Chapter V: Part 5

A piece of wood taken from one of these trees in 1873 is still preserved in Vermont. It is twenty inches by four, yet it shows five boxing places, two deep in the wood and three that the later growth of the tree had not been able to cover. Sugar was made from these trees in 1764, and they were tapped each year by some member of the Kathan family until 1862. One of the largest of these trees was cut in 1858, and the number of concentric rings of growth showed that nearly a hundred years had then passed since the tree was first boxed for sap. In 1894 another was cut, having a box mark only three inches beneath the surface of the wood, showing that in this tree at least someone had gone back to the ancient method not more than half a generation before the date of cutting the tree. Probably scattered trees of the groves of a century and a half ago still stand in other portions of the State, carrying deep in their heart wood the scars of the old-time sugar making.

The Vermont laws against the adulterating of maple sap products are now quite strict, and it is probable that original packages from the State are reasonably sure to be what they are sold for. The syrup weighing eleven pounds to the gallon is practically at the point of saturation, a gallon weighing even an ounce more than this showing a deposit of crystallized sugar. It was formerly considered that the intermixture of cane syrup could not be detected, but modern methods of chemical analysis show it, the ash from dried and burned maple sugar being greater than that from dried and burned cane sugar in that it, having not been recrystallized, still contains other chemical constituents of the sap. These no doubt contain the ingredients which go to make up the delectable flavor, and those not yet isolated elements which help make the Vermonters the big-hearted, big-souled people that they are. Yet the rich golden brown color which most maple sugar has is not a quality of the sugar itself, but due to impurities, harmless but unnecessary. They come from tiny flecks of bark which fall into the sap or from careless boiling. Before the sap gets to the can in the Grimes sugar house it has been strained seven times. The iron kettle sugar of the old days was sometimes almost black. Care in the handling will give a syrup that is almost as colorless as water and a sugar that is nearly white. Hence color in the final product by no means indicates purity, though it may in no sense indicate adulteration. The best syrup is a clear, viscous, pale straw-colored liquor, and the sugar itself need not be much if any darker.

To an outsider the whole trip into the upper valley of the Deerfield River is a delight. At Hoosac Tunnel the big train gets tired of the long climb and plunges into the very heart of the mountain. But the little narrow-gauge road takes up the ascent most determinedly. The boy’s-size engine snorts and chu-chus up astounding grades, winding into defiles where the mountains close in on each side and almost squeeze the track into the river. At some stations the stop is on such a slant that the engine puffs and grinds for minutes before any progress at all is noticed. The town comes down to see the struggle, and the small boys call the conductor and engineer by their first names and rail at their railroading. “Hey, Bill,” says one. “What’s your coffee mill grinding to-day?” Then, as the imperceptible first motion accelerates to a snail pace, they stroll along with the engine and continue their chaff till the hills shut down and cut them off. Yet after all, when you consider the grades, the curves and the stops, the whole trip is made at a good pace, the twenty-four miles being covered in about an hour and a half. Coming down is coasting, and the speed is limited only by the requirements of safety. Vermont whole-heartedness runs through the train chaff, however, and the favorite salutation is “neighbor.” To take the trip is like attending a lodge meeting, and long before the final stop you feel a friendly interest in everybody present. If you don’t know most of the others by their first names it is because you have not kept your ears open. At this season at least you learn how strong a hold the good old business of sugar making still has on the hearts of the people of the Green Mountain State, and the gossip of the groves and farms is yours without the asking. The free, wholesome air of the mountains is in it all, and as you breathe more and more of it you feel that the good old-time New Englander does not need to come back. He is there, up under the purple shadow of Haystack, talking maple sugar and drawing its essence of vitality from the white wood of mighty trees that clothe mountain slopes with the kindly peace of their stately groves.

XIII

NATURE’S MEMORIAL DAY

_How Earth and Sky Observe this National Holiday_

Up to the brow of Cemetery Hill
The serried battle ranks still press to-day.
The saxifrages in Confederate gray
Charge to the robin’s bugle, piping shrill.
In Union blue the sturdy violets still
Shoulder to shoulder in the battle sway
And, rank on rank, the rising onslaught stay,
While cheers of song-birds through the woodland thrill.

And yet peace reigns, and both the gray and blue
Mingled in garlands on the field will lie
Marking a soldier’s grave, or blue or gray,
Shoulder to shoulder waiting, who shall say?
We only know they wait beneath the sky
While garlands deck them, wet with tears of dew.

In my town the little “God’s Acre” in which the pioneers snuggled to sleep under the protecting shadow of their first rough church has grown over hill and dale to a score of acres. The church long since moved out of its own yard, as if to give the pioneers room, yet lingers gently within a stone’s throw, as a mother waits within sound of her children. Where once the rough oak timbers stood squarely upon their field-stone foundations century-old graves stretch restfully side by side, and gray lichens cling so close to the blue slate of headstones that the twain become one, and the very names of the sleepers beneath are hidden and forgotten. Shoulder to shoulder these old stones stand and lean friendlily one on another, as brothers to whom the kindly elder years have brought surcease of all differences. The early settlers were bold in their beliefs and battled sturdily for them while it was time to fight. The ancient records and traditions will tell you of stern warfare waged between man and man and clan and clan. Then, the battles well fought, they laid themselves down side by side in a forgiving neighborliness that is the most lasting inscription on the plain stones that mark their rest. Peace is most secure between those who have fought best, and the Memorial Day spirit is no mere growth of our later years. It was born in the scheme of all good, just as battles were.

