Wayside Trees
Who that has ever walked in the country has not blessed the farmer who planted, or early settler who spared, the wayside trees? The average country road, especially in the poorer farming districts, is something deplorable. Only too often, even when shady and otherwise attractive, there lies only the choice of wallowing through sand, stumbling over rocks, or tripping over briers that would shame the Gordian knot for close entanglement.
It is unreasonable to expect well-worn paths, far from the town’s limits, unless Nature has provided them: but something a little better than the remote highways, as they now are, might certainly be had. Is there not sufficient tax collected in every township to secure this? Probably the farmer who never walks to the village, and finds the wagon-way fairly passable, may insist that the pedestrian can pick his way, however rough the ground. True, but this does not dissipate the pedestrian’s just claims. A man that must walk, because too poor to ride, is none the less worthy of consideration, and may well grumble if his right of way is blocked. Of course, man must take the world as he finds it, and alter it if he can; and such an alteration is practicable where good roads or foot-paths can not be, in the planting and preservation of wayside trees.
Such was the current of my thoughts when I met, recently, the overseer of a highway resting, at noon, from his labors. To him, and for him, a little speech was made; and what was the reply? “Too many shade-trees will encourage the tramps”! So he who loves to wander out of town must take the dusty highways as they are, and sigh for pleasant shade he can not enter. To plant a wayside tree, to have a country byway beautiful, must not be thought of – it will encourage the tramps!
Now, it so happens that, near where I live, a chestnut-tree was spared, two centuries ago, probably because it was too crooked for fence-rails. Certainly for no praiseworthy motive was it allowed to stand; but it does, and so to-day it casts a shadow in which half a regiment might gather. Not strangely at all, every man, woman, and child in the neighborhood loves the old tree, and points to it with pride. Were it struck by lightning, it would have a public funeral. And yet I have not found that any of my neighbors, except those very near the town, have planted even a single wayside tree. On the contrary, a noble row of catalpas was felled not long since for fence-posts!
A wayside tree means, to the pedestrian, something more than a mere island of shade in an ocean of sunshine. A stately tree has many lovers, and hosts of birds are sure to crowd its branches. Such a tree then becomes the Mecca whereat the rambler spends the hours of hot high noon, not only pleasurably but profitably – for I hold that a bird can not be watched for long without gain. Is it nothing, as one rests in the shade after a long tramp, to have a wood-thrush sing to him? Is it not a lesson to the weak-hearted to hear the restless red-eye’s ceaseless song? The perverse grumbler, has he a trace of reason, will, at least secretly, own that much of which he complains might be far worse, after listening to the singing of a bird perched in a wayside tree. Though shorn of so much that Nature granted to the most commonplace of lands, chaos has not quite come again. Certainly, however barren a sandy field may look, it is not yet a desert.
As any ornithologist will tell you, birds, though there be little that favors them and much that is harmful beset them everywhere, will persistently cling to a tree by the roadside; will even nest in it, although the ubiquitous small boy showers them with stones; and, more, though persecution is the order of their day, will sing as in a paradise regained, thankful that the world has even this much of untamed nature left.
If, then, in spite of themselves, farmers love what wayside trees there are, why can we not have more? Think of a leisured stroll, of a hot summer’s day, through a long avenue of leafy oaks!
Skeleton-Lifting
There are probably very few people but have seen the pretty stone arrow-heads that are found, often in abundance, after the fields have been plowed. I have often filled my pockets with them while wandering about, and, in the words of a friend, “been amazed at the numbers which are sown over the face of our country, betokening a most prolonged possession of the soil by their makers. For a hunting population is always sparse, and the collector finds only those arrow-heads which lie upon the surface.” But if their handiwork is abundant, not so their skeletons, and it is the uncanny taste of archæologists to prize the bones as well as the weapons of the Indians. Still, it is not more objectionable to carefully preserve the bones in a glass case than to scatter them with the plowshare.
