 
 To the southwest Venus shone with a watery gleam. 
 The eastern valley was dark in the shadow of this mon- 
 strous pile— fifteen miles to the lighted top of Elmore. 
 There was a wild delight in standing on the apex of this 
 narrow wall, seeing the rocky mass of the chin heaved 
 up against the sky like the bows of a ship. The moun- 
 tain top, to pursue this simile, is like the deck of an 
 ancient galley. Upon either hand the empty ocean of 
 the air. The chin is the towering prow, from which it 
 slopes, a long incline, to the spot where I stand amid- 
 ships under the high deck of the nose. 
 
VERMONT 125 
 
 The eastern valley is to me, of course, by far the 
 more interesting. The gleaming course of a river that 
 winds among the hills to the lake is a beautiful fea- 
 ture of the western side. The sun sank behind the 
 mountains, that stood out dark and blue against the 
 glow. It is a close brotherhood, that of the Adiron- 
 dacks — they stand shoulder to shoulder in a fine at- 
 titude that seems to typify the nobility and the strength 
 of union. 
 
 The weather-worn house and barn had a strange 
 semi-savage interest. The smell of the wood smoke 
 blown from the kitchen chimney was a healthful perfume 
 on the raw air. The wind makes a surging sound among 
 the dwarfed spruces along the plateau. By the path 
 there are marshy spots deep with spongy mosses, where 
 standing pools show cavernous over their bottoms of 
 black mire. There are so-called hedgehogs, porcupines, 
 in this wind-wilted growth. Louis, the cook at the Sum- 
 mit House, says that some have been killed weighing up 
 to fifty pounds. 
 
 In the house the low wooden ceilings, the wood- 
 panelled walls, carry out the suggestion of the sea ; not 
 less the sound of the wind. 
 
 After supper the warm and cosy sitting-room. Louis 
 remarking in the course of conversation, "When I go 
 down to earth." 
 
 The night was cold ; fitful gleams of starlight in the 
 rift of the clouds. Half past ten, reading Lear. Stage 
 direction: "Storm still continues." Outside, the rush 
 and clamor of the wind. 
 
 Next day, the drive down through the clear cold air ; 
 
126 STOWENOTES 
 
 at the hotel about half past nine. The thermometer on 
 the piazza stood at sixty. 
 
 Ride at five o'clock. Through the wood where H. 
 and I rode not long ago and listened to the answering 
 thrushes. There, on the spot, at about half past six, a 
 solitary voice, this time calling mournfully out of the 
 deepening twilight. The cold sunset over the cold blue 
 mountains, seen through the tree trunks, hinted sadly of 
 autumn. 
 
 On August 14th saw small gray bird, breast of a 
 lighter hue, throat a bright crimson. Lapland redpoll? 
 
 Afternoon walk; clearing — distance absolutely clear; 
 houses not so big as the most Lilliputian toy, and the 
 windows plainly discernible. 
 
 Wind west-northwest; cold. Wind in the white 
 pines — surf, far and near, the rumor in a shell. Rain- 
 drops on all evergreens, particularly on the frosty 
 spruces, that make a wintry sound. This might be a 
 rolling, moderately hilly country, such as the Berkshire, 
 now, with the mountains, with the exception of the dark 
 side of Elmore, hidden in the fog. 
 
 It is necessary to see the spruce in these northern 
 latitudes to appreciate how beautiful it is. 
 
 The interior of the slaughter-house — dark. The 
 hanging carcasses of a pig and a beef; their colors so 
 strong, like a Dutch picture, a strange sight in the land- 
 scape. To-night clouded again, black as a wolf's maw; 
 wind with a coursing hollow sound; rain shaken from 
 the stirring trees — cold. 
 
VERMONT 127 
 
 Start for a ride; a clear morning after the rain. 
 There's life in the air; one feels exhilarated. Though 
 Nature's mood is intangible, one could predict that she 
 will presently be gay. It is like an awakening after the 
 wet drowsy days past, when the sun was withdrawn and 
 the world showed gray and lifeless, days of dead and 
 vacant hours, and restless nights of troubled breathings, 
 nightmare whispers, when she seemed crying in her 
 sleep. Now, with the sunny blue above, one feels that 
 her eyes have opened, her breath comes in calm and gen- 
 tle respirations. In the semi-consciousness of an awak- 
 ening she still feels the kisses of the rain ; she sighs and 
 smiles — an indolent smile of sweet recollection. The ter- 
 rors of the night are forgotten. 
 
 The wind is from the west. The wood— so many 
 and such various forms of out-of-doors designed to 
 flourish in the damp mist and rains, the summer in- 
 clemencies and cold, with the touch of late showers. In 
 such an environment how startling is the thought of the 
 naked dryads — the contrasting of unclothed flesh, so 
 luminous, so soft, so warm, so vital, with the dull and 
 slippery leaves, the rough and unyielding boughs, the 
 cold and lifeless vegetation. 
 
 Of Nature's early mood— though so flaccid a state 
 can hardly be defined as such — it is an anticipatory 
 pause, a moment of luxury, with the day, all the happy 
 day, before her. Now I reach an open pasture, her laugh 
 is in the breeze and the nodding ferns. 
 
 Moonlight— moon a little beyond the half, well up to 
 the zenith at half past eight ; it seems to aspire less high 
 
128 STOWENOTES 
 
 than the more mature moons that shall follow. It skirts 
 the sky rather than climbs it, veering well to the south- 
 ward. The shrubs and the trees cast long shadows 
 northward. The stars shine faintly, yet are the constel- 
 lations well defined. The long swing of the Dipper, the 
 index finger pointing to the Northern Star — to those my 
 eyes invariably turn. 
 
 Standing by a shrub of witch-hazel, I notice the ex- 
 tended branches, the motionless leaves (for there is 
 hardly any air stirring), and feel that there is a par- 
 ticular significance in the attitude. That outreaching 
 twig has now more meaning than when thus extended in 
 the broad daylight. 
 
 There is a heavy dew, notwithstanding the moon. A 
 mist lies or hovers over the pond. The frogs are still; 
 crickets chirrup in the grass — a sound at once sad and 
 cheerful. Their little voices ring so lonely in the silence 
 that one might almost discover their lurking places. The 
 trailing morning-glories, those pink-tinged cups, are 
 open, filled perhaps with dew, each chalice turned to the 
 moon. There is a little ringing sound at the marshy 
 edge— the misty willows beyond. 
 
 Started out for a walk at about half past four. The 
 sky was overcast; a thin veil interposed between the 
 earth and the sun. Brush fires to the southwest contrib- 
 uted to thicken the atmosphere. 
 
 Passed up through the wood where grows the beauti- 
 ful beech that first of its kind, I think, ever laid hold of 
 my aflfections, a swelling form under its tight velvety 
 covering. The lichens on its bole are of a cold blue and 
 
VERMONT 129 
 
 gray, inclining sometimes to yellow; the darker blotches 
 of bronze seem also to be a variety of lichen. The 
 brighter colors, however, the pinkish tinge sometimes 
 perceptible and the light bluish spots, are apparently 
 little uncoated showings of the bark itself. Not content 
 with this wonderful variety of mottled decoration. Na- 
 ture has inspired the lower lichens with a love of this 
 smooth denizen of the wood, whose high instep is clothed 
 in the velvet and vital hues of wet mosses. 
 
 Near this tree stands a hemlock, black in the shadow 
 of its own branches. A great maple trunk rises beside 
 it, so ridged and scaly with age that at the first glance 
 the two are apparently of the same species. The hem- 
 lock is less scaly, perhaps, but the principal difference lies 
 in the color, the hemlock being darker and reddish. 
 
 Further on I pass into the woody road where I have 
 so many times listened to the thrushes. Two gray 
 birches, in the recesses of shadow, shine with a dimmed 
 opaque brightness, as if their trunks were of the texture 
 of wax. In the pasture I come upon a dead maple, splin- 
 tered—lightning-stricken. Dead or leafless branches, 
 particularly if seen against the solid mass of summer 
 verdure, are possessed of a singular charm. As I walk 
 I am accompanied by a slight tapping sound, made by 
 the grasshoppers leaping out of my way and alighting 
 on the thin carcasses of the leaves. 
 
 There lies a swampy bit to my left. Ash trees grow 
 in and about it. The smaller, though they are probably 
 the innocent saplings of the black or the white ash, have 
 too close a resemblance to the poison elder, which is after 
 all, I believe, a kind of sumach. Is there some likeness to 
 
130 STOWENOTES 
 
 tropical foliage in a pinnate leaf that gives it its subtle 
 suggestion of poison ? 
 
 There is a singular absence of underbrush in this 
 wood; green lakes of tossing ferns are here, and occa- 
 sionally the dusky little pyramid of a young hemlock, but 
 around these verdant spots the dead leaves show pale 
 among the tree trunks. The eye, so often balked and 
 bewildered by a wild confusion and multiplicity of forest 
 forms, is here caught and tempted by the mystery of 
 far-reaching glades. The light is blue on the lateral 
 sprays of beech and maple. 
 
 I think I never before realized the wealth of beauty 
 in ferns. These, in the tempered light of the wood, 
 are fresh and green, in no respect shrunk, dried, or 
 coarsened, as are those of the open meadow. I find 
 myself in a veritable sea of verdure. They toss about 
 the trunk of a young maple as dances the surf at the foot 
 of a rock. Yet they are motionless, for no wind is stir- 
 ring here. Theirs is the dead commotion and silent 
 breaking of the Mer de Glace, at once so dense and so 
 transparent. They present a variety of aspects accord- 
 ingly as they happen to meet the eye, exhibiting in a 
 modified degree the coloring that leaves take from their 
 position in regard to the light. They would be most in- 
 teresting to paint. 
 
 Under the trees the young shoots, a woody stem 
 crowned by two or three leaves (if they be maple), shine 
 star-like on the dark ground. Among these I come upon 
 a sprig of cherry — its beautiful smooth slender leaves. 
 I look in vain for some tiny sprout of maple that still 
 retains the cotyledons as leaves. 
 
 The trunks of the basswood, so straight and evenly 
 
VERMONT 131 
 
 ribbed, remind me of the tulip trees down South, though 
 they in no wise compare with the latter. It is a very 
 large tree here, and branches far up. The leaves looked 
 thin and tattered, threadbare, on every basswood I saw 
 that day ; they appeared to be blighted. 
 
 By a grove of young beeches, into the grass-grown 
 road. I hear no singing birds now ; the air is full of the 
 chirping of crickets and all the choir Orthoptera, and the 
 cry of the tree toad, that, when once it is raised, ceases 
 only with the ending of the season. Its thin quavering 
 voice seems to ring throughout the latter days of 
 summer. 
 
 Down the path are two beeches, one lichen-coated, 
 the other almost bare, the sleek trunk striped in broad 
 dark bands like the marking on a bull's hide. A birch, 
 clinging to the side of a rock, writhes, glistening and 
 serpentine, from the crevices below. 
 
 Presently the path gives out upon the meadow again. 
 Below in the valley is the gray ruin of a sugar-house. 
 Back up the slope there are some fine old cherry trees in 
 the pasture. A goldfinch skips on before me from shrub 
 to shrub. 
 
 The sun is setting over Nebraska Notch and those 
 nameless mountains. It is a dim and cloudy exit. A 
 veil of smoke floats before Mount Mansfield. The face 
 seen through this filmy interposition wears a singular 
 inscrutable look, an expression full of subtle meaning. 
 
 Skirting the wood again. Damp and dusky now. 
 Through the meadow; no longer the tapping of nimble 
 grasshoppers. Moths fly out of the brakes and gleam 
 under the dark boughs; spiders hang in the centre of 
 their webs ; the secret things of night are abroad. 
 
THE ADIRONDACKS 
 
 The Adirondacks, 
 September. 
 
 Leaving Plattsburg, the cars run south and for a 
 short distance skirt the shore of the Lake, and far across 
 its shining extent a group of mountains shows mistily 
 upon the horizon. For one moment, being confused 
 about the points of the compass, I did not know them; 
 then with a sudden emotion I recognized that mighty 
 central form. Though dwarfed and disproportioned, 
 there lay the great profile, the chin heaved up against the 
 sky, and all the lesser of the Green Mountains clustered 
 around it — Sterling to the northeast, the Nebraska peaks 
 rising west and south— calm and reposeful, the sleeping 
 giant with his awful and passionless countenance. 
 
 My Mountain ! With a swelling heart, with the rise 
 of emotion that shakes the voice and brings tears into the 
 eyes, I looked back at Mount Mansfield. Clouds, touched 
 by the setting sun, rested upon the highest point of the 
 chin, and above them, white as smoke, hung the moon. 
 The sight was borne in upon me like the swelling strains 
 of some immortal music. The Pilgrim Chorus, which 
 has been associated in my mind with that mountain, the 
 magnificent ebb and flow of that passion of sound, came 
 back to me. 
 
 The silent Mountain spoke in a voice of undying har- 
 
 132 
 
THE ADIRONDACKS 133 
 
 mony, great and tender; it was the theme of home and 
 country; for not ten miles to the eastward, lying there 
 in the shadow of that Great Stone Face, was my Valpa- 
 raiso—my vale of Paradise. 
 
 Loon Lake. Early morning; mackerel clouds in the 
 west; sunrise; the drive over. The water-lily-decked 
 lake surface, northern extremity of Loon Lake ; wild and 
 rugged shore. How beautiful— beautiful compared with 
 travelling in the South ! Thank God for the white pines ! 
 
 Paul Smith's. This morning misty; heavy clouds, 
 damp and cold. Walked into grove of white pines, red 
 pines, and spruces, hemlocks, birches, etc. The white 
 pines are fine large trees, also the red, whose bark, in flat 
 plates, looks like beaten silver off which a wash of gold 
 is partly worn. 
 
 Beyond this grove there is a marshy place where the 
 wind made a thin and icy whisper in the lean reeds. 
 Pines, these white pines, go far to reconcile one to his 
 fate should it lead him into these wilds, but I found my- 
 self drawn with a deeper affection to the hemlocks. 
 
 Walk in wood. The white pines very impressive, 
 great shafts over one hundred feet high, in every way a 
 grander tree than the loblolly, except the cones. The 
 birches are the black, gray, and canoe, these latter often 
 of the most delicate color where newly stripped— pink, 
 ashen-silvery, and a pale lilac-mauve. The fir balsam 
 trunks are mottled like beeches ; the beeches themselves 
 few and far between. Here's the confusion and the rot- 
 
134 STOWENOTES 
 
 ting waste that of old thwarted my inclination for the 
 woods; there's no prejudice in my preference for the 
 forests of Vermont. 
 
 This afternoon in the woods it was terribly desolate. 
 The air was still — not a sound to be heard— complete 
 and awful stillness. It was a most dismal and solitary 
 place. I felt lonesome as I never remember feeling in 
 the Vermont woods, for they are full of friends— rock 
 maples and beeches. There's something strange and un- 
 approachable about these pines. We feel somehow that 
 they are old with a terrible age like the oldness of the 
 Sphinx ; that they now live and flourish as they lived and 
 flourished centuries ago, when these modern birches, 
 beeches, and maples were unknown ; that they belong to 
 the original growth and are in a way linked with the 
 mysterious past, that they figured in prehistoric land- 
 scapes. They reach further back than the Indian, and 
 may well have appeared to him with somewhat of the 
 awfulness with which they now impress me. Out of the 
 heart of the forest— there's no neighborly spread of 
 branches — they rise straight and isolated. I wonder 
 that man ever summoned courage to strike his axe into 
 the heel of one of these giants ! 
 
 Some men had been cutting spruces and hemlocks, 
 and the fresh discarded boughs lay all about me. There 
 were innumerable spider webs catching the light in pris- 
 matic tints, and before me an enormous gray spider was 
 in the act of spinning his trap in the fork of a little spruce 
 tree, silently lowering himself, and then slowly, with a 
 display of all his terrible legs, going up hand over hand ; 
 
THE ADIRONDACKS 13S 
 
 the sight sickened me. At length he desisted, and sat at 
 the very extremity of a little leafless twig, with his legs 
 drawn up about him, looking for all the world like an 
 imp with his arms akimbo. 
 
 To-night before the moon rose, beautiful starlight. 
 The evening star over St. Regis mountain reflected as a 
 long line of light in the lake below. The further shore 
 seemed to be like clouds in sunset; a silvery stretch of 
 water, pale as the sky, lay close under the shore, breaking 
 the reflection. 
 
 The stars, as I moved, seemed to peep from among 
 the boughs of the pines. The tall trunks stood black 
 against the starlit sky and the dimmer starlight in the 
 lake. 
 
 This is an interesting question about the sound of the 
 wind in trees. 
 
 Aspens, easily identified by the sound— a tapping like 
 the fall of rain on leaves, a kind of rattling. 
 
 Maples, observed in Acer rubrum—s. continuous 
 sound, like the rush of water. 
 
 Alders and birches (black and white)— a fluttering 
 sound, harsh at a distance. 
 
 The wind in the thin reedy grass that grows in the 
 sand along the lake's margin gives out a cold and silvery 
 whisper. 
 
 Of the evergreens, the pines are especially fine-toned ; 
 theirs is a hollow cry, full and continuous, like the rumor 
 of the ocean, the roll of surf. The music of the distant 
 sea is in all evergreens, while the sound made by the wind 
 
136 STOWENOTES 
 
 among the boughs of deciduous trees is not so deep, so 
 long, but is rather like the rush of a cascade. 
 
 The manner of branching and growth of leaves has 
 all to do with the sound ; as, for instance, more uniform 
 and deeper music might be made by a beech than a maple. 
 The character of the leaves, again, has its effect, as de- 
 tected in the wind-made sounds in aspens and poplars, 
 occasioned probably by the long petiole, and, to instance 
 again, in the "furry boughs" of the pines. 
 
 The cry of the hounds is a fine note and a stirring. I 
 should think that any fox or deer within hearing would 
 start to his feet, impelled less perhaps by terror than by 
 the quality of the sound. It's a cry of alarm too. It has 
 taken centuries of training, probably, to bring that hunt- 
 ing music to its present perfection. That detonative 
 utterance must be a thrilling call to the huntsman. 
 "Ding, dong !" One can hear a pack tolling a mile away 
 in the forest. 
 
 I think the hemlock is acknowledged the most beauti- 
 ful of the evergreens— it is so to me. The flat and 
 spreading branches form a natural canopy; the bare 
 twigs are as interesting as those of a deciduous tree, and 
 are infinitely more delicate. Not so the bare twigs of 
 spruces ; they grow too close, and their minutely knotted 
 character gives them, when gray and dry, the appearance 
 of a frosty network — the dew-coated web of some giant 
 spider. 
 
 Sounds again. I think a beech near which I listened 
 for some time made a fuller and softer noise in the wind 
 
THE ADIRONDACKS 137 
 
 than I had yet heard from any deciduous tree. In these 
 woods of great evergreens and saplings it is difficult to 
 pursue the investigation of these leafy voices, 
 
 I noted again the striped birch— white or canoe? the 
 latter, I am almost sure— of a most tender and beautiful 
 tint and of so fine an edge, sharp as a knife against the 
 dark and tangled background. 
 
 Cold cloudy autumnal morning; an absolutely even 
 light, a shadowless and sunless day. 
 
 The lake, stirred by the wind and reflecting no 
 feature of the shore, shines a dead opaque silver-gray to 
 its furthest margin. It lies like a lake of quicksilver in 
 the hollow of the hills. 
 
 Later, stratified clouds, breaking and disclosing 
 lateral glints of the blue sky; a thin interposition of 
 vapor, shredding like gray birch bark, 
 
 St. Regis mountain mottled with the red and orange 
 of the rock maples. 
 
 Beautiful clear day. Wind west-southwest; the 
 foliage of the hemlocks, turned by the wind, shows very 
 silvery. The cones hang like little carved wooden roses. 
 
 This afternoon I walked along the margin of the 
 lake. The wind was still blowing fresh, and a little surf 
 was rising. The sun went down in the gap between St, 
 Regis and the little hills to the northward. As he dis- 
 appeared I raised my eyes, that, liberated from the thrall 
 of too much brightness, opened on the scene with some- 
 thing of the sensation of a renewed sight. The wood 
 
138 STOWENOTES 
 
 along the lake's margin was of a deep and vital green; 
 St. Regis stood out blue against the sky ; the spurs of the 
 northern hills were purple. Behind the scanty tops of 
 pines a few clouds just over the sun were lit in long and 
 slender shreds of gold ; two vapory fragments northward 
 were touched with pink, and to the southward a single 
 floating cloud, like a fish in an amber sea, faded from 
 lilac to silver. The air grew cold. The pines in the 
 grove near the hotel stood tall against the light, all 
 warped away from the sunset, stooping to the east, their 
 heads drawn close together like dark conspirators. 
 
 Afterward, passing among them, I heard far above 
 me their mingled utterance. There was no whisper of 
 conspiracy; they seemed, the rather, to be telling some 
 melancholy tale in doleful chorus ; their voices were deep 
 and turbulent. 
 
 As the sun went down, dark places seemed to show in 
 the wood, tree trunks stood out against a sombre back- 
 ground. Looking across that vacant water at the hills 
 about, that stand arrayed very much as they did years 
 ago (the growth has changed, to be sure, in great part, 
 but they are still wild and wooded), there came home to 
 me some suggestion of the tragedy that lives in the his- 
 tory of the Indian. I thought then, that on just such an 
 evening as this, two hundred years ago, this sandy shore, 
 where I stepped, might have known the footprint of some 
 other, alien in race and temper^iment, and that the im- 
 print of a moccasin might have shown in the sand, re- 
 vealed without wonder to the eye of Nature. 
 
 There is something mean and meagre in the aspect of 
 civilized man. I am sure I seem poor in comparison to 
 
THE ADIRONDACKS 139 
 
 that fancied heroic figure that, plumed and gHstening as 
 an eagle, fierce and supple as a snake, stood where I now 
 stand, gazing across the lake. And though we recognize 
 so close a relation between the Indian and his environ- 
 ment that in describing him we fall naturally into similes 
 drawn from the air and the forest, yet I feel that I am 
 not any the less native. Say that he was as close to 
 Nature as the beasts of the earth ; his was the attitude of 
 a child toward its mother; while we, who have so far 
 succeeded in life as to be able to find time for something 
 beyond the struggle for existence, can mingle thought 
 and reason with our love, can venture upon a footing of 
 reverential friendship. But the picturesque aspect of 
 such a one ! He might have been a warrior of the terrible 
 Iroquois, a Seneca of the Five Nations, the banded terror 
 of the North; for these lakes doubtless lay within the 
 circle of fear that their fame imposed beyond their boun- 
 daries — in the shadow of the Long House. 
 
 How strange it is that I, who reckon myself a deep 
 and passionate lover of my country, should feel so close 
 an affection for it and be so convinced of the intimacy of 
 my attachment, should boldly declare it my country, when 
 my claim is in point of time so slight ! What right have 
 I to call it mine, when I stand upon these shores almost a 
 stranger, and when the dark shadow of another race 
 rises up behind me to claim it — a race that had grown 
 old in the land before, not three hundred years ago, my 
 ancestors first set foot on Plymouth Rock? 
 
 This inquiry is natural, but here I confuse nature 
 with country. My country is not alone in the hills and 
 valleys, lakes and rivers, forests and skies of America; 
 
140 STOWENOTES 
 
 it lives in the faith and valor of the Puritans, in the 
 Revolution, the Declaration of Independence, the Civil 
 War; in Washington, Lincoln, and Emerson and Haw- 
 thorne as well; my country is America, the Great Re- 
 public. 
 
 It is this history that, as well as my culture, has made 
 me here more native than the Indian. I have a claim 
 upon the land stronger than that of mere occupancy. We 
 have made this country ours by the right of living in it, 
 not merely existing off it. 
 
 Walking back along the water's edge, I noticed the 
 ribbed sand below the surface; the lake turned silvery 
 and cold. The clouds above the point of the sun's setting 
 grew redder, the lines less vivid, points and flashes of 
 gold appearing here and there. The chirping of the 
 crickets had no music to stay me ; I hurried home. 
 
 Cold starlight. Looking south, I saw a meteor shoot 
 across the sky, glow red, and vanish. 
 
 On the little hill the roots of the trees are crossed and 
 recrossed in an almost undecipherable tangle, rived and 
 knotted together. I think the angels in the war of Para- 
 dise Lost might indeed have plucked up this hill bodily 
 by seizing on the tree-tops. 
 
 The unparallelled beauty of maple leaves, shape and 
 color, the exquisite colors on the under sides of the 
 turned leaves — crimson, a plushy pink, etc. Beech 
 leaves, waxy — so easily distinguished — waxy both in 
 texture and color. I could look at the beech saplings near 
 the pine grove as long as trees have any interest for me. 
 
THE ADIRONDACKS 141 
 
 By the lake the leaves of the aspen shoots grow to an 
 enormous size, larger than basswood leaves ; it was as if 
 one should see the leaf under a microscope. By rough 
 estimate, eight inches across and eight in length. 
 
 The rock maples and some of the birches have turned ; 
 the swamp maples are deeply colored, and the arrow- 
 wood is bronze and ruddy— very beautiful tints. Tiny 
 aspen saplings seem to change before the alders, which 
 stand yet very green, the green-gray trunks, the dull 
 greens of the leaves, forming a striking contrast to the 
 other trees. They stand in an almost spring-like green- 
 ness. Pines, purplish-gray. 
 
 The other day tracks in the sand were very interest- 
 ing—prints of men, horses, dogs, and birds ; these latter 
 scrawled like Chinese characters all along the beach — 
 the feet of crows, I think. 
 
 Of reddened maple leaves (Acer ruhrum), the down- 
 iness of the under side gives a bluish tinge like the bloom 
 of a peach. 
 
 The maple leaves for the most part fall when they 
 ripen, turning to mellow yellows or crimson, but in the 
 striped maple {Acer pennsylvanicum) they shrivel on 
 the branch, hang limp and yellow. White birch leaves 
 grow withered and ragged on the edges very often be- 
 fore they turn color. 
 
 I think the beeches are conspicuously green now, 
 compared to the birches, both black and white. The beech 
 turns to a beautiful golden tree in autumn, the leaves so 
 uniformly perfect. 
 
 Who was it that to escape the embrace of Apollo was 
 
142 STOWENOTES 
 
 converted into a tree? Daphne? The spirit of such a 
 one may dwell in some of the birches, for instance the 
 gray, with its smooth shining bark, its graceful drooping 
 branches, or the white, with its inner bark tissues tinted 
 as delicately as flesh, But my woodland goddess is the 
 beech— I think the panther must have lain undistinguish- 
 able along those gray and mossy boughs. 
 
 The aspen leaf adapts itself, I think, to a sculptor's 
 art, as a leaf that might be well in a bas-relief or a capital. 
 
 Strong wind all the morning; furtive shadows; cop- 
 pery gleams; the sun in a dense haze. The mountain 
 entirely shut out, and the opposite shore as dim and un- 
 substantial as a dream. Sun on water, broken and scat- 
 tered reflection — coppery spangles. 
 
 This morning I heard the most plaintive, sweet, and 
 seaboard cries, little timorous twitterings— some little 
 birds that I could not see distinctly, swift and light of 
 wing — redpolls? 
 
 On the lake. This morning the lake was rippled 
 slightly, reflecting the sky. Only along the southern 
 shore was there the smooth surface and the sunken re- 
 flection. Everywhere else it shone steely blue, like a 
 shield in the sun, a silver mirror. 
 
 That sunrise at Loon Lake!— then the morning broke 
 joyously into golden mirth. It came laughing over the 
 hills, and the lake. Nature's mirror, laughed in response. 
 Loon Lake might be the Laughing Lake. 
 
 Under the southeastern shore there still hangs a dark 
 shadow. Even so little mist as there is in the air to-day 
 
THE ADIRONDACKS 143 
 
 suffices to give that feeling of heavy mystery that these 
 morning shadows seem to possess. Shadows as dense as 
 vapors, thick, a dusky fluid, a dark tide ebbing in the 
 rising light. 
 
 This morning a single silver line, sharp as a sword, 
 pierced the gloom. 
 
 Lily-pads, turned golden, lie like C)mibals, with the 
 narrow cleft to the middle. Near the shores are arrow- 
 head grasses. 
 
 I crossed the lake, and found a slow and tortuous way 
 into a channel with low sedgy banks. The sun was warm 
 and dazzling ; a fresh breeze was blowing. Presently the 
 channel opened out like a pond, the surface mottled with 
 round lily leaves, green, gold, and red. I rowed on into 
 the shadow of the further shore, for there the water 
 skirted the edge of a wood. Birches, maples, and hem- 
 locks rose high behind me, shutting out the sun. 
 
 It was delightful gliding into the chilly shade; a 
 sweet damp odor was in the dead unheated air. It was 
 like a draught of cold water to one parched with thirst. 
 A pleasant breeze was there — it rustled in the trees on 
 the opposite bank. I lay in the stern of my boat, looking 
 and listening. Presently I heard a cock crow ; the sound 
 was distant, but it seemed to come from the wood. Then 
 I realized the poetry of Thoreau's thought : how stirring 
 that sound would have been as the cry of a wild bird in 
 its native forest. 
 
 Wind cold, wintry. In the channel; interesting 
 wooded shore. Birches all turned, hemlocks and spruces 
 very dark. Here is mystery, the element that this scenery 
 
144 STOWENOTES 
 
 in general lacks. The golden leaves are dense and glitter- 
 ing ; soft penetrable glimpses ; suggestive shades in the 
 black boughs of the evergreens. Trees springing from 
 the dead level of water seem very tall. Further on the 
 channel opens out. A small wooded hill rises at its far 
 end. 
 
 Perhaps the icy wind gave point to my imagination, 
 but I could feel strongly the interest and beauty of the 
 scene, leafless, clothed only in snow— a white coating on 
 the outspread spruce branches; the evergreens doubly 
 dark, the deciduous trees springing out from a covering 
 of snow, their bare branches against a leaden sky; the 
 bosky hill thus transformed, and the pond a sheet of ice. 
 
 Coming back, I lay down in the boat and let the wind 
 propel me, occasionally touching the oars to keep her 
 head straight down the stream. Before me the wind, 
 catching the edges of the floating lily-pads, tossed them 
 up upon the surface. They bobbed like a school of por- 
 poises, or the head of a drowning man. 
 
 Last night the wind had many voices, mourning low 
 and whistling shrilly. 
 
 Cold wintry day, the dull cold that presages snow. 
 Wind from the west-northwest. Crossed the lake and 
 entered the channel, down which I rowed for a consider- 
 able distance, much further than I have ever been before. 
 The hemlocks, that partly compose the wood, are old 
 trees with twisted branches and dark close foliage. I was 
 mistaken in supposing the wood to be in great part of 
 maples; contrasting with the dark-hued evergreens are 
 the glittering yellows of birches and beeches, and only 
 
THE ADIRONDACKS 145 
 
 on the very margin of the water shows the crimson of the 
 red maples. 
 
 The water mirroring the sky and shore seemed of 
 infinite depth. The sky was overcast with stratified and 
 leaden clouds. The glassy channel reflected the woody 
 bank with such delicate blending of light and shadow, 
 such softness, wherein Nature as a portrayer of herself 
 triumphs over Art. There was in the reflection all the 
 mystery of a new and different scene: its shadowy re- 
 cesses were the entrances into an unknown country. Its 
 very remoteness was a provocative to the imagination; 
 it seemed to lie back of the wood above, far in under the 
 sedgy shore. Many of the young trees were leafless, and 
 displayed a crown of fine drawn twigs against the sky. 
 
 Rowing back. For a time, when the boat swam noise- 
 lessly in a stretch of clear water, there was complete 
 silence. Then a gust of wind would stir along the bank, 
 and, as if that slight noise gave the cue to Nature, various 
 sounds would break in upon the stillness— the distracted 
 cawing of crows in dark and clamorous flight, the 
 screaming of jays in the tree-tops, the whistling chirp of 
 squirrels from the wood. Faint and shrilly along the 
 dead face of the water the distant rattle of a kingfisher, 
 and with these the thin wiry sound of the sliding keel 
 among the rushes. On the opposite bank some ruffling 
 sparrows hopped from twig to twig with a plaintive 
 "cheep, cheep I" 
 
 This morning out riding; passed by Jones's Pond. If 
 this scenery is impressive at all, it would be in such a 
 place as this. The lake is dead, coated with floating lily- 
 
146 STOWENOTES 
 
 pads. A little removed from the marshy shore, larches 
 hung with gray mosses stand like cypresses in a South- 
 ern swamp. This has something of the primitive look- 
 such desolate places as this might have been King 
 Philip's retreat and refuge. 
 
 No change in the weather, the thermometer still in 
 the neighborhood of forty; cloudy, clearing, with cold 
 wind from the west. 
 
 On the lake the catspaws come darkling like the 
 shadow of a harpy's wings; they sweep upon one with 
 a fierce speed. 
 
 The breaking out of the sun was like a burst of 
 music. 
 
 In the wood, out of the wind, although the air was 
 cold it was very agreeable; there was the crisp autumnal 
 quality in it, and from the ground arose the sweet odor 
 from the fallen leaves. The sky was cloudy and the sun 
 obscured, but it would occasionally peer out, and an 
 answering brightness would appear in the wood, the dull 
 yellows of the birch leaves kindled into gold. There is a 
 silent sermon in the serene and patient attitude of 
 Autumn. It is as if the seared leaves clung to the tree to 
 catch the human eye and hold it with this spectacle of 
 change and dissolution. 
 
 The beech saplings, with their shining sharp-toothed 
 leaves and the persistency of their verdure, remind me 
 continually of holly, even in the manner of their yellow- 
 ing. The leaves of the shrubs of arrow-wood that skirt 
 the path turn color in spots glowing crimson like drops of 
 
THE ADIRONDACKS 147 
 
 blood, as if a hunt had lately passed along, the wounded 
 deer staining the leaves. More often, turned whole and 
 uniform, they shine in colors of rough tanned leather. 
 
 These crisp dead leaves betray the movements, how- 
 ever stealthy, of the little erstwhile silent woodland 
 things. 
 
 It seems a little strange that this Autumn, which ex- 
 ceeds all the seasons in the brilliancy and gay beauty of 
 her outward aspect, should nevertheless be of so pensive 
 a mood, even to melancholy. 
 
 The sun shines through the boughs of the trees as 
 red as blood — flashing like a gigantic carbuncle. 
 
 I wonder if Hawthorne's story of the Great Car- 
 buncle might not have been suggested to him by such an 
 evening walk, facing the red setting sun, and seeing it 
 flash with such a bright metallic glimmer in among the 
 leaves. 
 
 The seeming conformity of nature with one's mood, 
 as in the nodding of grasses, the whisper of leaves. 
 The sunset on the lake— red fire. 
 
 Warmer. The dead buck— the group of guides— the 
 dense misty background. 
 
 The wet transparent morning that follows after rain. 
 The boat — its silver wake; the golden trees touched into 
 vital color by a gleam of sunlight on the bank beyond. 
 Echoes around the lake ; the dead sound of a rifle's report 
 in the damp wood. 
 
