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LATE SUMMER NOTES ON this
bright
morning I am passing fields and kitchen gardens that I have not seen
since a
month ago. Then the fields were newly mown stubble-fields, such as all
men who
knew anything of the luxury of a barefooted boyhood must have in vivid
remembrance.
(How gingerly, with what a sudden slackening of the pace, we walked
over them,
if circumstances made such a venture necessary, —in pursuit of a lost
ball, or
on our way to the swimming-hole, — setting the foot down softly and
stepping
high! I can see the action at this minute, as plainly as I see yonder
fence-post.) Now the first thing that strikes the eye is the lively
green of
the aftermath. It looks as soft as a velvet carpet. I remember what I
used to
hear in haying time, that cattle like the second crop best. I should
think they
would. Grass is
man's
patient friend. Directly or indirectly, we may say, he subsists upon
it. Nay,
the Scripture itself declares as much, in one of its most familiar
texts. It is
good to see it so quick to recover from the cruel work of the scythe,
so
responsive to the midsummer rains, its color so deep, its leaves so
full of
sap. It is this spirit of hopefulness, this patience under injury,
that makes
shaven lawns possible. As to the
beauty of
grass, no man appreciates it, I suppose, unless he has lived where
grass does
not grow. “When I go back to New England,” said an exile in Florida, “I
will
ask for no garden. Let me have grass about the house, and I can do
without
roses.” The
century ends
with an apple year; and every tree is in the fashion. The old, the
decrepit,
the solitary, not one of them all but got the word in season; as there
is no
woman in Christendom but learns somehow, before it is too late, whether
sleeves
are to be worn loose or tight. Along the roadside, in the swamp, in the
orchard, everywhere the story is the same. Apple trees are all
freemasons. This
hollow shell of a trunk, with one last battered limb keeping it alive,
received
its cue with the rest. In the
orchard,
where the trees are younger and more pliable, a man would hardly know
them for
the same he saw there in May and June; so altered are they in shape, so
smoothly rounded at the top, so like Babylonian willows in the droop
of the
branches. Baldwins are turning red — greenish red — and russets are
already
rusty. “Yes,” says the owner of the orchard, “and much good will it do
me.”
Apples are an “aggravating crop,” he declares. “First there are none;
and then
there are so many that you cannot sell them.” Human nature is never
satisfied;
and, for one, I think it seldom has reason to be. A
bobolink, which
seems to be somewhere overhead, drops a few notes in passing. “I am
off,” he
says. “Sorry to go, but I know where there is a rice-field.” From the
orchard
come the voices of bluebirds and kingbirds. 'Not a bird is in song;
and what
is more melancholy, the road and the fields are thick with English
sparrows. Now I stop
at the
smell of growing corn, which is only another kind of grass, though the
farmer
may not suspect the fact, and perhaps would not believe you if you told
him of
it; more than he would believe you if you told him that clover is not
grass. He
and his cow know better. A queer set these botanists, who get their
notions
from books! Corn or grass, here grow some acres of it, well tasseled
(“all
tosselled out”), with the wind stirring the leaves to make them shine.
Does the
odor, with which the breeze is loaded, come from the blossoms, or from
the
substance of the plant itself? A new question for me. I climb the fence
and put
my nose to one of the tassels. No, it is not in them, I think. It must
be in
the stalk and leaves; and I adopt this opinion the more readily because
the
odor itself — the memory of which is part of every country boy's
inheritance —
is like that of a vegetable rather than of a flower, a smell rather
than a
perfume. I seem to recall that the stalk smelled just so when we cut it
into
lengths for cornstalk fiddles; and the nose, as everyone must have
remarked,
has a good memory, for the reason, probably, that it is so near the
brain. I turn the
corner,
and go from the garden to the wild. First, however, I rest for a few
minutes
under a wide-branching oak opposite the site of a vanished house. You
would
know there had been a house here at some time, even if you did not see
the
cellar-hole, by the old maid's pinks along the fence. How fresh they
look! And
how becomingly they blush! They are worthy of their name. Age cannot
wither
them. Less handsome than carnations, if you will, but faithful,
home-loving souls;
not requiring to be waited upon, but given rather to waiting upon
others. Like
mayweed and catnip, they are what I have heard called “folksy plants;”
though
on second thought I should rather say “homey.” There is something of
the cat
about them; a kind of local constancy; they stay by the old place, let
the
people go where they will. Probably they would grow in front of a new
house, —
even a Queen Anne cottage, so called, — if necessity were laid upon
them, but
who could imagine it? It would be shameful to subject them to such
indignity.
