Pastoral Days; or, Memories of a New England Year. Gibson William Hamilton
on, my boy, enjoy it while you may! That venerable barn will yield a fragrance to you in after-life that will conjure up in your heart a throng of memories as countless as the shining grains that glimmer in the light you hold, and as golden, too, as they. I wonder if those soft-winged bats squeak among the clapboards, or make their fluttering zigzag swoops about your lantern as they were wont to do in olden times.
Then there was that big-eyed owl, too, that perched upon the maple-tree outside my window, and cried as if its heart would break at the doleful tidings it foretold. What a world of kind solicitude that dolorous bird awakened in our superstitious neighbor across the road! How she overwhelmed us with her sympathy, aroused by that sepulchral omen! But I still live, and so does the owl, for aught I know; and I sometimes think that this aged, stooping dame over the way has never fully recovered from her disappointment, for she always greets me with a sigh and an injured expression, as she says, in her high and tremulous voice, “Well! well! back agin ez hale ’n hearty ’s ever; an’ arter the way thet ar witch bird yewst teu call ye, too, night arter night. Jest teu think on’t! an’ we’d all a’ gi’n ye up fer sartin. Well! well! I never see the beat on’t. Yen deu seem teu hang on paowerful;” and, after a moment’s hesitation, seemingly in which to swallow the bitter pill, she usually adds, with sad solicitude, “Feelin’ perty tol’ble teu, I spose?” But the “witch bird” never roused my serious apprehensions. I remember its plaintive cry only as a tender bit of pathos in the pages of my early history.
A RAINY DAY.
I recall, too, the pleasant sound upon the shingles overhead as the dark-clouded sky let fall its tell-tale drops to warn us of the coming rain. How many times have I glided into dream-land under the drowsy influence of the patter on the roof, and the ever varying tattoo upon the tin beneath the dripping eaves! Who can forget those rainy days, with their games of hide-and-seek in the old dark garret! How we looked out upon the muddy puddled road, and laughed at the great drifting sheets of water that ever and anon poured down from some bursting cloud, and roared upon the roof! And as the driving rain beat against the blurred window-panes, what strange capers the squirming tree-trunks outside seemed to play for our amusement: the dark door-way of the barn, too – now swelling out to twice its size, now stretching long and thin, or dividing in the middle in its queer contortions. Out in the dismal barn-yard we saw the forlorn row of hens huddled together on the hay-rick, under the drizzling straw-thatched shed; and the gabled coop near by, in whose dry retreat the motherly old hen spread her tawny wings, and yielded the warmth of her ruffled breast to the tender needs of her little family, peeping so contentedly beneath her. The rain-proof ducks dabble in the neighboring puddles, and chew the muddy water in search of floating dainties, or gulp with nodding heads the unlucky angle-worms which come struggling to the surface – drowned out of their subterranean tunnels.
Now we hear the snapping of the latch at the foot of the garret stairs, and we are called to come and see a little outcast that John has brought in from the wood-pile. Close beside the kitchen-stove a doubled piece of blanket lies upon the floor, and within its folds we find what once was a downy little chicken, now drenched and dying from exposure. He was a naughty, wayward child, and would persist in thinking that he knew more than his mother. At least so I was told – indeed, it was impressed upon me. But the little fellow was rescued just in time. The warmth will soon revive him, and by-and-by we shall hear his little chirp and see him trot around the kitchen-floor, pecking at that everlasting fly, perhaps, or at some tiny red-hot coal that snaps out from the stove.