 Blood seen to-day on the road. How strong in most 
 animals is the emotion that the sight of blood causes— a 
 
148 STOWENOTES 
 
 kind of pity and horror that is perhaps an expression of 
 our appreciation of its precious quality, its vital color ! 
 
 Followed the direction of my last evening's walk and 
 penetrated the unexplored portion of the path, which led 
 me, as I imagined, out upon the road to Meacham Lake. 
 
 The air thick as smoke, but cold with a dead and bit- 
 ter chill. Followed a little path to the very verge of Os- 
 good Pond. 
 
 The opposite shores were dim and gray. Heard the 
 far-away call of a kingfisher over the mist-hung water, 
 but saw nothing. There was a cold wind blowing that 
 stirred the rushes and the frost-bitten leaves of the alders 
 along the bank. 
 
 It is a great relief for me to find myself free of the 
 hotel, its environs and its population, for indeed a hotel 
 is a mimic town. It is worth while to have declared de- 
 fensive war against the world for the sake of the friend- 
 ship that Nature extends to the solitary. I think any 
 voice, even the most tuneful to my ears, would jar upon 
 this silent intercourse. 
 
 The rush of the wind, the stirring of leaves, all the 
 sounds of inanimate nature, speak to me in the language 
 of friendship. 
 
 The chipmunk, sitting upon his haunches and crack- 
 ing a beech nut — a pretty furry fellow with an eye like a 
 berry, glistening, dew-coated. 
 
 In the wood sweet bird notes, an infectious melan- 
 choly—the fall of every leaf like the fall of a tear. 
 
-P I !■- \ 
 
 JJ-I .i-^, ,iic 
 
NEW YORK 
 
 New York, 
 October. 
 
 Into the Park at the Sixty-seventh Street entrance. 
 Several pin oaks stand here, and give me always the first 
 greeting. I stopped to watch a squirrel seated on a 
 slender branch, erect, in the act of nibbling a nut. And 
 standing motionless beside the motionless trees, I seemed 
 to come as if by some subtle mesmeric transmission 
 within the influence of their attitude; the immovable 
 trunk, the still, extended branches, the quiet mien, af- 
 fected me so powerfully that I stood still with a sense of 
 having attained the end of my journey, 
 
 I glanced about me from the oaks to the evergreens, 
 and found in them the same resigned and Almost fatal- 
 istic calm. It seemed ruthless to break the spell, but the 
 squirrel, with a sudden relinquishment of his couchant 
 attitude, sprang upon the trunk and ran, with his claws 
 audible along the bark, down to the ground, and his 
 movement seemed to sanction mine. 
 
 Last night the half moon, red, in a faint mist. The 
 fairy lake — the dim bosky shores and distant bridges 
 reflected in the pale waters. The trailing branches of 
 the weeping willows seemed to give the only evidences 
 of life among the trees ; they swayed slightly in the little 
 breaths of air. 
 
 149 
 
150 STOWENOTES 
 
 In Central Park. Sky overcast; interesting spongy 
 clouds to the northeast; ovals (lakes) and strips of light 
 metallic blue; strong wind from west-southwest; dead 
 leaves in the wind, like animate impish things; under 
 sides of bay leaves ; a true autumn day. 
 
 Oh, the charm of bare twigs, the silvery twigs of lit- 
 tle beeches! Leaves of sweet gum turning soberly a 
 bronze red, like some oak leaves. 
 
 November. 
 
 Cold; wind west-southwest. Sky of a clear pale 
 autumnal blue. There is, however, a genial influence in 
 the air that strongly suggests the spring. The wind 
 also, with its chill and velvety touch, is a gentle re- 
 minder ; the air is smooth. 
 
 Life ! Life ! Trees and squirrels, and on the branches 
 of a pin oak a chickadee, sleek, plump, and merry. Na- 
 ture's attitude is a brave one to-day. There's no au- 
 tumnal melancholy and foreboding; her laughter, an 
 inaudible spiritual utterance that is echoed in the wind, 
 the dancing sunlight, and the note of the chickadee, is as 
 gay and careless as if her outlook were spring rather 
 than the dead and vacant winter. 
 
 Passed by some rocks and shrubbery about which 
 many birds twittered and flew, and caught a glimpse of 
 one, large, purple-tinged, that I thought might prove to 
 be a pine grosbeak. Another glimpse revealed the high- 
 crested head of a cardinal. It was the female cardinal 
 grosbeak, and the second after I saw the male flash 
 through the bare boughs of a little sassafras. He gave 
 warmth and color to the scene. 
 
N E W Y O R K 151 
 
 I walked in a grove of white pines in the hope of see- 
 ing a pine grosbeak. The trees greeted, me with a deep 
 note of welcome, tossing up their green and furry 
 boughs. 
 
 The water in the lower reservoir is blue, though 
 much more brilliant than any known color [pigment]. 
 
 How many beautiful evergreens there seem to be in 
 the Park, besides the most beautiful, holly. Cedars of 
 Lebanon, somewhat like larches in leaf. 
 
 The persistent leaves of the oak trees rustle harshly. 
 To-day there was no great movement and commotion 
 among the leaves, on account of the moderate wind, but 
 I noticed, notwithstanding, in unsheltered corners, some 
 skipping fragments caught in a sudden spasm, circling 
 in a kind of mad St. Vitus's rigadoon. 
 
 Sheep on the east side, giving a particular interest to 
 the open reserved as a playground for children. So 
 many pretty children— sweet faces, round and rosy. 
 It's hard to know where to direct one's interest, whether 
 to the trees, the birds, or the people. 
 
 The late red autumnal sunsets and the crescent moon. 
 
 Half past four, sunset. Went out at the first indica- 
 tion of a breaking away among the clouds. Wind from 
 the west-northwest; air cold. Yesterday the thermom- 
 eter stood (earlier in the day) at sixty-two. The wet 
 tree trunks black against the light. In the northwest 
 quarter of the horizon the clouds have lifted, leaving ex- 
 posed stretches of the sky that gleam a pale metallic 
 green; on this float fragments of gold and heavier 
 masses of purple, stretching horizontally across the light. 
 
152 S T O W E N O T E S 
 
 The light sweeps at length around the entire circle, 
 far into the spongy east, where the dark purple horizon 
 fades to the blue of the heavy clouds above. 
 
 The sunset, growing redder, glows behind the dark 
 evergreens. The wind wakes a response in the pines. 
 
 The dried oak leaves shiver on the branches. The 
 film of water on the pavement is, I think, partly frozen. 
 The twigs and leaves are glistening wet. 
 
 Coming out into any open place, one is conscious of 
 a lifting of the gloom, a lease of light, so masked is the 
 effect of the interposed and tangled branches. How 
 beautiful is this season of naked trunks and delicate bare 
 twigs ! — not like the earlier autumn, that is a scant and 
 wasted semblance of the full summer. 
 
 The sunset fades from red to ashen hues. All color 
 is withdrawn from the pale green lakes, below the clouds 
 that gleam cold and white. 
 
 December. 
 
 It is warm, wet, and spring-like. The wind is moist 
 and cool. The sky is the pale opaque blue of April. It is 
 as if the unawakened Spring stirred in her sleep. 
 
 Later the wind blows colder ; above is again the sun- 
 flooded pale autumnal heaven. 
 
 Sunset clouds of a wonderfully vital purple, gold- 
 edged, gradually fading to the dusky magenta-purple 
 commonly seen. 
 
 Clear, cold day. How light these winter skies are! 
 The Park is full of the thin wintry lisp of the chick- 
 adee. 
 
N E W Y O R K 153 
 
 Peacocks— the blues and gold of their trailing tail 
 feathers on the yellowish green of the grass. 
 
 What wind stirring is from the west. The air is very 
 still; the reflection of the bare and fawn-colored shore is 
 perfect, except toward the centre of the lake, where there 
 is a little motion, so slight that it reflects no glint of the 
 sky, but quivers white, like heated air. 
 
 Stars glimmer more slowly out of this pale winter 
 twilight than from the duskier summer skies. 
 
 To-day in the Park. The sky is of a singular blue 
 color, like the skies of summer or early fall. There are 
 numerous fleecy white clouds gathering heavily in places, 
 but between them, in beautiful gradations of color, from 
 the pale horizon to the almost purple depth of the apex, 
 shows this summer sky. 
 
 The wind is from the north and seems to threaten 
 snow, although it is not very cold ; the air is temperate. 
 
 The lake shows gray under the clouds. By the shore 
 I came upon the pair of beautiful cardinals that I saw 
 last late in November and had begun to regret as absent 
 friends. This fellow, the male, is vividly red, and, if I 
 am not deceived, of a more delicate hue than others I 
 have seen. He is almost rose-red — colored like the 
 breast feathers on the rose-breasted cardinal. There 
 were also in their company several chickadees. 
 
 I saw a white and black bird resting a moment in the 
 boughs of a little maple, and on approaching found it to 
 be a small downy woodpecker. Afterward I heard his 
 sharp rat-tap. It is a fine, clear, decisive sound. There 
 is something admirable in the seeming directness of his 
 
154 STOWENOTES 
 
 methods of obtaining his dinner ; other birds, twittering 
 and flitting about in the dried leaves, seem futile and 
 procrastinating compared with this silent, alert, and 
 nimble creature. His note is admonitory — like the tap 
 of a school-teacher's pencil recalling the class to business. 
 
 A heavy fall of snow last night. The trees beyond 
 the Park paling at the end of the street are covered; a 
 thick white coating follows the direction of every twig 
 and exaggerates the complexity of their branching. It 
 lies so heavily on the outspread branches of the ever- 
 greens that hardly any indication of their real color is 
 apparent. It is like a dense white leafage. On the de- 
 ciduous trees it is so soft and thick, a kind of sessile 
 frosty foliage like the flowering sprays of the Judas- 
 trees in spring, only that this wintry florescence is 
 white. 
 
 Looking south is looking into Fairyland, the country 
 of Jack Frost. Trunks, boughs, and twigs are all of the 
 same fragile glistening texture. It seems as if a sudden 
 gust might shatter it like a dream, or that it might waste 
 and dwindle in the sunshine. 
 
 I walked southward down the long aisle of the Mall. 
 The distance closed in on a confusion of white shadow- 
 less objects. Here, in a wind-protected spot, the boughs 
 are heavy. The eye loses itself in a mass of white netted 
 branches, as baffling as the intricacies worked in a spring 
 sunshine. 
 
 Nature, beautiful in extremes : the rhododendron and 
 other evergreen plants are most beautiful under their 
 white covering, notably a little shrub of holly with its 
 
N E W Y O R K IS5 
 
 glistening green leaves— leaves designed to prick 
 through the snow. 
 
 Of the evergreens, I think the circling needles of the 
 spruce hold the snow best. The flat spread of the 
 branches is also an assistance. It slips from the long 
 glassy needles of the white pines, but the Austrian pines 
 again retain it well. The white birches are dusky — of a 
 dull pinkish hue. They seem on better terms with win- 
 ter than the other trees ; they meet the eye with none of 
 the phenomenal brightness that distinguishes them in a 
 summer landscape. The dead leaves clinging to the 
 boughs of the beeches make a sharp rustling sound as 
 the melting snow from the twigs above falls among 
 them. 
 
 High above pigeons circled, white wings flashing 
 against the gray sky. 
 
 The far-off ringing of sleigh-bells is like the summer 
 sound of tree toads or of frogs in spring. 
 
 People seem to realize with greater force the phe- 
 nomena of winter. A snowfall is always an event, and 
 in the sense of a strange environment, under what ap- 
 pear new and unusual conditions, people are apt to give 
 freer expression to the natural joy of being in the open 
 air. 
 
 Thermometer at about freezing; strong gusty wind 
 from the west. A beautiful clear day, with a blue winter 
 sky full of hurrying white clouds. The Austrian pines 
 are of a deeper and more vital green than our ever- 
 greens, notably the white pine ; they stand dark patches 
 of rich color against the snow. 
 
IS6 STOWENOTES 
 
 Looking across the little lake to the willows on the 
 opposite shore, that show the liveliest bit of color in the 
 landscape, the twigs are of a bright yellow ochre, and 
 beside them the clinging oak leaves, that are ordinarily 
 important points of color, seem dull and gray. 
 
 On the crown of a little hill that rises like smoke, a 
 mist of pale deciduous boughs, a group of evergreens- 
 white pines and spruces— stand dark and solid. The 
 wind makes a hollow sound in the pines, a sound familiar 
 enough in all seasons, but always, even in the midst of 
 summer, with bleak and frosty suggestions, and now the 
 very voice of Winter. It is truly the only leafy voice of 
 the season ; the thin rustling of the persistent dead leaves, 
 like those of the oaks and beeches, can hardly be so called. 
 
 As I looked southward to the sun, the bare twigs 
 glistened like dew-coated spider webs — threads of gos- 
 samer. The southern horizon, flooded with white sun- 
 light, is a colder outlook than the north. 
 
 Clear, with a blustering wind blowing from the west 
 or west-southwest. The gloom of passing clouds and 
 the wonderful radiance of returning sunshine. 
 
 Saw the cardinal grosbeaks at very close quarters. I 
 have no words for the splendor of the male. The most 
 surprising fact in connection with them is that they are 
 not the only pair wintering in Central Park; to-day I 
 saw another couple. They were all in the vicinity of the 
 pea and guinea fowls' feeding-ground, in a sheltered 
 place out of the wind. There were numberless English 
 sparrows there, greedy and quarrelsome, who, between 
 their expeditions to the charmed circle of scattered corn, 
 
N E W Y O R K 157 
 
 crowded together in the bare twigs of a little shrub, look- 
 ing cold and discontented, "very poor and beggarly"; 
 contrasting most unfavorably with the lofty bearing of 
 the cardinals, who seemed to-day as blithe and confident 
 as if a summer sun shone upon them— and the ther- 
 mometer at twenty-five ! Their note is a thin sound. 
 
 Two little chickadees, high up in the cold wind, slid- 
 ing from bough to bough of a leafless oak, no less a 
 contrast to the soulless sparrows. The chickadees ap- 
 peared to be as merry as crickets, though their twitter- 
 ing seemed shaken from them by the cold and blustering 
 wind. 
 
 At a certain spot near the lake, where underbrush 
 and small shrubs abound, the little leafless twigs looked 
 like smoke creeping up the hillside. 
 
 January. 
 
 This is the first real winter day we have had. As I 
 entered the Park from the southeast, I met the wind 
 right in the face. The sky was gradually being over- 
 spread with a gray cloud rising in the west. Snow began 
 to fall ; the flakes danced about in the gray atmosphere, 
 sweeping down into one's eyes. The air was intensely 
 cold, as was the spirit of the whole scene— the leafless 
 dusky bushes, the ice-coated trees, the crisp crunching 
 snow. 
 
 We have had autumnal days and spring days, but be- 
 fore this no winter day. Here was the touch, the voice, 
 the breath of Winter ; the impression was as vivid as that 
 created by the first snowfall. The wind rose rapidly ; the 
 sky cleared, the sun bursting out as the snowflakes still 
 
IS8 STOWENOTES 
 
 fell, and there were sharp blue shadows on the snow. I 
 felt that strange and comfortable sensation of existence, 
 of being— warmly and actively alive in the face of such 
 white and death-like immobility. Perhaps this accounts 
 for the fact of winter having escaped me the past two 
 months. I have seen and noted too much life. 
 
 Perhaps the associations of warmth and comfort, of 
 open blazing hearths contrasted with outer cold, uncon- 
 sciously entered into the feeling of delight with which I 
 saw the dull gray cloud mount in the west. 
 
 People's thoughts might take on a more personal in- 
 terest at this time of the year ; the atmospheric conditions 
 in a primitive state would compel it. The dead and chill- 
 ing season adds another to our winter coverings; it 
 draws a close mantle of egotism about us. 
 
 People should be more characteristic, with wider 
 differences of thought, in winter than in summer; like 
 wood and metal, we are contracted by the cold. 
 
 February. 
 
 It is a wonderful, bright, warm spring sunshine. On 
 the bridge: New York with white wreaths of blown 
 smoke along the housetops, the crawling ferry-boats 
 below, and the wide stretch of the bay, bounded by the 
 long bow of Staten Island, on the sides of which the 
 snow glimmers. 
 
 A soft delightful air. Home through the Park by the 
 lower pond ; children and women skating. 
 
 There is something strange and delightful in witness- 
 ing an out-of-door exercise wherein women seem to 
 move upon an equal footing with men. Of the two on 
 
N E W Y O R K 159 
 
 the ice, the female is decidedly the more interesting fig- 
 ure. Her skirts give her a dignity that is wanting to the 
 spindling trousers of the modern male costume. . Every 
 movement gains in force and significance with its ac- 
 companying flow of di-apery. There is a rakishness in 
 the swinging skirt and the flash of light along the blade 
 of momentarily discovered skate. 
 
 March. 
 
 Buds on all trees in Park. Cloudy wet day; wind 
 northeast. 
 
 On a cold winter day of one of the two past months in 
 the Park, the trees being ice-coated to their tiniest twigs, 
 the whole face of Nature assumed a gray tone, on which 
 people moved with a startling eflfect of color. 
 
 [March 12, 1888.] 
 Sunday, and some part of yesterday, there occurred 
 the most terrific storm of wind and snow that has been 
 known for years in this city — I believe, the most severe 
 on record, but it has brought the redpolls on its white 
 wings. I saw a flock in the Park this afternoon. They 
 had a way of sliding about from twig to twig like chick- 
 adees. 
 
 A mild spring day. The buds are fairly out ; I notice 
 particularly the slender plaited sheaths of the beech buds. 
 Pass by a little snow-bound brook that is vociferous 
 under its coating of rotten ice. Its voice is a vital spring 
 sound ; it is hoarse with delight. 
 
 I hear some sweet bird notes and the thin whistle of 
 
i6o STOWENOTES 
 
 the cardinals. These I saw, and a large black glossy bird 
 that lit in the top branches of a pin oak, with a curious 
 "chuck, chuck." I afterward concluded this to be a 
 grackle. 
 
 As I was turning homeward, I heard a strong and 
 thrilling song; it was like the striking of a single bell. I 
 stopped and retraced my steps. I saw the grackle in a 
 spruce about two hundred yards distant, and from this 
 direction the song seemed to proceed. As I approached, 
 the notes grew louder — they were singularly sweet and 
 strong. I think I have not been so deeply affected by a 
 bird note since I last heard the hermit thrushes in the 
 woods about Stowe. This was a startling outburst, won- 
 derfully sustained. "Cling, cling, cling, cling," it 
 chimed, seeming to ring in the spring. The grackle flew 
 away as I came close to the tree, but the song proceeded, 
 and presently in the topmost branches I saw the male 
 cardinal. 
 
 I had never before heard any but their sharp winter 
 note ; this was another of the poetic revelations of spring. 
 I experienced a new feeling toward the bird. Before, 
 his courage and his beauty had excited my admiration ; 
 but his song touched me deeper. I used to watch him 
 with a complacent pleasure, pleased at his proud and 
 confident bearing and the brilliancy of his crimson uni- 
 form; but now I look upon him with a new affection, 
 with a feeling that approaches nearly to pity. 
 
 There is always something pathetic in the manifesta- 
 tion of a touch of passion where it seems strange, as in 
 the singing of a child. There is a confession, in such a 
 case, of the common pain of living— real, it may be, or 
 
N E W Y O R K i6i 
 
 prophetic ; and with regard to the bird, his song found a 
 response, perhaps, in our common fate. 
 
 A cloudy day; sHght wind from the west; slight and 
 scattering falls of snow. From the so-called Ramble 
 across the lake come sweet summer-like bird notes. 
 There I find a flock of fox sparrows, some chickadees and 
 slate-colored snowbirds. The latter, the first I have 
 ever seen, sober-tinted birds, yet with a dazzling display 
 of their white tail feathers ; active and pretty, with a thin 
 wintry note. 
 
 The snow comes floating down in large soft flakes, 
 sinking gently through the air, but occasionally a rising 
 gust will whirl them among the trees, and fill the air so 
 densely that one can hardly see a hundred yards. It is 
 very pleasant, warm, and spring-like between these little 
 white flurries, and then the birds are active. Three 
 grackles flew over my head with a plaintive unmusical 
 cry. I saw a hairy woodpecker, and a tiny sharp-billed 
 gray bird marked with white and black above, and below 
 buflfy-pink — a tiny creature, stout and comical, with a 
 fair stretch of wing but a small and stunted tail. It 
 seemed to be a creeper, running nimbly along tree trunks 
 and branches ; its beak was sharp and pointed, and it had 
 a curious way of throwing back its head and extending 
 its bill skyward. It uttered a low strange note. It was, I 
 afterward discovered on visiting the case of North 
 American birds at the Museum of Natural History, a 
 red-breasted nuthatch. 
 
 On my way home I noticed a commotion in the 
 boughs of an Austrian pine, and there beheld a crossbill, 
 
i62 STOWENOTES 
 
 white-winged or American, burying his salmon-colored 
 head and neck in among the leaves. I could hear the click 
 of his strong beak. There was a grace and silence in his 
 method of feeding that suggested the hummingbird; 
 flitting from bough to bough and alighting, he would 
 thrust his head into the tufts of glistening needles as a 
 bumblebee buries himself in a flower. 
 
 As I passed a tulip tree by the drive, I noticed some 
 of the flowers already out. 
 
 Home in a whirl of snowflakes. 
 
 Thermometer about twenty. To-day cold ; blustering 
 wind, roaring in the branches. A typical March day, 
 rude enough and yet with a touch of caprice— changing 
 from leaden frowns to broad and genial smiles. A stiff- 
 ening wind; the trees seem to strengthen themselves to 
 resist it; the less stalwart forms shrink before it. My 
 face seems to harden into an expression of determina- 
 tion, as I walk on in the teeth of it. 
 
 Thermometer still about twenty. The wind had 
 somewhat abated this morning. I passed through the 
 Park at about twelve o'clock. In some evergreens by the 
 drive I heard several grackles, no very musical hearing, 
 for their note was rather like the squeaking and grating 
 of rusty hinges. In the afternoon I saw again the fox 
 sparrows, and heard their clear whistling note. The 
 grosbeaks were flying in company with them. We had 
 a fine view of the male, high up in the leafless branches, 
 in the strong afternoon sun. 
 
 The day was like a winter day; even in sheltered 
 
N E W Y O R K 163 
 
 spots the warm sunshine was wintry rather than spring- 
 like. 
 
 On our way home, in a grove of pines I caught a 
 glimpse of a bird that seemed strange to me. I was able 
 to approach quite near to it, and could see it distinctly 
 from below. It seemed to have a black head, the back, 
 wings, and tail marked with black, white, and yellow, 
 the throat, nape, and shoulders yellow, the breast the 
 same color tinged slightly with pink, and the rump 
 white. It was a bird of about the size and shape of a 
 pine grosbeak, I thought, not so large as a robin. I am 
 mightily inclined to believe it was an evening grosbeak, 
 although I see from Ridgway that they are only as far 
 east (usually in winter) as Ohio. Might not the blizzard 
 have brought this one ? Its note was a short melancholy 
 chirp.* 
 
 April. 
 
 I have seen numerous juncos, seed-picking and hop- 
 ping in company with the fox sparrows. There are song 
 sparrows also. I have twice seen one, singing from the 
 branch of a tree, in that enraptured pose, the head in- 
 variably thrown back, the ruffled throat displayed, and 
 the tail depressed at an obtuse angle to the body. 
 
 Sometimes toward evening, when the day has been 
 mild, their song comes with a touching sweetness from 
 an unfrequented little peninsula, full of a light growth 
 of young trees and bushes, that puts out into the lake. 
 
 After some difficulty I have succeeded in locating— of 
 tracing to its unstable source— a sweet, strong whistling 
 
 * There seems to be no previous record of this bird's appearance in eastern 
 New York earlier than the winter of 1889-90. 
 
i64 STOWENOTES 
 
 song, a rapid succession of notes, cheerful notwithstand- 
 ing they are of a contralto quality— a song with none of 
 the prophetic sadness that is in almost all bird music ; it 
 is the note of the fox sparrow. 
 
 The junco's is a little shivering strain, unmodulated— 
 a single note shaken into the air, faint and musical. 
 
 For a few days past the grass has been pricking out, 
 a strong bluish green. The evergreens seem less olive 
 and purple, but they will probably soon fade, sadly in 
 contrast with the deciduous trees. 
 
 I have been vouchsafed an especial revelation : I have 
 been admitted to the company of a goddess. I say this 
 in the consciousness of a peculiar and personal manifes- 
 tation, since although the vision was open to the day and 
 in the eye of many, they had not the wit to comprehend 
 its full significance. I met Diana in Central Park. She 
 had outwardly, in all respects, conformed to the spirit of 
 the time. She was completely and even fashionably 
 dressed. Her jacket was the skin of an arctic seal, 
 which I am inclined to think she had bought; even her 
 dog, in deference to the Park authorities, she held in 
 leash. The one suggestion of wildness that redeemed 
 her was a glint of crimson in her hat — a gleam like a 
 scarlet tanager. She was gayer than a goldfinch, more 
 startling than a redstart. She never looked at me as I 
 stood at the side of the path, but passed on with her keen, 
 soulless blue eyes fixed on the distance. Her gold hair 
 curled on her low forehead ; the Greek profile was still pre- 
 served, the straight nose, the short lip, the full chin, while 
 in her cheek the blood stirred with a tender vital glow. 
 
N E W Y O R K i6s 
 
 The scattering notes of birds are carried past my ear 
 along the strong west wind. There is something ex- 
 hilarating in its rush and tumult ! 
 
 The peacocks' screaming is blown faint to the east- 
 ward, and follows in the wind with a wild suggestion. 
 Westward by the lake, where I sit down to rest, I hear a 
 musical twittering, and, following the sound, come upon 
 a tiny, trim, olive-backed bird of the color of the outer 
 petals of a water lily that grow pale, even as in this bird 
 the dusky olive of the back fades to the dusky white of 
 the breast. Her mate, whom I saw a few seconds after- 
 ward, gave me the clue to her variety and sex ; she was 
 the female gold-crowned kinglet. The male I saw close 
 by. He was less shy; in the confidence of his innocence, 
 he flitted among the bushes within four feet of my ap- 
 proach. 
 
 I was doubtful of him for an instant, for, as he 
 turned, the gold of his crown glimmered so ruddy on the 
 occiput that I thought perhaps he might be a ruby-crown, 
 but the two dark streaks bordering the gold identified 
 him. He uttered a note something like a chickadee's. 
 
 I saw a goldfinch, and afterward heard him singing 
 in the boughs of a spruce. As he left the tree, he rested 
 for an instant, silhouetted on a twig against the sun, and 
 then took flight with the light springing motion that is 
 characteristic of his merry mood. He's a slim and dainty 
 creature. 
 
 On the bank at the water's edge a swan sat asleep, a 
 soft and dazzling object, under the open boughs of a pin 
 oak that threw angular shadows on the grass. The wind 
 was somewhat lulled, and the sunshine so warm as to 
 
i66 STOWENOTES 
 
 cheat our senses with an atmosphere of summer and 
 give play to the warmer current of summer fancies. One 
 might have looked for a more startling sight beyond the 
 bend of the little peninsula, for a sleep more poetic than 
 that of a swan, a substance more delicate than his softest 
 feathers, more luminous than the dazzling whiteness of 
 his wings. Not to push the thought into an uninspired 
 commonplace, leaving the vulgar instance of Leda un- 
 molested, what a startling idea is that of the Greek 
 admiration of humanity and nature, dissociated from 
 the coldness of its sculptured transmission ! 
 
 April in this climate is, however, too harsh for us to 
 see the migrations of the nymphs. The robin and the 
 song sparrow, birds of the open spring and windy mead- 
 ows, are not their harbingers. They come with the mys- 
 tery of leaves, and haunt dusky places with the wood 
 thrush. 
 
 There was a touch of inclemency in the air that made 
 one shiver almost in the instant of suggestion. 
 
 In the warm shelter of the Ramble I saw again the 
 gold-crowned kinglets, and, flitting in the self-same 
 manner among some box-like bushes, their near connec- 
 tions, the ruby-crowned — birds a trifle larger, plump and 
 sleek, with bright confident eye. The crown of the male 
 is a brilliant crimson with a metallic lustre that gives life 
 to it, and the female, unlike the female gold-crowned, 
 has some touch, a reflection as it were, of her little lord's 
 glory. 
 
 The cardinal grosbeak sang from the bough of a pin 
 oak over the water. His song is less sweet, in contrast 
 
N E W Y O R K 167 
 
 with the increase of melodious spring notes, but his atti- 
 tude is as poetic as the song sparrow's, with as much con- 
 fidence, and with force that is lacking in the latter. 
 
 There's an old cherry tree, a beautiful one, by which 
 I like to sit, for there is an association of childhood with 
 these trees — such a one as this with gnarled boughs and 
 cracked bark, as if the coating were grown too small for 
 the swelling trunk. 
 
 I watch the swans on the lake. They are swimming 
 about with curved necks, and with wings made like a cup 
 to receive the sunshine, half opened like water lilies. 
 They are moving within a narrow circle, turning with a 
 swift stroke that sets their buoyant bodies rocking and 
 the water rippling from under their breasts, just as boats 
 anchored in conflicting currents swing about and are 
 suddenly checked by the tightening of their moorings. 
 They move with a proud but gentk dignity. I think 
 there is no animal, except perhaps the larger feline types, 
 that has so lofty an air. They became the sunshine ; their 
 beauty made it seem tender and caressing. As they ap- 
 proached the shore, their full-feathered forms seemed 
 softer, firmer, more luminous, even, than human 
 flesh. 
 
 I returned to the lake later in the day. It is strange 
 how the change of season, and even a change of light, 
 will alter the aspect of some familiar spot. The whole 
 scene was new to me. The lake reflected the sky, and the 
 swans floated like clouds upon it. 
 
 As I turned homeward, I heard the cardinal, and saw 
 him a hundred yards away, on a hilltop, in the upper 
 branches of a tree, a little black spot against the sunset, 
 
i68 STOWENOTES 
 
 while his song was in the air all about me. It is some- 
 thing like this— if whispered, it conveys some idea of the 
 notes, the prefix pt almost silent, a hint for the arrange- 
 ment of the lips: "Ptcheeow, ptcheeow, ptcheeow, 
 ptcheeow, ptchew, tch-6u." Its musical quality varies in 
 respect of distance. 
 
 There are mares'-tails overhead, and the swans 
 crossed the lake with beating wings and their bugle-like 
 call. There will certainly be rain to-morrow. 
 
 Just before sunset the air was quiet; there was that 
 hush and stillness through which we move involuntarily 
 on the alert— the pause seemed to threaten. 
 
 We lose confidence when Nature ceases to smile and 
 seems to brood ; like children, we must hear her voice and 
 feel the touch of her hands. The murmur and contact 
 of the wind is a cure for loneliness. To be happy we 
 must be continually reassured by some present mani- 
 festation, unless it be terrible in itself. 
 
 Hylas first heard, the night of the i8th, after a south 
 wind. 
 
 May. 
 
 To-day is close and misty, although not by any 
 means so warm as the preceding days of latter April, 
 when the thermometer reached eighty-three or even 
 eighty-six, I think. 
 
 About the 28th of April I noticed the horse-chestnuts 
 out and the willows, and on the 30th the latter, along the 
 lower lake, glittered like gauze, a delicate gold-green in 
 the sunlight. That day also a certain western variety of 
 
N E W Y O R K 169 
 
 maple was out, both flower and leaf. The poplar buds 
 were not yet burst and the aments were undeveloped, 
 many of them scattered on the ground, cut off by the 
 sparrows probably. 
 
 There was a great variety of bird notes, loud in the 
 heavy atmosphere— the cheerful song of the robins, 
 which if less common would be reckoned a beautiful song 
 indeed, and the cardinal's loud alarm from a tree-top, 
 where with some difficulty I traced and discovered him, 
 radiant, facing the sun. 
 
 By the lake just before sunset, in the thick atmo- 
 sphere that hung white and dense like milk on the hori- 
 zon, I saw two swallows circling, dipping, and winging 
 themselves away. The sight made me realize for the 
 first time that this is the end and not the beginning of 
 spring. It was the first intimation of summer. 
 
 Swallows are indelibly associated with all my 
 thoughts of summer, notably with warm and quiet even- 
 ings — twilight time, which is the moment that mem- 
 ory best lays hold of. 
 
 Trees all out. Summer heat. Light on cut grass— 
 blue in long grass, and again soon after cutting, with the 
 severed blades horizontally on surface. 
 
 Wood thrush's song to other bird notes as Venus is 
 to the lesser lights of heaven— brighter, with a ray of 
 particular and exquisite color, and scintillant when other 
 stars are dim. Velvet-topped robins— their cheerful 
 notes. The scissors note of the grackle. 
 
 I heard a cardinal down by the lower lake, where 
 
170 STOWENOTES 
 
 native birds are for the most part strangers, and saw 
 him, a little spot of living crimson against the sky. 
 
 Another overcast and sultry day; wind from the 
 east. The atmosphere of the Park is that of a vast hot- 
 house, close, moist; and in the stirring air a pleasant 
 chill. 
 
 Sweet summer scent— scattered cherry and syringa 
 blossoms swept by; dogwood just appearing, and also 
 lilac. The horse-chestnuts alone furnish an adequate 
 shade and fill the eye gratefully, where the thinly cov- 
 ered twigs of other trees are open to the sultry air. 
 
 June. 
 
 To-day is warm, yet with the vital quality and the 
 wind of summer. Certain walks in the Park lately open 
 to the sun are now dark and cool, made remote and wan- 
 dering by the mystery of the foliage. The air is full of 
 odors, above all the delightful scent of mown grass. The 
 oaks are beautiful in new and glistening greens. The 
 cypresses show a close green fringe along the branches, 
 and the Osage oranges are out. The magnolia blossoms 
 are dead and dying, but the leaves are beautiful. The 
 lilac is a departed delight. 
 
 Saw again a blackpoU warbler, and a wood thrush 
 that hopped within twelve feet of where I sat watching 
 him, and who several times gave utterance softly to his 
 inimitable note : "Schee-loo, chiiryll-eetz !" 
 
 The other morning early the nighthawks were sin- 
 gularly loud. Now and for several evenings past a sad 
 wild sound, the quavering voices of frogs, can be heard 
 
N E W Y O R K 171 
 
 by the lesser ponds. It rings in the ears like an old, 
 familiar, and melancholy song ; as sad as autumn, it fills 
 the mind with the same indefinable melancholy— the 
 melancholy of sunset and of distant sounds. 
 
 An atalanta butterfly lit on my coat and hung there 
 for some time as I walked along. I don't think I ever 
 saw a butterfly more beautiful than this, with her glow- 
 ing golden circle. The name in itself conveys beautiful 
 suggestions: "Cynthia atalanta"— Cynthia, the sylvan 
 goddess, and Atalanta, the maiden of nimble heels, swift 
 but vacillating, the very type of the feminine mind— and 
 the story is but half interpreted when her departures 
 from the straight course are attributed to curiosity. 
 
 A lovely day ; the Park crowded. Clear soft sky, and 
 a summer wind in the trees. Little clouds on the western 
 horizon, so saturated with sunshine that they seemed in 
 themselves to be a source of light. 
 
