The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 18, No. 110, December, 1866

The immortal flowers,—a child's story.

"He looked as if he had been standing up thirty years against a northeast storm." Description of an old mate of a vessel, by Pike.

Death possesses a good deal of real estate, namely, the graveyards in every town. Of late years, too, he has pleasure-grounds, as at Mount Auburn and elsewhere.

Corwin is going to Lynn; Oliver proposes to walk thither with him. "No," says Corwin, "I don't want you. You take great, long steps; or, if you take short ones, 'tis all hypocrisy. And, besides, you keep humming all the time."

May 18, 1848.—Decay of the year has already commenced. I saw a dandelion gone to seed, this afternoon, in the Great Pasture.

Words, so innocent and powerless as they are, as standing in a dictionary, how potent for good and evil they become, in the hands of one who knows how to combine them.

Captain B– tells a story of an immense turtle which he saw at sea, on a voyage to Batavia,—so long, that the look-out at the mast-head mistook it for a rock. The ship passed close to it, and it was apparently longer than the long-boat, "with a head bigger than any dog's head you ever see," and great prickles on his back a foot long. Arriving at Batavia, he told the story, and an old pilot exclaimed, "What! have you seen Bellysore Tom?" It seems that the pilots had been acquainted with this turtle as many as twelve years, and always found him in the same latitude. They never did him any injury, but were accustomed to throw him pieces of meat, which he received in good part, so that there was a mutual friendship between him and the pilots. Old Mr. L–, in confirmation of the story, asserted that he had often heard other shipmasters speak of the same, monster; but he being a notorious liar, and Captain B– an unconscionable spinner of long yarns and travellers' tales, the evidence is by no means perfect. The pilots estimated his length at not less than twenty feet.

The Grey Property Case. Mrs. Grey and her child three years old were carried off by the Indians in 1756 from the Tuscarora valley in Pennsylvania. The father, going on a campaign in search of them, was exhausted by fatigue, and came home only to die, bequeathing half his property to his child, if living. The mother, his wife, being redeemed, and there being several children who had been captive to the Indians to be seen at Philadelphia, went thither to see and recognize her little three years' old daughter, from whom, in her captivity, she had been separated. Her child proved not to be among the little captives; but, in order to get possession of her husband's property, she claimed another child, of about the same age. This child grew up gross, ugly, awkward, a "big, black, uncomely Dutch lump, not to be compared to the beautiful Fanny Grey," and moreover turned out morally bad. The real daughter was said to have been married, and settled in New York, "a fine woman, with a fair house and fair children." At all events, she was never recovered by her relatives, and her existence seems to have been doubtful. In 1789, the heirs of John Grey, the father, became aware that the claimed and recovered child was not the child that had been lost. They commenced a lawsuit for the recovery of John Grey's property, consisting of a farm of three or four hundred acres. This lawsuit lasted till 1834, when it was decided against the identity of the recovered child. (Sherman Day's Hist. Coll. of Penn.)

Bethuel Vincent, carried by the Indians to Canada, being then recently married. A few years after, a rough-looking man fell in with a sleighing party at a tavern, and inquired if they knew anything of Mrs. Vincent. She was pointed out to him. He gave her news of her husband, and, joining the sleighing party, began to grow familiar with Mrs. Vincent, and wished to take her upon his lap. She resisted,—but behold! the rough-looking stranger was her long-lost husband. There are good points in this story. (Ibid.)

Among the survivors of a wreck are two bitter enemies. The parties, having remained many days without food, cast lots to see who shall be killed as food for the rest. The lot falls on one of the enemies. The other may literally eat his heart!

October 13.—During this moon, I have two or three evenings sat for some time in our dining-room without light except from the coal fire and the moon. Moonlight produces a very beautiful effect in the room, falling so white upon the carpet, and showing its figures so distinctly, and making all the room so visible, and yet so different from a morning or noontide visibility. There are all the familiar things, every chair, the tables, the couch, the bookcase, all that we are accustomed to see in the daytime; but now it seems as if we were remembering them through a lapse of years, rather than seeing them with the immediate eye. A child's shoe, the doll, sitting in her little wicker-carriage, all objects that have been used or played with during the day, though still as familiar as ever, are invested with something like strangeness and remoteness. I cannot in any measure express it. Then the somewhat dim coal fire throws its unobtrusive tinge through the room,—a faint ruddiness upon the wall,—which has a not unpleasant effect in taking from the colder spirituality of the moonbeams. Between both these lights such a medium is created that the room seems just fit for the ghosts of persons very dear, who have lived in the room with us, to glide noiselessly in and sit quietly down, without affrighting us. It would be like a matter of course to look round and find some familiar form in one of the chairs. If one of the white curtains happen to be drawn before the windows, the moonlight makes a delicate tracery with the branches of the trees, the leaves somewhat thinned by the progress of autumn, but still pretty abundant. It is strange how utterly I have failed to give anything of the effect of moonlight in a room.

