{"collection":"philosophy-ethics","full_text_available":true,"graph_url":"https://unchartedknowledge.5gfusion.net/v2/api/page/gutenberg_60872/graph","html_url":"https://unchartedknowledge.5gfusion.net/v2/page/gutenberg_60872","id":"gutenberg_60872","license":"Public Domain (US)","rights_basis":"gutenberg_metadata_copyright_false","source":"gutenberg","source_url":"https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/60872","summary":null,"tags":["American essays -- 20th century","Category: Essays, Letters & Speeches","Category: Philosophy & Ethics"],"text":"THE MAGICAL CHANCE\n\n\n\n\n  THE\n  MAGICAL CHANCE\n\n  BY\n  DALLAS LORE SHARP\n  AUTHOR OF \u201cTHE LAY OF THE LAND,\u201d \u201cTHE HILLS OF\n  HINGHAM,\u201d \u201cEDUCATION IN A DEMOCRACY,\u201d ETC.\n\n  [Illustration]\n\n  BOSTON AND NEW YORK\n  HOUGHTON MIFFLIN COMPANY\n  The Riverside Press Cambridge\n  1923\n\n\n\n\n  COPYRIGHT, 1923, BY DALLAS LORE SHARP\n\n  ALL RIGHTS RESERVED\n\n\n  The Riverside Press\n  CAMBRIDGE, MASSACHUSETTS\n  PRINTED IN THE U.S.A.\n\n\n\n\nCONTENTS\n\n\n     I. THE MAGICAL CHANCE                    1\n\n    II. THE RADIUM OF ROMANCE                39\n\n   III. THE HUNT FOR \u201cCOPY\u201d                  69\n\n    IV. THE DUTY TO DIG                     103\n\n     V. THE MAN AND THE BOOK                131\n\n    VI. A JANUARY SUMMER                    153\n\n   VII. AFTER THE LOGGERS                   173\n\n  VIII. WOODCHUCK LODGE AND LITERATURE      203\n\n\n\n\nTHE MAGICAL CHANCE\n\n\n\n\nCHAPTER I\n\nTHE MAGICAL CHANCE\n\n\n\n\nTHE MAGICAL CHANCE\n\n\n\n\nCHAPTER I\n\nTHE MAGICAL CHANCE\n\n\n\u201cWhat are you going to say to the college girls?\u201d my pretty niece\nasked, as we motored down the valley. She was being graduated this\nspring, and the snowy dogwoods and the purple Judas-trees against the\ntender hillsides were not so fresh, nor half so full of bloom, as she.\nBut they were gayer far than she.\n\n\u201cDon\u2019t tell them, uncle, how wonderful they are! How the world waits\nfor them! Don\u2019t say it, uncle! I have heard that sort of talk for these\nfour years, and here I am with nobody waiting for me; not fitted for\nanything; nothing to do; and as wonderful--as thirty cents!\u201d\n\nPoor thing!\n\nA few days before, I had seen an interview with the President of Yale,\nin which the young writer said he had read in a book that all the\ngreat devices had been invented; all the new lands explored; all the\ngreat deeds done--all the adventure and romance forever gone from life,\nand that only bread and butter remain with the odds against a young\nman\u2019s getting much of the butter.\n\nPoor thing!\n\nHave I been living fifty years--in America? or fifty cycles in\nCathay? I cannot still be young at fifty! nor can I be so old either\nas modern two-and-twenty! Youth is a dry tree, these days; a sad\nstate--particularly youth bent with the burden of an A.B. degree. Out\nof my fifty-odd years of existence I have taught college youth for\nthree-and-twenty, and never in all that time have they looked like\nplain bread and butter to me. If they are not adventure and romance,\nnot better stories, sweeter songs, mightier deeds than any yet\nrecorded, then I am no judge of story matter and the stuff of epic song.\n\nBut my pretty niece declares that she also knows a shoat when she sees\none; and she knows it is just pork. As for the college man of the\ninterview: he was not speaking by the book; out, rather, of the depths\nof his heart.\n\nIt is an evil thing to be born young into an old world!\n\nFor the world seems very old. Its face is covered with doubt, its heart\nis only ashes of burned-out fires. The River of Life which John saw\nhas dwindled into Spoon River; and his Book of Life is now a novel,\npiddling and prurient. But John also saw the Scarlet Woman--and that\nwas long ago! The world was ever much the same; ever in need of an\nApocalypse; and never more in need than now. My pretty niece, and the\nyoung man of the interview, are the world, and the college world at\nthat, the more\u2019s the pity. They are its skepticism, its materialism,\nits conventionalism, its fear and failure. They seem afraid to bid on\nlife, for fear it might be knocked off to them at something above par!\nThey do not dare. They won\u2019t take a chance. They would, of course, if\nthere _were_ chances; they would dare, if only one giant were still\nleft stalking through the land. The giants are gone!\n\nThe orator was celebrating the hundredth anniversary of Richard Henry\nDana, the author of \u201cTwo Years Before the Mast\u201d:\n\n  Life offered him a magical human chance and he took it. There was\n  something in him for which the decorous and conventional life of\n  Boston allowed no place in its scheme. \u201cTwo Years Before the Mast\u201d\n  belongs to the Literature of Escape.\n\nLife offered him a magical chance--as if he were a special case! So he\nwas. So is every boy. Who was this boy? and what were the circumstances\nunder which Life offered him this magical chance? He was a Bostonian\nto begin with, and that is bad enough; he was a Harvard undergraduate\nalso, which still further complicates the situation; and, besides, he\nwas a Dana! Here was a complex which should have staggered Life. Who\ncould escape from all of this? Leave that to Life. Up she comes boldly,\njust as if she expected the boy to take her offer. And he did take it.\nHe fell ill with some affliction of the eyes; and, going down to the\nBoston wharfs, shipped as a common sailor before the mast in the little\nbrig Pilgrim for a two years\u2019 trip around the Horn. And out of that\nescape from Boston and Harvard and the Danas, he brought back one of\nthe three greatest sea stories in literature--a book that all of Boston\nand Harvard and the Danas combined could never have written except for\nthis escape.\n\nThe question is: Does Life come along to-day, as then, and offer us, as\nit offered Dana, such a magical chance? Is there any escape for us?\n\nWe are not all Danas, and so we are certainly not worse off than\nhe was; but our circumstances are distinctly different, and rather\ndisquieting. This chance was given Dana far back in 1834, nearly one\nhundred years ago, when escape was possible, and when Dana was a boy.\nIt was a young world a hundred years ago, and full of adventure. One\ncould escape then because there was some place to escape into; but to\nround the Horn to-day is to land, not on wild Point Loma, but at San\nDiego, with the single exception of Monte Carlo, the most decorous and\nconventional city on the planet.\n\nPerhaps my niece and the college boy of the interview are right.\n\nAbout the time that Dana was escaping from Boston, a young man by the\nname of Henry David Thoreau tried to escape from Concord, of the same\nState. He had no deep-sea wharf, no brig like the Pilgrim, but, as\none must seize such things as are at hand in an escape, Thoreau took\na rowboat and the near-by river and started off. He rowed and rowed\nfor a week, and came to Concord, New Hampshire. Here he took to his\ndiary and wrote that there were no frontiers this way any longer. \u201cThis\ngeneration has come into the world fatally late for some enterprises.\nGo where we will on the surface of things, men have been there before\nus. We cannot have the pleasure of erecting the last house; that was\nlong ago set up in the suburbs of Astoria City, and our boundaries have\nliterally been run to the South Sea.\u201d\n\nBorn in 1817, more than a hundred years ago, and still born fatally\nlate! How late, then, was I born? and you, my son? and you, my pretty\nniece?\n\n  \u201cThe rainbow comes and goes,\n  And lovely is the rose,\n\nbut you and I have missed the early glory that hath passed forever from\nthe morning earth,\u201d she makes reply.\n\nBut I would say to her: It was ten years later, ten whole years after\nThoreau\u2019s tame adventure on the Merrimac, that gold was discovered in\nCalifornia. Here was a magical chance as late as the year \u2019Forty-Nine,\nand Life offered it to a young man of Providence and Brooklyn by the\nname of Bret Harte. He took it. There was something in him for which\nthe decorous and conventional round of these cities allowed no place in\ntheir scheme. He went into the gold-fields and brought out \u201cThe Luck\nof Roaring Camp,\u201d another piece of the Literature of Escape. Then my\nstudents answer: \u201cYes, but there are no more outcasts in Poker Flat,\nand whom are we to write about?\u201d\n\nAlas, \u2019tis true, they\u2019re in their graves, that gentle race of gamblers.\nWith the wind-flower and the violet they perished long ago, as literary\nmaterial. Eighteen-Forty-Nine will be having its hundredth anniversary\nsoon. But, some fifty years later, gold was struck again--this time\non the Yukon. Here was another magical chance. And there was a young\nfellow walking the streets of Boston along with me, literally begging\nbread with me from editorial door to editorial door, by the name of\nJack London. Life came up to us and offered us this magical chance,\nand Jack took it, bringing out of the Yukon a story called \u201cBuilding a\nFire\u201d which is surely a part of the immortal Literature of Escape.\n\n\u201cWell, what would he write about now?\u201d they ask. \u201cWhat has happened\nsince?\u201d\n\n\u201cPeary has found the North Pole,\u201d I reply.\n\n\u201cYes, and Amundsen, or somebody, has found the South Pole!\u201d they cry.\n\u201cAnd what\u2019s the use of living in a world of only two poles, and some\none finding both of them before we come along!\u201d\n\nThere is something in that. It is a bad sort of world that has only two\npoles. It should be stuck full of poles, one for each of us. But there\nare only two, and a flag flies from each of them; as a flag flies over\nevery terrestrial spot in between them: over Mount McKinley now; over\nthe River of Doubt now, so that we are stopped from singing, as once we\nsang,--\n\n  \u201cThere\u2019s one more river,\n  There\u2019s one more river to cross.\u201d\n\nThere is no more river to cross. Theodore Roosevelt crossed it. There\nis nothing to cross; no place to go where, on the surface of things,\nmen have not been there before us. Yes, yes, there is Mount Everest. No\none has yet stood on that peak; but there is an expedition climbing it,\ncamping to-day at about twenty-five thousand feet up, with only two or\nthree thousand feet more to go. And here we are in Hingham!\n\nIt looks bad. My young niece is possibly right, after all. East, west,\nnorth, south, where is a frontier? Where shall I go from here and find\nan escape?\n\nNot overland any longer, for even Thoreau could find no frontier this\nway; and not by sea now, for here comes John Masefield, poet and\nsailor, saying the frontier has disappeared from off the sea; that the\nclipper ship, the ship of dreams, has foundered and gone down; that you\ncan haunt the wharves these piping times of steam,\n\n  \u201cYet never see those proud ones swaying home,\n  With mainyards backed and bows acream with foam.\n\n         *       *       *       *       *\n\n  As once, long since, when all the docks were filled\n  With that sea beauty man has ceased to build.\u201d\n\nListen, now, for this is the message of the poem:\n\n  \u201cThey mark our passage as a race of men,\n  Earth will not see such ships again,--\u201d\n\nwhich makes me thank Heaven for my farm, where the same old romantic\nhoe remains about what it ever was--the first recorded wedding present.\n\nMr. Masefield\u2019s observations are dated 1912. Prior to that year real\nclipper ships rode the deep, and real romance. It was prior to 1839\nthat there were real frontiers and romance in the land, and a last\nhouse (a government lighthouse) still to be set up in the suburbs of\nAstoria City. Going a little farther back, we find that prior to 1491\n(B.C.), about the year 4000 according to the margin of the King James\nVersion, there were giants in the earth, and the stories in the Book of\nGenesis show that there were romances as well as giants in those days.\nBut, like Thoreau and Masefield, Moses was born fatally late. I feel\nsorry for Moses and my niece.\n\nLet us pause here for a sad brief moment in order to see just where\nMoses was when Life sought him out and proffered him a magical chance\nin the shape of a trip to Egypt. Where was Moses? and what was he\ndoing? To begin with, he was keeping goats, a fairly common occupation\nin those days, though rather a rare job now. But that was not all:\nMoses was keeping these goats for Jethro, his father-in-law. Now you\nbegin to get some inkling as to where Moses was. But this is not the\nworst of it: for Moses was keeping the goats for his father-in-law\non \u201cthe _back_ side of the desert.\u201d One would certainly say that the\n_front_ side of any desert would be far enough away, and sterile enough\nof romance, if one had to keep one\u2019s father-in-law\u2019s goats there; but\nto keep the goats of your father-in-law on the _back_ side of a desert\nis to be farther off than Hingham, or any place I know. And here was\nMoses when Life came upon him offering him an escape into Egypt.\n\nHe was born fatally late, Moses was, just like Thoreau and my niece. He\nmight have been one of my own college men, so like a college man\u2019s was\nhis answer!\n\n\u201cNo, no!\u201d he complained, \u201cI don\u2019t want to go down to Egypt. There is\nnothing doing down in Egypt. I\u2019m slow of speech; without imagination;\nand it\u2019s a hard job, anyway. Let me stay here and be goatherd to\nJethro, my father-in-law, and dream of the good old days of the giants,\nwhen men began to multiply upon the face of the earth, when the sons\nof God saw the daughters of men that they were fair. Ah!--there was\nsomething doing in those days!\u201d\n\nFrom Moses to Masefield the times have been fatally late. And so\nmine are, with the clipper ships, the frontiers, the giants, and the\ndaughters of men that are fair, all gone! But I seem to see them fair.\nI suppose I ought not, having been born so fatally late. And I wonder\nif I might not find a giant, too, if I should hunt? and a clipper ship?\nand a frontier? and even an escape from Hingham!\n\nLumber is still brought in boats to one of Hingham\u2019s old wharves, but\nthe rest of her wharves are deserted. Her citizens, who used to do\nbusiness in great waters, stop now in Hingham Harbor to catch smelts.\nChange and some decay one can see all about Hingham, but little chance\nof escape.\n\nDown at the foot of Mullein Hill, on which my house stands, there runs\na long, long trail awinding into that land of my dreams; but I ask:\nWhere does it cross the frontier? I have traveled it, going south, in\nmy Ford (if you are out for frontiers, take a Ford. We have a saying\nhere in Hingham that a Ford will take a man anywhere--except into good\nsociety!)--I say I have gone south over this road which runs at the\nfoot of Mullein Hill as far as Philadelphia, and no frontier!--the next\nstop was Chester. I have gone east over the same road until I came to\nwithin ten miles of Skowhegan, Maine, where I ran into a steam-roller\non the road. When you meet a steam-roller on a road in Maine, you\nare very near the frontier. If there is any adventure for you on the\ntrip, it will be on the d\u00e9tour around that steam-roller. But under the\nroller ran the road and on into Skowhegan, and on out of Skowhegan into\nAroostook County, the richest county in the United States, where they\nraise \u201cspuds\u201d enough to feed, not only Boston, but the rest of dear old\nIreland with her; and all the way from Hingham to Aroostook, except at\nthe steam-roller, there was no chance to get off.\n\nAnd this road, taking a turn among these glorious potato-fields of\nMaine, starts over the mountains of New Hampshire, crosses the corn and\ncattle belt in the central portion of the country, and, running on and\non, dips into the Imperial Valley in far-off California, the hottest\ncultivated spot on earth. And all the way from Hingham, roundabout by\nMaine, to the Imperial Valley, you may not stop, unless you run out\nof \u201cgas.\u201d And the oil companies do not intend this magical chance to\nattend you, for they have planted gasoline tanks under every second\ntelegraph pole all the way.\n\nThis road, starting from Mullein Hill, Hingham, and running to\nAroostook, Maine, and to the Imperial Valley in California, takes a\nnew turn among the melon-fields there, works its way back along the\nGulf States, binding their ragged edge like a selvage, and, bending\ninto Florida, threads its way among the Everglades and out, heading off\nacross the cotton-fields, on across the corn and cattle belt again,\nclimbs Pike\u2019s Peak and down, climbs Mount Hood and down, and, faring on\ninto the State of Washington, climbs the fruited slopes of old Tacoma,\n\u201cThe Mountain that was God.\u201d And all the way from Hingham some one has\nbeen there before us, and laid an oiled road for us, and left us no\nfrontier.\n\nSurely we are born late; and my pretty niece fatally late. The frontier\nis gone. The buffaloes are gone. I saw their ancient trails out of the\ncar windows as my train roared over the Canadian prairie, wavering\nparallel paths in the virgin sod, a vivider green than the rest of the\ngrass, narrow meandering lines vanishing short of the far-off horizon\nwhere hung a cloud not larger than a man\u2019s hand, like the dust of the\nlast disappearing herd.\n\n\u201cHank\u201d Monk is gone. This king of overland stage-drivers sleeps in\nCarson City; and beside sleeps his Concord coach of split hickory.\nConcord has ceased to make such coaches.\n\n  They mark our passage as a race of men,\n  Earth will not see such coaches again.\n\nFrom Hell Gate now to Golden Gate there are only miles, and any machine\nmakes a mere holiday of the trip.\n\nA young acquaintance of mine has just made the coast-to-coast run,\ndriving her own car. She said to me on arriving here that \u201cit was\nan awful monotonous journey.\u201d Didn\u2019t anything happen? I asked\nwith considerable surprise. No, nothing happened. Didn\u2019t she see\nanything of interest? Wasn\u2019t there any excitement? Didn\u2019t she\nhave any adventures? No, she didn\u2019t see anything; she didn\u2019t get a\nbit of excitement out of it; there wasn\u2019t any adventure; just one\nblinkety-blank mile after another!\n\n\u201cIncredible!\u201d I cried.\n\n\u201cOh, yes,\u201d she said, her eyes brightening, something like a thrill in\nher voice, \u201cI did have three punctures!\u201d\n\nAll the way from Golden Gate to Hell Gate with three punctures to break\nthe cushioned tenor of her way. This is what life has come to.\n\nThen she said: \u201cThere were two things on the trip that did greatly\ninterest me. But I don\u2019t exactly know why; and I am afraid to tell you\nabout them for fear you will think me such a big fool.\u201d\n\n\u201cNo,\u201d I answered, \u201cI won\u2019t think you any bigger fool than I do now, so\nwhat were the two interesting things?\u201d\n\n\u201cWell,\u201d she began (and I wish the reader would note the strictly\nAmerican touch in this description), \u201cone of them was Luther Burbank\u2019s\nspineless cactus.\u201d (Notice, I say, the spineless quality of this\ncactus.)\n\nThe girl read my face and exclaimed, much hurt: \u201cThere! I knew you\nwould poke fun at me.\u201d\n\n\u201cBut tell what the other thing was,\u201d I begged. \u201cLet\u2019s get the sordid\nstory over as fast as we can.\u201d\n\n\u201cI don\u2019t know even yet what it all meant,\u201d she went on, \u201cbut, as I was\ncrossing the Arizona desert, I saw a long petition being circulated by\nthe native Arizonians, praying the National Congress to preserve for\nthem and for posterity a portion of their original desert.\u201d\n\nMy poor niece! Moses saw the giants pass away; Thoreau saw the frontier\npass away; Masefield sees the clipper ship pass away; but it remains\nfor my niece and her day to see the Great American Desert wiped out\nby the irrigation ditch, and the gila monster with the desert, and\nthe need of a shovel on the trip across the sands! Have we eaten the\ncassaba melon and gone mad? Is it all of life to make the desert\nblossom as the rose? To bring forth cassaba melons, and alligator\npears, and spineless cacti for cow feed?\n\nPloughing the desert; turning the giant cactus into ensilage, as\nif to live were a silo--for fear of this the native Arizonians are\nasking Congress that a portion of their original desert and of Life\u2019s\nadventure and romance be saved to them and to their children.\n\nIt is sad. But this is not the worst of it: for they have laid an oiled\nroad across that desert, as if it were the whole of life to get through\nto San Diego on time.\n\nThere is no hope for a man who gets through to San Diego on time.\nHe will strike Los Angeles on time, come to San Francisco on time.\nPortland on time, Winnipeg, Chicago, Boston, and Hingham on time; where\nhe will die on time, be buried on time, rise on time, and keep going\non time, with never a chance to get off. But where is the adventure in\nthat? It is not the whole of life to get through to San Diego on time.\nI had rather leave my bones to bleach beneath a bush than travel on and\non by schedule, always making life\u2019s connections, and so missing always\nlife\u2019s magical chances. Don\u2019t you remember your Mother Goose, wise old\ndear?\n\n  \u201cA dillar a dollar,\n  A ten-o\u2019clock scholar,\n  Why have you come so soon?\n  You used to come at ten o\u2019clock,\n  But now you come at noon.\u201d\n\nAnd he was the only little duffer in the whole school to get a poem\nwritten to him. The other children came on time and passed into\noblivion; this boy (he certainly was a boy) came late and has become\nimmortal.\n\nThe desert is doomed, no doubt, but we shall always have d\u00e9tours; and\nif \u201con the surface of things men have been there before us,\u201d we must\ngo beneath. There are giants still in these days; the daughters of\nmen are still fair; there are frontiers for those who will find them;\nand, clipper ships or no, I believe in the everlasting adventure of\nrounding the Horn. I believe in magical chances of escape, born though\nI was after my parents, which might have been fatally late had I not\nhappily come before my children, each of whom is an adventure and an\nescape. Wherever I turn, I see a chance to sidestep the decorous, the\nconventional, the scheduled, to dodge into the bushes and escape. Every\nday is an adventure.\n\nThere are magical human chances to go round; there is adventure and\nescape for everybody who will seize it. Youth is as young, the world\nas round, the earth as wild as ever. And, in spite of all those who\nhave grown old, it is still appareled in celestial light--sunlight,\nstarlight, moonlight--or else wrapped in ancient and adventurous dark.\nThe sun still knoweth his going down, thank Heaven! There are some\nthings that do not change nor pass away.\n\n  Thou makest darkness, and it is night: wherein all the beasts of the\n  forest do creep forth.\n\n  The young lions roar after their prey, and seek their meat from God.\n\n  The sun ariseth, they gather themselves together, and lay them down\n  in their dens.\n\n  Man goeth forth unto his work and to his labour until the evening.\n\nThen look out for your men-folks. For this is the end of the decorous\nand conventional. This is the time wherein all the beasts of the forest\ndo creep forth.\n\nWe are what we always were, and so are things what they always were,\nthough they look different. We have changed the spots of a few\nleopards, the skins of a few Ethiopians, and shifted the frontier\nfrom the dark wild heart of the forest to the wild dark heart of the\ncity; but we have not changed the darkness, or the wildness, or the\nEthiopian, or the leopard.\n\nI have seen the evening come over the city, a night deep with darkness\nand wild with a great storm blowing salty from the sea. I have watched\nthe streets grow empty till the shadow feet of Midnight echoed as they\npassed, and all the doors were shut. Then I have crept down along the\ndark wet ways, bleak and steep-cut as cliffs, where I have heard the\nbeating of great wings above the roofs, the call of wild shrill voices\nalong the craggy covings, and the wash and splash of driving rains\naslant the walls; I have tasted brine, spume, and spindrift on the\nlevel winds, flying through a city\u2019s streets from far at sea--\u201cone-way\u201d\nstreets by day, and so clogged that traffic could barely move in that\none way--but here--in the hushed tumult of the storm and night--I could\nhear the stones crying out of their walls, and the beams out of the\ntimbers answering them; the very cobbles of the pavement having tongues\nthat would speak when the din of the pounding hoofs was past.\n\nSome one complained to Browning that Italy is the only land of romance\nnow left to us. The poet answered promptly, \u201cI should like to include\ndear old Camberwell.\u201d And I should like to include dear old Haleyville\nand dear old Hingham. And you would like to include dear old Wig Lane,\nif you were born there.\n\nBut I started out from Hingham, pages back, to find the frontier. Have\nI found it yet? So Abraham started out from Ur of the Chaldees to find\na frontier, which he called a \u201cCity without Foundations,\u201d and did he\nfind it? Whether he did or not, he certainly had a plenty of adventure\nby the way. Abraham was a hundred years old when Isaac was born. There\nis something thrilling about that. Yet, narrow as that chance was, it\nis nothing when compared with what happened to him next. For, when\nAbraham was one hundred and _forty_ years old, he married Keturah. Here\nwas a man who would not be put down by a little circumstance like one\nhundred and forty years. Life comes along at one hundred and forty and\noffers Abraham Keturah, and he takes her!\n\nI say he may not have found his city. We know that he did find\nKeturah--which is vastly more of an adventure. We may not have the\npleasure of erecting the last house in the suburbs of Astoria City, as\nThoreau says; but we might have the wilder adventure of living in it.\nAnd as it happens to be a government lighthouse out on Tongue Point,\nat the mouth of the Columbia; and as it happens to be where the night\nand the rain and the fog are thickest on the face of the globe, life in\nthat last house is a constant frontier.\n\nOne might never leave Ur were he not seeking a city. And one must never\nfind his city else he might cease his seeking. I do not know how old\nAbraham was when he set out from Ur of the Chaldees. I left Haleyville\nat the age of eight. I have only lately come to Hingham, having got in\non the wrong side of the railroad track some twenty years ago. (If one\nis really to arrive in Hingham, one must come in with one\u2019s ancestors,\nand more than twenty years before.) I say, I was eight when I left\nHaleyville; that I have hardly yet arrived in Hingham; but all the way\nfrom Haleyville to Hingham, and all the way from Hingham to--Heaven,\ndare I say?--there has been, and there shall be, held out, in both of\nLife\u2019s hands to me, the magical chance of escape.\n\nDid I start out from Hingham to find the frontier? That was wrong.\nI will start back for Hingham. Hingham _is_ the frontier. So was\nHaleyville. So will Heaven be. Life with the earth goes round, not\nforward, except to complete a circuit established when the stars were\nfixed, an orbit that all the forces of Heaven and human intelligence\nhave been unable to warp. The only variation or shadow of new turning\nEarth herself can look forward to is from collision with some mad\ncomet, which, if she lasts long enough, may happen possibly within\nfifteen million years--a square head-on smash it may be, or only a\nside-swipe with a severe shaking up--and then fifteen million years\nmore of steady turning. Things outside are rather hard and fast despite\nappearances, and we who are parts of this even scheme, we find that our\nuprisings and downsittings have never varied much from rule, nor are\nliable to.\n\nWe are, I repeat, what we always were, and so are things what they\nalways were, though they look different. So is life what it always was\nfor adventures and frontiers.\n\nThe wild frontier, like the hunted fox, has doubled on its trail, that\nis all. Romance has slipped out of the woods into the deeper places\nof the city; Adventure has turned commuter; and here are the three to\ncompanion life, as they ever have--the Athos, Porthos, and Aramis to a\nbebundled D\u2019Artagnan. And already it is more than \u201cTwenty Years Since.\u201d\n\nTwenty years, or a hundred years--\n\n  \u201cThe year\u2019s at the spring.\u201d\n\nIf you do not find your fill of adventure with Davy Balfour in Appin,\ncome down with him to Dean--to Edinburgh, and you shall see the face of\nsuch danger \u201cin the midst of what they call the safety of a town\u201d as\nmay shake you, too, \u201cbeyond experience.\u201d\n\nIf you don\u2019t find the frontier in the daylight, wait for the dark.\nEvery night is a fresh frontier. There are no landmarks of the day but\nare blotted out by the dark as the lines are sponged in the wake of a\nsteamer\u2019s keel. On the shortest night of this year wild rabbits were\nin my garden, fox-hounds were baying beyond the quarries, and through\nthe thin early mist of the dawn we were all at the window watching a\nwild doe behind the barn. She nipped the clover nervously, twitched her\ntail, pricked her ears (for the day was approaching), and took the high\nwire fence at a bound. She was as wild and free as the wind.\n\nA few Sunday nights ago I was at church when the minister announced\na series of evening sermons for young people, and, to my utter\nastonishment, his first talk was to be \u201cAgainst Sowing Wild Oats.\u201d I\nwas greatly tempted to ask him if he intended to prevent his young\npeople from doing any more farming. If they couldn\u2019t sow wild oats,\nwhat kind of oats could they sow? Did he ever see any tame oats? Those\npreachers imagine a vain thing who think we ever cease to sow wild oats\n(at least, there is many a late crop, as Thackeray says). The truth is\nthere are no oats but wild ones.