Nature voices for us only kindly memories. Whatever the chisel may have graven on these rude slate stones, the kindly sun and rain and the slow sobbing of the earth’s bosom under frost and thaw have taught them “de mortuis nil nisi bonum” till they voice it in phrases which none who pass may fail to read. The lichens have written it and the actions of the slate speak louder than the words of the inscriptions. We in our Memorial Day offerings tell for a brief hour only what the good gray earth has been saying the year through, and we say it best, as she does, in flowers and tears. Nature’s Memorial Days began with the first grave and have continued ever since. Ours, which began with our mourning for dead heroes of the Civil War, has extended since to those of all wars and moves yearly nearer to Nature’s all-forgiving, all-loving teaching. Our lesson will be complete when we understand that all who have lived are heroes and that toward all who are dead we should bear constant loving remembrance. The sun and the rain lead the gentler things of earth to this all through the old cemetery where, since the pioneers of the town, have come the heroes of the Revolution, of 1812, the Civil War, and of countless un-uniformed battles of daily life before and since.

All the morning of Memorial Day children, and often their elders, glean from field and wood, from garden and greenhouse, flowers for the decking of graves, and later the thinning ranks of Grand Army men march to martial music and place upon the graves of dead comrades the flag for which they fought and garlands of remembrance. For these the mowing fields give gladly the white and gold of their buttercups and daisies, the hillsides the blue of their violets, the woodlands the feathery white and glossy green of the smilacina. It always seems as if these blossomed their best for the occasion. But beyond all other flowers in profusion and beauty for the ceremony is the lilac. This shrub, I am convinced, knows that its best service to man is in garlands for Memorial Day, and rarely does it fail in the service. There come years in which the spring is cold and backward and blossoming shrubs are weeks behind their accustomed time of bloom, but the lilacs press bravely forward, hopeful even at the very last moment, and manage to put forth flowers by the thirtieth of May. On other years, like this, all things are three weeks or more ahead of season, yet the lilacs hold steadfastly on, and when their need is felt there they are to be gathered in armfuls from willing bushes that go cheerfully at work again to repair the wrecked stems and provide buds for the garnering of another year. The lilac should be the flower of poets and heroes, and as we are all that, however humble our heroism or however shyly hidden our poetry, it is fitting that it should be commonest for the decorations of Memorial Day.

For the lilac, for all its buxom profusion and its ability to take care of itself in neglected fields and woods where the garden in which it was once delicately nurtured is grown up to grass, the house to which it belonged is crumbled to ruin, and wild woodland things crowd and choke it, is of royal lineage. In the garden of what prince of prehistoric days it first bloomed I cannot say, but it was beloved of Babylonian kings and mingled its perfume with that of the roses in Persepolis when Persia was a seat of learning and refinement, while western Europe was yet to emerge from savagery and America was not even a dream. There Jamshid, founder of the then mighty city, Rustam the hero who defended it all his life from barbarian invaders, Sadi the poet in his rose garden, Omar with his “jug of wine and thou” watching the stars and writing his fond, cynical, keen verses, and even Genghis Khan and Tamerlane, barbarian conquerors out of the mysterious farther east, must have sat beneath its shade from time to time as the centuries dreamed on and dreamed their own dreams of conquest, of love or of service, under the spell of its fond, pervading perfume. Dreams these should be, of love, if you will, of constancy, and of hope and yearning toward high ideals, for all these breathe from the true heart of the lilac to-day, nor has the passing of three centuries changed the subtle essences of the flower or their meaning one whit. How far these have gone to the changing of the hearts of men in that time one may not say, but surely the fragrance sighs through the Gulistan and the Rubaiyat and the culture and refinement that the Persia of those days has sent down the years to us in their records was greater than that of any other nation of the time. From this mother land of the lilac spread westward the belief in one God. There the learned men taught to princes and nobles a due reverence for parents and aged persons, a paternal affection for the whole human species and a compassionate tenderness even for the brute creation. There before the sovereign in state might appear the humblest peasant for justice, and the youth of the land were taught fortitude, clemency, justice, prudence, to ride a horse, use the bow and speak the truth. With the odor of these things that of the lilac filled the air there through centuries of springs. What more fitting flower could we lay upon the graves of our heroes, whether of the Civil War or the Revolution, whether wearing the blue or the gray, or the homespun of the battle of everyday workshop, farm or home? There is more of symbolism in its giving than we heed. With the loving remembrance of friends of to-day goes a greeting from heroes of an age long gone but not forgotten.

There is no remembrance of civilization, no aura of human nobility about the smilacina, which in my regard comes next as a flower for Memorial Day. Hardly the violet could be more modest. Its tiny spike of white bloom is borne only a few inches high on a two-leaved stalk, the leaves in shape and gloss reminding one of the florist’s smilax, whence probably the name. Yet its very simplicity makes it peculiarly a flower for garlands. The leaves, growing on the stalk itself, make just the right amount of green, and a nosegay or a wreath of smilacina alone has a dainty beauty that few flowers could thus give. The misty white blooms on the glossy green seem like shattered tears of gentle spirits of the woods bringing their tribute of sorrow to the fallen heroes. Nor are the blooms of this plant which the school children have gathered and which the veterans have placed on the graves the only ones that are there. All along one side of this cemetery the woods themselves press their sheltering beauty, and in them the earth is garlanded with smilacina blooms. Passing from Memorial Day observances to these I often think that the forest itself decorates in honor of its own whose resting places would be otherwise unmarked. It may be for the people of an elder race all other traces of whom are lost that the tiny, lovely flowers group their white and green, or for the humbler creatures of the wood who would otherwise lack tokens of mourning, but the smilacina certainly decorates the mounds in all woodlands with mystic tracings which have their own meaning. But it does more than this. In modest beauty it slips shyly out from the sheltering friendliness of the pines and stands with bowed head on many a dewy Memorial Day morning by such mounds as it may reach, in all gentle friendliness.

Shyer yet are the saxifrages which sometimes stand near by. These I have seen, clad as if in Confederate gray, by a mound which veterans had marked with a Union flag and along which tiny blue violets nestled lovingly. So, surely, they stand in mute respect and nestle as lovingly by many another spot where the remembered one fought as bravely beneath another flag. Long ago the good brown earth taught the blue and the gray to thus fraternize, and though we forgot it for a time the lesson came soon back to us with renewed force. The saxifrages and the smilacina have not ventured far out of the all-sheltering wood, but the Confederate gray is borne all over the score of memorial acres by the wild immortelles, everlasting, as the children call them, and no caretaker’s rake or lawnmower can keep these down, or clip the violets so close that their blue fails to nestle lovingly where heroes lie. All over the place from spring until autumn these two set their garlands side by side, as do those who mourn on the one Memorial Day of the year. Thus constant are the sun and rain and the tiny herbs of the brown earth.

