,,the ,,magical ,,chance ,,the ,,magical ,,chance ,,by ,,dallas ,,lore ,,sharp ,,author ,,of 8,,the ,,lay ,,of ,,the ,,land10 8,,the ,,hills ,,of ,,hingham10 8,,education ,,in ,a ,,democracy10 ,,etc4 ,illustration ,,boston ,,and ,,new ,,york ,,houghton ,,mifflin ,,company ,the ,riverside ,press ,cambridge #aibc ,,copyright1 #aibc1 ,,by ,,dallas ,,lore ,,sharp ,,all ,,rights ,,reserved ,the ,riverside ,press ,,cambridge1 ,,massachusetts ,,printed ,,in ,,the ,u4,s4,a4 ,,contents ,i4 ,,the ,,magical ,,chance #a ,,ii4 ,,the ,,radium ,,of ,,romance #ci ,,iii4 ,,the ,,hunt ,,for 8,,copy0 #fi ,,iv4 ,,the ,,duty ,,to ,,dig #ajc ,v4 ,,the ,,man ,,and ,,the ,,book #aca ,,vi4 ,a ,,january ,,summer #aec ,,vii4 ,,after ,,the ,,loggers #agc ,,viii4 ,,woodchuck ,,lodge ,,and ,,literature #bjc ,,the ,,magical ,,chance ,,chapter ,i ,,the ,,magical ,,chance ,,the ,,magical ,,chance ,,chapter ,i ,,the ,,magical ,,chance 8,what are you going to say to the college girls80 my pretty niece asked1 as we motored down the valley4 ,she was being graduated this spring1 and the snowy dogwoods and the purple ,judas-trees against the tender hillsides were not so fresh1 nor half so full of bloom1 as she4 ,but they were gayer far than she4 8,don't tell them1 uncle1 how wonderful they are6 ,how the world waits for them6 ,don't say it1 uncle6 ,i have heard that sort of talk for these four years1 and here ,i am with nobody waiting for me2 not fitted for anything2 nothing to do2 and as wonderful--as thirty cents60 ,poor thing6 ,a few days before1 ,i had seen an interview with the ,president of ,yale1 in which the young writer said he had read in a book that all the great devices had been invented2 all the new lands explored2 all the great deeds done--all the adventure and romance forever gone from life1 and that only bread and butter remain with the odds against a young man's getting much of the butter4 ,poor thing6 ,have ,i been living fifty years--in ,america8 or fifty cycles in ,cathay8 ,i cannot still be young at fifty6 nor can ,i be so old either as modern two-and-twenty6 ,youth is a dry tree1 these days2 a sad state--particularly youth bent with the burden of an ,a4,b4 degree4 ,out of my fifty-odd years of existence ,i have taught college youth for three-and-twenty1 and never in all that time have they looked like plain bread and butter to me4 ,if they are not adventure and romance1 not better stories1 sweeter songs1 mightier deeds than any yet recorded1 then ,i am no judge of story matter and the stuff of epic song4 ,but my pretty niece declares that she also knows a shoat when she sees one2 and she knows it is just pork4 ,as for the college man of the interview3 he was not speaking by the book2 out1 rather1 of the depths of his heart4 ,it is an evil thing to be born young into an old world6 ,for the world seems very old4 ,its face is covered with doubt1 its heart is only ashes of burned-out fires4 ,the ,river of ,life which ,john saw has dwindled into ,spoon ,river2 and his ,book of ,life is now a novel1 piddling and prurient4 ,but ,john also saw the ,scarlet ,woman--and that was long ago6 ,the world was ever much the same2 ever in need of an ,apocalypse2 and never more in need than now4 ,my pretty niece1 and the young man of the interview1 are the world1 and the college world at that1 the more's the pity4 ,they are its skepticism1 its materialism1 its conventionalism1 its fear and failure4 ,they seem afraid to bid on life1 for fear it might be knocked off to them at something above par6 ,they do not dare4 ,they won't take a chance4 ,they would1 of course1 if there were chances2 they would dare1 if only one giant were still left stalking through the land4 ,the giants are gone6 ,the orator was celebrating the hundredth anniversary of ,richard ,henry ,dana1 the author of 8,two ,years ,before the ,mast03 ,life offered him a magical human chance and he took it4 ,there was something in him for which the decorous and conventional life of ,boston allowed no place in its scheme4 8,two ,years ,before the ,mast0 belongs to the ,literature of ,escape4 ,life offered him a magical chance--as if he were a special case6 ,so he was4 ,so is every boy4 ,who was this boy8 and what were the circumstances under which ,life offered him this magical chance8 ,he was a ,bostonian to begin with1 and that is bad enough2 he was a ,harvard undergraduate also1 which still further complicates the situation2 and1 besides1 he was a ,dana6 ,here was a complex which should have staggered ,life4 ,who could escape from all of this8 ,leave that to ,life4 ,up she comes boldly1 just as if she expected the boy to take her offer4 ,and he did take it4 ,he fell ill with some affliction of the eyes2 and1 going down to the ,boston wharfs1 shipped as a common sailor before the mast in the little brig ,pilgrim for a two years' trip around the ,horn4 ,and out of that escape from ,boston and ,harvard and the ,danas1 he brought back one of the three greatest sea stories in literature--a book that all of ,boston and ,harvard and the ,danas combined could never have written except for this escape4 ,the question is3 ,does ,life come along to-day1 as then1 and offer us1 as it offered ,dana1 such a magical chance8 ,is there any escape for us8 ,we are not all ,danas1 and so we are certainly not worse off than he was2 but our circumstances are distinctly different1 and rather disquieting4 ,this chance was given ,dana far back in #ahcd1 nearly one hundred years ago1 when escape was possible1 and when ,dana was a boy4 ,it was a young world a hundred years ago1 and full of adventure4 ,one could escape then because there was some place to escape into2 but to round the ,horn to-day is to land1 not on wild ,point ,loma1 but at ,san ,diego1 with the single exception of ,monte ,carlo1 the most decorous and conventional city on the planet4 ,perhaps my niece and the college boy of the interview are right4 ,about the time that ,dana was escaping from ,boston1 a young man by the name of ,henry ,david ,thoreau tried to escape from ,concord1 of the same ,state4 ,he had no deep-sea wharf1 no brig like the ,pilgrim1 but1 as one must seize such things as are at hand in an escape1 ,thoreau took a rowboat and the near-by river and started off4 ,he rowed and rowed for a week1 and came to ,concord1 ,new ,hampshire4 ,here he took to his diary and wrote that there were no frontiers this way any longer4 8,this generation has come into the world fatally late for some enterprises4 ,go where we will on the surface of things1 men have been there before us4 ,we cannot have the pleasure of erecting the last house2 that was long ago set up in the suburbs of ,astoria ,city1 and our boundaries have literally been run to the ,south ,sea40 ,born in #ahag1 more than a hundred years ago1 and still born fatally late6 ,how late1 then1 was ,i born8 and you1 my son8 and you1 my pretty niece8 8,the rainbow comes and goes1 ,and lovely is the rose1 but you and ,i have missed the early glory that hath passed forever from the morning earth10 she makes reply4 ,but ,i would say to her3 ,it was ten years later1 ten whole years after ,thoreau's tame adventure on the ,merrimac1 that gold was discovered in ,california4 ,here was a magical chance as late as the year ',forty-,nine1 and ,life offered it to a young man of ,providence and ,brooklyn by the name of ,bret ,harte4 ,he took it4 ,there was something in him for which the decorous and conventional round of these cities allowed no place in their scheme4 ,he went into the gold-fields and brought out 8,the ,luck of ,roaring ,camp10 another piece of the ,literature of ,escape4 ,then my students answer3 8,yes1 but there are no more outcasts in ,poker ,flat1 and whom are we to write about80 ,alas1 'tis true1 they're in their graves1 that gentle race of gamblers4 ,with the wind-flower and the violet they perished long ago1 as literary material4 ,eighteen-,forty-,nine will be having its hundredth anniversary soon4 ,but1 some fifty years later1 gold was struck again--this time on the ,yukon4 ,here was another magical chance4 ,and there was a young fellow walking the streets of ,boston along with me1 literally begging bread with me from editorial door to editorial door1 by the name of ,jack ,london4 ,life came up to us and offered us this magical chance1 and ,jack took it1 bringing out of the ,yukon a story called 8,building a ,fire0 which is surely a part of the immortal ,literature of ,escape4 8,well1 what would he write about now80 they ask4 8,what has happened since80 8,peary has found the ,north ,pole10 ,i reply4 8,yes1 and ,amundsen1 or somebody1 has found the ,south ,pole60 they cry4 8,and what's the use of living in a world of only two poles1 and some one finding both of them before we come along60 ,there is something in that4 ,it is a bad sort of world that has only two poles4 ,it should be stuck full of poles1 one for each of us4 ,but there are only two1 and a flag flies from each of them2 as a flag flies over every terrestrial spot in between them3 over ,mount ,mc,kinley now2 over the ,river of ,doubt now1 so that we are stopped from singing1 as once we sang1-- 8,there's one more river1 ,there's one more river to cross40 ,there is no more river to cross4 ,theodore ,roosevelt crossed it4 ,there is nothing to cross2 no place to go where1 on the surface of things1 men have not been there before us4 ,yes1 yes1 there is ,mount ,everest4 ,no one has yet stood on that peak2 but there is an expedition climbing it1 camping to-day at about twenty-five thousand feet up1 with only two or three thousand feet more to go4 ,and here we are in ,hingham6 ,it looks bad4 ,my young niece is possibly right1 after all4 ,east1 west1 north1 south1 where is a frontier8 ,where shall ,i go from here and find an escape8 ,not overland any longer1 for even ,thoreau could find no frontier this way2 and not by sea now1 for here comes ,john ,masefield1 poet and sailor1 saying the frontier has disappeared from off the sea2 that the clipper ship1 the ship of dreams1 has foundered and gone down2 that you can haunt the wharves these piping times of steam1 8,yet never see those proud ones swaying home1 ,with mainyards backed and bows acream with foam4 99 99 99 99 99 ,as once1 long since1 when all the docks were filled ,with that sea beauty man has ceased to build40 ,listen1 now1 for this is the message of the poem3 8,they mark our passage as a race of men1 ,earth will not see such ships again1--0 which makes me thank ,heaven for my farm1 where the same old romantic hoe remains about what it ever was--the first recorded wedding present4 ,mr4 ,masefield's observations are dated #aiab4 ,prior to that year real clipper ships rode the deep1 and real romance4 ,it was prior to #ahci that there were real frontiers and romance in the land1 and a last house 7a government lighthouse7 still to be set up in the suburbs of ,astoria ,city4 ,going a little farther back1 we find that prior to #adia 7,b4,c471 about the year #djjj according to the margin of the ,king ,james ,version1 there were giants in the earth1 and the stories in the ,book of ,genesis show that there were romances as well as giants in those days4 ,but1 like ,thoreau and ,masefield1 ,moses was born fatally late4 ,i feel sorry for ,moses and my niece4 ,let us pause here for a sad brief moment in order to see just where ,moses was when ,life sought him out and proffered him a magical chance in the shape of a trip to ,egypt4 ,where was ,moses8 and what was he doing8 ,to begin with1 he was keeping goats1 a fairly common occupation in those days1 though rather a rare job now4 ,but that was not all3 ,moses was keeping these goats for ,jethro1 his father-in-law4 ,now you begin to get some inkling as to where ,moses was4 ,but this is not the worst of it3 for ,moses was keeping the goats for his father-in-law on 8the back side of the desert40 ,one would certainly say that the front side of any desert would be far enough away1 and sterile enough of romance1 if one had to keep one's father-in-law's goats there2 but to keep the goats of your father-in-law on the back side of a desert is to be farther off than ,hingham1 or any place ,i know4 ,and here was ,moses when ,life came upon him offering him an escape into ,egypt4 ,he was born fatally late1 ,moses was1 just like ,thoreau and my niece4 ,he might have been one of my own college men1 so like a college man's was his answer6 8,no1 no60 he complained1 8,i don't want to go down to ,egypt4 ,there is nothing doing down in ,egypt4 ,i'm slow of speech2 without imagination2 and it's a hard job1 anyway4 ,let me stay here and be goatherd to ,jethro1 my father-in-law1 and dream of the good old days of the giants1 when men began to multiply upon the face of the earth1 when the sons of ,god saw the daughters of men that they were fair4 ,ah6--there was something doing in those days60 ,from ,moses to ,masefield the times have been fatally late4 ,and so mine are1 with the clipper ships1 the frontiers1 the giants1 and the daughters of men that are fair1 all gone6 ,but ,i seem to see them fair4 ,i suppose ,i ought not1 having been born so fatally late4 ,and ,i wonder if ,i might not find a giant1 too1 if ,i should hunt8 and a clipper ship8 and a frontier8 and even an escape from ,hingham6 ,lumber is still brought in boats to one of ,hingham's old wharves1 but the rest of her wharves are deserted4 ,her citizens1 who used to do business in great waters1 stop now in ,hingham ,harbor to catch smelts4 ,change and some decay one can see all about ,hingham1 but little chance of escape4 ,down at the foot of ,mullein ,hill1 on which my house stands1 there runs a long1 long trail awinding into that land of my dreams2 but ,i ask3 ,where does it cross the frontier8 ,i have traveled it1 going south1 in my ,ford 7if you are out for frontiers1 take a ,ford4 ,we have a saying here in ,hingham that a ,ford will take a man anywhere--except into good society67--,i say ,i have gone south over this road which runs at the foot of ,mullein ,hill as far as ,philadelphia1 and no frontier6--the next stop was ,chester4 ,i have gone east over the same road until ,i came to within ten miles of ,skowhegan1 ,maine1 where ,i ran into a steam-roller on the road4 ,when you meet a steam-roller on a road in ,maine1 you are very near the frontier4 ,if there is any adventure for you on the trip1 it will be on the dtour around that steam-roller4 ,but under the roller ran the road and on into ,skowhegan1 and on out of ,skowhegan into ,aroostook ,county1 the richest county in the ,united ,states1 where they raise 8spuds0 enough to feed1 not only ,boston1 but the rest of dear old ,ireland with her2 and all the way from ,hingham to ,aroostook1 except at the steam-roller1 there was no chance to get off4 ,and this road1 taking a turn among these glorious potato-fields of ,maine1 starts over the mountains of ,new ,hampshire1 crosses the corn and cattle belt in the central portion of the country1 and1 running on and on1 dips into the ,imperial ,valley in far-off ,california1 the hottest cultivated spot on earth4 ,and all the way from ,hingham1 roundabout by ,maine1 to the ,imperial ,valley1 you may not stop1 unless you run out of 8gas40 ,and the oil companies do not intend this magical chance to attend you1 for they have planted gasoline tanks under every second telegraph pole all the way4 ,this road1 starting from ,mullein ,hill1 ,hingham1 and running to ,aroostook1 ,maine1 and to the ,imperial ,valley in ,california1 takes a new turn among the melon-fields there1 works its way back along the ,gulf ,states1 binding their ragged edge like a selvage1 and1 bending into ,florida1 threads its way among the ,everglades and out1 heading off across the cotton-fields1 on across the corn and cattle belt again1 climbs ,pike's ,peak and down1 climbs ,mount ,hood and down1 and1 faring on into the ,state of ,washington1 climbs the fruited slopes of old ,tacoma1 8,the ,mountain that was ,god40 ,and all the way from ,hingham some one has been there before us1 and laid an oiled road for us1 and left us no frontier4 ,surely we are born late2 and my pretty niece fatally late4 ,the frontier is gone4 ,the buffaloes are gone4 ,i saw their ancient trails out of the car windows as my train roared over the ,canadian prairie1 wavering parallel paths in the virgin sod1 a vivider green than the rest of the grass1 narrow meandering lines vanishing short of the far-off horizon where hung a cloud not larger than a man's hand1 like the dust of the last disappearing herd4 8,hank0 ,monk is gone4 ,this king of overland stage-drivers sleeps in ,carson ,city2 and beside sleeps his ,concord coach of split hickory4 ,concord has ceased to make such coaches4 ,they mark our passage as a race of men1 ,earth will not see such coaches again4 ,from ,hell ,gate now to ,golden ,gate there are only miles1 and any machine makes a mere holiday of the trip4 ,a young acquaintance of mine has just made the coast-to-coast run1 driving her own car4 ,she said to me on arriving here that 8it was an awful monotonous journey40 ,didn't anything happen8 ,i asked with considerable surprise4 ,no1 nothing happened4 ,didn't she see anything of interest8 ,wasn't there any excitement8 ,didn't she have any adventures8 ,no1 she didn't see anything2 she didn't get a bit of excitement out of it2 there wasn't any adventure2 just one blinkety-blank mile after another6 8,incredible60 ,i cried4 8,oh1 yes10 she said1 her eyes brightening1 something like a thrill in her voice1 8,i did have three punctures60 ,all the way from ,golden ,gate to ,hell ,gate with three punctures to break the cushioned tenor of her way4 ,this is what life has come to4 ,then she said3 8,there were two things on the trip that did greatly interest me4 ,but ,i don't exactly know why2 and ,i am afraid to tell you about them for fear you will think me such a big fool40 8,no10 ,i answered1 8,i won't think you any bigger fool than ,i do now1 so what were the two interesting things80 8,well10 she began 7and ,i wish the reader would note the strictly ,american touch in this description71 8one of them was ,luther ,burbank's spineless cactus40 7,notice1 ,i say1 the spineless quality of this cactus47 ,the girl read my face and exclaimed1 much hurt3 8,there6 ,i knew you would poke fun at me40 8,but tell what the other thing was10 ,i begged4 8,let's get the sordid story over as fast as we can40 8,i don't know even yet what it all meant10 she went on1 8but1 as ,i was crossing the ,arizona desert1 ,i saw a long petition being circulated by the native ,arizonians1 praying the ,national ,congress to preserve for them and for posterity a portion of their original desert40 ,my poor niece6 ,moses saw the giants pass away2 ,thoreau saw the frontier pass away2 ,masefield sees the clipper ship pass away2 but it remains for my niece and her day to see the ,great ,american ,desert wiped out by the irrigation ditch1 and the gila monster with the desert1 and the need of a shovel on the trip across the sands6 ,have we eaten the cassaba melon and gone mad8 ,is it all of life to make the desert blossom as the rose8 ,to bring forth cassaba melons1 and alligator pears1 and spineless cacti for cow feed8 ,ploughing the desert2 turning the giant cactus into ensilage1 as if to live were a silo--for fear of this the native ,arizonians are asking ,congress that a portion of their original desert and of ,life's adventure and romance be saved to them and to their children4 ,it is sad4 ,but this is not the worst of it3 for they have laid an oiled road across that desert1 as if it were the whole of life to get through to ,san ,diego on time4 ,there is no hope for a man who gets through to ,san ,diego on time4 ,he will strike ,los ,angeles on time1 come to ,san ,francisco on time4 ,portland on time1 ,winnipeg1 ,chicago1 ,boston1 and ,hingham on time2 where he will die on time1 be buried on time1 rise on time1 and keep going on time1 with never a chance to get off4 ,but where is the adventure in that8 ,it is not the whole of life to get through to ,san ,diego on time4 ,i had rather leave my bones to bleach beneath a bush than travel on and on by schedule1 always making life's connections1 and so missing always life's magical chances4 ,don't you remember your ,mother ,goose1 wise old dear8 8,a dillar a dollar1 ,a ten-o'clock scholar1 ,why have you come so soon8 ,you used to come at ten o'clock1 ,but now you come at noon40 ,and he was the only little duffer in the whole school to get a poem written to him4 ,the other children came on time and passed into oblivion2 this boy 7he certainly was a boy7 came late and has become immortal4 ,the desert is doomed1 no doubt1 but we shall always have dtours2 and if 8on the surface of things men have been there before us10 we must go beneath4 ,there are giants still in these days2 the daughters of men are still fair2 there are frontiers for those who will find them2 and1 clipper ships or no1 ,i believe in the everlasting adventure of rounding the ,horn4 ,i believe in magical chances of escape1 born though ,i was after my parents1 which might have been fatally late had ,i not happily come before my children1 each of whom is an adventure and an escape4 ,wherever ,i turn1 ,i see a chance to sidestep the decorous1 the conventional1 the scheduled1 to dodge into the bushes and escape4 ,every day is an adventure4 ,there are magical human chances to go round2 there is adventure and escape for everybody who will seize it4 ,youth is as young1 the world as round1 the earth as wild as ever4 ,and1 in spite of all those who have grown old1 it is still appareled in celestial light--sunlight1 starlight1 moonlight--or else wrapped in ancient and adventurous dark4 ,the sun still knoweth his going down1 thank ,heaven6 ,there are some things that do not change nor pass away4 ,thou makest darkness1 and it is night3 wherein all the beasts of the forest do creep forth4 ,the young lions roar after their prey1 and seek their meat from ,god4 ,the sun ariseth1 they gather themselves together1 and lay them down in their dens4 ,man goeth forth unto his work and to his labour until the evening4 ,then look out for your men-folks4 ,for this is the end of the decorous and conventional4 ,this is the time wherein all the beasts of the forest do creep forth4 ,we are what we always were1 and so are things what they always were1 though they look different4 ,we have changed the spots of a few leopards1 the skins of a few ,ethiopians1 and shifted the frontier from the dark wild heart of the forest to the wild dark heart of the city2 but we have not changed the darkness1 or the wildness1 or the ,ethiopian1 or the leopard4 ,i have seen the evening come over the city1 a night deep with darkness and wild with a great storm blowing salty from the sea4 ,i have watched the streets grow empty till the shadow feet of ,midnight echoed as they passed1 and all the doors were shut4 ,then ,i have crept down along the dark wet ways1 bleak and steep-cut as cliffs1 where ,i have heard the beating of great wings above the roofs1 the call of wild shrill voices along the craggy covings1 and the wash and splash of driving rains aslant the walls2 ,i have tasted brine1 spume1 and spindrift on the level winds1 flying through a city's streets from far at sea--8one-way0 streets by day1 and so clogged that traffic could barely move in that one way--but here--in the hushed tumult of the storm and night--,i could hear the stones crying out of their walls1 and the beams out of the timbers answering them2 the very cobbles of the pavement having tongues that would speak when the din of the pounding hoofs was past4 ,some one complained to ,browning that ,italy is the only land of romance now left to us4 ,the poet answered promptly1 8,i should like to include dear old ,camberwell40 ,and ,i should like to include dear old ,haleyville and dear old ,hingham4 ,and you would like to include dear old ,wig ,lane1 if you were born there4 ,but ,i started out from ,hingham1 pages back1 to find the frontier4 ,have ,i found it yet8 ,so ,abraham started out from ,ur of the ,chaldees to find a frontier1 which he called a 8,city without ,foundations10 and did he find it8 ,whether he did or not1 he certainly had a plenty of adventure by the way4 ,abraham was a hundred years old when ,isaac was born4 ,there is something thrilling about that4 ,yet1 narrow as that chance was1 it is nothing when compared with what happened to him next4 ,for1 when ,abraham was one hundred and forty years old1 he married ,keturah4 ,here was a man who would not be put down by a little circumstance like one hundred and forty years4 ,life comes along at one hundred and forty and offers ,abraham ,keturah1 and he takes her6 ,i say he may not have found his city4 ,we know that he did find ,keturah--which is vastly more of an adventure4 ,we may not have the pleasure of erecting the last house in the suburbs of ,astoria ,city1 as ,thoreau says2 but we might have the wilder adventure of living in it4 ,and as it happens to be a government lighthouse out on ,tongue ,point1 at the mouth of the ,columbia2 and as it happens to be where the night and the rain and the fog are thickest on the face of the globe1 life in that last house is a constant frontier4 ,one might never leave ,ur were he not seeking a city4 ,and one must never find his city else he might cease his seeking4 ,i do not know how old ,abraham was when he set out from ,ur of the ,chaldees4 ,i left ,haleyville at the age of eight4 ,i have only lately come to ,hingham1 having got in on the wrong side of the railroad track some twenty years ago4 7,if one is really to arrive in ,hingham1 one must come in with one's ancestors1 and more than twenty years before47 ,i say1 ,i was eight when ,i left ,haleyville2 that ,i have hardly yet arrived in ,hingham2 but all the way from ,haleyville to ,hingham1 and all the way from ,hingham to--,heaven1 dare ,i say8--there has been1 and there shall be1 held out1 in both of ,life's hands to me1 the magical chance of escape4 ,did ,i start out from ,hingham to find the frontier8 ,that was wrong4 ,i will start back for ,hingham4 ,hingham is the frontier4 ,so was ,haleyville4 ,so will ,heaven be4 ,life with the earth goes round1 not forward1 except to complete a circuit established when the stars were fixed1 an orbit that all the forces of ,heaven and human intelligence have been unable to warp4 ,the only variation or shadow of new turning ,earth herself can look forward to is from collision with some mad comet1 which1 if she lasts long enough1 may happen possibly within fifteen million years--a square head-on smash it may be1 or only a side-swipe with a severe shaking up--and then fifteen million years more of steady turning4 ,things outside are rather hard and fast despite appearances1 and we who are parts of this even scheme1 we find that our uprisings and downsittings have never varied much from rule1 nor are liable to4 ,we are1 ,i repeat1 what we always were1 and so are things what they always were1 though they look different4 ,so is life what it always was for adventures and frontiers4 ,the wild frontier1 like the hunted fox1 has doubled on its trail1 that is all4 ,romance has slipped out of the woods into the deeper places of the city2 ,adventure has turned commuter2 and here are the three to companion life1 as they ever have--the ,athos1 ,porthos1 and ,aramis to a bebundled ,d',artagnan4 ,and already it is more than 8,twenty ,years ,since40 ,twenty years1 or a hundred years-- 8,the year's at the spring40 ,if you do not find your fill of adventure with ,davy ,balfour in ,appin1 come down with him to ,dean--to ,edinburgh1 and you shall see the face of such danger 8in the midst of what they call the safety of a town0 as may shake you1 too1 8beyond experience40 ,if you don't find the frontier in the daylight1 wait for the dark4 ,every night is a fresh frontier4 ,there are no landmarks of the day but are blotted out by the dark as the lines are sponged in the wake of a steamer's keel4 ,on the shortest night of this year wild rabbits were in my garden1 fox-hounds were baying beyond the quarries1 and through the thin early mist of the dawn we were all at the window watching a wild doe behind the barn4 ,she nipped the clover nervously1 twitched her tail1 pricked her ears 7for the day was approaching71 and took the high wire fence at a bound4 ,she was as wild and free as the wind4 ,a few ,sunday nights ago ,i was at church when the minister announced a series of evening sermons for young people1 and1 to my utter astonishment1 his first talk was to be 8,against ,sowing ,wild ,oats40 ,i was greatly tempted to ask him if he intended to prevent his young people from doing any more farming4 ,if they couldn't sow wild oats1 what kind of oats could they sow8 ,did he ever see any tame oats8 ,those preachers imagine a vain thing who think we ever cease to sow wild oats 7at least1 there is many a late crop1 as ,thackeray says74 ,the truth is there are no oats but wild ones4 ,i do not know what seed catalogue you order your garden seeds out of2 ,i get mine out of one marked 8,honest ,seeds02 it is assuring to have an order-book of this sort plainly stamped 8honest0 on the cover4 ,in this honest-seed catalogue for the current year the seedsman1 on page #ef1 is describing his oats4 ,let the preacher on wild oats note