Because it is well to turn aside from beaten tracks occasionally, that we may appreciate their beauty the more upon our return, and avoid the danger of having the sweets of the upland or the meadow pall, I have been indulging, of late, in archæological pursuits; been gathering relics, though the locust and wild cherry drooped with their burden of bright bloom, and the grosbeaks wooed me to the hillside. Notwithstanding this, I resolutely turned my back upon bird and blossom alike, and sought a neighbor’s field, over which waved tall and stately grain. It was proposed to give the day, but, as it proved, the night was added, to archæology.
There were weighty reasons, of course, for this intrusion upon my neighbor’s land, as no sane man without a potent incentive would dare to walk through growing grain. What moved me to so bold a deed was this: Last autumn I discovered that my farmer neighbor had two skeletons, and of one of which he neither had any use nor knowledge of its existence. When apprised of the fact, he expressed no surprise, but resolutely declined my offer to become the custodian of the superfluous bones, and even went so far as to make appropriation next to impossible. But I bided my time, and now, these bright June days, the grain kindly covers the ground and every creeping thing upon it, as it proved when a dog bounded into the field on the trail of a rabbit. I forthwith took the hint and crept upon the trail of a dead Indian. The danger of discovery – real, not fancied – gave something of zest to the work. With only a garden trowel, the earth, over a marked spot, was carefully removed, and as I had all the while to lie upon my breast while at work, the task was a painfully slow one, and I more than once wished myself away, until a few small bones were brought to light. Then all thought of discomfort vanished. Bone after bone was slowly uncovered, but all, alas! were so friable that not one could be removed with safety. In a short time the entire skeleton was laid bare, but under what strange circumstances! I had it within my grasp, but could not move it, nor indeed myself, more than to crouch in the tall grain about me. It was too like digging one’s own grave, and once, imagining an approach, I lay full length by the side of my fleshless friend. The day of my rejoicing had come, it is true, but there proved to be an overabundance of thorns with the rose. Here was the long-coveted skeleton; but within hearing, in the adjoining field, was a burly farmer, passing to and fro with his plow. Whenever he came near, the grinning skull grew pale, as though it, too, feared discovery; and so, until the dinner-horn sounded across-lots, I was held a prisoner. How anxiously did I listen for retreating steps and the rattling of the unloosened plow-chains! – welcome sounds that came at last, assuring me that the coast was clear. Then, leaving the treasure to the kindly sun that was rapidly warming it to hardness, I sped dinnerward.
The Fates were intolerably cruel that day. At sunset, when I purposed to return, innumerable obstacles loomed up, and every excuse to run away from company that had most inopportunely arrived was pooh-poohed by madam, in a most meaning manner; and it was just midnight when the open grave was reached. The full moon at that moment broke through the clouds, and a flood of pallid light filled the spot when I shook hands with the fleshless warrior and forced myself to return the ghastly grin of his angular countenance. There was something of defiance, too, in his eyeless sockets, and a ghost of resistance as he was lifted from a couch that he had occupied for some three thousand moons at least. The rattle of his disjointedness was as harsh as the language that once he spake, and while I thridded the woods and skirted, on my way home, the resounding marshes, where every frog most ominously croaked, every jostle of the warrior’s bones seemed to force a protesting syllable between his rattling teeth.
With all deference to the votaries of archæology, skeleton-lifting by moonlight is, I claim, a most uncanny pastime.
Why I prefer a Country Life
Uz Gaunt was, in the writer’s experience, the most level-headed of farmers. He once remarked, “Town folks smile at my vim and way of putting things, but I’d rather be next neighbor to Natur’ than to most of the town folks.” That remark impressed me many a year ago as a nugget of pure wisdom, and now, when on the shady side of forty, I still think it wiser than any casual remark, learned essay, or eloquent oration I have ever heard in town.
It is a sad error to suppose that a rustic is akin to a fool; and a citizen’s real worth may be measured by his manner of speaking of the country people. That a significant difference obtains can scarcely be denied, but it is not one that altogether exalts the dweller in town and degrades the farmer. Will any one pretend to say that the latter is less intelligent or refined? The simple fact is, the two classes are differently educated: the townsman largely by books, the farmer to a great extent by his surroundings; the former comes by his facts through hearsay, the latter by observation. In other words, the citizen tends to artificiality, the farmer to naturalness. The one is educated, the other acquires knowledge. Dead, weigh their brains, and which may claim the greater number of ounces?