As the boldest soldiers in the fray held oftenest the foremost ramparts and felt themselves fortunate in their position, so I think it must be with those veterans who rest nearest the brow of the hill, where it seems as if they could look forth over miles of beautiful forests to the blue hills which are other ramparts on the horizon. Here of an early morning of this misty May they might well think they saw gray troopers form and advance in battalions that sweep down from the hills to eastward and charge over the treetops of the vale below. Through the distance they can hear the bugle calls of thrushes, and with trained ears thus know in what formation the advance will be made and when. Well may they feel the old-time thrill of desperate conflict as the advance sweeps up their hill and the misty gray legions swarm over it until the fight must need be hand to hand. Yet rarely does a day pass without final victory for the blue. The misty legions fall back and vanish before the flashing cavalry of the sun and the blue battalions of the clear sky swarm forth and drive the enemy in full retreat before them. Thus to them again out of the shades may come Gettysburg, or Antietam, or Port Hudson.

I like best, though, to think of them here as resting in camp with no thought of battles past or to come, the mists that rise meaning no more than the smoke of comrades’ campfires, the bird bugle calls only those of the day’s routine. From a hundred treetops they may hear the robins sound the reveille. From their hilltop these bugle notes should wake even the soundest sleepers. No other bird is so well fitted for this call. There is a sprightly persistence in the robin’s song of a morning, a recurrence of rollicking refrain which reminds one strongly of the awakening notes of the bugle as they ring through the camp when the last of the night watches is ended and the new day calls all to be up and stirring. The robins are peculiarly the buglers of the reveille. No bird sings earlier, and when the full chorus is in swing there is little chance for any other bird to be heard. No wonder the sun gets up betimes.

The day calls, the assembly, the retreat, the mess call and a score of others are left to other birds than the robins. The thrush may pipe them. Grosbeak, tanager or warbler may trill the familiar melodies for all these, and a host of others sing at any hour of the day in tree or shrub or in the pine woods that stand in a phalanx, like a company under arms, pressing close up to the brow of the hill. Sometimes I hear these in the sweet, flowing warble of the purple finch which is not rare hereabouts, but more often in the notes of the warbling vireos which frequent the tops of the shade trees. These are all-day buglers, piping clear for all occasions in firm, rich, continuous notes of whose meaning there can be no doubt, once you have learned the calls. Nearing these and seeing the white marble of the newer comers stretch far beyond the slate headstones, over hill and dale, it is not difficult to believe these indeed the tents of an army corps and to think I hear in response to the bugle the marching tread of feet that have been resting long. The tramp of the boys in blue on Memorial Day, as they march and countermarch, passing from station to station, the ringing call of the bugle that sang across Southern fields all through Grant’s campaign could not seem much more real.

When the busy day is ended it is the wood thrush that sings taps. The dropping sun reflected from polished white marble lights campfires from tent to tent, fires that shall burn low to glowworm embers presently, their smoke curling up in night mists from the dewy ground. It is then that the friendly forest seems to crowd closer as if to surround the camp with a host of faithful guards. Then out of its violet dusk rings the call of the wood thrush, a call full of gentle mystery, of faith and longing, at once so sad and so sweetly hopeful that it seems to voice all human sorrow for mortality and all human, wistful belief in immortality. “Come to me,” it pipes in tintinnabulating richness out of the deepening dusk. “Good night; good night; all’s well; good night.” No sweeter music than taps ever rang from bugle or from throat of wood thrush when deepening twilight falls upon this white-tented corner of fame’s eternal camping ground. The buttercups that stray lovingly among the graves of the pioneers give up their gold to the sky that sends its tears to dew their round eyes. All day the good gray earth and the brave blue sky have held memorial service, and as the last note of taps rings from the throat of the thrush deep in the sheltering wood the night takes up the service with wet eyes.

XIV

BIRDS OF CHOCORUA

_Some May Songsters of the Frank Bolles Hinterland_

To all who love the lore of woodland life the country up around Chocorua lake and mountain must always be haunted by the gentle spirit of Frank Bolles, whose books, all too few, breathe the very essence of its perennial charm. To nature lovers who come year after year to the place these books are a litany, and all the bird songs are echoes of the notes he loved. Nor need there be an hour of the twenty-four in this region, in May, in which the birds do not sing. No night is too dark for the wistful plaint of the whip-poor-wills, wandering voices that seem born of the loneliness of the bare places in the hills before man was. To the wakeful ear their sorrow hardly seems soothing, yet when drowsiness comes from long days in the mountain air the whip-poor-will’s plaint is a primal, preadamite lullaby that as surely sings to sleep as does the cadenced sorrow of the wind in the pines or the minor murmur of a mountain brook, intermittently tossed over the hill by the night breeze. Often at nightfall the “clackety clack, cow, cow, cow” of the yellow-billed cuckoo sounds through the Chocorua woods, as if a lanternless watchman were making his rounds and sounding the hour with his rattle. Often, too, some songbird will rouse from sleep as if he heard the cuckoo watchman, going his rounds, pipe him a sleepy bar or two of his day song, notes strangely vivid in the perfumed darkness, then drowse again with the melody half finished. But of all these the whip-poor-wills are most persistent and loudest. They greet the dusk with antiphonal chant, and when they finally follow the shadows to rest in the darkest wood the choir of day takes their silence for its matin bell.