 The distinctive quality of the wind in summer is that 
 it blows fresh, as if from an unpolluted and distant 
 source ; there is something in it that brings suggestions 
 of space, a free and limitless intimation. It seems to 
 speak of the universal country, to blow over the round 
 of the earth from below the horizon. To-day, as it 
 rushes past, I think perhaps it may have risen in the 
 Gulf, passed over the sandy stretches of Florida, and 
 caught some of the dry sweet odors among the pine for- 
 ests of Georgia. Wherever it travels, it collects and car- 
 ries the sweetest and most healthful scents; foul and 
 heavy odors follow feebly, and sink in the pure and rush- 
 ing air. The damp-laden winds of spring seem in com- 
 parison lifeless and heavy— feeble local stirrings. 
 
172 STOWENOTES 
 
 New Rochelle, New York, 
 
 June. 
 
 The beat of a steamer's paddles, loud and growing, 
 but the steamer invisible. The answering fog-horns like 
 bass notes in an organ, sometimes singularly musical. 
 
 Lilac sunset sky, green sea, same value ; hot Oriental- 
 like sunset, dense ragged cloud above burning waters; 
 black stretches of shore. 
 
 Fog: Curious effect looking across the fog-hung 
 water, following each faintly delineated ripple further 
 out and out, until suddenly, the sight becoming confused, 
 the distance is lost and the white wall closes in upon one. 
 It is in some aspects terrible, to-day mysterious. Hollow 
 voices and strange palpitations— a confusion of noises 
 behind this dispersed and impenetrable veil. 
 
 To-night is the night of the full moon, which silvers 
 the further side of the Sound and lies sparkling among 
 the waves below my window. The lapping water makes 
 a continuous accompaniment to terrestrial sounds. The 
 crickets are shrill. A bat fluttered under the piazza to- 
 night. The twittering of flying swallows; grackles on 
 the shore at low tide. 
 
 Morning, 4.20. It is very light, although the sun is 
 not yet risen above the haze that clothes the horizon— a 
 purple mist that gives the water infinite width and mys- 
 tery. The throbbing of a steamer comes loud over the 
 glassy Sound. It is low tide, and the brown seaweed- 
 hung rocks are singularly dark against the pale water 
 
jfeTf.' 
 
 
 >^ 
 
 
 ^ 
 
N E W Y O R K 173 
 
 that is tinged with the faint colors of the sky, where 
 float slender wreaths of vapor. There are two clam 
 dredgers anchored just beyond the rocks. The notes of 
 song sparrows are frequent ; I can see them flying from 
 tree to tree. The air is misty, the neighboring promon- 
 tory is dim. The sun rises red through the trees with a 
 dark and sanguinary glow— a sunrise that presages a 
 hot day. 
 
 Last night the full moon rose, a large and pale ma- 
 genta disk, hardly discernible on the horizon. The sea 
 was of a leaden blue and the sky heavily overcast. At 
 about a hand's breadth over the horizon the moon, then 
 shining with a dull reddish light, like an enormous Jap- 
 anese lantern, gradually disappeared behind a level line 
 of cloud, a narrow but heavy band that cut through the 
 circumference with a sharp and unshattered edge. She 
 was thus diminished from three quarters to the half, 
 from half to a quarter, growing shallower until she dis- 
 appeared entirely and her dwindling reflection alike for- 
 sook the face of the Sound beneath. Later she shone 
 with a strange effect of pallor, her face overspread with 
 a thin greenish veil. 
 
 At five o'clock this morning the sun was hid in a bank 
 of clouds. The water glassily still. Another hot day, 
 I fear. 
 
 Last night was a night of eccentric gleams, of 
 strange effects of illumination. The stars shone dim ; a 
 few were discernible in the loft of the sky. A falling 
 star trailed a pale thread of light behind the clouds. 
 
174 STOWENOTES 
 
 Rockets and other fireworks shot into the air from 
 beyond the Point— a rain of golden fire that shook down 
 behind the dark trees. Fireflies danced over the grass 
 and in among the branches. Guns were fired from the 
 yachts — a violent concussion in the air, a bursting de- 
 tonation followed by a cavernous yawn, a vast and hol- 
 low sigh that seemed to pass slowly around the horizon. 
 
 Of the thunder, loud and near, a snapping noise, if 
 such a term can be applied to so heavy a sound; also 
 crashing, splintering noises and cannon-like detonations, 
 so sudden and strange as hardly at the moment to sug- 
 gest the source and nature of the sound, which brings an 
 after-realization in the full and heavy rolling. Light on 
 Sound after thunder-storm vivid green, shadowed sur- 
 face dull purplish blue. 
 
 Beautiful sunsets here, and a vast expanse of sky for 
 the swing of the constellations, not encroached upon by 
 any swell of the land, which here lies flat ; and southward 
 the horizon is almost as level as the sea. 
 
 July. 
 
 Two days ago there was a storm from the southeast — 
 a steady howling wind, so strong that this high room 
 in the southeast corner, where I write, rocked in the gale. 
 The spray was blown like salt over the rocks, and as far 
 as the eye could go over the surface of the Sound white- 
 caps danced. The trees were tortured and tugged, 
 "toused joint by joint" ; they were shrill in protest. The 
 wind howled at the corners of the house, a prolonged and 
 inarticulate cry. 
 
 We built a fire in the parlor; it made us think of 
 
N E W Y O R K 175 
 
 autumn ; it shone cheerily, it became the centre and gath- 
 ering-point of the house. This building that had before 
 been a shelter, a soulless tenement, became a home in 
 virtue of that sacred flame. It was a delight to sit before 
 the blaze and hear the troubled night yawn and ruffle 
 about the house. 
 
 The next morning the vines on the porch were limp 
 and withered, as if scorched by fire. The place was 
 strewn with leaves and broken twigs. I walked down to 
 the beach ; it was cold and overcast. 
 
 Last evening it was warm; the sky full of stars, 
 palely reflected in the Sound. Moths flew in at the open 
 windows. 
 
 Clouds were rising in the west-northwest; the sky 
 suddenly grew dark ; the wind came up with a rush, and 
 the house was all at once filled -with wild and whistling 
 noises. Without, there was a great moaning, and sud- 
 den cries swallowed up in the steady roar and the fierce 
 hissing of the leaves. Crack and cranny began to pipe 
 and whistle — the wind came through keyholes like a 
 voice. The air was cold. The sound of thunder was 
 muffled in the wind ; lightning fell at long intervals. 
 
 This morning, wind from the same quarter, blowing 
 steadily cold. Saw a kingfisher, and also swallows— 
 their wonderful flight, so silent that though they some- 
 times passed within a few feet of my head, I could not 
 hear their wings. What swallow is this, rough-winged 
 or bank? 
 
 The wind has gone around to the north-northeast, 
 and brings with it a fine misty rain. 
 
176 STOWENOTES 
 
 I have been along the beach to Larchmont; coming 
 back, I saw in an oak tree a male red-headed wood- 
 pecker—rare, Ridgway says, east of Hudson River. 
 
 Coming of a storm: Windy but pleasant afternoon. 
 Wind (north?) blowing out from the shore; water 
 placid, its surface wrinkled in the wind. Far away in the 
 southeast a hollow sky of rain, rising and stealing east- 
 ward along the coast, obliterating the land point by point. 
 A heavy leaden cloud arched like a hog's back, with the 
 snout thrust into the southwestern sky, hangs above the 
 empty waste, the gray hollow of the rain. The shadow 
 of this cloud moves under it, yet the sails are still white 
 in the sun, and gleam upon the dark, except that far in 
 the distance, some already in the rain move like phantom 
 ships on the horizon. 
 
 Looking away, the lead changes to bottle-green, and 
 that to a dark blue line on the very edge, in which 
 through the glass one can see white-caps dancing. 
 
 The wind comes suddenly; as it flies, the water 
 darkles below and breaks into points and sparks of foam. 
 It comes with a rush, and immediately there is a distant 
 squeal and whistle in the air. The trees bend and hiss, 
 dead leaves hid in the crevices of the rocks leap up, whirl 
 giddily about, and away with a hop and a scurry. 
 
 A mist of rain lies over the dark water line of the 
 horizon, which shows dimly through, and sails that scud 
 upon it hang like a mirage. Boats run before the jib ; a 
 yacht passes under bare poles. 
 
 Rain begins to fall ; the storm goes about, however, 
 to the south, and presently streaks of brilliant green ap- 
 pear in the dark purple sea. 
 
N E W Y O R K 177 
 
 The sun is out again. It proves, to be, however, but a 
 temporary lull, for in a moment the east is dark, the 
 winds blow, and the rain falls. 
 
 To-day warmer, pleasant, a sparkling sea. This 
 morning some one of the family finds in the road a crip- 
 pled specimen of the Attacus polyphemus. I have it now 
 upon my table. It is drenched, beaten, and bedraggled 
 by wind and rain, with one of its antennae gone. As I 
 set it down it quivers as if in a silent agony. 
 
 Warm and hazy day. Fleet of yachts like a game at 
 quoits with clam shells, all inclined the same way, white 
 and hollow, skimming the surface of the Sound. 
 
 Warm day. Passed over beach, and while there I 
 saw hovering over the mill-pond a large bird which gave 
 utterance to a hoarse discordant cry. I looked at it 
 through the glass, and found it to be a heron. Its head 
 and neck seemed to be of a dark maroon-brown, whitish 
 in front, and wings and back a glossy blue. It must have 
 been a little blue heron. It lit upon the marshy edge and 
 fell hidden in the grass. I afterward saw two standing 
 on a little island— the little blue heron as before, and one 
 that seemed to me to be a green heron. 
 
 I crossed over the beach and struck into a narrow 
 sunken lane running inland along the borders of the 
 mill-pond. The grass rose high, brier roses showed 
 their delicate petals along the banks, and Virginia 
 creeper and poison ivy clung on the tree trunks. The 
 meadow grasses mingled with white and yellow daisies 
 
178 STOWENOTES 
 
 stretched to the right on a level with the eye, and above 
 them hovered bobolinks shaking out their mad and merry 
 jingles. 
 
 The trees that bordered the lane were cedar, sassafras 
 (of which there were many shrubs), and wild black 
 cherry, and among the boughs of the latter the bobolinks 
 settled and swayed and sang. 
 
 Among the rocks on the eastern side of the beach 
 were some small birds of the snipe kind. 
 
 The singing of the bugle from the fort several miles 
 away came distinctly over the water, and last night at 
 sunset, with a hollow sound. 
 
 Fireflies in the grass and the dark woody places. 
 Bats, and earlier a large, apparently polyphemus moth, 
 fluttering high, straight from the water and on across the 
 mill-pond landward. Is it possible that it could have 
 crossed the great width of the Sound from Long Island ? 
 
 Stars seen dimly in the Sound, misty and lengthened 
 reflections, silent palpitating echoes of crystalline lights, 
 like exquisite notes of pure melody submitted to a linger- 
 ing low interpretation. 
 
f/riLf.. -At 5 r; 
 
 fiO'v I 
 
 r, 
 
 
 
 i>-' 
 
 
 /■?" 
 
VERMONT 
 
 Stowe, Vermont, 
 
 October. 
 
 This is Sunday morning, and instead of going to 
 Mr. Marshall's church I went to Mr. Love joy's cathe- 
 dral. It is as beautiful as St. John's vision of heaven; 
 its sides are hung and shingled with plates of gold. I 
 pass in at one of the towering entrances, and find myself 
 in the vast dim interior, with its noble piers of straight- 
 grained basswood, rock maple, and painted beech ; there 
 are lighter columns of the yellow birch, gleaming like 
 metal. Above are the bright and rustling draperies of the 
 roof, green and golden; below is a soft and beautiful 
 carpet that muffles my tread. There's a holy stillness 
 here, broken by a faint whisper, the murmur of prayer. 
 
 At this time of year the little choristers are gone ; and 
 to-day the organist, who is the wind, is absent. What 
 church in the world can boast of such a choir?— the 
 summer warblers, the vireo and the catbird, the plaintive 
 wood pewee, the cheery robin, the rose-breasted gros- 
 beak and the blithe song sparrow, and all day long and 
 late into the twilight the exquisite notes of the hermit 
 thrush; and withal to hear that mysterious murmur of 
 prayer whispered in the Gothic arches of the beech and 
 maple, or finding a deeper and more solemn echo in the 
 old coniferous Norman, the dark boughs of spruce or 
 
 hemlock. 
 
 179 
 
i8o STOWENOTES 
 
 Wind from the north. Up to F.'s hill, and in the 
 once dim and shady hollow, now opened to the light by 
 the thinning trees, I found some white violets. 
 
 To-day the thermometer at about forty-two. Yester- 
 day the apples were frozen on the trees and the vege- 
 tables in the ground ; but undismayed, these delicate little 
 flowers, whose native air is the soft spring winds, start 
 like pale memories of summer up from the cold and leaf- 
 littered ground. 
 
 Oh, these noble maples ! They bear their golden bur- 
 dens, their mantles of flame, with a constant heart. The 
 butternut leaves are shed, and from the ground about 
 them, from the fallen leaves, arises the nutty, almost rank 
 scent, the most characteristic odor of autumn. 
 
 Beyond the ridge, facing the north wind, the Moun- 
 tain is in mist ; a fine snow is falling. The soft roar of 
 the wind is in my ears, and borne shrilly upon it is the 
 wild calling of jays from the dark copse of evergreen 
 westward. 
 
 A song sparrow starts up from the shrivelled brake 
 and flies silently away, and hides in the boughs of a little 
 fir tree ; later a flight of robins among the tree-tops, their 
 voices cracked and feeble, their coloring dull and faded. 
 
 In the hollows the slight whisper of the grasses and 
 ferns is distinctly audible. 
 
 Wind northwest. Bright sunny day. On F.'s hill, 
 and beyond to my woody thrush-haunted walk, where in 
 the boughs of some dim hemlocks I saw a Wilson thrush, 
 I think. Mount Mansfield majestic and beautiful in so 
 hoary a setting, and the Hogbacks with frosted ridges. 
 

VERMONT i8i 
 
 Sweet crisp air. Powder of the pollen rises on the 
 wind at almost every step. 
 
 Later, drive ; sky overcast, leaden, lowering ; dun-col- 
 ored mass over the white profile. Cold, cold— home with 
 the west wind beating cold raindrops into our faces. 
 
 Rain, southwest wind. The trees and grasses seem 
 to shiver in this cold wind, yet it is a congenial atmo- 
 spherical manifestation. The chilly drops flatter the 
 pale violets from the rich dark mould of woody hollows. 
 The full and plumed ferns take sustenance from the 
 moist air; it paints the boles of the velvet beeches, and 
 passes with the breath of life through these cold north- 
 ern woods. 
 
 Snow all the early part of the 8th. Went out at half 
 past five; the fine hard frozen snow made a continuous 
 hissing in the leaves. The sky was broken in the south. 
 Across the dark covered bridge, and out where the 
 shadow was like a tide along the muddy road; the snow 
 on the grasses and fences. 
 
 The sun had set obscured by the clouds ; it was a sad 
 wintry twilight. On the crown of a little hill that com- 
 mands a view of Mansfield there was nothing whatever 
 to be seen of the Mountain, only masses of moving and 
 trailing vapor. The roofs and plowed fields on the 
 Sterling slope were all white. A leafless elm stood out 
 against the leaden clouds. It was cheerless in the ex- 
 treme, so strange and yet familiar, like a country in a 
 dream. Far away I heard the baying of a house-dog ; it 
 carried with a hollow detonative sound across the cold 
 
i82 STOWENOTES 
 
 pastures. A bear was seen in this neighborhood not 
 long ago. 
 
 Snow still falling. Drove in the morning to Moss 
 Glen Falls. The plowed land, the roofs, the fences, and 
 the bridges take the snow well ; it melts on the open road. 
 The woods and the pastures are silvered with it, and it 
 falls so thickly that the mountains and all things not of 
 the immediate neighborhood are shut completely out. 
 The Falls are very full, owing to the late heavy rains. 
 The mould in the hemlock wood has a thick coating of 
 snow. 
 
 The beautiful delicate silver-green hemlocks ! Their 
 branches are outspread at the angle of admonition. 
 There is complete silence here and on the shores of the 
 mill-dam, except for the rush of the Fall. The water is 
 higher than it was last summer. The little trees on the 
 edge are doubtless dead ; they stand leafless, and are re- 
 flected in the quiet mere. The moon-silvered roof in the 
 hollow is now silvered with snow. I can barely see it 
 through the falling flakes, and beyond, pale, like breaks 
 in a cloud, the white pastures on the Hogback slope show 
 dimly through the mist. 
 
 Coming home, we started a flock of bluebirds. They 
 were brilliant in azure and cinnamon, their breasts as red 
 as ever I saw robins'. They were lingering in the corn- 
 fields, where the glowing pumpkins showed their warm 
 and cheering countenances in the stacks of gray and 
 withered corn-stalks. 
 
 I have seen juncos and myrtle warblers by flocks. 
 The country is fairly overflown by these latter. 
 
VERMONT 183 
 
 The elms, ash trees, butternut, basswood in open 
 spaces, and witch-hazel are mostly bereft of their 
 leaves. The basswood in woods holds them well; they 
 turn a dark purple-brown. The rock maple and beech 
 are the most constant. 
 
 In the woods a new tint, the mauve, the pale purplish- 
 brown hue of withered leaves, begins to show itself. The 
 dark and rugged tops of the hemlocks stand conspicuous 
 on the light glistening hillsides. Apple trees are brown 
 and withered. The alders look frost-bitten and faded; 
 the willows are still untouched. 
 
 The other morning (breaking clear before this over- 
 cast and dismal time) showed the higher ridges of the 
 Hogback, where the snow still hung in the spruces, lift- 
 ing silver spears, sharp frosty points, against the pale 
 blue sky. 
 
 In the woods in the rain ; the constant dripping is a 
 melancholy accompaniment to my steps. Wreaths of 
 mist hang like smoke in the sides of the Hogback range, 
 which is mostly obscured, as are all the mountains, with 
 heavy rolling vapors. The distant slopes are dark and 
 desolate. 
 
 There are huge maples here, and basswood trees of 
 great girth rising straight out of the confusion of 
 branch and leaf, and beeches, the most beautiful, I think, 
 I ever saw. 
 
 In one there is imprisoned the spirit of some hapless 
 dryad. It droops sadly all to one side, its branches fall 
 with a gentle and melancholy grace ; the swelling trunk. 
 
i84 STOWENOTES 
 
 parting above, writhes upward in curves that could re- 
 sult only from such fervent and delicate despair. 
 
 Home by a hollow where rose the sweet smell of wil- 
 lows and alders. 
 
 Yesterday afternoon the wind veered to the north- 
 west, and a patch of blue showed in the clouds. Toward 
 evening the upper northern sky was free, and later, as I 
 looked from the lighted parlor out on the night, a star 
 shone and quivered in the dark space of the window. 
 
 Outside it was cold, and as clear as crystal, except 
 southward, where the moon, something beyond half, 
 mounted among thin lateral clouds. The distant moun- 
 tains rose in dark waves against the sky. The solemn 
 profile, white and ghostly in its snowy mask, blent into 
 the pale starlit space. It was only in those far-away 
 looks, those indirect and vanishing glimpses, that its out- 
 line was made manifest. 
 
 The stars scintillated with strange intensity. They 
 seemed sometimes to vanish altogether ; they glowed and 
 paled like the pulse of heaven, beating with passionate 
 fervor. The night was silent, except for the slight stir 
 in the dark cloudy branches of the white pine before the 
 house. A collie barked, and was answered from a dis- 
 tant farm-yard. 
 
 The willows in the valley are some bare and all brown 
 and frost-nipped. The hillsides are light and cloudy 
 with bare twigs. 
 
 Yesterday's snow-storm made evident the thinness of 
 the foliage by marking out the boughs and trunks in lines 
 of white, for the snow was driven level on a strong 
 
VERMONT 185 
 
 southwest wind, that all the evening and the early part 
 of the night hallooed and whistled about the house like a 
 ghostly giant calling his stray dog. 
 
 Interiors must have seemed bright and pleasant to 
 outsiders in the chilly dark, for to the inmates of a lighted 
 room looking toward the black oblongs of the windows 
 (for shades are a superfluity in these farmhouses) there 
 was nothing of the outer world but darkness, and only 
 a dim image of themselves to stare back blankly upon 
 them. Yet the night was not dark; the moon was behind 
 the clouds, and the dim forests and the white fields shone 
 with a ghostly brightness. 
 
 Yesterday afternoon late, about six o'clock, I started 
 two partridges on the edge of a wood. I entered by a 
 dark congregation of hemlocks; and with beat and 
 ruffle, and a numbing reverberation in the air, they rose 
 one after the other and fluttered away among the snowy 
 boughs. 
 
 This morning, in an open pasture, my horse's hoofs 
 were balled with snow. 
 
 There are now whole hillsides of vaporous twigs, 
 gray in the sun and purple in the shadow. The sun seems 
 to bleach out this pale autumnal world. The orchards 
 are brown, leaf and trunk. 
 
 It cleared during the day, and most western hillsides 
 and pastures were free of snow. 
 
 I notice that the bluebird's call more nearly ap- 
 proaches the note of domestic fowls than any wild bird 
 utterance, unless it be the crowing of the hoot owl. It 
 is very like the cry of young turkeys. 
 
 Coming up the hill after our drive to-day, we faced 
 
i86 STOWENOTES 
 
 the cold north wind. The Hogback rose above us, white 
 and unreal ; the yellow slope, crowned by a little house, 
 its surrounding lilac bushes, and a large white pine, 
 looked strange against this glistening frosty ridge, that 
 gleamed vividly in the afternoon sunlight with an almost 
 golden sparkle, and, shining between the level pine 
 boughs, made the tree and the dark house to stand out 
 almost like silhouettes. 
 
 The sun set, and the ridge turned to a delicate metal- 
 lic pink broken with innumerable blue shadows. Little 
 rose-colored clouds were low over the glowing woods 
 northwest, and the snowy top of Sterling was rose- 
 tinted. 
 
 The sun sank lower, and the Hogback lost its color, 
 which, concentrating on the Sterling pyramid, grew 
 brighter ; the delicate shoaling clouds were touched with 
 pink and gold. 
 
 Later, only a clear pale amber space in the southwest, 
 and in it, on the margin and the melting blue, the even- 
 ing star shone, scintillating frostily. The dusky and 
 shrunken clouds, low over Mansfield, were shredded 
 with dull reddish streaks. 
 
 In the woods the ferns are faded and shrunk away to 
 grayish skeletons thin as shadows, and show like a yel- 
 low dust among the dead leaves. 
 
 The lilacs around houses are still in leaf, but from a 
 deep blue-green they have faded to a brighter if more 
 yellowish color. 
 
 Brown ferns in the pastures, soft and feathery, more 
 interesting than when green. Trees, wind-shaken, grow 
 
Nov > ^ 1' ' 
 
 ■'l t 
 
VERMONT 187 
 
 thin and leafless almost as you gaze. They toss their 
 arms and dance, like reckless prodigals shaking their 
 thinning rags. Their glory has departed, the glory of 
 gold and crimson, and soon they will stand cold and 
 naked, all the deciduous company— straight lindens, 
 rugged maples, and the soft-skinned beeches. 
 
 Though the night had every promise of a clear to- 
 morrow, yet on waking I found the sky overcast. The 
 wind had risen in the night; I heard it moaning at an 
 early hour when it was still dark. It turned out to be a 
 southwest wind, and brought a beautiful sky crossed 
 with cirro-stratus clouds. Thin bluish veils lay behind 
 the heavier masses, and detached purplish clouds swam 
 in the milky spaces, and among all shone little lakes of 
 blue ovals and of broken margin. 
 
 The mountain tops have a peculiar appearance. The 
 strong west wind of yesterday cleared the ridges of the 
 snow that rests on the eastern slope up to the line of 
 wind-darkened spruces, so that the mountains, except 
 Mansfield, where the snow lies flat upon the bare rock, 
 seem to be darkly outlined. 
 
 The snow, "flaw-blown," comes over the valley from 
 the Veiled Countenance like smoke. This morning there 
 was a strong wind, hollow, thunderous. Now it is rising 
 again, but earlier in the afternoon it died down and blew 
 fitfully. Last night was a witches' meeting, a whirling 
 dark -Vociferous night— the Stygian cave, full of lament- 
 ing voices. 
 
 In the afternoon in the south wood there was the 
 
i88 STOWENOTES 
 
 nutty odor of the fallen leaves. The wind searched the 
 most secret places. The wood was bare and open, the 
 breaking sky gleamed through the naked boughs. 
 
 They have cut down the larger trees and the wind has 
 felled some; hemlocks and spruces, many, stripped of 
 their bark and sawed into lengths, lie in the underbrush. 
 
 Down in an unused road, a swampy track where 
 grew hickories and red maples, and where showed the 
 soft dull green of little hemlocks. Down in the valley and 
 along the Sterling slope lay long stretches of sunlight; 
 the full river glistened. 
 
 The near trees stood dark against these pale pastures 
 and dusky woods. The hills northward were dark blue, 
 southward gray with snow ; they seemed almost to melt 
 into the dark and massive clouds that lay along their 
 ridges. A faint, slightly rosy light at sunset. 
 
 This afternoon in the swampy hollow the wind passed 
 with a deep and melancholy sigh among the nodding 
 spruces. 
 

 
 fil 
 
FRAGMENTS 
 
 March. 
 
 Each day has an individual beauty that convinces 
 wholly ; all differ, but each is perfect. 
 
 The sky was clear but for one fragment of cloud over 
 Mansfield mountain. A broad rosy flush overspread the 
 country, and in the sky behind the mountain tops north- 
 westward a cold and metallic glimmer of the same color 
 was evident, intensified on the horizon. The air very 
 chill and fresh. 
 
 The charm of spring seems to me to lie in the mar- 
 vellous delicacy of detail — the perfection of every flower, 
 leaf, and blade of grass, the wonderful intricacy of the 
 tree's anatomy made interesting by the budding life of 
 the season. 
 
 The upland (plateau) farms— the beauty of fields: 
 in them rather than in the wood, unless it be a wooded 
 bit in the corner of a pasture, lies to me the principal 
 beauty of the country. 
 
 As I passed through a sugar-wood in the still and 
 quiet afternoon, the maples had a knowing air as of half- 
 tamed creatures conscious of a. power unshared by the 
 wilder spirits of their kind— the wondering beeches, 
 
 189 
 
igo STOWENOTES 
 
 birches, ashes, and elms— and seemed aware of the 
 friendly office they perform, and to acquiesce, as well 
 they may, since accident in the blood of them insures a 
 certain protection, if not a care. The axe strikes thrice 
 at their neighbors where once it injures them — the only 
 trees held in any degree sacred in America. 
 
 Home by the new road. Before entering the wood 
 on the south, a growth of yellow birches of various ages 
 skirts the road for about an eighth of a mile. They grow 
 on a steep bank, and the glistening gold of the trunks 
 and larger boughs is shown against the pale reddish 
 ground of dead leaves, and against lilac patches of snow. 
 Bushes of young hemlock grow close to the road, and at 
 this time and in this light shine of a most lively green. 
 The surface of the drifts, rippled with blue and lilac 
 shadows, contrasts delicately with the vivid tint. 
 
 At about six o'clock I went out to the crown of the 
 little pasture, where a fire of brush had been kindled. It 
 had smouldered to the coals, but on my raking together 
 the charred ends, rekindled rapidly, and soon a bright 
 blaze fluttered on the hill. 
 
 The weather had changed; the sun sank in a haze 
 with but little color; a film of vapor overspread the 
 sky. Deprived of the warm light and under so dead 
 a sky, the mountains took on a solemn and brooding 
 aspect. 
 
 The woods looked thick and misty ; from their direc- 
 tion came the notes of the song sparrow. The moon was 
 just risen, pale but nearly full, the rays spread on the 
 mist in the form of a cross. Out of the east, as if 
 
FRAGMENTS 191 
 
 breathed from her cold surface, a chilly wind came 
 steadily, making a stir and murmur in the evergreens, 
 between which the fire glowed. 
 
 On the south, a black spruce; on the north, a little 
 feathery hemlock ; eastward, between me and the moon, 
 twigs of the wild apple trees. 
 
 There was a pleasant mingling of the voices of fir 
 and fire, strangely alike and subtly dififerent — the soft 
 roar of the flames, and the colder, more abrupt, and thin- 
 ner voices of the trees ; the fire soothing yet sinister, the 
 trees thrilling yet kind. ' 
 
 Indeed, the fire, so seeming dead, laid hold with a 
 hungry zest of the fragments I gathered; and now, on 
 the windy side from which the flame is driven, the ash- 
 coated coals dimple and seem to waver, whitening and 
 glowing red— the play and the colors of a withheld quiet 
 rage. 
 
 So marked was the appearance of a cross in the 
 moon's halo, that to see it more clearly, beyond the inter- 
 position of the apple tree branches, I descended the little 
 hill, passed through the hedge of cherry and young 
 hard-wood trees on the edge of the plowed acre, and 
 looked eastward. The purple brown of the plowing 
 stretched from my feet beyond a whitish stretch of faded 
 grass; then the broken line of a pasture, gray rock, 
 stunted evergreens, and the reddish brown ridges of fern 
 brakes; beyond that a sugar-wood, cloudy reddish pur- 
 ple, and finally the mountain-side, streaked with the 
 white glimmer of snow among the tree trunks. 
 
 Returning, at the base of the incline I could see the 
 wavering flames over the furrow of the pasture, but no 
 
192 STOWENOTES 
 
 other evidence of the fire, nor indeed of smoke, for the 
 mistiness of the air tended to disgfuise it, and it was car- 
 ried low by the level wind. There only, like a magical 
 display, on the apex of the little hill danced these fiery 
 tongues. 
 
 To-day the wind of March, big and blustering. The 
 dun and purple country, spotted with glittering drifts, 
 rolls away to the blue wall of spruce-forested mountains. 
 Heavy clouds overtop them, and the meeting of the 
 cloud-shadow and mountain-side is a purple hollow, a 
 violet cave, a band of deep and vivid color. 
 
 In the wood the trees sway and roar. Volumes of 
 fragrant steam burst from the windows of the sugar- 
 house. The atmosphere inside has a mild yet heavy 
 sweetness, the smell of the boiling maple sap, as peculiar 
 as the flavor, as delectable, as bland. It is as individual 
 a sweet as honey, for there lurks in both a quality like a 
 reminiscence of their sources; its flavor on the tongue 
 conveys more than a mere sense of sweetness— it is a 
 hint of saccharine secrets known to the bee, the fly, and 
 such ephemeral creatures — too slight for our percep- 
 tion, too fine for our obtaining, too subtle for our blunt 
 powers of differentiation, and at last ours only by craft 
 and violence, the exercise of ignoble forces. The maple 
 is perhaps the more delicate sweet of the two ; it has not 
 the cloying and bitter after-taste of honey. 
 
 A furnace of brick and stone stands in the centre of 
 the sugar-house. The sap hisses and surges in the pan, 
 curling in a tawny wave from the seams; at the upper 
 end a heater is set. The steam rolls and eddies around 
 
FRAGMENTS 193 
 
 the small building, and bursts wildly from the open win- 
 dows, pursued by gusts of wind. 
 
 It was growing toward sunset; sombre orange tints 
 showed in the clouds. John threw open the door and 
 drew in an armful of fagots. He unhooked the damper 
 of sheet iron (for door the furnace had none), and, as 
 he thrust in the wood, the red firelight glowed on his face 
 and as much of his figure as was visible. Behind his 
 head the low-hanging boughs (for the sugar-house 
 stands on the very edge of the wood) swayed in the 
 wind; pale leaves fluttered up against the deep purple 
 clouds that overspread the sky. Beyond was the rim of 
 the meadow, half bleached grass, half a dead white drift, 
 and beyond that, again, the far-away country northward, 
 the sapphire distance. 
 
 The wind roared, the sparks danced around the little 
 hut, and, the door being closed, the picture lost the 
 strange background — its leap into the north twenty 
 miles as the bird flies. In all that region and throughout 
 the range of the sugar maple, on every square of two 
 hundred acres or so a similar scene is being enacted, on 
 a large or a small scale — from the double evaporators 
 that boil the sap of fifteen hundred to two thousand trees, 
 through varying degrees in the size and capacity of pans, 
 even to the humble potash kettle of the old order of 
 things. 
 
 The wind lessened toward evening; for an hour- be- 
 tween six and seven it was still. 
 
 The moon rode clear when about one third of the 
 way across the sky. A night like faded daylight, like 
 a landscape darkened by time or neglect— so pale the 
 
194 STOWENOTES 
 
 country, and the clouds, clustering over the mountains, 
 white and fleecy. 
 
 Soon the wind recommenced, blustered and trampled. 
 The air was cold ; I could see the stars wink in the rifts 
 on the horizon. 
 
 So on into the pasture and to the edge of the wood, 
 where the boughs swayed and rustled in the wind and the 
 leaves danced in the pale moonlight, for there was a net 
 of clouds over the sky, and the full moon looked small and 
 faint, and a vast rainbow circled like a wheel about her. 
 
 I called, but there was only the murmuring whisper 
 and flutter of the leaves. Again I call, and a low whinny 
 answers ; so soft the turf that I do not hear the hollow 
 beat of hoof until I see the mare close upon me, large 
 against the moonlight. Her head is raised, her eyes 
 affrayed with doubtful tremor and wonder, her nostrils 
 dilated, her ears pricked forward, and, clearly outlined 
 on the sky, she comes at a fast swinging walk, her mane 
 fanned out on the wind. The colt leaps and ambles close 
 at her side. The sound of my voice speaking her name 
 reassures her ; she pauses for an instant, arches her head, 
 and lightly feels the palm of my hand with her lips ; then, 
 resuming her walk, she passes swiftly by, the colt still 
 close at her flank, and is lost to sight in the uncertain 
 moonlight — though the ear may follow her by an em- 
 phatic sneeze or the sound of cropping. 
 
 July. 
 From the dark swamp came the devil music of the 
 veery, whining, thrilling, the bitter-sweet of sound, 
 
FRAGMENTS 195 
 
 harsh and dulcet— the truant dryad of that shadowy 
 grove. 
 
 August. 
 The sunset glowed and died, fading out and growing 
 gray and cold like a dying coal. The mountains seemed 
 removed in space and sympathy; they seemed to brood, 
 and their thoughts were foreign to the hopes and fears 
 of animate Nature. 
 
 Summit of Mount Mansfield. Silence supreme. 
 Faint distant sound of wind in the trees, none to be seen 
 moving. Sounds as clear as rock shadows. 
 
 Day hot. Drove towards Smugglers' Notch, but 
 turned eastward to what is called the Platform. The 
 Mountain valley soft and hazy. This latter part of 
 August a time for gathering grain— this is a peculiar 
 charm. Up, up a long hill wooded on either side — young 
 birch, some beeches and young maples. On the road, 
 higher, looking across to Mansfield, the atmospheric con- 
 ditions almost perfect — perfect for the moment. A hazy 
 light; the excessive altitudes of the Mountain faint— a 
 great shadow looming on the evening sky, but, lower, the 
 southeastern spur distinctly seen. The roof of a house 
 catching the light; a yellow marking of the wheat-field 
 boundaries. Some trees tinged with an especially marked 
 individuality, and, indeed, a general feeling of all trees. 
 