They are survivals, livers in the past, lovers of things as they were,
charter
members, I should say, of the Society of Colonial Dames. As I come
to the
edge of the swamp I see a leaf move, and by squeaking draw into sight a
redstart. The pretty creature peeps at me furtively, wondering what new
sort of
man it can be that makes noises of that kind. To all appearance she is
very
desirous not to be seen; yet she spreads her tail every few seconds so
as to
display its bright markings. Probably the action has grown to be
habitual and,
as it were, automatic. A bird may be unconsciously coquettish, I
suppose, as
well as a woman or a man. It is a handsome tail, anyhow. Somewhere
just
behind me a red-eyed vireo is singing in a peculiar manner; repeating
his
hackneyed measure with all his customary speed, — forty or fifty times
a
minute, — but with no more than half his customary voice, as if his
thoughts
were elsewhere. I wish he would sing so always. It would be an easy way
of
increasing his popularity. Not far
down the
road are three roughly dressed men, — of the genus tramp, if I read the
signs
aright, — coming toward me; and I notice with pleasure that when they
reach the
narrow wooden bridge over the brook they turn aside, as by a common
impulse, to
lean over the rail and look down into the water. When I get there I
shall do
the same thing. So will every man that comes along, unless he happens
to be on
“business.” Running
water is
one of the universal parables, appealing to something primitive and
ineradicable in human nature. Day and night it preaches — sermons
without
words. It is every man's friend. The most stolid find it good company.
For that
reason, largely, men love to fish. They are poets without knowing it.
They
have never read a line of verse since they outgrew Mother Goose; they
never
consciously admire a landscape; they care nothing for a picture,
unless it is
a caricature, or tells a story; but they cannot cross moving water
without
feeling its charm. Well, in
that sense
of the word, I too am a poet. The tramps and I have met and passed each
other,
and I am on the bridge. The current is almost imperceptible (like the
passage
of time), and the black water is all a tangle of cresses and other
plants.
Lucky bugs dart hither and thither upon its surface, quick to start and
quick
to stop (quick to quarrel, also, — like butterflies, — so that two of
them can
hardly meet without a momentary set-to), full of life, and, for
anything that I
know, full of thought; true poets, perhaps, in ways of their own; for
why
should man be so narrow-minded as to assume that his way is of
necessity the
only one? On either
side of
the brook, as it winds through the swamp, are acres of the stately Joe
Pye
weed, or purple boneset, one of the tallest of herbs. I am beginning to
think
well of its color, — which is something like what ladies know as
“crushed
strawberry,” if I mistake not, — though I used to look upon it rather
disdainfully and call it faded. The plant would be better esteemed in
that
regard, I dare say, if it did not so often invite comparison with the
cardinal
flower. I note it as one of the favorites of the milkweed butterfly. Here on
the very
edge of the brook is the swamp loosestrife, its curving stems all
reaching for
the water, set with rosy bloom. My attention is drawn to it by the
humming of
bees, a busy, contented, content-producing sound. How different from
the hum of
the factory that I passed an hour ago, through the open windows of
which I saw
men hurrying over “piece-work,” every stroke like every other, every
man a
machine, or part of a machine, rather, for doing one thing. I wonder
whether
the dreariness of the modern “factory system” may not have had
something to do
with the origin and rapid development of our nineteenth-century breed
of
peripatetic thieves and beggars. Above the
music of
the bees I hear, of a sudden, a louder hum. “A hummingbird,” I say, and
turn to
look at a jewel-weed. Yes, the bird is there, trying the blossoms one
after
another. Then she drops to rest upon an alder twig (always a dead one)
directly
under my nose, where I see her darting out her long tongue, which
flashes in
the sunlight. I say “she.” She has a whitish throat, and is either a
female or
a male of the present season. Did any one ever see a hummingbird
without a
thrill of pleasure? Not I. As I go on I note, half
sadly, half gladly, some
tokens of waning summer; especially a few first blossoms of two of the
handsomest
of our blue asters, lævis
and patens. Soon the
dusty goldenrod will be
out, and then, whatever the almanac-makers may say, autumn will have
come.
Every dry roadside will publish the fact.
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