_See page 197_ ]

Something of Bolles’s purity of diction and sweet content in the gentle joy of life in the fields and woods, the sapphire cadences of distant mountain peaks and the chrysoprase tremolo of young leaves, seems to have come from the song of the white-throated sparrow that sings all day about Chocorua. “Peabody bird” we call the white-throat, from long custom, but to me his notes, clear, sweet and infinitely refreshing, seem to chant in accelerating diminuendo, “hap-pi-ness, hap-pi-ness, happiness,” till I lose the quivering cadences in an infinity of distance where sight and sound blend in the passing of dear dreams. The white-throated sparrow comes to the hills with the pink buds of the trailing arbutus, whose blooms are nowhere else so white and fair, and something of their fragrance seems always to come from his song. In little nooks where the early spring sunlight wells in pools of golden warmth the perfumes of the arbutus blooms and of the white-throat’s song come first, and they linger long into the summer where cool Northern hillsides hold the spring in their shadows. Sometimes the autumn, too, gives us a rare reblooming of the arbutus, and the white-throat sings his song of pure contentment well into the mellow haze of late September.

Now that May is in the mountains one may see the warblers budding from the twigs with the leaves, nor shall he at first know which dappling of living light has burgeoned from the wood or which flashed in from the sky above, so harmonious are the contrasts of rich color. Often it seems to be the leaves that sing, so well does the tiny songster fit upon his perch. All about the lake in beech and birch the young buds lisp and the half-open leaves trill with the tiny music of the parulas. As you pass from ridge to lowland and on to ridge again they lead you along the hillsides and on to the cool depths of remoter ranges where the ancient hemlocks still grow, their gray beards of usnea moss hanging sedately in the shadows among their dark trunks. The parulas feed and sing in the light of deciduous trees, but they nest in this moss in the shadows of the black growth. Here comes true the fairy tale of the birds that built their nests in beards, for as I rest in the cloistered seclusion of the hemlocks two parulas come and press aside the gray lace draperies of pendent moss and enter in. There is the beginning of the nest, this tiny cavern which they wedge with their bodies from the matted moss. The lower ends of this are to be turned up and interwoven, making the bottom more secure, and pendent there in her swinging cradle, safe from the eyes of owl or jay above, from four-footed prowlers below, the mother bird will brood her rufous-wreathed white eggs.

Many another warbler will lead the May visitor to Chocorua through these lakeside woodlands which Bolles loved. Some toll him cheerfully from one low thicket to another, where he may see the bird and the wood violet in the same glance or pluck painted and purple trilliums and not lose sight of his quest. Of these is the black-masked Maryland yellow-throat, whose song of “witchery, witchery, witchery,” always speaks for itself alone. No bird seems necessary for the production of this. It buds from the air as young leaves do from the twigs, impelled by a magic power within itself, nor, when you finally find the bird, demurely winding his masked way through the low growth, does the voice by any chance proceed from his throat. All warblers are ventriloquists, but I always think the Maryland yellow-throat of the Chocorua thickets the most demure magician of them all. Perhaps the black mask has something to do with it, lending to the eye the same thought which the puzzled ear conveys. The yellow-throats are building now, weaving their grass nests in tussocks of swamp grass down by the water’s edge, hiding them not so uniquely indeed as the parulas, but almost as well. The spikes of swamp grass grow tall about each nest, and its deep cup if seen at all from the outside is to the eye but a tangle of the last year’s grasses, matted down under this year’s growth. If I find these nests it is only by looking directly down into the heart of each tussock until I reach the right one. Yet this is not particularly difficult. It means only a little patience in inspection, after the probable neighborhood has been defined by the presence of the birds themselves. The yellow-throats are shy about their nests. If you inspect them too often they will leave them and begin all over again in a new locality. But, away from the nest, they are an easy bird to see much of. A man in their neighborhood is an object of insatiable curiosity to them, and you do not need to discover them if they are near. Instead they will come, creeping and peering through the bushes, to inspect you if you will but sit quietly in the region in which that “witchery” song is born out of the circumambient air.

Into the upper end of Chocorua Lake flows a brook of transparent water, fed by melting snows, out of “the heart of the mountain.” Along this the song of the water thrush leads the wanderer from one limpid pool to another, a song that has in it some of the liquid prattle of the stream but more of a dominant, aggressive note that carries far. There is a touch of sunlight in the color of the water thrush’s breast, sunlight flecked with little brown shadow markings that are like the uniform brown of his back, and if it were not that he sticks so closely to the water he might suggest the oven-bird to the careless glance. There is something of the song sparrow and the oven-bird at once in his song. It is as if the two birds had mated to produce him and the singing masters of both families had had the youngsters to singing school. Up this clear-water brook the oven-birds call you by way of the height of land, the water thrushes from pool to pool, while the sun drops behind Paugus in mid afternoon, and the blue shadows of the Sandwich range add to the cool gloom which wells upward from the deep gorge which is the heart of the mountains.

On the way, as the water thrushes and Maryland yellow-throats sing from the thickets near the water, so the oven-bird sends his aggressive staccato from the middle distances of the higher trees. I never knew an oven-bird to sing from either a treetop or a low thicket. Always he sits on a limb well up the trunk yet well beneath the shade also, and sends forth that aggressive, eager call for knowledge. “Teach us, teach us, teach us,” he cries to the wood gods, nor is he ever satisfied with his schooling, but applies persistently for more. The oven-bird is the very voice of the spirit of modern learning, crying always, in the wilderness of knowledge attained, for more knowledge. The wood gods have taught him much. Invisibility for himself he has almost learned. He sits like a knot on a speckled brown limb, and his speckled brown breast is so much like it that he may sing long there within a little distance of your eye before you see him. Invisibility for his nest he and his demure brown wife have learned completely. You may sit on it to rest among the brown leaves in the wood and not know it is there; unless the frightened escape of the brown mother birds gives you a hint, and even then it is invisible, so completely is it hidden in the debris dropped by the previous autumn. Of dead weed stalks, grasses and brown leaves it is not only built but roofed, and with an entrance on one side that to the uninitiated might be an entrance to the nest of a field mouse, indeed, but never that to a bird’s nest. It is not for greater knowledge of nest hiding that the oven-bird need pray to the wood gods, nor may we know what further wisdom he seeks, but all summer long he asks for it in no uncertain tones.