 Lower lay the valley with the sawmill, and, like a wall 
 on the southwest, the straight ridge of the Nebraska 
 moimtains. A house in a clearing, high, remote — an 
 eye, a watch upon the mountain solitudes. In the im- 
 
196 STOWENOTES 
 
 mediate foreground a wheat-field, in which a man and 
 (presumably) his two sons are at work. The wheat is 
 in sheaves mostly; a small ripening spot uncut. As we 
 passed, they left work and came over into the road, the 
 gleaming scythe on the man's shoulder, the boys hanging 
 on his steps. 
 
 The view from the knoll which we ascended — a wide 
 and comprehensive gaze about the whole horizon. The 
 Hogback mountains to the southeast, and successive blue 
 hills and vacancies of hidden valleys between. Tall 
 woods to the northeast, and, over all, an added shade of 
 mystery, the sun having virtually set in the haze. A red 
 light behind Mansfield, and little silver fragments, high 
 above, tinged brilliantly— light and feathery these. In 
 the west a little southward, ill-defined and heavily shad- 
 owed, cloud shapes rising on the twilight. 
 
 Over the Platform drive, a plunge into the darkening 
 woods. The light through the leaves— at the foot of a 
 long hill, looking upward, the road narrowing toward 
 the apex, reaching between two trees that stand soft and 
 feathery in the twilight air. They, as all objects at the 
 distance now, seem to be beheld through some denser 
 medium; the outlines are indistinct, yet the color is en- 
 hanced at the expense of an arbitrary exactness of f orm— 
 or feature rather than form. A medium this, pure and 
 liquid, like a refinement of the purest aqueous distilla- 
 tion—the atmosphere of Art and Dreamland. 
 
 Turning into a grass-grown road and passing a 
 barred gate, we came into a perfect wild. A desolate 
 barren sheep-pasture on the one hand, topped by the dis- 
 tant and faint outlines of the Hogback mountains ; before 
 
FRAGMENTS 197 
 
 us, to the south, a wood of maples ; westward, the great 
 profile, towered by those dark fantastic cloud-shadows 
 defined on a dying glow of daylight. On in the deep 
 cart-tracks, into the shadow of the wood. Between the 
 branches, faint, far, mysterious, that pale glimmering 
 shone indistinctly. The trees reared great trunks high 
 above us— forest trees. The incline was downward still, 
 and the flat lay of leaves from the young boughs of sap- 
 ling beeches was observable on our way, almost in our 
 faces. Through a quiet farm-yard, disturbing a peace- 
 able gathering of cows, and still down again into deeper 
 shadow. So, out into the valley mists, and home. 
 
 Looking up at the night-gathering sky, between the 
 branches of trees, a star, perhaps, twinkling on one's gaze 
 in a mysterious manner, as if one's contemplation had 
 power to summon that returning glimmer out of the sky. 
 
 December. 
 Thin clouds over the face of the new moon: like a 
 changing expression, they pass over it without obscuring 
 its light, but, being passed, it seems to smile. 
 
 Looking at Hogback, deserted by the afterglow— the 
 solemnity of the mountains after sunset. The glimmer 
 of icy ridge divided from the pale green sky by a line of 
 hair-like delicacy, in value occasionally identical, only the 
 faint definition of color remains— below, pale lilac; 
 above, pale green. 
 
 [Skyjyellow, changing to clear metallic pink— cold and 
 colder— curious tinge! Mountains clearly outlined, con- 
 
ipS STOWENOTES 
 
 struction defined, snow marking crevices and gorges- 
 bringing the bulk nearer and throwing summit into 
 remote regions of sunset; differing in this so much 
 from mysteries of autumn and summer also — wherein a 
 dead blue wall. 
 
 Every man who owns horses, unless brutishness over- 
 whelms him— for not the worst among mortals is denied 
 absolute dominion of these sensitive creatures— almost 
 every owner, then, inflates his own impression of his 
 horse's powers in the manner of the Dauphin's vaunting 
 before the battle of Agincourt: he sees his horse in a 
 slight haze of poetic self-sufficiency. The flattery is 
 almost personal, so intimate is the connection in vanity 
 between horse and rider, or horse and driver, though this 
 is but a modern and local instance. 
 
 The Peruvians thought De Soto and the mounted 
 Spaniards one with their horses. 
 
 In a shapeless hat and a parti-colored coat, of which 
 the original black has faded to harmonious greens and 
 yellows, frayed at the seams, ragged at the cuffs, I can 
 lay claim to as little personal vanity in my appearance as 
 a man may. I can endure to ride in a mud-coated cart ; 
 the harness even may be poor and dirty; but my mare's 
 coat must shine like satin — a straw clinging in mane or 
 tail would become a reproach and burden on the spirit. 
 Vanity is playing see-saw on the dashboard to such a 
 degree as converts those instances of humility into a 
 source of pride by very contrast, and I find myself happy 
 to be a foil to my horse, so subtle is this reciprocity. 
 
 A speech of Tilly, the veteran of the Thirty Years' 
 
FRAGMENTS I99 
 
 War, is recorded, that a bright polished weapon is best 
 set oflf by a ragged coat. 
 
 The little canary had a fit yesterday. Suddenly it 
 fell from its perch and lay upon its back in the centre of 
 the cage, its wings partially extended, its tail turned in 
 and up at a slight angle, and its claws drawn to the side 
 and closed— in a word, the attitude of a dead bird. Yet 
 its eyes winked brightly, though I fancied they appeared 
 darker and wore an expression of suffering. It did not 
 suggest the effects of a physical ailment, but the bird 
 seemed like some creature spent with emotion. 
 
 There is something awful in the presence of a dead 
 wild animal. I remember the young fox just killed and 
 still warm that H. brought to show me. There was no 
 blood upon it; I fancy it had been strangled. The eyes 
 were partly opened, the pupil was widely expanded and 
 showed dark and suffused. The expression was awfully 
 intelligent, at once sly and pathetic. It produced in the 
 observer a singular suspicion of death counterfeited. 
 One expected some swift change in the eye, some sudden 
 movement toward escape; but still it lay unstirred, its 
 brush drooping, its nimble feet passively extended, and 
 with the mocking gleam in its cunning eye. 
 
 Of the chicken hawk that H. shot last May— its stern 
 and unrepentant glance, the anger of its eye, unquenched 
 by death, staring a mute but bitter protest against men's 
 tyranny. 
 
 It is almost a year since there hung in my stable the 
 skin of a raccoon. It was a fine specimen, and perfect 
 
200 STOWENOTES 
 
 but that it lacked one fore foot, which, however, did not 
 injure the value of the fur. The slayer, who had spent 
 his Sunday wandering in the woods with expectations 
 raised nothing above partridge or rabbit, was not a little 
 proud of his achievement ; and a wave of something like 
 envy disturbed the stolid satisfaction with which less 
 fortunate sportsmen regarded the trophy, for the rac- 
 coon is no longer common in this country. 
 
 To me the bloody pelt possessed a strong and painful 
 interest, and the missing foot told a story of wrong and 
 tyranny, with force and eloquence beyond what pen can 
 set on paper and my faltering efforts ever hope to 
 shadow. 
 
 The raccoon was found asleep in the cleft of a hol- 
 low tree, on a bed of leaves. The slayer approached 
 softly, and took a sure and close aim at the eye, in order 
 not to mar the pelt. It appeared strange, the cunning 
 creature, that he should have chosen this tree with the 
 open cleft, for the entrance to the raccoon's hole is 
 usually placed high enough to avoid the allied dangers 
 that walk on two or run on four feet. But the clawless 
 stump threw light on the wonder : with but three feet, he 
 was no longer able to climb his tree, so made his bed at 
 its foot, and fell the easier prey, and the sportsman had in 
 this instance to acknowledge the good offices of the trap. 
 
 Of a frosty November night one sees the glow in the 
 windows of the farmhouse that speaks of an atmosphere 
 within, a tranquil social time, a gathering for some ease 
 after the strain of the day's work, for shelter, comfort, 
 repose. And yet the same cold moonlight that glimmers 
 
FRAGMENTS 201 
 
 on the roof sees a dark something stir in the close shrubs 
 and grasses of the swamp, something that seems to imply 
 an abortive activity, to writhe, but without progress. 
 
 It is the struggle between the insensate trap and the 
 mink, fox, or raccoon on whose flesh its fangs are set. 
 Either exhaustion follows, and subsequent death at the 
 hands of the trapper— who will visit the spot at dawn, or 
 two or three days hence — or an escape by means com- 
 pared with which the sacrifice of Scsevola's right hand 
 was a slight essay of stoicism. Then, in a dreadfully 
 imposed silence, the captive creature with its sharp teeth 
 desperately rends its own flesh, and even gnaws and 
 crushes its own bones — and is free. 
 
 Such tragedies transpire in the darkness of wood 
 and swamp, unrecorded, unheeded. Scsevola won the 
 approbation of all succeeding time that he suffered the 
 deprivation of his hand as a pledge of fidelity to his prin- 
 ciples ; but I never heard it recorded as a heroism in mink 
 or raccoon that with his own teeth h? severed flesh and 
 sinew because he loved freedom and his natural rights. 
 Indeed, the scientific have averred that in such cases of 
 voluntary dismemberment the suffering is slight. 
 
 Of those who speak thus lightly of pain and wrong, 
 soothing the disturbed and doubting conscience and giv- 
 ing countenance to the evil, . . . they are paid in such 
 coin as those thirty pieces, of which a man's strength 
 could not endure the weight, heaA^ with innocent blood. 
 
 I wonder, and I fail to see, by what right man im- 
 poses so much misery upon his fellow creatures. Is it 
 
202 STOWENOTES 
 
 not a strange arrogance, a conviction that the ability and 
 power to do wrong justify the doing? 
 
 It is held that all this suffering and desolation is a 
 necessary part of the march of civilization ; but I find the 
 glib expounders and patrons of this civilization some- 
 thing too rank — it is the weed and not the flower that 
 flourishes best in the soil of to-day. For my part, I think 
 it is no such great matter, and I indeed could find it in 
 my heart to condemn it utterly, if it destroys the inno- 
 cent and holds no life sacred save that which stirs under 
 its own skin. If civilization does not progress beyond 
 this, it is worse than nothing. 
 
 This is a subject that is in the mouths of many, and 
 yet little has been written upon it, however well these 
 cultivators of thought may have progressed with it : for 
 those who would urge against it shrink in diffidence, sus- 
 pecting a want of logic in their position. But what is 
 genuinely and deeply felt is alone worthy of expression, 
 and let this, and a hope that I may not be so far illogical 
 as to hurt the cause of those dumb kinsfolk I would fain 
 aid, be my encouragement and my excuse. 
 
 It seems as if all this misery could not die, as if some 
 power now perchance uncreated, biding its time, still 
 heard and noted; and to the imaginative mind dwelling 
 on such thoughts, the great natural sounds, the tones of 
 those forces that, aroused, are inimical to man, ever in 
 the wailing and gusty throat of the wind speak with an 
 angry sorrow for the mute and unheeded sufferers : for 
 surely they sympathize with the simple and the suffering, 
 and not with the usurper, treasuring up the wrong the 
 
FRAGMENTS 203 
 
 more that its note of suffering was so small, remember- 
 ing those brief and bitter cries. 
 
 The misery that human pride causes! If the horse 
 might choose, would he not change places with the hum- 
 ble sheep, the meek sheep, the ox ? Perhaps not ; perhaps 
 he values that spirit, that heart of fire, that inspiration, 
 to be willing to accept the suffering it entails. The hand 
 of man is heavy on all alike. Who does not know the 
 strained and anxious expression of the deep and beauti- 
 ful eye of the overwrought ox, the sole symptom and 
 protest against his bitter usage — that eye of calm and 
 peaceful beauty, of golden lights and purple shades, of 
 the quality of a mountain brook, its sky reflections and 
 its warm shallows ? Whosoever quenches the mild light 
 of that eye and clouds it with the dry and glassy stare of 
 a mute misery — what shall be said of him? It were bet- 
 ter that a millstone were hung about his neck and he 
 were cast into the sea. 
 
 All wrong is essentially the same, though differen- 
 tiated so far as to be known under different names ; but 
 above all among these manifold forms of wickedness 
 God hates cruelty. 
 
 It was not of man alone that the pitiful Christ spoke 
 that solemn judgment: "Inasmuch as ye have done it 
 unto the least of these my brethren, ye have done it unto 
 me." Responsibility does not end where humanity ends, 
 but extends even to "the meanest thing that feels." 
 
204 STOWENOTES 
 
 What is pity? It is the reaHzation of another's sor- 
 row, the most unselfish of the emotions, for it awakes the 
 keenest pain on another's account; whereas the other 
 emotions, if impersonal, awake pleasure, satisfaction, 
 friendship, and love— a response pleasing. It is less per- 
 sonal, less selfish, the most divine, as being a relation 
 beyond the individual— a wide sympathy. It is partly 
 an impatience of wrong and suffering, partly the realiza- 
 tion of it. 
 
 What did Christ, what did Joan of Arc feel ? Love 
 and pity ; but in both cases was it not pity that prompted 
 action? "I have a great pity for the fair realm of 
 France." 
 
 Wherein is the human heart and mind a superior 
 power? To endure with the better courage pain and 
 suffering. 
 
 What a chasm between the life of the poor or of the 
 earnest and that of the pleasure-seekers— the large class 
 of slightly cultured, pleasure-loving people whose culture 
 goes to nothing beyond the novel, whose pleasure is of 
 all that appeals not too forcibly to the senses— those who 
 live in an atmosphere of flutter susceptibility; those 
 whom toil or care has not hardened to make the recog- 
 nition of beauty perfunctory ; those who have never felt 
 the thorny point of bare distress. They have no concep- 
 tion of a real tragedy of the soul ; they are happy. But 
 it is a poor, selfish, and narrow form ; still, 'tis the mod- 
 ern tendency, the end of this civilization. 
 
 They dance, dine, seek out their amusements in a 
 
FRAGMENTS 205 
 
 direction between the good and the bad : for they must 
 not feel the tightening of either extreme. All flows 
 calmly, smoothly — "sleek-headed men and such as sleep 
 o' nights." 
 
 They know nothing of the bitterness of a struggle, 
 the poor man's for life, or the earnest man's for truth. 
 They are like inhabitants of different planets. 
 
 One may endure to accept the devoted care of an- 
 other, if the least hope of repayment lives to light the 
 future — a repajntnent not so much in regard to the indi- 
 vidual, but in respect to a larger requital, some accom- 
 plishment worthy of pains and of waiting. But if both 
 the one and the other hope be dead— of repayment in 
 kind and the repayment of a good work— then the object 
 of living ceases. The life of the aided is meaningless to 
 himself, useless to the world. . . . There's a great pos- 
 sibility for all alike in the power of dying bravely. 
 
 Courage: for instance, it must have been a terrible 
 experience on Round Top at Gettysburg when Pickett's 
 veterans marched through death and slaughter to the 
 mouths of the Federal guns— more terrible for the Fed- 
 erals than for their intrepid opponents. At that moment 
 the souls of the Union men must have needed some 
 loftier impulse than the fierce courage of battle to sustain 
 their cruel purpose. Nothing but implicit and unques- 
 tioning trust in the rectitude of their cause could have 
 nerved those men to hurl their murderous fire against 
 the defenseless breasts of the advancing column. 
 
206 STOWENOTES 
 
 Life seems the more sacred in proportion to its fra- 
 gility and brevity: the more ethereal the essence, the 
 more precious. It seems as if that little minute should 
 sparkle with delight : to spend that little sadly were too 
 long. 
 
 What is a realist ? One who cannot see further into 
 the truth than to confound the accidental with the essen- 
 tial. Truth is beauty, and the artist who is capable of 
 recording those elements of essential truth and omitting 
 the elements of accident achieves the beautiful. 
 
 Query: What is accident, and what essential truth? 
 How to be known, and how distinguished, the one from 
 the other ? By innate perception, by observation, and a 
 deep familiarity with the subject treated — a familiarity 
 gained by living under the conditions that allow of know- 
 ing, not by second-hand or forced acquaintance. An 
 artist must therefore live the life he records. Those that 
 deal with subjects classical, imaginative, dramatic, must 
 appeal to the inner senses; but what so well stimulates 
 that power, guides and aids it, as the living of a fixed 
 and earnest life ? 
 
 . . . Here is much the same idea as in Stevenson's 
 passage : "The young demand happiness as a right ; the 
 old humbly ask to be spared intolerable pain."* So the 
 young, in the fresh powers of untried hearts, are ven- 
 turesome to tempt the pains and pangs of fiery emotions, 
 which the old shrink from, either having suffered too 
 
 * "Age asks with timidity to be spared intolerable pain ; youth, taking fortune 
 by the beard, demands joy like a right." — TAe Dynamiter. 
 
FRAGMENTS 207 
 
 keenly, with old wounds of heart or conscience to cover, 
 or from weariness of spirit. 
 
 Introduction to an Unfinished Story, 
 "Hollywood" 
 
 "Death pays all debts" is an affirmation; it has the 
 currency of such sayings, an unscanned acceptance, and 
 not to admit it is to deny the powers of heredity and 
 example. Yet, like all popular aphorisms, it contains 
 truth, and is not unallowed of poetic justice, for the 
 human heart inclines to speak for the dead, who lie at a 
 silent disadvantage. As the Avise look tolerantly upon 
 the present, so the common mind contemplates the past 
 with pity and without anger. The dead walk uncen- 
 sured through dark paths and in a shadow of sin: for, 
 from the calm standpoint that distance gives, they appear 
 scarcely free agents, and their concluded fortunes are 
 touched with urgent pathos. 
 
 It may be said with some truth that the writer who 
 takes his theme from this atmosphere receives an ad- 
 ventitious aid, the more if he deals with fact, for it has 
 already become romance : characters and scenes are made 
 pictures, framed in charitable retrospect. 
 
 On this hope let me rest my story, for its actors have 
 been dumb and quiescent for more than a quarter of a 
 century — one in a land grave, one as deep as men sink in 
 the sea, and one in seclusion as close as death. 
 
2o8 STOWENOTES 
 
 How some pieces of music — those pieces that A 
 
 used to play — bring her back again ! The remembrance 
 of her sweet eyes, "Stars, stars"— and now they are dark 
 and shrouded! 
 
 Her vibrant voice, her clear and open glance, the 
 curves of her passionless lips, the sparkling, golden mass 
 of her hair, her supple body and delicate white hands are 
 all dead— cold, cold, and lifeless. How strange she must 
 have looked being dead— how drawn her face— how old 
 and sorrowful ! 
 
 Her spirit lives in those melodies of Beethoven and 
 Schumann and in the songs of Liszt. 
 
 Ah, those chill winter evenings, when, shut in the 
 warm draped room, sweet with the odor of flowers— the 
 delicate scent of Marshal Niel roses that were her favor- 
 ites — sitting silent, perhaps, before the bright wood fire, 
 from time to time turning, in silent comment, her pale 
 blue eyes with their rims of thick white lashes ; or, more 
 often, at the piano, her tapering fingers pressed upon the 
 keys, and her voice filling the room ! 
 
 A , the simple-hearted, the nobly serious, whose 
 
 life was a protest against the vanity and folly of this 
 modern world. As she appeared then, bright in the glow 
 of those swift and happy nights, or, sweetly pensive, in 
 the sad winter twilight : so do I see her now as I listen to 
 these heavenly sounds. Yes, it is all embalmed in the 
 melody of her voice that still rings in "Wo bist du" and 
 "Die Lorelei." How much more sweetly does the music 
 of her soul float in among the discords of life ! It is in 
 other ears than mine, heard by those that never knew the 
 strains of her voice— by unborn generations: so sings 
 
FRAGMENTS 209 
 
 her soul, shining like a star in this muddy world. If 
 there is any Heaven— other than the Heaven of Good 
 Deeds, of which she is the brightest angel— surely she is 
 a partaker of its joys. 
 
 Pan's Pipes 
 
 So time speaks of the decay of the old order, for truly 
 the halls of Valhalla and Olympus are dusty and neg- 
 lected. Yet, are they dead in spirit, or is it but the old 
 form that has passed away ? 
 
 Oh, skies, Olympus, now a garret full of broken toys ! 
 Desolate Olympus! There lie the mouldering goblets, 
 the bowl that rosy-fingered Hebe bore about the magic 
 circle ; Ceres' horn of plenty, too small a matter to typify 
 the vast agricultural realization of to-day ; Apollo's lyre, 
 its all too simple music unstrung and silent — these dusty 
 relics — also Mercury's caduceus and Pan's pipes. What 
 of the cunning serpents ? 
 
 If centuries so different in purpose should strangely 
 exhibit a still conscious life, and a wandering gust by 
 chance whisper a note on the long-silenced reed, would 
 it not breathe thus ?— 
 
 The pipes: That wind came fresh from the forest, 
 methinks, and carried with it a scent like the lindens in 
 July,* the drone of bumble and honey bees, and the little 
 pipe of the many tiny winged things. 
 
 The serpents: What note is that? Of the old half- 
 
 * The air blew from trees at vast distance, even from northern Vermont per- 
 chance: for there the basswood or linden flowers in July, though in most tem- 
 perate countries a month earlier. [Author's note.] 
 
2IO STOWENOTES 
 
 beast piper? Truly, we thought of all this faded com- 
 pany his pipes would be the last to sound. 
 
 The pipes: Once the half-god spoke for more than 
 half the world, and blithely. Is he dumb, yet not dead ? 
 He lives still in secrecy and suffering; he dwells in 
 silence terribly imposed. 'Tis better so; for if it were 
 broken, a cry of agony would rise, so bitter, so piercing, 
 that neither gods nor men might endure to hear it. 
 
 The serpents: So is it ever with the simple nature, 
 while it fares well with the wise or the cunning. Mer- 
 cury carries all ; Mars is his slave ; Minerva and Apollo 
 stoop to him ; he is the Jove of the new Olympus. 
 
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 1882-1896 
 
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EXTRACTS FROM LETTERS 
 
 TO HIS MOTHER 
 
 Nantucket, August 5, 1882. 
 
 Nantucket I really like; there is a great deal that is 
 attractive about it; but when in your description of the 
 sunset at Mohonk you spoke of the tall pine trees, the 
 absolute lack of such scenery all summer struck me 
 quite forcibly. 
 
 The other night we had a most magnificent effect 
 here — the aurora. Imagine a mass of dark clouds lying 
 upon the horizon, and from behind them sTiafts of light 
 stretching up to the centre of the sky, the stars shining 
 in them— that was how it looked at first, but in a little 
 while the whole northern sky was pulsating like an enor- 
 mous fire. 
 
 This town is really very quaint. I am at work (in 
 the afternoon) upon a study of some old houses I see 
 from my window. In the mornings I paint in a most 
 delightful old orchard, where the trees are quite mar- 
 vellously twisted and old. 
 
 I grow more certain every day that the mountains 
 are to me much more delightful than the seaside. 
 
 TO HIS SISTER 
 
 Stowe, July 9, 1887. 
 We were driven home by a thunder-cloud of tremen- 
 dous and threatening aspect, and caught the first drops 
 
 215 
 
2i6 STOWENOTES 
 
 as we crossed the road to the hotel piazza. It was quite 
 a storm— a deluge of water, and a wind of great force 
 that blew the rain like clouds of smoke over the ridge- 
 poles of the barns and houses. 
 
 We chanced upon a peculiarly comical episode in the 
 course of our walk. Entering the long covered bridge 
 we have to pass (you know the one, of course) in order 
 to reach your hill, we noticed two men at the further 
 end, busily employed with a brush, a pail, and a great 
 roll of papers, seemingly engaged in the art of poster- 
 sticking. We then perceived that over the old advertise- 
 ments of the Barnum London Circus, etc., new and 
 startlingly brilliant bills were judiciously pasted, setting 
 forth the "Aggregation of Cabalistic Wonders — Taylor 
 the Wizard King," with portrait — a kind of imitation 
 Hermann, with a curly red imperial and distinctly 
 waxed mustaches, arrayed in a dress suit with diamond 
 cross and shirt-buttons, and made yet more resplendent 
 by numerous and sparkling orders. "The King," so the 
 bill continued, "assisted by the Distinguished Artist, 
 Mile. Irena— Mile. Irena in her great European Suc- 
 cess," wherein she was depicted, in complete Eastern 
 costume, floating airily over the heads of a distinguished, 
 awe-inspired, and (presumably) European audience. 
 There was yet another bill, descriptive of a second attrac- 
 tion — this a conjurer— representing him (pictorially) 
 revealing the wonders of his art. 
 
 After such a preparation as the above, imagine our 
 feelings when, on reaching the further end of the bridge, 
 we discovered in the person of one of the bill-posters the 
 Wizard King himself. His dress coat was removed, but 
 
LETTERS 217 
 
 otherwise he stood before us in all respects the brilliant 
 personage of his advertisement; the low-cut vest and 
 polished boots, the diamond cross and buttons, the flash- 
 ing orders, the red imperial and mustaches, waxed to the 
 last possible extreme, were all clearly revealed to our 
 astonished gaze. Happening incidentally to glance at 
 the other poster of bills, we thought we could detect, 
 under a shabby tile and a general air of vagabondage, a 
 strong likeness to the conjurer before mentioned. It is 
 needless to remark that we looked with considerable in- 
 terest for Mile. Irena. 
 
 By the way, I shall hope to write you again, on the 
 subject of the Wizard King; we propose to make in- 
 quiries as regards the character of his show, and, if 
 possible, see it. He has been running in my head all the 
 evening; I can't help but wonder whether his profes- 
 sional is his only dress — if he wears a duster in the course 
 of his travels, or always goes about, as we beheld him, 
 wasting himself in the vulgar glare of the day. 
 
 TO HIS SISTER 
 
 New York, November 19, 1887. 
 
 You asked me to write you about the "Faust" show, 
 but M. has probably sent you full particulars. However, 
 in accordance with my promise, I shall say a word or two 
 on the subject. 
 
 We were all on hand; the family circle shone with 
 familiar faces. There were the B.'s and the Joblights 
 and the Jumblies, whose hands in the course of the even- 
 ing assumed their original coloring; and as the per- 
 
2i8 STOWENOTES 
 
 formance drew to a close and Mr. Irving came before 
 the curtain to deliver his little speech, the gunpowder 
 was distinctly observed to run out at the heels of their 
 boots— at least there arose such a dust in the vicinity 
 of Joseph, resulting from the combined and vigor- 
 ous action of his heels and umbrella, that certain 
 proud intruders, unknown to the gods, begged that he 
 would give vent to his enthusiasm in some less violent 
 manner. 
 
 I believe it would be impossible to speak too highly of 
 Miss Terry's acting just here. Throughout the piece she 
 seems to me to act more carefully, with greater earnest- 
 ness and continuity, than ever before. 
 
 The only fault to be found with the stage manage- 
 ment is that it may be, perhaps, a little too complex. Mr. 
 Irving carries out his theories bravely. The stage is 
 two thirds of the time in an unusual gloom, and there is 
 a bold and lavish use of music. The curtain never falls 
 until the end, darkness favoring the changing of the 
 scenes, that seem to melt one into another. The inten- 
 tion is, I suppose, to convey the idea of a dream. 
 
 I don't know that I ever entertained any notions re- 
 specting the devil ; it's a little hard to criticise anybody's 
 Mephistopheles, and far be it from me to attempt the 
 like with Mr. Irving's. He is very picturesque, and cer- 
 tainly a figure that remains vividly in mind. He is per- 
 haps a little inadequate at moments that require great 
 force, as, for instance, when he reminds Faust that he 
 has to do with the devil. You would delight, I feel sure, 
 in all the scenes with Martha. His costume and make-up 
 are admirable; his face has what Hawthorne calls, in 
 
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LETTERS 219 
 
 speaking of the dead Judge Pyncheon, "a swarthy 
 pallor." 
 
 I have now, to begin with, a little drawing of a rose, 
 with "For Dorothea" printed in Roman capitals; like- 
 wise, upon the succeeding page, engrossed "The Story 
 of Cinderella," with all the properties drawed off: the 
 fairy godmother taking flight up the kitchen chimney, 
 and on the hearth, dancing in a circle about the pumpkin, 
 the rat, the two lizards, and the six white mice. The little 
 shoe also occurs in a corner of the page. On one sheet 
 there are three small pictures— of the conjuring, the 
 proclamation, and the trying on. Also four full-page 
 pictures — of the Prince on horseback, the marriage, and 
 Cinderella before the footlights, taking her call; lastly, 
 the children's supper on their return from the play. As 
 soon as I can get some holly I shall draw a wreath with 
 a "Merry Christmas" printed inside, as a frontispiece. 
 
 I have had it in mind to draw off Bluebeard in pen 
 and ink. It would be much more interesting to do than 
 Cinderella — it is so much more dramatic; though, for 
 that matter, what could be better than the situation of 
 the clock striking twelve, in the ball-room scene of the 
 latter? 
 
 TO HIS SISTER 
 
 New York, April 2, 1888. 
 
 I don't know if I have already told you, or not, that I 
 
 went to Brooklyn, to one John Arkhurst, and purchased 
 
 two beautiful specimens of luna moths, male and female. 
 
 I have had in mind for some time to paint a picture, a 
 
220 STOWENOTES 
 
 moonlight scene, the lot back of the hotel at Stowe, and 
 a luna moth with outspread wings risen into the moon- 
 light from behind a little bush of witch-hazel that grows 
 there— last summer hung with white morning-glories 
 that on nights of middle moons were open and generally 
 full of dew. It is only by regarding my moths as models 
 that I can justify myself in the possession of them. The 
 extra luna and a large and beautiful Attacus polyphe- 
 mus still weigh heavily upon my conscience. 
 
 I have time and time again sat down with my pen in 
 my hand on purpose to write you all about Robert, but I 
 find I have nothing to say on the subject. I was too ex- 
 cited on the Claudio night to take away a very clear im- 
 pression of him, but I know that it was more than good. 
 The speech about death, as he says it, is, according to 
 Madame Modjeska, pathetic. I think it was more than 
 pathetic — it seemed to bring the idea terribly near; I'm 
 sure most people in the theatre were strangely touched. 
 
 TO JOE EVANS 
 
 New York, January 22, 1889. 
 Robert's Orlando was beautiful in parts. In the peni- 
 tential speech, 'Tf ever you have sat at good men's feasts. 
 If ever," etc., he touched the deepest note of feeling that 
 was sounded that night. I never heard the lines so well 
 spoken ; I wondered if there were not something deeper 
 and more serious in them than in any others that occur in 
 the play. Madame's remark on his Claudio I thought 
 applied well to him as he said those lines. 
 
J V 
 
 r 
 
LETTERS 221 
 
 TO HIS SISTER 
 
 Camden, S. C, April ii, 1889. 
 
 To-day, although there is a pleasant breeze, it is hot 
 in the sun, and looking south, as we do from this piazza, 
 comparatively near objects are indistinct in a hot white 
 haze. The most delightful and wonderful music of 
 mockingbirds is continually ringing in our ears; they 
 never seem to cease singing from sunrise to sunset, even 
 when flying. They are noisy in this garden, of which 
 the comparatively unkept condition seems to offer them 
 peculiar advantages. There is an alley of holly and 
 mock-oranges, very dense, at the foot of the garden, 
 leading a distance of about a hundred yards to the road, 
 and here they throng, singing, fluttering, and alighting 
 among the leaves, with their white-tipped wings and tail 
 outspread fan-like, in exactly the attitude of Mr. Audu- 
 bon's beautiful drawing. 
 
 The country is now in a charming state, the light 
 spring greens filling out with solid forms, and contrast- 
 ing with the dark pines. 
 
 The day before yesterday we drove out to an old 
 place called "Mulberry," lately the property of a General 
 Chestnut, and built by his family in 1820. It is the best 
 instance of a swell Southern home I have ever seen, a 
 very large brick building of colonial style— i.^., piazza in 
 front with very beautiful Doric columns, and a wide 
 sweep of stone steps. It lies in rather low ground, near 
 a swamp, about three miles from Camden. The way to 
 it is a most indifferent country road, running through an 
 
222 STOWENOTES 
 
 almost houseless wilderness. There are a few negro 
 cabins in its vicinity, but otherwise it stands alone. I 
 can't get over the strangeness of this ; it would not be so 
 odd if there were not all the evidences of a new and ap- 
 parently unopened country, the seamy side and the 
 ragged ends exceedingly visible in a bad road, charred 
 clearings, and miserable huts, and, at the end of all, a 
 truly grand old mansion, stranded as inconsequently as a 
 glacial boulder. 
 
 The grounds, even at this early spring stage of 
 foliage, are a little gloomy. The house is set in the midst 
 of a level park of water and willow oaks, some of con- 
 siderable size, a few live oaks, some hickory and holly 
 trees, and dogwood and crab-apple, both now in bloom. 
 
 It is said that the present owner, for the sake of a 
 few square rods of cotton, cut down a long succession of 
 beautiful old crab-apple trees that lined one side of the 
 avenue that leads to the road. 
 
 Until yesterday I did n't know that clouds could ap- 
 pear in this sky, which till that time had remained an 
 unbroken cloudless expanse. In this flat land the sky 
 seems a thousand times greater than it does in the moun- 
 tains ; I was never in any place where I felt the world to 
 be so large. Camden itself seems to stretch out inter- 
 minably; it is a country of infinite perspective. The 
 straight roads, lined with cloudy trees that grow bluer 
 and bluer, stretch away until all the lines converge and 
 meet on the horizon. 
 
 The sky fades from a very deep blue at the apex to a 
 cloudy pink, against which are the dark green pines and 
 the delicate emerald tints of the water oaks. 
 
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LETTERS 223 
 
 Twilight shuts in rather sadly ; there is often a great 
 deal of smoke in the air, and toward dusk things become 
 dim and ghostly. After sunset the air is very lively with 
 bird notes— mockingbirds, sparrows, and the little tufted 
 titmice ; and when these are quiet there is a loud whizzing 
 of insects, a ringing of tree toads, and a very far-off 
 hollow chant of frogs. Little Brer Rabbits hop silently 
 into the garden and begin nibbling the stalks, and bats 
 (little red bats) flutter around the piazza. 
 
 From time to time in the course of the evening, when 
 everything is quiet, the mockingbirds break out into 
 short and most unexpected bursts of song. 
 
 Very odd people turn up here occasionally. The other 
 day a man of eccentric appearance, with one fixed and 
 one roving eye, came apparently in quest of a ghost. He 
 made inquiries about all the old houses in the neighbor- 
 hood, in the hope that they might be haunted, and when 
 he heard that "Mulberry," the place I told you of, was 
 said to be frequented by a ghostly lady in gray, he tried 
 to persuade old Jim, the black butler, to go down there 
 with him and spend the night, and asked him in the event 
 of encountering the spirit what he would do — "Run, or 
 stand and address it?" I believe Jim said he should 
 run. 
 
 I have been trying to read "Richard Feverel," but I 
 don't seem to get on very fast, or with much enjoyment. 
 I like the admirable choice of words, and I am impressed 
 continually with its cleverness ; but the story is explained, 
 rather than told, in too lofty a manner, with words 
 and phrases in capitals — too Charles-Reade-like for my 
 taste. 
 