And here let me say, in passing, that not all knowledge worth possessing has yet got into books. Is it not true that the brightest features of current literature treat of the world outside a city’s limits? What, indeed, would modern novels be without something besides brick and mortar for a background? Will the reader become enthusiastic over a story the scenes of which shift only from Brown’s parlor to Jones’s and back again?
The thrifty farmer may see nothing that attracts in the ball-room, and fail to follow the thread of the story, or be charmed by the airs of an opera; but has he not a compensation therefor in the Gothic arches of his woodland, beneath which tragedy and comedy are daily enacted? And what of the songs at sunrise, when the thrush, the grosbeak, and a host of warblers greet him at the outset of his daily toil?
Town and country are interdependent; but, considered calmly and in all its bearings, does not the former ask more of the latter, than vice versa? Has not the influx of rural vigor an incalculable value? Does it not prevent, in fact, the very destruction of the city, by checking the downward course that artificiality necessarily takes?
But, as the heading of this article indicates, I do not propose to enter into any controversy as to the relative merits of city or country life, but simply to state why I prefer the latter. And may all those to whom my reasons seem insufficient flock to the towns and become, what our country certainly needs, good citizens.
I prefer an oak-tree to a temple; grass to a brick pavement; wild flowers beneath a blue sky to exotic orchids under glass. I would walk where I do not risk being jostled, and, if I see fit to swing my arms, leap a ditch, or climb a tree, I want no gaping crowd, when I do so, to hedge me in. In short, I prefer living “next neighbor to Nature.” I am free to admit I know very little about the town. It has ever been a cheerless place to me: cold as charity in winter, hot as an oven in summer, and lacking nearly all those features that make the country well-nigh a paradise in spring and autumn. Vividly do I recall the saddest sight in my experience – that of seeing on the window-sill of a wretched tenement-house a broken flower-pot holding a single wilted buttercup, and near it was the almost fleshless face of a little child.
To be indifferent to the town is to be misanthropic, says one; and is affectation, says another. Perhaps so; I neither know nor care. It concerns me only to know it is the truth. None loves company better than I; but may I not choose my friends? If I prefer my neighbor’s dog to my neighbor, why not? I have not injured him, and, if harm comes of it, it is the dog that suffers. Have not most people far too many friends? Hoping to please all, you impress no one. You hold yourself up as a model, and the chances are you are secretly voted a bore. Certainly, he who lives where human neighbors are comparatively few and far between runs the least risk of social disasters.
But there is a deal in the world besides humanity worth living for; and I count it that the world was not made for man more than for his brute neighbors. They, too, and their haunts, are worthy of man’s contemplation.
Is it spring? I would catch the first whisperings of the soft south wind, and hug the precious secret known, save to the flowers, only to myself. And, as the days roll by, would watch the opening leaf-buds one by one, and greet the first blossoms peeping above the dead year’s scattered leaves. Is this a waste of time? If so, how is it, then, that the earliest spring flowers need but to be taken to town to set the people, one and all, agape? Is it nothing to brighten the dull eyes of the weary toilers in the city? Verily, a violet plucked in February preaches a refreshing sermon. And, yet again, when a faint shimmer of green tints the wide landscape, I would catch the earliest note of the returning bird as it floats across the wide meadow or rings with startling clearness through the wood. Perchance along the river’s shore I would hear the heaped ice crack and groan as the breath of Spring snaps its bonds and sends this rugged gift of Winter whirling to the sea.
Is it summer? I would catch the fragrant breeze at dawn, and mark the day’s beauteous progress step by step; gather good cheer from the merry thrushes’ song, and chirp as lustily as the robin though my task be long. Even at noontide, be it never so sultry, I would take heart from the brave field-sparrow’s hopeful tone, and lighten my labor with the anticipation of long hours of rest, when the world’s best gift comes to the fore – a moonlit summer night. Surely it is something to go hand in hand with the year’s ripening harvest, for Nature unfolds many a secret then, more strange than any fairy tale and more helpful than any fevered fancy of vague theorist. Armed with such knowledge, the countryman is well equipped to solve the problem of his life; and does not the toiler in the town ask more frequently than all others that fearful question, Is life worth living?