The firelight diffuses a mild, heart-warm influence through the parlor, but is scarcely visible, unless you particularly look for it; and then you become conscious of a faint tinge upon the ceiling, of a reflected gleam from the mahogany furniture, and, if your eyes happen to fall on the looking-glass, deep within it you perceive the glow of the burning anthracite. I hate to leave such a scene; and when retiring to bed, after closing the door, I reopen it again and again, to peep back at the warm, cheerful, solemn repose, the white light, the faint ruddiness, the dimness,—all like a vision, and which makes me feel as if I were in a conscious dream.

The first manufacture of the kind of candy called Gibraltar rock, for a child's story; to be told in a romantic, mystic, marvellous style.

An angel comes from heaven, commissioned to gather up, put into a basket, and carry away everything good that is not improved by mankind, for whose benefit it was intended. The angel distributes these good things where they will be appreciated.

Annals of a kitchen.

A benevolent person going about the world and endeavoring to do good to everybody; in pursuance of which object, for instance, he gives, a pair of spectacles to a blind man, and does all such ill-suited things.

Beautiful positions of statues to one intellectually blind.

A man, arriving at the extreme point of old age, grows young again at the same pace at which he has grown old; returning upon his path, throughout the whole of life, and thus taking the reverse view of matters. Methinks it would give rise to some odd concatenations.

Little gnomes, dwelling in hollow teeth. They find a tooth that has been plugged with gold, and it serves them as a gold mine.

The wizard, Michael Scott, used to give a feast to his friends, the dishes of which were brought from the kitchens of various princes in Europe, by devils at his command. "Now we will try a dish from the King of France's kitchen," etc. A modern sketch might take a hint from this, and the dishes be brought from various restaurants.

"Pixilated,"—a Marblehead word, meaning bewildered, wild about any matter. Probably derived from Pixy, a fairy.

For a child's story,—imagine all sorts of wonderful playthings.

Sir Walter Raleigh, Sir Thomas More, Algernon Sidney, or some other great man, on the eve of execution, to make reflections on his own head,—considering and addressing it in a looking-glass.

March 16, 1849.—J– … speaking of little B. P–: "I will hug him, so that not any storm can come to him."

A story, the principal personage of which shall seem always on the point of entering upon the scene, but never shall appear.

In the "New Statistical Account of Scotland," (Vol. I.,) it is stated that a person had observed, in his own dairy, that the milk of several cows, when mixed together and churned, produced much less butter proportionably than the milk of a single cow; and that the greater the number of cows which contributed their milk, the smaller was the comparative product. Hence, this person was accustomed to have the milk of each cow churned separately.

A modern magician to make the semblance of a human being, with two laths for legs, a pumpkin for a head, etc., of the rudest and most meagre materials. Then a tailor helps him to finish his work, and transforms this scarecrow into quite a fashionable figure. At the end of the story, after deceiving the world for a long time, the spell should be broken, and the gray dandy be discovered to be nothing but a suit of clothes, with a few sticks inside of them. All through his seeming existence as a human being there shall be some characteristics, some tokens, that to the man of close observation and insight betray him to be a thing of mere talk and clothes, without heart, soul, or intellect. And so this wretched old creature shall become the symbol of a large class.

The golden sands that may sometimes be gathered (always, perhaps, if we know how to seek for them) along the dry bed of a torrent adown which passion and feeling have foamed, and passed away. It is good, therefore, in mature life, to trace back such torrents to their source.

The same children who make the little snow image shall plant dry sticks, etc., and they shall take root and grow in mortal flowers, etc.