\n\nI do not know what seed catalogue you order your garden seeds out of;\nI get mine out of one marked \u201cHonest Seeds\u201d; it is assuring to have an\norder-book of this sort plainly stamped \u201chonest\u201d on the cover. In this\nhonest-seed catalogue for the current year the seedsman, on page 56, is\ndescribing his oats. Let the preacher on wild oats note with critical\ncare the terms of this description. There is something theological,\nat least, revivalistic, about them. It is the only oat described in\nthe catalogue; and it would be the only oat to plant in all the world,\nif it were, as it is described, a \u201cRegenerated Select Swedish Oat.\u201d A\n\u201cregenerated\u201d (that is Methodist) \u201cselect\u201d (that is Presbyterian) oat!\nBut read on through this catalogue, and you will find that every seed\nand tuber from artichoke to zinnia has been to a revival since last\nsummer and hit the \u201csawdust trail.\u201d Great revivalists are the seedsmen!\nTheir work, however, is not permanent. For they know, and we all know,\nthat every regenerated select Swedish oat in their bins is a backslider\nat heart, as wild as the wild ass of the wilderness that scorneth the\ncrying of the driver.\n\nIt is true of the seed and true of the soil in which it grows. This\nspring I brought in from the garden a frozen lump of earth which I\nhad been subduing, after the fashion of Scripture, with my hoe, these\ntwenty years. Nay, that lump of earth had been in process of being\nsubdued for nigh two hundred years, here on this ancient Hingham farm.\nIt was a bit of regenerated, select soil, which I had sweetened with\nlime, had nourished with nitrogen and potash, and had planted with\nnothing but regenerated, select seeds out of this honest catalogue. I\nput this lump of soil in a pot by a south window and tenderly planted\nmore regenerated, select seeds within its breast--tomato seeds, Jewel,\nEarliana, and Bonny Best. Then I looked that it should bring forth\ntomato plants, and it brought forth within the pot, at the end of\ntwo weeks, pig-weed, horse-weed, chick-weed, smart-weed, white-weed,\nrag-weed, knot-weed, tumble-weed, milk-weed, silk-weed, sneeze-weed,\npoke-weed; goose-grass, crab-grass, witch-grass, wire-grass,\nspear-grass; burdock, sourdock, and _pusley_; to say nothing of the\nswarm of things from Europe, whose infant cotyledons looked innocent\nenough, but whose roots were altogether evil.\n\nLife offered that lump of mother earth its magical chance and the\nlump took it. The innate badness of it, this cared-for, chemically\npure, subdued piece of garden soil! Its frozen heart a very furnace\nof smouldering fires; its breast, that suckled the nursing salsify in\nthe summer, a bed of such wild spores as would sow a world to weeds!\nGiven tomato seeds, regenerated, select tomato seeds, Jewel, Earliana,\nand Bonny Best, the lump of earth brings forth its own original\npig-weed, horse-weed, chick-weed, smart-weed, white-weed, rag-weed,\nknot-weed, tumble-weed, milk-weed, silk-weed, sneeze-weed, poke-weed;\ngoose-grass, crab-grass, witch-grass, wire-grass, spear-grass; burdock,\nsourdock, and pusley. That is what it brought forth a million years\nago. A million years from now, subdued and sweetened and nourished,\nand planted with regenerated, select tomato seed, Jewel, Earliana,\nand Bonny Best, and put in a pot in the sunshine of the south\nwindow, that lump of earth will bring forth pig-weed, horse-weed,\nchick-weed, smart-weed, white-weed, rag-weed, knot-weed, tumble-weed,\nmilk-weed, silk-weed, sneeze-weed, poke-weed, goose-grass, crab-grass,\nwitch-grass, wire-grass, spear-grass; burdock, sourdock, and pusley.\n\n  \u201cThe Form remains, the Function never dies;\n  While we, the brave, the mighty, and the wise,\n  We Men, who in our morn of youth defied\n  The elements, must vanish;\u201d\n\n--vanish, but not change. The heart of man is not less constant than a\nclod of earth.\n\n  \u201cLord, we are vile, conceived in sin,\n  And born unholy and unclean;\n  Sprung from the man, whose guilty fall\n  Corrupts his race and taints us all,\u201d\n\n--sings Watts with Augustine, with gusto and with more unction and\nconsolation to me than in any other of his hymns. To know that we still\ninherit a portion of the original Adam, if only the naughty of him, is\ntremendously heartening. Anything original, if only original sin, in\nthis day of the decorous and the conventional, is stimulating. For,\nif we do still come by all of Adam\u2019s original badness, do we not, by\nthe same token, come by all of his original goodness, and are we not\nthen wholly original, as the original Adam? We must be; as surely as\nthe clod is; full, like the clod of wild weed-seed, and capable, like\nthe clod, under the proper care, of producing tomato plants: Jewel,\nEarliana, and Bonny Best, regenerate and select.\n\nI say the heart of a man is of the same steady stuff as the other clay.\nWhat it was, it is, and will be--wild, and ever seeking an escape from\nthe decorous, the conventional, the routine of his subdued and ordered\nround.\n\nHow constant the heart of nature is to itself I saw again the other day\nat Walden Pond. Almost half a century before I came to this planet,\nThoreau wrote of Walden Pond: \u201cBut since I left those shores the\nwoodchoppers have still further laid them waste, and now for many a\nyear there will be no more rambling through the aisles of the wood,\nwith occasional vistas through which you see the water.\u201d Those many\nyears have long since come and gone. Thoreau is gone; his cabin is\ngone; and a cairn of stones marks the spot where it stood. Over the\nstumps he saw, tall stranger trees now stand; and once more there is\nrambling through their shadowy aisles, and vistas through which you\ncatch glimpses of the beloved face of Walden, calm and pure as when he\nlast looked upon it.\n\n\u201cWhy, here is Walden!\u201d I hear him exclaim, \u201cthe same woodland lake\nthat I discovered so many years ago; where a forest was cut down last\nwinter another is springing up by its shore as lusty as ever; the same\nthought is welling up to its surface as was then; it is the same liquid\njoy and happiness to itself and its maker, aye\u201d--and it has now been\nset aside as a reservation that its liquid joy and happiness may be\nours forever.\n\nChange is constant, but it is the change of the ever-returning wheel.\nThoreau\u2019s cabin is gone, and no other cabin can now be built on the\nshores of Walden Pond. But the trees have come back to stay, and if,\n\u201con the surface of things\u201d Thoreau \u201chas been there before us,\u201d we must\ngo below or above the surface and find our frontier.\n\n\u201cMagical chances?\u201d a young aviator on the Pacific Coast wrote lately.\n\u201cI thought of them to-day as I flirted with a little bunch of\ncotton-wool clouds eight thousand five hundred feet above Point Loma.\nAnd I wondered what Dana would have thought had one of his shipmates\nsauntered across the deck of the Pilgrim, and, clapping him on the\nback, said: \u2018I\u2019ll meet you, old man, in fifteen minutes up there in\nthat fleet of little clouds; if they whift and drift into space, wait\nfor me at the five-thousand-foot altitude\u2019?\u201d\n\nSo the frontier comes back. Pushed past the suburbs of Astoria City\ninto the Pacific, it is seen crawling out on the sandy shores of Cape\nCod with the next great storm. The single line of human footsteps\nacross the polar snows has not left too packed and plain a trail. New\nsnows have covered it, as new trees have shadowed the shores of Walden.\n\nPeary\u2019s footprints, and Dr. Cook\u2019s, too, would be very hard to follow.\n\nIt was more than twenty-five years ago that I started from Savannah\nover the old stage-road to Augusta, finding my way by faint uncertain\nblazings on the tree-trunks through a hundred and thirty-odd miles of\nswamp. They were solemn miles. Trees thicker than my body grew in the\nruts where wheels had run; more than once the great diamond rattlesnake\ncoiled in my path, chilling the silence of the river bottoms with his\nshivering whirr. Once I heard the gobble of the wild turkey and the\nscream of the bobcat; and at night, while sleeping in an old abandoned\nchurch on the river bluff, I was awakened by the snuffling of a bear\nwhich had thrust its muzzle underneath the church door in the foot-worn\nhollow of the sill.\n\nIt was a lonesome place. A faint road led away from it off through\nthe swamp; but, aside from the gravestones near by, there were no\nother human signs around. How long since human feet had crossed the\nthreshold, I do not know.\n\nThe chintz altar-cloth that I tried to draw over me (the night was\nchill) crumbled at my touch and drifted off into a million dusty\nfragments. I had meant no desecration. I was very weary and had crept\nin through a window from the night and cold. A slow rain had settled\ndown with the dusk, attended by darkness indescribably profound. And\nbeneath the long-draped pines outside slept those whose feet had worn\nthe threshold--slept undisturbed by the soughing of the wind, wrapped\nin the unutterable loneliness of the coiling river and the silent,\nsomber swamp.\n\nYet here had passed a highway between two great cities just a few years\nearlier, before the railroad was built farther out through the State.\nAlready the swamp and the river had taken the highway for their own,\nand from human feet given it again to adventure, to the gliding form,\nthe swift wing, and the soft padded foot.\n\nThe giants of old, the frontiers and clipper ships of old, are gone.\nThey went out with the ebb tide, and here already comes back the flood!\nAnd with it the same old human chance, the magical chance of escape.\nLay aside the rifle and you pick up the camera--to creep with it into\nthe lion\u2019s den; or to climb with it into the top of a towering oak, on\nsome sheer mountain wall; and, pushing it before you along a horizontal\nlimb, feet dangling in space, a stiff wind blowing, eagles screaming\noverhead, canyon wall below you, and far, far down the narrow canyon\nbottom, you hold on, body balancing camera, but nothing over against\nthe swaying brain, and grind out a hundred feet of movie film. This is\nto shoot a good many lions.\n\nLife offers us all the chance of escape. Go where we will on the\nsurface of things, men have been there before us; but beneath the\nsurface we need go no deeper than our own hearts to find a frontier,\nand that adventurous something for which the decorous and conventional\nallows no place in its scheme.\n\n\n\n\nCHAPTER II\n\nTHE RADIUM OF ROMANCE\n\n\n\n\nCHAPTER II\n\nTHE RADIUM OF ROMANCE\n\n  \u201cWhy thus longing, thus forever sighing?\u201d\n\n\nBecause, I suppose, there were once two sides to her bread-board,\nboth of which she used for sketching. She brought the board from the\nFine Arts room at college to her new home, carrying it one day to the\nkitchen to try her hand at modeling--in dough. There are several of\nher early sketches about the house, of that period prior to the dough,\nwhich show real talent. Her bread, however, had about it the touch of\ngenius. The loaves grew larger all the time, the bakings more frequent.\nThe walls of any house are rather quickly covered with pictures, but\nthere is no bottom to the bread-box. There are still two sides to her\nbread-board, and she uses both sides for dough.\n\n  \u201cWhy thus longing, thus forever sighing?\n  For the far-off, unattained and dim?\u201d\n\nBecause, I suppose, time was when I thought of other things than the\nprice of flour; not because of much money in those times, but because\nshe made angel-cake most of the time then, and what bread we did eat\nwas had of the baker; and because the price of flour was then a matter\nof course. The price of flour now is a good deal more than a matter of\ncourse, and the price of corn-meal even more than the price of flour;\nso that we must count the slices now, and cut them thin.\n\nWe shall have angel-cake again, I promise the children, with the\nbiggest kind of a hole in the middle, giving them a bran muffin to\nmunch meanwhile, and wondering in my heart if this fight for bread will\never end in angel-cake.\n\nOne can live on potatoes and bran muffins, although there was never any\nromance about them, not even during the Great War when Wall Street took\nthem as collateral. We need cake. I don\u2019t remember that I ever lacked\npotatoes as a child, but, as a child, I do remember dancing while the\npickaninnies sang,\n\n  \u201cMammy gwine make some short\u2019nin\u2019, short\u2019nin\u2019,\n  Mammy gwine make some short\u2019nin\u2019 cake.\n  Ay lak short\u2019nin\u2019, short\u2019nin\u2019, short\u2019nin\u2019,\n  Ay lak short\u2019nin\u2019, short\u2019nin\u2019 cake,\u201d\n\nin an ecstasy of pure delight, which was not remotely induced by common\nhunger.\n\nShort\u2019nin\u2019 cake, angel-cake, floating island, coffee jelly--are they\nnot victuals _spirituels_, drifted deep with frosting, honeyed over\nwith an amber-beaded sweat, with melting sweetness, insubstantial,\nimpalpable, ethereal, that vanish into the brain, that thrill along the\nnerves, feeding not the body, not the mind, nor yet the spirit, for\nthese are but three of our four elements--we are also the stuff that\ndreams are made of, and we cannot wholly subsist on more material fare.\n\nWhat makes pie pie is its four-and-twenty-blackbirds. Singing-blackbird\npie is the only pie, whether you make it of apples or rhubarb or\ncustard or squash, with one crust or two. He dreamed a dream who made\nthe original pie. And even now I cannot pass a baker in apron and paper\ncap without a sense of frostings and m\u00e9ringues--of the white of life\nseparated from the yolk of life and stirred into a dream. I find the\nsame touch of romance on many faces, both young and old, as I find it\nover the landscape at dusk and dawn, and on certain days even at high\nnoon.\n\nIt was so this morning when a flock of migrating bluebirds went over,\ncalling down to me. They came out of the dawn, hovered idly over the\nbarn and the tops of the cedars in the pasture, then faded into the\nblue about them and beyond them, where a fleet of great white clouds\nwas drifting slowly far off to the south. But their plaintive voices\nfloating down to me I still hear calling, with more yearning than a\nman, perhaps, should allow himself to know. For at the first sip of\nsuch sweet misery some poet chides,\n\n  \u201cWhy thus longing, thus forever sighing\n  For the far-off, unattained and dim,\n  While the beautiful, all about us lying,\n  Offers up its low perpetual hymn?\u201d\n\nAs if longing were a weakness and not the heart\u2019s hope; and our\nsighing-- Shall I sigh for what I have? Or stop sighing? Some of my\npossessions I may well sigh over, but there are very few to sigh for,\nseeing none of them are farther off than the barn or the line fence,\nexcept a few books that I have lent my friends, and now and then a few\ndollars.\n\nAnd such is the magic in the morning light that I see the beautiful\nall about me lying--in the bend of the road, on the sweep of the\nmeadow, across the commonplace dooryard asleep in the sun; and such\nis the sweet silence of the autumn day that I hear the low perpetual\nhymn--in the lingering notes of the bluebirds, in the strumming of the\ncrickets, in the curving stems of the goldenrods, the loud humming of\nthe aster-dusted bees, even in the wavering red leaves of the maples\nsinging in their fall.\n\nIt lacks an hour of mail-time, and the newspaper, and the world. The\nbluebirds are leaving before the mail-man comes, and everything with\nwings is flying with them, or is poised for flight as if there were no\nworld, except a world for wings.\n\nThe day is warm, with little breezes on the wing, hardly larger than\nswallows. They stir the grasses of the knoll, and race with them up\nthe slope, to fly on over the wavy crest, following the bluebirds off\ntoward the deep-sea spaces among the drifting clouds. And the curving\nknoll itself is in motion, a yellow-brown billow heaving against the\nmoving clouds where they ride along the sky. And over the knoll sweep\nthe hawking swallows, white bellies and brown and glinting steel-blue\nbacks aflash in the sun. Winging swallows, winging seeds, winging\nwinds, winging clouds and spheres, and my own soul winging away into\nthe beckoning blue where the bluebirds have gone!\n\nBut I shall return--to the mail-box on this rural free delivery route,\nto the newspaper, to the tariff, to the Turk. The Democratic State\nCommittee is assembled this day in Springfield. I am not there. I\nalso ran. I stumped the State for nomination to the National Senate,\nand landed here on Mullein Hill, Hingham. Here I set out. Through\nmany years I have developed the safe habit of returning here. It was\na magical chance Life offered me; a dream of beating the protective\ntariff devils. But Mullein Hill is clothed with dreams; and magical\nchances make this their stopping-place.\n\nIt is certainly true to-day. To begin with, I have this day bought the\nfield by the side of my house. For all the twenty years of my living\nhere I have dreamed of this rolling field with its pines and pointed\ncedars, and rounded knoll against the sky. Not every day in the autumn\nis like this for dreams; not many of them in all the year. I shall be\nbuilding fences about the field now for many days; and paying taxes\non the field every day from this time on. There are not many autumn\ndays like this for dreams. Yet to know one such day, one touched with\nthis golden melancholy, this sweet unrest and yearning, should it not\noutlast the noon, is to know,\n\n  \u201cAnd one thing more that may not be,\n  Old earth were fair enough for me.\u201d\n\nYou say that I am still thinking of the United States Senate. Possibly.\n\u201cOne thing more that may not be\u201d I must be thinking on, for we all are.\nAfter the nomination comes the election; and what chance has the sworn\nenemy of a high protective tariff of election in Massachusetts?\n\nOld Earth is fair enough for me ordinarily, and she is passing fair\nto-day. But even the dog, for all his appetite and growing years, is\nnot always satisfied with bread and play. He clings closer than ever to\nme, as if sometimes frightened at inner voices calling him, which, like\ndeep waters, seem to widen between us, and which no love, though pure\nand immeasurable, may be able to cross. He is nothing uncommon as a\ndog, except in the size of his spirit and the quality of his love. He\nwill tackle anything, from a railroad train to a buzzing bumble-bee,\nthat he imagines has intentions inimical to me; and there is nothing on\nthe move, either coming or going, quite innocent of such intentions.\nWithout fear, or awe, or law, he wears his collar, and his license\nnumber, 66, but not as a sign of bondage, for that sign he wears all\nover his alert and fearless front. He growls in his sleep before the\nfire at ghosts of things that have designs against the house; he risks\nhis life all day long.\n\nBut he reserves a portion of his soul. He will deliberately chew off\nhis leash at night, and, making sure that nothing stirs about the\nhelpless house, will steal away to the woods, where he hears the baying\nof some spectral pack down the forest\u2019s high-arched halls. I do not\nknow what the little cross-bred terrier is hunting along the frosted\npaths--fox or rabbit or wild mice; I cannot run the cold trails that\nare so warm to his nose; but far ahead of his nose lope two panting\nhearts, his and mine, following the Gleam.\n\nAll dogs are dreamers, travelers by twilight, who wander toward a slow\ndeferring dawn. They cannot see in the white fire of noon. A lovelier\nlight, diffused and dim with dusk, is in the eyes of dogs and all dumb\ncreatures, through which they watch a world of shadows moving with them\nlike lantern-lighted shapes at night upon a wall.\n\n  \u201cNot of the sunlight,\n  Not of the moonlight,\n  Not of the starlight,\u201d\n\nis the tender, troubled light in the eyes of dogs.\n\nThere is a deposit, an infinitesimal deposit, it may be, of the radium\nof romance in the slag of all souls. Call it by other names--optimism,\nidealism, religion--you still leave it undefined; an inherent,\nessential element, harder to separate from the spiritual dross of us\nthan radium from its carnotite; a kind of atomic property of the spirit\nwhich breaks up its substance; which ionizes, energizes, and illumines\nit.\n\nThere may be souls that never knew its power, but I can hardly think\nthere ever was a soul shut in a cave so darksome, that romance never\nentered with its touch of radiance, if only as\n\n  \u201cA little glooming light, much like a shade.\u201d\n\nThis is the light in the eyes of dogs, the light that birds and\nbees follow, and the jellyfish steering round and round his course.\nSomething like its quivering flame burns down in the green, dismal\ndepths of the sea; down in the black subliminal depths; and on down in\nthe heart of the world. For what other light is it, that guides the\nherring every spring, in from the ocean up Weymouth Back River? or the\nsalmon in from the Pacific, up, high up the Columbia to the Snake, and\nhigher up the Snake into the deep, dark gorges of the Imnaha?\n\nIt is now long past October, and where is the bluebird\u2019s mate of\nJune? She has forgotten him, and is forgotten by him, but he has\nnot forgotten his dream-of-her; for I saw him in the orchard, while\nsouthward bound, going in and out of the apple-tree holes, the lover\nstill, the dream-of-her in his heart, holding over from the summer and\ncoming to meet him ahead of her, down the winter, out of the coming\nspring.\n\nThe dog and you and I and even the humble toad are dreamers at heart,\nall of us, only we are deeper adream than they.\n\n  \u201cIf nothing once, you nothing lose,\n  For when you die you are the same,\u201d\n\nsays Freneau to a flower. Yet the flowers are of the dust that I am\nmade of, and they too are the stuff of dreams. And the toad under the\nkitchen-steps, what he knows of my heart! As if the unrequited pain\nof lovers, the sweetest, saddest things of poets, had always been his\nportion, and their vague melancholy the only measure of his tremulous\ntwilight song. When the soft spring dusk has stolen into the young eyes\nof the day, as the first shadow of some sweet fear into the startled\neyes of a girl, then out of the hush, quavering through the tender\ngloom,\n\n  \u201cA voice, a mystery!\u201d\n\nFrom his earth-hole under the kitchen-steps I have known the toad, by\ndint of stretching and hitching up on chance stones, to get nine inches\nup, nine inches from the surface of the globe, up on the lowest of the\nsteps! Yet it is given him to pipe a serenade in the gloaming that no\nother lover, bird or poet, ever quite equaled, even when he sang,\n\n  \u201cI arise from dreams of thee\n  In the first sweet sleep of night.\u201d\n\nLife is always a romance. There is fire in its heart, even in the three\ncold chambers of the toad\u2019s heart; and the light of the fire flickers\nfainter than the guttered candle before it will go out. This may not\nbe \u201cthe true light\u201d; yet it lighteth every man that cometh into the\nworld, every man with a pen, and his brother with a hoe, though they\ncomprehend it not. One of our poets has written of \u201cThe Man With The\nHoe\u201d and left the man out and put only the hoe in the poem. This poet\nhas written more than he has hoed, I am sure; as the painter of \u201cThe\nMan with the Hoe\u201d had painted more than he had hoed, I am sure. Here is\na poet who sees no light at all in \u201cThe Man with the Hoe,\u201d because that\npoet has written more than he has hoed, which is to gather where he\nhas not strawed. When a hoe looks as black as this to a pen, you will\nsearch the premises of the pen in vain for hoes. I hoe; I know men who\nhoe; and none of us knows Mr. Markham\u2019s scarecrow for ourself. Here a\nrealist sees what another realist thought he saw; as if you could ever\n_see_ life!\n\nLife is not what the realist sees, but what the realist is and knows,\nplus what the man with the hoe is and knows; and he knows that, if\nchained to a pick instead of a hoe, down in the black pit of some\nSiberian mine, he could not work life out in the utter dark.\n\nRealism, if not a distortion and a disease, is at best only a\nhalf-truth; and the realist, if more than a medical examiner for his\ndistrict, is but the undertaker besides.\n\nWhoever sings a true song, or pens the humblest plodding prose, whether\nof Achilles, son of Peleus, or of John Gilley, a milkman down in Maine,\nor of the toad, or of the bee, has essentially one story to tell, and\nmust be a Homer, truly to tell it.\n\nHere on my desk lies the story of John Gilley, and over in the next\nfarmhouse lingers the unwritten story of another milkman, my neighbor,\nJoel Moore; and in the other neighbor-houses live like people--humble,\nhumdrum country people, with their stories, which, if lighted with\nnothing but their own hovering gleam, would glow forever.\n\nThe next man I meet would make a book; for either he is, or he knows, a\ngood-enough story, could I but come by the tale.\n\nO. Henry, pacing the streets in an agony of fear at having run out of\nstory-matter, is only a case of nerves. The one inexhaustible supply\nof matter in the Universe that is of use to man is story-matter; for,\nas the first human pair have been a perpetual song and story, so the\nlast pair shall be the theme for some recording angel, or else they\nwill leave a diary.\n\nThe real ill with literature is writer\u2019s cramp, an inability to seize\nthe story, all of it, its truth as well as its facts--an ill, not of\ntoo much observation, but of too little imagination. Art does not watch\nlife and record it. Art loves life and creates it.\n\n\u201cNo one knows the stars,\u201d says Stevenson, \u201cwho has not slept, as the\nFrench happily put it, _\u00e0 la belle \u00e9toile_. He may know all their\nnames, and distances, and magnitudes, and yet be ignorant of what alone\nconcerns mankind, their serene and gladsome influence on the mind.\u201d\n\nArt and literature have turned scientist of late, as if our\nmagnitudes, names, and distances, as if the concern of psychologists,\nphysiologists, ethnologists, criminologists, and pathologists, were the\nconcern of mankind! These things all belong to the specialists.\n\nWhat does mankind reck of the revolution of the node and apsides? that\nNeptune\u2019s line of apsides completes its revolution in 540,000 years?\nInstead of an astronomer, mankind is still the simple shepherd, keeping\nwatch by night, and all he knows of the stars is that they brood above\nthe sleeping hills, and now and then, in some holy hush, they sing\ntogether.\n\nScience is concerned with the names, distances, and magnitudes of the\nstars; and with problems touching the \u201cintestinal parasites of the\nflea.\u201d Art, literature, and religion are concerned only with mankind;\nwith the elemental, the universal, the eternal; with the dream, the\ndefeat, the romance of life.\n\nI have much to do with writers--with great writers, could they only\nthink of something to write about. \u201cThere is nothing left,\u201d they cry,\n\u201cto write about.\u201d \u201cBut here am I. Take me,\u201d I answer. Out come pads\nand pencils flying. There is hard looking at me for a moment. Then a\ncynical smile. I won\u2019t do. Becky might have done, but Thackeray got\nher; just as some one has got everybody! My tribe can never furnish her\nlike again. Yet my tribe is not infertile; it is Thackeray\u2019s, rather,\nthat has run out.\n\nA sweet young thing in one of my extension courses, voicing the\nliterary despair of the class in a poem called \u201cThe Fairy Door,\u201d made\nthis end of the whole matter:\n\n  \u201cThe world seems black and ugly\n  When I shut the Fairy Door;\n  I want to go to Fairyland\n  And live forever more.\u201d\n\nI was reading this effusion on my way in to college. When I reached the\nclimax in the stanza,\n\n  \u201cThe world seems black and ugly\u201d\n\nI thrust the manuscript back into my bag in disgust and turned for\nrelief to the morning paper. Here--for the young writer was the\ndaughter of a prominent Bostonian--I saw the announcement of her\nengagement to a Chicago man, and I knew, of course, what ailed the\npoetry; and I knew the medicine that I should administer.\n\nHow far apart literature and life sometimes get! And how much more real\nand romantic is ordinary life than ordinary literature!\n\nThe girl was to meet me that afternoon in the university extension\nlecture. The amphitheater was full of city folk, and there in the\nmiddle of the hall sat the young poet. She was very pretty, one of the\ndaughters of men still fair. Taking her poem, I read it aloud to that\nlast stanza, when, turning sharply, and pointing the manuscript hard at\nher, I demanded,\n\n\u201cIs this so? Do you want to leave Boston for Fairyland, instead of\nChicago? Do you?\u201d\n\nShe was staggered by the suddenness and savageness of it all and rose\nto her feet, adorably pink in her confusion, stammering, \u201cNo, no, I\nbeg--of course I--no, I don\u2019t\u201d--by this time so recovered that her\neyes flashed wrath as she dropped to her seat amid the gaping and the\ntwittering of the class.\n\n\u201cIf you don\u2019t mean it,\u201d I demanded, \u201cwhy in the sacred name of\nliterature did you write it? Why don\u2019t you ever write what you mean?\nAnd you mean that Boston has suddenly become a back number for\nliterature; that the literary center has shifted to Chicago--that\u2019s\nwhat you mean. Chicago! the one romantic, fairy-like spot on earth!\nIsn\u2019t that what you mean? Then don\u2019t you see how fresh, how thrilling\na theme you have in _your_ Chicago? No one else, perhaps, ever saw\nChicago in quite this rosy, romantic light before.