with critical care the terms of this description4 ,there is something theological1 at least1 revivalistic1 about them4 ,it is the only oat described in the catalogue2 and it would be the only oat to plant in all the world1 if it were1 as it is described1 a 8,regenerated ,select ,swedish ,oat40 ,a 8regenerated0 7that is ,methodist7 8select0 7that is ,presbyterian7 oat6 ,but read on through this catalogue1 and you will find that every seed and tuber from artichoke to zinnia has been to a revival since last summer and hit the 8sawdust trail40 ,great revivalists are the seedsmen6 ,their work1 however1 is not permanent4 ,for they know1 and we all know1 that every regenerated select ,swedish oat in their bins is a backslider at heart1 as wild as the wild ass of the wilderness that scorneth the crying of the driver4 ,it is true of the seed and true of the soil in which it grows4 ,this spring ,i brought in from the garden a frozen lump of earth which ,i had been subduing1 after the fashion of ,scripture1 with my hoe1 these twenty years4 ,nay1 that lump of earth had been in process of being subdued for nigh two hundred years1 here on this ancient ,hingham farm4 ,it was a bit of regenerated1 select soil1 which ,i had sweetened with lime1 had nourished with nitrogen and potash1 and had planted with nothing but regenerated1 select seeds out of this honest catalogue4 ,i put this lump of soil in a pot by a south window and tenderly planted more regenerated1 select seeds within its breast--tomato seeds1 ,jewel1 ,earliana1 and ,bonny ,best4 ,then ,i looked that it should bring forth tomato plants1 and it brought forth within the pot1 at the end of two weeks1 pig-weed1 horse-weed1 chick-weed1 smart-weed1 white-weed1 rag-weed1 knot-weed1 tumble-weed1 milk-weed1 silk-weed1 sneeze-weed1 poke-weed2 goose-grass1 crab-grass1 witch-grass1 wire-grass1 spear-grass2 burdock1 sourdock1 and pusley2 to say nothing of the swarm of things from ,europe1 whose infant cotyledons looked innocent enough1 but whose roots were altogether evil4 ,life offered that lump of mother earth its magical chance and the lump took it4 ,the innate badness of it1 this cared-for1 chemically pure1 subdued piece of garden soil6 ,its frozen heart a very furnace of smouldering fires2 its breast1 that suckled the nursing salsify in the summer1 a bed of such wild spores as would sow a world to weeds6 ,given tomato seeds1 regenerated1 select tomato seeds1 ,jewel1 ,earliana1 and ,bonny ,best1 the lump of earth brings forth its own original pig-weed1 horse-weed1 chick-weed1 smart-weed1 white-weed1 rag-weed1 knot-weed1 tumble-weed1 milk-weed1 silk-weed1 sneeze-weed1 poke-weed2 goose-grass1 crab-grass1 witch-grass1 wire-grass1 spear-grass2 burdock1 sourdock1 and pusley4 ,that is what it brought forth a million years ago4 ,a million years from now1 subdued and sweetened and nourished1 and planted with regenerated1 select tomato seed1 ,jewel1 ,earliana1 and ,bonny ,best1 and put in a pot in the sunshine of the south window1 that lump of earth will bring forth pig-weed1 horse-weed1 chick-weed1 smart-weed1 white-weed1 rag-weed1 knot-weed1 tumble-weed1 milk-weed1 silk-weed1 sneeze-weed1 poke-weed1 goose-grass1 crab-grass1 witch-grass1 wire-grass1 spear-grass2 burdock1 sourdock1 and pusley4 8,the ,form remains1 the ,function never dies2 ,while we1 the brave1 the mighty1 and the wise1 ,we ,men1 who in our morn of youth defied ,the elements1 must vanish20 --vanish1 but not change4 ,the heart of man is not less constant than a clod of earth4 8,lord1 we are vile1 conceived in sin1 ,and born unholy and unclean2 ,sprung from the man1 whose guilty fall ,corrupts his race and taints us all10 --sings ,watts with ,augustine1 with gusto and with more unction and consolation to me than in any other of his hymns4 ,to know that we still inherit a portion of the original ,adam1 if only the naughty of him1 is tremendously heartening4 ,anything original1 if only original sin1 in this day of the decorous and the conventional1 is stimulating4 ,for1 if we do still come by all of ,adam's original badness1 do we not1 by the same token1 come by all of his original goodness1 and are we not then wholly original1 as the original ,adam8 ,we must be2 as surely as the clod is2 full1 like the clod of wild weed-seed1 and capable1 like the clod1 under the proper care1 of producing tomato plants3 ,jewel1 ,earliana1 and ,bonny ,best1 regenerate and select4 ,i say the heart of a man is of the same steady stuff as the other clay4 ,what it was1 it is1 and will be--wild1 and ever seeking an escape from the decorous1 the conventional1 the routine of his subdued and ordered round4 ,how constant the heart of nature is to itself ,i saw again the other day at ,walden ,pond4 ,almost half a century before ,i came to this planet1 ,thoreau wrote of ,walden ,pond3 8,but since ,i left those shores the woodchoppers have still further laid them waste1 and now for many a year there will be no more rambling through the aisles of the wood1 with occasional vistas through which you see the water40 ,those many years have long since come and gone4 ,thoreau is gone2 his cabin is gone2 and a cairn of stones marks the spot where it stood4 ,over the stumps he saw1 tall stranger trees now stand2 and once more there is rambling through their shadowy aisles1 and vistas through which you catch glimpses of the beloved face of ,walden1 calm and pure as when he last looked upon it4 8,why1 here is ,walden60 ,i hear him exclaim1 8the same woodland lake that ,i discovered so many years ago2 where a forest was cut down last winter another is springing up by its shore as lusty as ever2 the same thought is welling up to its surface as was then2 it is the same liquid joy and happiness to itself and its maker1 aye0--and it has now been set aside as a reservation that its liquid joy and happiness may be ours forever4 ,change is constant1 but it is the change of the ever-returning wheel4 ,thoreau's cabin is gone1 and no other cabin can now be built on the shores of ,walden ,pond4 ,but the trees have come back to stay1 and if1 8on the surface of things0 ,thoreau 8has been there before us10 we must go below or above the surface and find our frontier4 8,magical chances80 a young aviator on the ,pacific ,coast wrote lately4 8,i thought of them to-day as ,i flirted with a little bunch of cotton-wool clouds eight thousand five hundred feet above ,point ,loma4 ,and ,i wondered what ,dana would have thought had one of his shipmates sauntered across the deck of the ,pilgrim1 and1 clapping him on the back1 said3 #8,i'll meet you1 old man1 in fifteen minutes up there in that fleet of little clouds2 if they whift and drift into space1 wait for me at the five-thousand-foot altitude'80 ,so the frontier comes back4 ,pushed past the suburbs of ,astoria ,city into the ,pacific1 it is seen crawling out on the sandy shores of ,cape ,cod with the next great storm4 ,the single line of human footsteps across the polar snows has not left too packed and plain a trail4 ,new snows have covered it1 as new trees have shadowed the shores of ,walden4 ,peary's footprints1 and ,dr4 ,cook's1 too1 would be very hard to follow4 ,it was more than twenty-five years ago that ,i started from ,savannah over the old stage-road to ,augusta1 finding my way by faint uncertain blazings on the tree-trunks through a hundred and thirty-odd miles of swamp4 ,they were solemn miles4 ,trees thicker than my body grew in the ruts where wheels had run2 more than once the great diamond rattlesnake coiled in my path1 chilling the silence of the river bottoms with his shivering whirr4 ,once ,i heard the gobble of the wild turkey and the scream of the bobcat2 and at night1 while sleeping in an old abandoned church on the river bluff1 ,i was awakened by the snuffling of a bear which had thrust its muzzle underneath the church door in the foot-worn hollow of the sill4 ,it was a lonesome place4 ,a faint road led away from it off through the swamp2 but1 aside from the gravestones near by1 there were no other human signs around4 ,how long since human feet had crossed the threshold1 ,i do not know4 ,the chintz altar-cloth that ,i tried to draw over me 7the night was chill7 crumbled at my touch and drifted off into a million dusty fragments4 ,i had meant no desecration4 ,i was very weary and had crept in through a window from the night and cold4 ,a slow rain had settled down with the dusk1 attended by darkness indescribably profound4 ,and beneath the long-draped pines outside slept those whose feet had worn the threshold--slept undisturbed by the soughing of the wind1 wrapped in the unutterable loneliness of the coiling river and the silent1 somber swamp4 ,yet here had passed a highway between two great cities just a few years earlier1 before the railroad was built farther out through the ,state4 ,already the swamp and the river had taken the highway for their own1 and from human feet given it again to adventure1 to the gliding form1 the swift wing1 and the soft padded foot4 ,the giants of old1 the frontiers and clipper ships of old1 are gone4 ,they went out with the ebb tide1 and here already comes back the flood6 ,and with it the same old human chance1 the magical chance of escape4 ,lay aside the rifle and you pick up the camera--to creep with it into the lion's den2 or to climb with it into the top of a towering oak1 on some sheer mountain wall2 and1 pushing it before you along a horizontal limb1 feet dangling in space1 a stiff wind blowing1 eagles screaming overhead1 canyon wall below you1 and far1 far down the narrow canyon bottom1 you hold on1 body balancing camera1 but nothing over against the swaying brain1 and grind out a hundred feet of movie film4 ,this is to shoot a good many lions4 ,life offers us all the chance of escape4 ,go where we will on the surface of things1 men have been there before us2 but beneath the surface we need go no deeper than our own hearts to find a frontier1 and that adventurous something for which the decorous and conventional allows no place in its scheme4 ,,chapter ,,ii ,,the ,,radium ,,of ,,romance ,,chapter ,,ii ,,the ,,radium ,,of ,,romance 8,why thus longing1 thus forever sighing80 ,because1 ,i suppose1 there were once two sides to her bread-board1 both of which she used for sketching4 ,she brought the board from the ,fine ,arts room at college to her new home1 carrying it one day to the kitchen to try her hand at modeling--in dough4 ,there are several of her early sketches about the house1 of that period prior to the dough1 which show real talent4 ,her bread1 however1 had about it the touch of genius4 ,the loaves grew larger all the time1 the bakings more frequent4 ,the walls of any house are rather quickly covered with pictures1 but there is no bottom to the bread-box4 ,there are still two sides to her bread-board1 and she uses both sides for dough4 8,why thus longing1 thus forever sighing8 ,for the far-off1 unattained and dim80 ,because1 ,i suppose1 time was when ,i thought of other things than the price of flour2 not because of much money in those times1 but because she made angel-cake most of the time then1 and what bread we did eat was had of the baker2 and because the price of flour was then a matter of course4 ,the price of flour now is a good deal more than a matter of course1 and the price of corn-meal even more than the price of flour2 so that we must count the slices now1 and cut them thin4 ,we shall have angel-cake again1 ,i promise the children1 with the biggest kind of a hole in the middle1 giving them a bran muffin to munch meanwhile1 and wondering in my heart if this fight for bread will ever end in angel-cake4 ,one can live on potatoes and bran muffins1 although there was never any romance about them1 not even during the ,great ,war when ,wall ,street took them as collateral4 ,we need cake4 ,i don't remember that ,i ever lacked potatoes as a child1 but1 as a child1 ,i do remember dancing while the pickaninnies sang1 8,mammy gwine make some short'nin'1 short'nin'1 ,mammy gwine make some short'nin' cake4 ,ay lak short'nin'1 short'nin'1 short'nin'1 ,ay lak short'nin'1 short'nin' cake10 in an ecstasy of pure delight1 which was not remotely induced by common hunger4 ,short'nin' cake1 angel-cake1 floating island1 coffee jelly--are they not victuals spirituels1 drifted deep with frosting1 honeyed over with an amber-beaded sweat1 with melting sweetness1 insubstantial1 impalpable1 ethereal1 that vanish into the brain1 that thrill along the nerves1 feeding not the body1 not the mind1 nor yet the spirit1 for these are but three of our four elements--we are also the stuff that dreams are made of1 and we cannot wholly subsist on more material fare4 ,what makes pie pie is its four-and-twenty-blackbirds4 ,singing-blackbird pie is the only pie1 whether you make it of apples or rhubarb or custard or squash1 with one crust or two4 ,he dreamed a dream who made the original pie4 ,and even now ,i cannot pass a baker in apron and paper cap without a sense of frostings and mringues--of the white of life separated from the yolk of life and stirred into a dream4 ,i find the same touch of romance on many faces1 both young and old1 as ,i find it over the landscape at dusk and dawn1 and on certain days even at high noon4 ,it was so this morning when a flock of migrating bluebirds went over1 calling down to me4 ,they came out of the dawn1 hovered idly over the barn and the tops of the cedars in the pasture1 then faded into the blue about them and beyond them1 where a fleet of great white clouds was drifting slowly far off to the south4 ,but their plaintive voices floating down to me ,i still hear calling1 with more yearning than a man1 perhaps1 should allow himself to know4 ,for at the first sip of such sweet misery some poet chides1 8,why thus longing1 thus forever sighing ,for the far-off1 unattained and dim1 ,while the beautiful1 all about us lying1 ,offers up its low perpetual hymn80 ,as if longing were a weakness and not the heart's hope2 and our sighing-- ,shall ,i sigh for what ,i have8 ,or stop sighing8 ,some of my possessions ,i may well sigh over1 but there are very few to sigh for1 seeing none of them are farther off than the barn or the line fence1 except a few books that ,i have lent my friends1 and now and then a few dollars4 ,and such is the magic in the morning light that ,i see the beautiful all about me lying--in the bend of the road1 on the sweep of the meadow1 across the commonplace dooryard asleep in the sun2 and such is the sweet silence of the autumn day that ,i hear the low perpetual hymn--in the lingering notes of the bluebirds1 in the strumming of the crickets1 in the curving stems of the goldenrods1 the loud humming of the aster-dusted bees1 even in the wavering red leaves of the maples singing in their fall4 ,it lacks an hour of mail-time1 and the newspaper1 and the world4 ,the bluebirds are leaving before the mail-man comes1 and everything with wings is flying with them1 or is poised for flight as if there were no world1 except a world for wings4 ,the day is warm1 with little breezes on the wing1 hardly larger than swallows4 ,they stir the grasses of the knoll1 and race with them up the slope1 to fly on over the wavy crest1 following the bluebirds off toward the deep-sea spaces among the drifting clouds4 ,and the curving knoll itself is in motion1 a yellow-brown billow heaving against the moving clouds where they ride along the sky4 ,and over the knoll sweep the hawking swallows1 white bellies and brown and glinting steel-blue backs aflash in the sun4 ,winging swallows1 winging seeds1 winging winds1 winging clouds and spheres1 and my own soul winging away into the beckoning blue where the bluebirds have gone6 ,but ,i shall return--to the mail-box on this rural free delivery route1 to the newspaper1 to the tariff1 to the ,turk4 ,the ,democratic ,state ,committee is assembled this day in ,springfield4 ,i am not there4 ,i also ran4 ,i stumped the ,state for nomination to the ,national ,senate1 and landed here on ,mullein ,hill1 ,hingham4 ,here ,i set out4 ,through many years ,i have developed the safe habit of returning here4 ,it was a magical chance ,life offered me2 a dream of beating the protective tariff devils4 ,but ,mullein ,hill is clothed with dreams2 and magical chances make this their stopping-place4 ,it is certainly true to-day4 ,to begin with1 ,i have this day bought the field by the side of my house4 ,for all the twenty years of my living here ,i have dreamed of this rolling field with its pines and pointed cedars1 and rounded knoll against the sky4 ,not every day in the autumn is like this for dreams2 not many of them in all the year4 ,i shall be building fences about the field now for many days2 and paying taxes on the field every day from this time on4 ,there are not many autumn days like this for dreams4 ,yet to know one such day1 one touched with this golden melancholy1 this sweet unrest and yearning1 should it not outlast the noon1 is to know1 8,and one thing more that may not be1 ,old earth were fair enough for me40 ,you say that ,i am still thinking of the ,united ,states ,senate4 ,possibly4 8,one thing more that may not be0 ,i must be thinking on1 for we all are4 ,after the nomination comes the election2 and what chance has the sworn enemy of a high protective tariff of election in ,massachusetts8 ,old ,earth is fair enough for me ordinarily1 and she is passing fair to-day4 ,but even the dog1 for all his appetite and growing years1 is not always satisfied with bread and play4 ,he clings closer than ever to me1 as if sometimes frightened at inner voices calling him1 which1 like deep waters1 seem to widen between us1 and which no love1 though pure and immeasurable1 may be able to cross4 ,he is nothing uncommon as a dog1 except in the size of his spirit and the quality of his love4 ,he will tackle anything1 from a railroad train to a buzzing bumble-bee1 that he imagines has intentions inimical to me2 and there is nothing on the move1 either coming or going1 quite innocent of such intentions4 ,without fear1 or awe1 or law1 he wears his collar1 and his license number1 #ff1 but not as a sign of bondage1 for that sign he wears all over his alert and fearless front4 ,he growls in his sleep before the fire at ghosts of things that have designs against the house2 he risks his life all day long4 ,but he reserves a portion of his soul4 ,he will deliberately chew off his leash at night1 and1 making sure that nothing stirs about the helpless house1 will steal away to the woods1 where he hears the baying of some spectral pack down the forest's high-arched halls4 ,i do not know what the little cross-bred terrier is hunting along the frosted paths--fox or rabbit or wild mice2 ,i cannot run the cold trails that are so warm to his nose2 but far ahead of his nose lope two panting hearts1 his and mine1 following the ,gleam4 ,all dogs are dreamers1 travelers by twilight1 who wander toward a slow deferring dawn4 ,they cannot see in the white fire of noon4 ,a lovelier light1 diffused and dim with dusk1 is in the eyes of dogs and all dumb creatures1 through which they watch a world of shadows moving with them like lantern-lighted shapes at night upon a wall4 8,not of the sunlight1 ,not of the moonlight1 ,not of the starlight10 is the tender1 troubled light in the eyes of dogs4 ,there is a deposit1 an infinitesimal deposit1 it may be1 of the radium of romance in the slag of all souls4 ,call it by other names--optimism1 idealism1 religion--you still leave it undefined2 an inherent1 essential element1 harder to separate from the spiritual dross of us than radium from its carnotite2 a kind of atomic property of the spirit which breaks up its substance2 which ionizes1 energizes1 and illumines it4 ,there may be souls that never knew its power1 but ,i can hardly think there ever was a soul shut in a cave so darksome1 that romance never entered with its touch of radiance1 if only as 8,a little glooming light1 much like a shade40 ,this is the light in the eyes of dogs1 the light that birds and bees follow1 and the jellyfish steering round and round his course4 ,something like its quivering flame burns down in the green1 dismal depths of the sea2 down in the black subliminal depths2 and on down in the heart of the world4 ,for what other light is it1 that guides the herring every spring1 in from the ocean up ,weymouth ,back ,river8 or the salmon in from the ,pacific1 up1 high up the ,columbia to the ,snake1 and higher up the ,snake into the deep1 dark gorges of the ,imnaha8 ,it is now long past ,october1 and where is the bluebird's mate of ,june8 ,she has forgotten him1 and is forgotten by him1 but he has not forgotten his dream-of-her2 for ,i saw him in the orchard1 while southward bound1 going in and out of the apple-tree holes1 the lover still1 the dream-of-her in his heart1 holding over from the summer and coming to meet him ahead of her1 down the winter1 out of the coming spring4 ,the dog and you and ,i and even the humble toad are dreamers at heart1 all of us1 only we are deeper adream than they4 8,if nothing once1 you nothing lose1 ,for when you die you are the same10 says ,freneau to a flower4 ,yet the flowers are of the dust that ,i am made of1 and they too are the stuff of dreams4 ,and the toad under the kitchen-steps1 what he knows of my heart6 ,as if the unrequited pain of lovers1 the sweetest1 saddest things of poets1 had always been his portion1 and their vague melancholy the only measure of his tremulous twilight song4 ,when the soft spring dusk has stolen into the young eyes of the day1 as the first shadow of some sweet fear into the startled eyes of a girl1 then out of the hush1 quavering through the tender gloom1 8,a voice1 a mystery60 ,from his earth-hole under the kitchen-steps ,i have known the toad1 by dint of stretching and hitching up on chance stones1 to get nine inches up1 nine inches from the surface of the globe1 up on the lowest of the steps6 ,yet it is given him to pipe a serenade in the gloaming that no other lover1 bird or poet1 ever quite equaled1 even when he sang1 8,i arise from dreams of thee ,in the first sweet sleep of night40 ,life is always a romance4 ,there is fire in its heart1 even in the three cold chambers of the toad's heart2 and the light of the fire flickers fainter than the guttered candle before it will go out4 ,this may not be 8the true light02 yet it lighteth every man that cometh into the world1 every man with a pen1 and his brother with a hoe1 though they comprehend it not4 ,one of our poets has written of 8,the ,man ,with ,the ,hoe0 and left the man out and put only the hoe in the poem4 ,this poet has written more than he has hoed1 ,i am sure2 as the painter of 8,the ,man with the ,hoe0 had painted more than he had hoed1 ,i am sure4 ,here is a poet who sees no light at all in 8,the ,man with the ,hoe10 because that poet has written more than he has hoed1 which is to gather where he has not strawed4 ,when a hoe looks as black as this to a pen1 you will search the premises of the pen in vain for hoes4 ,i hoe2 ,i know men who hoe2 and none of us knows ,mr4 ,markham's scarecrow for ourself4 ,here a realist sees what another realist thought he saw2 as if you could ever see life6 ,life is not what the realist sees1 but what the realist is and knows1 plus what the man with the hoe is and knows2 and he knows that1 if chained to a pick instead of a hoe1 down in the black pit of some ,siberian mine1 he could not work life out in the utter dark4 ,realism1 if not a distortion and a disease1 is at best only a half-truth2 and the realist1 if more than a medical examiner for his district1 is but the undertaker besides4 ,whoever sings a true song1 or pens the humblest plodding prose1 whether of ,achilles1 son of ,peleus1 or of ,john ,gilley1 a milkman down in ,maine1 or of the toad1 or of the bee1 has essentially one story to tell1 and must be a ,homer1 truly to tell it4 ,here on my desk lies the story of ,john ,gilley1 and over in the next farmhouse lingers the unwritten story of another milkman1 my neighbor1 ,joel ,moore2 and in the other neighbor-houses live like people--humble1 humdrum country people1 with their stories1 which1 if lighted with nothing but their own hovering gleam1 would glow forever4 ,the next man ,i meet would make a book2 for either he is1 or he knows1 a good-enough story1 could ,i but come by the tale4 ,o4 ,henry1 pacing the streets in an agony of fear at having run out of story-matter1 is only a case of nerves4 ,the one inexhaustible supply of matter in the ,universe that is of use to man is story-matter2 for1 as the first human pair have been a perpetual song and story1 so the last pair shall be the theme for some recording angel1 or else they will leave a diary4 ,the real ill with literature is writer's cramp1 an inability to seize the story1 all of it1 its truth as well as its facts--an ill1 not of too much observation1 but of too little imagination4 ,art does not watch life and record it4 ,art loves life and creates it4 8,no one knows the stars10 says ,stevenson1 8who has not slept1 as the ,french happily put it1 la belle toile4 ,he may know all their names1 and distances1 and magnitudes1 and yet be ignorant of what alone concerns mankind1 their serene and gladsome influence on the mind40 ,art and literature have turned scientist of late1 as if our magnitudes1 names1 and distances1 as if the concern of psychologists1 physiologists1 ethnologists1 criminologists1 and pathologists1 were the concern of mankind6 ,these things all belong to the specialists4 ,what does mankind reck of the revolution of the node and apsides8 that ,neptune's line of apsides completes its revolution in #edj1jjj years8 ,instead of an astronomer1 mankind is still the simple shepherd1 keeping watch by night1 and all he knows of the stars is that they brood above the sleeping hills1 and now and then1 in some holy hush1 they sing together4 ,science is concerned with the names1 distances1 and magnitudes of the stars2 and with problems touching the 8intestinal parasites of the flea40 ,art1 literature1 and religion are concerned only with mankind2 with the elemental1 the universal1 the eternal2 with the dream1 the defeat1 the romance of life4 ,i have much to do with writers--with great writers1 could they only think of something to write about4 8,there is nothing left10 they cry1 8to write about40 8,but here am ,i4 ,take me10 ,i answer4 ,out come pads and pencils flying4 ,there is hard looking at me for a moment4 ,then a cynical smile4 ,i won't do4 ,becky might have done1 but ,thackeray got her2 just as some one has got everybody6 ,my tribe can never furnish her like again4 ,yet my tribe is not infertile2 it is ,thackeray's1 rather1 that has run out4 ,a sweet young thing in one of my extension courses1 voicing the literary despair of the class in a poem called 8,the ,fairy ,door10 made this end of the whole matter3 8,the world seems black and ugly ,when ,i shut the ,fairy ,door2 ,i want to go to ,fairyland ,and live forever more40 ,i was reading this effusion on my way in to college4 ,when ,i reached the climax in the stanza1 8,the world seems black and ugly0 ,i thrust the manuscript back into my bag in disgust and turned for relief to the morning paper4 ,here--for the young writer was the daughter of a prominent ,bostonian--,i saw the announcement of her engagement to a ,chicago man1 and ,i knew1 of course1 what ailed the poetry2 and ,i knew the medicine that ,i should administer4 ,how far apart literature and life sometimes get6 ,and how much more real and romantic is ordinary life than ordinary literature6 ,the girl was to meet me that afternoon in the university extension lecture4 ,the amphitheater was full of city folk1 and there in the middle of the hall sat the young poet4 ,she was very pretty1 one of the daughters of men still fair4 ,taking her poem1 ,i read it aloud to that last stanza1 when1 turning sharply1 and pointing the manuscript hard at her1 ,i demanded1 8,is this so8 ,do you want to leave ,boston for ,fairyland1 instead of ,chicago8 ,do you80 ,she was staggered by the suddenness and savageness of it all and rose to her feet1 adorably pink in her confusion1 stammering1 8,no1 no1 ,i beg--of course ,i--no1 ,i don't0--by this time so recovered that her eyes flashed wrath as she dropped to her seat amid the gaping and the twittering of the class4 8,if you don't mean it10 ,i demanded1 8why in the sacred name of literature did you write it8 ,why don't you ever write what you mean8 ,and you mean that ,boston has suddenly become a back number for literature2 that the literary center has shifted to ,chicago--that's what you mean4 ,chicago6 the one romantic1 fairy-like spot on earth6 ,isn't that what you mean8 ,then don't you see how fresh1 how thrilling a theme you have in your ,chicago8 ,no one else1 perhaps1 ever saw ,chicago in quite this rosy1 romantic light before40 ,hers is the enduring truth about ,chicago2 as against that set forth by ,mr4 ,armour in 8,the ,packers1 the ,private ,car ,lines1 and the ,people40 ,here she was1 herself the very stuff of the eternal in literature1 and forced to ,fairyland for something to write about6 ,sheer nonsense4 ,one need not take the wings of the morning to the uttermost sea1 or make one's bed in ,hell for 8copy40 ,chicago will do--or ,boston--or even ,hingham4 ,to be1 if to be only a stock or a stone1 beast or bird or man1 is to be a story1 while to be any one of my neighbors is to be an epic4 ,the day we moved out here1 before our goods arrived1 a strangely youthful pair1 far on in the eighties1 struggled up the hill from the old farm below to greet us4 ,he was clad in overalls and topcoat1 and she in flowers1 overflowing from both her arms1 and in wild confusion on the gayest ,easter bonnet that ever bloomed4 8,how do you do1 neighbors60 she began1 extending her armfuls of glorious mountain laurel2 8,mr4 ,white and ,i bring you the welcome of the ,hingham ,hills0--,mr4 ,white's rough old hand grasping mine amid the blossoms4 8,why10 ,i cried1 8,i didn't know the ,hingham ,hills could hold such a welcome4 ,i have tramped the woods about here1 but ,i never found a bunch of laurel40 8,ah1 you didn't get into ,valley ,swamp6 ,mr4 ,white and ,i will show you1 won't we1 ,georgie8 ,we know where odes hang on hawthorns1 don't we8 ,we are busy farmers1 and you know what farming is2 but we have never ploughed up our poetry-patch1 have we1 ,georgie80 ,they never had2 nor much of their other ninety-six acres either--the whole farm a joyous riot of free verse3 fences without line or meter3 cattle running where they liked2 the farm kit--a mowing machine1 a sulky plough1 and a stolid old grindstone--straying romantically about the shy sweet fields4 ,it was an ode of a carriage that the spoony old couple went to town in1 with wheels dactylic on one side and iambic on the other1 and so broken a line for a back spring that ,mrs4 ,white would slide into ,mr4 ,white's lap without csura or even a punctuation mark to hinder4 ,i was at the village market one muddy ,march day1 when ,cupid and the old mare1 neither wearing blinders1 brought this chariot to the curb4 ,mr4 ,white1 descending to the street1 reached up for ,mrs4 ,white1 who1 giving him both her hands1 put out a dainty foot to the carriage-step and there poised1 dismayed at the ,march mud4 ,instantly ,mr4 ,white1 disengaging one hand1 lifted a folded blanket from the seat1 shot it grandly out across the mud1 and with a bow as gallant as ,sir ,walter's own1 handed the dear old shoes unblemished to the shop4 ,eighteen or eighty1 it is just the same4 ,boston or ,chicago or ,hingham1 it is just the same4 ,white or red or yellow or black1 it is just the same4 ,the radium of romance is mixed with the slag of all our souls4 ,here is my colored neighbor down toward the village4 8,hello60 ,i called to him over the telephone1 8aren't you going to do that job for me80 ,this neighbor is a most useful colored citizen1 with a complete line of avocations1 cleaning cesspools nocturnally and on ,saturday afternoons being one of these sporadic and subsidiary callings4 8,hello60 he answered2 8,i most assuredly am6 ,and exceedingly sorry ,i am1 too1 for this delay40 7,he had been coming for one year and six months now47 8,but my business grows enormously4 ,it is really more than ,i can administer4 ,the fact is1 professor1 ,i must increase my equipment4 ,i can't dip any longer4 ,i am rapidly approaching the proportions of a pump40 8,i am rapidly approaching the proportions of a pump40 ,divine6 ,i like the sound4 ,for it is the true measure of life as set over against that which life may merely appear to be4 ,to trudge along through life beside your humble cart of the long-handled dipper1 and to know that your dipper is approaching the proportions of a pump is to know that you are greater than you know4 ,i saw yesterday in the ,sunday newspaper the lovely face of a girl1 who1 8rumor has it10 ran the legend1 8will be the next ,queen of ,england40 ,she1 too1 like my colored neighbor1 like us all1 is approaching the proportions of a pump4 ,we are all the stuff that pumps and dreams are made of1 and great art1 and great literature4 ,i spoke of ,joel ,moore here in the next house to me4 ,for twenty-six years he was chained to a milk-route1 covering ,lovell's ,corner1 ,east ,weymouth1 and our back wood-road2 but he always drove it in a trotting sulky4 ,from behind the bushes ,i have seen him calming the leg-weary team as it labored up the humps in the road1 his feet braced1 his arms extended to the slack lines1 his eyes fixed on the ,judge's ,stand ahead1 while he maneuvered against ,ed ,geers and ,ben ,hur and all the ,weymouths for the pole4 ,he came home in that lumbering1 rattling milk-cart as if it wore winged wheels1 and were being drawn by the steeds of ,aurora around the half-mile track at the great ,brockton ,fair4 ,it was sixteen years ago that ,joel drove home with ,flora ,,iv1 a black mare without a leg to stand on1 but with a record of #b4ab-c_/d ,there was large fixing of the little barn for her1 and much rubbing-down of withers4 ,one day ,joel was seen wandering over the knoll here near the house1 kicking stones around4 ,something was the matter4 ,i sauntered out toward my barn casually and called to him4 ,picking up a piece of rock in the pasture1 he staggered with it to the fence1 and fixing it into the wall1 said with labored breath1 8,flora ,,iv has a foal60 ,and1 lifting another stone off the wall1 for ballast1 he strode up the hill and over1 and down to his barn1 not knowing the 8,magnificat10 it may be1 but singing it in his heart all the way down4 ,and this happened on the very hill which this day ,i bought with the field by the side of the house4 ,joel owned the field then4 ,but he longed for a fast horse4 ,i never set my heart on a fast horse2 but ,i cannot resist a field4 ,i did not covet this field of ,joel's4 ,i merely dreamed of it as part of my dooryard1 and waited--longer than ,jacob waited for ,rachel4 ,what a dream she must have been6 ,but let me come back to ,joel and ,flora and the foal4 ,my youngest boy was born that same summer--sixteen years ago--the double event in ,joel's mind wearing the mixed complexion of twins4 ,he had had no children till the colt came1 and naturally he spoiled her4 ,she was a willful little thing by inheritance1 though--arch1 skittish1 and very pretty2 and long before she wore shoes had got the petulant habit of kicking the siding off the barn at any delay of dinner4 ,she should have been broken by her second birthday1 but ,joel would take no risks2 and in the third summer1 though he 8had her used to leather10 he needed a steady old horse to hitch her with1 and she came up to her fourth birthday untrained4 ,then1 the first time he took her out1 she behaved so badly1 and cut herself so1 forward1 that it was necessary to turn her loose for months4 ,then she was sent away to be broken1 but came back a little more willful than ever1 and prettier than ever1 if possible4 ,that winter ,joel had to give up his milk-route on account of sickness1 and with the opening of spring got the blacksmith to take the colt in hand4 ,he took her1 and threw her1 dislocating her shoulder4 ,then he pulled off her new shoes1 and she was put into the boxstall to get well4 ,after that1 ,i don't know just why1 but we talked of other things than the colt4 ,she kicked a board off the back of the barn one day1 sending a splinter whizzing past my head1 but neither of us noticed it4 ,she was seven years old now1 a creature shaped for speed1 but ,joel was not strong enough to manage her1 and a horse like this could so easily be harmed4 ,in fact1 he never harnessed her again4 ,i urged him from time to time1 with what directness ,i dared1 to let me take him into the hospital4 ,but he had never left the farm and his wife alone overnight in all these years4 ,then one day he sent for me4 ,he would go1 he said1 if ,i could arrange for him4 ,a ,march snow lay on the fields the day before he was to go1 and all that day1 at odd times1 ,i would see him creeping like a shadow about his place3 to the hen-coops1 up to the line fence1 out to the apple tree in the meadow1 taking a last look at things4 ,it was quite impossible for me to work that day4 ,the next morning the four boys1 on their way to school1 went down ahead of me to say good-bye4 ,they filed in1 shook hands bravely1 fighting back their tears1 and playing fine the game of bluff with him1 though the little fellow1 born the summer the colt was born1 nearly spoiled it all4 ,he is a dear impulsive child and had frankly been ,joel's favorite4 8,i've taken the eveners off the disk harrow10 he was saying as he came out to the sleigh4 8,i gave the kittens a bed of fresh rowan4 ,i drove a nail under the shutter of the can-house1 where you can hang the key4 ,you had better lock up a little till ,i get back0--his words half muffled under the big robes of the sleigh4 8,i hate to leave home10 he said1 as we went along2 8but she couldn't stand it4 ,she's not well4 ,it isn't so bad for me with you along40 ,two or three times he was about to say something else1 but felt too tired4 ,i had him duly entered2 introduced him to his surgeon2 helped him to his cot1 where a cheery nurse made him easy2 then gave him my hand4 8,good-day10 he said2 8,i'm going to pay you back some time4 ,only ,i can't40 ,he clung a moment longer to me4 8,i've never had many of the luxuries4 ,i've worked hard for all ,i've got--except for the little colt4 ,she was thrown in4 ,i never fed her a quart of grain--the cleanest little eater--as fat as butter--and on nothing but roughage all the time60 ,then1 looking me straight in the eye1 he said calmly1 8,you and ,i know and the doctors know4 ,but ,i couldn't tell her4 ,you tell her4 ,you can4 ,and tell her ,i guess she had better sell the little colt40 ,he paused a moment4 ,something yet he wished to say--the thing he had tried before to say4 ,i hope the ,recording ,angel took it down1 and the way he said it1 down4 ,not quite daring to look into my eyes1 he asked1 wistfully1 8,you don't need a fast horse yourself1 of course1 having your auto80 8,yes1 ,i do1 ,joel10 ,i answered firmly2 8,i do need a fast horse4 ,we all do1 or something like that40 ,and ,i bent over and kissed him1 for his wife1 and for my little boy at home4 ,there is balm in ,gilead2 but are there racetracks in ,heaven8--and fast horses there8 ,perhaps not4 ,but ,i often wish that ,i had told ,joel ,i believed there were4 ,of course there are4 ,there is romance in ,heaven1 and the magical chance of escape there4 ,,chapter ,,iii ,,the ,,hunt ,,for 8,,copy0 ,,chapter ,,iii ,,the ,,hunt ,,for 8,,copy0 ,there never was a bigger1 fatter1 flabbier woodchuck than old ,tubby--among wild animals that ,i alone have known4 ,tubby is a fixture of the farm4 ,he was here when we came1 or else it was his father or his grandfather4 ,he is fat and flabby and as broad as he is long1 and broader when full of beans4 ,he is very much of a tub4 ,when he sits in the garden1 he sits like a tub4 ,when he runs1 he runs like a tub4 ,and he holds beans like a tub4 ,it is worth a few beans to see him run--a medley in motions3 up and down and round and round1 the spinning of a top and the hop of a saucepan on a hot stove with amazing progress forward4 ,he knows which end of him is head and which tail2 but from a distance ,i can see neither head nor tail1 only sides1 bulging1 tubby sides spilling down the garden4 ,one seldom does see the ends of a thing from a distance4 ,tubby has a head-end2 and he has wits in that end4 ,he also has a tail-end2 and the disturbing conclusion one reaches with close study is that ,tubby has wits also in this end4 ,he is a beautifully capable thing in his way4 ,a cutworm is not more capable--if there is anything so capable as a cutworm6 ,both are poems2 old ,tubby an epic poem--were ,i as capable as ,tubby1 and a ,homer-- ,a full-sized woodchuck is twenty-two inches long2 and ,i presume that ,tubby is not more than twenty-two inches wide1 though ,i have seen him wobbling out of the garden and carrying off as mere ballast a cabbage or two1 and a watermelon1 and a peck or two of beans1 and all of the ,swiss chard in the three rows4 ,there are several bushels of chard in three such rows4 ,the way he can run with his load6 ,his little black heels twinkling through the vines1 his shapeless carcass flopping into his hole with me on top of him6 ,then ,i will hear a chuckling deep down among the hickory roots1 a peculiar vegetarian chuckle quite unlike a carnivorous growl4 ,and then ,i will sit down on the hole and chuckle1 having lost for the moment my carnivorous growl4 ,he is so bold1 so impudent1 so canny4 ,the old scamp rather likes me4 ,and ,i am a fairly good gardener1 if ,i do say it myself4 ,when ,i place a trap in one entrance to his burrow1 he uses the other opening2 if ,i put another trap here1 he promptly digs a passage around it2 if ,i block this with chunks of rock1 he undermines the stones and patiently moves to a new house farther along the ridge2 and1 if ,i set traps for him here1 he changes house again4 ,it is a wide wooded ridge around the garden1 and honeycombed with woodchuck holes4 ,by and by he is back in his favorite house under the hickory--when the spiders have hung the doors with signs that the traps are gone4 ,but it happened once that ,i forgot the traps4 ,wood-earth and bits of bark and dead leaves washed down till the wicked gins were covered1 and ,tubby1 coming back after weeks off on the ridge1 tumbled into one of the traps and got his thick fat fist fast4 ,i heard him making a dreadful racket1 and rushed up with a club in my thick fat fist4 ,old ,tubby stopped kicking and grunting1 and looked at me4 ,i don't believe that ,i was ever looked at by a woodchuck before4 ,stolid1 sullen1 defiant1 there was much more of the puzzled1 of the world-old wonder in the eyes gazing steadily into mine1 as to what this situation and this moment meant4 ,the snarled body was all fight and fear1 but the blinking eyes sought mine for an answer to the riddle that ,i have asked of ,god4 ,and all that ,i could answer was1 8,you fat-head60 ,and he said1 8,fat-head yourself60 if ever a woodchuck spoke1 and spoke the truth4 8,fat-head1 to set this rotten thing here and forget it60 ,it was a rotten thing to do4 ,somehow he made me feel as if ,i had trapped one of my neighbors4 ,he saw how ,i was feeling1 and took advantage of me4 8,whose woods are these1 anyway80 he asked4 8,whose ancestors were here first1 yours or mine8 ,you didn't even come over in the ,mayflower4 ,but ,i came here in ,noah's ,ark40 8,i know it4 ,but keep quiet10 ,i begged him1 8and stop looking at me that way40 8,what way80 he asked4 8,why1 so much like my brother60 ,i exclaimed4 8,but ,i am your brother10 he retorted1 8though ,i am ashamed to say it40 8,don't say it1 then10 ,i begged4 ,but he was wound up4 8,any man who is brute enough to set this sort of thing for his brother has no soul4 ,and any man who can't share his beans with his brother doesn't deserve a soul4 ,if ,i were as low-down and as lazy as you1 ,i would go over to the north side of this hill and dig a deep hole1 and crawl into it1 and pull it in on top of me1 ,i would40 ,and all the time ,i was pressing down on the spring with my club1 trying to free him4 ,suddenly there was a flop in the hole1 and away in the sub-cellar1 among the hickory roots1 there was talk of me which ,i should have heard1 had ,i been able to understand4 ,but ,i have much to learn4 ,and so has ,pup1 our ,scotch-,irish terrier4 ,time and time again ,pup has sent the old woodchuck tumbling over himself for his hole4 ,once or twice they have come to blows at the mouth of the burrow1 and ,pup has come off with a limp or a hurt ear1 but with only a mouthful of coarse reddish hair to growl over4 ,he came off with a deep experience lately1 and a greatly enhanced respect for woodchucks4 ,but he is of stubborn stock4 ,so is ,tubby of stubborn stock4 ,pup knows that here is an enemy of the people1 and that he must get him4 ,he knows that ,tubby is all hair and hide and bowels4 ,he now knows that ,tubby is deeper than he is broad1 which makes him pretty deep4 ,the new light began to dawn on ,pup when ,tubby moved up from the woods to a corner of the ice-house near the barn4 ,the impudence1 the audacity of the thing stood ,pup's hair on end1 and he took to the blackberry-vines at the other corner of the ice-house to see what would happen4 ,tubby's raiding hour was about five in the afternoon4 ,at that hour the shadows of the ice-house and the barn lay wide across the mowing-field--the proper time and color for things to happen4 ,and there in the close-cut field1 as if he had come up out of a burrow1 sat old ,tubby1 looking as big as a bear6 ,pup stole softly out to meet him1 moving over till he was between the chuck and the ice-house hole4 ,it was a deliberate act and one of complete abandon4 ,things must this time be finished4 ,and what a perfect bit of strategy it was6 ,hugging the ground when the chuck rose high on his haunches to reconnoiter1 ,pup would 8freeze0 till ,tubby dropped down and went to feeding1 then1 gliding like a snake forward1 he would flatten behind a stone or a tuft of grass1 and work forward and wait4 ,the ground rose slightly to ,pup's disadvantage1 and he was maneuvering to avoid the uphill rush when ,tubby heard something off in the woods and turned with a dash for his hole4 ,it was head-on and terrific6 ,and the utter shock of it1 the moral shock1 was more terrific6 ,neither knew for an instant just what had happened2 the suddenness1 the precision1 the amazing boldness and quality of the attack putting ,pup almost out of action4 ,but it was precisely the jar old ,tubby needed4 ,every flabby fiber of him was fight4 ,the stub feet snapped into action2 the chunk of a body shot forward1 ramming ,pup amidships1 sending him to the bottom of the slope1 ,tubby slashing like a pirate with his terrible incisors4 ,but the touch of those long teeth brought ,pup short about4 ,he likes the taste of pain4 ,he is a son of battle4 ,and in a moment like this he is possessed of more than common powers of body and soul4 ,the fur flew2 the grass flew2 but there was scarcely a sound as the two fighters tumbled and tossed a single black-brown body like a ball of pain4 ,they sprang apart and together again1 whirled and dived and dodged as they closed1 each trying for a hold which neither dared allow4 ,but ,pup got plenty of hair1 choking1 slippery hair1 and leathery hide by the mouthful1 while the twisting1 snapping woodchuck cut holes in ,pup's thin skin with teeth which would punch holes in sheet steel4 ,and ,tubby was fighting with his head as well as with teeth and toes4 ,he was cooler than ,pup4 ,he had a single-track mind1 and it ran straight to his burrow4 ,the head-work was perfectly clear2 the whole powerful play going forward with the nicest calculation1 mad as it appeared to be in the wild rough-and-tumble4 ,there was method in ,tubby's madness4 ,he was fighting true to plan4 ,but ,pup was fighting to kill1 and he lost his head4 ,it was to win his hole1 and life1 and the pursuit of happiness on these ancestral acres that the woodchuck was fighting2 and1 as the two laid about them and rolled over and over1 they kept rolling nearer and nearer to the ice-house and a burrow under the corner4 ,over and over1 right and left1 they lunged when the woodchuck1 sent spinning from ,pup's foreleg1 came up with the dog chopping at his stub nose1 but1 giving him all four of his mailed feet instead1 he bounded from the face of the dog1 and1 with a lightning somersault1 landed plop in his burrow1 ,pup raking the hair from the vanishing haunch4 ,and now ,pup knows that there is no bottom to a woodchuck's burrow4 ,but do ,i fully realize that there is no bottom to the woodchuck8 ,i have been almost fatally slow over this lesson4 ,yet this is the writer's first and most important lesson1 no matter what his theme4 8,i have been studying the woodchuck all my life10 said my old friend ,burroughs to me1 8and there is no getting to the bottom of him60 ,he made that great discovery early2 eighty-four years of study confirmed it2 and from early to late ,burroughs never lacked for things to write about or failed of his urge to write4 ,there was no bottom to his woodchuck4 ,others have made this discovery concerning other things3 the philosophers1 of truth2 the poets1 of men and flowers2 the prophets1 of ,god4 ,but the writer must find it true of all things1 of all his own things1 from woodchucks to ,god4 ,there is nothing new in this discovery4 ,it simply makes all things new to the discoverer4 ,the skeptical1 the shallow1 the fool who says in his heart there is nothing but bowels to a woodchuck--what would he at four-and-eighty find at ,woodchuck ,lodge to write about8 ,he might have all knowledge and a pen with which he could remove mountains1 but1 lacking wonder1 that power to invest things with new and infinite significance1 he would see no use in removing the mountains and turning them into steppes and pampas and peopled plains4 ,all creative work1 whether by brush or pen or hoe1 is somehow making mountains into men1 out of the dust an image1 in our own likeness created1 in the likeness of ,god4 ,it may be woodchuck dust1 or dandelion dust1 or the shining dust of stars2 touched with a creative1 interpreting pen the dust takes human shape and breathes a breath divine4 ,a woodchuck pelt makes an excellent fur for a winter coat2 the rest of him makes an excellent roast for a dinner2 but it is what still remains1 the wonder of him1 which makes for sermon and for song4 ,how hard a lesson that has been for me to learn6 ,and so slow have ,i been learning it that little time is left for me to preach or sing4 ,if only ,i had known early that ,mullein ,hill was as good as ,helicon2 that the people of ,hingham were as interesting as the people of ,cranford2 that ,hingham has a natural history as rich and as varied as ,selborne6 ,my very friends have helped to mislead and hinder me3 8,i don't see what you find to write about up here60 they exclaim1 looking out with commiseration over the landscape1 as if ,wellfleet or ,washington or ,wausau were better for books than ,hingham6 ,hanover may be better for ducks than ,scituate2 but ,hingham is as good as ,hanover or ,heaven for books4 ,one of my friends started for ,hanover once for a day of hunting--but ,i will let him tell the story3 8,we were on our way to ,hanover1 duck hunting10 he said1 8and at ,assinippi took the left fork of the road and kept going4 ,but was this left fork the right road8 ,an ancient doubt which had brought many a traveler before them to confusion and a halt4 ,it was early morning1 raw and dark and damp4 ,no one was stirring in the farmhouses straggling along the road1 and we were turning to go back to the forks when the kitchen door of the near-by house opened and a gray-bearded man appeared with a milk-pail on his elbow4 8#8,is this the road to ,hanover8' we called4 8,the man backed into the kitchen door1 put down his milk-pail1 came out again1 carefully closing the door behind him1 and started down the walk toward the front gate4 ,he opened the gate1 turned and latched it behind him as carefully as he had latched the kitchen door1 and1 stepping out into the road1 approached our carryall4 ,looking up1 then down the road intently1 he hitched his right foot to the hub of our front wheel1 spat precisely into the dust1 and1 fixing his face steadfastly toward ,cape ,cod1 answered3 8#8,no4' 8#8,say it with flowers6' snapped our driver1 wheeling about for the other fork4 8,at the turn ,i looked back4 ,there stood our guide in the road1 his right foot still in the air1 ,i think2 and there--though it is several years since1 he may still be standing--one foot planted on the road to ,scituate1 the other foot resting on the hub of the wheel that should have been on the road to ,hanover40 ,the man in the road knew that this road ran to ,scituate4 ,he lived on it4 ,had they asked him3 8,master1 which is the ,great ,commandment80 he had answered3 8,take this road for ,scituate40 ,for were they not duck hunting in ,hanover8 ,then what profounder error could they have been in than on the road to ,scituate6 ,but most people go that way for ,hanover4 ,every young writer ,i know hankers to get his ,hanover ducks out of ,scituate1 as if1 failing to get ducks1 he might get ,scituate2 novelty1 the mere novelty of gunning in ,scituate when the ducks are in ,hanover1 making the best sort of 8copy40 ,is it some new thing that we should search out1 or some deeper1 truer thing8 ,must we travel1 or may we stay at home8 ,locomotion is certainly a curse to literature4 ,no one nowadays stays long enough in his own place to know it and himself in it1 which is about all that he can know well enough to express4 ,let the writer stay at home4 ,drummers1 actors1 circus-men1 and ,satan are free to go up and down the earth4 ,and these seem to be writing most of our books4 ,for some years1 now1 ,i1 also1 have been going to and fro and up and down in the earth thinking that ,i might find some better place than ,hingham4 ,i have just returned from ,wausau1 ,wisconsin1 where they have a very hard red granite1 and a deep green granite1 both of them the loveliest tombstone stuff that1 ,i think1 ,i ever saw4 ,certainly they are superior to our seam-face ,hingham granite for tombstones4 ,up to the time of my ,wausau visit1 ,i had never given much thought to tombstones2 but it shows how one's thought expands with travel1 and how easily ,wausau may surpass ,hingham1 not alone in gravestones1 but in other1 even in literary1 materials4 ,but ,hingham has one thing in the line of gravestones not found at all in ,wausau3 ,i mean the boulders1 great roundish glacial boulders1 gray granite boulders1 old and gentle and mossy-grown1 which lie strewn over our hilly pastures among the roses and the hardhack and the sweetfern1 ready to be rolled to the tomb1 and fit for any poet's tomb4 ,when that shy spirit and bird-lover1 ,bradford ,torrey1 native of my neighbor town of ,weymouth1 died in far-off ,california1 he left but a single simple request3 that he be brought back to his birthplace for burial1 and that a ,weymouth boulder be found and rolled up to mark his grave4 ,were mine not ,hingham boulders ,i would take one out of my wall1 the one which serves as a gatepost1 and1 with a yoke of ,weymouth oxen1 would draw it to ,bradford ,torrey's tomb1 a tribute from ,hingham to ,weymouth1 and a gift out of the heart of one who knows and loves 8,the ,foot-,path ,way10 8,a ,rambler's ,lease10 and 8,a ,world of ,green ,hills40 ,perhaps one must needs go to ,california in order to come by this deep desire for ,weymouth4 ,then let him go early4 ,for if he is to write 8,the ,natural ,history of ,weymouth10 or of ,selborne1 he must return early and stay a long time4 ,thoreau has been criticized for writing of ,nature as if she were born and brought up in ,concord4 ,so she was4 ,can one not see all of the world out of the 8,window in ,thrums08--that is1 all of the world of ,thrums1 which is all of the world1 and just the world1 one goes to ,thrums to see8 8,i have traveled a great deal in ,concord10 says ,thoreau4 ,this brings me back to ,hingham4 ,i wish that ,i could write 8,the ,natural ,history of ,hingham06 ,a modest desire6 ,there can never be another ,gilbert ,white--but not for lack of birds and beasts in ,hingham4 ,were ,i a novelist ,i would write a 8,cranford0--and ,i could6 ,i would call it 8,hingham10 not 8,main ,street10 though that is the name of perhaps the longest street in ,hingham4 ,but there are many other streets in ,hingham1 and all kinds of interesting people4 ,and here ,i am on ,mullein ,hill1 ,hingham1 with all of these streets1 and all of these people1 and woodchucks a plenty to write about--and planning this day a trip to ,california6 ,i might have been the author of a recent book whose theme and sub-title read3 8,in the plains and the rolling country there is room for the individual to skip and frolic1 but all the peaks are prempted40 ,come down from ,mullein ,hill2 get out of ,hingham2 go ,west1 young writer1 as far as ,california2 you shall find room to skip and frolic on the plains out there6 ,it may be true in ,california1 but the opposite of that is true in ,hingham4 ,to be sure1 ,i have tried to prempt ,mullein ,hill2 ,i now own the knoll outside my study window1 and the seven-acre woodlot beyond2 but there are many other peaks here among the hills of ,hingham1 and scarcely any of them occupied4 ,the people of ,hingham all crowd into the plains4 ,so did the people of ,israel crowd into the plains--of ,moab1 leaving ,pisgah to ,moses1 who found it very lonesome4 ,there is no one on ,pisgah now1 ,i understand2 no one on ,ararat2 no one on ,popocatepetl2 no one on the top of ,vesuvius1 nor on the peak of ,everest1 peaks as well known as ,white ,plains or the ,plains of ,abraham1 but not anything like so crowded4 ,moses sleeps on ,nebo1 yet no man knows where he lies4 ,have them lay you in ,sleepy ,hollow if you wish your friends and neighbors to crowd in close and keep you company4 ,why has there been no ,iliad of ,hingham8 ,there are ,helens in ,hingham1 as there were ,helens of ,troy4 ,hingham is short of ,homers4 ,mute1 inglorious ,miltons have we in ,hingham4 ,if one of them1 however1 should take his pen in hand1 would he dream1 and if he dreamed1 would he dare to cry to the ,heavenly ,muse1 8,i thence ,invoke thy aid to my adventurous song1 ,that with