Monday, September 17.—Set out on a journey to Temple, N.H., with E.F. M–, to visit his father. Started by way of Boston, in the half past ten train, and took the Lowell and Nashua Railroad at twelve, as far as Danforth's Corner, about fifty miles, and thence in stage-coach to Milford, four miles farther, and in a light wagon to Temple, perhaps twelve miles farther. During the latter drive, the road gradually ascended, with tracts of forest land alongside, and latterly a brook, which we followed for several miles, and finally found it flowing through General M–'s farm. The house is an old country dwelling, in good condition, standing beside the road, in a valley surrounded by a wide amphitheatre of high hills. There is a good deal of copse and forest on the estate, high hills of pasture land, old, cultivated fields, and all such pleasant matters. The General sat in an easy-chair in the common room of the family, looking better than when in Salem, with an air of quiet, vegetative enjoyment about him, scarcely alive to outward objects. He did his best to express a hospitable pleasure at seeing me; but did not succeed, so that I could distinguish his words. He loves to sit amidst the bustle of his family, and is dimly amused by what is going forward; is pleased, also, to look out of the open window and see the poultry—a guinea-hen, turkeys, a peacock, a tame deer, etc.—which feed there. His mind sometimes wanders, and he hardly knows where he is; will not be convinced that he is anywhere but at Salem, until they drag his chair to a window from which he can see a great elm-tree of which he is very fond, standing in front of the house. Then he acknowledges that he must be at the farm, because, he says, they never could have transplanted that tree. He is pleased with flowers, which they bring him,—a kind-hearted old man. The other day a live partridge was sent him, and he ordered it to be let go, because he would not suffer a life to be taken to supply him with a single meal. This tenderness has always been characteristic of the old soldier. His birthplace was within a few miles of this spot,—the son and descendant of husbandmen,—and character and fortune together have made him a man of history.

This is a most hospitable family, and they live in a style of plain abundance, rural, but with traits of more refined modes. Many domestics, both for farm and household work. Two unmarried daughters; an old maiden aunt; an elderly lady, Mrs. C. of Newburyport, visiting; a young girl of fifteen, a connection of the family, also visiting, and now confined to her chamber by illness. Ney, a spaniel of easy and affable address, is a prominent personage, and generally lies in the parlor or sits beside the General's chair; always ready, too, to walk out with anybody so inclined. Flora, a little black pony, is another four-footed favorite. In the warm weather, the family dine in a large room on one side of the house, rough and rustic looking, with rude beams overhead. There were evergreens hanging on the walls, and the figures 1776, also in evergreen, and a national flag suspended in one corner,—the blue being made out of old homespun garments, the red stripes out of some of the General's flannel wrappings, and the eagle copied from the figure on a half-dollar,—all being the handiwork of the ladies, on occasion of the last Fourth of July. It is quite a pleasant dining-hall; and while we were eating fruit, the deer, which is of a small and peculiar breed from the South, came and thrust its head into the open window, looking at us with beautiful and intelligent eyes. It had smelt the fruit, and wished to put in its claim for a share.

Tuesday morning, before breakfast, E– and I drove three or four miles, to the summit of an intervening ridge, from which we had a wide prospect of hill and dale, with Monadnock in the midst. It was a good sight, although the atmosphere did not give the hills that aspect of bulk and boldness which it sometimes does. This part of the country is but thinly inhabited, and the dwellings are generally small. It is said that, in the town of Temple, there are more old cellars, where dwellings have formerly stood, than there are houses now inhabited. The town is not far from a hundred years old, but contains now only five or six hundred inhabitants. The enterprising young men emigrate elsewhere, leaving only the least energetic portions to carry on business at home. There appear to be but few improvements, the cultivated fields being of old date, smooth with long cultivation. Here and there, however, a tract newly burned over, or a few acres with the stumps still extant. The farm-houses all looked very lonesome and deserted to-day, the inhabitants having gone to the regimental muster at New Ipswich.

As we drove home, E– told a story of a child who was lost, seventy or eighty years ago, among the woods and hills. He was about five years old, and had gone with some work-people to a clearing in the forest, where there was a rye-field, at a considerable distance from the farm-house. Getting tired, he started for home alone, but did not arrive. They made what search for him they could that night, and the next day the whole town turned out, but without success. The day following, many people from the neighboring towns took up the search, and on this day, I believe, they found the child's shoes and stockings, but nothing else. After a while, they gave up the search in despair; but for a long time, a fortnight or three weeks or more, his mother fancied that she heard the boy's voice in the night, crying, "Father! father!" One of his little sisters also heard this voice; but people supposed that the sounds must be those of some wild animal. No more search was made, and the boy never was found.