224 STOWENOTES 
 
 TO HIS SISTER 
 
 Hot Springs, N. C, May 8, 1889. 
 By the way, I did think of something the other day, 
 which I dare say has been thought and said often before, 
 but is to me a new idea— to you, I suppose, old. It is 
 this: that the first two lines of Shelley's "Skylark" (I 
 was repeating it to myself) sound his false note: 
 
 "Hail to thee, blithe spirit! 
 Bird thou never wert." 
 
 This is contrary to Matthew Arnold's definition of 
 poetry, is it not ? "Noble thoughts applied to life." If 
 Wordsworth had been the writer, he would have taken 
 pleasure (would he not?) to allow the skylark a bird, 
 and not a spirit. 
 
 TO JOE EVANS 
 
 Stowe, October 26, 1889. 
 
 I am almost afraid you will not be able to come to see 
 me when you get home, because this climate is exces- 
 sively cold, and requires a kind of Corin outfit, sheepskin 
 leggings and such. I have lately been investigating the 
 winter costume of these regions, and I find it is some- 
 thing like this. 
 
 It is beginning to get cold already; snow has been 
 hanging on the Mountain since the last of September, and 
 we have had a very respectable snow-storm in the valley. 
 
 I enjoyed your letter exceedingly. I feel almost cul- 
 pably provincial, hearing of these bits of news from for- 
 

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LETTERS 225 
 
 eign climes and (as Mr. Stevenson has it) the Modern 
 Bagdad. 
 
 The putting of H. Christian Andersen's "Snow 
 Queen" into a little operetta does greatly tickle my fancy; 
 I should have liked exceedingly to see it. 
 
 TO HIS SISTER 
 
 Stowe, November i8, 1889. 
 
 I could tell you of a delightful wintry drive we took 
 yesterday, over snowy and frozen roads, away up into 
 Nebraska Notch, which seems so remote and wild in this 
 cold season — the trees on the hillsides standing against 
 a background of snow ; the bare rocky surfaces and all 
 the lesser brooks and springs ice-coated ; the cattle hud- 
 dled in the farm-yards ; the farmers in knitted nightcaps, 
 buffalo coats, and sheepskin leggings. To-day has been 
 warm ; much of the snow is melted. 
 
 I am going to move a little kerosene stove into my 
 painting hut, for my hands get so stiff it is almost impos- 
 sible to paint. My picture gets on marvellously slowly. 
 I have been shifting my traps about to take in several 
 varieties of evergreens, and I expect to call the picture 
 "Hemlock-Spruce, Spruce, Fir, and Pine." Do you think 
 this too funny ? It is to be a kind of botanical study. 
 
 TO HIS MOTHER 
 
 Stowe, November 30, 1889. 
 This morning the thermometer was at 17"; but as 
 there was no wind, and as the sun shone, the air was al- 
 most summer-like. 
 
226 STOWENOTES 
 
 We have spent most of the afternoon riding about on 
 the ox-sleigh— to the upper barn for straw, to the woods 
 for fire-wood. This last expedition we made about sun- 
 set. You can imagine how beautiful it was : a red glow 
 behind the trees, and long blue shadows, a tinge of pink 
 on Sterling and the mountains northward. 
 
 The Canadian with the red nightcap informed us 
 that he had known it here as cold as 44° below zero. The 
 part of Canada he came from, however, was colder, he 
 thought. He went on to extol the benefit of open air ; he 
 said he was poorly as a child, from five to fifteen was 
 "recruiting up," at his sixteenth year took to wood- 
 chopping, and ever since had been "as tough as a 
 b'ar." 
 
 TO HIS MOTHER 
 
 Stowe, December 7, 1889. 
 The other day I rode down to the village on the wood 
 sledge. It was rather fun. Although we had a chain on 
 the runners to serve as a brake, the horses were pushed 
 along at quite a lively pace, bucking and kicking in their 
 endeavors to hold back the load. We went to the grist- 
 mill for some corn meal, and stopped also at Mr. Straw's 
 to encourage him to finish the windows. Everybody had 
 on the most delightful costumes. There was one old man 
 at the mill in an old sealskin cap and a coonskin coat, 
 who was a very lovely specimen. Mr. Lovejoy (who 
 runs the mill) came out to speak to Mr, Cobb, his rubi- 
 cund countenance done up in a blue checked handker- 
 chief. 
 
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LETTERS 227 
 
 December 8. 
 
 I take the keenest delight in Hans Christian his book. 
 I feel it is what one ought never to be without ; as essen- 
 tial, almost, as Shakespeare. 
 
 There is a little flock of blue jays continually around 
 the grain house, tapping at the walls like woodpeckers, 
 until the indignant squirrels burst out of the cracks and 
 crannies and disperse them. 
 
 This morning I went into the sugar-wood and 
 sketched for an hour. The air was warm and balmy, 
 very spring-like, the mountains in a haze. The snow in 
 the wood was crossed and recrossed by the prints of 
 squirrels' feet. 
 
 TO HIS SISTER 
 
 Stowe, December 9, 1889. 
 By the way, if you want an uncanny set of verses, 
 something in the style of those you sent me, why don't 
 you read "The Lykewake Dirge," or death-watch dirge, 
 in William Allingham's "Ballad Book" ? For so simple 
 a ditty, it seems to possess considerable hair-lifting pow- 
 ers. Perhaps it may not affect you so ; you ought to be 
 sitting alone at night in a farmhouse, the other inmates 
 having gone to bed and the wind whistling and moaning 
 outside, properly to appreciate it. 
 
 I like to hear about little things like your encounter 
 in the car. That is the kind of thing that makes a city 
 so attractive, and New York the most so of any. Being 
 in New York is like having a free ticket to a Chinese 
 theatre, to a kind of drama that has no ending. 
 
228 STOWENOTES 
 
 TO JOE EVANS 
 
 Stowe, December 27, 1889. 
 Forgive me, Joe, that I have not answered your letter 
 before. Ciod knows I am not greatly pressed for time, 
 nor am I likely to add much to my answer by letting it 
 linger a week or so. The fact is, country people live on 
 very generous terms with time; all their deeds, letters 
 included, are characterized by a liberal margin, though 
 not on paper. 
 
 TO HIS MOTHER 
 
 Worcester, Mass., January 3, 1890. 
 It is now endeavoring to snow; the changeableness 
 of the weather is tiresome. Excepting the first week in 
 December, we have had no real winter weather — it has 
 been either April thaws or windy, dry, frozen March 
 days. There has been very little of the charm of winter. 
 I am not prepared to define the charm, but I think it has 
 much to do with snow, and large snowflakes. 
 
 TO HIS sister 
 
 Worcester, January, 1890. 
 I am vmder a painful compulsion to send you the 
 verses* on the opposite page. I have been twisting and 
 turning of them inside out ever since I left Stowe. Con- 
 sidering their intrinsic weight, they have sat very heavy 
 on my soul. It is like employing a religious expert to 
 
 * "The North Countrie." (Printed on page 335.) 
 
LETTERS 229 
 
 lay a ghost, to get somebody to read your vexed verses— 
 they cease to writhe, they no longer prey on your feel- 
 ings. 
 
 These, I need hardly say, fail to express my feeling, 
 though they may convey a shadow of it. I feel as if I 
 might sometime write something like a poem on this 
 theme— a presumptuous statement, but I feel it— the 
 theme— as a great inspiration. 
 
 TO HIS SISTER 
 
 Stowe, March 6, 1890. 
 On the loth of February, I think, we had a severe 
 snow-storm. When I looked out of my window in the 
 morning and saw our next neighbor driving his ox- 
 sledge through the drifts, I wished for you to see and 
 appreciate so savage a picture of Winter. He had on 
 his sheepskin leggings, a long blue homespun blouse or 
 kaftan or something, belted in at the waist, his face and 
 cap tied up in a red muffler, his mustache and eyebrows 
 perfectly white. He came striding through the snow, 
 sinking in above his knees at every other step, shaking 
 his long whip-lash over the struggling oxen, the wind 
 making smoke of the snow— as in Schreyer's pictures. 
 
 TO HIS sister 
 
 Stowe, March 12, 1890. 
 I spent this morning in the sugar-woods watching 
 the oxen hauling logs, which is really rather exciting. 
 There is a popular notion that the ox is a slow, stately. 
 
230 STOWENOTES 
 
 and rather dull animal. If you could see them springing 
 over fallen trees, pushing their way through underbrush, 
 sliding down steep icy slopes, plunging full depth in 
 bogs, always extricating themselves with nimbleness 
 and dispatch, you would change your preconceived ideas 
 and regard them as particularly spry and intelligent 
 creatures. Notwithstanding all their cleverness, the 
 poor things end every day with cut and bleeding knees. 
 It is terrible to see animals so remorselessly driven; but 
 you can hardly wonder at it when you see what herculean 
 tasks the men themselves perform. 
 
 TO HIS MOTHER 
 
 Stowe, March 22, 1890. 
 
 Sugaring began this afternoon. I have just now 
 (about one p.m.) come down from the woods, where 
 they are still collecting sap. Since this morning they 
 have collected four tubs full (vats about three feet high 
 and ten feet in circumference), and had not quite fin- 
 ished. The sap ran freely ; the pails on some of the trees 
 tapped this morning were full to the brim. 
 
 This being a warmish day, the snow that came last 
 night on a north wind adheres to the branches in so great 
 a degree that the woods seem to have burst into white 
 foliage. Nothing is left uncovered but the trunks and 
 some of the larger boughs ; the rest is cloudy white, as 
 dense as spring foliage. There's a prospect of more 
 snow ; but the occasional gleams of sunlight this morning 
 have much diminished the beautiful effects. 
 
LETTERS 231 
 
 March 25. 
 
 I saw Henry sugar off about eighty pounds of maple 
 sugar yesterday. It may be interesting to you to know 
 the process. 
 
 The syrup drawn off from the evaporators is put in 
 a large pan, set over a fire, and boiled for about an hour 
 and a half. The means of ascertaining when it is done 
 sufficiently is amusing, I think. They have a little twig 
 of birch bent in a loop, and when on blowing through it, 
 after dipping it in the syrup, the sugar flies out in little 
 filmy strips like shavings, they swing the pan off the fire 
 by means of chains and a pulley fastened to the ceiling, 
 and allow the contents to cool. While it is still in a 
 gluey, half-melted condition, they pour it into the cans— 
 and there you are ! While the syrup is boiling, it seems 
 to be the custom to scrape off the warm sugar that can- 
 dies on the side of the pan and devour the same, which is 
 very good. Everybody goes provided with little paddles 
 whittled out of basswood. 
 
 To-day is most dismal — chilly and gray, and the 
 roads frozen up again. But we have had beautiful 
 nights, cold and starry. 
 
 TO HIS MOTHER 
 
 Stowe, April 25, 1890. 
 Yesterday afternoon I drove up the Sterling brook 
 road to the sawmill. You can imagine nothing more 
 charming. The road is for the most part good, being 
 sandy, and in the bad places repaired with cart-loads of 
 sawdust and shingle by the lavish lumbermen. Although 
 
232 STOWENOTES 
 
 the deciduous trees were leafless of course, the green 
 mosses and the extraordinary greenness of the spruces 
 made an effect dehghtfuUy summerish. But I was 
 pained to see a mountain of spruce logs at the mill, and 
 masses of sawed timber piled as high as the roof; they 
 seem to be doing the business on a gigantic scale, and I 
 should imagine will in no great space of time clear 
 Sterling as bare of spruces as Elmore or the Mountain. 
 I went up the road that we couldn't pass when we 
 were last there, you remember, on account of the drifts. 
 There was still a little snow on north slopes, but plows 
 were cutting into the gray field along the windy ridges, 
 and the whole country was ringing with the piping of 
 spring frogs. 
 
 April 27. 
 
 Last night we had a heavy fall of snow, from two to 
 three inches, and to-day everything is white, under a 
 leaden sky. The jays, that have not been seen for two 
 weeks past, are screaming and doing the gentlemen of 
 Japan act outside the front windows. However, the 
 thermometer is nearly up to 40°, so that this wintry 
 relapse will be but brief. 
 
 TO JOE EVANS 
 
 Stowe, May i, 1890. 
 I have about half finished a picture of a hemlock- 
 spruce that I am very anxious for you to see. How I 
 wish Thayer might cast an eagle eye upon it ; how I wish 
 I could drop into his studio to warm my thin blood in the 
 glow of genius ! 
 

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LETTERS 233 
 
 TO HIS MOTHER 
 
 Stowe, May 5, 1890. 
 
 This morning was cold (45°) and cloudy (it has 
 since cleared beautifully), so I devoted it to a long walk 
 through the Pilgrims and the west pasture. I found (as 
 I wrote you) yellow and white violets, and, though I 
 don't know whether this will be interesting, I saw a 
 black-throated green warbler. I found Sammy chained 
 up in the stable (he had been chasing hens with intent to 
 slay) and howling like a dervish. I took him out walk- 
 ing with me, and he was very obedient — and is certainly 
 the handsomest dog I ever saw. Still, he's but a poor 
 hand at driving cows. As Henry says, "He's played 
 too much." Cows at this time of year, getting out after 
 such a long confinement, are rather difficult to manage, 
 a difficulty augmented by the fact of the frost having 
 thrown the fences in some places, and Henry and Arthur 
 are driven to the extremity of despair, running and 
 shouting, while Sammy, I regret to say, only adds to the 
 confusion. 
 
 I drove down to the graveyard yesterday to have a 
 look at the birds, that I knew must be there (a sheltered 
 spot) if anywhere. You can't imagine how charming it 
 was; the effects from the valley, where the grass is 
 greener and contrasts very vividly with the purple woods 
 and blue mountains, are more interesting just now than 
 from higher places. There were myrtle warblers, a large 
 variety of sparrows, swifts, bank swallows, I think, and, 
 to be heard, blackbirds and thrushes. 
 
234 STOWENOTES 
 
 I see the apple trees in the yard are whitening very 
 slightly— the buds becoming a little evident. 
 
 TO HIS SISTER 
 
 Stowe, May 14, 1890. 
 
 This afternoon it is raining, but I put on my rubber 
 boots and a mackintosh and have been walking in the 
 west pasture and the Pilgrims. The south slope of the 
 pasture is covered with white violets; in the wood the 
 blue predominate. 
 
 In Gray's "Botany" frequently occurs the descrip- 
 tion of locality, "rich damp woods, northward." It very 
 adequately describes the Pilgrims and others hereabout, 
 where every boulder, root, and north side of bole and 
 limb is coated with moss — in the beeches ranging from 
 blue to yellow and bronze, and in all, in this moist spring 
 weather, vividly bright. 
 
 This morning, out driving, I had a glimpse of orioles 
 and several kinds of warblers. Blackbirds, robins, war- 
 blers, song and tree sparrows, and thrushes are all sing- 
 ing now, probably at their best; the song sparrows not 
 quite so musically as in April, and bluebirds heard not at 
 all. This may be accident ; I don't know. I have been 
 listening to the hermit thrushes to-day in the swamp. 
 They seem to choose the silent times of other birds to 
 sing their songs. In reality, I think they are very con- 
 stant singers : they speak deliberately, at long intervals, 
 but almost all day long. They can be heard later than 
 most, and at noon of hot days when others are silent. 
 
LETTERS 23S 
 
 TO HIS MOTHER 
 
 Stowe, May i6, 1890. 
 
 The flowers of the June-berry shrubs are very deli- 
 cate, and make interesting points on roadsides. 
 
 For a wonder, yesterday afternoon was clear, and 
 after dinner I walked a little way toward the Governor's 
 wood. There was a slight haze, the mountains soft and 
 cloudy in spring foliage, and open places, pastures, and 
 meadow of a bright emerald green. The trees all begin 
 to have some body; the beeches are the greenest, the 
 maples pale pink, lilac, and gold, aspens conspicuously 
 yellow-green. Thrushes were singing in such numbers 
 as to injure the effect. 
 
 TO HIS SISTER 
 
 Stowe, December 21, 1890, 
 Last night, after reading Ibsen's "Ghosts," I was 
 strongly tempted to put the book in the fire ; the fact that 
 it was not my property alone restrained me. Yet it is 
 almost interesting in its signal intemperance, so aimless 
 and misdirected an attack upon society. Will the pref- 
 acers (a silly tribe) insist in this case, as they do re- 
 specting the "Doll's House," that there are only two 
 positions tenable to the reader— entire acceptance of or 
 declared warfare with the views of the writer ? It would 
 be instructive to see what they had to say in this in- 
 stance. I fancy it would trouble them to define exactly 
 the nature of Ibsen's protestantism in "Ghosts." It 
 
236 STOWENOTES 
 
 appears to me as little better than a meaningless display 
 of ugliness, which, far from answering any good end, is, 
 in my mind, precisely the reverse of moral. To put this 
 ugliness in the form of a play is what I particularly re- 
 sent. To pursue the good and insist upon it is morality 
 in art; and this, I think, can be more widely applied to 
 life also. "Let all evil sleep," says, wisely and gently, 
 the woman in Tennyson's "Sea Dreams." I don't believe 
 that any denunciation of evil is so powerful for good as 
 an appeal to goodness. 
 
 As soon as one begins to think a little, ideas that are 
 older than the pyramids, and that have been presented to 
 the sightless eye and the deaf ear in many forms, sud- 
 denly strike one with the force of an original conception. 
 What I have said just now is trite, doubtless, but not 
 to me. 
 
 TO HIS MOTHER 
 
 Stowe, December 27, 1890. 
 I never saw the atmosphere so clear as it was Christ- 
 mas night ; there was not the least haze on the horizon, 
 so that the moon (the full moon, I believe) rose without 
 the least warning conveyed in a diffusion of light or 
 halo-like effect, perfectly round and sharply outlined 
 like a gold circle on a blue ground, and glittering as 
 bright as a new gold dollar. In the same way later the 
 night was quite remarkable. On ordinary moonlight 
 nights a whitish haze will blend with the outline of the 
 mountains and make them indistinct, but Christmas 
 night Mansfield was as sharply outlined, almost, as on a 
 clear day. 
 
^ 
 
 
LETTERS 237 
 
 The woods have a most mysterious, Hop-o'-my- 
 thumb forest appearance, the trunks and Umbs on the 
 outer edge heavily snow-coated, and the interior of dim 
 and general grayness. The gable ends of houses and 
 barns appear like haystacks, and the dormer windows 
 and chimneys the most inconsequent things in nature. 
 
 TO HIS MOTHER 
 
 Stowe, January 4, 1891. 
 
 Last night I received a note from C, stating that he 
 had found a pleasant country home for Samo. I am 
 both glad and sorry. I shall miss him exceedingly. He 
 is, to my mind, the most interesting dog of our collec- 
 tion and admirably suited to this place. I mean that his 
 nature is in accord with the spirit of the place, which is 
 one that combines a certain wild charm with interests of 
 a domestic sort. Samo is gentle, obedient, and is, "as 
 one should say, one that takes upon him to be a dog in- 
 deed," but nevertheless, he has an interest apart from 
 the common interests attaching to dogs; he has some- 
 thing, though in a slight degree, of the virtue of a wild 
 animal. 
 
 January 5. 
 
 But now I must tell you about our trip to the moun- 
 tains. Saturday morning was clear, with a very faint 
 northeast wind ; the thermometer was at about zero. As 
 we expected to find the road somewhat difficult, Mr. 
 Cobb borrowed a light sledge, and this he filled with 
 straw, a canvas covering and buflfalo robes on top of all. 
 They put us up a lunch basket, and we carried some 
 
238 STOWENOTES 
 
 steaks and potatoes to be cooked at the camp. H. and I 
 put on 'most everything we could find in the way of 
 wraps, and what we could not wear we carried. We 
 presented a decidedly Tweedledum-and-Tweedledee-like 
 appearance. We got off at about half past eleven. 
 
 The road southeast of us, by Wilkins' farm (the 
 grassy road), was entirely blocked by drifts, so we took 
 a winding course through the pastures to the Hollow. 
 After passing the mill we met a couple of lumber teams 
 just below Warren's farm, that last clearing that we see 
 from the valley, and it was not until we passed this al- 
 most drift-hidden house that we struck into the woods. 
 They are nowhere very dense on these Worcester moun- 
 tains, but we met with some fine maples and yellow 
 birches, until we reached an altitude above the range of 
 the former, where the evergreens became more numer- 
 ous, spruces mostly, and slender tapering firs. And in 
 the openings we saw ahead of us the glistening ridge of 
 the mountain, heavily frosted by clouds condensing and 
 freezing over night. You can imagine the delightful 
 nature of the drive through this winter forest, where 
 abandoned lumber roads wound with smooth unbroken 
 surfaces and prolonged the glimpses from our road, 
 which occasionally dipped to the crossing of small 
 ravines on corduroy bridges. At about half past one we 
 reached the camp. The house where the lumbermen 
 sleep and have their meals is not particularly interesting, 
 but I found the log barn decidedly picturesque. 
 
 The house is kept by "Charlie Burt's nigger" and his 
 wife, a white woman. It's neat and cleanly, but a some- 
 what primitive abode, consisting of a single room which 
 

 
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LETTERS 239 
 
 is at once kitchen, sitting-room, dining-hall, and sleep- 
 ing-apartment. A storeroom and woodshed open out of 
 it, and there's a loft overhead where the lumbermen 
 sleep. Mr. Cobb set to work at once to cook our dinner, 
 and meantime H. and I strolled about outside. There 
 was no wind, and you can hardly conceive of the extreme 
 quiet. Presently in the distance the shouting of team- 
 sters and the crack of whips would be heard, then the 
 jingle of harness, the creaking of the heavily loaded 
 sledges, and the sound of the runners in the snow, and 
 for a short space the camp would present an animated 
 scene, in the loading of sledges with lumber for the mill 
 or the unloading of logs brought down from the moun- 
 tain. The men were exceedingly interesting to look at, 
 in particular a Frenchman of a Mephistophelian cast, of 
 whom I have made a little sketch. 
 
 Dinner was ready for us in the course of half an 
 hour or so, and was a very admirable one and highly ap- 
 preciated. 
 
 Immediately after, we harnessed the horses and 
 drove up into the woods, where the wood-cutters were at 
 work. We went up the mountain in a northeasterly di- 
 rection for about two miles, through a region that was 
 like Fairyland, where the evergreens were so densely 
 coated with frost that hardly any suggestion of green 
 remained to them. I don't mean that the boughs were 
 snow-laden or iced over, as you sometimes see them, but 
 the entire surface of the tree, boughs, twigs, and needles, 
 was covered with minute feathery crystals that sparkled 
 like silver. In the same way, the birches seemed to bear 
 a delicate wintry foliage— the lower parts of these trees 
 
240 STOWENOTES 
 
 in a cold shadow, the tops in the golden afternoon light. 
 At a little distance the firs and spruces seemed to be glit- 
 tering pinnacles of ice. We had some little difficulty in 
 reaching the actual scene of the wood-cutting, as the 
 road had only the day before been broken out by a yoke 
 of oxen, and in the end we were compelled to turn, by 
 uncoupling the sledge and lifting it around, assisted in 
 this by the lumbermen, as the snow was too deep for the 
 horses to leave the road, and the track too narrow and 
 barred by a lately fallen tree. 
 
 The choppers were about quitting work, so we offered 
 them a lift back. They were very interesting— young fel- 
 lows of about eighteen to twenty-five, the very picture 
 of health and robustiousness. Some of them sat on the 
 end of the sled, from time to time answering our ques- 
 tions, but mostly conversing together in low tones; 
 others followed on foot, their axes slung over their 
 shoulders. In front of us a yoke of small Jersey cattle 
 dragged a large log of canoe birch (for fire-wood), and 
 occasionally created a diversion by endeavoring to crowd 
 each other out of the road. Their driver walked with 
 them. In this order we wound slowly down in the 
 shadow, for the sun had by this time set and left a deep 
 red glow behind the ragged spruce tops. 
 
 Passing places where a tree had been felled and the 
 severed boughs trampled, the smell of the crushed leaves 
 was very strong and fragrant. 
 
 On returning we did not stop, but continued directly 
 down the mountain. The last glimpse of the camp was 
 an interesting picture — horses, oxen, and men grouped 
 between the log barn and the little shanty; the bright 
 
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LETTERS 241 
 
 colors of flannel shirts and toques conspicuous on the 
 snow; the light gleaming on the axe-heads; the move- 
 ment, bustle, and color against the background of the 
 cold and darkening wood. 
 
 The stars were out before we reached the valley, but 
 with the wind at our backs the air seemed like that of a 
 balmy summer night. On our way through the Hollow 
 and homeward we were boarded from time to time by 
 lantern-bearing strangers, with whom we exchanged a 
 civil greeting or remark on the weather. When we 
 reached home, we were surprised to find that the tem- 
 perature had risen slightly a few degrees, for when we 
 turned northward and faced the wind, we imagined 
 some phenomenal fall, so icy was it. 
 
 TO HIS MOTHER 
 
 Stowe, January 8, 1891. 
 Let me tell you here about the chestnut devil, as you 
 term him. He will be seven years old next spring; he 
 stands fifteen and three quarters hands high; he is, so 
 far as Mr. Cobb and I know, perfectly sound; and al- 
 though lately he has displayed considerable vivacity, he 
 is, I believe, of a gentle disposition. In color he is a dark 
 chestnut, fading to a gold color around the pasterns, 
 black hoofs, and with no white hairs anywhere except 
 a somewhat indistinct star in his forehead. His legs are 
 very clean, and he has on most occasions a fine spirited 
 air. He is rather long-bodied, but not ungracefully so. 
 As you know, he is not much of a trotter, but Mr. Cobb 
 calls him a good roadster, a stalwart animal that can take 
 
242 STOWENOTES 
 
 a carriage along at a reasonable pace for long distances 
 without tiring. In motion he keeps his back steady, his 
 legs moving rather rapidly, his neck arched, displaying a 
 good crest, and his head tossing up and down, while his 
 ears, like a good roadster's, are continually in motion. 
 He carries his tail well also, it seems to me, not arched, 
 but straight, somewhat flagged. He was an excellent 
 fast walker when I got him, and I fancy he is so still. 
 One trick he has that strikes me as rather interesting 
 than otherwise, a way of wrinkling his nose like the horse 
 in Albert Durer's "Knight, Death, and the Devil." 
 
 He is certainly a very strong creature, and always 
 seems to me to be full of undeveloped force. He is dis- 
 tinctly young. He must strike other people so too, as I 
 have sometimes heard the men refer to him as "the colt." 
 He is apt to be restless and uneasy, for want of some 
 means of working off his superfluous energy, I suppose. 
 He was broken to driving very late, viewed according to 
 the custom here, but he seems to have been tractable 
 from the start. It may be a fantastical notion, but he 
 seems to me, somehow, to have made a temporary sur- 
 render, and never to have fought out very thoroughly 
 with man the question of supremacy. Yet, as I say, I 
 think him a well-dispositioned animal. 
 
 TO HIS MOTHER 
 
 Stowe, January 20, 1891. 
 Yesterday Mr. Cobb and I hitched up Polly and the 
 colt in a light sleigh and drove to Moss Glen Falls. I 
 
LETTERS 243 
 
 was really appalled at the mountains of logs of spruce 
 and hemlock heaped up around the Moss Glen saw- 
 mill. The destruction of the forest here is something 
 to make your hair rise on your head with horror. I 
 really have my doubts if enough will remain to admit of 
 our repeating our trip to the logging camp. This is the 
 exaggeration of strong feeling, but, without doubt, the 
 woods are being rapidly destroyed. 
 
 Yesterday was the most charming day we have had 
 this winter, and just before sunset I drove up to the 
 house, taking my snow-shoes in the sleigh with me. I 
 hitched the horse there, and went down into the swamp 
 and along the wood road, which was crossed and re- 
 crossed by the tracks of hares, squirrels, and mice. It's 
 a great satisfaction to walk among your own trees, with 
 the consciousness that they at least are secure, no longer 
 in continual danger of the axe. 
 
 The day before yesterday I went through the Elmore 
 woods. It was in the afternoon ; the sun was rather low, 
 and behind the clouds. I never saw a more completely 
 wintry scene. The track was hollowed deep into the 
 snow, which rose abruptly on each side to a level with 
 the floor of the sleigh ; it would have been a very difficult, 
 almost an impossible matter to turn around, or even to 
 pass another sleigh. This is (or was, before to-day's 
 thaw) about the depth of the snow on an average, for in 
 a dense wood like Elmore it could not have drifted. Of 
 course, on the main roads the rollers have kept a pretty 
 even surface, but on the less frequented mountain roads 
 you travel in these little gillies. 
 
 It was as beautiful as it is in summer, but quite a 
 
244 STOWENOTES 
 
 different place. It looked as if it might have been a 
 Russian forest, the evergreens, of which I did not know 
 there were so many in this wood, all with their boughs 
 drooping under a heavy weight of snow, twigs and 
 branches so thickly coated that the forest seemed very 
 dense and impenetrable. You know how the road winds 
 down for a quarter of a mile or so after you are fairly in 
 the wood. There was no effect of light and shade, the 
 Sim having gone behind a belt of clouds; only in the 
 northeast there was a little gleam of greenish sky. There 
 was no wind, and the most intense silence, broken only 
 by the creak of the runners and the very faint jingle of 
 the sleigh-bells, for I went through very slowly. 
 
 TO HIS MOTHER 
 
 Stowe, January 26, 1891. 
 
 To-day is diarming, very pleasant, brilliant sunshine, 
 but yesterday was intensely cold, several degrees below, 
 and an intolerable searching west wind. I went down to 
 the village to do some errands, and coming home, over 
 the crest of the hill, the snow was drifting heavily, blow- 
 ing in a cloud. I don't remember ever being so much im- 
 pressed with the terrible nature of winter ; it seemed as 
 if nothing could live for more than a few hours in such 
 an atmosphere. At five o'clock it was 8° below, but later, 
 when I looked out at about nine o'clock, it had risen 
 two degrees. However, it was comfortable enough in- 
 doors. 
 
 Yesterday I stopped to ask about the temperature in 
 
LETTERS 245 
 
 the village. It was 30° below at six this morning, colder 
 than it has been for several years. It was 3° below while 
 I was in the village, and 7" when I reached the house at 
 about sunset. 
 
 TO JOE EVANS 
 
 Stowe, January 31, 1891. 
 How intensely you would have enjoyed the coloring 
 of the clear cold days we had in December. You can 
 imagine what a delicate pink the distance, snow-covered, 
 might have been; and the irregularities of the surface, 
 reflecting the light in various colors, made it much more 
 complex than the distance of summer-time. 
 
 TO HIS MOTHER 
 
 Stowe, February 14, 1891. 
 Last night a wonderful effect — exceedingly cold 
 ( — 10°), clear moonlight, and in the north-northwest a 
 rose-red aurora borealis. It streamed up behind the 
 Mountain a soft rose-color, and also the same effect 
 (though not so brilliant) a little east of north; due north 
 it was the usual cold blue light. It did not last very 
 long. 
 
 TO JOE EVANS 
 
 Stowe, October 20, 1891. 
 I've been intending to write you for some time past, 
 but, as they say here, I've not "got round to it"— which 
 
246 STOWENOTES 
 
 is the same thing, I suppose, as not having gone squarely 
 about it. Forgive this confession of a difficulty ; but the 
 world, such as it is represented in these parts, is too 
 much with me. 
 
 TO HENRY HOLT 
 
 Stowe, December 9, 1891. 
 
 Two very high winds have swept over the country 
 from the south, levelling fences, unroofing barns, and 
 causing our house to jar and tremble, and, what is really 
 cause for regretful remark, taking down some very fine 
 old hemlocks. 
 
 I really believe you would enjoy Stowe now, even 
 more than you did earlier in the season ; these open win- 
 ters are, to my mind, beautiful beyond what any other 
 season has to offer. The woods, though leafless, are 
 now at their best. 
 
 TO HIS MOTHER 
 
 Stowe, January 20, 1892. 
 I drove over to Moscow in the afternoon, and coming 
 home, in the face of the wind, the little snow-crystals cut 
 so sharply that it was impossible to keep one's eyes open, 
 only just so far as to be able to see the road and avoid 
 running into anybody ; and when I arrived at the village, 
 my eyelashes were frozen together so tightly that I had 
 to thaw the ice off with my fingers before I could open 
 my eyes. Polly, who was going pretty well, and rather 
 
LETTERS 247 
 
 warm, was frost-covered to the extent of appearing al- 
 most as much of a white as a bay horse. 
 
 The thermometer at the stable this morning was only 
 34°, which is a very reasonable temperature, I think, 
 though of course one would prefer it should not go lower 
 than 40° or 50°. 
 
 January 27. 
 
 We skidded two or three lengths of ash out of the 
 swamp the other day. It was quite fun— the tree (our 
 own tree) sawed up by our own man with our own saws, 
 the log drawn out by our own horse in our own harness, 
 and finally carried down to the mill on our own sled. 
 This, after borrowing harnesses, hiring horses and 
 sledges, was quite refreshing. The ash worked up into 
 very nice-looking timber. 
 
 The wind has drifted the snow a good deal, and the 
 sharp edges of the drifts, heaved up here and there across 
 the meadow, make a very wintry aspect. About zero all 
 day, but clear. Wind now to the south — looks like a 
 thaw. 
 
 TO HENRY HOLT 
 
 Stowe, February 8, 1892. 
 I believe there is a prospect of much reward in a cer- 
 tain class of investment in Stowe, Vermont. This is 
 rather an abrupt way to spring this conviction upon you, 
 but I have been thinking the matter over of late, and as I 
 know you to be interested in the place, and one amused 
 by suggestions of the kind, I have even determined dis- 
 
248 STOWENOTES 
 
 covering to you my ideas on the subject. If it is going to 
 bore you, read no further, for investment is my theme 
 quite to the end. I shall bear you no malice if you de- 
 cline the remainder, which follows as the development 
 of an idea more in sport than for profit. 
 
 I don't mean investing money in a hotel or inn, or 
 cottages to be let, which might be profitable conducted 
 with unusual skill and energy, nor in farming on a large 
 scale, which would be profitable to any one with a head 
 for business and a natural bent that way; but what I 
 mean is simply an investment that any rich man might 
 make, and which would in time afford a good profit with- 
 out requiring peculiar gifts or much expense of energy— 
 an investment, moreover, not involving a vast amount of 
 money in purchase, very little in current expense, paying 
 back something at once, increasing that payment yearly 
 until within ten or fifteen years the profit becomes very 
 large, and, fourthly and lastly, retaining its value undi- 
 minished forever, and, to conclude, conferring a priceless 
 boon upon the children of earth. In a word, the investor 
 profits both body and soul, puts money in his purse, and 
 performs at the same time an act of truest philanthropy. 
 
 All this may be done by building a sawmill and by 
 putting a few thousand dollars into the more remote dis- 
 tricts of spruce forests that cover these mountains- 
 parts as yet comparatively inaccessible and untouched. 
 
 In order to explain the peculiar advantages of such 
 an investment, let me in the first place make some re- 
 marks respecting the lumber trade. For many years 
 previous to this (when it is peculiarly the case) the lum- 
 ber market throughout the country has been overstocked. 
 
