Chapter II: Preface: To the First Edition (2)

What shall I say of the gladiolus? It is the flower for the million! It is as easy to manage as a potato. It blossoms long, and better if cut and carried into the house than if left out doors. Its varieties of color are endless. It is healthy; multiplies its _corms_ rapidly, can be kept in winter in a common cellar, if dried of a little first; and is calculated to return as much pleasure for a small outlay as any flower in vogue. A few dozen to start with will convince any man of the truth of my words.

Let me dissuade you, my dear readers, from too great an addiction to mere profit. Don’t wait for a regular garden of flowers, but stick them in, in nooks and corners, all about the homestead.

IV.

A LETTER FROM THE FARM.

PEEKSKILL, _May 28th, 1868_.

MY DEAR MR. BONNER: You must expect no article from me this week. I am engaged. I was never more busy in my life. Let me relate my occupations. At about half past three in the morning, I wake. The light is just coming. I do not care for that, as I do not propose to get up at such an hour. But the birds _do_ care. They evidently wind up their singing apparatus over night. For, when the first bird breaks the silence, in an instant the rest go off, as if a spring had been touched which moved them all. Was ever such noise! There are robins without count, wood-thrushes, orioles, sparrows, bobolinks, meadow-larks, bluebirds, yellow-birds, wrens, warblers, catbirds (as the Northern mocking-bird is called), martins, twittering swallows. Think of the noise made by mixing all these bird-notes together! Add a rooster, and a solemn old crow to carry the bass. Then consider that of each kind there are scores, and of some kinds hundreds, within ear reach, and you will have some faint conception of the opening chant of the day.

You may not believe that I wake so early. But I do. You may be still less inclined to believe that, after listening for ten minutes to this mixture, I again go to sleep. But I solemnly do. Nor do I think of getting up before six o’clock. Whether I should emerge even then, if it were not for the savory odor that begins to steal through my cottage, I cannot tell. After breakfast, there are so many things to be done first that I neglect them all. The morning is so fine, the young leaves are so beautiful, the bloom on the orchards is so gorgeous, the sounds and sights are so many and so winning, that I am apt to sit down on the veranda, for just a moment, and for just another, and for a series of them, until an hour goes by. Do not blame me! Do not laugh at such farming and such a farmer. The soil overhead bears larger and better crops, for a sensible man, than does the soil under feet. There are blossoms in the clouds. There is fruit upon invisible trees, to those who know how to pluck it.

But then sky-gazing and this dallying with the landscape will not do. What crowds of things require the eye and hand! Flowers must be transplanted. Flower-seeds must be sown; shrubs and trees pruned; vines looked after; a walk taken over the hill to see after some evergreens, with many pauses to gaze upon the landscape, and many birds watched as they are confidentially exhibiting their domestic traits before you. The kittens, too, at the barn, must be visited, the calf, the new cow. Then every gardener knows how much time is consumed in noticing the new plants; for instance, I have some eight new strawberries that need watching, each one purporting to be a world’s wonder. I am quite anxious about eight or ten new kinds of clematis; two new species of honeysuckle; eight or ten new and rare evergreens; and ever so many other things,—shrubs and flowers. What shall I say of the new peas, new beans, rare cucumbers, early melons, extraordinary potatoes?

Speaking of potatoes, do you know anything of the _Early Rose_? Let me tell you. One hundred bushels were sold this spring, to one man, for _eighty dollars_ a bushel! Since then, they have been selling by the _pound_, at the increasing prices of one, two, and three dollars a pound. It takes about three potatoes to make a pound.

Now for a story—true, for I had it from Timothy Titcomb’s lips. A friend sent him this potato, with injunctions to give it the utmost care. He planted it in his garden, and when it ripened, last summer, not informed of its exceeding preciousness, he proceeded to eat. In a reasonable time he consumed three barrels, which at the lowest price were worth about seven hundred dollars!

I have a very nice plat of these potatoes, and should like to sell them to you in advance. As an inducement, I offer mine at _fifty_ dollars a bushel! But this is confidential. I do not wish to be overrun with purchasers, scrambling for a chance!

Do you not see that it is impossible for me, amid such incessant and weighty cares, to compose an article? The air is white with apple-blossoms; the trees are all singing; the steaming ground beseeches me to grant it a portion of flower-seeds; by night the whippoorwills, and by day the wood-thrush and mocking-bird, fill my imagination with all sorts of fancies, and how can I write?

V.

THE COST OF FLOWERS.

