Gala-Days. Gail Hamilton
out a quite sizable book.
"Travelled!" I said, looking him steadily in the face—"travelled! I went once up to Tudiz huckleberrying; and once, when there was a freshet, you took a superannuated broom and paddled me around the orchard in a leaky pig's-trough!"
He could not deny it; so he laughed, and said—
"Ah, well!—ah, well! Suit yourself. Take your trunk and pitch into Vesuvius, if you like. I won't stand in your way."
His acquiescence was ungraciously, and I believe I may say ambiguously, expressed; but it mattered little, for I gathered up my goods and chattels, strapped them into my trunk, and waited for the summer to send us on our way rejoicing—the gentle and gracious young summer, that had come by the calendar, but had lost her way on the thermometer. O these delaying Springs, that mock the merry-making of ancestral England! Is the world grown so old and stricken in years, that, like King David, it gets no heat? Why loiters, where lingers, the beautiful, calm-breathing June? Rosebuds are bound in her trailing hair, and the sweet of her garments always used to waft a scented gale over the happy hills.
"Here she was wont to go! and here! and here!
Just where the daisies, pinks, and violets grow;
Her treading would not bend a blade of grass,
Or shake the downy blow-ball from his stalk!
But like the soft west-wind she shot along;
And where she went the flowers took thickest root,
As she had sowed them with her odorous foot."
So sang a rough-handed, silver-voiced, sturdy old fellow, harping unconsciously the notes of my lament, and the tones of his sorrow wail through the green boughs today, though he has been lying now these two hundred years in England's Sleeping Palace, among silent kings and queens. Fair and fresh and always young is my lost maiden, and "beautiful exceedingly." Her habit was to wreathe her garland with the May, and everywhere she found most hearty welcome; but May has come and gone, and June is still missing. I look longingly afar, but there is no flutter of her gossamer robes over the distant hills. No white cloud floats down the blue heavens, a chariot of state, bringing her royally from the court of the King. The earth is mourning her absence. A blight has fallen upon the roses, and the leaves are gone gray and mottled. The buds started up to meet and greet their queen, but her golden sceptre was not held forth, and they are faint and stunned with terror. The censer which they would have swung on the breezes, to gladden her heart, is hidden away out of sight, and their own hearts are smothered with the incense. The beans and the peas and the tasselled corn are struck with surprise, as if an eclipse had staggered them, and are waiting to see what will turn up, determined it shall not be themselves, unless something happens pretty soon. The tomatoes are thinking, with homesick regret, of the smiling Italian gardens, where the sun ripened them to mellow beauty, with many a bold caress, and they hug their ruddy fruit to their own bosoms, and Frost, the cormorant, will grab it all, since June disdains the proffered gift, and will not touch them with her tender lips. The money-plants are growing pale, and biting off their finger-tips with impatience. The marigold whispers his suspicion over to the balsam-buds, and neither ventures to make a move, quite sure there is something wrong. The scarlet tassel-flower utterly refuses to unfold his brave plumes. The Zinnias look up a moment, shuddering with cold chills, conclude there is no good in hurrying, and then just pull their brown blankets around them, turn over in their beds, and go to sleep again. The morning-glories rub their eyes, and are but half awake, for all their royal name. The Canterbury-bells may be chiming velvet peals down in their dark cathedrals, but no clash nor clangor nor faintest echo ripples up into my Garden World. Not a bee drones his drowsy song among the flowers, for there are no flowers there. One venturesome little phlox dared the cold winds, and popped up his audacious head, but his pale, puny face shows how near he is to being frozen to death. The poor birds are shivering in their nests. They sing a little, just to keep up their spirits, and hop about to preserve their circulation, and capture a bewildered bug or two, but I don't believe there is an egg anywhere round. Not only the owl, but the red-breast, and the oriole, and the blue-jay, for all his feathers, is a-cold. Nothing flourishes but witch-grass and canker-worms. Where is June?