Out of the very treetops while the oven-bird shouts his prayer below comes the voice of the red-eyed vireo, uttering moral platitudes from dawn till dusk. It is no wonder that some birds go wrong with this monotonous preacher steadily droning out, “Don’t do this; don’t do that,” to them all day long. The bluejays, who have robber baron blood stirring always under their gaudy military coats, jeer at this prating of platitudes and descend upon the vireo’s hanging nest and eat the eggs from it, I always think, with more gusto than in their other freebooting, and small blame to them. The red-eyed vireo leads an exemplary life, no doubt, living properly on small insects and keeping up perpetual prayer-meeting, but his self-righteous twaddle must be intensely irritating to all but impeccably good birds that have to listen to it. In gladsome relief from this was the demeanor of the Canadian warblers, also flitting daintily in the treetops. I know the authorities say that the Canadian warbler frequents low thickets, but there is no mistaking the bird with his breast and throat of clear yellow and his necklace of jet beads, and this May the leafy topmost twigs of the deciduous trees in the Chocorua region held many such. They sang their liquid warble which has in it more than a suggestion of the song-sparrow notes of the water-thrush song, and they dashed out into the free air for insects which they captured, flycatcher fashion, and then dashed back again. The Canadian warblers are migrating, feeding and singing as they go on to their nesting sites farther north, and this year their favorite food must have been hanging high, for they were up there after it.

With the Canadians was the first wave of the tide of blackpolls which sweeps over the mountains, also bound north, in late May. More restless were these, constantly flitting and seeking food among the leaves, now in deciduous growth, again in the evergreens, ever moving on and ever singing their high-pitched, hissing whistle which is not so very different from the song of the black and white creeper, though a little more deliberate in movement and having a more staccato quality. So far as coloration goes one might mistake the male blackpoll for the black and white creeper were not the movements of the birds so distinctly different and the song as wiry but as soothingly crepitant as that of the cicada.

Night falls early in the deep heart of Chocorua, and full and clear the wood thrushes were yodeling of peace, one to another in the shadows, as I turned to descend. In the worn fields of the ancient clearing about the farmhouse where Bolles lived and loved the woods and all that therein lived with him, the song sparrows were trilling evening songs and the swifts twittering and circling nearer and nearer the big chimney which is their summer home. The bird cherry trees were white angels of bloom, and from all the land far and near the incense of opening blossoms made the air sweet and rose toward the high, mysterious altar of Chocorua’s peak as if in adoration of the rose glow of its sunset tints. Chocorua Lake was a mirror in which the glory of the summit, the blue dusk of the lower ranges and its own shores were reflected in perfect beauty. It was a sounding-board as well, across whose level came to the ear innumerable bird songs, singing carols of praise to the passing of day. Out of the blue depths of the sky the cool of night dropped like a blessing from heaven and seemed to soften and liquefy all melodies into purer, more mellow music. Wood thrushes and hermits sang in the shadows hymns of praise to the most high peak of the mountain, a pantheistic worship that was old ages before any spires other than those of the spruces had pointed the way to heaven.

From the hillocks of the pasture to the topmost boughs of the forest all bird life joined in the worship, making the welkin ring with praise of the pure joy of life, a chorus that quivered into silence only with the passing of the rose of mystery from the very tip of the high horn of Chocorua. Nor did the silence last long. Before the last wood thrush had finished his “Good night; all’s well; God is good,” other songs of praise and the joy of life were echoing from swamp and wood and lake margin. Where the birds had ceased a myriad other voices took up new refrains. The dreamy trill of the tree frogs sounds from the perfumed dusk, a lullaby of the world primeval that sang the first man to sleep in some safe refuge in the deep woods. From the distant marsh the mingled voices of innumerable hylas ring a chorus of fairy sleighbells that rises and falls as the wind of evening drifts by. Nowhere in the world, I believe, can one hear such hyla choruses as he gets in May evenings from marshy pools among the New Hampshire hills. Coming from a distance the hypnotic insistence of the sound has a soothing, sleepy quality that lulls to rest. To seek its source and stand by the very border of the pool is to find it a frightful uproar that shrills in the ears and rings through the head till the deafened hearer is driven to the upland again.

On the lake margin in the failing light it came to me as a sleepy drone of tiny bells, as if goblin sleighing parties were coursing gayly in the night on the white May snow of petals beneath the bird cherry trees. It and the dreamy trilling of the tree frogs were but a background for the voices of night birds that sounded now that those of the day birds had passed. High in air floated the nasal “peent, peent,” of whirling nighthawks. Out of the velvet dusk across the glimmering water I heard a bittern working his old-fashioned pump, wheezily. “Cahugunkagunk, cahugunkagunk,” he burbled, the weirdest bird voice of any that comes from marsh or mountain, yet in the peacefulness of the place sounding neither lonely nor uncouth. I fancy him, too, with his long beak pointed to the heights, worshiping the mountain peak in his own tongue. Whip-poor-wills mourned gently one to another across the water as a token that the night had really come and the last glow faded from the lone summit now so immeasurably withdrawn into the sky among the stars.

A yellow-billed cuckoo called from the thicket, then, indignant at receiving no answer, sprung his rattle and waited. Roused out of his first slumber a white-throat gave a faint “tseep” of surprise, then trembled into music for a moment and went to sleep again. “Hap--pi--ness, hap-pi-ness, happiness,” he sang, the notes slipping away into infinite distance and blending with the perfect quiet of the night and the sky. It was the very spirit of the place speaking and reminding me again of the gentle writer who sang so clearly of the peace and beauty of the Chocorua woods and who now sleeps, after singing.