no middle flight intends to soar ,above the ,aonian mount1 while it pursues ,things unattempted yet in prose or rhyme08 ,which of our poets thinks any more of an adventurous song8 ,of attempting any more the unattempted in either prose or rhyme8 ,it is as if everything had been attempted2 everything dared2 everything accomplished--the peaks all prempted4 ,politics or religion or literature1 it matters not3 the great days are gone1 the great things are done1 the great men securely housed in the ,hall of ,fame4 ,heaven offers us a ,league of ,nations and we prefer the tried and proved device of war2 a famed evangelist comes to town1 we build him a vast tabernacle1 and twenty thousand gather for the quickening message--8,brighten the corner where you are60 ,and in the corners1 and over the walls of the nation1 with poster and placard the 8,safety-,first0 sign warns us not to hold our little rushlight over-high1 or flare it over-far1 for fear we set our brightened corner of the world on fire4 ,but the whole world is on fire6 ,and wherever an emperor has escaped the devouring flame1 he is fiddling1 as emperors do2 and his poet laureate is writing free verse2 and all of his faithful subjects are saying1 over and over1 8,day by day1 in every way1 ,i am getting better and better40 8,we are taught by great actions that the universe is the property of every individual in it10 says ,emerson4 8,every rational creature has all nature for his dowry and estate4 ,it is his1 if he will4 ,he may divest himself of it2 he may creep into a corner1 and abdicate his kingdom1 as most men do1 but he is entitled to the world by his constitution40 ,i have not spoken lately with a man who seemed to think he was entitled to the world4 ,that grand old faith has passed away4 ,but ,i talk with no man lately who does not think he is entitled to an automobile4 ,great is ,tin ,lizzie of the ,americans6 ,greater than ,diana of the ,ephesians4 ,but except for our worship of the ,ford we are not over-religious4 ,the ,ford is a useful little deity2 she meets our needs to the last mile4 ,the individual can skip and frolic with her1 for she is distinctly the goddess of the plains and rolling country4 ,admirable to her winking tail-light1 she is one hundred per cent ,american1 the work of one of the supreme inventive geniuses of our time4 ,she is the greatest thing in ,america1 chugging everywhere but up ,parnassus4 ,fool-proof1 the universal car1 she is the very sign and symbol of our antlike industry1 the motor-minded expression of our internal-combustion age4 ,even my quiet old friend ,burroughs had his ,ford4 ,it was her creator himself who gave her to him4 ,the creature would climb around the slopes and over the walls about ,woodchuck ,lodge like a side-hill gouger1 ,burroughs in his long white beard driving her1 as ,father ,time might drive a merry-go-round4 ,he nearly lost his life in her1 too4 ,but everybody nearly loses his life so nowadays2 and nearly everybody had rather lose his life in a ,ford than to drag out an endless existence in a buggy or on foot or in a wooden swing at home1 watching the ,fords go by4 ,what is life1 anyway8 ,the ,ford is cheap2 the service station is everywhere2 so1 pile into the little old 8bug0--on the hood and running-boards6 8,let's go60 ,perhaps our machines are taking us--we wish to believe so--to some new ,arden1 some far-off ,avalon1 where we shall heal us of our motor-minds1 our movie-nerves1 our corner-light religion2 where 8,safety ,first0 shall give place to 8,derring-,do0 as a national motto2 where we shall ascend the empty peaks1 and out of the thunder and smoke of shaking ,sinai bring down some daring commandment1 done by the finger of ,god on new tables of stone4 ,we are not lacking courage4 ,it is imagination that we lack4 ,we dare4 ,but we do not think it worth while4 ,we are shallow1 skeptical1 conventional1 out of tune with the ,infinite1 and out of touch with spiritual things4 ,if we do not try the unattempted1 it is because we believe it has already been tried4 ,it is because ,homer has prempted ,helicon that we tunnel it4 ,only ,milton1 among us moderns 7and how ancient ,milton seems671 only ,milton in his blindness has seen that there is room and verge enough on ,helicon1 and deeps within the abyss of ,hades where ,dante would be lost4 ,no1 ,milton is not the only modern to leave the plains1 and1 like a star1 to dwell apart4 ,thoreau did it at ,walden2 ,lanier did it on the marshes of ,glynn2 ,burroughs did it at ,woodchuck ,lodge2 and ,hudson did it on the plains of ,patagonia--proof enough that ponds and plains and the low-lying marsh may be as high as ,helicon for poetry1 if only the poet have the vision to see that 8,like to the greatness of ,god is the greatness within ,the range of the marshes1 the liberal marshes of ,glynn40 ,but here we fail4 ,we no longer see the greatness of ,god in things4 ,we have covered ,god with an atom4 ,we ask for bread1 and ,science gives us a stone2 for ,god1 and ,science gives us an electron4 ,it was a super-electron that created the heavens and the earth when it saw that all of the other electrons were without form and void4 ,atomism has taken the place of theism in our religion1 if it is religion4 ,man is only a bunch of willful atoms1 or parts of atoms1 not any longer the crowning work of ,creation1 its center and circumference1 its dominion and destiny and glory1 its divine expression1 interpretation1 and immortal soul4 ,are we to be robbed of ,god8 ,inhibited forever from faith by the lensed eyes of ,science8 8,what is man80 ,i ask1 and ,science laughs and answers1 8,electrons40 ,that is its latest guess4 ,but does man look like them8 ,does he feel like them8 ,does he behave like them8 ,does he believe like them8 ,in the laboratory he may4 ,but out here in the hills of ,hingham1 where ,i am returned to the earth and the sky and to my own soul1 ,i know that ,i ,,am1 and that ,i still hold to all of those first things which ,science would shame me out of1 offering me electrons instead6 ,i accept the electrons4 ,capering little deities1 they are the sons of ,god4 ,but so are you and ,i the sons of ,god--and we are electrons1 trillions of electrons1 if you like4 ,gods and atoms1 we can dwell and think and feel as either1 the two realms distinct and far apart1 the roads between in a continual state of construction1 dangerous but passable4 ,the anatomist1 laying down his scalpel1 cries1 8,such knowledge is too wonderful for me4 ,i am fearfully and wonderfully made60--his science passing into poetry1 and from poetry to religion1 but not easily in our present frame and mood4 ,science clears the sight and widens its range2 but ,science can never clear up the shadows at the bottom of a woodchuck4 ,only vision can do that1 and ,science lacks vision1 using a microtome instead1 paring its woodchuck till he is thinner than sliced sunlight before it can see through so much as a single stained cell of him4 ,science turns aside from shadows1 walking by sight or else standing still4 ,it deals with the flesh1 not the spirit2 and is as impotent in literature and art as in life and society4 ,the potent thing among men and nations is love4 ,love never faileth4 ,yet never were we so afraid of love as we are to-day2 and never did art and literature seem so fearful of the imagination1 of vision1 of the eternal1 the divine4 8,go get me a bird10 the old scientist said to me2 8,i will give you a lesson in skinning and mounting40 ,i was a young boy4 ,hurrying out to the woods1 ,i was soon back with a cuckoo4 ,the face of the old scientist darkened4 8,you should not have killed this bird1 it is the friend of man4 ,see when ,i open this gizzard40 ,and with a dexterous twist of his fingers turned inside out the gizzard1 and showed it1 like a piece of plush1 its fleshy walls penetrated with millions of caterpillar hairs4 ,to this day ,i feel the wonder of that knowledge1 and ,i thrill at the meaning of that bird's gizzard4 ,here was science and charity and poetry and religion4 ,what untold good to man6 ,what greater possible good to man8 ,that was before ,i knew or understood the cuckoo's song4 ,and neither the old scientist1 nor yet his book1 8,sixteen ,weeks in ,zology10 dealt with the song4 ,science is sure and beautiful with a gizzard4 ,poetry is sure and beautiful with both gizzard and song4 ,and ,i wonder if the grinding gizzard or the singing throat is the better part of the cuckoo1 even in this world of worms8 8,though babbling only to the vale1 ,of sunshine and of flowers1 ,thou bringest unto me a tale ,of visionary hours4 8,thrice welcome1 darling of the ,spring6 ,even yet thou art to me ,no bird1 but an invisible thing1 ,a voice1 a mystery2 8,and ,i can listen to thee yet2 ,can lie upon the plain ,and listen1 till ,i do beget ,that golden time again4 8,o blessed ,bird6 the earth we pace ,again appears to be ,an unsubstantial fary place1 ,that is fit home for thee60 ,i have a great book1 published by the ,government1 devoted entirely to birds' gizzards1 mills of the gods1 and their grindings4 ,it is not a dull book1 though the mills grind slowly and grind exceeding small4 ,it is a book of bones1 of broken beetles1 seeds1 hairs1 feathers1 and fragments4 ,it is a great work of science4 ,one might not like to lay it down unfinished2 but1 having finished it1 one could hardly say3 8,and ,i can listen to thee yet2 ,can lie upon the plain ,and listen1 till ,i do beget ,that golden time again4 8,o blessed ,bird6 the earth we ,pace ,again appears to be ,an unsubstantial fary place1 ,that is fit home for thee60 ,nature will not do1 nor all the truth of nature1 for stuff of song and story4 ,as life is more than meat1 so is literature more than life4 ,nature conforms to art2 and in fiction 8the only real people are those who never existed40 ,at ,good-,will ,farm1 ,maine1 there is a rock marked with a copper plate4 ,it had been marked for drill and dynamite1 until1 one day1 my car swung up and over a sharp turn in the road before the schoolhouse1 skidding rather horribly on the smooth outcropping ledge which had been uncovered and left as part of the roadbed4 8,you ought to blast that thing out10 ,i said1 somewhat testily1 to the supervisor who came out to greet me1 my nerves1 strung a bit too tight on the long day's drive1 snapping with the skid here at the very end of the trip4 8,i'll do it10 he replied1 apologetically4 8,i had intended to do it from the first40 ,the next day we were climbing this road on foot1 and1 standing on the ledge to take in the wide landscape of the ,kennebec below us1 ,i chanced to look down at my feet and saw1 cut deep in the smooth surface of the stone1 several parallel lines4 8,don't blast out this rock60 ,i exclaimed4 8,tear down your schoolhouse rather4 ,build a new road through the grounds1 but leave this stone4 ,this is part of a great book40 8,i don't understand10 said the supervisor4 8,here is written a page of the greatest story ever penned4 ,these lines were done by the hand of the glacier who came this way in the ,ice ,age4 ,don't blot it out4 ,put a fence about it1 and a copper plate upon it1 translating the story so that your students can read it and understand40 ,he did4 ,there was no need of the fence2 but he set the plate into the rock1 telling of the ,ice ,age1 how the glacier came down1 ploughing out the valley of the ,kennebec1 rounding and smoothing this ledge1 and inditing this manuscript for ,good-,will ,farm ,school ages later4 ,so much does the mere scratch of science enhance the virtue of a stone6 ,now add to your science history4 ,instead of the scratch of a glacier1 let it be a chisel and a human hand1 and let the marks be--8#afbj40 ,now read--if you can read and understand4 ,i copy it verbatim from a ,freshman college theme3 ,,plymouth ,,rock ,plymouth ,rock is situated in ,plymouth ,mass4 ,it is the rock upon which the ,mayflower landed in #afbj4 ,but it is not now where it was then4 ,it was moved many years ago up to the street4 ,and when they moved it it broke4 ,but they cemented it together4 ,it is four or five feet long2 and three or four feet wide2 and it is inscribed with the famous figures #afbj1 to celebrate the landing of the ,puritans at that time4 ,it is enclosed within a canopy of stone and an iron fence2 but the gate is hardly ever closed4 ,there are a great many famous stones in the world but this is as famous as any4 ,my mother was visiting me4 ,she is a self-contained old ,quaker1 and this was the second time in all of her eighty years that she had even seen ,new ,england6 ,what should we do first8 ,what did she most desire to see8 8,take me to see ,plymouth ,rock first10 she said2 and we were off1 mother as excited and as lively as a girl4 ,as we entered ,plymouth1 however1 ,i noticed that mother had grown silent1 and that her doctor-daughter1 beside her on the back seat1 always sensitive to her moods1 was also silent4 ,we descended the hill to the harbor1 came on in sight of the canopy over the ,rock1 and slowed down to stop4 ,but the car had not stopped1 when mother1 the back door open1 her foot on the running-board1 was stepping off and through the open gate1 where1 falling on her knees1 with tears running down her face1 she kissed the blessed stone1 her daughter calling1 8,o ,mother1 the germs6 the germs60 ,when ,science and ,religion thus clash1 ,science must give way4 ,mother knew as much about germs as her doctor-daughter4 ,she had lived longer than her daughter2 she had lost more1 and had loved more--some things more than life itself4 ,science has marked every rock2 but only those that are wet with such tears and kissed with such lips are ripe for sermon and song4 ,these are the eyes and these the lips of those1 who1 passing through ,bacca1 make it a well4 ,knowledge alone1 though it course the very heavens1 will come back to earth without so much as one shining fleck of stardust in its hair4 ,the other day a great astronomer was delivering a lecture in ,boston on the stars4 ,wonder and awe held the audience as it traveled the stellar spaces with the help of the astounding pictures on the screen4 ,the emotion was deep2 the tension almost painful as the lecturer swept on and on through the unthinkable vast1 when1 coming to his close1 he turned and asked lightly1 8,now1 what do you think of immortality8 ,is it anything more than the neurotic hope of a very insignificant mote in this immensity80 ,the effect was terrific4 ,the scientific smiled4 ,the simple left the hall dazed and stunned4 ,they lost all sense of time and space1 they lost sight of the very stars in this swift1 far fall4 ,they had been carried up through the seven spheres to the very gate of heaven1 then hurled to earth4 ,the lecture failed--not of instruction1 not of emotion1 but of will1 leaving the listeners powerless and undone4 ,the lecturer may be right--for astronomy2 and yet be quite wrong1 for poetry4 ,he may have uttered the last word--for science2 but this end is only the beginning for religion4 ,how much greater an astronomer this college professor than that shepherd psalmist on the far-off ,syrian hills6 ,ranging the same astral field as our scientist1 sweeping the same stellar spaces1 with only a shepherd's knowledge1 the psalmist's thought takes the same turn as the scientist's1 down to man1 but on different wings1--the wings of poetry3 8,when ,i consider thy heavens1 ,the work of thy fingers1 ,the moon and the stars ,which thou hast ordained2 ,what is man1 that thou art mindful of him8 ,and the son of man1 that thou visitest him80 ,then1 swinging upward on those mighty wings1 past the reach of science1 out of the range of knowledge1 up1 up to the divinest height ever touched by human thought1 the psalmist-astronomer cries impiously1 exultantly1 8,for thou hast made him but little lower than ,god1 ,and crownest him with glory and honor60 ,this starts where the astronomer stopped4 ,this is religion and literature4 ,and ,i have these very stars over my hilltop here in ,hingham6 ,,chapter ,,iv ,,the ,,duty ,,to ,,dig ,,chapter ,,iv ,,the ,,duty ,,to ,,dig ,i ,a young man sat by the roadside1 milking4 ,and as he milked1 one drove up in her limousine and stopped and said unto him3 8,young man1 why are you not at the front80 ,the young man milked on1 for that was the thing to do4 ,then1 with still more slackers in her voice1 the woman said a second time unto him3 8,young man1 why are you not at the front80 8,because1 ma'am1 the milk is at this end10 he answered4 ,and the chauffeur1 throwing the clutch of the limousine into third speed ahead1 drove off1 thinking4 ,but the young man milking had already thought4 ,to milk is to think4 ,if 8darning is premeditated poverty10 then there is no saner occupation for human hands1 none more thought-inducing1 unless it be milking4 ,anyhow1 when the ,great ,war came on1 ,i went over to a neighbor's and bought a cow2 ,i made me a new milking-stool with spread sturdy legs2 and ,i sat down to face the situation calmly1 where ,i might see it steadily and whole4 ,i had tried the professorial chair2 ,i had tried the editorial chair2 ,i had even tried that ,siege ,perilous1 the high-backed1 soft-seated chair of plush behind the pulpit4 ,i may never preach again2 but if ,i do1 it will be on condition that ,i sit on a three-legged milking stool instead of on that upholstered pillowy throne of plush4 ,whence cometh wisdom8 and where is the place of understanding8 ,the flaming flambeaux on the ,public ,library say1 8,the light is in here02 the ,greek3 ,ph ,b ,k key in the middle of the professorial waistcoat says1 8,it is in here40 ,but ,i say1 let the flambeaux be replaced by round-headed stocking-darners1 as the sign of premeditated poverty2 and the dangling ,key by a miniature milking-stool1 as the symbol of the wisdom that knows which end of a cow to milk4 ,not one of those students in the ,university who earned ,greek3 ,ph ,b ,k last year knew how to milk1 and only a few1 ,i believe1 of their professors4 ,one of these1 with a ,ph4,d4 from ,germany1 whose key had charmed his students across their whole college course1 asked me what breed of cattle heifers were4 ,might not his teaching have been quite as practical1 had there dangled from his watch-chain those four years1 not this key to the catacombs of knowledge1 but a little jeweled milking-stool8 ,i too might wear a key1 especially as ,i came innocently by mine1 having had one thrust upon me2 still1 as ,i was born on a farm1 and grew up in the fields1 and am likely to end my days as ,i have lived them1 here in the woods1 this ,greek3 ,ph ,b ,k key does not fit the lock to the door of knowledge that opens widest to me4 ,i have read a little on the aorist tense1 and on the ,ygdrasyl tree2 a little1 ,i say1 on many things1 from the animal aardvark1 here and there1 to zythum1 a soft drink of the ancient ,egyptians1 picking a few rusty locks with this skeleton key2 but the doors that open wide at my approach are those to my house1 my barn1 and the unwithholding fields4 ,i know the road home1 clear to the end2 ,i know profoundly to come in when it rains2 and ,i move with absolute certainty to the right end of the cow when it is time to milk4 ,i am aware of a certain arrogance in this1 a show of pride1 and that unbottomed pomp of those who wear the ,greek3 ,ph ,b ,k key dangling at their vests1--as if ,i could milk any cow6 or might have in my barn the world's champion cow6 ,i have only a grade ,jersey in my barn2 and as for milking heifers with their first calves--,i have milked them4 ,but breaking in a heifer is really a young man's job4 ,so ,i find myself at the middle of my years1 stripped of outward signs1 as ,i hope ,i am inwardly purged1 of all vain shows of wisdom 7quite too humble1 truly671 falling in as unnaturally as the birds with the fool daylight-saving plan1 the ways of the sun1 who knoweth his going down1 being quite good enough for me4 ,,ii ,but how far run the ways of nature from the devious ways of men6 ,the ways of ,mullein ,hill from the ways of a military camp6 ,the ,great ,war came and passed and left the earth a vast human grave4 ,but through it all seedtime and harvest came to ,mullein ,hill1 leaving only more and more abundant life4 ,the ,great ,war is an illustration on the grandest scale of what man1 departing from the simple ways of nature1 will do to man4 ,war is the logic of our present way of living4 ,i am not concerned with war in this book1 but with the sources of life and literature4 ,i have a cure for war1 however1 here on ,mullein ,hill2 and this cure is the very elixir of life and literature4 ,war could have destroyed1 but it did not change1 my going or coming here in the hills4 ,my garden went on as it had for years gone on4 ,there was a little more of it1 for there was more need in the village2 there was a little larger yield of its reasonableness and joy and beans4 ,but ,i did not plough up my front lawn for potatoes4 ,years before ,i had provided myself with a back yard1 and got it into tilth for potatoes1 keeping the front lawn green for the cow4 ,though she is only a grade ,jersey1 the cow is a pretty creature1 and gives a rural1 ruminant touch to our approach1 along with the lilacs and the hens4 ,hitched here on the front lawn the cow suggests economy1 too4 ,she is more than a wagon hitched to a star4 ,she is a mowing-machine1 and a rake and tedder1 and a churn4 ,the gods with her do my mowing1 gather up and cure my hay1 and turn it into cream4 ,every cow gives some skim milk--which we need for the chickens1 for cooking1 and cottage cheese4 ,life is not all cream4 ,if ,i speak of gods doing my chores1 ,i will say they do not milk for me in the mornings1 and that it is one of the boys who milks at night4 ,a cow clipping your lawn is poetry and cream too1 but caring for the creature is often skim milk and prose4 ,milking ought to be done regularly4 ,get a cow and you find her cud a kind of pendulum to all creation1 the time to milk being synchronized twice daily to the stars4 ,i did not plant war-potatoes on my front lawn1 partly because they would not grow there1 and partly because1 in times of peace1 ,i had prepared for war-potatoes2 and partly because ,i think a front lawn looks better in cows than in potatoes4 ,if thou shouldst 8,so live1 that when thy summons comes to join ,the innumerable caravan 444 ,thou go not1 like the quarry-slave at night1 ,scourged to his dungeon10 --should we not all live so that1 when war comes1 we need not plough up the beds for potatoes where the portulaca and poppy ought to blow8 ,but what a confession here6 ,when war comes6 ,as if ,i expected war to come again6 ,many of us are fighting feebly against both the thought and the hideous thing4 ,but many more are preparing for it4 ,our generals of the late war are going up and down the land preaching preparedness1 as they always have4 ,we learn nothing4 ,they know everything4 ,their profession is war4 ,can a man lay down his life for a profession he does not believe in8 ,the military men believe in war4 ,but so do we all as a people4 ,war is the oldest1 most honored profession in the world4 ,in all of the fifty years of its history1 the great ,university1 of which1 for almost half of that time1 ,i have been a teacher1 had never conferred an honorary degree4 ,for fifty years it had carried a single laurel wreath in its hand to crown some honored head4 ,prophets came and went2 poets came and went2 scientists came and went2 scholars came and went2 but still the ,university1 dedicated to life and learning1 waited with its single wreath a yet more honorable brow4 ,then came ,foch1 the professional soldier4 ,study for nearly ten thousand students was suspended2 a holiday was proclaimed2 a great assembly was called2 and here1 with speech and song and academic garb1 with national colors mingling and waving palms1 the laurel wreath was placed upon the soldier's brow4 ,and this ,university1 founded in the name of the ,prince of ,peace1 dedicated to ,christian life and learning1 crowned the profession of arms as it can crown no other profession1 and gave its highest sanction to bloody war4 ,i do not fail of gratitude to ,foch4 ,i only stand in horror that he is1 and had to be4 ,i would have had the ,nation at the pier to meet him1 but clothed in sackcloth1 and every citizen with ashes on his head4 ,i1 too1 would have suspended study and work everywhere for an hour2 and1 stretching crape across the ,arctic ,circle till the sign of mourning hid ,matamoras and ,cape ,sable1 ,i would have called an assembly of the continent1 and begged this half of the hemisphere to cry1 8,o ,god1 the foolishness and futility of war60 ,the ,duty to ,dig is older than the practice of war4 ,it was designed to prevent war2 and to-day it is the only biological remedy certain to cure war4 ,i must not stop here to explain its therapeutics as applied to war1 for ,i am dealing with another theme4 ,but just before the war broke upon the world1 ,i wrote an editorial for a paper ,i was serving1 advocating that a hive of my bees be sent to the ,german ,emperor and one also to the war lord of ,austria4 ,i had extra hives for the ,british ,prime ,minister1 the ,tiger of ,france1 ,mr4 ,william ,randolph ,hearst1 and ,mr4 ,theodore ,roosevelt4 ,if ,i could have interested these gentlemen1 and a few others1 in bee-keeping1 ,i could save the world from war4 ,the editorial and the offer of bees were both rejected by the careful editor4 8,i must stay strictly neutral10 was his timid excuse4 ,at the very time ,i was writing1 the ,reverend ,price ,collier1 a former ,hingham preacher1 was publishing a book called 8,germany and the ,germans10 in which he set forth the old theory of military preparedness as a preventive of war4 ,speaking of the ,german army 7this was in #aiac71 he says3 ,it is the best all-round democratic university in the world2 it is a necessary antidote for the physical lethargy of the ,german race2 it is essential to discipline2 it is a cement for holding ,germany together2 it gives a much-worried and many-times-beaten people confidence2 the poverty of the great bulk of its officers keeps the level of social expenditure on a sensible scale2 it offers a brilliant example1 in a material age1 of men scorning ease for the service of their country2 it keeps the peace in ,europe2 and until there is a second coming of a ,christ of pity and patience and peace1 it is as good a substitute for that far-off divine event as puzzled man has to offer4 ,it is a minister of the ,gospel who makes this profound observation4 ,but it sounds like our present ,secretary of ,war1 a banker1 and like our present ,commanding ,general1 a professional soldier4 ,here is sure proof that the human race cannot learn the essential things1 and so1 is doomed4 ,but ,i wish ,i might try my bees4 ,this old hoax of preventing war by preparing men to fight has been so often tried6 ,and we are at it again4 ,but no nation has tried my simple and inexpensive substitute of bees and plough-shares1 and pruning hooks4 ,they have tried1 from time out of memory1 to beat their swords and spears into garden tools1 but a sword makes a mighty poor ploughshare4 ,it has never been successfully done4 ,the manufacturing process is wrong4 ,it takes the temper out of good garden steel first to heat it in the fires of war4 ,we must reverse the process3 turn the virgin metal into garden steel first1 and give every man a hoe1 and a ploughshare1 and a pruning hook2 then he will never have need for sword and spear4 ,,iii ,instead of universal military training1 ,i would advocate a hive of bees for everybody1 or a backyard garden4 ,a house should have both lawn and garden1 even though the gooseberries crowd the house out to the roadside1 where the human house instinctively edges to see the neighbors in their new pony-coats go by4 ,let my front door stand open2 while over the back stoop the old-fashioned roses and the grape-vines draw a screen4 ,but give me a house with a yard rather than a hole in the wall1 a city tenement1 or a flat4 ,the whole trend of society is toward the city1 or camp1 military1 rather than agricultural4 ,the modern city is a social camp4 ,life is becoming a series of mass movements1 military maneuvers1 at the command of social leaders4 ,industry has long been militarized both in form and spirit1 and is rapidly perfecting its organization4 ,today1 #aibc1 there are more than a hundred different automobile manufacturing concerns in this country4 ,only those capable of 8quantity production0 will survive4 ,already the manufacturers see the entire industry reduced to five different concerns4 ,this is strictly military1 the making of society into a vast1 and vaster machine1 which1 too great at last for control1 will turn upon and crush its makers4 ,we are all conscripted4 ,the ,draft ,board of industrialism allows no exemptions4 ,the only way ,i see is to desert1 to take to the woods1 as ,i have done1 to return individually to a simple1 elemental manner of life out of the soil4 ,but who can pay the social cost8 ,our social or camp psychology is better understood and more easily handled than the mind of the lone scout within us4 ,we are gregarious by nature2 we hunt in packs1 we collect into crowds4 ,yet we are selves1 separate1 single1 each of us a cave-man as well as cliff-dweller1 