But it is not known whether it was the next autumn, or a year or two after, some hunters came upon traces of the child's wanderings among the hills, in a different direction from the previous search, and farther than it was supposed he could have gone. They found some little houses, such as children build of twigs and sticks of wood, and these the little fellow had probably built for amusement in his lonesome hours. Nothing, it seems to me, was ever more strangely touching than this incident,—his finding time for childish play, while wandering to his death in these desolate woods,—and then pursuing his way again, till at last he lay down to die on the dark mountain-side. Finally, on a hill which E– pointed out to me, they found a portion of the child's hair adhering to the overthrown trunk of a tree; and this is all that was ever found of him. But it was supposed that the child had subsisted, perhaps for weeks, on the berries and other sustenance such as a forest-child knew how to find in the woods. I forgot to say, above, that a piece of birch or other bark was found, which he appeared to have gnawed. It was thought that the cry of "Father! father!" which the mother and little sister heard in the night-time, was really the little fellow's voice, then within hearing of his home; but he wandered away again, and at last sank down, and Death found him and carried him up to God. His bones were never found; and it was thought that the foxes or other wild animals had taken his little corpse, and scattered the bones, and that, dragging the body along, one lock of his flaxen hair had adhered to a tree.

I asked a physician whether it were possible that a child could live so long in the woods; and he thought it was, and said that children often show themselves more tenacious of life than grown people, and live longer in a famine. This is to me a very affecting story; and it seems to be felt as such by the people of the country. The little boy's parents, and his brothers and sisters, who probably lived to maturity or old age, are all forgotten; but he lives in tradition, and still causes wet eyes to strangers, as he did to me.

To account for the singularity of his not having been found by such numbers as took up the search, it is suggested that he was perhaps frightened, and perhaps concealed himself when he heard the noise of people making their way through the forest, people being apt to do so, when they get mazed with wandering in the woods. But it is strange that old hunters, with dogs, should have failed to find him. However, there is the fact.

After breakfast (a broiled chicken and excellent coffee) I walked out by myself. The brook would be a beautiful plaything for my children, and I wish I had such a one for them. As I looked down into it from the bridge, I saw little fish, minnows, small chubs, and perch sporting about and rising eagerly to anything that was thrown in. Returning towards the house, I encountered an ass, who seemed glad to see me, in its donkeyish way. Afterwards, E– and I took a ramble among some of his old haunts, which took up pretty much all the remainder of the forenoon. After dinner we drove to New Ipswich, expecting to see the closing scenes of the muster, but found the regiment dismissed, and the spectators taking their departure. We visited a cousin of E–, and took tea; borrowed two great-coats (it having grown from summer to autumn very rapidly since nightfall), and drove home, six miles or thereabouts. A new moon and the long twilight gleamed over the first portion of our drive, and then the northern lights kindled up and shot flashes towards the zenith as we drove along, up hill and down dale, and most of the way through dense woods.

The next morning, after breakfast, we got into our wagon and returned to Milford, thence by stage to Danforth's Corner, thence to Boston by rail. Nothing noteworthy occurred, except that we called on Mr. Atherton and lady at Nashua. We reached Boston at three o'clock. I visited the Town and Country Club, and read the papers and journals, took the three quarters past five train and reached home at half past six.

In the new statistical account of Scotland, in the volume about the Hebrides, it is stated that a child was born, and lived to the age of, I think, two years, with an eye in the back of its head, in addition to the usual complement in front. It could evidently see with this eye; for when its cap was drawn down over it, it would thrust it upward.

October 27.—Mrs.– gave a black woman six dollars for a dress of pine-apple cloth, sixteen yards, perhaps worth ten times as much,—the owner being ignorant of the value.

To inherit a great fortune.—To inherit a great misfortune.

Reflections in a mud-puddle;—they might be pictures of life in a mean street of a city.

February 16, 1850.—The sunbeam that comes through a round hole in the shutter of a darkened room, where a dead man sits in solitude.

The hoary periwig of a dandelion gone to seed.

Lenox, July 14, 1850.—Language,—human language,—after all, is but little better than the croak and cackle of fowls, and other utterances of brute nature, sometimes not so adequate.

The queer gestures and sounds of a hen looking about for a place to deposit her egg, her self-important gait, the sideway turn of her head and cock of her eye, as she pries into one and another nook, croaking all the while, evidently with the idea that the egg in question is the most important thing that has been brought to pass since the world began. A speckled black and white and tufted hen of ours does it to most ludicrous perfection.

July 25.—As I sit in my study, with the windows open, the occasional incident of the visit of some winged creature,—wasp, hornet, or bee,—entering out of the warm, sunny atmosphere, soaring round the room with large sweeps, then buzzing against the glass, as not satisfied with the place, and desirous of getting out. Finally, the joyous uprising curve with which, coming to the open part of the window, it emerges into the cheerful glow outside.

August 4.—Dined at hotel with J.T. Fields. Afternoon drove with him to Pittsfield, and called on Dr. Holmes.