_June 18th, 1868._

The charms of flowers have been sung ever since letters have existed. But in our day the passion for flowers has wonderfully increased, and the cultivation of them, which is a thing very different from the sentiment of admiration, has become so common that it is considered as an evidence of bad taste for one having any ground _not_ to have flowers about the dwelling-house.

But how few who only receive flowers as gifts, or purchase them, know the pains and penalties of flower-raising! It may be imagined that one has only to scratch open the ground, bury the seed, and then patiently wait for nature to do the rest. Listen! First comes the seed-buying. We do not think seedsmen any less honest than other men. Indeed, the conduct of those with whom we have dealt for ten years past leads us to think that they are honorable and honest in intent. But that does not insure good _seeds_.

They buy of other seedsmen, in foreign lands, who may not be honest, or are obliged to trust seed-raisers. And so it comes to pass that seeds, like thousands of other articles in this wicked and adulterous generation, are adulterated. Italian carnation seed come up miserable single pinks, of very poor colors; balsams are not half so choice as is the _price_ at which the seed is sold; not one in ten of this year’s _ipomea seed_ (convolvulus) will stir out of the ground,—and so of stock, sweet-william, etc.

But, that past, and our seed well planted, there often comes a deluge, and washes the seed-beds to pieces, or a long wet spell rots the seed in the ground.

At length we gather up what we can, and transplant the remnant, and patiently wait for the flowers. But we are not the only ones waiting for them. A legion of various insects seem to think that all our flowers were planted for _them_. We have been often asked why were insects created? If it is fair to say that the cause of their existence may be learned from the effects which they produce, we boldly aver that they were made to humble man’s arrogance, and to teach him how much mightier is insect weakness than human power. A grasshopper is contemptible. The farmer can crush him at a step. But let the plague of grasshoppers be let loose, and all his fields be deluged with them; and how easily do myriads of creatures that are individually weak overwhelm him and destroy all his labor!

We have a realizing sense of the unequal war which is waged between man and insects. It seems in late years as if horticulture might as well be abandoned. Cherries and plums go down before the curculio; apples before the canker-worm, the tent-worm, and the apple-worm; currants before a worm peculiar to itself; melons before half a dozen kinds of enemies (not including roguish boys).

Among flowers the destruction is equally great. As soon as the rose fairly shakes out its leaves it is attacked: one bug cuts circles out of the leaves, as if busy with a pair of scissors making diagrams; then comes the _thrip_, that can neither be caught, nor wet with soapsuds, nor dusted with lime, nor pinched with the fingers,—a nimble fellow, minute as a speck of flour, but numerous as dust. Close upon its heels comes the _slug_, whose remorseless appetite leaves nothing behind it but the ribs and frame of the leaf. Next come the rose-bugs proper, of a finer appetite, disdaining anything less delicate than rose-petals. Of these the number is surpassing; their devastation pitiable. There stand my bushes stripped of leaves and blighted in flowers.

Of course there are remedies enough. One rose-bush may be treated with hand-picking, or pinching, or washes, but one or two hundred rose-bushes would require formidable engineering.

Year by year the number of insects increases. New flowers come into the blighted circle. Aphides, grubs, worms, moles, flies—at the root, or on the top—resist your labor at every step. They never tire. They seem never to be full. They get up before you do, and eat on all night, after you are asleep.

Well, we are born into a world which pays few premiums to lazy men. Whatever is worth having is worth working for. At any rate, Providence seems to design that no man shall gather who does not sow and tend. Of every lazy man it may well be said, What does he in this world? This is a place for workers. “He that will not work shall not eat,” is an inspired command. It is as true of the garden as of the field, of flowers as of fruit and grain. God sends millions of insects over all our gardens and flower-beds, saying, “We are sent to make you work.” Every insect is some malignant enchanter, and every fair-faced flower, like a maiden lost in the wilderness, beseeches us to deliver it from its enemies!

VI.

HAYING.

_July 2d, 1868._

Alas for the poetry of farming! All the songs of milkmaids must be now listened for in the old English poets. The whetting of the mower’s scythe is almost over—quite over on my farm! Instead of that, one hears the sharp rattle of the mower, and sees the driving-man quite at his ease riding round and round the meadow, for all the world as if he were out airing. Whereas, heretofore, two acres would be counted a large day’s work, ten and twelve are easily accomplished now!