INDEX

A

Achilles, 156, 157

Adam, 117

Alcott, 99, 100, 102

-- Louisa, 101

Alder, white, 68

Aldrich, Thomas Bailey, 30

Allen, Ethan, 171

Amesbury, 129

Anemone nemorosa, 143

Angle-wing, 56

Antietam, 193

Apple, Baldwin, 6

-- russet, 115

-- wild, 127

Appledore, 44, 46, 48, 49, 50, 52, 56, 59

Arbutus, trailing, 94, 138, 140, 141, 142, 146, 199

Arcady, 37

Argynnis, 67

-- cybele, 39

Asclepias cornuti, 37

-- tuberosa, 38

Assabet, 101

Asters, 37, 49, 86, 107, 113

Astræa, 150

Atlantis, 45

Azalea, 9

B

Babylonian kings, 187

Bayberry, 9, 25, 46, 52, 81, 88

Bee, bumble, 25, 41

-- honey, 57

Beech, 21, 177, 200

“Bemis Place, the,” 35

Bilbao, 119

Billington, 139

-- sea, 139

Birch, 27, 69, 128, 200

-- black, 2

-- white, 21

-- yellow, 27, 171

Birds
Bittern, 210
Blackbird, 32, 36, 140
Blackpoll, 207
Bluebird, 169
“Bob white,” 13
Cedar wax-wing, 127
Chewink, 23
Creeper, black and white, 207
Crow, 126
Cuckoo, yellow-billed, 198, 211
Duck, 63
Finch, purple, 194
Flycatcher, great-crested, 14
-- olive-sided, 55
Grosbeak, 194
Gull, 56
-- herring, 129, 130
Hawk, fish, 131
-- night, 210
Heron, great blue, 57
-- little green, 71
Jay, 126, 200
-- blue, 205
Kingbird, 56
Kingfisher, 70, 71
Maryland yellow-throat, 52, 201, 202, 204
Mourning Dove, 13
Nuthatch, white-breasted, 171
Oven-bird, 203, 204, 205
Owl, 200
“Peabody bird,” 199
Quail, 13
Robin, 2, 3, 55, 127, 139, 193, 194
Sandpipers, 56, 70
Skylark, 2
Snipe, Wilson’s, 131
Sparrow, song, 52, 55, 140, 169, 203, 206
-- white-throated, 199, 211
Swallow, 7
-- barn, 5, 6, 53
-- tree, 53, 54
Tanager, 194
Thrush, 193, 194
-- hermit, 208
-- water, 203
-- wood, 195, 196, 208
Vireo, 21
-- red-eyed, 205, 206
-- warbling, 194
Warblers, 194, 199
-- Canadian, 206, 207
-- parula, 200, 202
-- wood, 86
Whip-poor-will, 197, 210

Black Mount, 2, 3, 4, 13

Blackberries, 47, 81

“Blobs,” 142

Blueberries, 4, 81

-- low-bush blacks, 4

-- pale blue, 4

Blue flag, 22, 47

Blue Hill, 32, 33

Bluets, 152

Bolles, Frank, 197, 200, 207, 208

Boston Light, 76

Bouncing-Bet, 89

Bradford, William, 75, 76, 105, 137, 138, 139, 146, 147

Bulkeley, Rev. Peter, 77

Burial Hill, 105, 137, 138, 139, 147

Buttercup, 146, 186

-- bulbous, 153

Butterflies,
Angle-wing, 56
Argynnis, 67
-- cybele, 39
Baltimore, 41
Cabbage, 56
Colias, 27
Colias philodice, 40
Fritillary, great spangled, 39
Grapta interrogationis, 144
Hesperiidæ, 144
Hunters, 56, 144
Lycæna pseudargiolus, 144
Monarch, 39, 56
Mourning cloak, 143, 146
Papilio turnus, 38
Pyrameis huntera, 144
Sulphur, 40
Vanessa antiopa, 143

C

Cabbage butterfly, 56

Cadiz, 119

Caltha palustris, 142

Camaguay, 111

Cape Cod, 75, 145

Cape of Good Hope, 148

Caraway, 43

Cardamine pratensis, 142

Carrageen, 54

Cedar, 11, 127, 128

Cedar berries, 127

Cedar, red, 9, 25, 37

Cedar wax-wing, 127

Ceylon, 63, 148

Charter Street, 148

Checkerberries, 140, 141

Chelone glabra, 41

Cherry-bird, 208, 210

Cherry, wild, 46, 50, 81, 83

Chestnut, 68

“Cheviot Hills, The,” 33

Chewink, 23

Chicory, 1

China Sea, 148

Chipmunks, 107

Chocorua, 3, 201, 206, 207, 208, 209

Chocorua, Lake, 197, 203, 208

-- mountain, 197, 208

-- woods, 198, 211

Chokeberry, 50

Cicada, 207

Cineraria maritima, 84

Cinquefoil, 51

Civil war, 185, 186, 189

Clark’s Island, 135

Clematis, 47, 48, 107, 113

Clethra, 62, 66

Clover, white, 58

Colias, 27

-- philodice, 40

Concord, 63, 65, 71, 90, 91, 92, 96, 97, 98, 99

-- Bridge, 91

Confederate, 191

Convolvulus, 111

Coreopsis, 44

Corydon, 37

Country brook, 26, 27, 28

Cowslip, 142

Crabs, 55

Cranberry, 51

Cranberry bog, 12, 140

Cranes-bill, 47

Creeper, black and white, 207

Cress, bitter, 142

Crow, 126

Cruciferæ, 56

Cuckoo, yellow-billed, 198, 211

Custom House, 150

D

Daisy, 186

-- ox-eye, 23

Dandelions, 51, 152

Dandelions, fall, 109

Deerfield River, 164, 181

Derby, Elias, 150, 158, 159

Derby Street, 148

Dexter, “Lord” Timothy, 124

Dickens, 123

Dreadnaught, 120

Duck, 63

Dummerston, 177

Dunkirk, 119

Dusty-miller, 84

E

Elder, 46, 50

Emerson, 90, 97, 99, 100, 102

Eos, 61

Epigæa, 140, 141

Eric the Red, 143

Essex Institute, 150, 161

Eve, 52

Everlasting, 192

F

Ferns
Cinnamon, 22, 109
Hay-scented, 22
Interrupted, 22
Lady, 22
Maidenhair, 95
Royal, 22, 109