\u201d\n\nHers is the enduring truth about Chicago; as against that set forth by\nMr. Armour in \u201cThe Packers, the Private Car Lines, and the People.\u201d\nHere she was, herself the very stuff of the eternal in literature,\nand forced to Fairyland for something to write about! Sheer nonsense.\nOne need not take the wings of the morning to the uttermost sea, or\nmake one\u2019s bed in Hell for \u201ccopy.\u201d Chicago will do--or Boston--or even\nHingham.\n\nTo be, if to be only a stock or a stone, beast or bird or man, is to be\na story, while to be any one of my neighbors is to be an epic.\n\nThe day we moved out here, before our goods arrived, a strangely\nyouthful pair, far on in the eighties, struggled up the hill from the\nold farm below to greet us. He was clad in overalls and topcoat, and\nshe in flowers, overflowing from both her arms, and in wild confusion\non the gayest Easter bonnet that ever bloomed.\n\n\u201cHow do you do, neighbors!\u201d she began, extending her armfuls of\nglorious mountain laurel; \u201cMr. White and I bring you the welcome of\nthe Hingham Hills\u201d--Mr. White\u2019s rough old hand grasping mine amid the\nblossoms.\n\n\u201cWhy,\u201d I cried, \u201cI didn\u2019t know the Hingham Hills could hold such a\nwelcome. I have tramped the woods about here, but I never found a bunch\nof laurel.\u201d\n\n\u201cAh, you didn\u2019t get into Valley Swamp! Mr. White and I will show you,\nwon\u2019t we, Georgie? We know where odes hang on hawthorns, don\u2019t we?\nWe are busy farmers, and you know what farming is; but we have never\nploughed up our poetry-patch, have we, Georgie?\u201d\n\nThey never had; nor much of their other ninety-six acres either--the\nwhole farm a joyous riot of free verse: fences without line or meter:\ncattle running where they liked; the farm kit--a mowing machine, a\nsulky plough, and a stolid old grindstone--straying romantically about\nthe shy sweet fields.\n\nIt was an ode of a carriage that the spoony old couple went to town in,\nwith wheels dactylic on one side and iambic on the other, and so broken\na line for a back spring that Mrs. White would slide into Mr. White\u2019s\nlap without c\u00e6sura or even a punctuation mark to hinder.\n\nI was at the village market one muddy March day, when Cupid and the\nold mare, neither wearing blinders, brought this chariot to the curb.\nMr. White, descending to the street, reached up for Mrs. White, who,\ngiving him both her hands, put out a dainty foot to the carriage-step\nand there poised, dismayed at the March mud. Instantly Mr. White,\ndisengaging one hand, lifted a folded blanket from the seat, shot it\ngrandly out across the mud, and with a bow as gallant as Sir Walter\u2019s\nown, handed the dear old shoes unblemished to the shop.\n\nEighteen or eighty, it is just the same. Boston or Chicago or Hingham,\nit is just the same. White or red or yellow or black, it is just the\nsame. The radium of romance is mixed with the slag of all our souls.\nHere is my colored neighbor down toward the village.\n\n\u201cHello!\u201d I called to him over the telephone, \u201caren\u2019t you going to do\nthat job for me?\u201d\n\nThis neighbor is a most useful colored citizen, with a complete line of\navocations, cleaning cesspools nocturnally and on Saturday afternoons\nbeing one of these sporadic and subsidiary callings.\n\n\u201cHello!\u201d he answered; \u201cI most assuredly am! And exceedingly sorry I am,\ntoo, for this delay.\u201d (He had been coming for one year and six months\nnow.) \u201cBut my business grows enormously. It is really more than I can\nadminister. The fact is, professor, I must increase my equipment. I\ncan\u2019t dip any longer. I am rapidly approaching the proportions of a\npump.\u201d\n\n\u201cI am rapidly approaching the proportions of a pump.\u201d Divine! I like\nthe sound. For it is the true measure of life as set over against that\nwhich life may merely appear to be. To trudge along through life beside\nyour humble cart of the long-handled dipper, and to know that your\ndipper is approaching the proportions of a pump is to know that you are\ngreater than you know.\n\nI saw yesterday in the Sunday newspaper the lovely face of a girl, who,\n\u201crumor has it,\u201d ran the legend, \u201cwill be the next Queen of England.\u201d\nShe, too, like my colored neighbor, like us all, is approaching the\nproportions of a pump. We are all the stuff that pumps and dreams are\nmade of, and great art, and great literature.\n\nI spoke of Joel Moore here in the next house to me. For twenty-six\nyears he was chained to a milk-route, covering Lovell\u2019s Corner, East\nWeymouth, and our back wood-road; but he always drove it in a trotting\nsulky.\n\nFrom behind the bushes I have seen him calming the leg-weary team as it\nlabored up the humps in the road, his feet braced, his arms extended to\nthe slack lines, his eyes fixed on the Judge\u2019s Stand ahead, while he\nmaneuvered against Ed Geers and Ben Hur and all the Weymouths for the\npole.\n\nHe came home in that lumbering, rattling milk-cart as if it wore\nwinged wheels, and were being drawn by the steeds of Aurora around the\nhalf-mile track at the great Brockton Fair.\n\nIt was sixteen years ago that Joel drove home with Flora IV, a black\nmare without a leg to stand on, but with a record of 2.12-3/4 There\nwas large fixing of the little barn for her, and much rubbing-down of\nwithers.\n\nOne day Joel was seen wandering over the knoll here near the house,\nkicking stones around. Something was the matter. I sauntered out toward\nmy barn casually and called to him. Picking up a piece of rock in the\npasture, he staggered with it to the fence, and fixing it into the\nwall, said with labored breath, \u201cFlora IV has a foal!\u201d And, lifting\nanother stone off the wall, for ballast, he strode up the hill and\nover, and down to his barn, not knowing the \u201cMagnificat,\u201d it may be,\nbut singing it in his heart all the way down.\n\nAnd this happened on the very hill which this day I bought with the\nfield by the side of the house. Joel owned the field then. But he\nlonged for a fast horse. I never set my heart on a fast horse; but I\ncannot resist a field. I did not covet this field of Joel\u2019s. I merely\ndreamed of it as part of my dooryard, and waited--longer than Jacob\nwaited for Rachel. What a dream she must have been!\n\nBut let me come back to Joel and Flora and the foal.\n\nMy youngest boy was born that same summer--sixteen years ago--the\ndouble event in Joel\u2019s mind wearing the mixed complexion of twins. He\nhad had no children till the colt came, and naturally he spoiled her.\nShe was a willful little thing by inheritance, though--arch, skittish,\nand very pretty; and long before she wore shoes had got the petulant\nhabit of kicking the siding off the barn at any delay of dinner.\n\nShe should have been broken by her second birthday, but Joel would take\nno risks; and in the third summer, though he \u201chad her used to leather,\u201d\nhe needed a steady old horse to hitch her with, and she came up to her\nfourth birthday untrained. Then, the first time he took her out, she\nbehaved so badly, and cut herself so, forward, that it was necessary\nto turn her loose for months. Then she was sent away to be broken, but\ncame back a little more willful than ever, and prettier than ever, if\npossible.\n\nThat winter Joel had to give up his milk-route on account of sickness,\nand with the opening of spring got the blacksmith to take the colt in\nhand. He took her, and threw her, dislocating her shoulder. Then he\npulled off her new shoes, and she was put into the boxstall to get well.\n\nAfter that, I don\u2019t know just why, but we talked of other things than\nthe colt. She kicked a board off the back of the barn one day, sending\na splinter whizzing past my head, but neither of us noticed it. She was\nseven years old now, a creature shaped for speed, but Joel was not\nstrong enough to manage her, and a horse like this could so easily be\nharmed. In fact, he never harnessed her again.\n\nI urged him from time to time, with what directness I dared, to let me\ntake him into the hospital. But he had never left the farm and his wife\nalone overnight in all these years. Then one day he sent for me. He\nwould go, he said, if I could arrange for him.\n\nA March snow lay on the fields the day before he was to go, and\nall that day, at odd times, I would see him creeping like a shadow\nabout his place: to the hen-coops, up to the line fence, out to the\napple tree in the meadow, taking a last look at things. It was quite\nimpossible for me to work that day.\n\nThe next morning the four boys, on their way to school, went down ahead\nof me to say good-bye. They filed in, shook hands bravely, fighting\nback their tears, and playing fine the game of bluff with him, though\nthe little fellow, born the summer the colt was born, nearly spoiled it\nall. He is a dear impulsive child and had frankly been Joel\u2019s favorite.\n\n\u201cI\u2019ve taken the eveners off the disk harrow,\u201d he was saying as he came\nout to the sleigh. \u201cI gave the kittens a bed of fresh rowan. I drove\na nail under the shutter of the can-house, where you can hang the\nkey. You had better lock up a little till I get back\u201d--his words half\nmuffled under the big robes of the sleigh.\n\n\u201cI hate to leave home,\u201d he said, as we went along; \u201cbut she couldn\u2019t\nstand it. She\u2019s not well. It isn\u2019t so bad for me with you along.\u201d\n\nTwo or three times he was about to say something else, but felt too\ntired. I had him duly entered; introduced him to his surgeon; helped\nhim to his cot, where a cheery nurse made him easy; then gave him my\nhand.\n\n\u201cGood-day,\u201d he said; \u201cI\u2019m going to pay you back some time. Only I\ncan\u2019t.\u201d He clung a moment longer to me. \u201cI\u2019ve never had many of the\nluxuries. I\u2019ve worked hard for all I\u2019ve got--except for the little\ncolt. She was thrown in. I never fed her a quart of grain--the cleanest\nlittle eater--as fat as butter--and on nothing but roughage all the\ntime!\u201d\n\nThen, looking me straight in the eye, he said calmly, \u201cYou and I know\nand the doctors know. But I couldn\u2019t tell her. You tell her. You can.\nAnd tell her I guess she had better sell the little colt.\u201d\n\nHe paused a moment. Something yet he wished to say--the thing he had\ntried before to say. I hope the Recording Angel took it down, and the\n_way_ he said it, down. Not quite daring to look into my eyes, he\nasked, wistfully, \u201cYou don\u2019t need a fast horse yourself, of course,\nhaving your auto?\u201d\n\n\u201cYes, I do, Joel,\u201d I answered firmly; \u201cI do need a fast horse. We all\ndo, or something like that.\u201d And I bent over and kissed him, for his\nwife, and for my little boy at home.\n\nThere is balm in Gilead; but are there racetracks in Heaven?--and fast\nhorses there? Perhaps not. But I often wish that I had told Joel I\nbelieved there were. Of course there are. There is romance in Heaven,\nand the magical chance of escape there.\n\n\n\n\nCHAPTER III\n\nTHE HUNT FOR \u201cCOPY\u201d\n\n\n\n\nCHAPTER III\n\nTHE HUNT FOR \u201cCOPY\u201d\n\n\nThere never was a bigger, fatter, flabbier woodchuck than old\nTubby--among wild animals that I alone have known. Tubby is a fixture\nof the farm. He was here when we came, or else it was his father or\nhis grandfather. He is fat and flabby and as broad as he is long, and\nbroader when full of beans. He is very much of a tub. When he sits in\nthe garden, he sits like a tub. When he runs, he runs like a tub. And\nhe holds beans like a tub.\n\nIt is worth a few beans to see him run--a medley in motions: up and\ndown and round and round, the spinning of a top and the hop of a\nsaucepan on a hot stove with amazing progress forward. He knows which\nend of him is head and which tail; but from a distance I can see\nneither head nor tail, only sides, bulging, tubby sides spilling down\nthe garden. One seldom does see the ends of a thing from a distance.\nTubby has a head-end; and he has wits in that end. He also has a\ntail-end; and the disturbing conclusion one reaches with close study\nis that Tubby has wits also in this end. He is a beautifully capable\nthing in his way. A cutworm is not more capable--if there is anything\nso capable as a cutworm! Both are poems; old Tubby an epic poem--were I\nas capable as Tubby, and a Homer--\n\nA full-sized woodchuck is twenty-two inches long; and I presume that\nTubby is not more than twenty-two inches wide, though I have seen him\nwobbling out of the garden and carrying off as mere ballast a cabbage\nor two, and a watermelon, and a peck or two of beans, and all of the\nSwiss chard in the three rows. There are several bushels of chard in\nthree such rows.\n\nThe way he can run with his load! His little black heels twinkling\nthrough the vines, his shapeless carcass flopping into his hole with me\non top of him! Then I will hear a chuckling deep down among the hickory\nroots, a peculiar vegetarian chuckle quite unlike a carnivorous growl.\nAnd then I will sit down on the hole and chuckle, having lost for the\nmoment my carnivorous growl. He is so bold, so impudent, so canny. The\nold scamp rather likes me. And I am a fairly good gardener, if I do say\nit myself.\n\nWhen I place a trap in one entrance to his burrow, he uses the other\nopening; if I put another trap here, he promptly digs a passage around\nit; if I block this with chunks of rock, he undermines the stones and\npatiently moves to a new house farther along the ridge; and, if I set\ntraps for him here, he changes house again. It is a wide wooded ridge\naround the garden, and honeycombed with woodchuck holes. By and by he\nis back in his favorite house under the hickory--when the spiders have\nhung the doors with signs that the traps are gone.\n\nBut it happened once that I forgot the traps. Wood-earth and bits of\nbark and dead leaves washed down till the wicked gins were covered,\nand Tubby, coming back after weeks off on the ridge, tumbled into one\nof the traps and got his thick fat fist fast. I heard him making a\ndreadful racket, and rushed up with a club in my thick fat fist.\n\nOld Tubby stopped kicking and grunting, and looked at me. I don\u2019t\nbelieve that I was ever looked at by a woodchuck before. Stolid,\nsullen, defiant, there was much more of the puzzled, of the world-old\nwonder in the eyes gazing steadily into mine, as to what this situation\nand this moment meant. The snarled body was all fight and fear, but the\nblinking eyes sought mine for an answer to the riddle that I have asked\nof God. And all that I could answer was, \u201cYou fat-head!\u201d And he said,\n\u201cFat-head yourself!\u201d if ever a woodchuck spoke, and spoke the truth.\n\u201cFat-head, to set this rotten thing here and forget it!\u201d\n\nIt was a rotten thing to do. Somehow he made me feel as if I had\ntrapped one of my neighbors. He saw how I was feeling, and took\nadvantage of me.\n\n\u201cWhose woods are these, anyway?\u201d he asked. \u201cWhose ancestors were here\nfirst, yours or mine? You didn\u2019t even come over in the Mayflower. But I\ncame here in Noah\u2019s Ark.\u201d\n\n\u201cI know it. But keep quiet,\u201d I begged him, \u201cand stop looking at me that\nway.\u201d\n\n\u201cWhat way?\u201d he asked.\n\n\u201cWhy, so much like my brother!\u201d I exclaimed.\n\n\u201cBut I am your brother,\u201d he retorted, \u201cthough I am ashamed to say it.\u201d\n\n\u201cDon\u2019t say it, then,\u201d I begged.\n\nBut he was wound up.\n\n\u201cAny man who is brute enough to set this sort of thing for his brother\nhas no soul. And any man who can\u2019t share his beans with his brother\ndoesn\u2019t deserve a soul. If I were as low-down and as lazy as you, I\nwould go over to the north side of this hill and dig a deep hole, and\ncrawl into it, and pull it in on top of me, I would.\u201d And all the time\nI was pressing down on the spring with my club, trying to free him.\nSuddenly there was a flop in the hole, and away in the sub-cellar,\namong the hickory roots, there was talk of me which I should have\nheard, had I been able to understand.\n\nBut I have much to learn. And so has Pup, our Scotch-Irish terrier.\nTime and time again Pup has sent the old woodchuck tumbling over\nhimself for his hole. Once or twice they have come to blows at the\nmouth of the burrow, and Pup has come off with a limp or a hurt ear,\nbut with only a mouthful of coarse reddish hair to growl over. He came\noff with a deep experience lately, and a greatly enhanced respect for\nwoodchucks. But he is of stubborn stock. So is Tubby of stubborn stock.\nPup knows that here is an enemy of the people, and that he must get\nhim. He knows that Tubby is all hair and hide and bowels. He now knows\nthat Tubby is deeper than he is broad, which makes him pretty deep.\n\nThe new light began to dawn on Pup when Tubby moved up from the\nwoods to a corner of the ice-house near the barn. The impudence, the\naudacity of the thing stood Pup\u2019s hair on end, and he took to the\nblackberry-vines at the other corner of the ice-house to see what would\nhappen.\n\nTubby\u2019s raiding hour was about five in the afternoon. At that hour\nthe shadows of the ice-house and the barn lay wide across the\nmowing-field--the proper time and color for things to happen. And there\nin the close-cut field, as if he had come up out of a burrow, sat old\nTubby, looking as big as a bear!\n\nPup stole softly out to meet him, moving over till he was between the\nchuck and the ice-house hole. It was a deliberate act and one of\ncomplete abandon. Things must this time be finished. And what a perfect\nbit of strategy it was! Hugging the ground when the chuck rose high\non his haunches to reconnoiter, Pup would \u201cfreeze\u201d till Tubby dropped\ndown and went to feeding, then, gliding like a snake forward, he would\nflatten behind a stone or a tuft of grass, and work forward and wait.\n\nThe ground rose slightly to Pup\u2019s disadvantage, and he was maneuvering\nto avoid the uphill rush when Tubby heard something off in the woods\nand turned with a dash for his hole. It was head-on and terrific! And\nthe utter shock of it, the moral shock, was more terrific! Neither knew\nfor an instant just what had happened; the suddenness, the precision,\nthe amazing boldness and quality of the attack putting Pup almost out\nof action. But it was precisely the jar old Tubby needed. Every flabby\nfiber of him was fight. The stub feet snapped into action; the chunk of\na body shot forward, ramming Pup amidships, sending him to the bottom\nof the slope, Tubby slashing like a pirate with his terrible incisors.\n\nBut the touch of those long teeth brought Pup short about. He likes\nthe taste of pain. He is a son of battle. And in a moment like this he\nis possessed of more than common powers of body and soul. The fur flew;\nthe grass flew; but there was scarcely a sound as the two fighters\ntumbled and tossed a single black-brown body like a ball of pain. They\nsprang apart and together again, whirled and dived and dodged as they\nclosed, each trying for a hold which neither dared allow. But Pup\ngot plenty of hair, choking, slippery hair, and leathery hide by the\nmouthful, while the twisting, snapping woodchuck cut holes in Pup\u2019s\nthin skin with teeth which would punch holes in sheet steel.\n\nAnd Tubby was fighting with his head as well as with teeth and toes. He\nwas cooler than Pup. He had a single-track mind, and it ran straight to\nhis burrow. The head-work was perfectly clear; the whole powerful play\ngoing forward with the nicest calculation, mad as it appeared to be in\nthe wild rough-and-tumble. There was method in Tubby\u2019s madness. He was\nfighting true to plan. But Pup was fighting to kill, and he lost his\nhead. It was to win his hole, and life, and the pursuit of happiness\non these ancestral acres that the woodchuck was fighting; and, as the\ntwo laid about them and rolled over and over, they kept rolling nearer\nand nearer to the ice-house and a burrow under the corner.\n\nOver and over, right and left, they lunged when the woodchuck, sent\nspinning from Pup\u2019s foreleg, came up with the dog chopping at his stub\nnose, but, giving him all four of his mailed feet instead, he bounded\nfrom the face of the dog, and, with a lightning somersault, landed plop\nin his burrow, Pup raking the hair from the vanishing haunch.\n\nAnd now Pup knows that there is no bottom to a woodchuck\u2019s burrow. But\ndo I fully realize that there is no bottom to the woodchuck? I have\nbeen almost fatally slow over this lesson. Yet this is the writer\u2019s\nfirst and most important lesson, no matter what his theme.\n\n\u201cI have been studying the woodchuck all my life,\u201d said my old friend\nBurroughs to me, \u201cand there is no getting to the bottom of him!\u201d He\nmade that great discovery early; eighty-four years of study confirmed\nit; and from early to late Burroughs never lacked for things to write\nabout or failed of his urge to write. There was no bottom to his\nwoodchuck.\n\nOthers have made this discovery concerning other things: the\nphilosophers, of truth; the poets, of men and flowers; the prophets,\nof God. But the writer must find it true of all things, of all his own\nthings, from woodchucks to God. There is nothing new in this discovery.\nIt simply makes all things new to the discoverer. The skeptical, the\nshallow, the fool who says in his heart there is nothing but bowels\nto a woodchuck--what would he at four-and-eighty find at Woodchuck\nLodge to write about? He might have all knowledge and a pen with which\nhe could remove mountains, but, lacking wonder, that power to invest\nthings with new and infinite significance, he would see no use in\nremoving the mountains and turning them into steppes and pampas and\npeopled plains.\n\nAll creative work, whether by brush or pen or hoe, is somehow making\nmountains into men, out of the dust an image, in our own likeness\ncreated, in the likeness of God. It may be woodchuck dust, or dandelion\ndust, or the shining dust of stars; touched with a creative,\ninterpreting pen the dust takes human shape and breathes a breath\ndivine. A woodchuck pelt makes an excellent fur for a winter coat; the\nrest of him makes an excellent roast for a dinner; but it is what still\nremains, the wonder of him, which makes for sermon and for song.\n\nHow hard a lesson that has been for me to learn! And so slow have I\nbeen learning it that little time is left for me to preach or sing. If\nonly I had known early that Mullein Hill was as good as Helicon; that\nthe people of Hingham were as interesting as the people of Cranford;\nthat Hingham has a natural history as rich and as varied as Selborne!\nMy very friends have helped to mislead and hinder me: \u201cI don\u2019t see\nwhat you find to write about up here!\u201d they exclaim, looking out with\ncommiseration over the landscape, as if Wellfleet or Washington or\nWausau were better for books than Hingham! Hanover may be better for\nducks than Scituate; but Hingham is as good as Hanover or Heaven for\nbooks.\n\nOne of my friends started for Hanover once for a day of hunting--but I\nwill let him tell the story:\n\n\u201cWe were on our way to Hanover, duck hunting,\u201d he said, \u201cand at\nAssinippi took the left fork of the road and kept going. But was this\nleft fork the right road? [An ancient doubt which had brought many a\ntraveler before them to confusion and a halt.] It was early morning,\nraw and dark and damp. No one was stirring in the farmhouses straggling\nalong the road, and we were turning to go back to the forks when\nthe kitchen door of the near-by house opened and a gray-bearded man\nappeared with a milk-pail on his elbow.\n\n\u201c\u2018Is this the road to Hanover?\u2019 we called.\n\n\u201cThe man backed into the kitchen door, put down his milk-pail, came out\nagain, carefully closing the door behind him, and started down the walk\ntoward the front gate. He opened the gate, turned and latched it behind\nhim as carefully as he had latched the kitchen door, and, stepping out\ninto the road, approached our carryall. Looking up, then down the road\nintently, he hitched his right foot to the hub of our front wheel, spat\nprecisely into the dust, and, fixing his face steadfastly toward Cape\nCod, answered:\n\n\u201c\u2018No.\u2019\n\n\u201c\u2018Say it with flowers!\u2019 snapped our driver, wheeling about for the\nother fork.\n\n\u201cAt the turn I looked back. There stood our guide in the road, his\nright foot still in the air, I think; and there--though it is several\nyears since, he may still be standing--one foot planted on the road to\nScituate, the other foot resting on the hub of the wheel that should\nhave been on the road to Hanover.\u201d\n\nThe man in the road knew that this road ran to Scituate. He lived on\nit. Had they asked him: \u201cMaster, which is the Great Commandment?\u201d he\nhad answered: \u201cTake this road for Scituate.\u201d For were they not duck\nhunting in Hanover? Then what profounder error could they have been in\nthan on the road to Scituate!\n\nBut most people go that way for Hanover. Every young writer I know\nhankers to get his Hanover ducks out of Scituate, as if, failing to get\nducks, he might get Scituate; novelty, the mere novelty of gunning in\nScituate when the ducks are in Hanover, making the best sort of \u201ccopy.\u201d\n\nIs it some new thing that we should search out, or some deeper, truer\nthing? Must we travel, or may we stay at home? Locomotion is certainly\na curse to literature. No one nowadays stays long enough in his own\nplace to know it and himself in it, which is about all that he can know\nwell enough to express. Let the writer stay at home. Drummers, actors,\ncircus-men, and Satan are free to go up and down the earth. And these\nseem to be writing most of our books.\n\nFor some years, now, I, also, have been going to and fro and up and\ndown in the earth thinking that I might find some better place than\nHingham. I have just returned from Wausau, Wisconsin, where they have\na very hard red granite, and a deep green granite, both of them the\nloveliest tombstone stuff that, I think, I ever saw. Certainly they are\nsuperior to our seam-face Hingham granite for tombstones. Up to the\ntime of my Wausau visit, I had never given much thought to tombstones;\nbut it shows how one\u2019s thought expands with travel, and how easily\nWausau may surpass Hingham, not alone in gravestones, but in other,\neven in literary, materials.\n\nBut Hingham has one thing in the line of gravestones not found at all\nin Wausau: I mean the boulders, great roundish glacial boulders, gray\ngranite boulders, old and gentle and mossy-grown, which lie strewn over\nour hilly pastures among the roses and the hardhack and the sweetfern,\nready to be rolled to the tomb, and fit for any poet\u2019s tomb. When that\nshy spirit and bird-lover, Bradford Torrey, native of my neighbor town\nof Weymouth, died in far-off California, he left but a single simple\nrequest: that he be brought back to his birthplace for burial, and that\na Weymouth boulder be found and rolled up to mark his grave. Were mine\nnot Hingham boulders I would take one out of my wall, the one which\nserves as a gatepost, and, with a yoke of Weymouth oxen, would draw it\nto Bradford Torrey\u2019s tomb, a tribute from Hingham to Weymouth, and a\ngift out of the heart of one who knows and loves \u201cThe Foot-Path Way,\u201d\n\u201cA Rambler\u2019s Lease,\u201d and \u201cA World of Green Hills.\u201d\n\nPerhaps one must needs go to California in order to come by this deep\ndesire for Weymouth. Then let him go early. For if he is to write \u201cThe\nNatural History of Weymouth,\u201d or of Selborne, he must return early and\nstay a long time. Thoreau has been criticized for writing of Nature as\nif she were born and brought up in Concord. So she was. Can one not see\nall of the world out of the \u201cWindow in Thrums\u201d?--that is, all of the\nworld of Thrums, which is all of the world, and just the world, one\ngoes to Thrums to see? \u201cI have traveled a great deal in Concord,\u201d says\nThoreau.\n\nThis brings me back to Hingham. I wish that I could write \u201cThe Natural\nHistory of Hingham\u201d! A modest desire! There can never be another\nGilbert White--but not for lack of birds and beasts in Hingham. Were\nI a novelist I would write a \u201cCranford\u201d--and I could! I would call it\n\u201cHingham,\u201d not \u201cMain Street,\u201d though that is the name of perhaps the\nlongest street in Hingham. But there are many other streets in Hingham,\nand all kinds of interesting people.\n\nAnd here I am on Mullein Hill, Hingham, with all of these streets,\nand all of these people, and woodchucks a plenty to write about--and\nplanning this day a trip to California! I might have been the author of\na recent book whose theme and sub-title read: \u201cIn the plains and the\nrolling country there is room for the individual to skip and frolic,\nbut all the peaks are pre\u00ebmpted.\u201d Come down from Mullein Hill; get out\nof Hingham; go West, young writer, as far as California; you shall find\nroom to skip and frolic on the plains out there!\n\nIt may be true in California, but the opposite of that is true in\nHingham. To be sure, I have tried to pre\u00ebmpt Mullein Hill; I now own\nthe knoll outside my study window, and the seven-acre woodlot beyond;\nbut there are many other peaks here among the hills of Hingham, and\nscarcely any of them occupied. The people of Hingham all crowd into the\nplains. So did the people of Israel crowd into the plains--of Moab,\nleaving Pisgah to Moses, who found it very lonesome. There is no one on\nPisgah now, I understand; no one on Ararat; no one on Popocatepetl; no\none on the top of Vesuvius, nor on the peak of Everest, peaks as well\nknown as White Plains or the Plains of Abraham, but not anything like\nso crowded. Moses sleeps on Nebo, yet no man knows where he lies. Have\nthem lay you in Sleepy Hollow if you wish your friends and neighbors\nto crowd in close and keep you company.