Nor is the contrast less remarkable in all the after-work. When I was a boy, I was placed in line with all the men that could be mustered, to shake out the hay with forks; and after a few hours, all hands were called to go over the ground and turn it. To do this rapidly, and yet so that the bottom side should really come to the top, was no small knack. Now, a _tedder_, with one man riding, will literally do the work of ten men, and do it far better than the most expert can. Have you ever seen a tedder? I have a perfect one. The grass rolls up behind it and foams, I was going to say, like water behind the wheels of a steamer. The grass leaps up and whirls as if it were amazingly tickled with such dealings. The result is, that unless the grass is very heavy, and the weather very bad, you may cut your hay in the morning and get it into your barn before night, in far better condition than it used to be when it required never less than two, and generally a part of three days to cure it.

But I have forgotten the _horse-rake_. Instead of the old-fashioned, long-handled rake, and the five or six men pulling and hauling to get the grass into windrows, that same fellow, with that same horse, rides his luxurious rake, and in a fifth part of the time formerly required puts it into equally good shape. Indeed, haying, if it has lost its poetry, has also lost its drudgery. A man can now manage a hundred acres of grass easier than he formerly could twenty.

The only thing that remains to be made easy is pitching on and off the load. It is true that horse-forks have been invented, but I have never seen any that did their work well; and in my barn, at any rate, the old work of pitching and mowing remains; and if you wish to know what fun is, get on to the mow, under the slate roof of my barn, on a hot day, and let Tim pitch off hay as he will if I give him the wink. You will have to step lively, and even then you will often be seen emerging from heaps of hay thrown over you, like a rat from a bunch of oakum. And then it is so pleasant, when a man is all a-sweat, to have his shirt filled with hay-seed, each particular particle of which makes believe that it is a flea, and wiggles and tickles upon every square inch of his skin, until he is half desperate.

It is the 2d of July, and my grass is all cut, and the last load is rolling into the barn while I write. How sweet it smells! How jolly the children are that have been mounted on the top of the load! And their little scarlet jackets peep out from their nest while Tim stands guard and nurse. A child that has not ridden up from the meadow to the barn on a load of hay has yet to learn one of the luxuries of exultant childhood. What care they for jolts, when the whole load is a vast and multiplex spring? The more the wagon jounces the better they like it! Then come the bars, leading into the lane with maple-trees on each side. The limbs reach down, and the green leaves kiss the children over and over again. So would I, if I were a green leaf, and not consider myself so green after all! And so the load slowly rolls up the bill. There is no such thing as momentum in an ox. He is always at a dead pull and at the very hardest. But the children like it. The slower they move the longer is the ride! Let them take all the comfort they can. By and by they will be grown, and own fine carriages, and roll in style through the streets. But there is many a fair face that rides in a silk-lined coach, with a sad heart, and would go back if she could, O, how gladly, to her joyous ride on a load of hay!

VII.

THE VALUE OF ROBINS.

_October 10th._

The game-law has relaxed its authority. The gun is set free. I hear it in the woods, in the fields, on the hills, Sundays and week-days, bang! bang! bang! as if it could not express its joy, and even celebrating its own emancipation.

Well, let them fire, only so they keep off my hill. It is true that the birds have finished their service, and are now of little use, either as songsters or as worm-exterminators—more’s the pity! But are their past services to be forgotten?

Let me speak of the robin.

He is an immense feeder, and omnivorous. Nothing seems to come amiss—fruit, worm, or seed. Glutton he is not, for he does not eat more than he really needs; but he needs more than most birds of his size.

It is a disputed question, among farmers, whether the robin is a profitable bird. Whether he does not damage the fruit crop out of all proportion to his services in the crusade against insects, I grieve to say, that my own household is divided, and that I am the only one that is openly and wholly a friend to the robin. He is an early riser, and no sooner has he sung his morning hymn than he begins breakfast. Now, in the month of June cherries ripen. I have a cherry orchard. When fully grown, there will be enough for robins and men. But at present my trees are like precocious children; they blossom enormously, but set little fruit. The question now is, Whose is that fruit? The people in the house declare that it belongs to us. The robins out of doors say little about it, but actions speak louder than words. Rising earlier than we do, they get their breakfast before the smoke rises from my chimneys. I will not permit them to be driven away, and still less to be shot. I plead their services. I recount their deeds of valor against insects; their service of song. But it is all in vain. I am voted down. All manner of threats are thrown out by the boys, “if I would only let them.” But I won’t let them!

There are two distinct grounds on which these birds are to be preserved and encouraged. The first ground is the refining pleasure which they give to every person of true susceptibility. Thousands there are who live in the country who will regard this as sheer sentimentality. They are robust people, who drive around all day with vigorous industry, and have always done so, until at length their very standard of manhood is made up of some kind of physical force. He is a man that can lift the largest weight, run the longest and fastest, cut the most grain, climb most lithely, wrestle the most dextrously. And if he can make a shrewd bargain, has an eye for the points in an ox or horse, has the knack of making money, and a good-natured way of pushing about among men, he is considered, and considers himself, to be a real up-and-down man!