a ,remus as well as a ,romulus4 ,the city-building brother killed his country brother4 ,and the murder still goes on4 ,out of a commentary on the ,bible ,i take the following observation1 partly for its charm1 but also because it holds a profound truth3 ,god's people from the earliest time had never been builders of cities4 ,the earliest account of city-building is that of the city of ,enoch by ,cain1 and all the subsequent mention of city-building is in connection with the apostate families of the earth1 such as ,nimrod and his descendants1 the ,canaanites and the ,egyptians4 ,sodom is one of the earliest mentioned cities properly so called1 and the story of it is not encouraging for the people of ,god4 ,but which is the city whose story is encouraging to the people of ,god8 ,not ,boston's1 nor ,new ,york's1 nor ,london's1 nor ,vienna's4 ,vienna is starving2 the country is bankrupt ,austria's governmental machine is a total wreck2 but the peasant goes his way1 suffering little inconvenience1 though the crown is not to-day worth the paper it is printed on4 ,the peasant lives on the land1 not on the bank2 he gets his simple life directly out of the soil instead of a pay envelope2 he has no ,new ,york1 ,new ,haven and ,hartford stock1 worth one hundred and eighty-six dollars yesterday1 and ten dollars to-day1 to-morrow1 and until he starves4 ,he has a piece of land and1 impossible as it sounds on paper1 lives on it1 and out of it1 and in it1 an almost independent life1 as the wage-slave and the coupon-victim cannot live4 ,we shall face a famine1 so long as our door-yards are all lawn in front and all garbage-can behind4 ,we have farmers enough--one to every eight of our population1 ,i believe--who might produce sufficient raw potatoes2 but ,aroostook ,county is barely contiguous to the ,united ,states1 and such a barrage of frost was laid down across its borders this last winter that1 if one brought potatoes out of ,aroostook between ,december and ,march1 he had to bear them in his bosom4 ,aroostook ,county is the greatest potato-patch in the world2 the ,american imagination loves to hover over the tubered tracts of ,aroostook1 the richest county in the world2 loves to feel that the world could be fed from ,aroostook1 were it not for the triple alliance of the cold and the contiguity and a railroad that runs1 if not like a broken tooth1 then like a foot out of joint1 into these remote dreamlands of ,maine4 ,woe to them that go down to the railroads for help2 and stay on engines and trust in empties1 because they are many2 and in officials1 because they are very strong4 ,now the officials are men and not ,god1 and their engines steel and not spirit4 ,why should a rational1 spiritual human society trust its well-being to such paltry powers1 when all the forces of nature are at its command8 ,i will put more trust in an acre of land than in a ,continental ,congress4 ,i had rather have a hoe at my right hand than an army of bank presidents4 ,give me the rising and the setting sun1 the four seasons1 and the peasant's portion2 and you may have the portion of the president4 ,i said we have farmers enough to raise all we need4 ,we have more than enough4 ,we have more than enough bankers2 more than enough automobile-makers2 more than enough store-keepers2 more than enough coal-miners2 more than enough cooks and janitors4 ,but we have nowhere near enough landowners and peasants4 ,nothing in the world would so straighten out society as to declare next year a ,year of ,jubilee1 and give every man1 not a job1 but his birthright1 a piece of land4 ,we are over-organized and almost de-individualized4 ,but the time must again come when every man shall dig and every woman spin1 and every family build its own automobile1 distill its own petrol1 and work out its taxes on the road4 ,we shall always hold to the social principle of the division of labor--,i plough for you2 and you shoe my horse for me4 ,but we have carried the principle1 in our over-organization1 to the point where a man's whole part in the world's work consists in putting on the left hind wheel of endless automobiles4 ,an eight-hour day will not save that man4 ,and he is typical of all men to-day4 ,only by his acceptance of the duty to dig can he be saved1 and society with him4 ,the principle of the division of labor has been misapplied3 instead of specialization and the narrowing of each man's portion1 it should be applied broadly1 multiplying his labors4 ,work is creative2 it is self-expression2 and ,i should let no man do for me what ,i can do4 ,he robs me of living who robs me of doing4 ,the theory of present-day society--specialization1 organization1 combination1 quantity production--is a fatal application of a perfectly sound principle4 ,six automobile combinations which in a year can destroy a hundred lesser combinations1 can in another year destroy all but one of each other2 and that remaining one1 having nothing now to destroy1 must turn and destroy itself4 ,,iv ,but ,i am concerned with life and literature4 ,how does the organization of society affect books1 admitting that it affects life8 ,what is a book but a life8--and a more abundant life8 ,everybody who has lived has a book to write4 ,but only those who have lived abundantly should write their books4 ,starve a nation spiritually1 as ours is being starved2 reduce its life to a mechanical routine2 rob its labor of all creative quality1 and how shall it write8 ,the duty to dig applies first to the spirit4 ,there is sound economy in it if one's political economy is sound4 ,i do not say money4 ,economy and money are not equivalent terms4 ,i digged as a duty last year2 and as a result ,i did not buy a potato from the 8combine0 in ,maine2 ,i nearly got on without a pound of beef from ,chicago2 and could have made my honey serve for ,cuban sugar4 ,the same amount of time spent putting left hind wheels on automobiles might have brought me more money1 and so1 more beef and potatoes and sugar1 and so1 more gout and rheumatism4 ,the duty to dig comprehends a great deal more than ordinary economy4 ,i would not imply that ,i can handle the ,beef ,trust and the potato pirates and the sugar barons with my humble hoe2 or snap my fingers in the face of ,standard ,oil1 and say1 8,go to1 ,i'll have none of your twenty-eight-cent gas60 ,i do say that several million bee-keepers and potato-patchers1 and hen-coopers1 keeping busy in their back yards1 as ,i keep busy in mine1 could mightily relieve the railroad congestion1 and save gasoline1 and cut in on the demand for ,chicago beef and cold-storage eggs1 and generally lower the high cost of living4 ,it is not because there are 8millions in it0 that ,i would have the banker plant his back yard to beans4 ,thoreau planted two acres and a half to beans and potatoes 7on a weak market1 however71 with a 8pecuniary profit of #h4ga-a_/b40 ,here is no very great financial inducement to a busy banker1 or to a ward boss4 ,still1 who better than the ward boss or the banker could afford a private beanfield8 ,i say it is not for the sake of this #h4ga-a_/b profit of ,thoreau's that we must dig2 but rather for that chapter on the bean field in ,walden ,pond1 which proves the real worth of digging4 ,there can hardly be a form of labor so elemental1 so all-demanding1 so abundantly yielding of the fruits of life1 as digging4 ,yet there are those who doubt the wisdom of digging because things can be bought cheaper at the store2 and those who question their right to dig when they can hire a man to dig for them2 and there are those who hate to dig1 who contemn duty1 who1 if they plant1 will plant a piece of fallow land with golf-balls only1 and hoe it with brassies1 niblicks1 cleeks1 and spooners1 saying with ,chaucer's ,monk3 8444 how shall the world be servd8 ,let ,austyn have his swynk to his reservd40 ,golf is an ancient game1 no doubt1 but not so old as gardening1 though golf's primordial club and vocabulary seem like things long left over1 bits of that ,missing-,link ,period between our arboreal and cave-day past4 ,except for calling the cows from the meadow1 or fighting in war1 there is nothing we do that requires words and weapons1 tools1 instruments1 implements1 utensils1 apparatus1 machinery1 or mechanisms so lacking in character and comeliness as the words and clubs of golf4 ,the gurglings of infants seem articulate1 even to unparental ears1 compared with the jargon of golf2 and as for billiard-cues1 baseball-bats1 pikes1 spades1 shillalahs1 and teething-rings1 they have the touch of poetry on them2 whereas the golf-club was conceived and shaped in utter unimaginativeness4 ,golf is not an ancient game3 it has the mark of the ,machine upon it2 the ,preadamites could not have figured the game out4 ,gardening1 on the other hand1 if we trust ,holy ,writ1 was an institution founded before the ,fall1 incorporated with the social order from the start--an inherent1 essential element in the constitution of human things3 8,great nature's primal course1 ,chief nourisher in life's feast10 --which civilization doth murder as ,macbeth murdered sleep4 ,golf belongs to civilization strictly1 not to the human race1 being one of life's post-,edenic precautions1 like psychopathic hospitals1 jails1 and homes for the feeble-minded4 ,a golf course is a little-wanderers' home2 and if we must have golf courses1 let their hazards be carefully constructed on worthless land1 and let the ,civil ,service ,board examine the caddies1 whether they be fit guards for the golfers1 lest some small boy be wasted who might have tended real sheep on ,norfolk ,downs or have weeded in a garden4 ,it is a duty to dig1 to nail the ,stars and ,stripes to a lima-bean pole1 and plant the banner square in the middle of the garden4 ,profits8 pleasures8 ,both sorts will grow1 especially the pleasures1 which really are part of the profits1 till they fairly smother the weeds2 not the least of these being your sense of living and your right to live1 which comes out of actually hoeing your own row--a literal row of beans or corn or tomatoes4 ,somebody must feed the soldiers2 but nobody must needs feed me4 ,it is not necessary that ,i live1 however necessary ,i find it to eat2 eating1 like sleeping and breathing and keeping warm1 being strictly a private enterprise that nobody but ,i need see as necessary or be responsible for4 ,the soldier must carry a shovel nowadays1 but he will require a hoe1 too1 and a pruning hook1 and a ploughshare1 before he will be self-supporting4 ,with such a kit war could support war forever1 which is the ,rathenau plan of war1 with everything ,german left out1 consequently everything of war left out4 ,the soldier cannot feed himself4 ,the crew of a battleship cannot be expected to catch their own cod and flounders4 ,they must leave that to the trawlers1 those human boats1 with human crews who fish for a living4 ,men of the navy must die for a living4 ,the captain of a ,united ,states destroyer1 writing to his wife1 says1 8,i think that the only real anxiety is lest we may not get into the big game at all4 ,i do not think that any of us are bloodthirsty or desirous of glory or advancement1 but we have to justify our existence40 ,so does every human being2 yet an existence that can be justified only by fighting and dying is too unproductive1 too far from self-supporting1 to warrant the sure calling and election of many of us4 ,no ,grand-,banker ever wrote so to his wife1 though he might be returning with all his salt unwet2 no college professor ever wrote so--not if he could get into his garden--in spite of his pupils1 his college president1 the trustees1 and ,mr4 ,carnegie's ,efficiency ,board4 ,teaching may not justify a professor's existence1 though it ought to justify his salary2 so1 every time ,i start for the ,university1 ,i put a dozen or two of eggs into my book-bag1 that ,i may have a right to the tree of life1 and may enter in through the gates into the city4 ,i am not independent of society4 ,i do not wish to be independent4 ,i wish to be debtor to all and have all debtors to me4 ,but we buy too much and sell too much of life1 and raise too little4 ,we pay for all we get4 ,sometimes we get all we pay for1 but not often2 and if we never did1 still life has so thoroughly adopted the business standard1 that we had rather keep on paying than trying to grow our way4 ,business is a way of living by proxy2 money is society's proxy for every sort of implement and tool4 ,to produce something1 however--some actual wealth1 a pennyweight of gold-dust1 a pound of honey1 a dozen eggs1 a book1 a boy1 a bunch of beets2 some real wealth out of the soil1 out of my loins1 out of my brains1 out of my muscles and the sap of the maple1 the rains and sunshine and the soil1 out of the rich veins of the earth or the swarming waters of the sea--this is to be2 and to be myself1 and not a proxy1 is to lose my life and save it1 and to justify my existence4 ,i have to buy a multitude of things--transportation1 coal1 dentistry1 news1 flour1 and clothes4 ,i have paid in money for them4 ,i have also paid in real wealth1 having given1 to balance my charge on society1 an equivalent in raw cabbage1 pure honey1 fresh eggs1 and the like1 from my own created store4 ,i am doubtless in debt to society1 but ,i have tried to give wealth for wealth1 not the symbol of it merely2 and last year1 as ,i balanced my books1 ,i think the world was in debt to me by several bunches of beets4 ,i do not boast of the beets1 though they take me out of the debtor's prison where most of us live4 ,i can face the world1 however1 with those beets2 ,i have gone over the top1 have done my bit1 with beets4 ,the oldest duty on the human conscience is the duty to dig4 ,i am a college teacher1 and that is an honorable1 if futile1 profession4 ,the ,scriptures say3 8,he gave some1 apostles2 and some1 prophets2 and some1 evangelists2 and some1 pastors and teachers02 but1 before there were any such multifarious and highly specialized needs1 it was said unto our first father3 8,replenish the earth and subdue it0--a universal human need1 a call to duty1 from which no ,draft ,board of civilization can rightly exempt us4 ,wealth is not created1 not even increased1 in trade4 ,when was one pennyweight of gold on 'change by any magic metallurgy of trade made two pennyweight8 ,the magic of the second pennyweight is the metallurgy of the pick and shovel and cradle rocking the shining sands of the ,yukon4 ,real wealth is only circulated in trade4 ,it comes from primal sources--from the gold-fields1 the cotton-fields1 the corn-fields1 the fir-clad sides of ,katahdin1 the wide gray waters of the ,grand ,banks1 the high valleys of the sheeped ,sierras1 and from back yards1 like mine1 that bring forth thirty- and sixty- and an hundred-fold4 ,and this is as profoundly true of life and literature as it is of cotton and lumber and gold4 ,give me a garden and the wages of hoeing my row4 ,and if not a garden1 then a little house of hens1 a coop of pigeons1 a colony of bees--even in the city ,i should keep bees1 if ,i had to keep them in the attic or on the roof4 ,not every one can have a garden1 but every one can either plant a tree1 or raise one pig1 or keep a cow or goat1 or feed a few hens1 or raise a flock of pigeons1 or do something that will bring him personally into contact with real things1 and make it possible for him to help pay his way with real wealth1 and in part1 at least1 to justify his existence1 and his book4 ,,chapter ,v ,,the ,,man ,,and ,,the ,,book ,,chapter ,v ,,the ,,man ,,and ,,the ,,book ,here on my desk lies a new book entitled1 8,for the ,benefit of ,my ,creditors10 the autobiography of ,hinckley ,gilbert ,mitchell1 a scholar1 a teacher in a school of theology--and now this book1 a simple1 sad book of human struggle and defeat1 of spiritual and scientific adventure and triumph and romance4 ,the scholar is not the accepted stuff of literature4 ,what of human interest can come out of a classroom8 ,yet ,i have seen this scholar's classroom when it was wilder than ten nights in a barroom crowded into one4 ,i have seen some lively and human times in my own classroom2 and ,i know that there is as real a chance1 and as magical a chance1 there as ,dana found on the high seas4 ,there are frontiers for the scholar1 especially in theology1 as dangerous in their crossing as any to be met with by the overland pioneer4 ,dana escaped from the decorous and the conventional life of social ,boston by way of the deep sea2 ,mitchell escaped from the decorous and conventional dogma of his church by way of honest study2 and his ,church tried him for heresy1 and found him guilty1 and would have burned him at the stake had that been the decorous and conventional manner of dealing with heretics at the moment4 ,as it was1 they only branded him1 and cast him out as a thing unclean4 ,perhaps that is not a life human enough1 and abundant enough1 for a book4 ,it is the simple story of a poor boy picking stones and building walls on his father's farm in ,new ,york ,state2 then1 as ,director of the ,american ,school of ,oriental ,research in ,jerusalem1 rebuilding 8,the ,wall of ,nehemiah02 then1 as scholar and professor1 re-creating 8,the ,world before ,abraham02 and finally1 as the storm center of one of the bitterest theological controversies of recent years1 dismissed1 dishonored1 betrayed for less than thirty pieces of silver1 a silent1 brokenhearted man4 ,it is only another version of an old and very common story4 ,prophets and pioneers are all alike2 and their stories are much alike1 whether the pages turn westward1 where new empires take their way1 or eastward1 back along the scholar's crossed and tangled trails to a world before ,abraham4 ,as the manuscript of the book lay upon my table1 ,i wondered if any publisher would feel the human pathos of the struggle1 and the mighty meaning of it all for truth4 ,who would publish it8 ,but here it is1 printed and bound1 a book--8,for the ,benefit of ,my ,creditors10 as if he were debtor to all1 his enemies included1 and owed them only love4 ,this is as modest and self-withholding a story as a man ever told of himself4 ,there are all too few of such human stories4 ,this one would never have been told had the author not hated intellectual cowardice as he hated moral cowardice1 with a perfect hatred4 ,he sought the truth--in the ,bible1 and in his own mind4 ,the geologist seeks some of the same truth in the rocks2 the astronomer in the stars4 ,the ,old ,testament was this scholar's field4 ,and1 laying aside tradition and the spirit of dogma1 he sought as a scientist seeks1 patiently1 fearlessly1 reverently1 for what his long and thorough preparation made him eminently able to find4 ,this is the highest type of courage and daring4 ,who finds truth finds trial and adventure4 ,in his condemnation by the bishops of his ,church1 he felt that truth had been assailed and the scientific method4 ,he did not write this book to defend the truth1 nor to defend himself2 but to examine himself1 as he would examine a difficult fragment of ,hebrew manuscript1 and make himself easy for other men to read4 ,his trial was long past1 and most of his life had been lived1 before a page of his book was written4 ,he came at it reluctantly3 he might seem personal--petty or selfish or egotistical2 or he might say something bitter and vindictive and do harm to the ,church4 ,but neither himself nor his ,church must stand in the way of truth2 and in his trial1 truth had been tried1 and the only way of knowing truth had been condemned4 ,so he sits down to write this story of his life exactly as he sat down to write a commentary on the ,book of ,genesis--to account for his being as a man and a scholar1 his preparation1 his methods of study1 his attitude1 and approach4 ,how much truth has he discovered8 ,he makes no claims4 ,darwin may or may not have the truth about ,evolution2 but we have a certain and a great truth in ,darwin--in his mind and method4 ,it was how ,darwin tried to solve the problem of life and its forms1 rather than the solution1 that has changed the thinking of the world4 ,for three years ,i was a student of ,hebrew and ,old ,testament ,exegesis under this scholar4 ,i have forgotten all he taught me1 and more4 ,but the way he taught me has changed forever my outlook upon life4 ,his attitude was truth1 and it flooded not only the whole mind1 but one's whole being1 with light4 ,many a time ,i have sat in his classroom during the discussion of some highly difficult and dangerous question of doctrine1 and said to myself1 amid the drawn daggers of those who had come to trap him1 8,right or wrong his findings1 he is himself truth1 its life and way40 ,life enough for a book8 ,he could have written a book on teaching4 ,for he loved to teach6 ,he loved to teach young preachers4 ,he could not preach2 but he was the teacher born4 ,the classroom was his from the foundation of the world4 ,here he was preaching truly--from a thousand future pulpits at the very ends of the earth4 ,he saw his students scattered over the whole world preaching to the intelligences of men as well as to their hearts2 revealing the wisdom as well as the love of ,god2 and expounding a diviner ,bible because it was a wholly human ,bible4 ,in all of these pulpits he heard himself speaking with tongues not his own1 but the message was his own1 the simple sincere faith of his classroom4 ,the thought of it thrilled him4 ,it lifted him up4 ,he dwelt in the presence of the opportunity as in the very presence of the ,most ,high4 ,as humble a man as ever lived1 doubting his every power and gift1 and relying only on the truth to make him free1 he would come into the classroom and take his chair on the six-inch platform1 which raised him by so much above his students1 as if that platform were the ,mount of ,transfiguration4 ,his face would shine2 his voice1 his gestures1 his attitude working with his careful words1 made his whole being radiant with zeal for the truth and love for us1 his students1 so mysteriously given to his care4 ,then suddenly1 after more than twenty years of this1 he was expelled--driven from this sacred classroom and branded as unsound1 unsafe1 unfit6 ,no1 not suddenly4 ,it was only the verdict of his judges that came suddenly4 ,no one nowadays could prepare his mind for a judgment like that4 ,for five or six of the years1 during which the trouble-makers1 under pretense of study1 had elected his courses at the ,theological ,school1 ,i had either been a student under him or his close and sympathetic friend4 ,i knew1 as he knew1 that his enemies would stop at nothing in their bitter zeal2 still1 ,i remember vividly the utter shock and astonishment of the bishops' decision4 ,and ,i remember--for ,i cannot forget--its strange numbing effect upon him4 ,it came over him slowly1 else ,i think he might have died4 ,it crept upon him like a dreadful palsy1 leaving him dazed and dumb4 ,he was too simple a man to realize it quickly1 too entirely single in mind and heart to realize it wholly4 ,it slowly crushed him to the earth4 ,and never in all the after years was he whole again4 ,his heart was broken4 ,he rose up and taught1 until the very hour of his death1 but never again in his old classroom nor with his old spirit4 ,day after day he would pass by the ,theological ,school with its hundreds of eager students2 he would see them gathering at the hour of his lecture2 but another teacher 7one whom he had trained7 would come in and take his place1 while he plodded down the street and on1 a shepherd without his sheep4 ,meantime he was called to teach in another graduate school4 ,he welcomed this new work4 ,he found honor1 and love1 and fellowship among his new colleagues4 ,they gave him freedom4 ,they created a place for him that had not been before4 ,he could teach what he wished and as he wished4 ,it was enough for them to have him among them1 and many a time he told me of how unworthy he felt of all this love and honor in his declining years1 and how it had stayed and steadied him in his deep defeat4 ,but they did not need him here--so he felt4 ,it was more for the honor of scholarship than for the good he would do them4 ,but he felt that they did need him at his own beloved school1 whose policies he had helped to shape1 whose spirit he had helped to create1 whose name and fame he had so largely helped to establish1 and whose students1 crowding in from the east and from the great west1 he longed to take into his heart and his home1 as for so many happy years he had been in the habit of doing4 8,o ,jerusalem1 ,jerusalem10 he would cry as he passed by on the street1 a stranger1 and saw the students going in and out1 8,o ,jerusalem1 ,jerusalem1 which killeth the prophets1 444 how often would ,i have gathered thy children together1 even as a hen gathereth her chickens under her wings1 and ye would not60 ,this1 however1 was not the doing of the school4 ,faculty and students1 with the exception of those few who came for the express purpose of accusing him1 were loyal4 ,the president of the ,university1 his close friend1 was loyal1 and did all that lay in his power to prevent the iniquity of the trial and the decision4 ,this only added to the tragedy4 ,to have been tried by his peers and co-laborers1 by those who knew him and the field of his labors1 would have been perfectly fair1 but to be accused by three or four narrow-minded students 7one of whom recanted later and all of whom deserve oblivion71 who had come with malice aforethought1 whose very presence in the school was a lie1 to be accused by such as these1 ,i say1 and then tried by a board of judges1 to whom he was largely a stranger1 not one of whom probably was his equal as a scholar in the field involved--this made the shame to the school1 to himself1 and to truth1 doubly deep and sore4 ,there remained one thing more for him to do2 and as soon as he could do it kindly1 as a ,christian1 and dispassionately1 as a scholar1 without bias or prejudice or any personal ends except the ends of gratitude and truth1 he set about his autobiography4 ,and ,i wonder if1 among autobiographies1 there is another that approaches his for detachment1 restraint1 and self-negation2 for absolute adherence to the facts for the sake of the truth involved1 a truth not of self at all1 but wholly of scholarship8 ,this is more of a thesis than an autobiography--as if the author were writing of another 8,wall of ,nehemiah10 and no more involved in it1 personally1 than he was present in 8,the ,world before ,abraham06 ,this is one of the most remarkable evidences of severe and scientific scholarship that ,i have ever seen2 and it is equal evidence of the inherent literary value of human life4 ,no accusing word is here1 nothing bitter and unchristian4 ,but just the opposite3 8,for the ,benefit of ,my ,creditors0 is a work of love4 ,his very character had been assailed by his enemies1 but this1 while it hurt1 could not harm him4 ,he stood upon his conscious integrity1 calm and silent4 ,it was not the attack upon himself that concerned him4 ,it was that ,truth had been attacked4 ,it was an attempt to make the ,bible a denominational book2 to confound truth with tradition and give it a doctrinal color or a denominational slant4 ,the ,church may compel its theologians to do that if it has to1 but its scholars1 those who discover truth1 it should leave free4 ,god and truth are not denominational1 nor ,protestant nor ,catholic nor ,hebrew4 ,god is truth1 and single or separate1 ,god and ,truth belong to the fearless1 the frank1 and the pure--in science not more than in religion4 ,for 8are ye not as the children of the ,ethiopians unto me1 ,o children of ,israel8444 ,have not ,i brought up ,israel out of the land of ,egypt1 and the ,philistines from ,caphtor1 and the ,syrians from ,kir80 ,i recall the day we came upon that wonderful passage in ,amos in our study of this prophet2 and how for the first time in my life the universality of truth dawned upon me out of that passage4 ,i had had a tribal1 denominational ,god1 up to that time4 ,i had been seeing different kinds of truth--like the different tribes of old in ,palestine--warring truths1 each with its own territory1 its own grip upon me1 when suddenly1 as the 8,rabbi0 opened up this mighty saying of ,amos1 ,i saw one ,god of us all1 one truth for us all1 and all of us searching1 under ,god's leading1 for the truth4 ,henceforth the ,philistines and the ,syrians and the children of ,israel were to be as the ,ethiopians to me1 as they are to ,god--all of us led by him1 and all of us free4 ,no teacher ever taught me a diviner lesson than that4 ,it was not a body of truth that this great teacher was called to expound4 ,it was the spirit of truth--the desire for truth1 the search for truth1 the nature of truth1 that it is ,god--this was his high calling4 ,and in condemning him1 his ,church was confounding tradition and truth1 blocking the road to truth1 and threatening1 in this example of him1 to punish the daring who discover and bring us forward into new realms of truth4 ,in his trial and condemnation the ,church was saying3 8,study1 but study to perpetuate the past2 to preserve the old2 to defend doctrine1 and establish tradition4 ,we have the truth1 the whole truth1 and nothing but the truth4 ,no new light can possibly break forth from ,god's word1 or from any word4 ,revelation is closed4 ,and if you think you have new light1 hide it1 and if you discover new truth1 do not publish it1 do not teach it1 for among the three hundred men in your school there are three who have closed their minds to light and truth1 and have sworn by all the past to keep them closed2 and it would jeopardize the ,church if you should pry those three minds open to the light and to the truth of to-day40 ,these are not his words4 ,there is a tang of bitterness in them4 ,they are mine4 ,yet it was partly because he believed that the ,church meant to make him a warning to all scholars and honest thinkers within its fold1 that he set about his autobiography1 which he died writing4 8,rabbi10 we students called him affectionately1 and strangely enough he seemed to look the part4 ,he was the thorough scholar4 ,careful1 methodical by nature1 he was severely trained1 and to all of this he added a profound reverence for the ,book which was his life's study1 and felt a deep sense of his responsibility as its teacher4 ,had his life's task been a haystack with one single needle of divine truth lost within it1 he would have tirelessly taken it down1 straw by straw1 for the needle of truth1 just as ,madame ,curie1 aware of some mysterious power in the crude common bulk of slag1 patiently eliminated pound after pound1 ton after ton of the gross elements until she held in her hand the pulsing particle of radium1 hardly larger than the head of a pin1 whose light illumines and almost blinds the groping world4 ,had ,professor ,mitchell not been a student of the ,bible1 he might have been a student of chemistry1 for his methods and his zeal were exactly those of the discoverer in any field1 and it might have been his honor and glory1 as it chanced to be ,madame ,curie's1 to give radium to the world4 ,instead of glory1 his was condemnation and defeat4 ,yet his very mind and method1 applied anywhere else1 would have won him distinction and honor4 ,there is no other mind or method1 except the closed mind and the method of appeal to authority1 as against the trial by experiment and fact4 ,truth is truth whether in ,theology or in ,chemistry1 and only the open mind1 the free1 the bold1 the experimenting mind finds it4 ,traditions have to be defended4 ,truth is its own defense4 ,the mind of the great scholar is never on the defensive4 ,let 8the ,forts of ,folly fall10 he is far over the frontier where there is no need for forts4 ,so here in his life he writes not to defend himself1 but to express himself1 his gratitude2 and to explain himself1 his position1 his purpose1 his principles as to the way of truth4 ,here is a man who was as simple as he was sincere4 ,but simplicity in a great spirit is the sign1 the very expression of sincerity4 ,he was interested in all human things4 ,he could make wonderful coffee4 ,he could build a stone wall with the best of masons1 and how he used to tramp the woods with me for mushrooms6 ,i was a stranger in ,boston and had been in his classes for a week1 perhaps1 when ,i met him downtown4 ,it was a very real pleasure to be stopped and called by name and quizzed by the great ,rabbi4 ,what was ,i looking for in ,boston8 ,a hammer8 8,come along10 he said1 turning short about1 8there's a good hardware store down this street4 ,i'll go with you and see that you get a ,maydole--a ,maydole now--they're the only wear in hammers40 ,i got the ,maydole2 that was twenty-six years ago2 ,i have it yet4 ,his was a little act4 ,but ,i have drawn many a nail with that hammer4 ,yea1 ,i have built him a mansion with it4 ,i speak of that little thing because it was a characteristic act4 ,the details of life tremendously interested him4 ,he was entirely human and as interested in the human side of his students as he was in their intellectual and spiritual sides4 ,from my study window here in ,hingham as ,i write1 eight stone faces stare at me out of the retaining wall in the driveway1--big granite chunks of boulder they were in my meadow years ago4 ,it was the ,rabbi who rigged the tackle and helped me put those stones here in the wall4 ,he could fix a toggle1 he could 8cut0 and 8pize0 and 8wop0 a stone with lever and chain so as to 8move mountains40 8,there6 ,there60 he would say1 8let the mare do the work2 let the mare do the work10 when ,i would rush up at a quarter-ton chunk of solid granite and1 bare-handed1 try to hustle it on to the stone-boat4 ,he had built stone walls before--back on the hill farm in ,new ,york ,state1 where he was born and had his boyhood4 ,later he 8restored0 the ,wall of ,nehemiah about ,jerusalem1 but not with any more zest than he helped me build with actual stones the retaining wall for my driveway up ,mullein ,hill in ,hingham4 ,such is the man4 ,would he be substance for a book8 ,theological students are as naturally full of trouble as rag-weeds are of pollen4 ,they know enough to doubt2 they are old enough to be married2 they are poor2 and they preach2 and they would like to be pious2 but the world and the flesh and the devil are against them4 ,they are only as good as the average of mankind1 but they have more than an average share of tribulations4 ,they need ,hebrew--all of them--which is one more terrible trouble6 ,but they sorely need human sympathy and wise counsel1 and whether they got ,hebrew or failed to get it1 never a man came into the ,rabbi's classroom who did not also enter at the same moment into his open heart and open home4 ,classroom and heart and home belonged to every man who would enter4 ,his capacity for patience in the classroom was only equaled by the boundless sympathy and the simple hospitality of his near-by home4 ,is it a wonder that the great body of his students were confounded and dismayed that he could be tried on some technical point or other and be ejected from his chair as unfit to teach those who were to preach the ,gospel8 ,after the trial the enforced leisure was immediately turned to new studies and larger literary plans4 ,fresh fields were opened1 too1 for lecturing--in the ,university of ,chicago1 in ,harvard ,university2 and then soon came the invitation to join the staff of ,tufts ,theological ,school as a member of the faculty4 ,life has its compensations and rewards2 and if there was no cure for the mortal wound he had received at the hands of his brethren in his own ,church1 this invitation to ,tufts1 and the perfect fellowship there to the day he died1 was a compensation and a satisfaction that gave to his life a sweet reasonableness1 completeness1 and reward4 ,there was no variableness nor shadow caused by turning in his unhurried life4 ,the loss of his chair did not mean the end of his creative scholarship4 ,he worked to the last1 and was preparing for the day's work when death came4 ,he knew our hearts1 but we ourselves hardly knew them till he had gone4 ,then the swift word reached us1 and we were told that we should see him no more1 that he was to be buried afar with no service of any kind for him here--here where he had labored so many years6 ,it could not be4 ,on every hand his old pupils appeared--,methodist1 ,universalist1 ,unitarian--in one mind1 all differences forgotten in their single love for the honest scholar1 the direct1 the earnest1 the sincere teacher1 the simple man1 whose life had been devoted to learning and to doing good1--on every hand they app eared and gave him 8,the ,grammarian's ,funeral40 8,thither our path lies2 wind we up the heights6 ,wait ye the warning8 ,our low life was the level's and the night's3 ,he's for the morning4 ,step to a tune1 square chests1 erect each head1 ',ware the beholders6 ,this is our master1 famous1 calm1 and dead1 ,borne on our shoulders4 8,this1 throws himself on ,god1 and unperplexed ,seeking shall find him4 ,so1 with the throttling hands of death at strife1 ,ground he at grammar2 ,still1 through the rattle1 parts of speech were rife3 ,while he could stammer ,he settled ,hoti's business--let it be6-- ,properly based ,oun-- ,gave us the doctrine of the enclitic ,de1 ,dead from the waist down4 8,here's the top-peak2 the multitude below ,live1 for they can1 there3 ,this man decided not to ,live but ,know-- ,bury this man there8 ,here--here's his place1 where meteors shoot1 clouds form1 ,lightnings are loosened1 ,stars come and go6 ,let joy break with the storm1 ,peace let the dew send6 ,lofty designs must close in like effects3 ,loftily lying1 ,leave him--still loftier than the world suspects1 ,living and dying40 ,,chapter ,,vi ,a ,,january ,,summer ,,chapter ,,vi ,a ,,january ,,summer ,when winter winds blow cold and chill ,and through the hawthorn howls the gale ,the winter winds were truly cold and chill on this twenty-first of ,january here in ,massachusetts4 ,and ,i chance to know they were chill down along the ,delaware this particular ,january day4 ,i remember many a ,january day like this on the wide marshes of the ,delaware and in the big woods along the ,maurice ,river where ,i was a boy4 ,but ,i was not thinking of those days at all here in my ,new ,england home1 for ,i was busy at my desk4 ,some one was at my study door4 ,more than one1 for ,i heard low talking4 ,then the door softly opened1 and four bebundled boys stood before me--with an axe1 a long-handled shovel1 a covered basket1 and a very big secret1 which stuck out all over their faces4 ,they were not big boys outside4 ,but they were almost bursting inside with their big secret4 ,they were big with boots and coats and caps and mittens2 and they looked almost like monsters in my study door with their axe and shovel and big basket4 8,come on1 father10 they whispered 7as if ,she hadn't heard them tramping through the hall and upstairs with their kit671 8come on6 ,it's mother's birthday to-morrow1 and we're going after the flowers40 8,what60 ,i exclaimed4 8,are you going to chop the flowers down with an axe1 and dig them up with a shovel80 ,and ,i tried to think what a chopped-down and dug-up birthday bouquet would look like4 ,but it was too much for me4 8,you are going to give her a nice bunch of frost flowers10 ,i said1 feeling about in my puzzled mind for just what was afoot4 8,if you are going to give her frost flowers1 you had better get the ice-saw1 too1 for we shall need a big block of ice to stick their stems in40 ,not a word of comment6 ,no sign on the four faces that they had even heard my gentle banter4 ,they knew what they were going to do2 and all they wanted of me was to come along4 8,hurry up10 they answered1 dropping my hip-boots on the floor4 8,here are your scuffs40 ,i hurried up6 ,scuffs and boots and cap and reefer on in a jiffy1 and the five of us were soon in single file upon the meadow1 the dry snow squealing under our feet1 while the little imp-winds1 capering fitfully about us1 blew the snowdust into our faces1 or catching up the thin drifts1 sent them whirling and waltzing1 like ghostly dancers1 over the meadow's level glittering floor4 ,i was beginning to warm up a little2 but ,i was still guessing about the flowers1 and not yet in the spirit of the game4 ,we were having a hard winter1 and the novelty of zero weather was beginning to wear off--at least to me4 ,the fact was ,i had intended to get the birthday flowers down at the greenhouse in the village4 ,january is an awkward time to have a birthday1 anyhow4 ,june is a much more reasonable month for birthdays1 if you gather wild flowers for the celebration4 ,the fields are full of flowers in ,june6 ,but here in ,january you must go with an axe and a shovel1 mittens1 rubber-boots1 and reefers6 ,and ,i confess ,i couldn't make head or tail of this festive trip4 ,it is a lucky man who has boys1 or who knows and 8trains10 as our ,new ,englanders say1 with boys4 ,they won't let him freeze up4 8,come1 father10 they say1 8get into your scuffs and boots1 and hit the old trail for the woods60 ,and father drops his pen2 bundles up2 8clomps0 out in his boots1 grumbling at the weather and the boys and the birthdays and the stiffness in his knees and in his soul--for a whole hundred yards or more into the meadow6 ,then he begins to warm up4 ,then he takes the axe from one of the boys and looks at its edge1 and 8hefts0 it2 and looks about for a big birthday flower1 about the size of a hundred-year-old oak1 to chop down4 ,something queer is happening to father4 ,he is forgetting his knees2 he is capering about on the snow2 he is getting ahead of the boys2 he hardly realizes it1 but he is beginning to feel like a birthday inside of him2 and he will soon be in danger of getting this ,january day mixed up with the days of ,june6 ,but not right off4 ,i was warming up1 ,i do confess1 yet it was a numb1 stiff world about us1 and bleak and stark4 ,it was a world that looked all black and white1 for there was not a patch of blue overhead4 ,the white underfoot ran off to meet the black of the woods1 and the woods in turn stood dark against a sky so heavy with snow as to shut us apparently into some vast snow cave4 ,a crow flapping over drew a black pencil-line across the picture--the one sign of life that we could see besides ourselves4 ,only small boys are likely to leave their firesides on such a day2 only small boys and those men who can't grow up4 ,yet never before1 perhaps1 had boys or men ever gone afield on such a tramp with an axe1 a shovel1 and a basket4 ,suddenly one of the boys dashed off calling1 8,let's go see if the muskrats have gone to bed yet60 ,and trailing after him away we went1 straight across the meadow4 ,i knew what he was after2 ,i could see the little mound1 hardly more than an anthill in size1 standing up in the meadow where the alder bushes and elderberry marked the bend in the brook4 ,if my farmer neighbor had forgotten a small haycock1 when he cut his rowen1 it would have looked about as this muskrat lodge here buried under the snow4 ,i was glad the boys had seen it4 ,for only a practiced eye could have discovered it2 and only a lover of bleak gray days would have known what might be alive deep down under its thatch of cat-tails and calamus here in the silent winter4 ,but is there any day in the whole year out of doors that real live boys and real live girls do not love8 or any wild thing that they do not love--flower or bird or beast or star or storm8 ,we crept up softly1 and surrounded the lodge2 then with the axe we struck the frozen1 flinty roof several ringing blows4 ,instantly one--two--three muffled splashy 8plunks0 were heard1 as three little muskrats1 frightened out of their naps and half out of their wits1 plunged into the open water of their doorways from off their damp but cozy couch4 ,it was a mean thing to do1 but not very mean as wild animal life goes4 ,and it did warm me up so1 in spite of the chilly plunge the little sleepers took6 ,chilly to them8 ,not at all1 and that is why it warmed me4 ,to hear the splash of water down under the two feet of ice and snow that sealed the meadow like a sheet of steel6 ,to hear the sound of stirring life1 and to picture that snug1 steaming bed on the top of a tough old tussock1 with its open water-doors leading into freedom and plenty below6 8,why1 it won't be long before the arbutus is in bloom10 ,i began to think4 ,i looked at the axe and shovel1 and said to myself1 8,well1 the boys may know what they are doing1 after all1 though three muskrats don't make a spring or a bouquet40 ,but they did make me warmer inside and outside1 too4 ,warm up your heart and you soon feel warmer in your fingers and toes4 ,we turned back from the muskrats' lodge and headed again for the woods1 where the flowers must be4 ,hardly had we reached the cart-path before another of the boys was off--this time to the left1 going rapidly toward a low piece of maple swamp perhaps a quarter of a mile away4 8,he's going over to see if ,hairy ,woodpecker is in his hole10 said the boys in answer to my question4 8,hairy has a winter hole over there in a big dead maple4 ,want to see him80 ,of course ,i wanted to see him4 ,the only live thing outside of ourselves that we had seen 7we had only heard the muskrats7 had been a crow4 ,live birds on such days as these one would go far to see4 ,so we all cut across toward the swamp where the hairy woodpecker reigned solitary in his bleak domain4 ,the 8hole0 was almost twenty-five feet up in a dead maple stub that had blown off and lodged against a live tree4 ,the meadow had been bleak and wind-swept1 but the swamp was naked and dead1 filled with ice1 and touched with a most forbidding emptiness and stillness4 ,i was getting cold again1 when the boy ahead tapped lightly on the old stub4 ,at the hole upstairs appeared a head--a fierce black-and-white head1 a sharp1 long bill1 a flashing eye--as ,hairy came forth to fight for his castle4 ,he was too wise a fighter to tackle all of us1 however2 so1 slipping out1 he spread his wings1 and galloped off with a loud wild call that set all the swamp to ringing4 ,it was a thrilling1 defiant challenge that set my blood to leaping again4 ,black and white1 he was a part of the picture2 but there was a scarlet band in the nape of his neck that1 like his call1 had fire in it and the warmth of life4 ,as his shout went booming through the hollow walls of the swamp1 it woke a blue jay1 which squalled back from a clump of pines1 then1 wavering out into the open on curious wings--flashing ice-blue and snow-white wings--he dived into the covert of pines again2 and faint1 as if beyond the swamp1 the cheep of chickadees6 ,if anything was needed up to this moment to change my winter into spring1 it was this call of the chickadees4 ,the dullest day in winter smiles2 the deepest1 darkest woods speak cheerfully to me1 if a chickadee is there4 ,and did you ever know a winter day or a dank1 gloomy forest hall without its chickadee8 ,give me a flower in my buttonhole and a chickadee in my heart and ,i am proof against all gloom and cold4 8,what is all this noise about80 the chickadees came forward asking4 ,it was a little troop of them1 a family of them1 possibly1 last year's children and one1 or both1 of the parents1 hunting the winter woods together for mutual protection against the loneliness and long bitter cold4 ,how active and interested in life they were6 ,a hard winter8 ,yes1 of course1 but what is the blue jay squawking over1 anyhow8 ,and the little troop of them came to peep into the racket1 curious1 but not excited1 discussing the disturbance of the solemn swamp in that sewing-bee fashion of theirs1 as if nipping off threads and squinting through needle-eyes between their running comments4 ,they too were gray and black1 gray as the swamp beeches1 black as the spotted bark of the birches4 ,and how tiny6 ,but-- 8,here was this atom in full breath ,hurling defiance at vast death2 ,this scrap of valor just for play ,fronts the north wind in waistcoat gray02 and this is what ,emerson says he sings3 8,good day1 good sir6 ,fine afternoon1 old passenger6 ,happy to meet you in these places ,where ,january brings few faces40 ,and as ,i brought to mind the poet's lines1 ,i forgot to shiver1 and quite warmed again to the idea of flowers1 especially as one of the boys just then brought up a spray of green holly with a burning red berry on it4 ,i laid the spray of green holly on the hard white crust of the ,january snow4 ,then ,i stood a moment and spread my hands out over it to warm them6 ,it was like a little fire in the snow4 ,the boys laughed at me4 ,they were warm enough in their mittens4 ,but ,i had need of more than mittens to warm my fingers4 ,i had need of a fire1--a fire of green pointed holly leaves and one glowing1 flaming berry1 a tiny red hot coal of summer blazing here in the wide white ashes of the winter4 ,we were tacking again now in order to get back on our course1 and had got into the edge of the swamp among the pines when the boy with the shovel began to study the ground and the trees as if trying to find the location of something4 8,here it is10 he said1 and began digging through the snow at the foot of a big pine4 ,i knew what he was after4 ,it was goldthread1 and here was the only spot in all the woods about where we had ever found it1 a spot no larger than the top of a dining-room table4 ,soon we had a fistful of the delicate plants with their evergreen leaflets and long golden1 threadlike roots that1 mixed with the red and green of the partridge-berry in a finger-bowl1 make a cheerful winter bouquet4 ,and here with the goldthread1 about the butt of the pine1 was the partridge-berry1 too1 the dainty vines strung with the beads which seemed to burn holes in the snow that covered and banked their tiny fires4 ,for this is all that the ice and snow had done4 ,the winter had come with enough wind to blow out every flame in the maple-tops1 and with enough snow to smother every little fire in the peat-bogs of the swamp2 but peat fires are hard to put out2 and here and everywhere the winter had only banked the fires of summer4 ,dig down through the snow ashes anywhere1 and the smouldering coals of life burst into blaze4 ,when that red-beaded partridge-vine was hastily placed with the goldthread in the covered basket1 and the spray of holly put with them1 a ray of light began to dawn on my snow-clouded mind4 ,did ,i begin to see the bouquet these boys were after8 ,i said nothing4 ,they said nothing4 ,they were watching me1 though1 ,i knew1 to see how long ,i should stumble blindly on through these glorious ,january woods1 which were so full of joy for them4 ,i say ,i said nothing4 ,i was thinking hard1 however4 8,holly1 goldthread1 partridge-berry10 ,i thought to myself4 8,i see so much of the birthday bouquet4 ,but what else can they find80 ,the boy with the axe had again gone on ahead4 ,and we were off again after him1 stopping to get a great armful of black alder branches that were literally aflame with red berries4 ,we were climbing a piny knoll when almost at our feet1 jumping us nearly out of our skins1 and warming the very roots of our hair1 was a burrrr6 burrrr6 burrrr6 burrrr6--four big partridges--as if four snow-mines had exploded under us1 hurling bunches of brown feathers on graceful scaling wings over the dip of the hill6 ,this was getting livelier all the time4 ,from my study window how dead and deserted1 and windswept and bare the world had looked to me6 ,nothing but a live crow winging wearily against the leaden sky6 ,but out here in the real woods and meadows--partridges1 chickadees1 hairy woodpecker1 blue jay1 and muskrats as well as crows6 ,and then ,i knew a certain old apple tree where a pair of screech owls were wintering4 ,and1 as for white-footed mice1 ,i could find them in any stump4 ,besides1 here were rabbit holes in the snow1 and up in a tall pine a gray squirrel's nest and-- ,but ,i was losing sight of the boy with the axe who was leading the procession4 ,on we went up over the knoll and down into a low bog where in the summer we gathered high-bush blueberries1 the boy with the axe leading the way and going straight across the ice toward the middle of the bog4 ,my eye was keen for signs1 and ,i soon saw he was heading for a sweet-pepper bush with a broken branch4 ,my eye took in another bush a little to the right also with a broken branch4 ,the boy with the axe walked up to the sweet-pepper bush1 and drew a line on the ice between it and a bush off on the right1 pacing off this line till he found the middle2 then he started at right angles from it1 and paced off a line to a clump of cat-tails sticking up through the ice on the flooded bog4 ,halfway back on this line he stopped1 threw off his coat1 and began to chop a hole about two feet square in the ice4 ,removing the block of ice while ,i looked on1 he rolled up his sleeve1 and reached down the length of his arm through the ice water4 8,give me the shovel10 he said1 8it's down here40 ,and with a few dexterous cuts he soon brought to the surface a beautiful cluster of pitcher-plants1 the strange1 almost uncanny1 leaves filled with muddy water1 but every pitcher of them intact1 shaped and veined and tinted by a master potter's hand4 ,now at last ,i fully understood4 ,now ,i could see what those boys had been seeing with their inward eyes all the time4 ,now ,i had faith1 too4 ,but how late6 ,the bouquet of flowers was now full4 ,we wrapped the wonderful pitcher-plant carefully in newspapers1 and put it into the basket1 starting back with our bouquet as cheerfully1 and as full of joy in the season1 as we could possible have been in ,june4 ,no1 ,i did not say that we love ,january as much as we love ,june4 ,january here in ,new ,england is a mixture of rheumatism1 chilblains1 frozen water-pipes1 mittens1 overshoes1 blocked trains1 and automobile-troubles by the hoodsful1 whereas any automobile will run in ,june4 ,it is so in ,delaware and ,texas and ,oregon1 too4 ,what ,i was saying is that we started home all abloom with our pitcher-plants and goldthread and partridge-berry and holly and glowing black alder1 and all aglow inside with our vigorous tramp1 and with the gray grave beauty of the landscape1 and with the stern joy of meeting and beating the cold1 and with the signs of life--of the cozy muskrats in their lodge beneath the ice-cap on the meadow2 with the hairy woodpecker in his deep warm hole in the heart of a tree2 with the red warm berries in our basket2 with the chirping1 the capable1 the conquering chickadee accompanying us and singing1 8,for well the soul1 if stout within1 ,can arm impregnably the skin2 ,and polar frost my form defied1 ,made of the air that blows outside40 ,and actually as we came over the bleak meadow1 one of the boys said that he thought he heard a song-sparrow singing6 ,and ,i said ,i thought the pussy-willows by the brook had opened a little since we had passed them coming out6 ,and we all declared that the weather had changed1 and that there were signs of a break-up4 ,but the thermometer stood at fifteen above zero when we got home--one degree colder than when we started6 ,we had had a ,january thaw1 however1 and it had come off inside of us1 as the color on the four glowing faces showed4 ,the birthday came off on the morrow1 and ,i wonder if there ever was a more interesting or a more loving gift of flowers than those from the ,january woods8 ,,chapter ,,vii ,,after ,,the ,,loggers ,,chapter ,,vii ,,after ,,the ,,loggers ,i lay listening to the rain spattering against the fly of the tent and dripping through the roof of birch leaves upon the sputtering fire and soaking down into the deep1 spongy bottom of the forest--softly1 as soft as something breathing and asleep4 ,the guide and the boy beside me were asleep1 but ,i had been awakened by the rain4 ,the rain always wakens me4 ,and in my grave1 ,i think1 if ,i lie sleeping under a roof of forest leaves1 ,i shall wake and listen when it rains4 ,before the stars sang together the primordial waters made music to the rising land2 before the winds came murmuring through the trees the waves were fingering the sweet-tuned sands strung down the sounding shores2 and before the birds found their tongues1 or the crickets their little fiddles1 or even the toad had blown his quavering conch1 it had rained6 ,and when it rained--and not until it rained--the whole earth woke into song4 ,mother of music is the water1 and1 for me1 the sweetest of her daughters is the rain1 and never sweeter1 not even on the shingles1 nor down the rolled1 fevered blades of the standing corn1 than in the deep woods at night upon the low slant roof of your tent4 ,but suddenly the singing stopped1 and the myriad rain-notes were turned to feet1 tiny1 stirring feet1 creeping down the tent1 skipping across the leaves1 galloping over the forest floor1 and jumping in and out of the fire4 ,then a twig snapped4 ,was that what had awakened me8 ,i rose up on my elbow slowly4 ,the tent flap was open2 the woods were very dark1 the dim light from above the roof of leaves and rain showing only shadows1 and an ashen spot where the camp-fire still spluttered1 and beyond the ashen spot a shadow--different from the other shadows2 a shape--a doe with big ears forward toward the fire6 ,a bit of birch bark flared in the darkness1 and the shape was gone4 ,i could hear her moving through the ferns2 hear her jump a fallen log and step out among the grating pebbles on the shore4 ,then all was still1 except for the scampering rain1 and the little red-backed wood-mouse among the camp tins1 and the teeth of a porcupine chilled and chattering in the darkness at the big wood-mouse among the tins1 and the rain running everywhere4 ,i dropped back upon my pillow and left off listening4 ,how good the duffle-bag felt beneath my head6 ,and the thick1 springy bows of the fir beneath the bag1 how good they felt--springs and mattress in one1 laid underside up1 evenly1 and a foot deep1 all over the tent floor6 ,and how good they smelled6 ,a bed of balsam-fir boughs is more than a bed2 it is an oblation to ,sleep1 and not a vain oblation--after miles of paddling in live water or a day of trailing through the spruce and fir4 8,there's a long1 long trail a-winding0 runs the song-- 8,into the land of my dreams40 ,but1 speaking of sleep1 there is no trail1 except a forest trail1 that winds away to a land of such deep dreamlessness as that of a