\n\nWhy has there been no Iliad of Hingham? There are Helens in Hingham, as\nthere were Helens of Troy. Hingham is short of Homers. Mute, inglorious\nMiltons have we in Hingham. If one of them, however, should take his\npen in hand, would he dream, and if he dreamed, would he dare to cry to\nthe Heavenly Muse,\n\n                                  \u201cI thence\n  Invoke thy aid to my adventurous song,\n  That with no middle flight intends to soar\n  Above the Aonian mount, while it pursues\n  Things unattempted yet in prose or rhyme\u201d?\n\nWhich of our poets thinks any more of an adventurous song? Of\nattempting any more the unattempted in either prose or rhyme? It is\nas if everything had been attempted; everything dared; everything\naccomplished--the peaks all pre\u00ebmpted. Politics or religion or\nliterature, it matters not: the great days are gone, the great\nthings are done, the great men securely housed in the Hall of\nFame. Heaven offers us a League of Nations and we prefer the tried\nand proved device of war; a famed evangelist comes to town, we\nbuild him a vast tabernacle, and twenty thousand gather for the\nquickening message--\u201cBrighten the corner where you are!\u201d And in the\ncorners, and over the walls of the nation, with poster and placard\nthe \u201cSafety-First\u201d sign warns us not to hold our little rushlight\nover-high, or flare it over-far, for fear we set our brightened corner\nof the world on fire. But the whole world is on fire! And wherever an\nemperor has escaped the devouring flame, he is fiddling, as emperors\ndo; and his poet laureate is writing free verse; and all of his\nfaithful subjects are saying, over and over, \u201cDay by day, in every way,\nI am getting better and better.\u201d\n\n\u201cWe are taught by great actions that the universe is the property of\nevery individual in it,\u201d says Emerson. \u201cEvery rational creature has all\nnature for his dowry and estate. It is his, if he will. He may divest\nhimself of it; he may creep into a corner, and abdicate his kingdom, as\nmost men do, but he is entitled to the world by his constitution.\u201d I\nhave not spoken lately with a man who seemed to think he was entitled\nto the world. That grand old faith has passed away. But I talk with no\nman lately who does not think he is entitled to an automobile. Great\nis Tin Lizzie of the Americans! Greater than Diana of the Ephesians.\nBut except for our worship of the Ford we are not over-religious. The\nFord is a useful little deity; she meets our needs to the last mile.\nThe individual can skip and frolic with her, for she is distinctly the\ngoddess of the plains and rolling country. Admirable to her winking\ntail-light, she is one hundred per cent American, the work of one of\nthe supreme inventive geniuses of our time. She is the greatest thing\nin America, chugging everywhere but up Parnassus. Fool-proof, the\nuniversal car, she is the very sign and symbol of our antlike industry,\nthe motor-minded expression of our internal-combustion age.\n\nEven my quiet old friend Burroughs had his Ford. It was her creator\nhimself who gave her to him. The creature would climb around the slopes\nand over the walls about Woodchuck Lodge like a side-hill gouger,\nBurroughs in his long white beard driving her, as Father Time might\ndrive a merry-go-round. He nearly lost his life in her, too. But\neverybody nearly loses his life so nowadays; and nearly everybody had\nrather lose his life in a Ford than to drag out an endless existence\nin a buggy or on foot or in a wooden swing at home, watching the Fords\ngo by. What is life, anyway? The Ford is cheap; the service station\nis everywhere; so, pile into the little old \u201cbug\u201d--on the hood and\nrunning-boards! \u201cLet\u2019s go!\u201d\n\nPerhaps our machines are taking us--we wish to believe so--to some new\nArden, some far-off Avalon, where we shall heal us of our motor-minds,\nour movie-nerves, our corner-light religion; where \u201cSafety First\u201d shall\ngive place to \u201cDerring-Do\u201d as a national motto; where we shall ascend\nthe empty peaks, and out of the thunder and smoke of shaking Sinai\nbring down some daring commandment, done by the finger of God on new\ntables of stone.\n\nWe are not lacking courage. It is imagination that we lack. We dare.\nBut we do not think it worth while. We are shallow, skeptical,\nconventional, out of tune with the Infinite, and out of touch with\nspiritual things. If we do not try the unattempted, it is because we\nbelieve it has already been tried. It is because Homer has pre\u00ebmpted\nHelicon that we tunnel it. Only Milton, among us moderns (and how\nancient Milton seems!), only Milton in his blindness has seen that\nthere is room and verge enough on Helicon, and deeps within the abyss\nof Hades where Dante would be lost. No, Milton is not the only modern\nto leave the plains, and, like a star, to dwell apart. Thoreau did it\nat Walden; Lanier did it on the marshes of Glynn; Burroughs did it at\nWoodchuck Lodge; and Hudson did it on the plains of Patagonia--proof\nenough that ponds and plains and the low-lying marsh may be as high as\nHelicon for poetry, if only the poet have the vision to see that\n\n  \u201cLike to the greatness of God is the greatness within\n  The range of the marshes, the liberal marshes of Glynn.\u201d\n\nBut here we fail. We no longer see the greatness of God in things. We\nhave covered God with an atom. We ask for bread, and Science gives\nus a stone; for God, and Science gives us an electron. It was a\nsuper-electron that created the heavens and the earth when it saw that\nall of the other electrons were without form and void. Atomism has\ntaken the place of theism in our religion, if it is religion. Man is\nonly a bunch of willful atoms, or parts of atoms, not any longer the\ncrowning work of Creation, its center and circumference, its dominion\nand destiny and glory, its divine expression, interpretation, and\nimmortal soul. Are we to be robbed of God? Inhibited forever from faith\nby the lensed eyes of Science?\n\n\u201cWhat is man?\u201d I ask, and Science laughs and answers, \u201cElectrons.\u201d\nThat is its latest guess. But does man look like them? Does he feel\nlike them? Does he behave like them? Does he believe like them? In the\nlaboratory he may. But out here in the hills of Hingham, where I am\nreturned to the earth and the sky and to my own soul, I know that I AM,\nand that I still hold to all of those first things which Science would\nshame me out of, offering me electrons instead!\n\nI accept the electrons. Capering little deities, they are the sons\nof God. But so are you and I the sons of God--and we are electrons,\ntrillions of electrons, if you like.\n\nGods and atoms, we can dwell and think and feel as either, the two\nrealms distinct and far apart, the roads between in a continual state\nof construction, dangerous but passable. The anatomist, laying down his\nscalpel, cries, \u201cSuch knowledge is too wonderful for me. I am fearfully\nand wonderfully made!\u201d--his science passing into poetry, and from\npoetry to religion, but not easily in our present frame and mood.\n\nScience clears the sight and widens its range; but Science can never\nclear up the shadows at the bottom of a woodchuck. Only vision can\ndo that, and Science lacks vision, using a microtome instead, paring\nits woodchuck till he is thinner than sliced sunlight before it can\nsee through so much as a single stained cell of him. Science turns\naside from shadows, walking by sight or else standing still. It deals\nwith the flesh, not the spirit; and is as impotent in literature and\nart as in life and society. The potent thing among men and nations is\nlove. Love never faileth. Yet never were we so afraid of love as we\nare to-day; and never did art and literature seem so fearful of the\nimagination, of vision, of the eternal, the divine.\n\n\u201cGo get me a bird,\u201d the old scientist said to me; \u201cI will give you a\nlesson in skinning and mounting.\u201d I was a young boy. Hurrying out to\nthe woods, I was soon back with a cuckoo. The face of the old scientist\ndarkened. \u201cYou should not have killed this bird, it is the friend of\nman. See when I open this gizzard.\u201d And with a dexterous twist of his\nfingers turned inside out the gizzard, and showed it, like a piece of\nplush, its fleshy walls penetrated with millions of caterpillar hairs.\n\nTo this day I feel the wonder of that knowledge, and I thrill at the\nmeaning of that bird\u2019s gizzard. Here was science and charity and\npoetry and religion. What untold good to man! What greater possible\ngood to man? That was before I knew or understood the cuckoo\u2019s song.\nAnd neither the old scientist, nor yet his book, \u201cSixteen Weeks in\nZo\u00f6logy,\u201d dealt with the song. Science is sure and beautiful with a\ngizzard. Poetry is sure and beautiful with both gizzard and song. And I\nwonder if the grinding gizzard or the singing throat is the better part\nof the cuckoo, even in this world of worms?\n\n  \u201cThough babbling only to the vale,\n  Of sunshine and of flowers,\n  Thou bringest unto me a tale\n  Of visionary hours.\n\n  \u201cThrice welcome, darling of the Spring!\n  Even yet thou art to me\n  No bird, but an invisible thing,\n  A voice, a mystery;\n\n  \u201cAnd I can listen to thee yet;\n  Can lie upon the plain\n  And listen, till I do beget\n  That golden time again.\n\n  \u201cO blessed Bird! the earth we pace\n  Again appears to be\n  An unsubstantial fa\u00ebry place,\n  That is fit home for thee!\u201d\n\nI have a great book, published by the Government, devoted entirely to\nbirds\u2019 gizzards, mills of the gods, and their grindings. It is not a\ndull book, though the mills grind slowly and grind exceeding small.\nIt is a book of bones, of broken beetles, seeds, hairs, feathers, and\nfragments. It is a great work of science. One might not like to lay it\ndown unfinished; but, having finished it, one could hardly say:\n\n  \u201cAnd I can listen to thee yet;\n  Can lie upon the plain\n  And listen, till I do beget\n  That golden time again.\n\n  \u201cO blessed Bird! the earth we Pace\n  Again appears to be\n  An unsubstantial fa\u00ebry place,\n  That is fit home for thee!\u201d\n\nNature will not do, nor all the truth of nature, for stuff of song and\nstory. As life is more than meat, so is literature more than life.\nNature conforms to art; and in fiction \u201cthe only real people are those\nwho never existed.\u201d\n\nAt Good-Will Farm, Maine, there is a rock marked with a copper plate.\nIt had been marked for drill and dynamite, until, one day, my car\nswung up and over a sharp turn in the road before the schoolhouse,\nskidding rather horribly on the smooth outcropping ledge which had been\nuncovered and left as part of the roadbed.\n\n\u201cYou ought to blast that thing out,\u201d I said, somewhat testily, to the\nsupervisor who came out to greet me, my nerves, strung a bit too tight\non the long day\u2019s drive, snapping with the skid here at the very end of\nthe trip.\n\n\u201cI\u2019ll do it,\u201d he replied, apologetically. \u201cI had intended to do it from\nthe first.\u201d\n\nThe next day we were climbing this road on foot, and, standing on the\nledge to take in the wide landscape of the Kennebec below us, I chanced\nto look down at my feet and saw, cut deep in the smooth surface of the\nstone, several parallel lines.\n\n\u201cDon\u2019t blast out this rock!\u201d I exclaimed. \u201cTear down your schoolhouse\nrather. Build a new road through the grounds, but leave this stone.\nThis is part of a great book.\u201d\n\n\u201cI don\u2019t understand,\u201d said the supervisor.\n\n\u201cHere is written a page of the greatest story ever penned. These lines\nwere done by the hand of the glacier who came this way in the Ice Age.\nDon\u2019t blot it out. Put a fence about it, and a copper plate upon it,\ntranslating the story so that your students can read it and understand.\u201d\n\nHe did. There was no need of the fence; but he set the plate into the\nrock, telling of the Ice Age, how the glacier came down, ploughing out\nthe valley of the Kennebec, rounding and smoothing this ledge, and\ninditing this manuscript for Good-Will Farm School ages later.\n\nSo much does the mere scratch of science enhance the virtue of a stone!\nNow add to your science history. Instead of the scratch of a glacier,\nlet it be a chisel and a human hand, and let the marks be--\u201c1620.\u201d Now\nread--if you can read and understand.\n\nI copy it verbatim from a Freshman college theme:\n\n  PLYMOUTH ROCK\n\n  Plymouth Rock is situated in Plymouth Mass. It is the rock upon which\n  the Mayflower landed in 1620. But it is not now where it was then. It\n  was moved many years ago up to the street. And when they moved it it\n  broke. But they cemented it together. It is four or five feet long;\n  and three or four feet wide; and it is inscribed with the famous\n  figures 1620, to celebrate the landing of the Puritans at that time.\n  It is enclosed within a canopy of stone and an iron fence; but the\n  gate is hardly ever closed. There are a great many famous stones in\n  the world but this is as famous as any.\n\nMy mother was visiting me. She is a self-contained old Quaker, and\nthis was the second time in all of her eighty years that she had\neven seen New England! What should we do first? What did she most\ndesire to see? \u201cTake me to see Plymouth Rock first,\u201d she said; and we\nwere off, mother as excited and as lively as a girl. As we entered\nPlymouth, however, I noticed that mother had grown silent, and that\nher doctor-daughter, beside her on the back seat, always sensitive to\nher moods, was also silent. We descended the hill to the harbor, came\non in sight of the canopy over the Rock, and slowed down to stop. But\nthe car had not stopped, when mother, the back door open, her foot on\nthe running-board, was stepping off and through the open gate, where,\nfalling on her knees, with tears running down her face, she kissed the\nblessed stone, her daughter calling, \u201cO Mother, the germs! the germs!\u201d\n\nWhen Science and Religion thus clash, Science must give way. Mother\nknew as much about germs as her doctor-daughter. She had lived longer\nthan her daughter; she had lost more, and had loved more--some things\nmore than life itself.\n\nScience has marked every rock; but only those that are wet with such\ntears and kissed with such lips are ripe for sermon and song. These are\nthe eyes and these the lips of those, who, passing through Bacca, make\nit a well. Knowledge alone, though it course the very heavens, will\ncome back to earth without so much as one shining fleck of stardust in\nits hair.\n\nThe other day a great astronomer was delivering a lecture in Boston\non the stars. Wonder and awe held the audience as it traveled the\nstellar spaces with the help of the astounding pictures on the screen.\nThe emotion was deep; the tension almost painful as the lecturer swept\non and on through the unthinkable vast, when, coming to his close, he\nturned and asked lightly, \u201cNow, what do you think of immortality? Is it\nanything more than the neurotic hope of a very insignificant mote in\nthis immensity?\u201d\n\nThe effect was terrific. The scientific smiled. The simple left the\nhall dazed and stunned. They lost all sense of time and space, they\nlost sight of the very stars in this swift, far fall. They had been\ncarried up through the seven spheres to the very gate of heaven,\nthen hurled to earth. The lecture failed--not of instruction, not of\nemotion, but of will, leaving the listeners powerless and undone. The\nlecturer may be right--for astronomy; and yet be quite wrong, for\npoetry. He may have uttered the last word--for science; but this end is\nonly the beginning for religion.\n\nHow much greater an astronomer this college professor than that\nshepherd psalmist on the far-off Syrian hills! Ranging the same astral\nfield as our scientist, sweeping the same stellar spaces, with only a\nshepherd\u2019s knowledge, the psalmist\u2019s thought takes the same turn as the\nscientist\u2019s, down to man, but on different wings,--the wings of poetry:\n\n  \u201cWhen I consider thy heavens,\n  The work of thy fingers,\n  The moon and the stars\n  Which thou hast ordained;\n  What is man, that thou art mindful of him?\n  And the son of man, that thou visitest him?\u201d\n\nThen, swinging upward on those mighty wings, past the reach of science,\nout of the range of knowledge, up, up to the divinest height ever\ntouched by human thought, the psalmist-astronomer cries impiously,\nexultantly,\n\n  \u201cFor thou hast made him but little lower than God,\n  And crownest him with glory and honor!\u201d\n\nThis starts where the astronomer stopped. This is religion and\nliterature. And I have these very stars over my hilltop here in\nHingham!\n\n\n\n\nCHAPTER IV\n\nTHE DUTY TO DIG\n\n\n\n\nCHAPTER IV\n\nTHE DUTY TO DIG\n\n\nI\n\nA young man sat by the roadside, milking. And as he milked, one drove\nup in her limousine and stopped and said unto him:\n\n\u201cYoung man, why are you not at the front?\u201d\n\nThe young man milked on, for that was the thing to do. Then, with still\nmore slackers in her voice, the woman said a second time unto him:\n\n\u201cYoung man, why are you not at the front?\u201d\n\n\u201cBecause, ma\u2019am, the milk is at this end,\u201d he answered.\n\nAnd the chauffeur, throwing the clutch of the limousine into third\nspeed ahead, drove off, thinking.\n\nBut the young man milking had already thought. To milk is to think. If\n\u201cdarning is premeditated poverty,\u201d then there is no saner occupation\nfor human hands, none more thought-inducing, unless it be milking.\nAnyhow, when the Great War came on, I went over to a neighbor\u2019s and\nbought a cow; I made me a new milking-stool with spread sturdy legs;\nand I sat down to face the situation calmly, where I might see it\nsteadily and whole. I had tried the professorial chair; I had tried the\neditorial chair; I had even tried that Siege Perilous, the high-backed,\nsoft-seated chair of plush behind the pulpit. I may never preach again;\nbut if I do, it will be on condition that I sit on a three-legged\nmilking stool instead of on that upholstered pillowy throne of plush.\n\nWhence cometh wisdom? and where is the place of understanding? The\nflaming flambeaux on the Public Library say, \u201cThe light is in here\u201d;\nthe [Greek: Ph B K] key in the middle of the professorial waistcoat\nsays, \u201cIt is in here.\u201d But I say, let the flambeaux be replaced by\nround-headed stocking-darners, as the sign of premeditated poverty; and\nthe dangling Key by a miniature milking-stool, as the symbol of the\nwisdom that knows which end of a cow to milk.\n\nNot one of those students in the University who earned [Greek: Ph B\nK] last year knew how to milk, and only a few, I believe, of their\nprofessors. One of these, with a Ph.D. from Germany, whose key had\ncharmed his students across their whole college course, asked me what\nbreed of cattle heifers were. Might not his teaching have been quite\nas practical, had there dangled from his watch-chain those four years,\nnot this key to the catacombs of knowledge, but a little jeweled\nmilking-stool?\n\nI too might wear a key, especially as I came innocently by mine, having\nhad one _thrust_ upon me; still, as I was born on a farm, and grew up\nin the fields, and am likely to end my days as I have lived them, here\nin the woods, this [Greek: Ph B K] key does not fit the lock to the\ndoor of knowledge that opens widest to me.\n\nI have read a little on the aorist tense, and on the Ygdrasyl tree;\na little, I say, on many things, from the animal aardvark, here and\nthere, to zythum, a soft drink of the ancient Egyptians, picking a few\nrusty locks with this skeleton key; but the doors that open wide at my\napproach are those to my house, my barn, and the unwithholding fields.\nI know the road home, clear to the end; I know profoundly to come in\nwhen it rains; and I move with absolute certainty to the right end of\nthe cow when it is time to milk.\n\nI am aware of a certain arrogance in this, a show of pride, and that\nunbottomed pomp of those who wear the [Greek: Ph B K] key dangling at\ntheir vests,--as if I could milk _any_ cow! or might have in my barn\nthe world\u2019s champion cow! I have only a grade Jersey in my barn; and as\nfor milking heifers with their first calves--I _have_ milked them. But\nbreaking in a heifer is really a young man\u2019s job.\n\nSo I find myself at the middle of my years, stripped of outward signs,\nas I hope I am inwardly purged, of all vain shows of wisdom (quite too\nhumble, truly!), falling in as unnaturally as the birds with the fool\ndaylight-saving plan, the ways of the sun, who knoweth his going down,\nbeing quite good enough for me.\n\n\nII\n\nBut how far run the ways of nature from the devious ways of men! The\nways of Mullein Hill from the ways of a military camp! The Great War\ncame and passed and left the earth a vast human grave. But through it\nall seedtime and harvest came to Mullein Hill, leaving only more and\nmore abundant life. The Great War is an illustration on the grandest\nscale of what man, departing from the simple ways of nature, will do to\nman. War is the logic of our present way of living. I am not concerned\nwith war in this book, but with the sources of life and literature. I\nhave a cure for war, however, here on Mullein Hill; and this cure is\nthe very elixir of life and literature.\n\nWar could have destroyed, but it did not change, my going or coming\nhere in the hills. My garden went on as it had for years gone on. There\nwas a little more of it, for there was more need in the village; there\nwas a little larger yield of its reasonableness and joy and beans. But\nI did not plough up my front lawn for potatoes. Years before I had\nprovided myself with a back yard, and got it into tilth for potatoes,\nkeeping the front lawn green for the cow.\n\nThough she is only a grade Jersey, the cow is a pretty creature,\nand gives a rural, ruminant touch to our approach, along with the\nlilacs and the hens. Hitched here on the front lawn the cow suggests\neconomy, too. She is more than a wagon hitched to a star. She is a\nmowing-machine, and a rake and tedder, and a churn. The gods with her\ndo my mowing, gather up and cure my hay, and turn it into cream.\n\nEvery cow gives some skim milk--which we need for the chickens, for\ncooking, and cottage cheese. Life is not all cream. If I speak of gods\ndoing my chores, I will say they do not milk for me in the mornings,\nand that it is one of the boys who milks at night. A cow clipping your\nlawn is poetry and cream too, but caring for the creature is often skim\nmilk and prose. Milking ought to be done regularly. Get a cow and you\nfind her cud a kind of pendulum to all creation, the time to milk being\nsynchronized twice daily to the stars.\n\nI did not plant war-potatoes on my front lawn, partly because they\nwould not grow there, and partly because, in times of peace, I had\nprepared for war-potatoes; and partly because I think a front lawn\nlooks better in cows than in potatoes. If thou shouldst\n\n  \u201cSo live, that when thy summons comes to join\n  The innumerable caravan ...\n  Thou go not, like the quarry-slave at night,\n  Scourged to his dungeon,\u201d\n\n--should we not all live so that, when war comes, we need not plough up\nthe beds for potatoes where the portulaca and poppy ought to blow?\n\nBut what a confession here! When war comes! As if I expected war to\ncome again! Many of us are fighting feebly against both the thought and\nthe hideous thing. But many more are preparing for it. Our generals of\nthe late war are going up and down the land preaching preparedness,\nas they always have. We learn nothing. They know everything. Their\nprofession is war. Can a man lay down his life for a profession he does\nnot believe in? The military men believe in war.\n\nBut so do we all as a people. War is the oldest, most honored\nprofession in the world. In all of the fifty years of its history, the\ngreat University, of which, for almost half of that time, I have been a\nteacher, had never conferred an honorary degree. For fifty years it had\ncarried a single laurel wreath in its hand to crown some honored head.\nProphets came and went; poets came and went; scientists came and went;\nscholars came and went; but still the University, dedicated to life\nand learning, waited with its single wreath a yet more honorable brow.\n\nThen came Foch, the professional soldier. Study for nearly ten thousand\nstudents was suspended; a holiday was proclaimed; a great assembly was\ncalled; and here, with speech and song and academic garb, with national\ncolors mingling and waving palms, the laurel wreath was placed upon\nthe soldier\u2019s brow. And this University, founded in the name of the\nPrince of Peace, dedicated to Christian life and learning, crowned the\nprofession of arms as it can crown no other profession, and gave its\nhighest sanction to bloody war.\n\nI do not fail of gratitude to Foch. I only stand in horror that he is,\nand had to be. I would have had the Nation at the pier to meet him,\nbut clothed in sackcloth, and every citizen with ashes on his head. I,\ntoo, would have suspended study and work everywhere for an hour; and,\nstretching crape across the Arctic Circle till the sign of mourning\nhid Matamoras and Cape Sable, I would have called an assembly of the\ncontinent, and begged this half of the hemisphere to cry, \u201cO God, the\nfoolishness and futility of war!\u201d\n\nThe Duty to Dig is older than the practice of war. It was designed to\nprevent war; and to-day it is the only biological remedy certain to\ncure war. I must not stop here to explain its therapeutics as applied\nto war, for I am dealing with another theme. But just before the war\nbroke upon the world, I wrote an editorial for a paper I was serving,\nadvocating that a hive of my bees be sent to the German Emperor and\none also to the war lord of Austria. I had extra hives for the British\nPrime Minister, the Tiger of France, Mr. William Randolph Hearst, and\nMr. Theodore Roosevelt. If I could have interested these gentlemen, and\na few others, in bee-keeping, I could save the world from war.\n\nThe editorial and the offer of bees were both rejected by the careful\neditor. \u201cI must stay strictly neutral,\u201d was his timid excuse. At the\nvery time I was writing, the Reverend Price Collier, a former Hingham\npreacher, was publishing a book called \u201cGermany and the Germans,\u201d\nin which he set forth the old theory of military preparedness as a\npreventive of war. Speaking of the German army (this was in 1913), he\nsays:\n\n  It is the best all-round democratic university in the world; it is\n  a necessary antidote for the physical lethargy of the German race;\n  it is essential to discipline; it is a cement for holding Germany\n  together; it gives a much-worried and many-times-beaten people\n  confidence; the poverty of the great bulk of its officers keeps\n  the level of social expenditure on a sensible scale; it offers a\n  brilliant example, in a material age, of men scorning ease for the\n  service of their country; it keeps the peace in Europe; and until\n  there is a second coming of a Christ of pity and patience and peace,\n  it is as good a substitute for that far-off divine event as puzzled\n  man has to offer.\n\nIt is a minister of the Gospel who makes this profound observation.\nBut it sounds like our present Secretary of War, a banker, and like\nour present Commanding General, a professional soldier. Here is sure\nproof that the human race cannot learn the essential things, and so, is\ndoomed.\n\nBut I wish I might try my bees. This old hoax of preventing war by\npreparing men to fight has been so often tried! And we are at it again.\nBut no nation has tried my simple and inexpensive substitute of bees\nand plough-shares, and pruning hooks. They have tried, from time out\nof memory, to beat their swords and spears into garden tools, but a\nsword makes a mighty poor ploughshare. It has never been successfully\ndone. The manufacturing process is wrong. It takes the temper out of\ngood garden steel first to heat it in the fires of war. We must reverse\nthe process: turn the virgin metal into garden steel first, and give\nevery man a hoe, and a ploughshare, and a pruning hook; then he will\nnever have need for sword and spear.\n\n\nIII\n\nInstead of universal military training, I would advocate a hive of\nbees for everybody, or a backyard garden. A house should have both\nlawn and garden, even though the gooseberries crowd the house out to\nthe roadside, where the human house instinctively edges to see the\nneighbors in their new pony-coats go by. Let my front door stand open;\nwhile over the back stoop the old-fashioned roses and the grape-vines\ndraw a screen.\n\nBut give me a house with a yard rather than a hole in the wall, a city\ntenement, or a flat. The whole trend of society is toward the city, or\ncamp, military, rather than agricultural. The modern city is a social\ncamp. Life is becoming a series of mass movements, military maneuvers,\nat the command of social leaders. Industry has long been militarized\nboth in form and spirit, and is rapidly perfecting its organization.\nToday, 1923, there are more than a hundred different automobile\nmanufacturing concerns in this country. Only those capable of \u201cquantity\nproduction\u201d will survive. Already the manufacturers see the entire\nindustry reduced to five different concerns. This is strictly military,\nthe making of society into a vast, and vaster machine, which, too great\nat last for control, will turn upon and crush its makers.\n\nWe are all conscripted. The Draft Board of industrialism allows no\nexemptions. The only way I see is to desert, to take to the woods, as\nI have done, to return individually to a simple, elemental manner of\nlife out of the soil. But who can pay the social cost? Our social or\ncamp psychology is better understood and more easily handled than the\nmind of the lone scout within us. We are gregarious by nature; we hunt\nin packs, we collect into crowds. Yet we are selves, separate, single,\neach of us a cave-man as well as cliff-dweller, a Remus as well as a\nRomulus. The city-building brother killed his country brother. And the\nmurder still goes on.