But where are the finer traits? God made blossom bulbs in every nature, and if men do not blossom they are deficient in the higher elements.

To disregard qualities of beauty, in form, color, motion, and song, is so far to indicate a deformity of one’s own nature. We never think one to be more manly who cares nothing for the unmarketable graces of the natural world, than he who makes them a part of his daily enjoyment.

The argument is conclusive to a fine nature, when one says, “Birds are too beautiful to be killed.” It may be replied that noxious insects and animals are beautiful, too, and yet are destroyed by the humane and refined, because they are mischievous. We admit the statement, and are willing to apply it to birds. When they are really destructive to crops, or when they are, at proper seasons, needful for food, it is no inhumanity to take their lives. They must take their part and lot with the whole creation, which everywhere eats and is eaten.

But to return to our robin. There is no season of the year when the robin does not prevent more mischief than he accomplishes. He is an enormous eater, and, for the most part, he prefers a meat diet. No one who has not taken pains to observe and estimate can form any conception of the insects and worms devoured by the robin between March and August—that is, during the whole nesting period. One robin eats, in a single season, what, if built into a solid form, would be more than a whole ox. Fruit is but a small part of his diet; cherries, strawberries, and grapes, for a while, suffer from his depredations. Yet, if there were no birds these very things would suffer far more. Insects are more to be dreaded than birds. They elude our vigilance, they work secretly, they swarm in such numbers as to defy man’s power. But birds keep them down. They destroy myriads of eggs, of grubs, of tender worms, and of fruit-loving insects. To destroy birds for the sake of saving fruit is like throwing down the fence about one’s garden to keep the pigs out! Even admit, as some do and we do not, that blackbirds and crows deserve to be shot for destroying the planter’s seed. We claim that the robin does not belong to their company. He preserves a hundred-fold more than he destroys.

On every ground, then, of humanity, of good taste, and of thrift, robins should be spared. They are our best friends. They are, beyond all question, the finest song-bird of the temperate zone. They are a watch and guard against insect depredations in orchard and garden, and, with other birds, they make possible the raising of fruit, which, without them, it is no exaggeration to say, would be utterly impossible. They are, next to the wren and sparrows, the most companionable of birds, hovering about the dwellings of man, and following him, step by step, as he subdues the wilderness, and singing the song of triumph for the axe and the plow.

One word as to the robin’s song. Whoever has read Audubon’s description of the wood-thrush’s song, and the still more glowing account by a writer in the _Atlantic Monthly_ of two or three years ago, will surely be disappointed on first hearing it. In any proper sense, it has no _song_, but only a few sweet sentences, which it utters in a sad and almost melancholy way, sitting solitary in some forest edge, or tree overhanging a brook. The bird is a recluse. So, one imagines a tender-hearted woman, disappointed in love, yet not embittered, might sing from the casement of a nunnery a hymn of mingled resignation and regret. But, to compare this monosyllabic song of the wood-thrush to the robin’s, is like comparing a ballad to an oratorio, or the tinkling of a guitar to the sweet tone of a piano-forte under the hands of some Perabo.

The robin is an out-door bird. He lives in the sunshine. He attracts no sympathy by delicate ways. He is altogether robust, and full of dashing life. When twenty or thirty robins between three and four o’clock in a June morning are at full voice, it would be no exaggeration to compare it to a rain of music. It is no dainty thrumming,—no parceling out of a sweet note or two, with more rests than notes. It is a musical rush, the exultation of a healthy, hearty bird, that sings by the half-hour, without pause, and is ever ready to sing again.

The evening song of the robin I most love to hear. Heard from the top of some orchard tree, or of some meadow maple, while his note has the fire and brilliancy of his morning song, there is in it a slight undertone of sadness. Indeed, this evening song seems to be a mate-call. For ten or fifteen minutes the bird will send out its mellow call over all the region, if peradventure the truant mother may come home. A slight impatience mixes with its closing notes. He flies to a neighboring tree, utters two or three sharp single notes, and then, beginning again, swells out his long call louder than before, warbling five to ten minutes. He pauses. No bird returns. He sits silent.