LETTERS 249 
 
 and prices consequently have been low ; yet, nevertheless, 
 it is agreed in this part of Vermont that the lumber busi- 
 ness pays better than any other. Though farming may 
 now be said to be at its best, for the country is neither 
 too new nor too old, is well cleared and drained, and still 
 retains sufficient forest to economize the moisture, yet 
 the lumber business, choked with competition, pays bet- 
 ter. Nor does this excess of supply cause any abatement 
 in the cutting of the forests, which is done at about the 
 same or at an increased rate yearly, the reason being 
 either that each lumberman counts on the discourage- 
 ment of his competitors or else that all make sufficient 
 profit. 
 
 Indeed, I understand that they make about one dollar 
 on every thousand square feet, and as the mills get out 
 from two to three millions of square feet yearly, the 
 profit is not despicable. Besides, it is to be considered 
 that the lumberman's methods are not economical. He 
 either buys the land he cuts upon, or buys the right to 
 cut trees on other people's lands ; he cuts very close, so 
 much so that he cannot again within twenty years, per- 
 haps ever, go over the same land, even if he owns it, and 
 the cost of his road-building, etc., is consequently thrown 
 away. 
 
 Thus it may be seen from the lumberman's methods 
 that the state of the market in no wise tends to preserve 
 the forests, and in this reckless slaughter is the profit of 
 the investor who can afford to wait, for it clears the way 
 to the remoter forests, both for profits and for roads. 
 
 The proper way, of course, to invest in forest land is 
 to buy a large tract, sufficiently large to be divided into. 
 
250 STOWENOTES 
 
 say, ten districts, one tenth of the whole to be cut over 
 annually. In this way your forest lasts forever, the orig- 
 inal cost of your roads is not lost (the repairing of them 
 with so much at hand for the purpose would amount to 
 nothing), the profit, as the country is cleared, yearly in- 
 creases, and if under present conditions the business 
 pays, how much more will it within ten years ? 
 
 In addition, there are in this State peculiar advan- 
 tages in connection with the lumber trade. In the first 
 place, the tree that is principally cut on these mountains 
 is permanent for certain qualities and purposes. For 
 dimension timber and framing of houses and for the 
 lesser spars of vessels nothing is so good as spruce, for 
 besides being as light and as easily worked as white pine, 
 it is more elastic and enduring and of a tougher con- 
 sistency. It is unrivalled as a framing timber ; it can be 
 put to almost all the uses where white pine was formerly 
 exclusively employed, and is the best for general pur- 
 poses of the soft woods that remain to us. I speak of the 
 spruce particularly, although there are splendid forests 
 of valuable hard wood in this State which command bet- 
 ter prices. 
 
 There is to be considered the fact that the forests of 
 Vermont are nearer the centres of demand south and 
 southeast than those of any other State (except perhaps 
 New Hampshire), and that New England and southern 
 New York are particularly well cleared. Ask any 
 builder you know where he gets his lumber, and I think 
 you will find that all of it travels far before reaching 
 New York, but his spruce from Vermont and northern 
 New York comes the shortest distance; the white pine 
 
LETTERS 251 
 
 from Canada and Wisconsin, the hard pine from Georgia 
 and Alabama, the white wood from western Pennsyl- 
 vania, etc., etc. 
 
 But what most contributes to the profit to be made 
 here is the length and severity of the winter, which, in- 
 jurious to all other industries, is an aid to this, by making 
 it possible for a term of four months to penetrate the 
 forests and transport the lumber with comparative ease, 
 and at probably one third of the cost expended in regions 
 of little or no snow. This remains an advantage over 
 every lumber district further south. Also, the long in- 
 terruption to farming throws a large class of laborers 
 into this business, at ordinary wages and during a time 
 when their services are most needed— that is to say, 
 from September until Christmas or the first of January, 
 the season of tree-cutting, or even for a longer period, 
 if the snow does not become too deep to interfere with 
 the work. 
 
 Again, it must not be forgotten that the laws of this 
 State are peculiarly favorable to holders of real estate, 
 and will probably continue so, while the cities remain 
 unimportant, as they are likely to do. 
 
 As regards the prices of forest land, I understand 
 that districts more or less remote have been sold within 
 a few years at $2,50 the acre, a thousand acres for 
 $2,500. 
 
 Respecting the cost of sawmills, those run by water- 
 power, with all necessary machinery, water-privilege, 
 etc., involve an outlay of about $5,000; but water is too 
 unreliable a motor— steam is preferable. But the ca- 
 pacity of the mill should be considered in connection with 
 
252 STOWENOTES 
 
 the extent of forest land that feeds it. The largest mills 
 here, with every kind of machine for preparing boards, 
 dimension timber, shingles, clapboards, etc., cost in the 
 neighborhood of $20,000, and are capable of producing 
 20,000 square feet of lumber per day. But suppose the 
 extent of forest land annually cut to be one hundred 
 acres, one tenth of the whole thousand : a steam mill with 
 all necessary machinery, and capable of manufacturing 
 in the course of the year all the lumber cut on the given 
 amount of land, would probably require a sum of from 
 eleven to thirteen thousand dollars. 
 
 Now to arrive at the amount of lumber on a hundred 
 acres: There are probably from two to three hundred 
 spruce trees, of a size most suitable for lumber purposes, 
 to an acre; but in buying an extensive tract of forest 
 land, although at a certain elevation the spruce has its 
 natural range above the deciduous and hard-wood trees 
 (the canoe birch excepted), it is nevertheless not at all 
 impossible that a certain proportion of such a purchase 
 may bear them but scantily. Let us say, then, 70 spruce 
 to the acre, in each tree (a moderate estimate) 400 
 square feet of lumber— that is to say, 28,000 square 
 feet to the acre; a hundred acres make the amount 
 2,800,000 square feet, on which the profit is about 
 $2,800. 
 
 Thus it is seen that the outlay on land and mill may 
 be set at or within $15,000, and the profit, at the present 
 reduced rate, pays for the undertaking in about six 
 years. 
 
 This profit of one dollar on a thousand square feet 
 refers, I understand, to all grades, and, in this view, 
 
LETTERS 253 
 
 would be too low an estimate in connection with the 
 scheme I am expounding, for the proportion of first 
 grade lumber from forests treated as I have suggested 
 would be larger than the mills here ordinarily ship, and 
 the profit is proportionately greater on the higher 
 grades. 
 
 These calculations are based, you see, on existing 
 conditions ; there is every prospect to expect a very great 
 increase, perhaps the doubling of the profits within ten 
 years. 
 
 It is worth while to add also that the taxes on land 
 valued at $2.50 an acre cannot amount to very much. 
 
 What do you think of this? Is it not worth the z^t- 
 tention of the rich and perfect philanthropist, the man 
 who would do good to himself and others ? 
 
 P. S. I have forgotten to say that the expense of 
 running a steam mill is very little more than that in- 
 volved in working by water-power— just as much as 
 the wages of, say, two men, engineers, amount to— for 
 the waste lumber, edgings, sawdust, etc., provide ample 
 fuel. 
 
 P. P. S. I am afraid, being so much occupied in 
 explaining pecuniary advantages, I have somewhat 
 slighted the side philanthropic, but that is of course ob- 
 vious. By cutting the forests as I propose, all necessary 
 timber is supplied to the wants of civilization, and, far 
 from being destroyed or injured, the forest remains a 
 thing of beauty and a joy forever, and an inestimable 
 blessing to the farmer. 
 
254 STOWENOTES 
 
 TO HIS MOTHER 
 
 Stowe, March 13, 1892, 
 
 To-day is one of those cold clear March days intoler- 
 ably windy and bleak in cities, but here you can always 
 find a warm and cosy corner out of doors. Yesterday I 
 was in the swamp looking for birds, and although there 
 was a bitter southwest wind blowing, in that sheltered 
 place the air was as warm and pleasant as April. Indeed, 
 for the last two days we have felt the benefit of the wood 
 very much, for whereas it has been extremely cold and 
 disagreeable in the village, or anywhere where the south- 
 west wind strikes, we have felt little discomfort, and 
 only realized how bleak the weather was by driving out 
 to the village, etc. 
 
 Last night was full moon, I think. I tried the bob on 
 the crust over the mowing ; it did not go very well, as the 
 drifts interfered. But I never saw a more beautiful 
 night. It was almost as light as day. The whole sur- 
 face of the slope, where the lighter snow clung in long 
 wavy lines to the crust, had the ribbed look of sea 
 sand— little drifts with a sharp edge, the other side 
 swept off by the wind, in the same manner as undertow 
 deals with light sand. 
 
 The days are getting long again, and the sunset be- 
 gins to creep up a little to the north beyond the edge of 
 the woods. 
 
 Yesterday I think I saw the first of the warblers, the 
 myrtle warbler, but I am not sure. However, the birds 
 in the swamp were not strictly winter birds, but such as 
 
LETTERS 255 
 
 indicate a little change in the season, notably the brown 
 creeper. 
 
 TO HIS SISTER 
 
 Stowe, March 19, 1892. 
 
 Now is the time when I begin to listen for notes of 
 song sparrows or bluebirds, and make all my out-of- 
 door excursions armed with a field-glass to catch the 
 first glimpse of them. Perhaps you can understand how 
 the appearance and voice of the earliest migratory birds 
 affect me; they "make my blood cold and my hair to 
 stare" — as you say Beethoven's music does with you. 
 
 C. sent me by mail yesterday two stories, both amus- 
 ing, but one was by Miss Wilkins. It is not enough to 
 say "truthful" ; every word was precious, the pure gold 
 of truth. 
 
 TO HIS MOTHER 
 
 Stowe, March 24, 1892. 
 I have been inquiring about dog licenses, and thus 
 stands the law in Vermont: before April ist male dogs 
 taxed one dollar, after April ist until May, the third 
 week (I believe), two dollars, after the third week in 
 May they are condemned — in other words, they throw 
 them into the brier-patch. Tojo is very much afraid, as 
 he tells me, "dat Mr. Man ketch him by de behime leg 
 and fling 'im blip! in de middle of de brier-patch— an' 
 'tain't all de creeturs," Tojo adds, "dat kin crawl out 
 onter a chinkapin log and koam de pitch outer der har." 
 
256 STOWENOTES 
 
 He 'lows he dunner w'at minnit gwineter be de nex' — 
 consequently I must have a little light on the subject. 
 
 March 31. 
 Tojo's mind is at rest. If any one should even sug- 
 gest the brier-patch, all he has to do is to put his hand in 
 his pocket and pull out a little card, "A little yellowish- 
 gray Skye terrier six years old." Nobody allowed to 
 fling him in de brier-patch! 
 
 TO JOE EVANS 
 
 Stowe, March 27, 1892. 
 
 I have asked you before about Theophile Gautier, 
 but I want to know a little more about him. What has 
 he written besides "Captain Fracasse" and (what I am 
 now reading) "A Winter in Russia"? He is certainly 
 a very acute and delicate though not very subtle ob- 
 server, and presents a picture in a vivid and interesting 
 way, an out-of-door picture especially; when he deals 
 with personalities I am not so much amused. "Captain 
 Fracasse" took me back to pantomime days: I saw the 
 most startling and vivid pictures, real in that sense but 
 in no way connected with real life, and saw them with 
 the clearness and force with which the fresh eye of eight 
 years or so takes impressions. It is much the same with 
 this book. 
 
 Have you seen Thayer lately? When you do, ask 
 him if the color in a landscape varies in proportion to the 
 amount of light. Is there more color on a sunshiny day 
 

 y^i^t-Z-^- 
 
 
LETTERS 257 
 
 than a cloudy one ? Or is it a change of values only ? If 
 I did not suspect myself of opinions at variance with 
 scientific facts, I should be tempted to believe there was 
 more color in a winter than a summer lai^idscape; the 
 yellows and reds certainly seem to hold out longer, and 
 the blue of distance to retire much beyond summer 
 limits. Is this due to a clearer atmosphere ? The moun- 
 tains (blue in summer) are now (snow-covered) of a 
 kind of golden pink and lililc. 
 
 I continually think of you in noting these delicate 
 colors and the extreme sharpness of all outlines of 
 things near at hand— the tufty edge of a mowing or 
 pasture now as sharp as a knife-blade against the dis- 
 tance. It's the kind of thing I think you would like to 
 paint. 
 
 I want very much to send something to the American 
 Artists, and I shall do so, if I do not fall between the 
 devils of Procrastination and Delay which beset me. Be- 
 sides that, I am under the dominion of the demon that 
 presides over Jacks of All Trades — a fate perfectly un- 
 deserved, as I am one simply by circumstances, neither 
 inclination nor an ability to play any part moving me 
 thereto. Behold my unhappy dilemma ! 
 
 TO JOE EVANS 
 
 Stowe, April 8, 1892. 
 I would like to know what date is the very latest for 
 sending in pictures to the American Artists jury, because 
 the weather is now, I think, very unfavorable for me to 
 
2S8 STOWENOTES 
 
 make those alterations in my picture. Unlike most sea- 
 sons at this time, it is not the warm hazy April weather 
 (which I tried to represent), but is clear, cold, and 
 windy, with bright bursts of sunshine and long intervals 
 of shadow — the most perplexing weather for painting. 
 
 The suggestion you made regarding my picture I 
 find valuable, and truth requires me to make the altera- 
 tion in it, even if I miss the jury and the exhibition. 
 
 TO JOE EVANS 
 
 Stowe, August 4, 1892. 
 I should have been very glad to go to Windsor with 
 R., but the day is hot, and the Capulets are abroad, 
 and my picture I must finish before September yellows 
 prevail. Finished it must be in this month or left over 
 until next year — a very depressing alternative. I am 
 painting a real American artist picture— an elm tree, a 
 sunset. I am happy that R. liked it ; but it is a very unin- 
 spired spirit that presides over its execution. 
 
 TO MRS. JOHN W. ELLIOT 
 
 Stowe, November 30, 1892. 
 Winter, as you guess, is indeed here; the tempera- 
 ture says so, though not too severely, and it is so in aspect. 
 We have had only a slight fall of snow, but the steady 
 cold makes much of it; the country, all but the valley 
 itself, lies white, and the freezing of clouds makes the 
 mountain tops very wintry. 
 
LETTERS 259 
 
 That call of nuthatches is to be heard in the woods 
 now of sunny days, also tapping of woodpeckers (hairy) 
 and sometimes the sounding blows of a logcock— black- 
 cocks, as they call them here ; and chickadees, you know, 
 we have always with us. 
 
 Yesterday I saw a small flock of pine grosbeaks, dark 
 slaty in color, with overlying ruddy or salmon tint. They 
 flit restlessly, and are shy for unsophisticated birds. On 
 taking flight, when fairly launched they give a succes- 
 sion of wild and plaintive notes, which sometimes con- 
 tinue, growing faint, after they have quite disappeared. 
 
 On Sunday our hired man shot a coon— rather a fine 
 skin. The coon was found asleep in a kind of nest he 
 had made in the foot of a hollow tree. He lacked one 
 fore foot, which he had probably gnawed off to free 
 himself from a trap, and so, being unable to climb his 
 tree, was an easy prey. Such is the lot of the disinherited 
 wild creatures ! 
 
 TO JOE EVANS 
 
 Stowe, December 10, 1892. 
 
 Professor , it seems, is sufficiently small of soul 
 
 to comment on a hole he detects in the foliage of my 
 hemlock tree. How does he know that I didn't do it on 
 purpose? or that it is really a hole at all, and not painted? 
 My former method of mending it was to stop it up with 
 paint— I don't know of any other, do you? 
 
 Very mild winter here so far; no sleighing. But I 
 am well pleased, for I know. I shall have snow enough, 
 enough winter and rough weather. 
 
26o STOWENOTES 
 
 By the way, "rough" is in common use here in the 
 sense of cold or inclement. 
 
 TO MRS. JOHN W. ELLIOT 
 
 Stowe, December 27, 1892. 
 
 A party of our friends spent Christmas with us, and 
 returned to New York perfectly convinced of the se- 
 verity of Vermont winter. They arrived here on the 
 coldest day I have ever felt, sunless, with a strong south- 
 west wind that gave emphasis to a recorded temperature 
 of 8° throughout the greater part of the day. 
 
 It was while these friends were here that we went on 
 an expedition which I should think would interest you 
 very much. It was to a logging camp on the mountains 
 east of us. 
 
 We drove up in a rough traverse farm-sledge (for 
 the mountain roads are more comfortably and safely 
 travelled in such a conveyance), and succeeded in pene- 
 trating as far as any trace of road extended, where the 
 choppers were at work. To gain this point we passed 
 through the hard-wood belt, into the region of spruces. 
 
 The clouds had frozen on the trees at this height, 
 and the effect was indescribably beautiful and fantastic. 
 In gorges or hollows of the mountains where the sun 
 rested for only a few hours during the day, and where 
 the clouds had probably hung heavily, it was very much 
 that of window-pane frost foliage made real. The 
 boughs were not ice-covered, but coated to a velvety 
 depth with innumerable tiny crystals, even more remark- 
 able on the birches than the evergreens, for it gave the 
 
LETTERS 261 
 
 many branching boughs of the former something of the 
 appearance of gigantic trees of coral. 
 
 At this height the canoe birches are not uncommon, 
 and reach a fair size; their trunks, lead-colored or sil- 
 very, sometimes russet-tinted, are very soothing among 
 the too frequent yellow birches. We have none in the 
 valleys, I think. 
 
 The logging life is picturesque, and sometimes dan- 
 gerous. The axemen suiffer only through carelessness, 
 I fancy, for the spruce is not a large tree at best, and 
 the wood is so tough and elastic that flying boughs or 
 rebounding tops are of rare occurrence. The men are 
 recruited mostly from the lower classes of French 
 Canadians, and I was interested to note certain charac- 
 teristics (eyes particularly) pure Indian. 
 
 The teamsters' bane is the liability of their runner 
 chains to breakage. These chains, wound around the 
 runner, serve as brake or drag to the load, sometimes of 
 fifteen to twenty logs. If this accident occurs, there is 
 but one hope for the horses — to keep ahead of the load; 
 and the danger is hardly less to the teamster. 
 
 Up in the spruce forest I saw both chickadees and 
 pine grosbeaks. 
 
 Curiously enough, notwithstanding the severe win- 
 ter, I have only once seen a flock of snowflakes. I am 
 sorry, for their flight is, I think, the finest animate spec- 
 tacle that the winter affords. They remind me of sea 
 birds, flying with such swiftness and power, passing over 
 with a plaintive twitter or chatter— a long ripple of 
 sound. 
 
 It is characteristic of winter birds to talk as they fly, 
 
262 STOWENOTES 
 
 is it not? Pine grosbeaks make a harsh outcry, and red- 
 polls chatter like sparrows when they rise, and flying 
 give the same long-drawn "te-wdfe" with which canaries 
 usually prelude their song. 
 
 The only particularly interesting bird I have seen of 
 late is the blackcock (pileated woodpecker), glossy black, 
 a broad white band through the wing, and a high bril- 
 liant vermiHon crest; his note a loud "flicker." 
 
 I saw him in the wood on a very cold day, when the 
 trees were cracking in a manner most mysterious and 
 startling, a sound varying in intensity from a pistol shot 
 to the pop of a toy air-gun. 
 
 TO HIS SISTER 
 
 Worcester, February 2, 1893. 
 
 I have been thinking about your poems, and I believe 
 the principal fault is in treating familiarly, as if known, 
 a subject with which you are not very conversant, viz., 
 nature, in the meaning of field and forest, wild life. 
 
 You have not observed enough to distinguish be- 
 tween what are common phenomena and what accidental. 
 You do not know the subject sufficiently well to select the 
 really significant details. Of course you have recorded 
 what you have been impressed with, but through ig- 
 norance of conditions that make one thing observed, in 
 relation to time and place, more significant than another, 
 you have failed generally to record details of a really 
 suggestive sort. As for instance : 
 
LETTERS 263 
 
 "The upland pasture . . . 
 And saw the slender grasses stand 
 Distinct against the sunset sky." 
 
 Characteristic of pasture is turf close-cropped by cattle ; 
 consequently, tall grasses, being accidental, are poor 
 things to record in connection with pasture. 
 
 "The wood is thrilled 
 By the soft call of a late-nesting thrush." 
 
 "Soft" is not the word that suggests anything to me in 
 this relation. 
 
 Last line of "Before Harvest" very bad ; stars come 
 so meekly, so imperceptibly, with so little regard to each 
 other, are so very individual and so lonely, that "ushered" 
 is "a vile phrase, a very vile phrase." The right word 
 ought, I think, to have the meaning of going before, 
 preceding. 
 
 TO HIS SISTER 
 
 Stowe, February 26, 1893. 
 All America, I feel, should read Merwin's book. Do 
 you so when I return it, for I see that none of your 
 household have already looked into it— uncut leaves as 
 evidence. It treats the noble subject of horse-flesh from 
 the proper point of view, and a new one in this depart- 
 ment of literature: not from the horse-jockey's or the 
 trainer's or the breeder's, or the one-equine-family en- 
 thusiast's, but from the horse-lover's point of view, the 
 most valuable and most catholic. It is the kind of book 
 
264 STOWENOTES 
 
 that ought (and if it does not, the reader is to blame) to 
 awaken a new interest in horses ; in the case of those al- 
 ready interested in the subject, it is calculated to stimu- 
 late that interest more than any book of the kind I have 
 ever seen. It should prove as good or a better friend to 
 horses than "Black Beauty." 
 
 I am predicting an early spring— a little way I have, 
 in common with most dwellers in hard winter climates. 
 Certainly we have warm sunny weather now. 
 
 By the way, the notice of Merwin's book in the 
 "Nation" is in the carping spirit usually displayed in 
 that department of the paper ; it cries out against details, 
 but does not interest itself in the spirit. 
 
 TO JOE EVANS 
 
 Stowe, March 4, 1893. 
 
 Did you ever hear of four-color painters? Those 
 who considered green (in addition to red, blue, and yel- 
 low) as one of the primary colors? 
 
 The psychologists admit that all magentas and pur- 
 ples are combinations of red and blue. In looking at 
 them they recognize, as a painter would, the two pri- 
 mary colors and nothing more; whereas of green they 
 affirm that, while a bluish or yellowish tendency is ob- 
 servable, there is a sense of an underlying — a primary 
 color, such as red or blue conveys, something that's 
 neither blue nor yellow, but green. What do you think 
 of this? 
 
 I've been so much puzzled by the colors at twilight 
 
LETTERS 265 
 
 that I'm wondering if there's not truth in it. Both twi- 
 light and moonlight, though on the whole exhibiting 
 almost solely purple and lilac tints, have certain greenish 
 effects which, in painting, a little mixture of yellow fails 
 to reproduce. This might result from a predominance 
 of blue, but such a predominance can hardly be ac- 
 counted for by distance, since red would then naturally 
 outlast yellow, or by nearness, for then blue is at its least 
 power; but admit green as a primary color, and the 
 difficulty is solved. This may be all in my eyes, and I 
 greatly suspect it is. Various tests show my eyes to 
 disagree in a most pronounced manner, being of differ- 
 ent focus and one evidently less capable of detecting 
 color than the other. Of course, to admit a fourth pri- 
 mary color does not create one for painting purposes— 
 we shall still have to mix up blues and yellows ; but the 
 admission, perhaps, might help one in seeing. 
 
 If you consider me quite, quite mad, do say so with 
 frankness. 
 
 Psychologists also say that brightness and whiteness 
 are synonymous. I combated this statement at first, but 
 the more I think on't, the more I believe they are in the 
 right. What think you of this opinion ? Not to offend 
 the psychologists, you might reply with all of Malvolio's 
 tact and in his very words, if you disagree. 
 
 All this is the result of my visit to Clark University. 
 
266 STOWENOTES 
 
 TO JOE EVANS 
 
 Stowe, March 8, 1893. 
 
 Do you know how to dispose of paintings of great 
 American artists such as . . . ?* We have of the works 
 of all of these gentlemen, and would gladly part with 
 them for good gold. Do you think it possible to sell 
 them? 
 
 I speak with little reverence of these worthies, who 
 are so bold in error, painting distant mountains bright 
 orange, and including the glorious sun himself in the 
 range of their values (as he descends in the gathering 
 brown, yes, actually brown twilight), but notwithstand- 
 ing color, value, etc., their sunsets leave no doubt in the 
 observer's mind as to what they were about, whereas 
 those who look at my twilight picture are exceedingly 
 uneasy until its strange appearance is explained to them. 
 
 My picture gets along slowly, but I do not despair. 
 
 TO CHARLES C. BURLINGHAM 
 
 Stowe, March 13, 1893. 
 I am a citizen of this State, you know, so, to act the 
 part of a good one, I go to town meetings and vote as my 
 conscience dictates. Party is not considered at these 
 elections; personal spleen influences the voting slightly, 
 but in the main the farmer's common sense (which is 
 
 * Certain early American artists. 
 
LETTERS 267 
 
 vast) governs, and good men are chosen. This is the 
 case with the town offices, where a better feeUng is mani- 
 fested than concerning less intimate trusts, such as 
 representatives to the State legislature. 
 
 Sugar weather is crowding upon the farmers here a 
 little too fast for their satisfaction; they have hardly 
 gotten their wood sawed as yet. It will be an early 
 spring, I think, without doubt, and there'll be more sugar 
 made in March than in April, which, popular tradition 
 to the contrary, is seldom the case. 
 
 I suppose R. keeps you informed of his whereabouts 
 and fortunes. He still keeps his interest in birds, I sup- 
 pose. Mine revives powerfully every spring, and I am 
 compelled to let everything on the farm go, and even my 
 painting, to follow it. Hermit thrushes in June are al- 
 most our commonest bird ( for we live close to the wood) , 
 and veeries, shy in more civilized localities, are frequent 
 here. There's no sound that birds make so wild and 
 thrilling as their song, I believe. We hear them the last 
 of all at evening, and sometimes they will sing at night. 
 
 TO MRS. JOHN W. ELLIOT 
 
 Stowe, March 23, 1893. 
 I saw yesterday two meadowlarks. These birds seem 
 to take precedence of bluebirds, even. It is the first time 
 this year that the fact of spring has been expressed in its 
 fine type; hitherto the signs (winged) have been writ 
 large and black. 
 
268 STOWENOTES 
 
 TO JOE EVANS 
 
 Stowe, March 27, 1893. 
 
 I am sorry I cannot send the picture. I received 
 your telegram this morning, and it caused me for some 
 reason or other to regard my picture more favorably; it 
 inspired me with a transient confidence, now departed. I 
 cannot deceive the pubhc (if that chance should be 
 afforded me, and methinks no conscientious jury would 
 admit of it) in the presenting of so noble a scene with so 
 slight, so feeble, and so wretched a counterfeit. A snow 
 picture is all of finest edges, most delicate tints, which it 
 is hopeless to slight. Truly, if it is possible to say one 
 thing requires more painting than another, it is a winter 
 landscape. 
 
 I was determined to send it you this morning and 
 abide by your decision ; I even went the length of having 
 a box made for it; but at the critical moment, as the 
 cover was ready to place over it, my sense of its utter 
 inadequacy quite overcame all other considerations, and 
 now I'm fixed in my determination not to send it. 
 
 Truly, the weather has been so contrary that. I've 
 had only two weeks' work on it, and to one of my small 
 powers that is not time enough. 
 
 I cannot tell you how vexing it is to me to have noth- 
 ing whatever for this exhibition, but such is the fact. 
 
 I thank you again and again for the trouble I know 
 you've taken ; if it were for no other reason than to com- 
 plete your part, i.e., my picture in your frame, I should 
 
LETTERS 269 
 
 be strongly tempted to send it, but it is an impossible 
 case, believe it, Joe, not a matter of fantastical doubts. 
 
 TO JOE EVANS 
 
 Stowe, May 2, 1893. 
 What think you of French's gigantic lady? It has 
 dignity and considerable charm, has it not? There is 
 something admirable about his work of that order very 
 lacking to most American efforts— something reserved 
 and scholarly, a kind of authority, which the French so 
 remarkably possess, something almost classic. Well, he 
 has a touch of this, whereas most of the designs (I judge 
 by what I have seen in the magazines) strike me as being 
 flimsy, experimental, without power or confidence. 
 
 TO HIS sister 
 
 Stowe, October i, 1893. 
 
 Shall I not send you "David Balfour" ? I have fin- 
 ished it. But perhaps it would be well to wait until you 
 leave the so distracting place of the World's Fair, for it 
 is a book to be read with all the powers of appreciation 
 you possess. I am fresh from reading it, but it seems 
 to me that there is nothing in the way of story-telling to 
 surpass the last part of it. It's a great treasure among 
 books. 
 
 This reminds me of something that appears to me 
 
270 STOWENOTES 
 
 exceedingly comical : the fact that Vermont, in order to 
 show to the world its wealth of marble quarries, has 
 adopted the Pompeian style for its State building.* 
 What genius conceived this plan, to unite such seem- 
 ingly conflicting conditions of life ? The interior is said 
 to be decorated in the Pompeian fashion. What can this 
 mean ? Find out for me, will you not ? Perhaps there is 
 a frieze representing the sturdy Vermonter, with sheep- 
 skin leggings and mittens, his toga wrapt about him, 
 armed with a bit-stock and a half-inch bit, sallying forth 
 to tap the sugar maples on the slopes of Vesuvius; or, 
 possibly, watching a trotting chariot race at the amphi- 
 theatre; or bringing in the harvest with dancing and 
 song (so like him!) and sacrifices to Ceres. 
 
 TO HIS BROTHER HENRY 
 
 Stowe, October 30, 1893. 
 Have you read "David Balfour" ? Do so. It is won- 
 derful ; all Stevenson's old power, or lacking but little of 
 it, and coupled with something more masterly, more in- 
 evitable in the telling. 
 
 TO HIS SISTER 
 
 Stowe, November 2, 1893. 
 M. has been reading "Wuthering Heights" aloud. I 
 don't recommend any one to read it, and I hate even to 
 
 * At the Chicago Exposition. 
 
LETTERS 271 
 
 think of it, for it comes near the chief position, in my 
 opinion, of all the outrageous conceptions ever written 
 down. The appeal to the feelings would seem too gross 
 if it were not for the terrible reality of the story, which 
 convinces when the credulity is most strained, and makes 
 to seem true and reasonable what would otherwise ap- 
 pear as outrageous improbability. It is much less like 
 an imaginative work than a simple narration of actual 
 occurrences. 
 
 Yet there are some moments, certainly one, where it 
 approaches, and perhaps reaches, the pathos of real 
 tragedy — I mean where Catherine (the first Catherine) 
 learns of Heathclifif's return. You know the book, do 
 you not ? 
 
 It reads like a story that, if not actually witnessed, 
 has gradually grown up in the mind and been so studied 
 and so felt, each character so clearly seen, that no uncer- 
 tainty or obscurity at any moment of the narration 
 troubled the author's mind. The touch is as sure as if 
 in every turn and circumstance of the story it followed 
 the cold fact. 
 
 The style, to my thinking, is admirable, so simple, so 
 clear, and every now and then illuminated with thrilling 
 words. 
 
 So far as I have read of the Bronte works, this seems 
 to me easily second. It is an ugly depressing story ; ter- 
 ror and gloom make the atmosphere of all their works, as 
 well as of their history. 
 
272 STOWENOTES 
 
 TO MRS. JOHN W. ELLIOT 
 
 Stowe, November 19, 1893. 
 
 The books were all appreciated. There wants no 
 apology for the amount of literature; on the contrary, 
 the more thanks are due you. My mother took very 
 kindly to Mr. Trollope's work, and for my part I find the 
 books on Arabian travel interesting throughout. The 
 Arab's is certainly an ideal existence. 
 
 The illustrations of "La Marche a I'Etoile" are im- 
 pressive; the mystery of the silhouette figures and the 
 simplicity of the designs appeal strongly to the imagina- 
 tion. There is an atmosphere of night, and a sense of 
 width and stillness, as of an open and wintry country, 
 very powerfully rendered. The appearance in the 
 various groups of sustained and deliberate motion 
 seemed to me to be admirably given. I am curious to 
 know what the music is like. 
 
 F. will have told you, perhaps, of her finding a little 
 Acadian owl in our wood. He was very compact, very 
 cunning, and winked his eyes at us in a sleepy manner; 
 but they had nevertheless the angry expression of a bird 
 of prey, and, when fully opened upon you, conveyed a 
 feeling of awe or rebuke very odd as being imposed by 
 such a small personality. 
 
LETTERS 273 
 
 TO HIS SISTER 
 
 Stowe, May 4, 1894. 
 
 This is the most astonishing spting; it comes, as Brer 
 Rabbit might put it, "a-zoonin'." All one can do is 
 feebly to express admiration at the rapid succession of 
 events ; to endeavor to record any of these daily chang- 
 ing aspects is quite out of the question. 
 
 The hobble-bush, the cherry, the June-berry are 
 out. The dog-tooth violet, spring-beauty, Dutchman's 
 breeches, hepatica are all about over. I found one and 
 the last hepatica flower yesterday, but I saw from the 
 scattered petals that many had been in bloom. The trees 
 are cloudy, round, of pale pinks and yellows, no solid 
 masses of foliage, though the aspens are bright green 
 and almost in full leaf. 
 
 It has been hot and dry; and a strange thing it is to 
 be able to see snow not only on Mansfield but in the 
 spruce wood of Hogback. 
 
 CliflF swallows were here on the 21st of April, so you 
 may know that most of the birds have arrived. Last 
 night after sunset, for the first time this year, I heard in 
 the swamp the rippling, tripping song which I think is 
 the winter wren's. 
 
274 STOWENOTES 
 
 TO MRS. JOHN W. ELLIOT 
 
 Stowe, May i8, 1894. 
 
 Was there ever a spring so early and so swift ? The 
 general aspect now is of June rather than May, but you 
 know the Vermont June is only half a summer month. 
 
 One night in the early part of April, as my mother 
 and I were locking doors and windows and putting out 
 lamps before going to bed, just before the last light was 
 to be extinguished my mother caught sight of a flutter- 
 ing object on the floor, which proved to be the scarcely 
 expanded cecropia. We shut him up in a room by him- 
 self and kept him for three or four days. I do not know 
 if they feed at all in this stage, but this one would sit, 
 slowly waving his wings, in the palm of my hand, and 
 make no objection to a pin's head coated with a syrup of 
 sugar and water being thrust under his mouth ; indeed, I 
 thought he depressed his head as if tasting or absorbing 
 the liquid, but it may have been an involuntary trembling 
 of my hand that caused the seeming action. A warm 
 spell of weather followed, so we took advantage of it to 
 give him his freedom; his attempted flights, ending in 
 staggering encounters with the walls, were a somewhat 
 sickening spectacle. 
 
 It was a cruel thing to hurry up his appearance under 
 false persuasion, and confront him with bare and color- 
 less April when, in the natural order of things, he should 
 have broken the chrysalis in June. I must say so much, 
 though I remember that you were a party to the deceit. 
 