\n\nOut of a commentary on the Bible I take the following observation,\npartly for its charm, but also because it holds a profound truth:\n\n  God\u2019s people from the earliest time had never been builders of\n  cities. The earliest account of city-building is that of the city of\n  Enoch by Cain, and all the subsequent mention of city-building is in\n  connection with the apostate families of the earth, such as Nimrod\n  and his descendants, the Canaanites and the Egyptians. Sodom is one\n  of the earliest mentioned cities properly so called, and the story of\n  it is not encouraging for the people of God.\n\nBut which is the city whose story is encouraging to the people of\nGod? Not Boston\u2019s, nor New York\u2019s, nor London\u2019s, nor Vienna\u2019s. Vienna\nis starving; the country is bankrupt Austria\u2019s governmental machine\nis a total wreck; but the peasant goes his way, suffering little\ninconvenience, though the crown is not to-day worth the paper it is\nprinted on. The peasant lives on the land, not on the bank; he gets\nhis simple life directly out of the soil instead of a pay envelope; he\nhas no New York, New Haven and Hartford stock, worth one hundred and\neighty-six dollars yesterday, and ten dollars to-day, to-morrow, and\nuntil he starves. He has a piece of land and, impossible as it sounds\non paper, lives on it, and out of it, and in it, an almost independent\nlife, as the wage-slave and the coupon-victim cannot live.\n\nWe shall face a famine, so long as our door-yards are all lawn in\nfront and all garbage-can behind. We have farmers enough--one to every\neight of our population, I believe--who might produce sufficient raw\npotatoes; but Aroostook County is barely contiguous to the United\nStates, and such a barrage of frost was laid down across its borders\nthis last winter that, if one brought potatoes out of Aroostook between\nDecember and March, he had to bear them in his bosom.\n\nAroostook County is the greatest potato-patch in the world; the\nAmerican imagination loves to hover over the tubered tracts of\nAroostook, the _richest_ county in the world; loves to feel that the\nworld could be fed from Aroostook, were it not for the triple alliance\nof the cold and the contiguity and a railroad that runs, if not like\na broken tooth, then like a foot out of joint, into these remote\ndreamlands of Maine.\n\nWoe to them that go down to the railroads for help; and stay on engines\nand trust in empties, because they are many; and in officials, because\nthey are very strong. Now the officials are men and not God, and their\nengines steel and not spirit. Why should a rational, spiritual human\nsociety trust its well-being to such paltry powers, when all the forces\nof nature are at its command?\n\nI will put more trust in an acre of land than in a Continental\nCongress. I had rather have a hoe at my right hand than an army of\nbank presidents. Give me the rising and the setting sun, the four\nseasons, and the peasant\u2019s portion; and you may have the portion of the\npresident.\n\nI said we have farmers enough to raise all we need. We have more\nthan enough. We have more than enough bankers; more than enough\nautomobile-makers; more than enough store-keepers; more than enough\ncoal-miners; more than enough cooks and janitors. But we have nowhere\nnear enough landowners and peasants. Nothing in the world would so\nstraighten out society as to declare next year a Year of Jubilee, and\ngive every man, not a job, but his birthright, a piece of land.\n\nWe are over-organized and almost de-individualized. But the time must\nagain come when every man shall dig and every woman spin, and every\nfamily build its own automobile, distill its own petrol, and work out\nits taxes on the road. We shall always hold to the social principle of\nthe division of labor--I plough for you; and you shoe my horse for me.\nBut we have carried the principle, in our over-organization, to the\npoint where a man\u2019s whole part in the world\u2019s work consists in putting\non the left hind wheel of endless automobiles.\n\nAn eight-hour day will not save that man. And he is typical of all men\nto-day. Only by his acceptance of the duty to dig can he be saved,\nand society with him. The principle of the division of labor has been\nmisapplied: instead of specialization and the narrowing of each man\u2019s\nportion, it should be applied broadly, multiplying his labors. Work is\ncreative; it is self-expression; and I should let no man do for me\nwhat I can do. He robs me of living who robs me of doing.\n\nThe theory of present-day society--specialization, organization,\ncombination, quantity production--is a fatal application of a perfectly\nsound principle. Six automobile combinations which in a year can\ndestroy a hundred lesser combinations, can in another year destroy all\nbut one of each other; and that remaining one, having nothing now to\ndestroy, must turn and destroy itself.\n\n\nIV\n\nBut I am concerned with life and literature. How does the organization\nof society affect books, admitting that it affects life? What is a book\nbut a life?--and a more abundant life? Everybody who has lived has a\nbook to write. But only those who have lived abundantly should write\ntheir books. Starve a nation spiritually, as ours is being starved;\nreduce its life to a mechanical routine; rob its labor of all creative\nquality, and how shall it write?\n\nThe duty to dig applies first to the spirit. There is sound economy in\nit if one\u2019s political economy is sound. I do not say money. Economy\nand money are not equivalent terms. I digged as a duty last year; and\nas a result I did not buy a potato from the \u201ccombine\u201d in Maine; I\nnearly got on without a pound of beef from Chicago; and could have made\nmy honey serve for Cuban sugar. The same amount of time spent putting\nleft hind wheels on automobiles might have brought me more money, and\nso, more beef and potatoes and sugar, and so, more gout and rheumatism.\nThe duty to dig comprehends a great deal more than ordinary economy.\n\nI would not imply that I can handle the Beef Trust and the potato\npirates and the sugar barons with my humble hoe; or snap my fingers\nin the face of Standard Oil, and say, \u201cGo to, I\u2019ll have none of your\ntwenty-eight-cent gas!\u201d I do say that several million bee-keepers and\npotato-patchers, and hen-coopers, keeping busy in their back yards, as\nI keep busy in mine, could mightily relieve the railroad congestion,\nand save gasoline, and cut in on the demand for Chicago beef and\ncold-storage eggs, and generally lower the high cost of living.\n\nIt is not because there are \u201cmillions in it\u201d that I would have the\nbanker plant his back yard to beans. Thoreau planted two acres and\na half to beans and potatoes (on a weak market, however), with a\n\u201cpecuniary profit of $8.71-1/2.\u201d Here is no very great financial\ninducement to a busy banker, or to a ward boss. Still, who better than\nthe ward boss or the banker could afford a private beanfield?\n\nI say it is not for the sake of this $8.71-1/2 profit of Thoreau\u2019s that\nwe must dig; but rather for that chapter on the bean field in Walden\nPond, which proves the real worth of digging.\n\nThere can hardly be a form of labor so elemental, so all-demanding,\nso abundantly yielding of the fruits of life, as digging. Yet there\nare those who doubt the wisdom of digging because things can be bought\ncheaper at the store; and those who question their right to dig when\nthey can hire a man to dig for them; and there are those who hate to\ndig, who contemn duty, who, if they plant, will plant a piece of fallow\nland with golf-balls only, and hoe it with brassies, niblicks, cleeks,\nand spooners, saying with Chaucer\u2019s Monk:\n\n  \u201c... how shall the world be serv\u00e8d?\n  Let Austyn have his swynk to his reserv\u00e8d.\u201d\n\nGolf is an ancient game, no doubt, but not so old as gardening, though\ngolf\u2019s primordial club and vocabulary seem like things long left over,\nbits of that Missing-Link Period between our arboreal and cave-day\npast. Except for calling the cows from the meadow, or fighting in\nwar, there is nothing we do that requires words and weapons, tools,\ninstruments, implements, utensils, apparatus, machinery, or mechanisms\nso lacking in character and comeliness as the words and clubs of\ngolf. The gurglings of infants seem articulate, even to unparental\nears, compared with the jargon of golf; and as for billiard-cues,\nbaseball-bats, pikes, spades, shillalahs, and teething-rings, they have\nthe touch of poetry on them; whereas the golf-club was conceived and\nshaped in utter unimaginativeness.\n\nGolf is not an ancient game: it has the mark of the Machine upon it;\nthe Preadamites could not have figured the game out. Gardening, on\nthe other hand, if we trust Holy Writ, was an institution founded\nbefore the Fall, incorporated with the social order from the start--an\ninherent, essential element in the constitution of human things:\n\n  \u201cGreat nature\u2019s _primal_ course,\n  Chief nourisher in life\u2019s feast,\u201d\n\n--which civilization doth murder as Macbeth murdered sleep.\n\nGolf belongs to civilization strictly, not to the human race, being one\nof life\u2019s post-Edenic precautions, like psychopathic hospitals, jails,\nand homes for the feeble-minded. A golf course is a little-wanderers\u2019\nhome; and if we must have golf courses, let their hazards be carefully\nconstructed on worthless land, and let the Civil Service Board examine\nthe caddies, whether they be fit guards for the golfers, lest some\nsmall boy be wasted who might have tended real sheep on Norfolk Downs\nor have weeded in a garden.\n\nIt is a duty to dig, to nail the Stars and Stripes to a lima-bean pole,\nand plant the banner square in the middle of the garden. Profits?\npleasures? Both sorts will grow, especially the pleasures, which really\nare part of the profits, till they fairly smother the weeds; not the\nleast of these being your sense of living and your right to live,\nwhich comes out of actually hoeing your own row--a literal row of\nbeans or corn or tomatoes.\n\nSomebody must feed the soldiers; but nobody must needs feed me. It is\nnot necessary that I live, however necessary I find it to eat; eating,\nlike sleeping and breathing and keeping warm, being strictly a private\nenterprise that nobody but I need see as necessary or be responsible\nfor.\n\nThe soldier must carry a shovel nowadays, but he will require a\nhoe, too, and a pruning hook, and a ploughshare, before he will be\nself-supporting. With such a kit war could support war forever,\nwhich is the Rathenau plan of war, with everything German left out,\nconsequently everything of war left out. The soldier cannot feed\nhimself. The crew of a battleship cannot be expected to catch their own\ncod and flounders. They must leave that to the trawlers, those human\nboats, with human crews who fish for a living. Men of the navy must\ndie for a living. The captain of a United States destroyer, writing\nto his wife, says, \u201cI think that the only real anxiety is lest we\nmay not get into the big game at all. I do not think that any of us\nare bloodthirsty or desirous of glory or advancement, but we have to\njustify our existence.\u201d\n\nSo does every human being; yet an existence that can be justified\nonly by fighting and dying is too unproductive, too far from\nself-supporting, to warrant the sure calling and election of many of\nus. No Grand-Banker ever wrote so to his wife, though he might be\nreturning with all his salt unwet; no college professor ever wrote\nso--not if he could get into his garden--in spite of his pupils, his\ncollege president, the trustees, and Mr. Carnegie\u2019s Efficiency Board.\nTeaching may not justify a professor\u2019s existence, though it ought to\njustify his salary; so, every time I start for the University, I put a\ndozen or two of eggs into my book-bag, that I may have a right to the\ntree of life, and may enter in through the gates into the city.\n\nI am not independent of society. I do not wish to be independent. I\nwish to be debtor to all and have all debtors to me. But we buy too\nmuch and sell too much of life, and raise too little. We _pay_ for all\nwe get. Sometimes we get all we pay for, but not often; and if we never\ndid, still life has so thoroughly adopted the business standard, that\nwe had rather keep on paying than trying to grow our way.\n\nBusiness is a way of living by proxy; money is society\u2019s proxy for\nevery sort of implement and tool. To produce something, however--some\nactual wealth, a pennyweight of gold-dust, a pound of honey, a dozen\neggs, a book, a boy, a bunch of beets; some real wealth out of the\nsoil, out of my loins, out of my brains, out of my muscles and the sap\nof the maple, the rains and sunshine and the soil, out of the rich\nveins of the earth or the swarming waters of the sea--this is to be;\nand to be myself, and not a proxy, is to lose my life and save it, and\nto justify my existence.\n\nI have to buy a multitude of things--transportation, coal, dentistry,\nnews, flour, and clothes. I have paid in money for them. I have also\npaid in real wealth, having given, to balance my charge on society, an\nequivalent in raw cabbage, pure honey, fresh eggs, and the like, from\nmy own created store. I am doubtless in debt to society, but I have\ntried to give wealth for wealth, not the symbol of it merely; and last\nyear, as I balanced my books, I think the world was in debt to me by\nseveral bunches of beets. I do not boast of the beets, though they take\nme out of the debtor\u2019s prison where most of us live. I can face the\nworld, however, with those beets; I have gone over the top, have done\nmy bit, with beets.\n\nThe oldest duty on the human conscience is the duty to dig. I am a\ncollege teacher, and that is an honorable, if futile, profession. The\nScriptures say: \u201cHe gave some, apostles; and some, prophets; and some,\nevangelists; and some, pastors and teachers\u201d; but, before there were\nany such multifarious and highly specialized needs, it was said unto\nour first father: \u201cReplenish the earth and subdue it\u201d--a universal\nhuman need, a call to duty, from which no Draft Board of civilization\ncan rightly exempt us.\n\nWealth is not created, not even increased, in trade. When was one\npennyweight of gold on \u2019change by any magic metallurgy of trade made\ntwo pennyweight? The magic of the second pennyweight is the metallurgy\nof the pick and shovel and cradle rocking the shining sands of the\nYukon. Real wealth is only circulated in trade. It comes from primal\nsources--from the gold-fields, the cotton-fields, the corn-fields, the\nfir-clad sides of Katahdin, the wide gray waters of the Grand Banks,\nthe high valleys of the sheeped Sierras, and from back yards, like\nmine, that bring forth thirty- and sixty- and an hundred-fold.\n\nAnd this is as profoundly true of life and literature as it is of\ncotton and lumber and gold.\n\nGive me a garden and the wages of hoeing my row. And if not a garden,\nthen a little house of hens, a coop of pigeons, a colony of bees--even\nin the city I should keep bees, if I had to keep them in the attic or\non the roof. Not every one can have a garden, but every one can either\nplant a tree, or raise one pig, or keep a cow or goat, or feed a few\nhens, or raise a flock of pigeons, or do something that will bring him\npersonally into contact with real things, and make it possible for him\nto help pay his way with real wealth, and in part, at least, to justify\nhis existence, and his book.\n\n\n\n\nCHAPTER V\n\nTHE MAN AND THE BOOK\n\n\n\n\nCHAPTER V\n\nTHE MAN AND THE BOOK\n\n\nHere on my desk lies a new book entitled, \u201cFor the Benefit of My\nCreditors,\u201d the autobiography of Hinckley Gilbert Mitchell, a scholar,\na teacher in a school of theology--and now this book, a simple,\nsad book of human struggle and defeat, of spiritual and scientific\nadventure and triumph and romance.\n\nThe scholar is not the accepted stuff of literature. What of human\ninterest can come out of a classroom? Yet I have seen this scholar\u2019s\nclassroom when it was wilder than ten nights in a barroom crowded into\none. I have seen some lively and human times in my own classroom; and\nI know that there is as real a chance, and as magical a chance, there\nas Dana found on the high seas. There are frontiers for the scholar,\nespecially in theology, as dangerous in their crossing as any to be met\nwith by the overland pioneer.\n\nDana escaped from the decorous and the conventional life of social\nBoston by way of the deep sea; Mitchell escaped from the decorous and\nconventional dogma of his church by way of honest study; and his Church\ntried him for heresy, and found him guilty, and would have burned him\nat the stake had that been the decorous and conventional manner of\ndealing with heretics at the moment. As it was, they only branded him,\nand cast him out as a thing unclean.\n\nPerhaps that is not a life human enough, and abundant enough, for a\nbook. It is the simple story of a poor boy picking stones and building\nwalls on his father\u2019s farm in New York State; then, as Director of the\nAmerican School of Oriental Research in Jerusalem, rebuilding \u201cThe\nWall of Nehemiah\u201d; then, as scholar and professor, re-creating \u201cThe\nWorld before Abraham\u201d; and finally, as the storm center of one of\nthe bitterest theological controversies of recent years, dismissed,\ndishonored, betrayed for less than thirty pieces of silver, a silent,\nbrokenhearted man. It is only another version of an old and very common\nstory. Prophets and pioneers are all alike; and their stories are much\nalike, whether the pages turn westward, where new empires take their\nway, or eastward, back along the scholar\u2019s crossed and tangled trails\nto a world before Abraham.\n\nAs the manuscript of the book lay upon my table, I wondered if any\npublisher would feel the human pathos of the struggle, and the mighty\nmeaning of it all for truth. Who would publish it? But here it is,\nprinted and bound, a book--\u201cFor the Benefit of My Creditors,\u201d as if he\nwere debtor to all, his enemies included, and owed them only love.\n\nThis is as modest and self-withholding a story as a man ever told of\nhimself. There are all too few of such human stories. This one would\nnever have been told had the author not hated intellectual cowardice\nas he hated moral cowardice, with a perfect hatred. He sought the\ntruth--in the Bible, and in his own mind. The geologist seeks some\nof the same truth in the rocks; the astronomer in the stars. The Old\nTestament was this scholar\u2019s field. And, laying aside tradition and the\nspirit of dogma, he sought as a scientist seeks, patiently, fearlessly,\nreverently, for what his long and thorough preparation made him\neminently able to find.\n\nThis is the highest type of courage and daring. Who finds truth finds\ntrial and adventure. In his condemnation by the bishops of his Church,\nhe felt that truth had been assailed and the scientific method. He did\nnot write this book to defend the truth, nor to defend himself; but to\nexamine himself, as he would examine a difficult fragment of Hebrew\nmanuscript, and make himself easy for other men to read.\n\nHis trial was long past, and most of his life had been lived, before a\npage of his book was written. He came at it reluctantly: he might seem\npersonal--petty or selfish or egotistical; or he might say something\nbitter and vindictive and do harm to the Church. But neither himself\nnor his Church must stand in the way of truth; and in his trial, truth\nhad been tried, and the only way of knowing truth had been condemned.\nSo he sits down to write this story of his life exactly as he sat down\nto write a commentary on the Book of Genesis--to account for his being\nas a man and a scholar, his preparation, his methods of study, his\nattitude, and approach.\n\nHow much truth has he discovered? He makes no claims. Darwin may or may\nnot have the truth about Evolution; but we have a certain and a great\ntruth in Darwin--in his mind and method. It was _how_ Darwin tried to\nsolve the problem of life and its forms, rather than the solution, that\nhas changed the thinking of the world.\n\nFor three years I was a student of Hebrew and Old Testament Exegesis\nunder this scholar. I have forgotten all he taught me, and more. But\nthe _way_ he taught me has changed forever my outlook upon life. His\nattitude was truth, and it flooded not only the whole mind, but one\u2019s\nwhole being, with light. Many a time I have sat in his classroom during\nthe discussion of some highly difficult and dangerous question of\ndoctrine, and said to myself, amid the drawn daggers of those who had\ncome to trap him, \u201cRight or wrong his findings, he is himself truth,\nits life and way.\u201d\n\nLife enough for a book? He could have written a book on teaching. For\nhe loved to teach! He loved to teach young preachers. He could not\npreach; but he was the teacher born. The classroom was his from the\nfoundation of the world. Here he was preaching truly--from a thousand\nfuture pulpits at the very ends of the earth. He saw his students\nscattered over the whole world preaching to the intelligences of men\nas well as to their hearts; revealing the wisdom as well as the love\nof God; and expounding a diviner Bible because it was a wholly human\nBible. In all of these pulpits he heard himself speaking with tongues\nnot his own, but the message was his own, the simple sincere faith of\nhis classroom.\n\nThe thought of it thrilled him. It lifted him up. He dwelt in the\npresence of the opportunity as in the very presence of the Most High.\nAs humble a man as ever lived, doubting his every power and gift, and\nrelying only on the truth to make him free, he would come into the\nclassroom and take his chair on the six-inch platform, which raised\nhim by so much above his students, as if that platform were the Mount\nof Transfiguration. His face would shine; his voice, his gestures, his\nattitude working with his careful words, made his whole being radiant\nwith zeal for the truth and love for us, his students, so mysteriously\ngiven to his care.\n\nThen suddenly, after more than twenty years of this, he was\nexpelled--driven from this sacred classroom and branded as unsound,\nunsafe, unfit!\n\nNo, not suddenly. It was only the verdict of his judges that came\nsuddenly. No one nowadays could prepare his mind for a judgment like\nthat. For five or six of the years, during which the trouble-makers,\nunder pretense of study, had elected his courses at the Theological\nSchool, I had either been a student under him or his close and\nsympathetic friend. I knew, as he knew, that his enemies would stop at\nnothing in their bitter zeal; still, I remember vividly the utter shock\nand astonishment of the bishops\u2019 decision. And I remember--for I cannot\nforget--its strange numbing effect upon him. It came over him slowly,\nelse I think he might have died. It crept upon him like a dreadful\npalsy, leaving him dazed and dumb. He was too simple a man to realize\nit quickly, too entirely single in mind and heart to realize it wholly.\nIt slowly crushed him to the earth. And never in all the after years\nwas he whole again. His heart was broken. He rose up and taught, until\nthe very hour of his death, but never again in his old classroom nor\nwith his old spirit. Day after day he would pass by the Theological\nSchool with its hundreds of eager students; he would see them gathering\nat the hour of his lecture; but another teacher (one whom he had\ntrained) would come in and take his place, while he plodded down the\nstreet and on, a shepherd without his sheep.\n\nMeantime he was called to teach in another graduate school. He welcomed\nthis new work. He found honor, and love, and fellowship among his new\ncolleagues. They gave him freedom. They created a place for him that\nhad not been before. He could teach what he wished and as he wished.\nIt was enough for them to have him among them, and many a time he told\nme of how unworthy he felt of all this love and honor in his declining\nyears, and how it had stayed and steadied him in his deep defeat. But\nthey did not need him here--so he felt. It was more for the honor of\nscholarship than for the good he would do them. But he felt that they\ndid need him at his own beloved school, whose policies he had helped to\nshape, whose spirit he had helped to create, whose name and fame he\nhad so largely helped to establish, and whose students, crowding in\nfrom the east and from the great west, he longed to take into his heart\nand his home, as for so many happy years he had been in the habit of\ndoing.\n\n\u201cO Jerusalem, Jerusalem,\u201d he would cry as he passed by on the street,\na stranger, and saw the students going in and out, \u201cO Jerusalem,\nJerusalem, which killeth the prophets, ... how often would I have\ngathered thy children together, even as a hen gathereth her chickens\nunder her wings, and ye would not!\u201d\n\nThis, however, was not the doing of the school. Faculty and students,\nwith the exception of those few who came for the express purpose of\naccusing him, were loyal. The president of the University, his close\nfriend, was loyal, and did all that lay in his power to prevent the\niniquity of the trial and the decision. This only added to the tragedy.\nTo have been tried by his peers and co-laborers, by those who knew\nhim and the field of his labors, would have been perfectly fair, but\nto be accused by three or four narrow-minded students (one of whom\nrecanted later and all of whom deserve oblivion), who had come with\nmalice aforethought, whose very presence in the school was a lie, to be\naccused by such as these, I say, and then tried by a board of judges,\nto whom he was largely a stranger, not one of whom probably was his\nequal as a scholar in the field involved--this made the shame to the\nschool, to himself, and to truth, doubly deep and sore.\n\nThere remained one thing more for him to do; and as soon as he could do\nit kindly, as a Christian, and dispassionately, as a scholar, without\nbias or prejudice or any personal ends except the ends of gratitude\nand truth, he set about his autobiography. And I wonder if, among\nautobiographies, there is another that approaches his for detachment,\nrestraint, and self-negation; for absolute adherence to the facts for\nthe sake of the truth involved, a truth not of self at all, but wholly\nof scholarship? This is more of a thesis than an autobiography--as if\nthe author were writing of another \u201cWall of Nehemiah,\u201d and no more\ninvolved in it, personally, than he was present in \u201cThe World before\nAbraham\u201d!\n\nThis is one of the most remarkable evidences of severe and scientific\nscholarship that I have ever seen; and it is equal evidence of the\ninherent literary value of human life. No accusing word is here,\nnothing bitter and unchristian. But just the opposite: \u201cFor the\nBenefit of My Creditors\u201d is a work of love. His very character had\nbeen assailed by his enemies, but this, while it hurt, could not harm\nhim. He stood upon his conscious integrity, calm and silent. It was\nnot the attack upon himself that concerned him. It was that Truth had\nbeen attacked. It was an attempt to make the Bible a denominational\nbook; to confound truth with tradition and give it a doctrinal color\nor a denominational slant. The Church may compel its _theologians_ to\ndo that if it has to, but its scholars, those who discover truth, it\nshould leave free. God and truth are not denominational, nor Protestant\nnor Catholic nor Hebrew. God is truth, and single or separate, God\nand Truth belong to the fearless, the frank, and the pure--in science\nnot more than in religion. For \u201care ye not as the children of the\nEthiopians unto me, O children of Israel?... Have not I brought up\nIsrael out of the land of Egypt, and the Philistines from Caphtor, and\nthe Syrians from Kir?\u201d\n\nI recall the day we came upon that wonderful passage in Amos in\nour study of this prophet; and how for the first time in my life\nthe universality of truth dawned upon me out of that passage. I\nhad had a tribal, denominational God, up to that time. I had been\nseeing different kinds of truth--like the different tribes of old in\nPalestine--warring truths, each with its own territory, its own grip\nupon me, when suddenly, as the \u201cRabbi\u201d opened up this mighty saying\nof Amos, I saw one God of us all, one truth for us all, and all of\nus searching, under God\u2019s leading, for the truth. Henceforth the\nPhilistines and the Syrians and the children of Israel were to be as\nthe Ethiopians to me, as they are to God--all of us led by him, and all\nof us free. No teacher ever taught me a diviner lesson than that.\n\nIt was not a body of truth that this great teacher was called to\nexpound. It was the spirit of truth--the desire for truth, the search\nfor truth, the nature of truth, _that it is God_--this was his high\ncalling. And in condemning him, his Church was confounding tradition\nand truth, blocking the road to truth, and threatening, in this\nexample of him, to punish the daring who discover and bring us forward\ninto new realms of truth. In his trial and condemnation the Church was\nsaying: \u201cStudy, but study to perpetuate the past; to preserve the old;\nto defend doctrine, and establish tradition. We have the truth, the\nwhole truth, and nothing but the truth. No new light can possibly break\nforth from God\u2019s word, or from any word. Revelation is closed. And if\nyou think you have new light, hide it, and if you discover new truth,\ndo not publish it, do not teach it, for among the three hundred men in\nyour school there are three who have closed their minds to light and\ntruth, and have sworn by all the past to keep them closed; and it would\njeopardize the Church if you should pry those three minds open to the\nlight and to the truth of to-day.