Perhaps he remembers that there had been a little domestic quarrel during the day, and if his mate is dead, he may never be able to say to her, “I am sorry.” A nest full of little birds needs the mother. The twilight is deepening. Once more, its brilliance now toned down by an unmistakable sadness, he sends out far and near through the dew-damp air a song which is more a lamentation than a call. If there be no response, he flies silently away, and the air rests.

But, sometimes, just as his song is ending, it breaks out into a sharp note of surprise. A flutter is heard, and two birds fly hastily away. The wanderer has come home again!

Can one, all summer long, follow birds with sympathy, and enter into their gentle life, throwing around it, by the imagination, the charm of the affections, and then consent to their destruction as if they had been mere birds from a coop? Shoot and eat my birds? It is but a step this side of cannibalism. The next step beyond, and one would hanker after Jenny Lind or Miss Kellogg.

VIII.

SOUNDS OF TREES.

_July 24th._

The sounds and motions of trees constitute subtle but important elements of pleasure. It is not enough that a tree have a comely form as a whole; that it cast a dense shade in the sultry days of summer; that, perhaps, it yield a nut or fruit; and that, finally, when it gives up its life to the inevitable ax, its prostrate trunk shall furnish good timber. Besides these uses of bodily comfort and of economy, a tree, like a rich-hearted person, has a hundred nameless ways which we hardly stop to analyze, but which, were they suddenly taken away, we should miss.

The murmuring of trees is profoundly affecting to a sensitive spirit. In some moods of imagination one cannot help feeling that trees have a low song, or a conversation of leaves. They whisper, or speak, or cry out, and even roar. No one knows this last quality so well as those who have been in old oak forests in a storm, with violent wind. A dense forest opposes such a resistance to the free passage of the air, that the sound is much deadened. But in a park or oak-opening, where spaces are left for the motion of the air, and among open-branched trees, a storm moves with such power and majesty, that not even the battles of thunder-clouds are more sublime, and, under certain circumstances, it becomes terrific. At the beginning of the tempest, the trees sway and toss as if seeking to escape; as the violence increases, the branches bounce back, the leaves, turning their white under sides to the light, fairly scream. The huge boughs creak and strain like a ship in a storm. Now and then some branches which have grown across each other are drawn back and forth, as if demons were scraping infernal bass-viols. Occasionally a branch breaks with a wild crash, or some infirm tree, caught unawares in a huge puff of the storm, goes down with crashing as it falls, and with a thunder-stroke when it reaches the ground. I would go farther to hear a storm-concert in an old forest, than any music that man ever made. No one who is familiar with forest sounds but is sure, when he hears Beethoven’s music, that much of it was inspired by the sounds of winds among trees.

There are milder joys, however, in tree converse. Only this morning I awakened to hear it rain. That steady splash of drops which a northeast wind brings on is not easily mistaken. I flatter myself that my ear is too well trained to all the ordinary sounds of nature to be easily deceived. I rise, and throw back the blinds, when lo! not a drop is falling. It is the wind in my maple-trees. I had thought of that, and listened with the most discriminating attention, and was sure that it was rain!

Twice in our life we lived in houses built on the edge of the original forests. These had been thinned out, and recesses opened up. It happened in both cases that an ash and a hickory had been left, which shot up, without side branches, to a great height. The trunks were supple and tough. Whenever the winds moved gently, these long and lithe trees moved with singular grace and beauty. As there was no perceptible wind along the ground, their movements seemed voluntary. And yet there was in it that kind of irresolution which one sees in sleep-walking. But as soon as the breath became a breeze, the wide circles through which these rooted gymnasts moved was wonderful. They seemed going forth in every direction, and yet surely and quickly springing back to position again. And in every motion, such was their elasticity, they manifested the utmost grace. The sighing of winds in a pine forest has no parallel sound except upon the sea-shore. Of all sounds of leaves it is the sweetest and saddest, to certain moods of summer leisure.

The pine sings, like the poet, with no every-day voice, but in a tone apart from all common sounds. It has the power to change the associations, and to quicken the poetic sensibility, as no other singing tree can do. Every one should have this old harper, like a seer or a priest among trees, about his dwelling. Under an old pine would naturally be found the young maiden, whose new lover was far across the seas. In the sounds that would descend she could not fail to hear the voices of the sea,—the roar of winds, the plash of waves running in upon the shore. A young mother, whose first-born had returned to God who gave it, would go at twilight to the pines; for, to her ear, the whole air must needs seem full of spirit voices. They would sing to her thoughts in just such sad strains as soothe sorrow. Nor would it be strange if, in the rise and fall of these sylvan syllables, she should imagine that she heard her babe again, calling to her from the air.