woodman's sleep2 and no sleep1 from which a man will waken1 half so fragrant and refreshing as his4 ,i do not wish to be carried to the skies 8on flowery beds of ease10 but ,i should like this balsam-fir bed1 for two or three weeks every summer1 in the woods of ,maine4 ,a reasonable and a wholesome wish that1 as ,i lay there wrapped in the fragrant mantle of my couch1 ,i coveted for city sleepers everywhere4 ,the odors 7we should spell them with a 8u07--the odours of the big woods are so clean and pure and prophylactic6 ,they clear the clogged senses1 and keep them in a kind of antiseptic bath1 washing a coated tongue as no wine can wash it2 and tingling along the most snarled of nerves1 straightening1 tempering1 tuning them till the very heart is timed to the singing of the firs4 ,my bed of boughs was a full foot deep1 covering every inch of the bottom of the tent1 fresh cut that evening1 and so bruised with the treading as we laid them that their smell1 in the close1 rainy air of the night1 filled the tent like a cloud4 ,i lay and breathed--as if taking a cure1 this tent being the contagious ward of the great hospital1 the ,out-of-,doors4 ,all around me poured the heavy1 penetrating vapor distilled from the gums1 and resins1 and oils1 and sweet healing essences of the woods1 mingled here in the tent with the aromatic balsam of the fir4 ,i breathed it to the bottom of my lungs2 but my lungs were not deep enough2 ,i must breathe it with hands and feet to get it all2 but they were not enough4 ,then a breeze swept by the tent1 pausing to lay its mouth over my mouth1 and1 catching away my little breath1 breathed for me its own big breath1 until my very bones1 like the bones of the birds1 were breathing1 and every vein ran redolent of the breath of the fir4 ,that breeze blew the sharp1 pungent smell of wood smoke past the tent4 ,i caught it eagerly--the sweet smoke of the cedar logs still smouldering on the fire4 ,there was no suggestion of hospitals in this whiff1 but camps1 rather1 and kitchens1 altars1 caves1 the smoke of whose ancient fires is still strong in our nostrils and cured into the very substance of our souls4 ,i wonder if our oldest racial memory may not be that of fire1 and if any other form of fire1 a coal off any other altar1 can touch the imagination as the coals of a glowing camp-fire4 ,and ,i wonder if any other odor takes us farther down our ancestral past than the smell of wood smoke1 and if there is another smoke so sweet as cedar smoke1 when the thin1 faint wraith from the smouldering logs curls past your tent on the slow wind of the woods and drifts away4 ,it does not matter of what the fire is built4 ,i can still taste the spicy smoke of the sagebrush in my last desert camp4 ,and how hot that sagebrush fire6 ,and as sweet as the spicy sage is the smell in my nostrils of the cypress and gum in my camp-fires of the ,south4 ,swamp or desert or forest1 the fire is the lure--the light1 the warmth1 the crackle of the flames1 and the mystic incense of the smoke rising as a sweet savor to the deities of the woods and plains4 ,it is the camp-fire that lures me to the woods when ,i might go down to the sea4 ,i love the sea4 ,perhaps ,i fear it more2 and perhaps ,i have not yet learned to pitch my tent and build my fire upon the waves2 certainly ,i have not yet got used to the fo'c's'le smell4 ,for1 of all foul odors known to beast or man1 the indescribable stench of the fo'c's'le is to me the worst4 ,what wild wind of the ocean can blow that smell away8 ,when bilges are sprayed with attar of roses1 and fo'c's'les sheathed in sandalwood1 and sailors given shower-baths and open fires1 ,i shall take a vacation before the mast2 but until then give me the woods and my fir-bough bed1 and my fire of birch and cedar logs1 and the rain upon my tent4 ,when ,i woke at dawn it was still raining2 and off and on all day it rained1 spoiling our plans for the climb up ,spencer ,mountain and keeping us close to camp and the drying fire4 ,the forest here at the foot of the mountain was a mixed piece of old-growth timber1 that had been logged for spruce and pine some years before--as every mile of the forest of ,maine has been logged--yet so low and spongy was the bottom that the timber seems to have overgrown and long since ceased to be fit for lumber1 so that most of it was left standing when the lumber-jacks went through4 ,we were camped by the side of ,spencer ,pond in the thick of these giant trees--yellow birch1 canoe birch1 maple and spruce1 hemlock and fir and pine--where the shade was so dense and the forest floor so strewn with fallen trees that only the club mosses1 and the sphagnum1 and a few of the deep-woods flowers could grow4 ,the rain made little difference to my passage here1 so low were these lesser forest forms under the perpetual umbrage of the mighty trees1 and ,i came back from as far in as ,i dared to venture on so dull a day1 my clothes quite dry1 but my spirit touched with a spell of the forest1 which ,i should have missed had the sun been shining and the points of the compass clear4 ,for in the big woods one is ever conscious of direction1 a sense that is so exaggerated in the deepest bottoms1 especially when only indirect1 diffused light fills the shadowy spaces1 as to border on fear4 ,i am never free1 in a strange forest1 from its haunting ,presence2 so close to it that ,i seem to hear it2 seem able to touch it2 and when1 for a moment of some minor interest or excitement1 ,i have forgotten to remember and1 looking up1 find the ,presence gone from me1 ,i am seized with sudden fright4 ,what other panic comes so softly1 yet with more terrible swiftness8 ,and once the maze seizes you1 once you begin to meet yourself1 find yourself running the circle of your back tracks1 the whole mind goes to pieces and madness is upon you4 8,set where you be and holler till ,i come get ye1 if ye're lost10 the guide would say4 8,climb a tree and holler2 don't run around like a side-hill gouger1 or you're gone40 ,i do not know what sort of animal is ,johnny's side-hill gouger2 though ,i saw1 one day1 far up on the side of the mountain a big bare spot where he had been digging--according to the guide4 ,it is enough for me that there is such a beast in the woods1 and that he gets those who turn round and round in the forest on rainy days and forget to look up4 ,the gouger was abroad in the woods to-day4 ,the clouds hung at the base of the mountains1 just above the tops of the trees2 the rain came straight down2 the huge fallen trunks lay everywhere criss-cross2 and once beyond the path to the spring the semi-gloom blurred every trail and put at naught all certainty of direction4 ,but how this fear sharpened the senses and quickened everything in the scene about me6 ,i was in the neighborhood of danger1 and every dull and dormant faculty became alert4 ,nothing would come from among the dusky trees to harm me2 no bear1 or lynx1 or moose1 for they would run away2 it was the dusk itself1 and the big trees that would not run away2 and ,i watched them furtively as they drew nearer and nearer and closed in deeper about me4 ,i knew enough to 8set down and holler0 if ,i got turned hopelessly around2 but this very knowledge of weakness1 of inability to cope alone with these silent1 sinister forces1 woke all my ancient fears and called back that brood of more than fabled monsters from their caves and fens and forest lairs4 ,this was the real woods1 however1 deep1 dark1 and primeval1 and no mere fantasy of fear4 ,it looked even older than its hoary years1 for the floor was strewn with its mouldering dead1 not one generation1 but ages of them1 form under form1 till only long1 faint lines of greener moss told where the eldest of them had fallen an on since and turned to earth4 ,time leaves on nothing its failing marks so deeply furrowed as upon men and trees1 and here in the woods upon no other trees so deeply as upon the birches4 ,lovely beyond all trees in their shining1 slender youth1 they grow immeasurably aged with the years1 especially the yellow birch1 whose grim1 grizzled boles seemed more like weathered columns of stone than living trees4 ,one old monster1 with a hole in his base that a bear might den in1 towering till his shoulders overtopped the tallest spruce1 stood leaning his gnarled hands upon the air1 as a bent and aged man leans with his knotty hands upon a cane4 ,a hundred years he might have been leaning so2 a hundred years more he might continue in his slow decline1 till1 with a crash1 he falls to lie for a hundred years to come across a prostrate form that fell uncounted years before4 ,i was standing on the tough1 hollow rind of such a birch1 so long1 long dead that its carcass had gone to dust1 leaving only this empty shell that looked like a broken1 half-buried piece of aqueduct4 ,it was neither tree nor pipe1 however1 but the ,house of ,porcupines1 as ,i could plainly hear by the grunting inside4 ,a pile of droppings at the door of the house told the story of generations of porkies going in and out before the present family came into their inheritance4 ,i knocked on the rubbery walls with my foot1 but not hard1 for ,i might break through and hurt ,mother or ,father ,porky1 or possibly the baby that ,i saw along the pond that night4 ,no careful1 right-minded person steps on or hurts a porcupine in any manner4 ,i went on out of the sound of their teeth1 for chattering teeth are not consoling1 and the woods were gray enough4 ,gray and vast and magnificently ruinous1 yet eternally new they were1 the old walls slowly crumbling1 and over them1 out of their heaped disorder1 the fresh walls rising to the high-arched roof that never falls4 ,to-day the deep1 hollow halls were shut to me by the arras of the gloom1 and so smoky rolled the rain beneath the roof that even the black rafters of the birches were scarcely visible2 but all the closer about me1 in the wildest wealth and splendor1 lay the furniture of the forest floor4 ,never were wools dyed and woven with a pile so rich and deep as the cover of mosses and lichens that carpeted this rude1 cluttered floor4 ,rolled and wrinkled and heaped up over the stumps1 it lay1 nowhere stretched1 nowhere swept1 a bronze and green and gold ground1 figured and flowered endlessly2 and down the longest1 deepest wrinkle a darkling little stream6 ,it was a warp of sphagnum moss with woof of lichens1 liverworts1 ferns1 mushrooms1 club mosses1 and shier flowers of the shadows1 that was woven for the carpet--long1 vivid runners of lycopodium1 the fingered sort1 or club moss1 and its fan-leaved cousin1 the ground pine1 now in fruit1 its clusters of spikes like tiny candelabra standing ready to be lighted all over the floor2 and everywhere1 on every tree-trunk1 stump1 and log1 and stone the scale mosses1 myriads of them1 in blotches of exquisite shapes and colors1 giving the gray-green tone to the walls as the sphagnums gave the vivid bronze-green to the floor4 ,down to about the level of my head1 the dominant note in the color scheme of the walls1 hung the gray reindeer moss1 tufts and shreds and pointed bunches of it like old men's grizzled beards4 ,some of the spruces and twisted cedars were covered with it4 ,shorter in staple than the usnea of the ,south1 stiffer and lighter in color1 it is far less somber and funereal2 but a forest bearded with it looks older than time4 ,this moss is the favorite winter food of the moose and caribou and deer1 and so clean had the moose and deer eaten it from the trees1 up as high as they could reach1 that the effect on a clear day was as if a thin gray fog had settled in the forest at an even six-foot level from the ground4 ,worked in among the lichens and mosses1 quite without design1 were the deep-woods flowers--patches of goldthread1 beds of foam-flower and delicate wood-sorrel and the brilliant little bunchberry4 ,wherever the sunlight had a chance to touch the cold1 boggy bottom it seemed to set the punk on fire and blaze up into these scarlet berries1 stumps and knolls and slopes aflame with them1 to burn on through the gloom until they should be smothered by the snow4 ,twin-flower and partridge-berry were laced in little mats about the bases of the trees2 here and there the big red fruit of trillium and the nodding blue berries of clintonia were mixed in a spot of gay color with berries of the twisted stalk1 the wild lily-of-the-valley1 and the fiery seed-balls of the ,indian turnip4 ,these touches of color were like the effect of flowers about a stately1 somber room1 for this was an ancient and a solemn house of mighty folk4 ,if the little people came to dwell in the shadow of these noble great they must be content with whatever crumbs of sunshine fell from the heaven-spread table over them to the damp and mouldering floor4 ,there were corners so dark that only the coral orchid and the ,indian pipe pushed up through the mat of leaves2 and other spots1 half open to the sky1 where the cinnamon fern and the lady fern waved their lovely plumes1 and the wood fern1 the beech1 the oak1 and the crested shield ferns grew together1 forced thus to share the scanty light dropped to them from the overflowing feast above4 ,but ,i never saw mushrooms in such marvelous shapes and colors and in such indescribable abundance as here4 ,the deep forest was like a natural cavern for them1 its cold1 dank twilight feeding their elfin lamps until the whole floor was lighted with their ghostly glow4 ,clearest and coldest burned the pale-green amanita1 and with it1 surpassingly beautiful in color and design1 the egg-topped muscaria1 its baleful taper in a splotched and tinted shade of blended orange yellows1 fading softly toward the rim4 ,besides these1 and shorter on their stems1 were white and green and purple russulas1 and great burning red ones1 the size of large poinsettia blooms2 and groups of brown boletus1 scattered golden chanterelles1 puff-balls1 exquisite coral clusters1 and1 strangest of them all1 like handfuls of frosted fog1 the snowy medusa4 ,these last ,i gathered for my lunch1 together with some puff-balls and a few campestris1 whose spores1 ,i suppose1 may have been brought into the woods with the horses when this tract was lumbered years ago4 ,but ,i had little appetite for mushrooms4 ,it was the sight of them1 dimly luminous in the rain1 that held me1 their squat lamps burning with a spectral light which filled the dusky spaces of the forest full of goblin gloom4 ,as ,i sat watching the uncanny lights there was a rush of small feet down the birch at my back1 a short stop just above my head1 and a volley of windy talk that might have blown out every elf light in the neighborhood4 ,it was very sudden and1 breaking into the utter stillness1 it was almost startling4 ,a moose could hardly have made more noise4 ,i said nothing back nor took any notice of him4 ,he could kick up the biggest sort of a rumpus if he wished to1 for the woods needed it4 ,i only wondered that he had a tongue1 dwelling forever here in this solitude4 ,but a red squirrel's tongue is equal to any solitude1 and more than once ,i have caught him talking against it1 challenging the silence of all outdoors1 as ,i have seen small boys challenge each other to a blatting-match4 ,by and by ,i turned1 and so startled him that he dropped a cluster of green berries from his mouth almost upon my head4 ,it was a large bunch of arbor vit berries that he was going to store away1 for1 though he sleeps much of the winter1 he is an inveterate hoarder1 working overtime1 down the summer1 as if the approaching winter were to be seven lean years long4 ,i was glad he had not obtruded earlier1 but now he reminded me properly that it was long past noon1 and high time for me to get back to camp4 ,it was later than ,i thought1 for the woods had gradually grown lighter1 the rain had almost ceased1 and by the time ,i reached camp had stopped altogether4 ,while we were at supper the sun broke through on the edge of the west and ran the rounded basin of the pond over-full with gold4 ,i stepped down to the shore to watch the glorious closing of the day4 ,the clouds had lifted nearly to the tops of the mountains1 where their wings were still spread1 feathering the sky with gray for far around2 a few fallen plumes lying snowy white upon the dark slopes of the lesser hills2 then pouring down the hills into the pond1 splashing over the gleaming mountains and up against the sky1 burst the flood of golden light with indescribable glory4 8,all ready10 said the guide1 touching me on the arm1 and ,i stepped into the bow of the canoe as he pushed quietly off4 ,an ,indian never moved with softer paddle1 nor ever did a birch-bark canoe glide off with the ease of this one under the hand of ,john ,eastman1 as we moved along in the close shadows of the shore4 ,the light was passing1 but the flush of color still lay on the lovely face of the water with a touch of warmth and life that seemed little less than joy2 a serene1 but not a solemn joy1 for there was too much girlish roundness and freshness to the countenance of the water1 too much happiness in the little hills and woods that watched her1 and in the jealous old mountain that frowned darkly down4 ,mine1 too1 were the eyes of a lover1 and in my heart was the lover's pain1 for what had ,i to offer this eternal youth and loveliness8 ,the prow of the canoe swerved with a telling movement that sent my eyes quick to the shore1 to see a snow-shoe rabbit racing down a little cove hard at me1 with something--a stir of alder leaves1 a sound of long1 leaping feet making off into the swamp--that had been pursuing him4 ,it was probably a wildcat that had leaped and missed the rabbit and seen us from within his covert4 ,what lightning eyes and lightning legs1 thus to leap and turn together6 ,the rabbit had run almost to the canoe1 and sat listening from behind a root at the edge of the water1 ears straight up and body so tense with excitement that we nosed along close enough to touch him with a paddle before he had eyes and ears for us4 ,even then it was his twitching1 sensitive nose that warned him1 for his keen ears caught no sound2 and1 floating down upon him thus1 we must have looked to his innocent eyes as much like a log or a two-headed moose as like men4 ,softly in and out with the narrow fret of shadow that hemmed the margin of the pond swam the gray canoe1 a creature of the water1 a very part of our creature selves1 our amphibious body1 the form we swam with before the hills were born4 ,brother to the muskrat and the beaver1 ,i stemmed along1 as much at home as they among the pickerel-weed and the cow-lilies1 and leaving across the silvery patches of the open water as silent a wake as they4 ,nothing could move across such silvery quiet without a trail4 ,so stirless was the water that the wake of a feeding fish was visible a hundred yards away4 ,within the tarnished smooches of the lily-pads a muskrat might move about and not be seen2 but not a trout could swirl close to the burnished surface of the open water without a ripple that ran whispering into every little inlet around the shore4 ,the circle of the pond was almost perfect1 so that ,i roved1 at a glance1 the whole curving shore-line1 watching keenly for whatever might come down to feed or drink4 ,we came up to a patch of pickerel-weed and frightened a brood of half-grown sheldrakes that went rushing off across the water1 kicking up a streak of suds and making a noise like the launching of a fleet of tiny ships4 ,heading into a little cove1 we met a muskrat coming straight across our bows4 ,a dip of the paddle sent us almost into her4 ,a quicker dive she never made nor a more startling one1 for the smack as she struck the water jumped me half out of the canoe4 ,her head broke the surface a dozen yards beyond us1 and we followed her into the mouth of a stream and on to a hummock into which she swam as a boat swims under a bridge1 or more as a train runs into a tunnel1 for an arching hole opened into the mound1 just above the level of the stream1 through which she had glided out of sight4 ,hardly had she disappeared before she popped up again from deep under the mound1 at the other side1 and close to the canoe1 starting back once more down-stream4 ,she had dodged us4 ,her nose and eyes and ears were just above the water and a portion of her back2 her bladelike tail was arched1 its middle point1 only1 above the surface1 its sheering1 perpendicular edges doing duty as propeller1 keel1 and rudder all at once4 ,as she made off the guide squeaked shrilly with his lips4 ,instantly she turned and came back1 swimming round and round the canoe1 trying to interpret the sounds1 puzzled to know how they could come from the canoe1 and fearing that something might be wrong inside the house4 ,she dived to find out4 ,by this time two young ones had floated into the mouth of the tunnel1 thinking their mother was calling them1 blinking there in the soft light so close that ,i might have reached them with my hand4 ,satisfied that the family was in order1 the old rat reappeared1 and no amount of false squeaking would turn her back4 ,a few bends up the stream and we heard the sound of falling water at the beaver dam4 ,fresh work had been done on the dam2 but we waited in vain for a sight of the workers4 ,they would not go on with their building4 ,one of the colony 7there were not more than two families of them1 ,i think7 swam across the stream1 and came swiftly down to within a few feet of us1 when1 scenting us1 perhaps1 he warped short about and vanished among the thick bushes that trailed from the bank of the stream4 ,a black duck came over1 just above our heads1 with wings whirring like small airplane propellers1 as she bore straight out toward the middle of the pond4 ,we were passing a high place along the shore when a dark object1 a mere spot of black1 seemed to move off at the side of us against the white line of the pebbles1 and ,i found that ,i was already being sent silently toward it4 ,my pulse quickened1 for the thing moved very slowly2 and behind it a lesser blur that also moved--very slowly2 so deep was the darkness of the overhanging trees1 however1 that the nose of the canoe ploughed softly into the sand beside the creatures1 and ,i had not made out the fat old porcupine1 and1 creeping a foot or two behind her1 as if he might catch up by to-morrow1 perhaps1 the baby porky4 ,the old mother was feeding on bits of lily-pads washed up along the shore1 picking them from among the stones with her paws as if she intended to finish her supper by to-morrow1 perhaps1 when her baby had covered the foot or two of space between them and caught up with her4 ,she was so intent on this serious and deliberate business that she never looked up as ,i stopped beside her2 she only grunted and chattered her teeth2 but ,i disturbed the baby1 apparently1 for he speeded up1 and pretty soon came alongside his mother1 who turned savagely upon him and told him to mind his manners1 which he did by humping into a little heap1 sticking his head down between two stones1 and raying the young quills out across his back in a fan of spines4 ,he didn't budge for about five minutes4 ,then he hurried again--right up beside the old one--a thing so highly improper in porkypinedom1 and so deleterious to porkypine health1 that she turned and1 with another growl1 humped her fat little porky again into a quiet and becoming bunch of quills4 ,this time she read him a lecture on the 8,whole ,duty of ,children40 ,it was in the porcupine-pig language1 and her teeth clicked so that ,i am not sure ,i got it verbatim1 but ,i think she said1 quite distinctly3 8,a child should always say what's true1 ,and speak when he is spoken to1 ,and behave mannerly at table3 ,at least as far as he is able0-- for1 seeing him so obediently and properly humped1 she repented her of her severity and1 reaching out with her left paw1 picked up a nice1 whole lily-pad and1 turning half around1 handed it to him as much as to say1 8,there1 now2 but chew it up very thoroughly1 as you did the handle of the carving-knife in the camp last night40 ,it was a sweet glimpse into the family life of the woods2 and as the canoe backed off and turned again down-stream ,i was saying to myself3 8,every night my prayers ,i say1 ,and get my dinner every day1 ,and every day that ,i've been good ,i get an orange after food0-- or a nice1 round lily-pad4 ,the precious light was fading1 and we had yet more than half the magic circle of the shore to round4 ,as we passed out into the pond again a flock of roosting blackbirds whirred noisily from the 8pucker-brush10 or sweet-gale bushes1 frightened by the squeal of the bushes against the sides of the canoe2 and hardly had their whirring ceased when1 ahead of me1 his head up1 his splendid antlers tipped with fire1 stood a magnificent buck4 ,he had heard the birds1 or had scented us1 and1 whirling in his tracks1 curiosity1 defiance1 and alarm in every line of his tense1 tawny body1 stood for one eternal instant in my eye1 when1 shaking off his amazement1 he turned and1 bounding over the sweet-gale and alders1 went crashing into the swamp4 ,i had neither camera nor gun2 but1 better than both1 ,i had eyes--not such good eyes as ,john ,eastman's1 for he could see in the dark--but mine with my spectacles were better than a camera2 for mine are a moving-picture theater--screen1 film1 machine1 and camera1 all behind my spectacles1 and this glorious creature for the picture1 with the dark hills beyond1 the meadowy margin of the pond in the foreground1 and over the buck1 and the pond1 and the dark green hills1 and over me a twilight that never was nor ever can be thrown upon a screen6 ,i had come into the wilds of ,maine without so much as a fish-line--though ,i have fished months of my life away1 and am not unwilling to fish away a considerable portion of whatever time may still be left me4 ,but am ,i not able1 in these later days1 to spend my time 8in the solitude of this vast wilderness with other employments than1 these1--employments perfectly sweet and innocent and ennobling8 ,for one that comes with a pencil to sketch or sing1 a thousand come with an axe or rifle4 ,what a coarse and imperfect use ,indians and hunters make of ,nature6444 ,strange that so few ever come to the woods to see how the pine lives and grows and spires1 lifting its evergreen arms to the light1--to see its perfect success2 but most are content to behold it in the shape of many broad boards brought to market1 and deem that its true success6444 ,every creature is better alive than dead1 men and moose and pine trees1 and he who understands it aright will rather preserve its life than destroy it40 ,thoreau did not teach me that truth1 for every lover of life discovers it himself2 but how long before me it was that he found it out1 and how many other things besides it he found out here in the big woods6 ,three-quarters of a century ago he camped on ,katahdin1 and on ,chesuncook1 and down the ,allegash2 but now he camps wherever a tent is pitched or a fire is lighted in the woods of ,maine4 ,his name is on the tongue of every forest tree1 and on every water2 and over every carry at twilight may be seen his gray canoe and ,indian guide4 ,and ,i wonder1 a century hence1 who will camp here where ,i am camping1 and here discover again the woods of ,maine8 ,for the native shall return4 ,and as 8every creature is better alive than dead1 man and moose and pine tree02 and as 8he who understands it aright will rather preserve his life than destroy it0 so shall he seek his healing here4 ,the light had gone out of the sky4 ,it was after nine o'clock4 ,a deep purple had flowed in and filled the basin of the pond1 thickening about its margins till nothing but the long chalk-marks of the birches showed double along the shore4 ,the high1 inverted cone of ,spencer stood just in front of the canoe as we headed out across the pond toward the camp1 its shadow and its substance only faint suggestions now1 for all things had turned to shadow1 the solid substance of the day having been dissolved in this purple flood and poured into the beaker of the night4 ,a moose 8barked0 off on a marshy point near the dam behind us2 a loon went laughing over1 shaking the hollow sides of ,spencer and all the echoing walls of the woods with his weird and mirthless cry4 ,against the black base of the mountain a faint bluish cloud appeared--the smoke of our camp-fire that1 slowly sinking through the heavy air1 spread out to meet us over the hushed and sleeping pond4 ,,chapter ,,viii ,,woodchuck ,,lodge ,,and ,,literature ,,chapter ,,viii ,,woodchuck ,,lodge ,,and ,,literature ,have ,i proof of my contention here8 ,throughout this book1 on many sides of the question1 ,i have argued that the earth is as young as it ever was2 that ,nature1 though it can all but be destroyed in spots1 as in ,new ,york ,city1 cannot be tamed2 that we are still the stuff of dreams1 if we could find rest for our souls and the chance to dream4 ,we are not lacking imagination and the power for high endeavor4 ,we master material things2 we can also handle the raw materials of the spirit and give them enduring form4 ,but how can we come by the raw materials of the spirit8 ,and where shall we find new patterns on which to mould our new and