\u201d\n\nThese are not his words. There is a tang of bitterness in them. They\nare mine. Yet it was partly because he believed that the Church meant\nto make him a warning to all scholars and honest thinkers within its\nfold, that he set about his autobiography, which he died writing.\n\n\u201cRabbi,\u201d we students called him affectionately, and strangely enough\nhe seemed to look the part. He was the thorough scholar. Careful,\nmethodical by nature, he was severely trained, and to all of this he\nadded a profound reverence for the Book which was his life\u2019s study,\nand felt a deep sense of his responsibility as its teacher. Had his\nlife\u2019s task been a haystack with one single needle of divine truth lost\nwithin it, he would have tirelessly taken it down, straw by straw, for\nthe needle of truth, just as Madame Curie, aware of some mysterious\npower in the crude common bulk of slag, patiently eliminated pound\nafter pound, ton after ton of the gross elements until she held in her\nhand the pulsing particle of radium, hardly larger than the head of a\npin, whose light illumines and almost blinds the groping world. Had\nProfessor Mitchell not been a student of the Bible, he might have been\na student of chemistry, for his methods and his zeal were exactly those\nof the discoverer in any field, and it might have been his honor and\nglory, as it chanced to be Madame Curie\u2019s, to give radium to the world.\n\nInstead of glory, his was condemnation and defeat. Yet his very mind\nand method, applied anywhere else, would have won him distinction and\nhonor. There is no other mind or method, except the closed mind and\nthe method of appeal to authority, as against the trial by experiment\nand fact. Truth is truth whether in Theology or in Chemistry, and only\nthe open mind, the free, the bold, the experimenting mind finds it.\nTraditions have to be defended. Truth is its own defense. The mind of\nthe great scholar is never on the defensive. Let \u201cthe Forts of Folly\nfall,\u201d he is far over the frontier where there is no need for forts.\nSo here in his life he writes not to defend himself, but to express\nhimself, his gratitude; and to explain himself, his position, his\npurpose, his principles as to the way of truth.\n\nHere is a man who was as simple as he was sincere. But simplicity in\na great spirit is the sign, the very expression of sincerity. He was\ninterested in all human things. He could make wonderful coffee. He\ncould build a stone wall with the best of masons, and how he used to\ntramp the woods with me for mushrooms!\n\nI was a stranger in Boston and had been in his classes for a week,\nperhaps, when I met him downtown. It was a very real pleasure to be\nstopped and called by name and quizzed by the great Rabbi. What was I\nlooking for in Boston? A hammer? \u201cCome along,\u201d he said, turning short\nabout, \u201cthere\u2019s a good hardware store down this street. I\u2019ll go with\nyou and see that you get a Maydole--a Maydole now--they\u2019re the only\nwear in hammers.\u201d I got the Maydole; that was twenty-six years ago; I\nhave it yet. His was a little act. But I have drawn many a nail with\nthat hammer. Yea, I have built him a mansion with it.\n\nI speak of that little thing because it was a characteristic act. The\ndetails of life tremendously interested him. He was entirely human\nand as interested in the human side of his students as he was in\ntheir intellectual and spiritual sides. From my study window here in\nHingham as I write, eight stone faces stare at me out of the retaining\nwall in the driveway,--big granite chunks of boulder they were in my\nmeadow years ago. It was the Rabbi who rigged the tackle and helped\nme put those stones here in the wall. He could fix a toggle, he could\n\u201ccut\u201d and \u201cpize\u201d and \u201cwop\u201d a stone with lever and chain so as to \u201cmove\nmountains.\u201d \u201cThere! There!\u201d he would say, \u201clet the mare do the work;\nlet the mare do the work,\u201d when I would rush up at a quarter-ton\nchunk of solid granite and, bare-handed, try to hustle it on to the\nstone-boat.\n\nHe had built stone walls before--back on the hill farm in New York\nState, where he was born and had his boyhood. Later he \u201crestored\u201d the\nWall of Nehemiah about Jerusalem, but not with any more zest than he\nhelped me build with actual stones the retaining wall for my driveway\nup Mullein Hill in Hingham. Such is the man. Would he be substance for\na book?\n\nTheological students are as naturally full of trouble as rag-weeds\nare of pollen. They know enough to doubt; they are old enough to be\nmarried; they are poor; and they preach; and they would like to be\npious; but the world and the flesh and the devil are against them. They\nare only as good as the average of mankind, but they have more than an\naverage share of tribulations. They need Hebrew--all of them--which\nis one more terrible trouble! But they sorely need human sympathy and\nwise counsel, and whether they got Hebrew or failed to get it, never a\nman came into the Rabbi\u2019s classroom who did not also enter at the same\nmoment into his open heart and open home. Classroom and heart and home\nbelonged to every man who would enter. His capacity for patience in the\nclassroom was only equaled by the boundless sympathy and the simple\nhospitality of his near-by home.\n\nIs it a wonder that the great body of his students were confounded and\ndismayed that he could be tried on some technical point or other and be\nejected from his chair as unfit to teach those who were to preach the\nGospel?\n\nAfter the trial the enforced leisure was immediately turned to new\nstudies and larger literary plans. Fresh fields were opened, too, for\nlecturing--in the University of Chicago, in Harvard University; and\nthen soon came the invitation to join the staff of Tufts Theological\nSchool as a member of the faculty. Life has its compensations and\nrewards; and if there was no cure for the mortal wound he had received\nat the hands of his brethren in his own Church, this invitation to\nTufts, and the perfect fellowship there to the day he died, was\na compensation and a satisfaction that gave to his life a sweet\nreasonableness, completeness, and reward.\n\nThere was no variableness nor shadow caused by turning in his\nunhurried life. The loss of his chair did not mean the end of his\ncreative scholarship. He worked to the last, and was preparing for\nthe day\u2019s work when death came. He knew our hearts, but we ourselves\nhardly knew them till he had gone. Then the swift word reached us,\nand we were told that we should see him no more, that he was to be\nburied afar with no service of any kind for him here--here where he\nhad labored so many years! It could not be. On every hand his old\npupils appeared--Methodist, Universalist, Unitarian--in one mind, all\ndifferences forgotten in their single love for the honest scholar, the\ndirect, the earnest, the sincere teacher, the simple man, whose life\nhad been devoted to learning and to doing good,--on every hand they app\neared and gave him \u201cThe Grammarian\u2019s Funeral.\u201d\n\n  \u201cThither our path lies; wind we up the heights!\n          Wait ye the warning?\n  Our low life was the level\u2019s and the night\u2019s:\n          He\u2019s for the morning.\n  Step to a tune, square chests, erect each head,\n          \u2019Ware the beholders!\n  This is our master, famous, calm, and dead,\n          Borne on our shoulders.\n\n  \u201cThis, throws himself on God, and unperplexed\n          Seeking shall find him.\n  So, with the throttling hands of death at strife,\n          Ground he at grammar;\n  Still, through the rattle, parts of speech were rife:\n          While he could stammer\n  He settled _Hoti\u2019s_ business--let it be!--\n          Properly based _Oun_--\n  Gave us the doctrine of the enclitic _De_,\n          Dead from the waist down.\n\n  \u201cHere\u2019s the top-peak; the multitude below\n          Live, for they can, there:\n  This man decided not to Live but Know--\n          Bury this man there?\n  Here--here\u2019s his place, where meteors shoot, clouds form,\n          Lightnings are loosened,\n  Stars come and go! Let joy break with the storm,\n          Peace let the dew send!\n  Lofty designs must close in like effects:\n          Loftily lying,\n  Leave him--still loftier than the world suspects,\n          Living and dying.\u201d\n\n\n\n\nCHAPTER VI\n\nA JANUARY SUMMER\n\n\n\n\nCHAPTER VI\n\nA JANUARY SUMMER\n\n  _When winter winds blow cold and chill\n  And through the hawthorn howls the gale_\n\n\nThe winter winds were truly cold and chill on this twenty-first of\nJanuary here in Massachusetts. And I chance to know they were chill\ndown along the Delaware this particular January day. I remember many a\nJanuary day like this on the wide marshes of the Delaware and in the\nbig woods along the Maurice River where I was a boy. But I was not\nthinking of those days at all here in my New England home, for I was\nbusy at my desk.\n\nSome one was at my study door. More than one, for I heard low talking.\nThen the door softly opened, and four bebundled boys stood before\nme--with an axe, a long-handled shovel, a covered basket, and a very\nbig secret, which stuck out all over their faces.\n\nThey were not big boys outside. But they were almost bursting inside\nwith their big secret. They were big with boots and coats and caps and\nmittens; and they looked almost like monsters in my study door with\ntheir axe and shovel and big basket.\n\n\u201cCome on, father,\u201d they whispered (as if _She_ hadn\u2019t heard them\ntramping through the hall and upstairs with their kit!), \u201ccome on! It\u2019s\nmother\u2019s birthday to-morrow, and we\u2019re going after the flowers.\u201d\n\n\u201cWhat!\u201d I exclaimed. \u201cAre you going to chop the flowers down with\nan axe, and dig them up with a shovel?\u201d And I tried to think what a\nchopped-down and dug-up birthday bouquet would look like. But it was\ntoo much for me.\n\n\u201cYou are going to give her a nice bunch of frost flowers,\u201d I said,\nfeeling about in my puzzled mind for just what was afoot. \u201cIf you are\ngoing to give her frost flowers, you had better get the ice-saw, too,\nfor we shall need a big block of ice to stick their stems in.\u201d\n\nNot a word of comment! No sign on the four faces that they had even\nheard my gentle banter. They knew what they were going to do; and all\nthey wanted of me was to come along.\n\n\u201cHurry up,\u201d they answered, dropping my hip-boots on the floor. \u201cHere\nare your scuffs.\u201d\n\nI hurried up! Scuffs and boots and cap and reefer on in a jiffy, and\nthe five of us were soon in single file upon the meadow, the dry snow\nsquealing under our feet, while the little imp-winds, capering fitfully\nabout us, blew the snowdust into our faces, or catching up the thin\ndrifts, sent them whirling and waltzing, like ghostly dancers, over the\nmeadow\u2019s level glittering floor.\n\nI was beginning to warm up a little; but I was still guessing about the\nflowers, and not yet in the spirit of the game.\n\nWe were having a hard winter, and the novelty of zero weather was\nbeginning to wear off--at least to me. The fact was I had intended\nto get the birthday flowers down at the greenhouse in the village.\nJanuary is an awkward time to have a birthday, anyhow. June is a much\nmore reasonable month for birthdays, if you gather wild flowers for\nthe celebration. The fields are full of flowers in June! But here in\nJanuary you must go with an axe and a shovel, mittens, rubber-boots,\nand reefers! And I confess I couldn\u2019t make head or tail of this festive\ntrip.\n\nIt is a lucky man who has boys, or who knows and \u201ctrains,\u201d as our New\nEnglanders say, with boys. They won\u2019t let him freeze up.\n\n\u201cCome, father,\u201d they say, \u201cget into your scuffs and boots, and hit\nthe old trail for the woods!\u201d And father drops his pen; bundles up;\n\u201cclomps\u201d out in his boots, grumbling at the weather and the boys and\nthe birthdays and the stiffness in his knees and in his soul--for a\nwhole hundred yards or more into the meadow! Then he begins to warm up.\nThen he takes the axe from one of the boys and looks at its edge, and\n\u201chefts\u201d it; and looks about for a big birthday flower, about the size\nof a hundred-year-old oak, to chop down. Something queer is happening\nto father. He is forgetting his knees; he is capering about on the\nsnow; he is getting ahead of the boys; he hardly realizes it, but he is\nbeginning to feel like a birthday inside of him; and he will soon be in\ndanger of getting this January day mixed up with the days of June!\n\nBut not right off. I was warming up, I do confess, yet it was a numb,\nstiff world about us, and bleak and stark. It was a world that looked\nall black and white, for there was not a patch of blue overhead. The\nwhite underfoot ran off to meet the black of the woods, and the woods\nin turn stood dark against a sky so heavy with snow as to shut us\napparently into some vast snow cave. A crow flapping over drew a black\npencil-line across the picture--the one sign of life that we could see\nbesides ourselves. Only small boys are likely to leave their firesides\non such a day; only small boys and those men who can\u2019t grow up. Yet\nnever before, perhaps, had boys or men ever gone afield on such a tramp\nwith an axe, a shovel, and a basket.\n\nSuddenly one of the boys dashed off calling, \u201cLet\u2019s go see if the\nmuskrats have gone to bed yet!\u201d And trailing after him away we went,\nstraight across the meadow. I knew what he was after; I could see the\nlittle mound, hardly more than an anthill in size, standing up in the\nmeadow where the alder bushes and elderberry marked the bend in the\nbrook. If my farmer neighbor had forgotten a small haycock, when he cut\nhis rowen, it would have looked about as this muskrat lodge here buried\nunder the snow. I was glad the boys had seen it. For only a practiced\neye could have discovered it; and only a lover of bleak gray days would\nhave known what might be alive deep down under its thatch of cat-tails\nand calamus here in the silent winter.\n\nBut is there any day in the whole year out of doors that real live boys\nand real live girls do not love? or any wild thing that they do not\nlove--flower or bird or beast or star or storm?\n\nWe crept up softly, and surrounded the lodge; then with the axe we\nstruck the frozen, flinty roof several ringing blows. Instantly\n_one_--_two_--_three_ muffled splashy \u201cplunks\u201d were heard, as three\nlittle muskrats, frightened out of their naps and half out of their\nwits, plunged into the open water of their doorways from off their damp\nbut cozy couch.\n\nIt was a mean thing to do, but not very mean as wild animal life goes.\nAnd it did warm me up so, in spite of the chilly plunge the little\nsleepers took! Chilly to them? Not at all, and that is why it warmed\nme. To hear the splash of water down under the two feet of ice and snow\nthat sealed the meadow like a sheet of steel! To hear the sound of\nstirring life, and to picture that snug, steaming bed on the top of a\ntough old tussock, with its open water-doors leading into freedom and\nplenty below! \u201cWhy, it won\u2019t be long before the arbutus is in bloom,\u201d\nI began to think. I looked at the axe and shovel, and said to myself,\n\u201cWell, the boys may know what they are doing, after all, though three\nmuskrats don\u2019t make a spring or a bouquet.\u201d\n\nBut they did make me warmer inside and outside, too. Warm up your heart\nand you soon feel warmer in your fingers and toes.\n\nWe turned back from the muskrats\u2019 lodge and headed again for the woods,\nwhere the flowers must be. Hardly had we reached the cart-path before\nanother of the boys was off--this time to the left, going rapidly\ntoward a low piece of maple swamp perhaps a quarter of a mile away.\n\n\u201cHe\u2019s going over to see if Hairy Woodpecker is in his hole,\u201d said the\nboys in answer to my question. \u201cHairy has a winter hole over there in a\nbig dead maple. Want to see him?\u201d\n\nOf course I wanted to see him. The only live thing outside of ourselves\nthat we had seen (we had only _heard_ the muskrats) had been a crow.\nLive birds on such days as these one would go far to see. So we all cut\nacross toward the swamp where the hairy woodpecker reigned solitary in\nhis bleak domain.\n\nThe \u201chole\u201d was almost twenty-five feet up in a dead maple stub that had\nblown off and lodged against a live tree. The meadow had been bleak\nand wind-swept, but the swamp was naked and dead, filled with ice, and\ntouched with a most forbidding emptiness and stillness. I was getting\ncold again, when the boy ahead tapped lightly on the old stub. At the\nhole upstairs appeared a head--a fierce black-and-white head, a sharp,\nlong bill, a flashing eye--as Hairy came forth to fight for his castle.\nHe was too wise a fighter to tackle all of us, however; so, slipping\nout, he spread his wings, and galloped off with a loud wild call that\nset all the swamp to ringing.\n\nIt was a thrilling, defiant challenge that set my blood to leaping\nagain. Black and white, he was a part of the picture; but there was a\nscarlet band in the nape of his neck that, like his call, had fire in\nit and the warmth of life.\n\nAs his shout went booming through the hollow walls of the swamp, it\nwoke a blue jay, which squalled back from a clump of pines, then,\nwavering out into the open on curious wings--flashing ice-blue and\nsnow-white wings--he dived into the covert of pines again; and faint,\nas if beyond the swamp, the cheep of chickadees!\n\nIf anything was needed up to this moment to change my winter into\nspring, it was this call of the chickadees. The dullest day in winter\nsmiles; the deepest, darkest woods speak cheerfully to me, if a\nchickadee is there. And did you ever know a winter day or a dank,\ngloomy forest hall without its chickadee? Give me a flower in my\nbuttonhole and a chickadee in my heart and I am proof against all gloom\nand cold.\n\n\u201cWhat is all this noise about?\u201d the chickadees came forward asking. It\nwas a little troop of them, a family of them, possibly, last year\u2019s\nchildren and one, or both, of the parents, hunting the winter woods\ntogether for mutual protection against the loneliness and long bitter\ncold.\n\nHow active and interested in life they were! A hard winter? Yes, of\ncourse, but what is the blue jay squawking over, anyhow? And the little\ntroop of them came to peep into the racket, curious, but not excited,\ndiscussing the disturbance of the solemn swamp in that sewing-bee\nfashion of theirs, as if nipping off threads and squinting through\nneedle-eyes between their running comments.\n\nThey too were gray and black, gray as the swamp beeches, black as the\nspotted bark of the birches. And how tiny! But--\n\n  \u201cHere was this atom in full breath\n  Hurling defiance at vast death;\n  This scrap of valor just for play\n  Fronts the north wind in waistcoat gray\u201d;\n\nand this is what Emerson says he sings:\n\n        \u201cGood day, good sir!\n  Fine afternoon, old passenger!\n  Happy to meet you in these places\n  Where January brings few faces.\u201d\n\nAnd as I brought to mind the poet\u2019s lines, I forgot to shiver, and\nquite warmed again to the idea of flowers, especially as one of the\nboys just then brought up a spray of green holly with a burning red\nberry on it.\n\nI laid the spray of green holly on the hard white crust of the January\nsnow. Then I stood a moment and spread my hands out over it to warm\nthem! It was like a little fire in the snow. The boys laughed at me.\nThey were warm enough in their mittens. But I had need of more than\nmittens to warm my fingers. I had need of a fire,--a fire of green\npointed holly leaves and one glowing, flaming berry, a tiny red hot\ncoal of summer blazing here in the wide white ashes of the winter.\n\nWe were tacking again now in order to get back on our course, and had\ngot into the edge of the swamp among the pines when the boy with the\nshovel began to study the ground and the trees as if trying to find the\nlocation of something.\n\n\u201cHere it is,\u201d he said, and began digging through the snow at the foot\nof a big pine. I knew what he was after. It was goldthread, and here\nwas the only spot in all the woods about where we had ever found it, a\nspot no larger than the top of a dining-room table.\n\nSoon we had a fistful of the delicate plants with their evergreen\nleaflets and long golden, threadlike roots that, mixed with the red and\ngreen of the partridge-berry in a finger-bowl, make a cheerful winter\nbouquet. And here with the goldthread, about the butt of the pine, was\nthe partridge-berry, too, the dainty vines strung with the beads which\nseemed to burn holes in the snow that covered and banked their tiny\nfires.\n\nFor this is all that the ice and snow had done. The winter had come\nwith enough wind to blow out every flame in the maple-tops, and with\nenough snow to smother every little fire in the peat-bogs of the swamp;\nbut peat fires are hard to put out; and here and everywhere the winter\nhad only banked the fires of summer. Dig down through the snow ashes\nanywhere, and the smouldering coals of life burst into blaze.\n\nWhen that red-beaded partridge-vine was hastily placed with the\ngoldthread in the covered basket, and the spray of holly put with\nthem, a ray of light began to dawn on my snow-clouded mind. Did I\nbegin to see the bouquet these boys were after? I said nothing. They\nsaid nothing. They were watching me, though, I knew, to see how long I\nshould stumble blindly on through these glorious January woods, which\nwere so full of joy for them.\n\nI say I said nothing. I was thinking hard, however. \u201cHolly, goldthread,\npartridge-berry,\u201d I thought to myself. \u201cI see so much of the birthday\nbouquet. But what else can they find?\u201d\n\nThe boy with the axe had again gone on ahead. And we were off again\nafter him, stopping to get a great armful of black alder branches that\nwere literally aflame with red berries.\n\nWe were climbing a piny knoll when almost at our feet, jumping us\nnearly out of our skins, and warming the very roots of our hair, was\na burrrr! burrrr! burrrr! burrrr!--four big partridges--as if four\nsnow-mines had exploded under us, hurling bunches of brown feathers on\ngraceful scaling wings over the dip of the hill!\n\nThis was getting livelier all the time. From my study window how dead\nand deserted, and windswept and bare the world had looked to me!\nNothing but a live crow winging wearily against the leaden sky! But\nout here in the real woods and meadows--partridges, chickadees, hairy\nwoodpecker, blue jay, and muskrats as well as crows! And then I knew\na certain old apple tree where a pair of screech owls were wintering.\nAnd, as for white-footed mice, I could find them in any stump. Besides,\nhere were rabbit holes in the snow, and up in a tall pine a gray\nsquirrel\u2019s nest and--\n\nBut I was losing sight of the boy with the axe who was leading the\nprocession. On we went up over the knoll and down into a low bog where\nin the summer we gathered high-bush blueberries, the boy with the axe\nleading the way and going straight across the ice toward the middle of\nthe bog.\n\nMy eye was keen for signs, and I soon saw he was heading for a\nsweet-pepper bush with a broken branch. My eye took in another bush a\nlittle to the right also with a broken branch. The boy with the axe\nwalked up to the sweet-pepper bush, and drew a line on the ice between\nit and a bush off on the right, pacing off this line till he found the\nmiddle; then he started at right angles from it, and paced off a line\nto a clump of cat-tails sticking up through the ice on the flooded bog.\nHalfway back on this line he stopped, threw off his coat, and began to\nchop a hole about two feet square in the ice. Removing the block of ice\nwhile I looked on, he rolled up his sleeve, and reached down the length\nof his arm through the ice water.\n\n\u201cGive me the shovel,\u201d he said, \u201cit\u2019s down here.\u201d And with a few\ndexterous cuts he soon brought to the surface a beautiful cluster of\npitcher-plants, the strange, almost uncanny, leaves filled with muddy\nwater, but every pitcher of them intact, shaped and veined and tinted\nby a master potter\u2019s hand.\n\nNow at last I fully understood. Now I could see what those boys had\nbeen seeing with their inward eyes all the time. Now I had faith, too.\nBut how late! The bouquet of flowers was now full.\n\nWe wrapped the wonderful pitcher-plant carefully in newspapers, and put\nit into the basket, starting back with our bouquet as cheerfully, and\nas full of joy in the season, as we could possible have been in June.\n\nNo, I did not say that we love January as much as we love June.\nJanuary here in New England is a mixture of rheumatism, chilblains,\nfrozen water-pipes, mittens, overshoes, blocked trains, and\nautomobile-troubles by the hoodsful, whereas any automobile will run in\nJune. It is so in Delaware and Texas and Oregon, too.\n\nWhat I was saying is that we started home all abloom with our\npitcher-plants and goldthread and partridge-berry and holly and glowing\nblack alder, and all aglow inside with our vigorous tramp, and with\nthe gray grave beauty of the landscape, and with the stern joy of\nmeeting and beating the cold, and with the signs of life--of the cozy\nmuskrats in their lodge beneath the ice-cap on the meadow; with the\nhairy woodpecker in his deep warm hole in the heart of a tree; with the\nred warm berries in our basket; with the chirping, the capable, the\nconquering chickadee accompanying us and singing,\n\n  \u201cFor well the soul, if stout within,\n  Can arm impregnably the skin;\n  And polar frost my form defied,\n  Made of the air that blows outside.\u201d\n\nAnd actually as we came over the bleak meadow, one of the boys said\nthat he thought he heard a song-sparrow singing! And I said I thought\nthe pussy-willows by the brook had opened a little since we had passed\nthem coming out! And we all declared that the weather had changed,\nand that there were signs of a break-up. But the thermometer stood at\nfifteen above zero when we got home--one degree colder than when we\nstarted!\n\nWe had had a January thaw, however, and it had come off inside of us,\nas the color on the four glowing faces showed. The birthday came off\non the morrow, and I wonder if there ever was a more interesting or a\nmore loving gift of flowers than those from the January woods?\n\n\n\n\nCHAPTER VII\n\nAFTER THE LOGGERS\n\n\n\n\nCHAPTER VII\n\nAFTER THE LOGGERS\n\n\nI lay listening to the rain spattering against the fly of the tent and\ndripping through the roof of birch leaves upon the sputtering fire and\nsoaking down into the deep, spongy bottom of the forest--softly, as\nsoft as something breathing and asleep. The guide and the boy beside\nme were asleep, but I had been awakened by the rain. The rain always\nwakens me. And in my grave, I think, if I lie sleeping under a roof\nof forest leaves, I shall wake and listen when it rains. Before the\nstars sang together the primordial waters made music to the rising\nland; before the winds came murmuring through the trees the waves were\nfingering the sweet-tuned sands strung down the sounding shores; and\nbefore the birds found their tongues, or the crickets their little\nfiddles, or even the toad had blown his quavering conch, it had rained!\nAnd when it rained--and not until it rained--the whole earth woke into\nsong. Mother of music is the water, and, for me, the sweetest of her\ndaughters is the rain, and never sweeter, not even on the shingles, nor\ndown the rolled, fevered blades of the standing corn, than in the deep\nwoods at night upon the low slant roof of your tent.\n\nBut suddenly the singing stopped, and the myriad rain-notes were turned\nto feet, tiny, stirring feet, creeping down the tent, skipping across\nthe leaves, galloping over the forest floor, and jumping in and out of\nthe fire. Then a twig snapped. Was that what had awakened me? I rose\nup on my elbow slowly. The tent flap was open; the woods were very\ndark, the dim light from above the roof of leaves and rain showing\nonly shadows, and an ashen spot where the camp-fire still spluttered,\nand beyond the ashen spot a shadow--different from the other shadows;\na shape--a doe with big ears forward toward the fire! A bit of birch\nbark flared in the darkness, and the shape was gone. I could hear her\nmoving through the ferns; hear her jump a fallen log and step out\namong the grating pebbles on the shore. Then all was still, except for\nthe scampering rain, and the little red-backed wood-mouse among the\ncamp tins, and the teeth of a porcupine chilled and chattering in the\ndarkness at the big wood-mouse among the tins, and the rain running\neverywhere.\n\nI dropped back upon my pillow and left off listening. How good the\nduffle-bag felt beneath my head! And the thick, springy bows of the fir\nbeneath the bag, how good they felt--springs and mattress in one, laid\nunderside up, evenly, and a foot deep, all over the tent floor! And how\ngood they smelled! A bed of balsam-fir boughs is more than a bed; it is\nan oblation to Sleep, and not a vain oblation--after miles of paddling\nin live water or a day of trailing through the spruce and fir.\n\n  \u201cThere\u2019s a long, long trail a-winding\u201d\n\nruns the song--\n\n  \u201cInto the land of my dreams.\u201d\n\nBut, speaking of sleep, there is no trail, except a forest trail, that\nwinds away to a land of such deep dreamlessness as that of a woodman\u2019s\nsleep; and no sleep, from which a man will waken, half so fragrant\nand refreshing as his. I do not wish to be carried to the skies \u201con\nflowery beds of ease,\u201d but I should like this balsam-fir bed, for two\nor three weeks every summer, in the woods of Maine. A reasonable and a\nwholesome wish that, as I lay there wrapped in the fragrant mantle of\nmy couch, I coveted for city sleepers everywhere.