Is it autumn? The recompense for bearing the heat and burden of the year’s long day is ours. What joy to contemplate the heaped-up treasures of a fruitful summer, and know they are yours by right of a worthy conquest wherein no one suffered wrong! Nor is Nature less beautiful or less communicative now. Indeed, I hold her even more so. The ruddy tints of the forest leaf mark the completion of a summer’s labor to which we have given little heed as it progressed; but the woodlands invite us now to see how beautiful as well as useful a tree may be, and open their doors to “an annual exhibition” at which the world may well wonder. I would rather have the autumn landscape before my door than its counterfeit on canvas hung upon the wall. It is a comfort to know that, be the former ever so gaudy, it can not be said to be unnatural. Thank the stars! critics are dumb, whatever the garb Nature sees fit to put on.
Is it winter? In a broad sense the world is now at rest, but one need not sit down and mope because of it. It is a happy lot to be able to lead a contemplative life; the better if it alternates with periods of activity. And never a winter so dead as to be unsuggestive, not even though the rigor of an arctic one be upon us. If the familiar river no longer flows by, brimming, blue, and sparkling, flecked with the white sails of busy craft or fretted with the tireless splash of hissing steamers, what of the rugged highway it becomes for the wild life that braves the north wind and its attendant storms? Whoso studies the flocks of dainty sparrows that throng the wide, wind-swept wastes in winter should have courage enough to face the world at all seasons. What a pulpit becomes a cake of ice whereon a tree-sparrow is singing! and I have heard hundreds of warbling sparrows when the day was cold and dreary beyond description.
“How cheerless are the leafless oaks!” – these the strange words of a storm-bound visitor. Cheerless? just now, perhaps; but wait, and what a network of ruggedness will bar the deep blue sky, and let in the welcome sunshine where the gnarly roots afford a tempting seat! It is winter now, and as welcome the warmth and sunshine in this little nook as were the coolness and shade in the leafy month of June.
And what a merry fate is his who is snow-bound! It is something to know even a little of what Whittier has pictured for all time. Every feature of a great snow-storm is a living poem that thrills us; and ever dearest of all the open fire. “Back-log studies,” think of them! Everything, down to the breaking of paths to the highway and the assurance received at last that the world still lasts – everything, when snow-bound, cuts a deep notch in the tally-stick of your memory.
The townsman may greet me with a pitying smile and turn with disdain from the pleasures wherewith I am pleased; but nothing that he offers in their place has yet tempted me to forsake the idols of my early days. What though I am rough as the gnarly black-oak’s bark, have I not Nature for my next neighbor?
A Midsummer Outing
The gentle breeze that keeps the forest roof a-tremble whispers the promise of a cool day, but breaks it long before noontide. It is wise, therefore, to trust only to past experience, and, if you ramble at all during the dog-days, consider yourself in the tropics and act accordingly. Seek the shady nooks, and rest content to contemplate that which is nearest at hand. He has traveled much who spends an hour in the woods. The glamour of mystery rests as a veil over every tree and shrub, and who has yet shown why the wayside weeds are all so brilliant and beautiful? Where, except the damp shades of night, no cooling shadows ever fall, even the well-traveled highway is now resplendent with St. – John’s-wort, or white as with a snow-drift, where the blooming yarrow clusters; but the pitiless sun threatens the rambler here, and I turn to the little forest of sumach and locust which now nearly obliterates the boundaries of a long-neglected pasture. Everywhere is outspread the luxuriance of the tropics. Acres of lilies, ruddy and golden, set in a cloud of tall meadow-rue; and this wealth of gorgeous bloom upon which the eyes might feast the summer long, is hedged by a glossy thicket of smilax, broken here and there only to give place to a no less rank growth of pink roses. My neighbors hold the place a disgrace to its owner, but I have long since cut the word “weed” from my vocabulary.
In midsummer, it is too much like cataloguing to scan over-closely one’s surroundings. General impressions are all that one should aim at, and not fret if many a flower or bird should escape notice. When it is ninety in the shade, it is well to carry even a light load of thoughts. Lilies and yarrow, for instance, are enough for a hot July morning, and I am quite content to have further details go to those botanists, fearful bores, who
“Love not the flower they pluck, and know it not,
And all their botany is Latin names.”