—the bright and beautiful, the warm and clear and balm-breathing June, with her matchless, deep, intense sky, and her sunshine, that cleaves into your heart, and breaks up all the winter there? What are these sleety fogs about? Go back into the January thaw, where you belong! What have the chill rains, and the raw winds, and the dismal, leaden clouds, and all these flannels and furs to do with June, the perfect June of hope and beauty and utter joy? Where is the June? Has she lost her way among the narrow, interminable defiles of your crooked old city streets? Go out and find her! You do not want her there. No blade nor blossom will spring from your dingy brick, nor your dull, dead stone, though you prison her there for a thousand years of wandering. Take her by the hand tenderly, and bid her forth into the waiting country, which will give her a queenly reception, and laurels worth the wearing. Have you fallen in love with her—on the Potomac, O soldiers? Are you wooing her with honeyed words on the bloody soil of Virginia? Is she tranced by your glittering sword-shine in ransomed Tennessee? Is she floating on a lotus-leaf in Florida lagoons? Has she drunk Nepenthe in the orange-groves? Is she chasing golden apples under the magnolias? Are you toying with the tangles of her hair in the bright sea-foam? O, rouse her from her trance, loose the fetters from her lovely limbs, and speed her to our Northern skies, that moan her long delay.
Or is she frightened by the thunders of the cannonade sounding from shore to shore, and wakening the wild echoes? Does she fear to breast our bristling bayonets? Is she stifled by the smoke of powder? Is she crouching down Caribbean shores, terror-stricken and pallid? Sweet June, fear not! The flash of loyal steel will only light you along your Northern road. Beauty and innocence have nothing to dread from the sword a patriot wields. The storm that rends the heavens will make earth doubly fair. Your pathway shall lie over Delectable Mountains, and through vinelands of Beulah. Come quickly, tread softly, and from your bountiful bosom scatter seeds as you come, that daisies and violets may softly shine, and sweetly twine with the amaranth and immortelle that spring already from heroes' hearts buried in soldiers' graves.
"But there is no use in placarding her," said Halicarnassus. "We shall have no warm weather till the eclipse is over."
"So ho!" I said. "Having exhausted every other pretext for delay, you bring out an eclipse! and pray when is this famous affair to come off?"
"Tomorrow if the weather prove favorable, if not, on the first fair night."
Then indeed I set my house in order. Here was something definite and trustworthy. First an eclipse, then a book, and yet I pitied the moon as I walked home that night. She came up the heavens so round and radiant, so glorious in her majesty, so confident in her strength, so sure of triumphal march across the shining sky; not knowing that a great black shadow loomed right athwart her path to swallow her up. She never dreamed that all her royal beauty should pass behind a pall, that all her glory should be demeaned by pitiless eclipse, and her dome of delight become the valley of humiliation! Is there no help? I said. Can no hand lead her gently another way? Can no voice warn her of the black shadow that lies in ambuscade? None. Just as the young girl leaves her tender home, and goes fearless to her future—to the future which brings sadness for her smiling, and patience for her hope, and pain for her bloom, and the cold requital of kindness, or the unrequital of coldness for her warmth of love, so goes the moon, unconscious and serene, to meet her fate. But at least I will watch with her. Trundle up to the window here, old lounge! you are almost as good as a grandmother. Steady there! broken-legged table. You have gone limping ever since I knew you; don't fail me tonight. Shine softly, Kerosena, next of kin to the sun, true monarch of mundane lights! calmly superior to the flickering of all the fluids, and the ghastliness of all the gases, though it must be confessed you don't hold out half as long as you used when first your yellow banner was unfurled. Shine softly tonight, and light my happy feet through the Walden woods, along the Walden shores, where a philosopher sits in solitary state. He shall keep me awake by the Walden shore till the moon and the shadow meet. How tranquil sits the philosopher, how grandly rings the man! Here, in his homespun house, the squirrels click under his feet, the woodchucks devour his beans, and the loon laughs on the lake. Here rich men come, and cannot hide their lankness