\n\nThe odors (we should spell them with a \u201cu\u201d)--the odo_u_rs of the big\nwoods are so clean and pure and prophylactic! They clear the clogged\nsenses, and keep them in a kind of antiseptic bath, washing a coated\ntongue as no wine can wash it; and tingling along the most snarled of\nnerves, straightening, tempering, tuning them till the very heart is\ntimed to the singing of the firs. My bed of boughs was a full foot\ndeep, covering every inch of the bottom of the tent, fresh cut that\nevening, and so bruised with the treading as we laid them that their\nsmell, in the close, rainy air of the night, filled the tent like a\ncloud. I lay and breathed--as if taking a cure, this tent being the\ncontagious ward of the great hospital, the Out-of-Doors. All around\nme poured the heavy, penetrating vapor distilled from the gums, and\nresins, and oils, and sweet healing essences of the woods, mingled here\nin the tent with the aromatic balsam of the fir. I breathed it to the\nbottom of my lungs; but my lungs were not deep enough; I must breathe\nit with hands and feet to get it all; but they were not enough. Then a\nbreeze swept by the tent, pausing to lay its mouth over my mouth, and,\ncatching away my little breath, breathed for me its own big breath,\nuntil my very bones, like the bones of the birds, were breathing, and\nevery vein ran redolent of the breath of the fir.\n\nThat breeze blew the sharp, pungent smell of wood smoke past the\ntent. I caught it eagerly--the sweet smoke of the cedar logs still\nsmouldering on the fire. There was no suggestion of hospitals in this\nwhiff, but camps, rather, and kitchens, altars, caves, the smoke of\nwhose ancient fires is still strong in our nostrils and cured into the\nvery substance of our souls.\n\nI wonder if our oldest racial memory may not be that of fire, and if\nany other form of fire, a coal off any other altar, can touch the\nimagination as the coals of a glowing camp-fire. And I wonder if any\nother odor takes us farther down our ancestral past than the smell of\nwood smoke, and if there is another smoke so sweet as cedar smoke,\nwhen the thin, faint wraith from the smouldering logs curls past your\ntent on the slow wind of the woods and drifts away.\n\nIt does not matter of what the fire is built. I can still taste the\nspicy smoke of the sagebrush in my last desert camp. And how hot that\nsagebrush fire! And as sweet as the spicy sage is the smell in my\nnostrils of the cypress and gum in my camp-fires of the South. Swamp\nor desert or forest, the fire is the lure--the light, the warmth, the\ncrackle of the flames, and the mystic incense of the smoke rising as a\nsweet savor to the deities of the woods and plains.\n\nIt is the camp-fire that lures me to the woods when I might go down to\nthe sea. I love the sea. Perhaps I fear it more; and perhaps I have\nnot yet learned to pitch my tent and build my fire upon the waves;\ncertainly I have not yet got used to the fo\u2019c\u2019s\u2019le smell. For, of all\nfoul odors known to beast or man, the indescribable stench of the\nfo\u2019c\u2019s\u2019le is to me the worst. What wild wind of the ocean can blow that\nsmell away? When bilges are sprayed with attar of roses, and fo\u2019c\u2019s\u2019les\nsheathed in sandalwood, and sailors given shower-baths and open fires,\nI shall take a vacation before the mast; but until then give me the\nwoods and my fir-bough bed, and my fire of birch and cedar logs, and\nthe rain upon my tent.\n\nWhen I woke at dawn it was still raining; and off and on all day it\nrained, spoiling our plans for the climb up Spencer Mountain and\nkeeping us close to camp and the drying fire. The forest here at the\nfoot of the mountain was a mixed piece of old-growth timber, that had\nbeen logged for spruce and pine some years before--as every mile of the\nforest of Maine has been logged--yet so low and spongy was the bottom\nthat the timber seems to have overgrown and long since ceased to be fit\nfor lumber, so that most of it was left standing when the lumber-jacks\nwent through. We were camped by the side of Spencer Pond in the thick\nof these giant trees--yellow birch, canoe birch, maple and spruce,\nhemlock and fir and pine--where the shade was so dense and the forest\nfloor so strewn with fallen trees that only the club mosses, and the\nsphagnum, and a few of the deep-woods flowers could grow. The rain made\nlittle difference to my passage here, so low were these lesser forest\nforms under the perpetual umbrage of the mighty trees, and I came back\nfrom as far in as I dared to venture on so dull a day, my clothes quite\ndry, but my spirit touched with a spell of the forest, which I should\nhave missed had the sun been shining and the points of the compass\nclear.\n\nFor in the big woods one is ever conscious of direction, a sense\nthat is so exaggerated in the deepest bottoms, especially when only\nindirect, diffused light fills the shadowy spaces, as to border on\nfear. I am never free, in a strange forest, from its haunting Presence;\nso close to it that I seem to hear it; seem able to touch it; and when,\nfor a moment of some minor interest or excitement, I have forgotten to\nremember and, looking up, find the Presence gone from me, I am seized\nwith sudden fright. What other panic comes so softly, yet with more\nterrible swiftness? And once the maze seizes you, once you begin to\nmeet yourself, find yourself running the circle of your back tracks,\nthe whole mind goes to pieces and madness is upon you.\n\n\u201cSet where you be and holler till I come get ye, if ye\u2019re lost,\u201d the\nguide would say. \u201cClimb a tree and holler; don\u2019t run around like a\nside-hill gouger, or you\u2019re gone.\u201d\n\nI do not know what sort of animal is Johnny\u2019s side-hill gouger; though\nI saw, one day, far up on the side of the mountain a big bare spot\nwhere he had been digging--according to the guide. It is enough for me\nthat there is such a beast in the woods, and that he gets those who\nturn round and round in the forest on rainy days and forget to look up.\n\nThe gouger was abroad in the woods to-day. The clouds hung at the base\nof the mountains, just above the tops of the trees; the rain came\nstraight down; the huge fallen trunks lay everywhere criss-cross; and\nonce beyond the path to the spring the semi-gloom blurred every trail\nand put at naught all certainty of direction.\n\nBut how this fear sharpened the senses and quickened everything in the\nscene about me! I was in the neighborhood of danger, and every dull and\ndormant faculty became alert. Nothing would come from among the dusky\ntrees to harm me; no bear, or lynx, or moose, for they would run away;\nit was the dusk itself, and the big trees that would not run away; and\nI watched them furtively as they drew nearer and nearer and closed in\ndeeper about me. I knew enough to \u201cset down and holler\u201d if I got turned\nhopelessly around; but this very knowledge of weakness, of inability\nto cope alone with these silent, sinister forces, woke all my ancient\nfears and called back that brood of more than fabled monsters from\ntheir caves and fens and forest lairs.\n\nThis was the real woods, however, deep, dark, and primeval, and no\nmere fantasy of fear. It looked even older than its hoary years, for\nthe floor was strewn with its mouldering dead, not one generation, but\nages of them, form under form, till only long, faint lines of greener\nmoss told where the eldest of them had fallen an \u00e6on since and turned\nto earth. Time leaves on nothing its failing marks so deeply furrowed\nas upon men and trees, and here in the woods upon no other trees so\ndeeply as upon the birches. Lovely beyond all trees in their shining,\nslender youth, they grow immeasurably aged with the years, especially\nthe yellow birch, whose grim, grizzled boles seemed more like weathered\ncolumns of stone than living trees.\n\nOne old monster, with a hole in his base that a bear might den in,\ntowering till his shoulders overtopped the tallest spruce, stood\nleaning his gnarled hands upon the air, as a bent and aged man leans\nwith his knotty hands upon a cane. A hundred years he might have been\nleaning so; a hundred years more he might continue in his slow decline,\ntill, with a crash, he falls to lie for a hundred years to come across\na prostrate form that fell uncounted years before.\n\nI was standing on the tough, hollow rind of such a birch, so long,\nlong dead that its carcass had gone to dust, leaving only this empty\nshell that looked like a broken, half-buried piece of aqueduct. It was\nneither tree nor pipe, however, but the House of Porcupines, as I could\nplainly hear by the grunting inside. A pile of droppings at the door\nof the house told the story of generations of porkies going in and out\nbefore the present family came into their inheritance. I knocked on the\nrubbery walls with my foot, but not hard, for I might break through and\nhurt Mother or Father Porky, or possibly the baby that I saw along the\npond that night. No careful, right-minded person steps on or hurts a\nporcupine in any manner.\n\nI went on out of the sound of their teeth, for chattering teeth are\nnot consoling, and the woods were gray enough. Gray and vast and\nmagnificently ruinous, yet eternally new they were, the old walls\nslowly crumbling, and over them, out of their heaped disorder, the\nfresh walls rising to the high-arched roof that never falls. To-day the\ndeep, hollow halls were shut to me by the arras of the gloom, and so\nsmoky rolled the rain beneath the roof that even the black rafters of\nthe birches were scarcely visible; but all the closer about me, in the\nwildest wealth and splendor, lay the furniture of the forest floor.\n\nNever were wools dyed and woven with a pile so rich and deep as the\ncover of mosses and lichens that carpeted this rude, cluttered floor.\nRolled and wrinkled and heaped up over the stumps, it lay, nowhere\nstretched, nowhere swept, a bronze and green and gold ground, figured\nand flowered endlessly; and down the longest, deepest wrinkle a\ndarkling little stream! It was a warp of sphagnum moss with woof of\nlichens, liverworts, ferns, mushrooms, club mosses, and shier flowers\nof the shadows, that was woven for the carpet--long, vivid runners\nof lycopodium, the fingered sort, or club moss, and its fan-leaved\ncousin, the ground pine, now in fruit, its clusters of spikes like\ntiny candelabra standing ready to be lighted all over the floor; and\neverywhere, on every tree-trunk, stump, and log, and stone the scale\nmosses, myriads of them, in blotches of exquisite shapes and colors,\ngiving the gray-green tone to the walls as the sphagnums gave the\nvivid bronze-green to the floor. Down to about the level of my head,\nthe dominant note in the color scheme of the walls, hung the gray\nreindeer moss, tufts and shreds and pointed bunches of it like old\nmen\u2019s grizzled beards. Some of the spruces and twisted cedars were\ncovered with it. Shorter in staple than the usnea of the South, stiffer\nand lighter in color, it is far less somber and funereal; but a forest\nbearded with it looks older than time. This moss is the favorite winter\nfood of the moose and caribou and deer, and so clean had the moose and\ndeer eaten it from the trees, up as high as they could reach, that the\neffect on a clear day was as if a thin gray fog had settled in the\nforest at an even six-foot level from the ground.\n\nWorked in among the lichens and mosses, quite without design, were the\ndeep-woods flowers--patches of goldthread, beds of foam-flower and\ndelicate wood-sorrel and the brilliant little bunchberry. Wherever the\nsunlight had a chance to touch the cold, boggy bottom it seemed to set\nthe punk on fire and blaze up into these scarlet berries, stumps and\nknolls and slopes aflame with them, to burn on through the gloom until\nthey should be smothered by the snow. Twin-flower and partridge-berry\nwere laced in little mats about the bases of the trees; here and there\nthe big red fruit of trillium and the nodding blue berries of clintonia\nwere mixed in a spot of gay color with berries of the twisted stalk,\nthe wild lily-of-the-valley, and the fiery seed-balls of the Indian\nturnip.\n\nThese touches of color were like the effect of flowers about a stately,\nsomber room, for this was an ancient and a solemn house of mighty folk.\nIf the little people came to dwell in the shadow of these noble great\nthey must be content with whatever crumbs of sunshine fell from the\nheaven-spread table over them to the damp and mouldering floor. There\nwere corners so dark that only the coral orchid and the Indian pipe\npushed up through the mat of leaves; and other spots, half open to\nthe sky, where the cinnamon fern and the lady fern waved their lovely\nplumes, and the wood fern, the beech, the oak, and the crested shield\nferns grew together, forced thus to share the scanty light dropped to\nthem from the overflowing feast above.\n\nBut I never saw mushrooms in such marvelous shapes and colors and\nin such indescribable abundance as here. The deep forest was like a\nnatural cavern for them, its cold, dank twilight feeding their elfin\nlamps until the whole floor was lighted with their ghostly glow.\nClearest and coldest burned the pale-green amanita, and with it,\nsurpassingly beautiful in color and design, the egg-topped muscaria,\nits baleful taper in a splotched and tinted shade of blended orange\nyellows, fading softly toward the rim. Besides these, and shorter\non their stems, were white and green and purple russulas, and great\nburning red ones, the size of large poinsettia blooms; and groups of\nbrown boletus, scattered golden chanterelles, puff-balls, exquisite\ncoral clusters, and, strangest of them all, like handfuls of frosted\nfog, the snowy medusa. These last I gathered for my lunch, together\nwith some puff-balls and a few campestris, whose spores, I suppose, may\nhave been brought into the woods with the horses when this tract was\nlumbered years ago. But I had little appetite for mushrooms. It was the\nsight of them, dimly luminous in the rain, that held me, their squat\nlamps burning with a spectral light which filled the dusky spaces of\nthe forest full of goblin gloom.\n\nAs I sat watching the uncanny lights there was a rush of small feet\ndown the birch at my back, a short stop just above my head, and a\nvolley of windy talk that might have blown out every elf light in\nthe neighborhood. It was very sudden and, breaking into the utter\nstillness, it was almost startling. A moose could hardly have made more\nnoise. I said nothing back nor took any notice of him. He could kick\nup the biggest sort of a rumpus if he wished to, for the woods needed\nit. I only wondered that he had a tongue, dwelling forever here in\nthis solitude. But a red squirrel\u2019s tongue is equal to any solitude,\nand more than once I have caught him talking against it, challenging\nthe silence of all outdoors, as I have seen small boys challenge each\nother to a blatting-match.\n\nBy and by I turned, and so startled him that he dropped a cluster of\ngreen berries from his mouth almost upon my head. It was a large bunch\nof arbor vit\u00e6 berries that he was going to store away, for, though\nhe sleeps much of the winter, he is an inveterate hoarder, working\novertime, down the summer, as if the approaching winter were to be\nseven lean years long.\n\nI was glad he had not obtruded earlier, but now he reminded me properly\nthat it was long past noon, and high time for me to get back to camp.\nIt was later than I thought, for the woods had gradually grown lighter,\nthe rain had almost ceased, and by the time I reached camp had stopped\naltogether. While we were at supper the sun broke through on the edge\nof the west and ran the rounded basin of the pond over-full with gold.\nI stepped down to the shore to watch the glorious closing of the day.\nThe clouds had lifted nearly to the tops of the mountains, where their\nwings were still spread, feathering the sky with gray for far around; a\nfew fallen plumes lying snowy white upon the dark slopes of the lesser\nhills; then pouring down the hills into the pond, splashing over the\ngleaming mountains and up against the sky, burst the flood of golden\nlight with indescribable glory.\n\n\u201cAll ready,\u201d said the guide, touching me on the arm, and I stepped into\nthe bow of the canoe as he pushed quietly off. An Indian never moved\nwith softer paddle, nor ever did a birch-bark canoe glide off with the\nease of this one under the hand of John Eastman, as we moved along in\nthe close shadows of the shore.\n\nThe light was passing, but the flush of color still lay on the lovely\nface of the water with a touch of warmth and life that seemed little\nless than joy; a serene, but not a solemn joy, for there was too much\ngirlish roundness and freshness to the countenance of the water, too\nmuch happiness in the little hills and woods that watched her, and in\nthe jealous old mountain that frowned darkly down. Mine, too, were the\neyes of a lover, and in my heart was the lover\u2019s pain, for what had I\nto offer this eternal youth and loveliness?\n\nThe prow of the canoe swerved with a telling movement that sent my eyes\nquick to the shore, to see a snow-shoe rabbit racing down a little\ncove hard at me, with something--a stir of alder leaves, a sound of\nlong, leaping feet making off into the swamp--that had been pursuing\nhim. It was probably a wildcat that had leaped and missed the rabbit\nand seen us from within his covert. What lightning eyes and lightning\nlegs, thus to leap and turn together! The rabbit had run almost to the\ncanoe, and sat listening from behind a root at the edge of the water,\nears straight up and body so tense with excitement that we nosed along\nclose enough to touch him with a paddle before he had eyes and ears\nfor us. Even then it was his twitching, sensitive nose that warned\nhim, for his keen ears caught no sound; and, floating down upon him\nthus, we must have looked to his innocent eyes as much like a log or a\ntwo-headed moose as like men.\n\nSoftly in and out with the narrow fret of shadow that hemmed the margin\nof the pond swam the gray canoe, a creature of the water, a very part\nof our creature selves, our amphibious body, the form we swam with\nbefore the hills were born. Brother to the muskrat and the beaver, I\nstemmed along, as much at home as they among the pickerel-weed and the\ncow-lilies, and leaving across the silvery patches of the open water as\nsilent a wake as they.\n\nNothing could move across such silvery quiet without a trail. So\nstirless was the water that the wake of a feeding fish was visible a\nhundred yards away. Within the tarnished smooches of the lily-pads a\nmuskrat might move about and not be seen; but not a trout could swirl\nclose to the burnished surface of the open water without a ripple that\nran whispering into every little inlet around the shore. The circle of\nthe pond was almost perfect, so that I roved, at a glance, the whole\ncurving shore-line, watching keenly for whatever might come down to\nfeed or drink.\n\nWe came up to a patch of pickerel-weed and frightened a brood of\nhalf-grown sheldrakes that went rushing off across the water, kicking\nup a streak of suds and making a noise like the launching of a fleet\nof tiny ships. Heading into a little cove, we met a muskrat coming\nstraight across our bows. A dip of the paddle sent us almost into her.\nA quicker dive she never made nor a more startling one, for the smack\nas she struck the water jumped me half out of the canoe. Her head\nbroke the surface a dozen yards beyond us, and we followed her into the\nmouth of a stream and on to a hummock into which she swam as a boat\nswims under a bridge, or more as a train runs into a tunnel, for an\narching hole opened into the mound, just above the level of the stream,\nthrough which she had glided out of sight. Hardly had she disappeared\nbefore she popped up again from deep under the mound, at the other\nside, and close to the canoe, starting back once more down-stream. She\nhad dodged us. Her nose and eyes and ears were just above the water and\na portion of her back; her bladelike tail was arched, its middle point,\nonly, above the surface, its sheering, perpendicular edges doing duty\nas propeller, keel, and rudder all at once.\n\nAs she made off the guide squeaked shrilly with his lips. Instantly\nshe turned and came back, swimming round and round the canoe, trying\nto interpret the sounds, puzzled to know how they could come from the\ncanoe, and fearing that something might be wrong inside the house. She\ndived to find out. By this time two young ones had floated into the\nmouth of the tunnel, thinking their mother was calling them, blinking\nthere in the soft light so close that I might have reached them with my\nhand. Satisfied that the family was in order, the old rat reappeared,\nand no amount of false squeaking would turn her back.\n\nA few bends up the stream and we heard the sound of falling water at\nthe beaver dam. Fresh work had been done on the dam; but we waited\nin vain for a sight of the workers. They would not go on with their\nbuilding. One of the colony (there were not more than two families of\nthem, I think) swam across the stream, and came swiftly down to within\na few feet of us, when, scenting us, perhaps, he warped short about\nand vanished among the thick bushes that trailed from the bank of the\nstream.\n\nA black duck came over, just above our heads, with wings whirring like\nsmall airplane propellers, as she bore straight out toward the middle\nof the pond. We were passing a high place along the shore when a dark\nobject, a mere spot of black, seemed to move off at the side of us\nagainst the white line of the pebbles, and I found that I was already\nbeing sent silently toward it. My pulse quickened, for the thing moved\nvery slowly; and behind it a lesser blur that also moved--very slowly;\nso deep was the darkness of the overhanging trees, however, that the\nnose of the canoe ploughed softly into the sand beside the creatures,\nand I had not made out the fat old porcupine, and, creeping a foot or\ntwo behind her, as if he might catch up by to-morrow, perhaps, the baby\nporky.\n\nThe old mother was feeding on bits of lily-pads washed up along the\nshore, picking them from among the stones with her paws as if she\nintended to finish her supper by to-morrow, perhaps, when her baby had\ncovered the foot or two of space between them and caught up with her.\nShe was so intent on this serious and deliberate business that she\nnever looked up as I stopped beside her; she only grunted and chattered\nher teeth; but I disturbed the baby, apparently, for he speeded up,\nand pretty soon came alongside his mother, who turned savagely upon\nhim and told him to mind his manners, which he did by humping into a\nlittle heap, sticking his head down between two stones, and raying the\nyoung quills out across his back in a fan of spines. He didn\u2019t budge\nfor about five minutes. Then he hurried again--right up beside the old\none--a thing so highly improper in porkypinedom, and so deleterious to\nporkypine health, that she turned and, with another growl, humped her\nfat little porky again into a quiet and becoming bunch of quills. This\ntime she read him a lecture on the \u201cWhole Duty of Children.\u201d It was in\nthe porcupine-pig language, and her teeth clicked so that I am not sure\nI got it verbatim, but I think she said, quite distinctly:\n\n  \u201cA child should always say what\u2019s true,\n  And speak when he is spoken to,\n  And behave mannerly at table:\n  _At least as far as he is able_\u201d--\n\nfor, seeing him so obediently and properly humped, she repented her of\nher severity and, reaching out with her left paw, picked up a nice,\nwhole lily-pad and, turning half around, handed it to him as much as\nto say, \u201cThere, now; but chew it up very thoroughly, as you did the\nhandle of the carving-knife in the camp last night.\u201d\n\nIt was a sweet glimpse into the family life of the woods; and as the\ncanoe backed off and turned again down-stream I was saying to myself:\n\n  \u201cEvery night my prayers I say,\n  And get my dinner every day,\n  And every day that I\u2019ve been good\n  I get an orange after food\u201d--\n\nor a nice, round lily-pad.\n\nThe precious light was fading, and we had yet more than half the magic\ncircle of the shore to round. As we passed out into the pond again a\nflock of roosting blackbirds whirred noisily from the \u201cpucker-brush,\u201d\nor sweet-gale bushes, frightened by the squeal of the bushes against\nthe sides of the canoe; and hardly had their whirring ceased when,\nahead of me, his head up, his splendid antlers tipped with fire, stood\na magnificent buck. He had heard the birds, or had scented us, and,\nwhirling in his tracks, curiosity, defiance, and alarm in every line of\nhis tense, tawny body, stood for one eternal instant in my eye, when,\nshaking off his amazement, he turned and, bounding over the sweet-gale\nand alders, went crashing into the swamp.\n\nI had neither camera nor gun; but, better than both, I had eyes--not\nsuch good eyes as John Eastman\u2019s, for he could see in the dark--but\nmine with my spectacles were better than a camera; for mine are a\nmoving-picture theater--screen, film, machine, and camera, all behind\nmy spectacles, and this glorious creature for the picture, with the\ndark hills beyond, the meadowy margin of the pond in the foreground,\nand over the buck, and the pond, and the dark green hills, and over me\na twilight that never was nor ever can be thrown upon a screen!\n\nI had come into the wilds of Maine without so much as a\nfish-line--though I have fished months of my life away, and am not\nunwilling to fish away a considerable portion of whatever time may\nstill be left me. But am I not able, in these later days, to spend my\ntime \u201cin the solitude of this vast wilderness with other employments\nthan, these,--employments perfectly sweet and innocent and ennobling?\nFor one that comes with a pencil to sketch or sing, a thousand come\nwith an axe or rifle. What a coarse and imperfect use Indians and\nhunters make of Nature!... Strange that so few ever come to the woods\nto see how the pine lives and grows and spires, lifting its evergreen\narms to the light,--to see its perfect success; but most are content to\nbehold it in the shape of many broad boards brought to market, and deem\n_that_ its true success!... Every creature is better alive than dead,\nmen and moose and pine trees, and he who understands it aright will\nrather preserve its life than destroy it.\u201d\n\nThoreau did not teach me that truth, for every lover of life discovers\nit himself; but how long before me it was that he found it out,\nand how many other things besides it he found out here in the big\nwoods! Three-quarters of a century ago he camped on Katahdin, and on\nChesuncook, and down the Allegash; but now he camps wherever a tent is\npitched or a fire is lighted in the woods of Maine. His name is on the\ntongue of every forest tree, and on every water; and over every carry\nat twilight may be seen his gray canoe and Indian guide.\n\nAnd I wonder, a century hence, who will camp here where I am camping,\nand here discover again the woods of Maine? For the native shall\nreturn. And as \u201cevery creature is better alive than dead, man and\nmoose and pine tree\u201d; and as \u201che who understands it aright will rather\npreserve _his_ life than destroy it\u201d so shall he seek his healing here.\n\nThe light had gone out of the sky. It was after nine o\u2019clock. A deep\npurple had flowed in and filled the basin of the pond, thickening\nabout its margins till nothing but the long chalk-marks of the birches\nshowed double along the shore. The high, inverted cone of Spencer stood\njust in front of the canoe as we headed out across the pond toward the\ncamp, its shadow and its substance only faint suggestions now, for all\nthings had turned to shadow, the solid substance of the day having been\ndissolved in this purple flood and poured into the beaker of the night.\nA moose \u201cbarked\u201d off on a marshy point near the dam behind us; a loon\nwent laughing over, shaking the hollow sides of Spencer and all the\nechoing walls of the woods with his weird and mirthless cry. Against\nthe black base of the mountain a faint bluish cloud appeared--the smoke\nof our camp-fire that, slowly sinking through the heavy air, spread out\nto meet us over the hushed and sleeping pond.\n\n\n\n\nCHAPTER VIII\n\nWOODCHUCK LODGE AND LITERATURE\n\n\n\n\nCHAPTER VIII\n\nWOODCHUCK LODGE AND LITERATURE\n\n\nHave I proof of my contention here? Throughout this book, on many sides\nof the question, I have argued that the earth is as young as it ever\nwas; that Nature, though it can all but be destroyed in spots, as in\nNew York City, cannot be tamed; that we are still the stuff of dreams,\nif we could find rest for our souls and the chance to dream. We are\nnot lacking imagination and the power for high endeavor. We master\nmaterial things; we can also handle the raw materials of the spirit\nand give them enduring form. But how can we come by the raw materials\nof the spirit? And where shall we find new patterns on which to mould\nour new and enduring forms? Matter and pattern are still to be found in\nnature--substance, essence, presence,\n\n  \u201cWhose dwelling is the light of setting suns,\n  And the round ocean and the living air,\n  And the blue sky, and in the mind of man.\u201d\n\nI have had much to do with young people, especially with those of\ncreative minds, divinely capable minds, could they be freed from the\ndoubt of their times, and the fear of their own powers. Here let me\ngive them a glimpse of an _old_ man of their own times, these evil\ntimes when all of the raw material of books has been used up; an old\nman with a boy\u2019s eyes and a child\u2019s heart and a pen and a bluebird or\ntwo, and a woodchuck--and, of course, a magical chance.