August 5.—Drove with Fields to Stockbridge, being thereto invited by Mr. Field of Stockbridge, in order to ascend Monument Mountain. Found at Mr. Field's, Dr. Holmes, Mr. Duyckink of New York; also Mr. Cornelius Matthews and Herman Melville. Ascended the mountain,—that is to say, Mrs. Fields and Miss Jenny Field, Mr. Field and Mr. J.T. Fields, Dr. Holmes, Mr. Duyckink, Matthews, Melville, Mr. Harry Sedgwick, and I,—and were caught in a shower. Dined at Mr. Field's. Afternoon, under guidance of J.F. Headley, the party scrambled through the Ice Glen. Left Stockbridge and arrived at home about eight P.M.

August 7.—Messrs. Duyckink, Matthews, and Melville called in the forenoon. Gave them a couple of bottles of Mr. Mansfield's champagne, and walked down to the lake with them. At twilight Mr. Edwin P. Whipple and wife called from Lenox.

August 19.—Monument Mountain, in the early sunshine; its base enveloped in mist, parts of which are floating in the sky; so that the great hill looks really as if it were founded on a cloud. Just emerging from the mist is seen a yellow field of rye, and above that, forest.

August 24.—In the afternoons, this valley in which I dwell seems like a vast basin filled with golden sunshine, as with wine.

August 31.—J.R. Lowell called in the evening. September 1st, he called with Mrs. Lowell in the forenoon, on their way to Stockbridge or Lebanon, to meet Miss Bremer.

September 2.—"When I grow up," quoth J–, in illustration of the might to which he means to attain,—"when I grow up, I shall be two men!"

September 3.—Foliage of maples begins to change.

In a wood, a heap or pile of logs and sticks that had been cut for firewood, and piled up square, in order to be carted away to the house when convenience served, or rather to be sledded in sleighing-time. But the moss had accumulated on them, and, leaves falling over them from year to year, and decaying, a kind of soil had quite covered them, although the softened outline of the woodpile was perceptible in the green mound. It was perhaps fifty years, perhaps more, since the woodman had cut and piled these logs and sticks, intending them for his winter fire. But he probably needs no fire now. There was something strangely interesting in this simple circumstance. Imagine the long-dead woodman, and his long-dead wife and family, and one old man who was a little child when the wood was cut, coming back from their graves, and trying to make a fire with this mossy fuel.

September 19.—Lying by the lake yesterday afternoon, with my eyes shut, while the breeze and sunshine were playing together on the water, the quick glimmer of the wavelets was perceptible through my closed eyelids.

October 13.—A cool day,—the wind northwest, with a general prevalence of dull gray clouds over the sky, but with brief, sudden glimpses of sunshine. The foliage having its autumn hues, Monument Mountain looks like a headless Sphinx, wrapt in a rich Persian shawl. Yesterday, through a diffused mist, with the sun shining on it, it had the aspect of burnished copper. The sun-gleams on the hills are peculiarly magnificent, just in these days.

October 13.—One of the children, drawing a cow on the blackboard, says, "I'll kick this leg out a little more,"—a very happy energy of expression, completely identifying herself with the cow; or, perhaps, as the cow's creator, conscious of full power over its movements.

October 14.—The brilliancy of the foliage has past its acme; and, indeed, it has not been so magnificent this season as usual, owing to the gradual approaches of cool weather, and there having been slight frosts instead of severe ones. There is still a shaggy richness on the hillsides.

October 16.—A morning mist, filling up the whole length and breadth of the valley, between the house and Monument Mountain, the summit of the mountain emerging. The mist reaches to perhaps a hundred yards of me, so dense as to conceal everything, except that near its hither boundary a few ruddy or yellow tree-tops rise up, glorified by the early sunshine, as is likewise the whole mist-cloud. There is a glen between our house and the lake, through which winds a little brook, with pools and tiny waterfalls, over the great roots of trees. The glen is deep and narrow, and filled with trees; so that, in the summer, it is all in dark shadow. Now, the foliage of the trees being almost entirely of a golden yellow, instead of being obscure, the glen is absolutely full of sunshine, and its depths are more brilliant than the open plain or the mountain-tops. The trees are sunshine, and, many of the golden leaves having freshly fallen, the glen is strewn with light, amid which winds and gurgles the bright, dark little brook.

October 28.—On a walk yesterday forenoon, my wife and children gathered Houstonias. Before night there was snow, mingled with rain. The trees are now generally bare.

December 1.—I saw a dandelion in bloom near the lake, in a pasture by the brookside. At night, dreamed of seeing Pike.

December 19.—If the world were crumbled to the finest dust, and scattered through the universe, there would not be an atom of the dust for each star.