Finch, purple, 194

Firefly, 31

Florida Keys, 145

Flycatcher, great-crested, 14

-- olive-sided, 55

“Flying Dutchman, The,” 120, 148

Forget-me-not, 22

Fox, 107

Fragaria, 153

Free Press, 123

Fritillary, great-spangled, 39

Frog, tree, 209

G

Gallows Hill, 149, 151, 153

Garrison, William Lloyd, 123

Gaultheria, 141

Genista, 154

Geraniums, red, 44, 58, 59

Gerardia, 68

-- flava, 41

-- golden, 40, 41

-- tenuifolia, 67

Gettysburg, 193

Ghettos, 150

Goldenrod, 27, 49, 86, 107

-- seaside, 128, 130

Gosnold, 76

Grand Army, 186

Grand Turk, The, 150, 158, 159

Granite, 49

Grant, 195

Grape, fox, 111

Grapta, interrogationis, 144

Gratiola aurea, 70

Greenbrier, 8, 81, 111

Greenbush, 106

Green Harbor, 2, 3, 7, 10, 12

Grimes, C. S., 165, 173, 178

Grosbeak, 194

Guadeloupe, 119

Gulf Stream, 64

Gulistan, 188

Gull, 56

-- herring, 129, 130

Gurnet, 136, 145, 147

H

Habenaria fimbriata, 36

-- psycodes, 35, 38

Hard-hack, 153

Harold, 94

Harraden, Jonathan, 156, 157

Hastings, 94

Hathorn, Judge, 150

Hawk, fish, 131

Hawk, night, 210

Hawthorn, 142

Hawthorne, Nathaniel, 98, 102, 149, 150, 151, 160, 162

Haystack mountain, 164, 165, 172, 182

Hedge-hyssop, 68, 70

Hemlock, 16, 21, 172, 201

Hepatica, 95

Heron, great blue, 57

-- little green, 71

Herring, 128, 130

Hesperiidæ, 144

Hildreth, Richard, 124

Holly berries, 127

Hollyhock, 19

“Home Sweet Home,” 117

Homer, 138

Hoosac Tunnel, 181

Huckleberry, 4, 50, 88, 128

-- low-bush, black, 46

Hunter’s butterfly, 56, 144

Hyla, 52, 209

I

Immortelles, 192

Indians, 32, 85

Indian pipe, 42

Ireland, 119

Isles of Shoals, 44, 49

Ivy, 107

-- poison, 110

J

Jamshid, 188

Jay, 126, 200

-- blue, 205

Jewel Weed, 22

Job’s Hill, 23, 24

Jones, Paul, 155

Joppa, 125

-- flats, 122

Juniper, 25, 69

K

Kathan farm, 177

Kelp, 55, 57

Kenoza lake, 24

Khan, Genghis, 188

Kingbird, 56

Kingfisher, 69, 70, 71

L

Ladies’ Tresses, 86

Launcelot, 144

“Legend of Ara-Cœli,” 34

Lichen, 9, 108, 184, 185

-- reindeer, 10

Lilac, 17, 29, 186, 187, 188, 189

Liliputian, 85

Lily, pond, 32, 42

-- water, 82

Lincoln, 63

Liverpool packet, 120

London pride, 19

Long Point, 75, 76, 77

Lotos, 101

Love-in-a-mist, 44

Lycæna pseudargiolus, 144

M

Madeira, 119

Magnolia, 162

Maidenhair fern, 95

Manomet, 136, 143, 145, 147

-- head, 135

-- heights, 146

Maple, 21, 68, 128, 140, 164, 165, 171

-- sap, 179

-- sugar, 164, 171, 180, 182

Marigold, 44

-- marsh, 142

Marjoram, 19

Marshfield, 1, 3, 6, 14

Maryland yellow-throat, 52, 201, 202, 204

Massachusetts bay, 105

Mayflower, the, 10, 76, 94, 95, 105, 135, 136, 142, 147

Mayflower, 139, 141, 142, 143, 146, 147

Meadow Sweet, 67

Memorial Day, 184, 185, 186, 187, 190, 191, 192, 195

Merrimac, 15, 20, 27

Miantowonah, 32, 42

Mica, 49

Milkweed, 37, 39, 40, 41

Mint, wild, 20

Minute Man, 91, 92, 93, 99

Mirror, New York, 105

Mogg Megone, 16

Monarch butterfly, 39, 56

Monotropa uniflora, 42

Morning glory, 49

Mourning cloak butterfly, 143, 146

Mourning dove, 13

Mussels, 54

N

Naples, 145

Naples, bay of, 145

Newbury, 118

Newburyport, 118, 119, 121, 123, 125, 129

Nuthatch, white-breasted, 171

O

Oak, 68, 140

Oak, red, 21, 99

-- white, 21

Octavia, Miss, 132

Odysseus, 160

Odyssey, 160

Old Curiosity Shop, 123

“Old Oaken Bucket, The,” 104, 114, 117

Omar, 188

Orchid, 38

-- larger, fringed, 36

-- small purple-fringed, 36

Oriole, 162

Oven-bird, 203, 204, 205

Owl, 200

P

Papilio turnus, 38

Parsnip, wild, 49

Parula, 200, 202

Paugus, 203

Peabody, 150

Peabody Academy of Science, 161

“Peabody Bird,” 199

Peabody, Joseph, 158

Peaked Hill Bar, 87

Peregrine, 3

Persepolis, 187

Persia, 187, 188

“Pickles for the Knowing Ones,” 123

Pierpont, John, 123, 124, 132

Pilgrim, 37, 75, 77, 82, 87, 89, 105, 137, 142, 144, 146, 147

-- cemetery, 3, 6, 12

-- children, 1, 141

-- descendants, 3

-- mothers, 78

-- scouts, 80

-- shrines, 78

-- warriors, 81

Pine, 16, 21, 68, 129, 191

-- pitch, 85