Every country place should have that very coquette among trees, the aspen. It seems never to sleep. Its twinkling fingers are playing in the air at some arch fantasy almost without pause. If you sit at a window with a book, it will wink and blink, and beckon, and coax, till you cannot help speaking to it! That must be a still day that does not see the aspen quiver! A single leaf sometimes will begin to wag, and not another on the whole tree will move. Sometimes a hidden breath will catch at a lower branch, then, shifting, will leave that still, while it shakes a topmost twig. Though the air may move so gently that your cheek does not feel it, this sensitive tree will seem all a shiver, and turn its leaves upward with shuddering chill. It is the daintiest fairy of all the trees. One should have an aspen on every side of his house, that no window should be without a chance to look upon its nods and becks, and to rejoice in its innocent witcheries. I have seen such fair sprites, too, in human form. But one does not get off so easily, if he sports too much with them. The aspen leaf makes no wounds. Its frolics spin no silken threads which one cannot follow, and which will not break!

The musical qualities of trees have not been considered enough, in planting around our dwellings. The great-leaved magnolias have no fine sound. Willows have but little. Cedars, yew-trees, and Lombardy poplars are almost silent. It is said that the Lombardy poplar is the male tree, the female having never come over. It is very likely. It is stiff enough to be an old bachelor. It spreads out no side branches. Its top dies early. It casts a penurious shadow.

But my hand is tired. The winds move; all the leaves call me. Let me go forth.

This ocean above me is sure to cure trouble. The winds sound, the trees sing. My soul yearns. Its thoughts and moods below may roll like a disturbed sea; but, drawn up into the heavenly air, like the waters of the sea, they forget their wrath, and descend again in gentle dews and nourishing rains.

IX.

UNVEILED NONSENSE.

_August 28th._

MY DEAR MR. BONNER: Are you not a censor of all your contributors? Do you not read cautiously all matter sent to the _Ledger_, to prevent the entrance thereinto of any injurious sentiments? And yet you have allowed _blasphemy_ in your columns? You have! Or else the _Christian Intelligencer_, the Dutch Reformed religious journal of New York, by one of its contributors, is greatly mistaken. An article appears there signed “Puritan,” and entitled “Veiled Profanity.” It begins with an extract from an article of one of your contributors:—

“Henry Ward Beecher says, ‘The only way to exterminate the
Canada thistle is to plant it for a crop, and propose to
make money out of it. Then worms will gnaw it, bugs will
bite it, beetles will bore it, aphides will suck it, birds
will peck it, heat will scorch it, rains will drown it, and
mildew and blight will cover it.’”

And now guess, if you can, what harm lies couched in these words. Put on your spectacles. Nothing wrong, do you say? O, but there is! _You_, a Scotch-Irish Presbyterian, and can’t see heresy! Fie, for shame, to be beaten by a Dutchman! Now, let our _Intelligencer’s_ man express himself. The italics are his, not mine:—

“These bugs, beetles, aphides, heat, rain, and mildew are
the messengers of God. If they are sent, they _are on an
errand for God_! Now, if the above extract has a point, it
is that when mankind plant a crop of any kind of grain or
seed, _God_ takes _a malicious pleasure in defeating such
schemes_.”

This is exquisite! If mildew attacks my grape-vines, _it is on an errand for God_, and if I sprinkle it with sulphur as a remedy, I put brimstone into the very face of God’s messenger! When it _rains_—is not rain, too, God’s messenger?—does “Puritan” dare to open a blasphemous umbrella, and push it up in the very face of this divine messenger? When a child is attacked by one of “God’s messengers”—measles, canker-rash, dysentery, scarlet-fever—would it be a very great sin to send for a doctor on purpose that he might resist these divine messengers? There are insects which attack men, against one of which we set up combs, and against another sulphur. “Nay,” says Puritan. “If they are sent, _they are on an errand for God_.”

“Puritan” goes on:—

“Such a sentiment is far deeper in its tone than a mere
_murmur_. Especially as Mr. Beecher’s farm at Fishkill is
well known to be cultivated with reference to making money.”

Yes, we confess it. A “murmur” very imperfectly expresses our feelings as we dig at a Canada thistle, or squirt whale-oil soapsuds over a myriad of “Puritan’s” divine messengers, called aphides. A _grumble_ would not be too strong a word to use on such occasions. Nay, the reverend gentleman has been known to say, in a paroxysm of horticultural impiety, “I wish every rose-bug on the place was dead!” which must seem to “Puritan” a piece of horrible depravity.