\n\nIt was an October day. And how it rained that day! An October day in\nthe Catskills, and I was making my way, with my friend DeLoach, out of\nthe little village of Roxbury by the road that winds up the hills to\nWoodchuck Lodge. Hardscrabble Creek knew it was raining, and met me\nnoisily at a turn of the road, just before I came to the square stone\nschoolhouse (now a dwelling) where little Johnny Burroughs had gone for\nhis book learning some seventy-five years before. Leaving the creek, I\nfound myself on a roller-coaster road athwart the hills, making up with\nspurt and dip to a low, weathered farmhouse, thin and gray and old,\nthat seemed to be resting by the roadside thus far over the mountain\non its way to the valley.\n\nI knew it from the distance and through the rain, only it seemed even\nolder, smaller, poorer than I had expected to find it. But how close\nit sat to the roadside, and how eagerly it gazed down into the valley\nwhere the store and the station and the meeting-house were--to see who\nmight be stirring, I thought, down there in the valley! Or perhaps it\nsat here for the landscape. I was approaching Woodchuck Lodge, and it\nseemed very old and lonely in the rain that slanted along the wide gray\nslopes, and too frail to stand long against the pull of the valley and\nthe push of the heights crowding hard upon it from behind.\n\nA tiny kitchen garden at its corner, and across the road a stone wall,\nan orchard of untrimmed apple trees bent with fruit, and a small barn\non the edge of a sharply falling field--this was the picture in the\nrain, the immediate foreground of the picture, which stood out on a\nfield of hay-lands and pastures rolling out of the rainy sky and down,\nfar down where their stone walls ran into the mists at the bottom of\nthe valley.\n\nThese were the ancestral fields. Burroughs was born a little farther\nalong this road, the house no longer standing. Here at the Lodge he was\nnow living, and in the old barn across the road he had a study. These\nwere his fields by right of pen, not plough; these were his buildings,\ntoo, and they showed it. They sheltered him and gave him this outlook,\nbut they utterly lacked the pride of the gilded weathervane, the\nstolid, four-square complacency, that well-fed, well-stocked security\nof the prosperous American farm. An old pair of tramps were house\nand barn, lovers of the hills, resting here above the valley. It was\nin that old barn, on an overturned chicken-coop, with a door or some\nother thing as humble for table, that Burroughs had written most of\nthe chapters in \u201cThe Summit of the Years,\u201d in \u201cTime and Change,\u201d \u201cThe\nBreath of Life,\u201d and \u201cUnder the Apple-Trees.\u201d\n\nSo a literary farm should look, I suppose,--a farm that produces books\nas abundantly as a prairie farm produces cattle and corn; yet every\nfarm, I think, should have a patch of poetry, as every professional\npoet certainly needs to keep a garden and a pig. For years Burroughs\ngrew fancy grapes and celery for the New York market, along with his\nliterary essays for the reading public.\n\nAs we came in on the vine-covered porch of the Lodge, we were met by\nDr. Barrus, Burroughs\u2019s physician and biographer, who told us with\nconsiderable anxiety that the old man was not at home.\n\n\u201cHe is out visiting his traps, I suppose,\u201d she said. \u201cHe\u2019s just like a\nboy. I can\u2019t do anything with him. He\u2019ll come home wringing wet. And\nhe\u2019s not a bit well.\u201d\n\nHe came home true to form. It was an hour later, perhaps, that I saw,\nfrom the steps, a dim figure in the blur of the rain: an old man\nplodding slowly down the hill road, a stick and a steel trap in his\nleft hand, and in his right hand a heavy woodchuck.\n\nIt was John Burroughs, the real Burroughs, for I knew as I watched him\nthat I had never seen, never clearly seen, this man before--not exactly\nthis simple, rain-soaked man with the snow of more than eighty winters\non his head, with the song of eternal springtime in his heart, and a\nwoodchuck, like a lantern, in his hand.\n\nThis figure in the rain should be seen coming down every page of\nBurroughs\u2019s books. Every line should be read in the light of this\nlantern in his hand, for its wick is in his heart, and its flame\nshines from \u201cWake-Robin\u201d to \u201cThe Summit of the Years.\u201d Burroughs was\nthe eternal boy--splashing through the puddles, wet to the skin; the\nboy for whom these fields of his father\u2019s farm were as wild as the\njungles of Africa; and this woodchuck in his hand (it _was_ a big one!)\na very elephant, except for the tusks. But to be like this is to be\nboth boy and philosopher--boy and writer, I should say. And to see him\nthus--falling with the rain, whirling with the dust, singing with the\nbirds, growing with the grass, his whole being one with the elements,\nearth and wild-life and weather--thus to see the man is to know how to\nread his books.\n\nAs he came up to the porch, his slouch hat spouting like an\neaves-trough, he greeted me cordially, but as a stranger, not\nrecognizing me for an instant; then dashing the rain from his eyes,\nhe dropped the woodchuck, drew off, and with a quick righthander to my\nchest, which almost took me off my feet, he cried, \u201cSharp, we\u2019ll have\nwoodchuck for dinner!\u201d\n\nAnd we did--not the one he had just dropped on the floor, for that\none he skinned and salted and gave me to bring home to Boston. We had\ncanned woodchuck that noon at the Lodge. It was Burroughs\u2019s custom to\nserve his guests a real literary dinner; and of course it must savor of\nthe locality.\n\nThis called for woodchuck, or \u201cRoxbury Lamb,\u201d as you preferred; and for\nroast Roxbury Lamb the rule for rabbit-stew prevails: first get your\nwoodchuck; not always readily done, for the meat-market down at the\nvillage is sometimes out of woodchuck. So the Laird of the Lodge keeps\nthem canned ahead.\n\nThe clouds cleared in the afternoon, the sun came down upon the\nmountains, and we looked out from the porch over a world so large and\nnew and lovely that I remember it still as a keen pain, so unprepared\nwas I for it, with my level background of meadow and marsh and bay.\n\nEndless reaches of river and bay, of wavy marshland and hazy barrens of\npine, were my heritage of landscape as a child. And I have never been\nable to measure up to the mountains, nor to this scene, here from the\nporch--this reach without level; space both deep and high as well as\nwide; this valley completely hiding a village below you; ridges above\nyou where stone walls climb over the sky; mountains far across with\nforests flung over their shoulders, and farms, like colored patchwork,\nstitched into the rents of the forests; runnels singing down the\npastures; and roads, your road to school, so close to the verge that\nonly the stone wall stays you from stepping off the edge of the world!\n\nNone of this had I known as a boy. \u201cWho couldn\u2019t write,\u201d I muttered,\n\u201cborn into this glorious world!\u201d I have seen much grander mountains.\n\u201cNot a rugged, masculine touch in all the view,\u201d Burroughs said to\nme. \u201cIt is all sweet and feminine, and doubtless has had a feminizing\ninfluence upon my character and writing.\u201d It may be so. There is a\nplenty of wilder, stormier landscape than this in these Western\nCatskills, but certainly none that I ever saw that is lovelier for a\nhuman home. And here Burroughs now sleeps, under the boulder where he\nplayed as a child, and where all this beauty of winding valley and\nblue, bending sky upon the mountains lies forever about him.\n\nThere is something terribly important and lasting about childhood.\nAlmost any environment will do, if only the child is happy. It is the\nchild who counts. In every child the world is recreated and in his\nmemory stays recreated. More and more, as the years lengthen, do we\nfind ourselves longing--for the pine barrens, for the vast green reach\nof the marshes; and were my feet free this summer day, they would run\nwith my heart to the river--not to the mountains; to the river, the\nMaurice River, where the bubbling wrens build in the smother of reed\nand calamus, and where this very day the pink-white marshmallows make,\nat high noon, a gorgeous sunset over miles of the meadows. I love and\nunderstand those great, green levels of marshland as I shall love and\nunderstand no other face of nature, it may be. I know perfectly what\nLanier means when he sings,\n\n  \u201cOh, what is abroad in the marsh and the terminal sea?\n  Somehow my soul seems suddenly free\n  From the weighing of fate and the sad discussion of sin,\n  By the length and the breadth and the sweep of the marshes of Glynn.\u201d\n\nI said the clouds cleared late that afternoon, but it was still raining\nwhen, after dinner, I brought a box from the woodshed to the front\nporch for Burroughs to skin the woodchuck. Here we sat down together,\nthe flabby, flaccid marmot between us, the whole October afternoon our\nown.\n\nBurroughs pulled a rudimentary whetstone out of his coat pocket and\ntouched up the blade of his knife--of his spirit, too, running his\nthumb along the blade of every faculty as he settled to the skinning,\nhis shining eyes, his vibrant voice, his eager movements, all showing\nhow razor-keen an edge the old man was still capable of taking. He got\nhold of a forefoot of the \u2019chuck and started to talk on the flight of\nbirds, reviewing the various stages of the controversy on the soaring\nof hawks that he had been carrying on in the press, when, suddenly\ndropping his knife, he disappeared through the door and returned in\na minute with a letter from some scientist, whose argument, as I\nremember it, was wholly at variance with Burroughs\u2019s theory, but which\nclosed with a strange word, a word the old man had never seen before\nand could not find in his dictionary. It was some aeronautical term, I\nthink. Handing me the letter, his finger, as well as his eyes, fastened\nto that stranger from beyond the dictionary, he said:\n\n\u201cThat chap doesn\u2019t know much about soaring hawks; but there\u2019s a new\nword. See that! He knows a heap more than I do about the English\nlanguage.\u201d\n\nHe sat down to the skinning again. No cut had yet been made, nor ever\nwould be made, apparently, unless he used the back of his blade, for\nit was plain that Burroughs kept that old whetstone for his wits only.\nHe sawed away and talked as if inspired. I held the other forefoot, a\nshort, broad foot, like a side-hill gouger\u2019s, on the oldest, toughest\n\u2019chuck in the Catskills.\n\n\u201cDo you know what I am going to do?\u201d he asked, switching the\nconversation into the hard-working knife. \u201cI\u2019m going to pickle this\nold rascal and send him by you to your family. I want you all to have a\ndish of \u2018Roxbury Lamb.\u2019\u201d\n\n\u201cBut we have our own Hingham Lamb out on Mullein Hill,\u201d I suggested\ncautiously. \u201cAnd I don\u2019t like to rob you this way.\u201d\n\n\u201cNo robbery at all. Besides, these are a better breed than yours in\nHingham.\u201d\n\n\u201cBut my folks don\u2019t seem very fond of \u2019em,\u201d I protested. \u201cThey cook\nwith a rank odor.\u201d\n\n\u201cOh, you don\u2019t know how to prepare them,\u201d he answered. \u201cLet me show you\na trick,\u201d and deftly cutting in between the neck and the shoulder, he\ntook out the thyroid glands.\n\n\u201cNow you\u2019re going to take this one home. There\u2019ll be no strong smell\nwhen you cook this fellow.\u201d\n\n       *       *       *       *       *\n\nOur talk turned to poetry--the skinning still going forward--the\nwoodchuck brimming full of verse; for Burroughs, at every other turn of\nhis knife, would seem to open up a vein of song. The beauty of nature\nto Burroughs had always been more than skin deep. He wanted the skin\nfor a coat; the carcass he wanted for a roast; but here was a chance\nfor him to look into some of the hidden, fearful things of nature, and\nthe sight inside of that woodchuck made him stop and sing.\n\nBut how old and frail he looked! And he was old, very old, eighty-four\nthe coming April 9. And he was suddenly sad.\n\nResting a bit from his labor, he began to chant to the slackening rain:\n\n  \u201c\u2019Tis a dull sight\n    To see the year dying.\n  When winter winds\n    Set yellow woods sighing,\n  Sighing, O sighing.\n\n  \u201cWhen such a time cometh,\n    I do retire\n  Into an old room\n    Beside a bright fire;\n  Oh, pile a bright fire!\n\n  \u201cI never look out\n    Nor attend to the blast,\n  For all to be seen\n    Is the leaves falling fast,\n  Falling, falling!\u201d\n\nAnd he rubbed his thin hands together, spread them to the warmth, and\nrepeated two or three times,\n\n  \u201cOh, pile a bright fire!\u201d\n  \u201cOh, pile a bright fire!\u201d\n\nMore than once, I heard him returning to those lines; and saw him\nseveral times reading the last stanzas of the poem from a typewritten\ncopy on his porch table, chafing his hands the while, and extending\nthem before the imaginary fire as if they were cold, or as if he felt\nthrough his hands, so sensitive was he physically, an actual fire in\nthe written lines. The poem is Edward Fitzgerald\u2019s \u201cOld Song,\u201d and I am\nsure Burroughs was learning it by heart, and making rather hard work of\nit, I thought, for one who had already in memory so much good poetry.\nBut he was getting very old.\n\nThen, at my request he said some of the lines of his own poem,\n\u201cWaiting.\u201d \u201cThe only thing I ever did,\u201d he remarked, \u201cwith real poetry\nin it.\u201d\n\n\u201cHow about the philosophy in it,\u201d I inquired, \u201cDo you find it sound\nafter all these years?\u201d\n\nThere was an audible chuckle inside of him. Then rather solemnly he\nreplied: \u201cMy father killed himself early trying to clear these acres\nof debts and stones. I might have been in my grave, too, these forty\nyears had I tried to hurry it his way. I waited. By and by Henry Ford\ncame along and cleared up the whole farm for me. Here I am, and here\n\n  \u201cSerene, I fold my hands and wait,\n    Nor care for wind, nor tide, nor sea;\n  I rave no more \u2019gainst Time or Fate,\n    For lo! my own shall come to me.\u201d\n\nWe were soon deep in a discussion of free verse, no hungry trout\never rising to the fly with more snap than Burroughs. He called the\nfree-verse writers the Reds of American literature, the figure sticking\nto him, until some months later in California he worked the idea out\ninto a brief newspaper article under that title, the last piece, I\nthink, for publication from his pen.\n\n\u201cName me one good modern poem,\u201d I said, \u201cmoulded on the old forms, with\nrhyme and meter.\u201d\n\nHe let go his knife again, turned his face once more to the rain,\nthrough which the mountains were now emerging, and asked,\n\n\u201cDo you know Loveman\u2019s \u2018Raining\u2019 and how he wandered up from Georgia\nto find himself in New York City, his boat gone, or his money gone,\nor something gone--for he was someway stranded, I believe--and it was\nraining?\u201d And the old man began--\n\n  \u201c\u2018It isn\u2019t raining rain to me,\n  It\u2019s raining daffodils;\n  In every dimpled drop I see\n  Wild flowers on the hills.\n  The clouds of gray engulf the day,\n  And overwhelm the town,\n  It isn\u2019t raining rain to me,\n  It\u2019s raining roses down.,\u2019\u201d\n\nwhile the rain across the hills, shot through with sunset light, fell\nall violets and clover-bloom and roses on the mountains and on the roof\nof Woodchuck Lodge.\n\nThe thing on the box between us was utterly forgotten, but only for the\nmoment.\n\n\u201cDamn those fleas!\u201d the old poet exploded, at the end of the\nrecitation, swinging with both hands at his long white whiskers, \u201cThat\n\u2019chuck\u2019s alive with fleas!\u201d\n\nSo I had observed; and I had been speculating, as I watched them\nquitting their sinking craft and boarding the sweeping beard of the\npoet, how many of them it might take to halt the flow of song. I was\nfar off in my reckoning. Burroughs knocked them out and went on:\n\n\u201cThat\u2019s a good poem because it goes straight to the heart. It\u2019s an\nexperience. He lived it. And its form is perfect. You can\u2019t change a\nsyllable in it. It\u2019s on the old forms, yet it\u2019s true to itself. And see\nhow simple, direct, and sincere it is! and how lovely! I call that good\npoetry.\u201d\n\n       *       *       *       *       *\n\nWe had been more than three hours getting the pelt off that woodchuck\nand all of the poetry out of him. As I sat by, I saw what I had hardly\nrealized before: that the hand with the knife must often rest, though\nthe eager mind seemed almost incapable of resting.\n\nThe national elections were approaching, and from poetry we plunged\ninto politics, where I feared we were bound to disagree, but where,\nto my surprise, I found we were standing together on the League of\nNations, Burroughs having forsaken his party on that issue.\n\n\u201cIt\u2019s the only thing!\u201d he cried. \u201cThat\u2019s what we fought for. Rob us of\nthat, and the whole terrible sacrifice is futile--criminal!\u201d\n\nAnd later, after my return home, he wrote me:\n\n\u201cWell, the elections did not go as both of us had hoped. DeLoach was\non the winning side, as I suppose all the great moneyed interests\nwere. But thank heaven I am not in that crowd. If it means an utter\nrepudiation of the League of Nations, then for the first time I am\nashamed that I am an American. If I were in Europe I could not hold up\nmy head and say, \u2018I am from the United States!\u2019 If we have failed to\nsee ourselves as a member of the great family of nations, with solemn\nduties toward the rest of the world, to perform as such a member, then\nwe have slumped morally as badly as did the Germans when they set out\nto enslave the rest of the world!\u201d\n\nBut to return to Woodchuck Lodge, to the old man with the boy\u2019s\njack-knife in his hand, and the boy\u2019s heart in his breast--and so, the\npoet\u2019s outlook in his eyes. For he was more poet than scientist, more\npoet than theologian, though every poet, like all Gaul, is divided into\nthree parts, and these--science, music, and theology--are the parts.\n\nThe theologian is the ultimate thinker. His chief attribute is\nconsistency--even unto death. Nothing will shatter a system of\ntheology as will a trifling inconsistency. Burroughs was a bad\ntheologian, the worst I know by the test of consistency. Yet who\namong the theologians is more religious? Or leaves us with a realer\nconsciousness of the presence of God in nature?\n\n\u201cYou and I approach this thing from different angles,\u201d he said to\nme. \u201cWe come to God down different roads. Our terms differ. You say\n\u2018Father.\u2019 I say \u2018Nature.\u2019 But whatever we call Him, He is the same, and\nthe same for each of us. Our divergent paths at the start, come out\ntogether at the end. We worship the same God.\u201d\n\nWe did differ radically in our approach, in our terminology, and as I\nhad always thought, must of necessity differ as radically in our faiths\nand works. That was a foolish, vainglorious conceit. I wish every\ndisconcerted reader of \u201cThe Light of Day\u201d and \u201cAccepting the Universe\u201d\nhad heard the old author interpret himself that day. That reader would\nhave understood, as he sat there watching the light of a real day\nbreaking in over the rainy autumn landscape, what Carruth meant by,\n\n  \u201cA haze on the far horizon,\n  The infinite tender sky,\n  The ripe rich tint of the corn-fields,\n  And the wild geese sailing high,\n  And all over upland and lowland\n  The charm of the goldenrod--\n  Some of us call it Autumn,\n  And others call it God!\u201d\n\nThe pelt was finally off; the carcass in pickle for me; and the sun\nwas out, flooding Montgomery Valley and the heaving ranges beyond. An\nautomobile load of callers came, stopped a little time, and went away;\nanother load came and went away, and Burroughs, now quite rested,\nbrought out the manuscripts of two new books, which were about ready\nfor the publishers.\n\nI looked at the piles of work, then at the frail old man who had heaped\nthem up, and thought with shame of my own strength--and laziness. To\nbe approaching eighty-four with one book on the press and two other\nbooks in manuscript! What a long steady stroke he had pulled across\nthese more than sixty years of writing to be bringing him in at the\nfinish, two full volumes ahead of the race! Three volumes indeed, for\n\u201cAccepting the Universe\u201d had not yet come from the press.\n\nThe quiet and calm of it all deeply impressed me. The extreme opposite\nin temperament and action from his friend Roosevelt, there was nothing\n\u201cstrenuous\u201d about this plodding old man, nor ever had been. \u201cSerene I\nfold my hands and wait\u201d he had written in his twenty-third year, and\nhad practiced all these four-and-eighty years. Yet look at this amount\nof durable work accomplished. It is well for us Americans to remember\njust now that there is another than the \u201cstrenuous\u201d type of life, which\nis just as worthy of emulation, and which is likely to be even more\neffective.\n\nThis was an October day at Woodchuck Lodge. Sixty-one years before\nthe \u201cAtlantic Monthly\u201d was actually printing Burroughs\u2019s first essay,\n\u201cExpression.\u201d I looked at the old man beside me with the pen in his\nfingers. Was it the same man? the same pen? Lowell was the editor;\nthen Fields, Howells, Aldrich, Scudder, Page, Perry, to the present\neditor, who has held his chair these dozen years; and I watched the\npen in Burroughs\u2019s hand travel slowly across a corrected line of the\nmanuscript and I remembered that in all the years since Lowell was\neditor, not for a single year had that pen failed to appear in the\npages of the \u201cAtlantic.\u201d Was it strange that as I looked from the\npen away to the Catskills surrounding me I wondered if I were really\nlooking into Montgomery Valley and not into Sleepy Hollow?\n\nWe guests had a plenty that night, but Burroughs went to bed\nsupperless. We guests slept indoors, but Burroughs made his bed out on\nthe front porch, where he could see the stars come over the mountains,\nand the gates of dawn swing wide on the wooded crests, when the new\nsweet day should come through and down into Montgomery Valley.\n\nFor Burroughs has lived and loved everything he has written. He cannot\nwrite of anything else. Our present-day writers, especially our poets\nand nature writers, take the wings of the morning (or of the night)\nunto the uttermost parts of the earth for copy. Burroughs visited\ndistant places; but he always wrote about the things at home. \u201cFresh\nFields,\u201d to be sure, is out of England; yet England was only an older\nhome. Burroughs had seen strange, extraordinary, tropical things; seen\nthem, to write little about them, however, for it is only the homely,\nthe ordinary, the familiar things that stirred his imagination and\nmoved his pen. These were his things, the furniture of his house, the\nfolks of his town; for it was the hearth where he lived, his home, that\nhe loved, and it was the creatures living on it with him that gave him\nhis great theme. \u201cThe whole gospel of my books,\u201d he wrote, \u201cis stay at\nhome, see the wonderful and beautiful and the simple things all about\nyou. Make the most of the near at hand.\u201d\n\n       *       *       *       *       *\n\nIt was a constant wonder to me how one could be so simple as Burroughs,\nand yet know so many places, persons, and books. Burroughs had met\nmany people; he had read many books, and had written more than a\nscore himself; yet he was the simplest man I ever knew, as simple\nas a child,--simpler, indeed. For children may be suspicious and\nself-conscious, and even uninterested; but Burroughs\u2019s interest and\ncuriosity grew with the years. He carried his culture and his knife\nand his whetstone in his pocket. They belonged to him; but he belonged\nstrictly to himself. He remained to the end what the Lord made him--and\nthat is to be original.\n\nPietro, the sculptor, has made Burroughs in bronze, resting on a rock,\nhis arm shading his face, his eyes peering keenly into the future or\nthe far-away. Pietro has made him a seer or a prophet. He was much more\nthe lover and the poet. I sat with Burroughs on that same rock, the\nmorning after the rainy day at the Lodge, and talked with him of some\nthings long past, of many things round about us, but of few things of\nthe future. I saw him shield his face with his arm, and look far off\nfrom the rock--to the rounded, green-crested hills in the distance,\nand down into the beautiful valley below. But most of the time he was\nwatching a chipmunk near by, or scanning the pasture for woodchucks.\nHad I been Pietro I should have made the old man flat on that boulder,\nhis beard a patch of lichen, his slouch hat hard down on his eyes, his\nhead just over the round of the rock--and down the slope, at the mouth\nof his burrow, a big woodchuck on his haunches.\n\n\u201cI\u2019ve been studying the woodchuck all my life,\u201d he said, as we sat\nthere on the rock, \u201cand there is no getting to the bottom of him.\u201d\n\nI do not know whether Burroughs climbed over the walls and up through\nthe field again to this favorite spot of his boyhood in the few\nremaining days he had at the Lodge. This may have been the last time he\nlooked out with seeing eyes over this landscape of valley and mountain\nthat had been one of the deepest, most abiding influences of his life.\nAs we sat there together, the largeness and glory of the world: colors,\ncontours, the valley depths, the quiet hills, the wealth of life, the\nfull, deep flood of autumn light--almost too much for common human\neyes--the old man beside me said, with a sigh:\n\n\u201cI love it. But it is hard to live up to it. Sometimes, especially of\nlate, I feel it a burden too great to bear.\u201d Then, as if guilty of some\nevil thought, he brightened instantly, pointed out a dam that he had\nbuilt as a boy in the field below us, for his own swimming-hole, the\nridge of sod and stone still showing; told me stories of his parents;\ndescribed his sugar-making in the \u201cbush\u201d behind us; nor referred again\nto the burden of the years, weighing so heavily now upon him, until we\nwere leaving. Then, as he came out to the road to see us off, he said\nwith tears in his eyes:\n\n\u201cI hate to have you go. I wish you could stay. You boys are life to me\nnow. Come again soon. Good-bye.\u201d\n\nWe promised we would, and we did--in April, the next April, when we\nwent up to say our last good-bye. Meantime he was off to California for\nthe winter months. Before leaving he wrote to me from West Park, his\nhome on the Hudson:\n\n  I neglected to make any apologies for the long letter I wrote you\n  the other day. I promise not to do so again. I am sending you an old\n  notebook of mine, filled with all sorts of jottings, as you will see.\n  I send it as a keepsake.\n\n  We are off for California to-morrow. Hope to be there in early\n  December. We leave Chicago on the 29th. My address there will be La\n  Jolla, San Diego. Good luck to you and yours.\n\n                                    Ever your friend\n\n                                                          JOHN BURROUGHS\n\nHe kept his promise. This was his last letter to me. They were not\nvery happy months in California. Visitors came to see him as usual;\nhe spoke in the schools; and wrote up to the very end; but he was\nweak, often sick, and always longing for home. He knew if he was ever\nto see home again he must not delay long; and he counted the days.\nHe wished to celebrate his birthday with his old friends, at the old\nplace; and he was on the way, speeding homeward, with most of the\nlong journey covered, when, suddenly, the end came. And is it at all\nstrange that his last uttered words, as he sank into unconsciousness,\nshould have been \u201cHow far are we from home?\u201d\n\nOn the front of the boulder which marks his grave, those last words\nmight well be cut, as expressing the real theme of all his books, the\ndominant note in all his life.\n\nHis old friends kept his birthday in the old place--in the \u201cNest\u201d\nat Riverby, for the funeral; and the next day, his eighty-fourth\nbirthday, they carried him into his beloved mountains, to his grave\nby the rock, where so lately we had talked together, and where, since\nchildhood, he had found an altar for his soul.\n\nHow great a man Burroughs was I do not know. Time knows. I know that\nhe had three of the elements of greatness as a writer: simplicity,\nsincerity, and a true feeling for form. And he had these to an\nuncommon degree. I know that great men and little children loved him;\nand that three generations already have been led oftener and farther\ninto the out-of-doors by him than by any other American writer.\nI know how Burroughs thought of himself and of Thoreau; for in a\nletter, several years ago to me he wrote:\n\n  Thoreau is nearer the stars than I am. I may be more human, but he is\n  as certainly more divine. His moral and ethical value I think is much\n  greater, and he has a heroic quality that I cannot approach.\n\nBut I am not trying to estimate Burroughs. I am only sketching, through\nthe gray rain and in the golden light at the far end of the autumn, one\nwhom thousands of us read and love.\n\n\nTHE END\n\n\n\n\nTRANSCRIBER\u2019S NOTES:\n\n\n  Italicized text is surrounded by underscores: _italics_.\n\n  Obvious typographical errors have been corrected.\n\n  Inconsistencies in hyphenation have been standardized.","title":"The Magical Chance","tradition":"philosophy-ethics","translated_text":null,"word_count":42660}