enduring forms8 ,matter and pattern are still to be found in nature--substance1 essence1 presence1 8,whose dwelling is the light of setting suns1 ,and the round ocean and the living air1 ,and the blue sky1 and in the mind of man40 ,i have had much to do with young people1 especially with those of creative minds1 divinely capable minds1 could they be freed from the doubt of their times1 and the fear of their own powers4 ,here let me give them a glimpse of an old man of their own times1 these evil times when all of the raw material of books has been used up2 an old man with a boy's eyes and a child's heart and a pen and a bluebird or two1 and a woodchuck--and1 of course1 a magical chance4 ,it was an ,october day4 ,and how it rained that day6 ,an ,october day in the ,catskills1 and ,i was making my way1 with my friend ,de,loach1 out of the little village of ,roxbury by the road that winds up the hills to ,woodchuck ,lodge4 ,hardscrabble ,creek knew it was raining1 and met me noisily at a turn of the road1 just before ,i came to the square stone schoolhouse 7now a dwelling7 where little ,johnny ,burroughs had gone for his book learning some seventy-five years before4 ,leaving the creek1 ,i found myself on a roller-coaster road athwart the hills1 making up with spurt and dip to a low1 weathered farmhouse1 thin and gray and old1 that seemed to be resting by the roadside thus far over the mountain on its way to the valley4 ,i knew it from the distance and through the rain1 only it seemed even older1 smaller1 poorer than ,i had expected to find it4 ,but how close it sat to the roadside1 and how eagerly it gazed down into the valley where the store and the station and the meeting-house were--to see who might be stirring1 ,i thought1 down there in the valley6 ,or perhaps it sat here for the landscape4 ,i was approaching ,woodchuck ,lodge1 and it seemed very old and lonely in the rain that slanted along the wide gray slopes1 and too frail to stand long against the pull of the valley and the push of the heights crowding hard upon it from behind4 ,a tiny kitchen garden at its corner1 and across the road a stone wall1 an orchard of untrimmed apple trees bent with fruit1 and a small barn on the edge of a sharply falling field--this was the picture in the rain1 the immediate foreground of the picture1 which stood out on a field of hay-lands and pastures rolling out of the rainy sky and down1 far down where their stone walls ran into the mists at the bottom of the valley4 ,these were the ancestral fields4 ,burroughs was born a little farther along this road1 the house no longer standing4 ,here at the ,lodge he was now living1 and in the old barn across the road he had a study4 ,these were his fields by right of pen1 not plough2 these were his buildings1 too1 and they showed it4 ,they sheltered him and gave him this outlook1 but they utterly lacked the pride of the gilded weathervane1 the stolid1 four-square complacency1 that well-fed1 well-stocked security of the prosperous ,american farm4 ,an old pair of tramps were house and barn1 lovers of the hills1 resting here above the valley4 ,it was in that old barn1 on an overturned chicken-coop1 with a door or some other thing as humble for table1 that ,burroughs had written most of the chapters in 8,the ,summit of the ,years10 in 8,time and ,change10 8,the ,breath of ,life10 and 8,under the ,apple-,trees40 ,so a literary farm should look1 ,i suppose1--a farm that produces books as abundantly as a prairie farm produces cattle and corn2 yet every farm1 ,i think1 should have a patch of poetry1 as every professional poet certainly needs to keep a garden and a pig4 ,for years ,burroughs grew fancy grapes and celery for the ,new ,york market1 along with his literary essays for the reading public4 ,as we came in on the vine-covered porch of the ,lodge1 we were met by ,dr4 ,barrus1 ,burroughs's physician and biographer1 who told us with considerable anxiety that the old man was not at home4 8,he is out visiting his traps1 ,i suppose10 she said4 8,he's just like a boy4 ,i can't do anything with him4 ,he'll come home wringing wet4 ,and he's not a bit well40 ,he came home true to form4 ,it was an hour later1 perhaps1 that ,i saw1 from the steps1 a dim figure in the blur of the rain3 an old man plodding slowly down the hill road1 a stick and a steel trap in his left hand1 and in his right hand a heavy woodchuck4 ,it was ,john ,burroughs1 the real ,burroughs1 for ,i knew as ,i watched him that ,i had never seen1 never clearly seen1 this man before--not exactly this simple1 rain-soaked man with the snow of more than eighty winters on his head1 with the song of eternal springtime in his heart1 and a woodchuck1 like a lantern1 in his hand4 ,this figure in the rain should be seen coming down every page of ,burroughs's books4 ,every line should be read in the light of this lantern in his hand1 for its wick is in his heart1 and its flame shines from 8,wake-,robin0 to 8,the ,summit of the ,years40 ,burroughs was the eternal boy--splashing through the puddles1 wet to the skin2 the boy for whom these fields of his father's farm were as wild as the jungles of ,africa2 and this woodchuck in his hand 7it was a big one67 a very elephant1 except for the tusks4 ,but to be like this is to be both boy and philosopher--boy and writer1 ,i should say4 ,and to see him thus--falling with the rain1 whirling with the dust1 singing with the birds1 growing with the grass1 his whole being one with the elements1 earth and wild-life and weather--thus to see the man is to know how to read his books4 ,as he came up to the porch1 his slouch hat spouting like an eaves-trough1 he greeted me cordially1 but as a stranger1 not recognizing me for an instant2 then dashing the rain from his eyes1 he dropped the woodchuck1 drew off1 and with a quick righthander to my chest1 which almost took me off my feet1 he cried1 8,sharp1 we'll have woodchuck for dinner60 ,and we did--not the one he had just dropped on the floor1 for that one he skinned and salted and gave me to bring home to ,boston4 ,we had canned woodchuck that noon at the ,lodge4 ,it was ,burroughs's custom to serve his guests a real literary dinner2 and of course it must savor of the locality4 ,this called for woodchuck1 or 8,roxbury ,lamb10 as you preferred2 and for roast ,roxbury ,lamb the rule for rabbit-stew prevails3 first get your woodchuck2 not always readily done1 for the meat-market down at the village is sometimes out of woodchuck4 ,so the ,laird of the ,lodge keeps them canned ahead4 ,the clouds cleared in the afternoon1 the sun came down upon the mountains1 and we looked out from the porch over a world so large and new and lovely that ,i remember it still as a keen pain1 so unprepared was ,i for it1 with my level background of meadow and marsh and bay4 ,endless reaches of river and bay1 of wavy marshland and hazy barrens of pine1 were my heritage of landscape as a child4 ,and ,i have never been able to measure up to the mountains1 nor to this scene1 here from the porch--this reach without level2 space both deep and high as well as wide2 this valley completely hiding a village below you2 ridges above you where stone walls climb over the sky2 mountains far across with forests flung over their shoulders1 and farms1 like colored patchwork1 stitched into the rents of the forests2 runnels singing down the pastures2 and roads1 your road to school1 so close to the verge that only the stone wall stays you from stepping off the edge of the world6 ,none of this had ,i known as a boy4 8,who couldn't write10 ,i muttered1 8born into this glorious world60 ,i have seen much grander mountains4 8,not a rugged1 masculine touch in all the view10 ,burroughs said to me4 8,it is all sweet and feminine1 and doubtless has had a feminizing influence upon my character and writing40 ,it may be so4 ,there is a plenty of wilder1 stormier landscape than this in these ,western ,catskills1 but certainly none that ,i ever saw that is lovelier for a human home4 ,and here ,burroughs now sleeps1 under the boulder where he played as a child1 and where all this beauty of winding valley and blue1 bending sky upon the mountains lies forever about him4 ,there is something terribly important and lasting about childhood4 ,almost any environment will do1 if only the child is happy4 ,it is the child who counts4 ,in every child the world is recreated and in his memory stays recreated4 ,more and more1 as the years lengthen1 do we find ourselves longing--for the pine barrens1 for the vast green reach of the marshes2 and were my feet free this summer day1 they would run with my heart to the river--not to the mountains2 to the river1 the ,maurice ,river1 where the bubbling wrens build in the smother of reed and calamus1 and where this very day the pink-white marshmallows make1 at high noon1 a gorgeous sunset over miles of the meadows4 ,i love and understand those great1 green levels of marshland as ,i shall love and understand no other face of nature1 it may be4 ,i know perfectly what ,lanier means when he sings1 8,oh1 what is abroad in the marsh and the terminal sea8 ,somehow my soul seems suddenly free ,from the weighing of fate and the sad discussion of sin1 ,by the length and the breadth and the sweep of the marshes of ,glynn40 ,i said the clouds cleared late that afternoon1 but it was still raining when1 after dinner1 ,i brought a box from the woodshed to the front porch for ,burroughs to skin the woodchuck4 ,here we sat down together1 the flabby1 flaccid marmot between us1 the whole ,october afternoon our own4 ,burroughs pulled a rudimentary whetstone out of his coat pocket and touched up the blade of his knife--of his spirit1 too1 running his thumb along the blade of every faculty as he settled to the skinning1 his shining eyes1 his vibrant voice1 his eager movements1 all showing how razor-keen an edge the old man was still capable of taking4 ,he got hold of a forefoot of the 'chuck and started to talk on the flight of birds1 reviewing the various stages of the controversy on the soaring of hawks that he had been carrying on in the press1 when1 suddenly dropping his knife1 he disappeared through the door and returned in a minute with a letter from some scientist1 whose argument1 as ,i remember it1 was wholly at variance with ,burroughs's theory1 but which closed with a strange word1 a word the old man had never seen before and could not find in his dictionary4 ,it was some aeronautical term1 ,i think4 ,handing me the letter1 his finger1 as well as his eyes1 fastened to that stranger from beyond the dictionary1 he said3 8,that chap doesn't know much about soaring hawks2 but there's a new word4 ,see that6 ,he knows a heap more than ,i do about the ,english language40 ,he sat down to the skinning again4 ,no cut had yet been made1 nor ever would be made1 apparently1 unless he used the back of his blade1 for it was plain that ,burroughs kept that old whetstone for his wits only4 ,he sawed away and talked as if inspired4 ,i held the other forefoot1 a short1 broad foot1 like a side-hill gouger's1 on the oldest1 toughest 'chuck in the ,catskills4 8,do you know what ,i am going to do80 he asked1 switching the conversation into the hard-working knife4 8,i'm going to pickle this old rascal and send him by you to your family4 ,i want you all to have a dish of #8,roxbury ,lamb4'0 8,but we have our own ,hingham ,lamb out on ,mullein ,hill10 ,i suggested cautiously4 8,and ,i don't like to rob you this way40 8,no robbery at all4 ,besides1 these are a better breed than yours in ,hingham40 8,but my folks don't seem very fond of 'em10 ,i protested4 8,they cook with a rank odor40 8,oh1 you don't know how to prepare them10 he answered4 8,let me show you a trick10 and deftly cutting in between the neck and the shoulder1 he took out the thyroid glands4 8,now you're going to take this one home4 ,there'll be no strong smell when you cook this fellow40 99 99 99 99 99 ,our talk turned to poetry--the skinning still going forward--the woodchuck brimming full of verse2 for ,burroughs1 at every other turn of his knife1 would seem to open up a vein of song4 ,the beauty of nature to ,burroughs had always been more than skin deep4 ,he wanted the skin for a coat2 the carcass he wanted for a roast2 but here was a chance for him to look into some of the hidden1 fearful things of nature1 and the sight inside of that woodchuck made him stop and sing4 ,but how old and frail he looked6 ,and he was old1 very old1 eighty-four the coming ,april #i4 ,and he was suddenly sad4 ,resting a bit from his labor1 he began to chant to the slackening rain3 8',tis a dull sight ,to see the year dying4 ,when winter winds ,set yellow woods sighing1 ,sighing1 ,o sighing4 8,when such a time cometh1 ,i do retire ,into an old room ,beside a bright fire2 ,oh1 pile a bright fire6 8,i never look out ,nor attend to the blast1 ,for all to be seen ,is the leaves falling fast1 ,falling1 falling60 ,and he rubbed his thin hands together1 spread them to the warmth1 and repeated two or three times1 8,oh1 pile a bright fire60 8,oh1 pile a bright fire60 ,more than once1 ,i heard him returning to those lines2 and saw him several times reading the last stanzas of the poem from a typewritten copy on his porch table1 chafing his hands the while1 and extending them before the imaginary fire as if they were cold1 or as if he felt through his hands1 so sensitive was he physically1 an actual fire in the written lines4 ,the poem is ,edward ,fitzgerald's 8,old ,song10 and ,i am sure ,burroughs was learning it by heart1 and making rather hard work of it1 ,i thought1 for one who had already in memory so much good poetry4 ,but he was getting very old4 ,then1 at my request he said some of the lines of his own poem1 8,waiting40 8,the only thing ,i ever did10 he remarked1 8with real poetry in it40 8,how about the philosophy in it10 ,i inquired1 8,do you find it sound after all these years80 ,there was an audible chuckle inside of him4 ,then rather solemnly he replied3 8,my father killed himself early trying to clear these acres of debts and stones4 ,i might have been in my grave1 too1 these forty years had ,i tried to hurry it his way4 ,i waited4 ,by and by ,henry ,ford came along and cleared up the whole farm for me4 ,here ,i am1 and here 8,serene1 ,i fold my hands and wait1 ,nor care for wind1 nor tide1 nor sea2 ,i rave no more 'gainst ,time or ,fate1 ,for lo6 my own shall come to me40 ,we were soon deep in a discussion of free verse1 no hungry trout ever rising to the fly with more snap than ,burroughs4 ,he called the free-verse writers the ,reds of ,american literature1 the figure sticking to him1 until some months later in ,california he worked the idea out into a brief newspaper article under that title1 the last piece1 ,i think1 for publication from his pen4 8,name me one good modern poem10 ,i said1 8moulded on the old forms1 with rhyme and meter40 ,he let go his knife again1 turned his face once more to the rain1 through which the mountains were now emerging1 and asked1 8,do you know ,loveman's #8,raining' and how he wandered up from ,georgia to find himself in ,new ,york ,city1 his boat gone1 or his money gone1 or something gone--for he was someway stranded1 ,i believe--and it was raining80 ,and the old man began-- 8#8,it isn't raining rain to me1 ,it's raining daffodils2 ,in every dimpled drop ,i see ,wild flowers on the hills4 ,the clouds of gray engulf the day1 ,and overwhelm the town1 ,it isn't raining rain to me1 ,it's raining roses down41'0 while the rain across the hills1 shot through with sunset light1 fell all violets and clover-bloom and roses on the mountains and on the roof of ,woodchuck ,lodge4 ,the thing on the box between us was utterly forgotten1 but only for the moment4 8,damn those fleas60 the old poet exploded1 at the end of the recitation1 swinging with both hands at his long white whiskers1 8,that 'chuck's alive with fleas60 ,so ,i had observed2 and ,i had been speculating1 as ,i watched them quitting their sinking craft and boarding the sweeping beard of the poet1 how many of them it might take to halt the flow of song4 ,i was far off in my reckoning4 ,burroughs knocked them out and went on3 8,that's a good poem because it goes straight to the heart4 ,it's an experience4 ,he lived it4 ,and its form is perfect4 ,you can't change a syllable in it4 ,it's on the old forms1 yet it's true to itself4 ,and see how simple1 direct1 and sincere it is6 and how lovely6 ,i call that good poetry40 99 99 99 99 99 ,we had been more than three hours getting the pelt off that woodchuck and all of the poetry out of him4 ,as ,i sat by1 ,i saw what ,i had hardly realized before3 that the hand with the knife must often rest1 though the eager mind seemed almost incapable of resting4 ,the national elections were approaching1 and from poetry we plunged into politics1 where ,i feared we were bound to disagree1 but where1 to my surprise1 ,i found we were standing together on the ,league of ,nations1 ,burroughs having forsaken his party on that issue4 8,it's the only thing60 he cried4 8,that's what we fought for4 ,rob us of that1 and the whole terrible sacrifice is futile--criminal60 ,and later1 after my return home1 he wrote me3 8,well1 the elections did not go as both of us had hoped4 ,de,loach was on the winning side1 as ,i suppose all the great moneyed interests were4 ,but thank heaven ,i am not in that crowd4 ,if it means an utter repudiation of the ,league of ,nations1 then for the first time ,i am ashamed that ,i am an ,american4 ,if ,i were in ,europe ,i could not hold up my head and say1 #8,i am from the ,united ,states6' ,if we have failed to see ourselves as a member of the great family of nations1 with solemn duties toward the rest of the world1 to perform as such a member1 then we have slumped morally as badly as did the ,germans when they set out to enslave the rest of the world60 ,but to return to ,woodchuck ,lodge1 to the old man with the boy's jack-knife in his hand1 and the boy's heart in his breast--and so1 the poet's outlook in his eyes4 ,for he was more poet than scientist1 more poet than theologian1 though every poet1 like all ,gaul1 is divided into three parts1 and these--science1 music1 and theology--are the parts4 ,the theologian is the ultimate thinker4 ,his chief attribute is consistency--even unto death4 ,nothing will shatter a system of theology as will a trifling inconsistency4 ,burroughs was a bad theologian1 the worst ,i know by the test of consistency4 ,yet who among the theologians is more religious8 ,or leaves us with a realer consciousness of the presence of ,god in nature8 8,you and ,i approach this thing from different angles10 he said to me4 8,we come to ,god down different roads4 ,our terms differ4 ,you say #8,father4' ,i say #8,nature4' ,but whatever we call ,him1 ,he is the same1 and the same for each of us4 ,our divergent paths at the start1 come out together at the end4 ,we worship the same ,god40 ,we did differ radically in our approach1 in our terminology1 and as ,i had always thought1 must of necessity differ as radically in our faiths and works4 ,that was a foolish1 vainglorious conceit4 ,i wish every disconcerted reader of 8,the ,light of ,day0 and 8,accepting the ,universe0 had heard the old author interpret himself that day4 ,that reader would have understood1 as he sat there watching the light of a real day breaking in over the rainy autumn landscape1 what ,carruth meant by1 8,a haze on the far horizon1 ,the infinite tender sky1 ,the ripe rich tint of the corn-fields1 ,and the wild geese sailing high1 ,and all over upland and lowland ,the charm of the goldenrod-- ,some of us call it ,autumn1 ,and others call it ,god60 ,the pelt was finally off2 the carcass in pickle for me2 and the sun was out1 flooding ,montgomery ,valley and the heaving ranges beyond4 ,an automobile load of callers came1 stopped a little time1 and went away2 another load came and went away1 and ,burroughs1 now quite rested1 brought out the manuscripts of two new books1 which were about ready for the publishers4 ,i looked at the piles of work1 then at the frail old man who had heaped them up1 and thought with shame of my own strength--and laziness4 ,to be approaching eighty-four with one book on the press and two other books in manuscript6 ,what a long steady stroke he had pulled across these more than sixty years of writing to be bringing him in at the finish1 two full volumes ahead of the race6 ,three volumes indeed1 for 8,accepting the ,universe0 had not yet come from the press4 ,the quiet and calm of it all deeply impressed me4 ,the extreme opposite in temperament and action from his friend ,roosevelt1 there was nothing 8strenuous0 about this plodding old man1 nor ever had been4 8,serene ,i fold my hands and wait0 he had written in his twenty-third year1 and had practiced all these four-and-eighty years4 ,yet look at this amount of durable work accomplished4 ,it is well for us ,americans to remember just now that there is another than the 8strenuous0 type of life1 which is just as worthy of emulation1 and which is likely to be even more effective4 ,this was an ,october day at ,woodchuck ,lodge4 ,sixty-one years before the 8,atlantic ,monthly0 was actually printing ,burroughs's first essay1 8,expression40 ,i looked at the old man beside me with the pen in his fingers4 ,was it the same man8 the same pen8 ,lowell was the editor2 then ,fields1 ,howells1 ,aldrich1 ,scudder1 ,page1 ,perry1 to the present editor1 who has held his chair these dozen years2 and ,i watched the pen in ,burroughs's hand travel slowly across a corrected line of the manuscript and ,i remembered that in all the years since ,lowell was editor1 not for a single year had that pen failed to appear in the pages of the 8,atlantic40 ,was it strange that as ,i looked from the pen away to the ,catskills surrounding me ,i wondered if ,i were really looking into ,montgomery ,valley and not into ,sleepy ,hollow8 ,we guests had a plenty that night1 but ,burroughs went to bed supperless4 ,we guests slept indoors1 but ,burroughs made his bed out on the front porch1 where he could see the stars come over the mountains1 and the gates of dawn swing wide on the wooded crests1 when the new sweet day should come through and down into ,montgomery ,valley4 ,for ,burroughs has lived and loved everything he has written4 ,he cannot write of anything else4 ,our present-day writers1 especially our poets and nature writers1 take the wings of the morning 7or of the night7 unto the uttermost parts of the earth for copy4 ,burroughs visited distant places2 but he always wrote about the things at home4 8,fresh ,fields10 to be sure1 is out of ,england2 yet ,england was only an older home4 ,burroughs had seen strange1 extraordinary1 tropical things2 seen them1 to write little about them1 however1 for it is only the homely1 the ordinary1 the familiar things that stirred his imagination and moved his pen4 ,these were his things1 the furniture of his house1 the folks of his town2 for it was the hearth where he lived1 his home1 that he loved1 and it was the creatures living on it with him that gave him his great theme4 8,the whole gospel of my books10 he wrote1 8is stay at home1 see the wonderful and beautiful and the simple things all about you4 ,make the most of the near at hand40 99 99 99 99 99 ,it was a constant wonder to me how one could be so simple as ,burroughs1 and yet know so many places1 persons1 and books4 ,burroughs had met many people2 he had read many books1 and had written more than a score himself2 yet he was the simplest man ,i ever knew1 as simple as a child1--simpler1 indeed4 ,for children may be suspicious and self-conscious1 and even uninterested2 but ,burroughs's interest and curiosity grew with the years4 ,he carried his culture and his knife and his whetstone in his pocket4 ,they belonged to him2 but he belonged strictly to himself4 ,he remained to the end what the ,lord made him--and that is to be original4 ,pietro1 the sculptor1 has made ,burroughs in bronze1 resting on a rock1 his arm shading his face1 his eyes peering keenly into the future or the far-away4 ,pietro has made him a seer or a prophet4 ,he was much more the lover and the poet4 ,i sat with ,burroughs on that same rock1 the morning after the rainy day at the ,lodge1 and talked with him of some things long past1 of many things round about us1 but of few things of the future4 ,i saw him shield his face with his arm1 and look far off from the rock--to the rounded1 green-crested hills in the distance1 and down into the beautiful valley below4 ,but most of the time he was watching a chipmunk near by1 or scanning the pasture for woodchucks4 ,had ,i been ,pietro ,i should have made the old man flat on that boulder1 his beard a patch of lichen1 his slouch hat hard down on his eyes1 his head just over the round of the rock--and down the slope1 at the mouth of his burrow1 a big woodchuck on his haunches4 8,i've been studying the woodchuck all my life10 he said1 as we sat there on the rock1 8and there is no getting to the bottom of him40 ,i do not know whether ,burroughs climbed over the walls and up through the field again to this favorite spot of his boyhood in the few remaining days he had at the ,lodge4 ,this may have been the last time he looked out with seeing eyes over this landscape of valley and mountain that had been one of the deepest1 most abiding influences of his life4 ,as we sat there together1 the largeness and glory of the world3 colors1 contours1 the valley depths1 the quiet hills1 the wealth of life1 the full1 deep flood of autumn light--almost too much for common human eyes--the old man beside me said1 with a sigh3 8,i love it4 ,but it is hard to live up to it4 ,sometimes1 especially of late1 ,i feel it a burden too great to bear40 ,then1 as if guilty of some evil thought1 he brightened instantly1 pointed out a dam that he had built as a boy in the field below us1 for his own swimming-hole1 the ridge of sod and stone still showing2 told me stories of his parents2 described his sugar-making in the 8bush0 behind us2 nor referred again to the burden of the years1 weighing so heavily now upon him1 until we were leaving4 ,then1 as he came out to the road to see us off1 he said with tears in his eyes3 8,i hate to have you go4 ,i wish you could stay4 ,you boys are life to me now4 ,come again soon4 ,good-bye40 ,we promised we would1 and we did--in ,april1 the next ,april1 when we went up to say our last good-bye4 ,meantime he was off to ,california for the winter months4 ,before leaving he wrote to me from ,west ,park1 his home on the ,hudson3 ,i neglected to make any apologies for the long letter ,i wrote you the other day4 ,i promise not to do so again4 ,i am sending you an old notebook of mine1 filled with all sorts of jottings1 as you will see4 ,i send it as a keepsake4 ,we are off for ,california to-morrow4 ,hope to be there in early ,december4 ,we leave ,chicago on the #bith4 ,my address there will be ,la ,jolla1 ,san ,diego4 ,good luck to you and yours4 ,ever your friend ,,john ,,burroughs ,he kept his promise4 ,this was his last letter to me4 ,they were not very happy months in ,california4 ,visitors came to see him as usual2 he spoke in the schools2 and wrote up to the very end2 but he was weak1 often sick1 and always longing for home4 ,he knew if he was ever to see home again he must not delay long2 and he counted the days4 ,he wished to celebrate his birthday with his old friends1 at the old place2 and he was on the way1 speeding homeward1 with most of the long journey covered1 when1 suddenly1 the end came4 ,and is it at all strange that his last uttered words1 as he sank into unconsciousness1 should have been 8,how far are we from home80 ,on the front of the boulder which marks his grave1 those last words might well be cut1 as expressing the real theme of all his books1 the dominant note in all his life4 ,his old friends kept his birthday in the old place--in the 8,nest0 at ,riverby1 for the funeral2 and the next day1 his eighty-fourth birthday1 they carried him into his beloved mountains1 to his grave by the rock1 where so lately we had talked together1 and where1 since childhood1 he had found an altar for his soul4 ,how great a man ,burroughs was ,i do not know4 ,time knows4 ,i know that he had three of the elements of greatness as a writer3 simplicity1 sincerity1 and a true feeling for form4 ,and he had these to an uncommon degree4 ,i know that great men and little children loved him2 and that three generations already have been led oftener and farther into the out-of-doors by him than by any other ,american writer4 ,i know how ,burroughs thought of himself and of ,thoreau2 for in a letter1 several years ago to me he wrote3 ,thoreau is nearer the stars than ,i am4 ,i may be more human1 but he is as certainly more divine4 ,his moral and ethical value ,i think is much greater1 and he has a heroic quality that ,i cannot approach4 ,but ,i am not trying to estimate ,burroughs4 ,i am only sketching1 through the gray rain and in the golden light at the far end of the autumn1 one whom thousands of us read and love4 ,,the ,,end ,,transcriber',s ,,notes3 ,italicized text is surrounded by underscores3 italics4 ,obvious typographical errors have been corrected4 ,inconsistencies in hyphenation have been standardized4