I did not before know that I had a farm in _Fishkill_. My experience with the farm at Peekskill, “which is well known to be cultivated with reference to making money,” is such, that if it be true that I own another farm at Fishkill, I shall consider myself on the straight road to the poor-house!

But there is more coming:—

“The charge of the reverend gentleman amounts to this,—that
whenever he attempts to raise a crop of wheat, corn, flax,
or grass, God sends beetles, bugs, aphides, heat, rain, and
mildew, to blast his designs.

“This has the _ring_ of Cain when his sacrifice was
rejected. That primeval sinner vented his anger towards God
on his holy brother. Mr. H. W. Beecher vents his anger
towards the real cause of his mildewed crops, by charging
the innocent instruments in their Maker’s hand. If this is
not blasphemy in one as well informed as Mr. Beecher is, we
have read his words amiss.
“PURITAN.”

I may have been mistaken, but it has seemed to me that every crop that I have ever attempted to raise has had swarms of “messengers” sent upon it. But, until now, I never suspected that God sent them, in any other sense than that in which he sends diseases, famines, tyrants, literary “Puritans,” and all other evils which afflict humanity.

But what is to be done about this matter? If it be “blasphemy” to speak against bugs, it can be little short of sacrilege to smash them. Here have I been, in the blindness of unrepented depravity, slaughtering millions of “the messengers of God” called aphides! I have ruthlessly slain those other angelic “messengers” called mosquitoes, who came singing to me with misplaced confidence. I have even railed at fleas, and spoken irreverently of gnats. I have gone further: on a sultry summer’s day, after dinner, I have turned out of my room every one of those “messengers of God” which wicked boys call flies—every one but one, I mean; and, just as the sounds grew faint and sight dim, and I was sinking into that entrancing experience, the first virgin moments of slumber, an affectionate fly settled on my nose, ran down to kiss my lips, and, like a traveler on a new continent, set about exploring my whole face. Instead of greeting this “messenger” divine as “Puritan” would, I confess to a lively vexation. And if speaking of flies in a very disrespectful manner is blasphemous, I must confess to the charge!

But soberly, Mr. Bonner, is it not pitiable to have among us men pretending to intelligence, who bring religion into discredit by such hopeless stupidity?

In the velocipede rinks, besides those for speed, premiums are offered to the men who can ride the _slowest_. “Puritan” should enter himself. If anybody can go slower, he must be a marvel of torpidity.

X.

NATURAL ORDER OF FLOWERS.

_May 21st._

He must have an artist’s eye for color and form who can arrange a hundred flowers as tastefully, in any other way, as by strolling through a garden, picking here one and there one, and adding them to the bouquet in the accidental order in which they chance to come. Thus we see every summer day the fair lady coming in from the breezy side-hill with gorgeous colors, and most witching effects. If only she could be changed to alabaster, was ever a finer show of flowers in so fine a vase? But instead, allowed to remain as they were gathered, the flowers are laid upon the table, divided and rearranged on some principle of taste, I know not what, but never regain that charming naturalness and grace which they first had.

As to the bouquets put up for market, the less said about them the better. They are mere pillories in which, like innocent children put into the stocks, flowers are punished! Squeezed, tied on sticks, formal and pedantic, the flowers lose their rare charms, their delicacy, their individuality, their exquisite variety of form, every element of floral beauty except color. They are used as mere pigments. They are poor studies in color. There are few who really know anything about flowers by their finer qualities. The elder Park—who committed the capital crime of leaving Brooklyn and going back to Scotland to live—loved flowers after the true sort. We remember one day going to his green-house in Amity Street, and after a world of talk about all sorts of things, and looking over all his azaleas, camellias, laurustinus, and what not, he drew us bashfully into a side apartment, and with the diffidence of a girl, said, pointing to an exquisite little fern hardly so large as our forefinger, growing in the border under some orange-plants, “There, I should not dare to tell anybody but you that I have taken more real pleasure in that one little thing than in all the whole establishment.” We perfectly understood him. The fern was of the most delicate sort. It seemed to hover between form and spirit,—if there be such a thing as soul in plant-life. All around it were large and vigorous plants growing lush and stalwart. This dainty little fairy fern appealed to the child-loving side of human nature, to the unworldly and uncommercial faculties. We always respected Park the better for this weakness. No man can have such a sentiment for flowers, who has not in him feelings as fresh and delicate as the flowers which he admires.

But with what complacency can such a one look upon the merchandise of flowers which is exhibited at every party, every wedding, every vulgar jam of rich people, who torment themselves through untimely hours for the sake of tormenting their host?