Pink, 44

-- clove, 34

Pipsissewa, 42

Plantain, 51

Plum, beach, 81, 88, 128

Plum Island, 132, 133

Plymouth, 2, 94, 135, 138, 142, 143

-- bay, 10, 145

-- colony, 105, 137

Plymouth rock, 105

Ponkapoag, 31, 33, 34, 35

-- brook, 35

-- pond, 31, 32, 42

Poplar, silver-leafed, 88

Poppies, 19, 44, 58

-- shirley, 49

Port au Prince, 119

Port Hudson, 193

Potentilla, 152, 153

Provincetown, 76, 77, 80, 87, 136

“Prynne, Hester,” 160

Puritan, 89, 154

Pyrameis huntera, 144

Pyrola, 42, 140

Q

Quail, 13

Quartz, 49

Queenstown, 120

R

Race Point, 75, 76, 78, 80

Rajah (ship), 150

Raspberry, 46

Revolution, the, 186, 189

Robin, 2, 3, 55, 127, 139, 193, 194

Rock weed, 53, 54, 57

Rose, damask, 34

-- wild, 9, 11, 24, 25, 26, 50, 58, 81, 113, 187

Royal Society, philosophical transactions of, 166

Rubaiyat, 188

Rudbeckias, 23

Rush, bog, 51

S

Sadi, 188

Sagittaria, 36

Sahara, 82

Salem, 148, 149, 150, 152, 154, 155, 156, 157, 158, 161, 162, 166

Sandpipers, 56, 70

Sandwich Range, 204

Sandy Hook, 120

Sassafras, 9, 69

Saxifraga virginiensis, 143

Saxifrage, 43, 191, 192

Scarlet Letter, 122, 149, 161

Senegambia, 148

Shadbush, 46, 50

Sinbad the Sailor, 136

Skylark, 2

Sleepy Hollow, 99

Smelt, 128, 130

Smilacina, 186, 189, 190, 192

Smilax, 111, 190

-- rotundifolia, 81

-- wild, 81

Smith, Capt. John, 33, 76

Snake, green, 52

Snipe, Wilson’s, 141

Sparrow, song, 52, 55, 140, 169, 203, 206

-- white-throated, 199, 211

Spiranthes, gracilis, 86

Spofford, Harriet Prescott, 124, 129

Spruce, 172

Standish, Myles, 78, 85, 89

Steeplebush, 24, 25

Stevenson, 161

St. John’s-wort, 47, 58

St. Martins, 119

Strawberry, 4

-- wild, 152

Sudbury, 101

Sumac, 9, 27, 50, 58

-- staghorn, 8, 26, 46

Surinam, 119, 148

Swallow, 7

-- barn, 5, 6, 53

-- tree, 53, 54

Sweet-fern, 25, 81

Sweet william, 19

T

Tambourine bird, 23

Tamerlane, 188

Tanager, 194

Thaxter, Celia, 49

-- --, garden of, 44, 58

-- --, grave of, 58

Third Cliff, 112

Thistle, 25

Thoreau, 60, 65, 66, 67, 69, 73, 74, 98, 99, 100

Thoroughwort, 67, 68

Thrush, 193, 194

-- water, 203

-- wood, 195, 196, 208

Toad-flax, 47

“Tocsin, the,” 133

Town Brook, 138

Trillium, painted, 201

-- purple, 201

Troy, 97, 138

Truro, 86

-- North, 77, 78, 79, 85

Turtle-head, 41

U

Ulysses, 160

Usnea moss, 200

V

Vanessa antiopa, 143

Violet, 153, 186, 190, 192

-- wood, 201

Vireo, 21

-- red-eyed, 205, 206

-- warbling, 191

Virginia creeper, 47

Vishnu, 96

W

Walden, 60, 62, 65, 66, 68, 69, 70, 71

Wapping Old Stairs, 122

Warbler, 194

-- Canadian, 206

-- wood, 86

Warsaw, 150

Water plantain, 37

Water striders, 21

Webster, Daniel, 2, 3, 6, 12

-- farm, 3

-- path, 10

-- place, 4

-- well house, 7

West, Ebenezer, 158

Whin, 154

Whip-poor-will, 197, 210

White Mountains, 45

White, Peregrine, 1, 3, 6, 12

-- --, mother of, 10

Whitefield, 123

Whittier, 17, 20, 23, 24, 28, 123

Whittier birthplace, 18

-- fireplace, 15

Whittier’s mother, 16

“Wild boat of the Atlantic, the,” 120

Willow, 88, 140

Wilmington, 164, 175

Wind flower, 143

Winslow, 12

Witch Hazel, 113

Woad-waxen, 154

Woodbine, 107, 110, 111

Woodchuck, 12, 107

Woodworth, Samuel, 104, 106, 110, 114, 115

Y

Yarrow, 25, 47, 48, 49

TRANSCRIBER’S NOTE

Obvious typographical errors and punctuation errors have been
corrected after careful comparison with other occurrences within
the text and consultation of external sources.

Except for those changes noted below, all misspellings in the text,
and inconsistent or archaic usage, have been retained.

Pg ix: ‘The Birds of Chocorua’ replaced by ‘Birds of Chocorua’.
Pg 118: ‘In the heydey’ replaced by ‘In the heyday’.
Pg 213: ‘Azalia,’ replaced by ‘Azalea,’.
Pg 213: ‘Beech, 21, 177, 280’ replaced by ‘Beech, 21, 177, 200’.
Pg 213: ‘Bilboa,’ replaced by ‘Bilbao,’.
Pg 214: ‘Cardamine praetensis,’ replaced by ‘Cardamine pratensis,’.
Pg 216: ‘Gualaloupe,’ replaced by ‘Guadeloupe,’.
Pg 217: ‘Odyssy,’ replaced by ‘Odyssey,’.