Little did we suspect the mission of those rainy days, so drear and dismal without, or the sweet surprise preparing for us in the myriad mysteries of life beneath the sod, where every root and thread-like rootlet in the thirsty earth was drinking in that welcome moisture, and numberless sleeping germs, dwelling in darkness, were awakening into life to seek the light of day, waiting only for the glory of a sunny dawn to burst forth from their hiding-places! That sunny morn does come at last, and in its beams it sheds abroad a power that stirs the deepest root. It is, indeed, a glorious day. The clustered buds upon the silver-maples burst in their exuberance, and fringe the graceful branches with their silken tassels. The restless crocus, for months an unwilling captive in its winter prison, can contain itself no longer, and with its little overflowing cup lifts up its face to the blue heaven. Golden daffodils burst into bloom on drooping stems, and exchange their little nods on right and left. The air is filled with a faint perfume, in which the very earth mould yields its fragrance – that wild aroma only known to spring. Our little feathered friends, so few and far between as yet, are full of song. The bluebird wooes his mate with a loving warble, full of tender sweetness, as they flit among the swaying twigs, or pry with diligent search for some snug nesting-place among the hollow crannies of the orchard trees. The noisy blackbirds hold high carnival in the top of the old pine-tree, the woodpecker taps upon the hollow limb his resonant tattoo, and the hungry crows, like a posse of tramps, hang around the great oak-tree upon the knoll, and watch to see what they can steal. Down through the meadow the gurgling stream babbles as of old, and along its fretted banks the alder thickets are hanging full with drooping catkins swinging at every breeze. The glossy willow-buds throw off their coat of fur, and plume themselves in their wealth of inflorescence, lighting up the brook-side with a yellow glow, and exhaling a fresh, delicious perfume. Here, too, we hear the rattling screech of the swooping kingfisher, as with quick beats of wing he skims along the surface of the stream, and with an ascending glide settles upon the overhanging branch above the ripples. All these and a thousand more I vividly recall from the memory of that New England spring; but sweetest of all its manifold surprises was that crowning consummation, that miracle of a single night, bringing on countless wings through the early morning mist the welcome chorus of the returning flocks of birds. How they swarmed the orchard and the elms, where but yesterday the bluebird held his sway! Now we see the fiery oriole in his gold and jetty velvet flashing in the morning sun, and robins without number swell their ruddy throats in a continuous roundelay of song. The pert cat-bird in his Quaker garb is here, and with flippant jerk of tail and impertinent mew bustles about among the arbor-vitæs, where even now are remnants of his last year’s nest. The puffy wrens, too, what saucy, sputtering little bursts of glee are theirs as they strut upon the rustic boxes in the maples! The fields are vocal with their sweet spring medley, in which the happy carols of the linnets and the song sparrows form a continuous pastoral. Now we hear the mellow bell of the wood thrush echoing from some neighboring tree, and all intermingled with the chatter and the gossip of the martens on their lofty house. Birds in the sky, birds in the trees and on the ground, birds everywhere, and not a silent throat among them; but from far and near, from mountain-side and meadow, from earth and sky, uniting in a happy choral of perpetual jubilee.
A HANDFUL FROM THE WOODS.
Down in the moist green swamp lot the yellow cowslips bloom along the shallow ditch, and the eager farmer’s wife fills her basket with the succulent leaves she has been watching for so long; for they’ll tell you in New England that “they ain’t noth’n’ like caowslips for a mess o’ greens.” Near by we see the frog pond, with lush growth of arrow leaves and pickerel weed, and flat blades of blue-flag just starting from the boggy earth. Half submerged upon a lily pad, close by the water’s edge, an ugly toad sits watching for some winged morsel for that ample mouth of his.
Who could believe that so much poetic inspiration could emerge from such a mouth as that; for verily it is this miserable-looking toad that lifts his little voice in the dreamy, drowsy chorus of the twilight. All sorts of odium have been heaped upon the innocent toad; but he only returns good for evil. He is the farmer’s faithful friend. He guards his garden by day, and lulls him to sleep by night. Yonder, near those withered cat-tails, we see the village boys among the calamus-beds, pulling up the long white roots tipped with pink and fringed with trickling rootlets. What visions of candied flag-root stimulate them in their zeal! I can almost see the tender, juicy leaf-bud screened beneath that smooth pink sheath, and its aromatic pungency is as fresh and real to me as this appetizing fragrance that comes to us from the green tufts of spearmint we crush beneath our feet at every step. Bevies of swallows all around us skim through the air, like feathered darts, in their twittering flight; and the restless starling,