Probably there was waving lizard-tail; I know there was purple milkweed; but if there were a host of lesser growths, it availed nothing. I was seated in a bit of shade, and from my cozy nook looked out, at my leisure, upon acres of lilies; and when their fiery tints proved too bright for such a day, I refreshed my sight by turning to the yarrow, on my left, or that daintiest of blooming shrubs, tall meadow-rue. Is this too objectless a way to spend the summer? Should an outing have higher aims? Various comments that reach me imply that view, but I enter a plea for such laziness. Whoso contemplates a flower logically, and sees not only it, but all that it represents, has given his brain but little rest, though he may never have moved a finger. A fig for the loud-mouthed chatter of non-productive busy-bodies!
It was not long before the fact became evident that this sea of lilies was the pathless highway of a busy world. Bees, wasps, and many a creature akin to them hurried by, tarrying but for a moment here and there, ever buzzing their displeasure or humming sweet satisfaction as on they rush. As in the human world, success and want of it were the essence of the steady ramble of that insect metropolis.
Though long I waited, not a bird came near. The kingbirds, that are held to be such foes of the honey-bees, were not to be seen, nor any fly-catchers came in view. Afar off in the shady copse I could hear the wood-pee-wee lisp its languid notes, and nearer a field-sparrow trilled its winsome lay, but neither dared venture to the open meadow. It was the insects’ paradise for the time, and I must confess soon became monotonous. But I struggled against tiring of the wild bees’ hum, and hoped, if nothing more tasteful offered, I might gather a bit of patience. If dished up daintily, perhaps it can be swallowed with a smiling countenance, but the bare drug, in fly-time, rouses a rebellion.
I singled out the nearest lily, and armed with my field-glass became statistician. The novelty wore off directly: it was too like work. The procession of bees and bee-like flies that visited that one flower was not to be counted like city street parades. The bees marched in every direction, and the lily was simply the hub of a wheel with innumerable spokes. Soon, however, the monotony was broken and my languishing interest revived. There was a commotion in this particular nook of lilydom. I cautiously drew near, and found a noisy humming-bird; then nearer, and found it no bird at all, but a clear-winged sphinx, and was not ashamed to find I had made so great a mistake at the outset. There is no great harm done in jumping at a conclusion, if we follow it up and verify or correct the original impression. Certainly at a little distance the resemblance is very marked. On its appearance every near-by insect seemed to take umbrage at the presence of the “clear-wing,” and the volume of sound was largely increased. There was a change from a contented hum to an angry buzz. This change was readily brought about I found by agitating the lilies with a switch, and so I realized, more clearly than ever before, how by the increased velocity of the wings’ movements an insect would express its emotions. For a time I forgot the heat and the glare of the noontide sun, and, walking to and fro, I roused at will an angry roar from thousands of disturbed bees, or, by remaining quiet, allowed it to settle into the drowsy hum of contentment.
But the unprotected tropic of that field of lilies proved too great a strain, and I was glad to seek the shelter of the woods. And what a change is wrought by a few degrees of temperature! Here I found the humming-birds in propriæ personæ, but they would not hum or buzz as I drew near or retreated, and proved to be veritable commonplaces, although I am sure their nest was very near. Disgusted with their unsuggestiveness, I went home, and there followed up the subject, so far as these birds are concerned. Covering one side of a porch is a thrifty trumpet creeper, now in full bloom. Here come the humming-birds continually, morning, noon, and night, and here I heard their angry buzz, and could see it, too, I think, in the motion of their wings. It needed only a little irritation to make them buzz angrily; but this is not their only means of making themselves heard. They can squeak quite loudly, and very generally do, if the flower they alight upon or actually enter, is not quite to their satisfaction. I used to think that the wrens were the quickest tempered of all our birds, but probably the humming-birds are their equals in this respect. This I learned from a pair of nesting birds, but to-day, this terrible, tropical July day, I had the other fact impressed upon me, that not alone do insects express their feelings by the movements of the wings; it is true also of the humming-bird.