 Of the birds, only the veeries seem late; the bobo- 
 
M 
 
 ,/\ 
 
 .1^,^ 
 
 
 
 
 A 
 
LETTERS 275 
 
 links sing, but the veery is silent. True, they are mys- 
 tery-lovers, and never sing until the foliage makes a 
 concealment, but this year I begin to fear that, like the 
 before mentioned singers, they have passed through a 
 stage of material excellence and fallen victims to the un- 
 natural appetites of West Indians or inhabitants of 
 Guatemala. But this is a flippant tone to take respecting 
 a thrush. 
 
 I wish you could see the colts now ; they are running 
 in their pasture, and are full of tricks of unconscious 
 posing, for the poetical pastoral, wild, etc. They con- 
 tinue as tame as dogs. 
 
 By the way, after the sudden appearance of the 
 moth, my mother became apprehensive regarding the 
 wasp's nest, so there is nothing to report of that. I 
 carried it out and left it on a stump near the wood; of 
 what has since happened to it or its inhabitants I know 
 nothing. 
 
 TO HIS MOTHER 
 
 Stowe, May 19, 1894. 
 
 Drove around by the Moss Glen Fall and the grassy 
 road. 
 
 The long hill to Brownsville was as beautiful as 
 usual, the leaves meeting overhead, the banks thick with 
 ferns and wild flowers and spongy with mosses, a real 
 forest undergrowth of hobble-bush and moosewood on 
 either hand. The birds are beginning to sing more than 
 
276 STOWENOTES 
 
 they did two weeks ago, and at last I have heard the 
 veery — the "honeyed whine," as Charles Reade says. 
 
 The owner of Dandy stopped here yesterday at noon. 
 I was rather amused by him, though I thought his man- 
 ners somewhat demoralizing for the youthful help. His 
 face was smooth-shaven, formed and informed with a 
 kind of piggish impudence — the kind of raw dandy that 
 only a country town can produce. He stood about smok- 
 ing a vile cigar, and commenting in a drawling tone, and 
 not without some slight savor of wit, on H.'s abilities 
 as a laboring man. 
 
 I go regularly every day to have a little fighting 
 game with Sintram. Audrey is growing tamer and 
 more gentle all the time. She begins to show white hairs, 
 as if a star were forming in the middle of her forehead— 
 as a sign of a changed nature or not, I am unable to say. 
 
 Tell R. to look at Cavazza's sketch called "Jerry" in 
 the "Atlantic" (latest). We have been interested in her 
 writing. 
 
 TO HIS MOTHER 
 
 Stowe, May 23, 1894. 
 I took Polly out early for a long drive on the road 
 that H. H.'s enterprise discovered, that which lies 
 between the stage and the river road to Waterbury 
 Centre. It was lovely, reposeful, and still ; and it was a 
 real relief to be in a country so shut in. From this road 
 you see the ragged mountains northeast toward Middle- 
 
^_*„ 
 
 
 \ K 
 
 f^S 
 
 •-^4,, «».^'' 
 
 
LETTERS 277 
 
 sex, the wall of the Mansfield spurs to the west, with 
 Camel's Hump terminating the line in the southwest; 
 Hogback, too, ranges up on the northeast. But some- 
 how, in spite of all the mountains in sight, there is some- 
 thing that suggests seclusion and repose, for there are 
 some points, looking due south for instance, where the 
 sky-line is broken by grassy knolls crowned with groups 
 of thick-leaved maples. It was warm, but not sultry, 
 and threatening rain — enormous masses of cloud very 
 black over the Hump. It was really summer, the air full 
 of warm and pungent smells, the leaves, ferns, and 
 grasses full and thriving, and that settled aspect, as if 
 there had never been any state but summer and no 
 change of season would ever follow. The farmhouses, 
 too, had that air (a summer characteristic) of having 
 been finally deserted by their inmates. 
 
 TO HIS SISTER 
 
 Stowe, August 6, 1894. 
 
 What a good thing that was of Mrs. Catherwood's 
 in the late "Atlantic"— "Pontiac's Lookout." . . . 
 
 In literature, the world goes the way to damnation 
 with a blindness quite astonishing. For my part, I don't 
 dare to look beyond the title-page of any new book that 
 does not bear one of the names Stevenson, Wilkins, 
 Hardy. I have a new book (not a novel) that gives me 
 keen joy; it is Battell's "Register of Morgan Horses." 
 There are in't photographs that well exhibit the beauty 
 
278 STOWENOTES 
 
 of the Morgan family, and I am pleased to see Polly's 
 grandsire spoken of with great respect. 
 
 to his sister 
 
 Summit House, Mount Mansfield, 
 August, 1894. 
 
 We have already spent two nights here, arriving on 
 the first day at about six o'clock. It was clear cold 
 weather, and at that time in the evening the Notch was 
 in deep shadow, a dark purple-blue— you know how 
 dark a spruce-timbered mountain like Sterling can look. 
 As we made the last turn on the road toward the summit, 
 the north wind came over the ridge cold and strong, 
 making a wintry sound in the dwarf firs. Yesterday was 
 another such day, but warm in the sun. To-day it is 
 bleak, cloudy, with occasional showers, but the wind con- 
 tinues in the north. 
 
 Beautiful as the sunrise is, the sunset is yet more 
 lovely, to my thinking. It is interesting to see the 
 shadow of the Mountain stretch over the valley. One 
 experiences a state of feeling very lofty and Olympian 
 in watching the night overtaking the dwellers below 
 while there remains to us a reserve of sunlight in the 
 west. 
 
 I have heard the whistling of whitethroats, the twit- 
 tering of juncos, and have seen both, but no redpolls— 
 indeed, nothing else. The birds are shy, and hug the 
 bushes, flying low and stealthily. I fancy this rocky 
 
LETTERS 279 
 
 region is a breeding place for hawks, which would ac- 
 count for the timidity of the lesser birds. Indeed, if it 
 were not for the frequency of picnic parties and the bits 
 and crumbs obtainable about the house, there would be 
 no especial encouragement for the birds to remain. 
 
 TO HIS SISTER 
 
 Stowe, September 6, 1894. 
 
 I am back again from the Mountain, and feel much 
 better for the change. It was a very interesting two 
 weeks, but the country of pigmy forest and bare rock, 
 thick cloud mists or wide map-like extensions of view, 
 is too phenomenal to be well endured; it is full of a 
 strange interest, but there is no repose. 
 
 I found nothing to paint, but there were many wild 
 and interesting effects. Some days one could not see 
 more than a few rods away, the thick mists drifting like 
 smoke among the firs ; at night the lights from the win- 
 dows threw a shadow of one's self upon the dense cloud, 
 and there were strange gliding and spectral illumina- 
 tions. Sometimes people would kindle fires of brush and 
 dead fir trees ; the whole top of the mountain would be lit 
 up, the light flickering on the rocks, showing them pale 
 against the sky for an instant, and again leaving them 
 indistinguishable in dark masses. 
 
 The only wild quadruped I saw on the Mountain 
 (excepting mice) was a weasel, which passed close by 
 within three feet of me without observing my presence. 
 He looked around at last, but testified more curiosity 
 
28o STOWENOTES 
 
 than alarm, creeping back among the rocks to stare at 
 me ; he thrust his Uttle head out of a miniature cave, and 
 his eyes shone like spots of gold. 
 
 Eagles, that have their nest in Nebraska Notch, came 
 sailing over the Mountain on clear still days. There were 
 hawks — chicken, and also, I suspect, the marsh harrier. 
 I saw flocks of juncos and whitethroats, some song spar- 
 rows, myrtle warblers, the Nashville warbler (new to 
 me), a pair of gold-crowned kinglets, and a golden- 
 winged woodpecker ; and on one occasion, on a cold day 
 with a leaden wintry sky, I heard a low croaking sound 
 from among the brush on the steep western slope, and 
 presently four large black birds arose, wheeling against 
 the sky, and, one of them uttering a loud hoarse croak, 
 they took flight across the Mountain and disappeared in 
 the southeast ; they were ravens. 
 
 On one very cold morning a weasel was caught asleep 
 in the hotel pantry; he was put into a tin pail, the top 
 covered with a pane of glass, and exhibited to the curi- 
 ous for an hour or so. I made some sketches of him; he 
 was the most attractive little wild creature I have ever 
 seen. His eyes were rather large and dark, his expres- 
 sion innocent and somewhat pathetic; his fur was so 
 thick as to form ridges, and was of a liver-brown color; 
 the tip of his tail was obscurely black. Some thought 
 him a young one, but I believe he was the so-called least 
 weasel, more or less common northward. The one I saw 
 two or three days previously was exactly similar in size 
 and color. He did not appear at all frightened, but 
 spent the greater part of his term of imprisonment 
 curled up asleep. 
 
LETTERS 281 
 
 What I wrote you of the plants on the Mountain 
 was the result of a superficial observation before I had 
 time to examine them, and was quite erroneous. If it is 
 of interest to you, you will find here a more accurate 
 account of what was peculiar to the summit, the region 
 of dwarf forest and mossy bogs between the two peaks : 
 
 The balsam fir, the principal tree. 
 
 A dwarf variety (I believe) of the canoe birch, 
 mingled everywhere with the evergreens. 
 
 The spruce, sparingly on the summit. 
 
 The mountain holly, very pretty shrub with ash-gray 
 bark, pale leaves, and red solitary berries. 
 
 The mountain ash, less handsome than the same tree 
 in the valley. 
 
 Cranberry tree, common, the berries less deep red 
 but more transparent and (it was said) sweeter than 
 those of the cultivated form in the valley. 
 
 Wild black cherry, rare. 
 
 Blueberries: low(?); Canadian, with downy leaves 
 and branchlets ; dwarf, with the lanceolate-leaved alpine 
 variety — very pretty. 
 
 The bilberry (called blueberry here). The leaves are 
 of lovely colors at this time of year, varying from a 
 sage-green to purple. 
 
 The creeping wintergreen, in among the mosses, 
 very common; and more delicate, with smaller pointed 
 leaves, was the creeping snowberry. 
 
 In the mossy bogs, the small cranberry, with tiny 
 shining leaves and mottled terminal berry. 
 
 Bunch-berry was very common. 
 
 Of spring flowers, I saw the leaves of many lilies; 
 
282 STOWENOTES 
 
 of goldthread (very common) ; of two kinds of violet; 
 of wake-robin (one). 
 
 The blue fruit of clintonia (common), and a Solo- 
 mon's-seal. 
 
 One of the most interesting shrubs was the Labrador 
 tea, the leaf dull green, the edges recurved, and beneath 
 covered with a thick rusty wool; when crushed the 
 younger leaves gave a sweet fragrance like lavender, the 
 older ones had a strong and somewhat turpentiny flavor. 
 
 Indian-pipes were not infrequent. There were two 
 plants growing in moss, one in wet boggy places, the 
 other on barren slopes, both of the heath family, but 
 which I could not identify satisfactorily. Also a lovely 
 little white flower, very regular; five sepals, five petals, 
 pod (superior) with three pistils, ten stamens, regu- 
 larly opposite sepals and petals, all placed individually 
 on the receptacle. Color, white with fine silvery streaks. 
 The petals are notched at the top, spatulate in general 
 form; the leaves are alternate (I think), clasping, and 
 are fine, needle-like, and grow densely like a moss. The 
 nearest I come to it in Gray is the cassiope, an alpine 
 flower. Perhaps you can help me out. It was very com- 
 mon, flourishing where it seemed impossible for any- 
 thing but lichens to find the means of life. 
 
 Where grass had been sown near the hotel, butter- 
 cups, asters, some kinds of goldenrod, and much ever- 
 lasting were to be found, also a few raspberry bushes, I 
 found also a pretty little purple-veined orchid. 
 
 When we first came up, there was a quantity of 
 snake-head flowering on the east side (not on the 
 summit). 
 
LETTERS 283 
 
 The substitution of moss for grass in the open, for 
 leaf-mould in the wood, was both strange and delight- 
 ful. In boggy places there were velvety carpets, six 
 inches deep, of beautiful orange-colored moss; indeed, 
 there were almost all composite colors, none pure, of 
 course, except perhaps yellow. 
 
 Much of the time on the Mountain the air was thick, 
 smoky, from the efiPect of the terrible Michigan fires. 
 
 I looked through that very dull and tiresome book 
 called "Esther Waters," but I found nothing worth the 
 trouble. 
 
 See Stevenson's "My First Book," in "McClure's" 
 current number. I am reminded of the Stevenson plays. 
 I enjoyed them exceedingly. It is a very diluted form 
 of the strong Stevensonian wine, however ; you miss him 
 where he is best, in his power to realize in a few words 
 of inimitable descriptive writing. 
 
 They are interesting and picturesque, but too slight 
 for plays; there is not enough body to them, especially 
 "Deacon Brodie" and "Admiral Guinea." They are not 
 based on common fate and experience. The theme is not 
 of a deep or permanent interest. They are too miuch 
 made of what is phenomenal and incidental. And every- 
 thing is pushed to obtain a picturesque effect — and, in- 
 deed, perverted, though the very flimsiness of the theme 
 compels it generally, as in the case of the unromantic, 
 coarse brute Moore, made to pose at the close of one of 
 the scenes as Brodie's Mephistopheles— a device to close 
 the act effectively. 
 
 The situations do not come, like reading and writing, 
 by nature ; there is too much of art in their production. 
 
284 STOWENOTES 
 
 The character of Brodie is enough to damn the play in 
 itself, for the simple reason that he is a real scamp, and 
 to interest as a play should interest there must be at least 
 a balance of moral qualities, if not a preponderance for 
 good. Mathias in "The Bells" is an instance in point; in 
 him you have a genuine picture of remorse. There is 
 nothing convincing about Brodie' s remorse, his "new 
 life," etc. You feel that it was but a temporary and 
 fleeting conception, in which, by pure chance, he died. 
 Indeed, you cannot help suspecting that it was but an- 
 other device to end him decently and extort a little sym- 
 pathy not properly his due. As for "Admiral Guinea," 
 it is an incident, not a play. Who is the hero? Not 
 Christopher, of all others; not the Admiral, who is 
 hardly real. Pew is the hero ; such being the case, it is 
 necessarily a failure. 
 
 "Beau Austin," because it has a deeper and wider 
 human interest, is better, but it is not a good play, to my 
 thinking. 
 
 Notwithstanding and in spite of feeling all this, I 
 read them with interest and great pleasure. What a 
 wonderful picture of the various rogues of the last cen- 
 tury in the dicing scene in "Deacon Brodie" ! 
 
 TO HIS SISTER 
 
 Stowe, November 13, 1894. 
 Yesterday at evening it cleared, and remained fine 
 for a few hours. M. and I had gone down to the village 
 
LETTERS 285 
 
 with Polly in the little yellow sleigh. We came home just 
 at moonrise. With the dispersement of the clouds the 
 air grew intensely cold. The mountains, uncovered for 
 the first time in more than a week, were so heavily 
 frosted that they seemed from the cloud line built up of 
 solid ice, every tree an icy pinnacle ; Hogback and Ster- 
 ling were rose-colored, reflecting the sunset. The air 
 was very clear, and there was no dimness or reddening 
 of the moon ; it seemed astonishingly big behind the trees 
 in the wood road and the swamp, and shone with an ex- 
 tremely bright and cold radiance. Later at night it was 
 very powerful; it showed the Mountain with most re- 
 markable distinctness, the face a dead white against the 
 sky, and the snow in the clefts of the Notch, behind the 
 shoulder of Sterling, glimmered with such brightness as 
 to suggest the idea of being lit by concealed artificial 
 light. 
 
 The day before, when we passed through the woods, 
 we came upon a little troop of partridges ; driven from 
 the ground thus early, they were feeding on the imma- 
 ture buds. Some fluttered down and strutted with a 
 jerky hen-like walk through the snow ; several flew over, 
 passing high above us, swiftly and silently but with per- 
 ceptible flutterment — a quick motion of the wings, as in 
 the flight of all heavy or feeble fliers. • 
 
 I hope these notings of every-day Stowe matters are 
 not a bore to you. It pleases me to write them down. 
 
286 STOWENOTES 
 
 TO HENRY HOLT 
 
 Stowe, November i8, 1894. 
 I don't feel that I can do much more to help your 
 picture, and yet I am sorry to let it go, because I feel that 
 its faults are glaring; but they are in the very constitu- 
 tion of it, and to amend them I must needs paint it over 
 from the beginning. This would not, I believe, meet 
 with your approval ; and there's a shrewd doubt of my 
 being able in any such case to better the attempt. How- 
 ever, it does not satisfy me; I think it is both hard and 
 weak in treatment. In years hence, if I am alive and 
 have acquired any skill, I'll offer to paint it over for you ; 
 in the mean time it must serve the turn. Those who 
 paint as I am compelled to do, by fits and starts, are not 
 able to command an even flow of skill ; they have to rely 
 a great deal on lifts of luck, on happy moments. So it 
 happens this picture has been painted at unfavorable 
 times, mostly when I have not felt very well, and at ir- 
 regular and long intervals. I think it shows it. 
 
 TO HIS BROTHER HENRY 
 
 Stowe, November 20, 1894. 
 I thought of Kipling the other day, and in a chari- 
 table spirit. I remembered the "Punch" parody of his 
 account of his American experiences : how, when he left 
 the train at Brattleboro, he seemed to find himself en- 
 
LETTERS 287 
 
 cased, set, as it were, in a great sapphire. Now this was 
 true, and showed a discriminating sense of color. To- 
 ward evening the sky is sapphire-tinted, and the moon 
 and stars shine with a cold blue light. 
 
 How sad and sudden is this news of Stevenson's 
 death ! What a loss ! The best living writer of English, 
 "the youngest son of old Sir Walter," the last of the 
 story-tellers gone, while the realistic novel flourishes as 
 a green bay tree, and the freer field exists for those 
 "brainy" authors who deal with the vital questions of 
 the day. 
 
 TO HIS BROTHER ROBERT 
 
 Stowe, January 19, 1895. 
 
 The idea of producing "Henry IV." is, to my think- 
 ing, most happy. I picture the Prince, a blond young 
 fellow whose aim is to appear rather fine and effeminate, 
 with all his roistering and swagger. You remember 
 how scornfully he decries Hotspur's early morning sport 
 of Scot-killing as a superfluous exhibition of brutish 
 powers. He should be made up pale rather than rosy, 
 but pretty; and I think a woman might succeed in tem- 
 pering in her personality the coldness of his spirit so far 
 even as to make the part a popular success. No man 
 could so play the part and be other than what the Prince 
 is in reality — selfish, clever, ungenerous, no fit figure for 
 a hero. 
 
 Do you remember Howard Pyle's "Men of Iron"? 
 
288 STOWENOTES 
 
 There's great aid in the dressing of the piece in that 
 book ; the costumes are most feelingly rendered. 
 
 Oh, what a play to put upon the stage ! What char- 
 acters! The scenes are more vivid to my mind's eye 
 than anything else in literature, I think. How can you 
 possibly hope to fill out the parts as they should be ? Yet 
 despair not; a suggestion in the right way would be 
 precious indeed. 
 
 I can think of no one (but then I know few come- 
 dians) to be a Falstaff, save Owen ; and the something in 
 his style, dry, hard, and mercenary (so to speak it), 
 might lend itself to express the underlying cynicism of 
 the character. They all cry out for talented interpreta- 
 tion— Bardolph, the old dog; Pistol (Owen would be well 
 here too) ; Glendower ; the King— I should love to talk the 
 play over with you. One scene in particular requires to 
 be played between good actors — Hotspur's quarrel with 
 Glendower. Hotspur, of course, would be in safe hands, 
 but you must have a good Glendower. He is a great fig- 
 ure. Do you remember how the Pater, in telling one of 
 his stories, would rouse himself to give point and em- 
 phasis to the climax, his eyes (so extraordinary, with a 
 power of intense expression I have never seen equalled) 
 burning truly like coals of fire ? You know the manner. 
 It is thus, I believe, that Glendower should speak his 
 part, with passion and conviction— of the moment, at all 
 events. 
 

 ^"5*^ 
 
LETTERS 289 
 
 TO HIS MOTHER 
 
 Stowe, February 6, 1895. 
 
 You have escaped the coldest spell of the winter in 
 being now in a comparatively temperate region. It is 
 one of those days when, from an indoor point of view, it 
 would seem impossible to sustain life outside for any 
 length of time. There is no speck of color in sky or land ; 
 a shadowless and blinding day, with overhead a dense 
 cloud of the same ghastly white as the snow. Now, at 
 eleven o'clock, I have just been around to the piazza to 
 look at the thermometer, which stands at 18° below. 
 Last night it fell to — 22°. It was a dreadful night; the 
 window-panes, except in the double windows, were so 
 clouded by frost as to be opaque. It was unusually dim, 
 and with the moon somewhere behind the clouds. A 
 heavy wind blew from the west, rattling the windows 
 and making the dry snow hiss against the glass, as it 
 does in a south storm. 
 
 Yesterday I drove to the village to mail a letter to 
 you. Polly was cramped up (you know how horses 
 stand in severe weather, with the flank dropped, the legs 
 drawn in), and was dancing as if on hot plates. There 
 was a cutting wind, and much drifting snow in the air; 
 I guessed that the temperature was as low as zero, but 
 on reaching home I was surprised to find it 10° below. 
 
 Now it is half after three. I have just come up irovci 
 the barn, where I have been to see the beasties. They 
 seem reasonably comfortable; the horses are double- 
 blanketed. The bow-wows go on three legs and nearly 
 
290 STOWENOTES 
 
 shake themselves to Uttle bits when out of doors, and the 
 touch of the brass door-knob on the bare fingers stings 
 like fire. The temperature rose five degrees about one, 
 but the wind has since changed to the north, and now I 
 see there is a drop again to i6° below. I expect this will 
 be a record-breaking night at Four Winds. For my own 
 part, I am amused by watching to see how low the tem- 
 perature will fall ; I do not suffer from the cold. 
 
 February 12. 
 I saw Mr. W., and asked him about the breeding 
 of Nancy's dam's sire's dam Hibernia. He wrote it out 
 in the form of a signed statement, and I called at his 
 office this morning to get it. He read it to me in an ora- 
 torical manner, waving his right hand and looking up at 
 me at each period, his voice deep and rolling. He sat 
 tilted back in his chair, his feet on the stove, and his hat 
 cocked over one eye. 
 
 TO HIS SISTER 
 
 Stowe, February 18, 1895. 
 
 You ask if I am not to send another picture to the 
 Exhibition. I really don't know. Perhaps you heard 
 that I began one of the Mountain, that I was compelled 
 to relinquish, and my hope was then to finish a smaller 
 winter sunset picture, which I began in November. 
 
 The reason why I gave up the former is that the sub- 
 ject is too great to be treated otherwise than with the 
 best of whatever powers one may possess. This winter 
 
LETTERS 291 
 
 I have been conscious of the beauty of the country rather 
 as pain than as pleasure. It has oppressed without in- 
 spiring me ; all this winter's painting I have done under 
 a compelling sense of duty, and not because I have found 
 interest or amusement in it. I have felt the difficulties 
 much more than heretofore, and they are great. In the 
 first place, the weather is so variable that the same effect 
 (or what is approximately the same, sufficiently so for a 
 painter's purpose) occurs perhaps at intervals of four or 
 five days ; then the excessive cold compels one to paint in 
 a cumbersome fur coat, and causes such difficulties as the 
 clouding of the glass, the stiffening of the fingers, and 
 limits my endeavors to the little space of some two hours, 
 for besides the energy expended in the work there is the 
 additional demand for resistance of the cold. You can 
 well imagine that work so interrupted and of such short 
 duration must be taken up in no placid spirit. When- 
 ever the opportunity occurs to continue my painting, I 
 find I begin work in a flurry, made nervous by the feeling 
 that something must be accomplished before the effect 
 changes or my energy fails, and hardly have I worked 
 myself into a state of calmness when either the one cause 
 or the other puts an end to the proceedings. My eyes, 
 also, have suffered from the snow glare— in painting the 
 Mountain picture particularly, for in that case I faced 
 the sun, though not directly. 
 
292 STOWENOTES 
 
 TO MRS. JOHN W. ELLIOT 
 
 Stowe, March 4, 1895. 
 
 You have no doubt thought it odd that I did not re- 
 turn the "Lord Ormont" you sent me, but the truth is, I 
 ventured to keep it because I was anxious not to lose the 
 opportunity of reading the book, and yet could not find 
 sufficient strength of mind to begin the struggle with the 
 forced and baffling style of its telling. But there is the 
 same lively feeling for beauty in this one as in all. 
 
 I must tell you of a little trip my mother and I took, 
 while at Waterbury, for the purpose of seeing a horse of 
 the old and now rare (in unmixed descent) Morgan 
 stock. 
 
 We drove through the towns of Waitsfield and More- 
 town, which lie southeast of Camel's Hump. The latter 
 is a wildish region, well timbered, and the road was inter- 
 esting and but little travelled. There were no distant 
 views, for the valleys were deep and narrow, but the peak 
 of the Hump from time to time overlooked the dark 
 spruce-clad ridges. At a well-to-do farm near Waitsfield 
 we found what we went to see. The horse shows his 
 affinity in blood to the old Black Hawk, in his spirited 
 bearing as well as in the jet black and glossy coat. His 
 head was wide at the eyes and exceedingly long from the 
 setting of the ear to the eye, which was of a clear hazel ; 
 the nose fine and tapering; the lips thin. His legs were 
 clean, hard, and sinewy, the hoofs round and high; the 
 flank exceedingly deep, and the loins broad and mus- 
 cular, as in all Morgans ; the body round, the back short. 
 
LETTERS 293 
 
 the neck heavy, with a swelling crest against which the 
 diminutive ear was almost hidden. He was a horse of 
 the old times, such as one sees in Flemish battle pieces of 
 the seventeenth century; of great solidity, yet with an 
 Arabian fineness of finish. 
 
 A deficiency of bone in the shoulders was perhaps his 
 only failing. He was small, barely fifteen hands, but 
 with a carriage and action I have seldom seen equalled. 
 It shows the saddest degeneracy in New England's tastes 
 and morals that such a stock as this horse represents is 
 now superseded by the poor creature, loose-coupled, 
 leggy, wooden-headed, the Hambletonian trotting horse. 
 Truly we live among an unblessed generation ; when the 
 lumber dealers and horse breeders have accomplished 
 their ends, it will be time for a second deluge. 
 
 This winter has been very severe ; bare ground has 
 not been seen here for four months; we have almost 
 given up hope of any other season. One looks anxiously 
 now for shore larks, tree sparrows, perchance bluebirds ; 
 so far none have made an appearance. 
 
 TO HIS SISTER 
 
 Stowe, March 17, 1895. 
 Thanks for the catalogue. I agree with you about 
 Kenyon Cox's design ; yet, like all of his, it has so much 
 that is good and truthful that one laments all ^e more 
 that additional feeling (of poetry,' sense of beauty, 
 what?), the charm which is always lacking. His is a 
 
294 STOWENOTES 
 
 Spartan attitude— he will not concede a stroke, a line, to 
 the pettiness of the "pretty" : rather he seems happy to 
 insist on what is unlovely, than to relax his severity. 
 
 Do you care for "Lord Ormont" ? Frankly, I do not 
 like it particularly. I do not believe in George Meredith ; 
 he seems to be in a false position as a novelist— he is so 
 little of a story-teller ; and I think this is why this sophis- 
 ticated age has come so to dote upon him. It seems as if 
 he did not feel well enough convinced of the reality of 
 his story to dare to put it in simple phrase; his style 
 seems a device to create atmosphere, not only to assist 
 the reader's but to help his own powers of realization, 
 
 Mrs. Elliot said that in this book he exhibited a better 
 grasp of the story, a more convincing lead to the culmi- 
 nating situation (at least I understood her so), but I do 
 not find it so; it seems to me just as little inevitable as 
 others of his works. It is like the studio work of a 
 painter: it does not convince on the face of it, but re- 
 quires some adaptation of the mood in order to believe 
 in it, and then one is rewarded with much that is true 
 and a great deal that is beautiful. The two heroes are 
 shadowy but pleasing ; I have no distinct impression of 
 either Lord Ormont or Matey. I dare say mine is not the 
 kind of mind to do justice to the work ; perhaps you will 
 think so too when I say that for me "the man Morsfield" 
 is the real hero, and that episode the best part of the 
 story. 
 
LETTERS 29s 
 
 TO HIS SISTER 
 
 Stowe, April 4, 1895. 
 
 I have had such a delightful letter from Thayer con- 
 cerning my picture. I'll enclose it to you because I know 
 both you and H. would like to see it. Pray show it to no 
 one else. You know how kind Thayer is, how apt to do 
 more than justice to every one but himself. 
 
 In about a week I shall send down my picture (not 
 pictures, which you write of). There is but one, and 
 that a poor thing. It is indeed a complete failure. It 
 fails to convey the effect and sentiment it is supposed to 
 catch, as also it fails in the way it is painted. I would 
 not send it, only that Thayer's letter and the favorable 
 things said about the picture now exhibited give me a 
 kind of Dutch courage. 
 
 I seem to have painted this one with stiff fingers, 
 frozen paint, and heart and mind considerably below 
 zero. Indeed, such is partly true. 
 
 It is very unskilful, not truly felt, and also not fin- 
 ished ; but of finishing it I despair, because it is our ex- 
 pectation to spend next winter in the South — otherwise 
 I should be glad to let the thing go over another year. 
 
 TO HIS SISTER 
 
 Worcester, April 22, 1895. 
 I am pleased that you have asked Brush. I want his 
 criticism, and also I want to hear how you are impressed 
 
296 STOWENOTES 
 
 by him. I do not know him, but think he must be ex- 
 cellently simple, Spartan, etc. 
 
 There is here a picture of Joe's which he painted long 
 ago at Scarboro. I never knew before how truthful it 
 was, though I have always taken pleasure in its color. 
 But acquaintance with a mountainous country has taught 
 me a little concerning those transitions from purple to 
 blue which terminate at last in so pure a color that it 
 would be hard to exaggerate in what one's palette offers. 
 The foreground is pale, as if the sunshine bleached out 
 color, but the distance of a jewel-like brightness. It is 
 just as I see nature. It has a charming warm afternoon 
 atmosphere. It is indeed too soft, too warm, for rigid 
 New England, and I should think it very characteristic 
 of the place in which it was painted. 
 
 TO HIS MOTHER 
 
 Worcester, April 25, 1895. 
 You can well understand how one misses birds, par- 
 ticularly at this time of year, for the English sparrow is 
 not a bird, rather the case of the transmigrated soul of a 
 street urchin. Instead of the song sparrow's, the white- 
 throat's, or the robin's song, to hear of mornings that 
 dry harsh sound ! — bird note it is not. 
 
LETTERS 297 
 
 TO HIS SISTER 
 
 Worcester, May i, 1895. 
 
 The 30th of last month was Carlotta's birthday, but. 
 Miss C. being away, the festivities were postponed until 
 to-day. They consisted of a little cake with four candles 
 (white and red), lady's-fingers, and a dish of ice-cream 
 of the same variety in color. 
 
 I lunched with Dr. and Mrs. G. H. was to have 
 been there also, but he arrived very late, having been 
 detained by a lecture ; but when we came away, we took 
 Margaret with us, as it seems the children were anxious 
 to have her of the party. At the last moment her mother 
 thrust into her hand a small box containing two feathers 
 fit to decorate a doll's bonnet, and gave her to understand 
 that they were a present for Carlotta. This extraordi- 
 nary little lady then marched off with these two, to her, 
 almost strange men, taking H.'s hand with one of her 
 own and in the other clutching fast her box. This box 
 seemed to weigh upon her mind, for she refused to allow 
 me to carry it for her, and at the very moment of cross- 
 ing the threshold and meeting with Carlotta, who came 
 to open the door for us, she, in impressive silence, thrust 
 it forward into Carlotta's hands. The latter received it 
 without much understanding the nature of the presenta- 
 tion, whereat Margaret repossessed herself of it, and 
 still silently, with her eyes fixed solemnly on Carlotta's, 
 removed the cover, disclosed the contents, and, shutting 
 the box, again placed it in Carlotta's hands. 
 
 All queries addressed to her she answered with nods. 
 
298 STOWENOTES 
 
 and made but one remark during the feast— something 
 she said in a loud and cheerful tone, but nobody under- 
 stood it. It was in a language quite of her own, and 
 each child in succession gave up the effort to interpret it. 
 
 TO HIS SISTER 
 
 Stowe, May 13, 1895. 
 
 The weather has very suddenly turned from an un- 
 usual heat, which advanced foliage in two weeks to the 
 degree that's usually seen here about the middle of June 
 (for the apple blossoms had already begun to show 
 themselves and the ashes were out), to a nipping and an 
 eager air. Frost is again on the mountains, and if the 
 present heavy cloud should break and disperse, to-night 
 will be one of significance to birds (if they had the wit? 
 rather the folly, to make much of such matters), for a 
 frost on the lowlands will certainly destroy the wild 
 cherry crop. 
 
 Here we have not heard a note of the thrushes as yet. 
 If I went down to the swamp after sunset, I might hear 
 the winter wren ; that would be the best song now, none 
 better at any time, except, of course, the immortals and 
 devils— hermits and veeries. 
 
 TO JOE EVANS 
 
 Stowe, August 19, 1895. 
 I have heard from Thayer about his portrait of Miss 
 B. I guess that between them— the lady with so much 
 
LETTERS 299 
 
 of delicate charm and the painter with such rare powers 
 for just such expression— it must be a lovely thing. 
 
 He sent me a photograph of his "Virgin Enthroned," 
 which is impressive, and to me, who know so well the 
 subtleties of his work, suggests something very beauti- 
 ful. 
 
 TO HIS SISTER 
 
 Stowe, September 2, 1895. 
 
 I wrote you on the 31st, having then received the 
 photographs, etc., of Rodin's work, but I kept the letter, 
 since on perusal of it I found its tone very unsympa- 
 thetic, and I did not wish to express myself rashly, par- 
 ticularly in a matter where it seems you feel so strongly. 
 I know what you worship in art— force; so I am not 
 surprised at your admiration. 
 
 I am sorry I cannot sympathize with you, but I am 
 not touched; all I feel is the man's power. Even you 
 must admit the incompleteness of the work, its great 
 lacking — absence of charm. And also it seems to me 
 that in the subjects that offer most poetically he suc- 
 ceeds less well. 
 
 The "Saint John" I cannot admire; there seems no 
 feeling for beauty, none even for dignity. The "Calais 
 Burghers," though impressive, is a trifle grotesquie— a 
 parlous fault ; and as for the "Ninety-three," which you 
 so admire, I think, considering the nature of the subject, 
 it is inadequate. There is incompleteness in the artistic 
 make-up, and a want, too, of the best qualities in one 
 
300 STOWENOTES 
 
 who, treating the subject, suggests the terror and passion 
 without the heroic fire. 
 
 The portrait busts are, of course, full of power and 
 of character. 
 
 The door, I suppose, is the work on which to form a 
 judgment, but of that I get too slight an impression to 
 venture any opinion. Indeed, unless one is at once in 
 sympathy with the work, how little impression these few 
 sketches, etc., give ! 
 
 TO HIS SISTER 
 
 Stowe, October 6, 1895. 
 
 Never did the country look more charming. It is 
 now literally of the loveliest rose-color, for we have none 
 of the too clear weather of autumn, nor yet of the thick 
 and hazy kind so characteristic of the time of year. The 
 atmosphere is more that of spring, with a slight moisture 
 in the air, which gives softness to the landscape. 
 
 I have just finished "The Romance of DoUard"— the 
 best book (novel), in my opinion, from any American 
 pen since Hawthorne. 
 
 TO MRS. JOHN W. ELLIOT 
 
 Bainbridge, Georgia, December 20, 1895. 
 You must know that I have been long intending to 
 answer your letters, and now for the first time I find 
 myself with energy sufficient to take pleasure in doing so. 
 
LETTERS 301 
 
 First let me go back to the photographs of the Arab; 
 my interest in them was great. At first, I confess, I was 
 disappointed to find less beauty than I had looked for, 
 but the extraordinary general excellence of the points 
 began to show itself as I examined more of the photo- 
 graphs. The only possible criticism a horseman might 
 make would perhaps be to wish for a greater length 
 between hip and hock; to me the hock seemed placed a 
 little high for perfection, but I am really no judge. The 
 nose and lips seemed finer than anything I have ever 
 seen in horse-flesh, but I think there are many Morgan 
 stallions with larger brain-room, wider spaced between 
 the eyes. The expression interested me in diflfering 
 from that of fine horses of our domestic breeds ; though 
 equally intelligent, it seemed rather wild than gentle. 
 
 This is a singular country where we are now. It is 
 really the first time we have been quite separated from 
 Northern civilization; we have here unadulterated 
 Southern life. To say that it is comfortable, enjoyable, 
 pretty, or admirable, except in respect to the air and 
 sunshme, would be to exaggerate grossly. It is, in fact, 
 rude, grim, and uncomfortable; there seems to be no 
 shrinking from — in fact, no consciousness of ugliness. 
 The town might be pretty, with its superb oaks and beau- 
 tiful evergreens of many kinds, but neglect and squalor 
 everywhere make the place far from pleasing. There 
 are many picturesque sights, but they are of a sombre 
 order — the wild-looking black men that come in from 
 the woods, ragged figures with curious long-bladed axes 
 used for boxing the turpentine trees ; the manacled pris- 
 oners that pass to and from the jail and court house 
 
302 STOWENOTES 
 
 under a guard, who carry their rifles in not very soldierly 
 manner, but one that suggests convenience for a quick 
 shot. 
 
 I do not think I have seen more than one leading 
 citizen as yet. On the whole, the men are stout, brutal- 
 looking, but not much differing from the types one sees 
 in manufacturing towns in New England. The country 
 North certainly breeds something better— still I am not 
 disposed to insist very strongly on this, either ; New Eng- 
 landers have not all the virtues. 
 
 I am delighted to hear that Brush is to make a draw- 
 ing of your little boy. Though I know nothing of his 
 work (alas!) within the last five or six years, yet I have 
 always greatly admired it. 
 
 It is really hard to believe that it is close upon Christ- 
 mas, while the weather remains as warm as the Vermont 
 June. We are reminded of the fact, however, in a rather 
 singular way, by the explosion every evening of tor- 
 pedoes, fire-crackers, etc., which the negroes call "hurry- 
 ing up Christmas." 
 
 TO HIS SISTER 
 
 Bainbridge, December 27, 1895. 
 I have just finished Hardy's book, miscalled "novel." 
 Some time ago I ventured the bold statement, when H. 
 and I were discussing the author in question, that I 
 thought "Tess" just escaped being a decided failure as a 
 work of art, and that in any view it was artistically 
 feeble. It was the intensity of feeling, and the poetry 
 
LETTERS 303 
 
 of Tess's personality, and (what H. rightly calls Hardy's 
 great power, his best) the suggestion of the poetry in 
 the old pagan peasant life of England, that were the 
 saving elements in the book. On the other hand, the 
 dry, loveless, inartistic treatment of the villain and of 
 almost all the other characters, including Angel himself, 
 is surely a damning quality. No man who, undertaking 
 to write a novel, concentrates all his feeling on a single 
 character can hope for an artistic whole; but to treat 
 other characters as creatures repellent to his own feel- 
 ings (as is evidently his attitude toward his villain Alec) 
 is absurd. No record made with aversion or loathing is 
 art. Artistic villainy is created otherwise. I'll venture 
 to say that nothing in the way of the devil outdoes our 
 friend "Pew." And yet, instead of being a dead indi- 
 gestible weight like Alec D'Urberville, he is a joy for- 
 ever, a kind of horrible delight. And why? Because he 
 is moulded by the loving touch of the real artist. Per- 
 haps Hardy is too emotional to be a perfect artist. Well, 
 however that may be, he is not now the man who wrote 
 "Far from the Madding Crowd"; he's turned himself 
 into a realist, or a querist, or something that is not an 
 artist. 
 
 This "Jude the Obscure" is a wonderful instance of 
 what the evil times may bring forth. It is told in the 
 deadest, most perfunctory manner ; it has not one touch 
 of his great power; indeed, so far from showing the 
 poetry of the peasant life, it evidently aims at the reverse, 
 and ugly and accidental incidents are insisted upon, as 
 with the true realists. It is so persistently pushed in the 
 directions of defeat and misery that, to my thinking, it is 
 
304 STOWENOTES 
 
 not a truthful picture of human life. The characters are 
 treated with a remarkable lack of feeling; he has not 
 been able, apparently, to expend any emotional power 
 upon one, even; he is simply, like Dogberry, bestowing 
 his tediousness upon us. "What !" the public should cry, 
 like the horrified Leonato, "all your tediousness upon 
 us!" It is a dreadful thing for an artist to get to holding 
 theories; the title-page of "Tess" was the first sign of 
 it, in the acute form, in Hardy's case— now he seems 
 past cure. The next thing, you will find, he'll be writing 
 plays like Ibsen's — and I'm disposed to think they will 
 not be so good ! 
 
 I think in the preface he says something to the effect 
 that he has endeavored to bring home to the reader's 
 appreciation the tragedy of misunderstood endeavors 
 and defeated aims. So far as the shock to the sensibili- 
 ties of the reader is concerned, he (Hardy) may rest him 
 merry. It wants art to raise a story to the height of 
 tragedy. But as, after all, his wish was probably "to 
 make your flesh creep," it would be no consolation to him 
 that nervous tissue had been spared. However, his re- 
 ward will be great in the sale of his book and the applause 
 of the Philistines. 
 
 You see I am rather vexed; but so must all be who 
 once loved Hardy. 
 
LETTERS 305 
 
 TO JOE EVANS 
 
 Bainbridge, February 29, 1896. 
 
 This is now our second day at our log cabin in the 
 pine woods, a much more desirable place than a boarding- 
 house in a Southern town. 
 
 It is surprising that these odd structures do not pre- 
 sent a more interesting appearance. This is built of the 
 barked logs, its chimney half of brick, half of clay and 
 sticks, its veranda of an interesting depth, and yet, some- 
 how, it looks odd, without being in the least picturesque. 
 I think the trouble must be the lack of color; 'tis all a 
 uniform dirty gray. 
 
 Though the weather is pleasantly warm and we sit 
 with doors and windows open until bedtime, yet there 
 are no signs of spring. True, there is under one window 
 a peach tree in blossom, and near at hand it is a delight- 
 ful intimation, but as an element in the landscape, among 
 the dead old oaks and the long shafts of the pines, it 
 counts for very little. You know perhaps how it is in 
 these Southern woods: you hear that the jasmine is 
 blooming in February, and your mind's eye sees the pic- 
 ture of bursting spring. It is a fact that the jasmine 
 blooms in February or even earlier, but it takes nothing 
 from the wintry aspect of the leafless swamps ; one might 
 readily take the yellow of the flower for frost-bitten 
 leaves. 
 
 The beauty as well as the wealth of the country is the 
 long-leaved yellow pine. The pine is a tree of all regions, 
 is it not? But I think this pine shows an affinity with 
 
306 STOWENOTES 
 
 tropical forms in the manner of its growth— the flat 
 spreading tops, so unHke the conical forms of Northern 
 evergreens. It is beautiful in color, a bright green with 
 shadows of purple-blue, more pure in color than I have 
 ever noticed to be the case with any of the evergreens. 
 At a distance in this thick air the foliage becomes a dusky 
 purple. The edge of a pine wood where there are innu- 
 merable patches of purple shadow and the (lilac) trunks 
 as close as organ pipes, and where there is certain to be 
 one or two long bone-white shafts with a crown of 
 skeleton boughs rigid as old roots— such a place offers a 
 very tempting subject. I wish I had had better health 
 this winter and could have attempted it. 
 
 The winter skies, too, have been charming— like our 
 spring skies, pale blue with light streaky clouds, and 
 toward the horizon turning pinkish or purple. 
 
 TO HIS SISTER 
 
 Bainbridge, March i, 1896. 
 
 You remember the learned man thought Poetry lived 
 in the hot country, and the Shadow made certain vague 
 claims to having there been in the anteroom of Poetry's 
 abode. In my opinion, the learned man was quite mis- 
 taken, and, the Shadow having turned out such a thor- 
 ough-going scamp, I think it is not too much to suppose 
 him a liar in the bargain. Poetry is too fine, too subtle 
 a spirit ever to have left the North. 
 
 To my sick eye this country seems a great waste 
 place, crude, squalid, already half ruined — no forest 
 
LETTERS 307 
 
 where the tree trunks are not blackened by fire, scarce a 
 pine that has not the filthy witness of human rapacity, 
 the blackened scar of an old boxing. The young oaks 
 that flourish on the barrens are twisted, misshapen, with 
 rough bark and bristling adventitious branches; they 
 are to other young trees as street urchins to innocent 
 children. Linnaeus said of the American plants : "They 
 have an aspect at once smooth and joyous" ; and to my 
 mind's eye the sentence brings the groves of young 
 sugar maples with smooth straight stems and the crown 
 of cool and broad-leaved foliage. 
 
 To say truly, this is a somewhat ungrateful mood, 
 for in spite of myself I have from time to time been 
 struck by the beauty of color in these Georgia pines, and 
 by the charm of the winter skies. The sandy soil, too, 
 allows a lovely blueness in shadows. It is generally a 
 mistake to condemn — to condemn Nature, always so; it 
 is simply a way of giving expression to one's limitations. 
 But I do not think it is Nature I find fault with; it is 
 rather with man— the deplorable mess he has made of 
 this country. 
 
 You may suppose I have not seen many birds, only 
 two that are properly natives: the Carolina chickadee, 
 just as saucy as ours but not so pretty, lacking the buff 
 tinge on the breast and sides— a slimmer bird— and the 
 Carolina wren, which haunts around these buildings 
 though said to be a shy species. We hear its notes (as 
 described by Chapman) frequently in the wood. The 
 cardinal, jay, thrasher, bluebird, flicker, crow, phcebe, 
 and a flock of wagtails (new to me) comprise the whole; 
 strangely enough, I have not seen either robin or mock- 
 
308 STOWENOTES 
 
 ingbird, and I have never been near enough to sparrows 
 or warblers to identify them. Yet even if I had been 
 able to make some observations, I doubt if I should have 
 been animated to do so. What are the winter birds of 
 the South ? The shadow, in a sense, but more properly 
 the substance : it is in coming North that the soul is de- 
 veloped. 
 
 The spring comes grudgingly here. The weather is 
 rather warmer than our June, more like July, and yet one 
 must look well for the signs of spring— the general 
 aspect is still more that of winter. At night, however, 
 the frogs are heard, not the crackling note of our wood 
 frogs, but a plaintive piping, a weak and rather tremu- 
 lous call. 
 
 Our man brought in some wood violets the other day— 
 a large, rather coarse purple variety — some wild pinks, 
 and twigs from two little heath-like shrubs; one is the 
 huckleberry of this region, the other (with waxy white 
 flowers) he calls "sparkleberry." The dangleberry re- 
 sembles it more nearly than anything I find in my Gray. 
 
 I am afraid I have not anything very encouraging to 
 say regarding literary attempts. My own efforts only 
 cause me to realize how long and how difficult an art it is— 
 how it seems to make more cruel demands than others, 
 at least than painting. It seems so easy ; the expression 
 in words is so natural; it seems to demand so little 
 preliminary study, nothing of the training that painting 
 and music require ; but in the end the sentence that comes 
 near to satisfy is as hardly wrought out as any part of 
 the surface of the painted canvas — more hardly, perhaps, 
 as the effort of concentration is the greater, as there is 
 
LETTERS 309 
 
 no interesting mechanical process to hold the attention, 
 no palpable subject, as in painting— in literature all's in 
 the mind's eye. 
 
 I suppose this false impression arises from the fact 
 that so many of no great genius take readily to pen and 
 ink; the fact is, of course, that nothing of the same de- 
 gree of badness in form and execution that most current 
 literature exhibits would be tolerated in any other art. 
 In a word, literature is an art, exacting, inexorable— a 
 dangerous thing to play with, like fire. Sometimes it 
 seems that if you can see no prospect of giving it the best 
 of your energies, the most of your time, you had better 
 abandon hope. But, really, I do not think this view the 
 right one to take. The greatest work of art is, in a sense, 
 a failure — no one save the artist can know in what de- 
 gree; the poorest attempt, when inspired by real feeling — 
 I mean when the subject is known and loved or deeply 
 felt — can hardly be without some admirable quality, 
 though the work may be too crude in form or obscure in 
 expression to be "worth a Christian's eye." But it is the 
 feeling of exaltation, of spiritual uplifting, which ac- 
 companies such labors that is of the first value ; the mo- 
 ment when one seems to renew the lost sympathy with 
 Nature— that is happiness ; the freedom, the relief from 
 the miserable constraints of the world, surely a great 
 boon. 
 
 How far such occupations should be allowed to con- 
 flict with pressing duties is a question for the individual 
 conscience, if it is really a question at all. In my opinion, 
 it skills nothing to puzzle over the matter: people will 
 express their natures whether or no, and the will can do 
 
3IO STOWENOTES 
 
 no more than modify or intensify action; like the lever 
 of the steam engine, it governs the speed, but the lines 
 are laid beforehand in some unalterable direction. 
 
 TO HIS SISTER 
 
 Bainbridge, March 9, 1896. 
 
 You need not read this letter unless you find that it 
 does not bore you. 'Tis about the books you have sent 
 me ; and I write it partly because I have nothing else to 
 do, and partly because I am cross with most modern in- 
 ventions and it is a kind of satisfaction to say so at some 
 length. 
 
 Henry James's story,* although, in my opinion, not 
 very successful, is a good story, but too slight for its 
 bulk. That is the fault of his style and the danger of 
 being so glib ; he tells his story in too many words. He 
 may have reflected that something more sprightly than 
 his usual manner was required — at least I so conjec- 
 tured ; it seemed to me very trippingly told — at a quick- 
 step, which, somehow, did not contrive to shorten the 
 distance. Why not finish at the climax ? Why spoil the 
 effect with still more words? It is told, however, with 
 great authority ; it is a pleasure to read a man so sure of 
 his language. 
 
 This "Red Badge of Courage"— have you read it? 
 Is it the modern form of story? Is it really what we are 
 coming to ? For my part, I cannot take it seriously ; do 
 
 * "Glasses," in the "Atlantic." 
 
LETTERS 3" 
 
 you happen to know how it is regarded by others ? Who 
 is Mr. Stephen Crane— is he a warrior in his own per- 
 son, or is it all the power of imagination? To have 
 fought in the war he describes, he must be at least fifty 
 years old ; and fifty years has quite another form of ex- 
 pressing itself. 
 
 There is something fresh in Owen Wister's book; it's 
 the old story of Western adventure, but told with much 
 more truth and less sentimentality than ever before, so it 
 seems to me. The stories vary very much; "Salvation 
 Gap," for instance, is the tiresome, sentimental, never 
 very true kind of tale that Bret Harte told— only it has 
 not his power — but on the whole the stories are good, 
 and it is a pity the book is defaced by Remington's ugly 
 ill-drawn illustrations. 
 
 Howells' "My Boy" * is, on reflection, very much 
 what you might expect — a boy of much sensibility but 
 surprisingly deficient in imagination, with a very small 
 leaven of poetry in his nature. 
 
 The picture Howells draws is on the whole a truthful 
 one, I think, though it strikes me he is not at all times 
 sympathetically in touch with his subject ; and, of course, 
 it is truth in glimpses, as he always presents it, as if he 
 never had the whole scene in view at once, but was look- 
 ing through the slats of the fence. But it shows in some 
 degree how our enlightened American people come to be 
 what they are: brought up in an atmosphere purely in- 
 dustrial, in a country without traditions, monuments, or 
 indeed history, it is not surprising that when they have 
 developed fully, their accomplished ambition is the steam 
 
 *In "A Boy's Town." 
 
312 STOWENOTES 
 
 heater, the hot and cold water supply, and electric illumi- 
 nation—perhaps, in addition, the Nineteenth Century 
 Club, or, in another variation, a span of 2 :20 trotters. 
 
 Howells perpetually harps on boys' failures, and 
 seems not to feel that the successes are made in the 
 imagination, and so outrun the little skill and limited 
 means a boy has control of. Thus the desire is satiated 
 long before a tenth part of the task they set themselves 
 is accomplished. One almost fancies he has forgotten 
 his youth, though attempting to describe it, when he 
 speaks of the circus. 
 
 Do you notice the crumbs of socialistic doctrine so 
 artfully strewn along the way? It is just as well that 
 youth swallows that kind of food without tasting. 
 
 He is not much in awe of childhood; children's fail- 
 ures, children's fears, form the comical element of the 
 work, repeated from chapter to chapter until it becomes 
 a little oppressive. 
 
 Last night we had a crashing thunder-storm and one 
 of those flooding rains for which the region is noted. 
 To-day two ladies in a buggy stopped to inquire if the 
 "creek was swimming." We could give no information, 
 and one, addressing the other, said, "Well, suppose we 
 try it?" But the other objected, "We'd better pay some 
 one to wade ahead." Comical, was it not?— their idea 
 seemingly being that if the mercenary should drown they 
 would decide not to cross the creek. They went on to 
 confer with Major B. on the chances. 
 
 You would like Major B. I have not talked with him 
 much, but I should like to do so; I guess from his five 
 years' experience here that he must have obtained much 
 
LETTERS 313 
 
 interesting knowledge of the people and country. He 
 tells me of Southern gentlemen, his neighbors, calling 
 upon him in the morning and making protest at the sug- 
 gestion of having their horses put up; but yielding, they 
 linger on until dinner time. With some reluctance they 
 accept the invitation to dine. In the midst of the after- 
 noon, as it seems, supper time surprises them ; they con- 
 sent to remain to that meal, and finally, well after dark, 
 they motmt and ride on their way. 
 
 You should see M. and me out on our occasional 
 drives ; if I thought I could convey all the oddity of the 
 spectacle, I'd attempt a little sketch. But picture to 
 yourself a turnout so worn that the running gear has lost 
 all trace of its coat of paint, and in its harness has a 
 heavy archaic character, as if of native construction ; it 
 is the normal condition of the Georgian vehicle, how- 
 ever, though the hubs slide and jar on the spindles and the 
 wheels turn with waverings. Our horse is an old blind 
 stallion, wall-eyed, knee-sprung, who trudges at a walk 
 (our chosen pace) on unshod hoofs that have never 
 known cleaner or paring knife ; the harness is russet with 
 age and patched with pieces of twine. 
 
 We have had the pleasure of releasing no less than 
 sixteen bob- whites, which were brought living to us, hav- 
 ing been caught in snares. We ransomed them and then 
 set them at liberty. The last that came, some five, were 
 free in a box — very timorous, crowding together in cor- 
 ners and uttering a low piping or twittering; since their 
 release we have heard them all day, calling to one another 
 with a broken plaintive note. The other party of eleven 
 were secured by having their legs tied tightly together 
 
314 STOWENOTES 
 
 with strips of calico ; they sat in the bottom of a basket 
 and only moved their heads, watching us with their 
 bright dark eyes. They seemed to be "studdyin'." They 
 struggled very little when M. lifted them out and with 
 scissors severed their bonds, and they went off with less 
 show of excitement than the last. 
 
 I have seen the brown-headed nuthatch and the 
 tufted titmouse, both not of our acquaintance in the 
 North. There are many birds now, but my eyes are too 
 weak to look against the sky for them, and they flit 
 among the budding tops of oaks, avoiding the dead-wood 
 of the lower level. We hear the cardinal now very often ; 
 and after the often repeated "che-ow, che-ow," follow 
 the most charmingly modulated call notes, very sweet 
 and coaxing. 
 
 How we rejoiced over your letter describing Robert's 
 happy reception ! I am struck with surprise every now 
 and then when I realize that I have never seen him as 
 Romeo — I see him so clearly in the mind's eye. It an- 
 swers nothing to lament our exile; but a word on this 
 subject would lead to too many words. 
 
 TO JOE EVANS 
 
 Bainbridge, April i, 1896. 
 I am sorry my picture lost the prize (as usual). It 
 would seem as if one might hardly be so daring as to 
 make the attempt again. There is a great finality about 
 the number three — see Father William: "I've answered 
 three questions, and that is enough." And the Bell Man : 
 "What I say three times is true." 
 
LETTERS 315 
 
 You know, no one was ever permitted more than 
 three wishes, and three attempts have ever been the limit. 
 I do not see my way to apply for the prize again. How- 
 ever, I am glad the picture is well hung. 
 
 TO HIS BROTHER HENRY 
 
 Washington, Conn., July 13, 1896. 
 
 What a summer of beauty this must be at the fairest 
 of all places ! The lindens are in flower now, or should 
 be, but perhaps this rich warm rainy season has pushed 
 the development of all vegetation somewhat ahead of 
 time. 
 
 I am sure you have not had a sultry day, however all 
 the rest of the world may suffer from heat and humidity. 
 
 Oh for Stowe ! Oh for the North ! Send me word 
 of it— every detail! 
 
 TO his SISTER 
 
 Washington, Conn., September, 1896. 
 What a gift life was, not a right ! 
 
VERSES 
 
^".^2 
 
 
VERSES 
 
 WINTER'S ANSWER TO MISGIVINGS 
 
 Often the heart that eager is 
 To build its hope on dazzHng height 
 Falls in the shadow of its bliss, 
 And, comfortless, sees endless night. 
 A sullen whisper stirs anon : 
 "Acknowledge life a worthless boon; 
 What gain to cloak and smother care- 
 To smile at grief ? Accept your doom. 
 Why struggle still against despair ? 
 How long resist the creeping gloom ?" 
 
 As long as crowns that hilltop bare 
 The pine against the azure sky, 
 And gives its music to the air. 
 And waves its tasselled boughs on high ; 
 As long as shall the chickadee 
 Flit, lisping sweet, from tree to tree ; 
 As long as on this slope's displayed 
 The sumach's dauntless red cockade. 
 
 319 
 
320 STOWENOTES 
 
 TO 
 
 "See !" cried that voice of love 
 
 That never claimed my ear with aught but kind intent, 
 
 "See, in the west, those tiny clouds above 
 
 The crescent moon, where rose and azure blent 
 
 Hang on the setting sun !" Alas that I, 
 
 Vexed with the ills of life, whose sombre side 
 
 O'erdarkened petty pleasures, stubbornly 
 
 Bent on defiance, in a sullen pride 
 
 Answered: "I cannot now attend." The voice was still. 
 
 Then, at her humble silence, spoke my heart. 
 
 I rose, and slowly, with an altered will. 
 
 Moved to the window — but the sky was cold: 
 
 That ardent glow was shrunk and paled away. 
 
 Those floating clouds were comfortless of light. 
 
 Stretching across the sky a veil of gray. 
 
 Cold on the coming of the autumn night. 
 
 TO 
 
 I think you are pure-minded, 
 And gentle and pitiful. 
 And wise and vain and foolish. 
 Full of little fears and great hopes. 
 As good women are. 
 
VERSES 321 
 
 TO THE LUNA MOTH 
 
 Pale wanderer of the summer night ! 
 My candle's feeble ray of light, 
 Sped out upon the empty dark 
 (To thee a lost Promethean spark), 
 Hath touched the circle of thy flight ; 
 And wondrous, shining pale and far, 
 A beacon flame to lure thee hence. 
 It dawns upon thy innocence — 
 The glory of a fallen star. 
 
 Poor moth ! On thee the waking Spring 
 
 Shall never lift her laughing eyes : 
 
 So swift, so soon, a chill surprise, 
 
 Comes Death to close thy azure wing. 
 
 Yet do I pity overmuch 
 
 Thy sudden end, who day by day 
 
 Must see the Summer waste away 
 
 And feel the Winter's iron clutch ? 
 
 Too strange is life, too swiftly spent, 
 
 Too swift for joy, too strange for sorrow ; 
 
 I have no leisure to lament 
 
 Thee, dead to-day, who die to-morrow. 
 
 The sigh I breathe were wasted breath 
 
 That mourns thy fate and weeps not ours, 
 
 For in the final grasp of Death 
 
 My years shall be as thy short hours. 
 
322 STOWENOTES 
 
 So might it seem less loss than gain 
 To touch the limit of delight 
 And know the utmost bounds of pain 
 And vanish in a summer night. 
 
 Outside, the winds are stealing by, 
 
 Faint with the breath of drowsing flowers, 
 
 From meadows open to the sky. 
 
 From moonlit slopes and sylvan towers, 
 
 From woody dells remote and deep. 
 
 Where, in the silence and the gloom. 
 
 Spring violets ; or laden come 
 
 From beds where purple pansies sleep— 
 
 Short, sweet, and happy night of June ! 
 
 A wandering gleam, the river threads 
 
 A way among the fields, and spreads 
 
 Its silver shallows in the moon ; 
 
 And imaged in the glassy pond 
 
 Are bank and bush and grove beyond ; 
 
 And in the depths prof ounder dwells 
 
 A sunken planet, bright and large. 
 
 The frogs, like drowsy sentinels. 
 
 Among the rushes on the marge 
 
 A hoarse and sullen watchword pass. 
 
 The dew lies sparkling in the grass. 
 
 Night-loving things are all astir : 
 
 The wings of owls and bats are spread. 
 
 And from her net of gossamer 
 
 The nimble spider weaves her thread. 
 
 And thou, with downy wings unfurled. 
 
 Dost roam. Queen of the waking world ! 
 
VERSES 323 
 
 Out of the mystery of night 
 
 Thou com'st to me with wavering flight, 
 
 Unerring in thy shining quest, 
 
 Bold-hearted as a looked-for guest ... ^ 
 
 Strange silent thing ! Thy fragile wings 
 
 Bear greetings from another land: 
 
 There dwells within thy dreaming eyes 
 
 The memory of Paradise. 
 
 The light of early morning brings. 
 
 Aloft on gaily painted wings. 
 
 Thy prototype of sunny air. 
 
 Frail emblem of the soul, as bright 
 
 As rainbow hues, as changing fair . . . 
 
 But on the dusky edge of night 
 
 Thou hoverest, like a guilty sprite. 
 
 Unseen until the day is done. 
 
 Perchance thou art the soul of one 
 
 Too new to heaven to forget 
 
 The living bonds of earth. I think 
 
 Thou art a spirit ; one that met 
 
 No friend upon the further brink. 
 
 And earthward, on the night wind's breath. 
 
 Art borne along the gleaming skies. 
 
 Sad exile in the gates of Death ! 
 
 That crossed the threshold full of pain. 
 
 With outstretched arms and longing eyes 
 
 And heart that yearned to earth again ; 
 
 Whose pleading lips are shut and dumb. 
 
 Whose lease of life is sadly sped : 
 
 In such pale semblance might they come. 
 
 The souls of all the lonely dead. 
 
324 STOWENOTES 
 
 TO THE WOOD THRUSH 
 
 Often along a mossy road 
 
 That keeps the secret of my tread, 
 
 I walked at evening ; gently flowed 
 The summer air, and overhead 
 
 The golden tide of evening ebbed. 
 And, white upon the soft expanse. 
 
 The limpid ether, silver-webbed, 
 I saw the moon's pale countenance. 
 
 Then sometimes on the silence stirred 
 The cricket's slight and shrilly cry ; 
 
 The sounds of evening, vaguely heard, 
 Are blent and faint along the sky ; 
 
 While with a saddened cadence fall 
 From fields afar and twilight dells, 
 
 The low of cows, the driver's call, 
 The lessened beat of distant bells. 
 
 Where silence broods, where shade abounds, 
 
 I oft in expectation stood. 
 And heard the first melodious sounds 
 
 Wake in the arches of the wood ; 
 
VERSES 325 
 
 And from the depth and gathered night 
 Of maple boughs and hooded beech 
 
 I marked with still and strange delight 
 The woodland genius finding speech. 
 
 No torrent of impassioned song, 
 
 But, like some lone and hidden rill. 
 The sylvan music glides along 
 
 And chimes aloud, and then is still. 
 
 A magic holds the listening ear : 
 
 Breathless I wait, and know no choice, 
 
 Dumb as the rocks, intent to hear 
 Once more that airy elfin voice. 
 
326 STOWENOTES 
 
 THE BLUE HERON 
 
 He raised the rifle, steely bright ; 
 
 He took good aim, the trigger drew ; 
 And, reeling in its happy flight. 
 
 Fluttered and fell the heron blue, 
 
 "He's hit; he's staggered; see him swing 
 
 In a wide circle down the air ! 
 See how he settles, light of wing, 
 
 On the lake's bosom smooth and bare !" 
 
 Grouped on the forest's margin, by 
 A placid lake that mirrored all. 
 
 With upturned gaze and anxious eye 
 They watched the heron float and fall. 
 
 They saw the glittering sunlight shed 
 On quivering leaves, and heard the speed 
 
 And music of the wind, and said : 
 "Alas, this is an evil deed !" 
 
 Methinks a vengeance should pursue 
 That rude soul to the brink of death 
 
 Whose cruel hand for pleasure slew. 
 Who stopped a free and happy breath. 
 
VERSES 327 
 
 For him the wind should bear a sigh 
 Where'er it stirs ; the wood and shore 
 
 Seem empty as the empty sky, 
 With sense of loss for evermore ; 
 
 The sparkling light seem bleak and cold ; 
 
 The wavelets sob on sand and stone ; 
 And ever should the silence hold 
 
 An echo for his ear alone. 
 
328 STOWENOTES 
 
 THE SONG SPARROW 
 
 The dawn rose slowly, pale and bleak ; 
 
 The morning air struck raw and chill ; 
 And, pied in many a patch and streak, 
 
 The snow still glimmered on the hill. 
 
 Gray clouds along the mountains crept ; 
 
 Frost- whitened all the garden lay ; 
 And slow and silent tears bewept 
 
 Softly the cheerless birth of day. 
 
 The earth lay wrapped in chill distress ; 
 
 The promised spring seemed all remote ; 
 When suddenly the silentness 
 
 Was broken by a bird's clear note. 
 
 Song of a daring heart serene ! 
 
 Into the dusk I peered in vain, 
 Though all the dumb and dreary scene 
 
 Was thrilling with the valiant strain. 
 
 But to my mental view arose 
 
 The modest singer, brown of coat. 
 
 Perched in that all-enraptured pose. 
 The lifted bill, the quivering throat. 
 
VERSES 329 
 
 Symbol of Hope— the earliest borne 
 
 On dauntless wings these snows among— 
 
 Sweet in the sullen face of dawn 
 Arose the silvery flight of song ! 
 
 THE WOOD THRUSH 
 (fragment) 
 
 Hark ! From those frail and trembling throats 
 
 Hid in the leafy haunts above, 
 
 A low and liquid murmur floats 
 
 Out of the hushed and listening grove. 
 
 It faints ; a peal of fairy bells 
 Rings on the silence deep and tense ; 
 The sudden music lapses, swells, 
 Fails with a sweet inconsequence. 
 
 So die the twittering notes away, 
 And in the holy calm and hush 
 Falls sweet the latest voice of day. 
 The utterance of the hidden thrush. 
 
330 STOWENOTES 
 
 FRAGMENT FROM "THE VOYAGEUR" 
 
 ( The wind is supposed suddenly to begin blowing, bringing the 
 sound of water from the lake.) 
 
 But hark ! The ripple of the rising wind 
 Runs in the tree-tops, and the whisper stirs, 
 Through rustling birches and the soughing firs, 
 Deep in my heart a longing undefined ; 
 And faintly clashing, o'er the hushing trees 
 Whose secret shudders through the listening night, 
 A distant music rings, so faint, so light, 
 It climbs and hovers on the flying breeze. 
 Where swims the lily, tiny wavelets comb. 
 And in the rushes flash a rim of foam ; 
 The underlying shore and mirrored night 
 Are rent and shattered, and a broken light 
 Dances o'er shadowy deeps where dwelt the moon ; 
 The shallows with a golden rain are strewn. 
 And echo fills the cove with blithe alarms 
 Like plaudits faintly struck from fairy palms. 
 The sleeping spirit of the Northern lakes. 
 The fair dread siren, shivers and awakes. 
 
VERSES 331 
 
 SPIRITS 
 
 From lily-beds and osiers damp 
 Breathes cool the odorous air of spring; 
 The little stars in heaven lamp 
 My blithe and lonely wandering. 
 Lone, still alone, in happy mood 
 I hover near, and far away, 
 In the sweet, short nights of May, 
 From the white lakes, from the wood. 
 Spirits gather : elf and fay 
 Fain would fly, but hover near. 
 Half in awe and half in fear. 
 Oh, the circle of their round. 
 Where, with neither sign nor sound, 
 The dancers mingle, touch and glance, 
 Circling on the haunted ground. 
 Clasp, dissever, skip and bound 
 Breathless in a shadow dance ! 
 Spectral mute and filmy rout. 
 Shade and starlight in and out, 
 What are these that float so light. 
 Alien to the woodland sprite, 
 Free as air and free of night? 
 Lo ! the merry ghosts are these, 
 Dancing, dumb diaphanies. 
 Spirits that are haply free 
 From all mortal misery. 
 
332 STOWENOTES 
 
 Soon the morning star's pale shine, 
 Dawning on their measures fleet, 
 In the gloom of yonder pine 
 Mocks the gleam of ghostly feet. 
 
 WINTER SUNSET 
 
 Where the wind sighs, so softly, so wearily. 
 In the dark hemlock-tops stirring so drearily. 
 
 Where the red light 
 
 Darkens to night, 
 
 And there's intense 
 
 Cold and suspense. 
 There is the spirit that whispers one cheerily. 
 
VERSES 333 
 
 The western wind has lightly stirred 
 The bending grasses on the mead; 
 And in the longing leaves 'tis heard 
 To pass with rush of joyous speed. 
 
 The robins loud their songs repeat, 
 
 And from the denser dim retreat 
 
 The hermit's note comes faint and sweet - 
 
 The silver bell, the lisp and sigh ; 
 And that wild spirit, strange and shy. 
 The mocking veery, makes reply. 
 
 It seems so short a time ago 
 
 This forest floor, where flowers blow. 
 
 Was deep in folds of silent snow. 
 
 Yet many forms of life are sped 
 That saw the spring sky overhead ; 
 And many an eager hope is dead. 
 
 Where are the flowers of early spring ? 
 For not to them the thrushes sing ; 
 To them no breeze is whispering. 
 
 Spring-beauty touched with rosy hue. 
 Goldthread silver-tipped with dew. 
 Wind-flowers, and the violet blue,