Look at the atrocious bridal bouquets! The bride, the bridesmaids, come forth bearing each a huge _melange_ of orange-blossoms and rosebuds, wedged together into a pyramidal wart of flowers! If, instead, the bride were to issue forth bearing in her hand a sprig of orange-blossoms just as it grew, just as it was plucked from the branch, or two or three simple rosebuds on the one stem, loosely clustered, and with their own fresh green leaves, or a simple white lily, would not every one feel how superior flowers were for such an occasion, in their own simplicity and individuality, than when, as generally happens, they are smothered up in an artificial heap, in which all naturalness is utterly lost?

A single blossom of carnation with a geranium leaf; an exquisite saffrano rosebud just beginning to open, with a fresh leaf from its own bush for company; a stem of mignonette, girt round with a dozen fragrant blue violets; a long sprig of mauvandia-vine, with its charming blue bells, hanging from a tall wineglass, or carelessly trailing round it,—these, and such little things, confer a pleasure on those who have a sensitive eye for grace and simplicity, which nothing else can.

We would not be understood as objecting to all _masses_ of flowers, nor to large combinations. For coarser and more distant effects, they are permissible. But even then, the more they can be made to have a loose, airy, open habit, the finer will be their effect.

But first, simplicity, naturalness, singleness, and individualism in flowers; afterward and inferior, though permissible, artificial structures and combinations.

XI.

ROSES.

_July 2d._

June is the paradise of roses. In this month they break forth into unparalleled splendor. All Rosedom is out in holiday apparel; and roses white and black, green and pink, scarlet, crimson, and yellow, striped and mottled, double and single, in clusters and solitary, moss-roses, damask-roses, Noisette, perpetual, Bourbon, China, tea, musk, and all other tribes and names, hang in exuberant beauty. The air is full of their fragrance. The eye can turn nowhere that it is not attracted to a glowing bush of roses. At first one is exhilarated. He wanders from bush to bush and cuts the finest specimens, until there is no room or dish for more. So many roses, and so few to see them! What would not people shut up in cities give to see such luxuriance of beauty! How strange that those who have ground do not gather about them these favorites of every sense! The air and soil that nourish nettles and thistles, plantain and dock, would bring forth roses with equal kindness. There is enough ground wasted around country houses to furnish root-room for a hundred kinds of roses, without detriment either to fruit trees or ornamental shade trees. Men admire them when they see them in a friend’s house; they are always pleased to receive a lapful as a present to their wife or mother or daughter; but it does not enter their head that they, too, might have roses to give away.

Roses are easy of culture, easy of propagation, requiring almost as little care as dandelions or daisies. The wonder is that every other man is not an enthusiast, and in the month of June a gentle fanatic. Floral insanity is one of the most charming inflictions to which man is heir! One never wishes to be cured, nor should any one wish to cure him. The garden is infectious. Flowers are “catching,” or the love of them is. Men begin with one or two. In a few years they are struck through with floral zeal. Not bees are more sedulous in their researches into flowers than many a man is, and one finds, after the strife and heat and toil of his ambitious life, that there is more pure satisfaction in his garden than in all the other pursuits that promise so much of pleasure and yield so little.

It is pleasant to find in men whose hard and loveless side you see in society, so much that is gentle and beauty-loving in private. Hard capitalists, sharp politicians, grinding business men, will often be found, at home, in full sympathy with the gentlest aspects of nature. One is surprised to find how rich and sweet these monsters often turn out to be! Here is the man whom you have for years heard described, in all the newspapers, as a spectacle of wickedness or a monument of folly. You are, by some convulsion of nature, thrown into his company, and travel for days with him. To your surprise his manners are gentle, his conversation pleasing, his attentions to all about him considerate. This must be artifice. It is a veil to hide that hideous heart of which you have heard so much. You watch and wait. But watching and waiting only satisfy you that this supposed monster is a kind man, with a world of sympathy for beautiful things. And when, in after-months, you have been at his summer-house, and know him in his vineyard and his garden, you smile at yourself that you were ever subject to that illusion which is so often raised about public men.

A man is not always to be trusted because he loves fine horses, or because he follows the stream or hunts in the fields. But if a man that loves flowers, and loves them enough to labor for them, is not to be trusted, where in this wicked world shall we go for trust? A man that carries a garden in his heart has got back again a part of the Eden from which our great forefather was expelled.

XII.

CHESTNUTS.

_July 30th._

I fancy that trees have dispositions. At any rate, they have those qualities which suggest dispositions to all who are in sympathy with nature, and who look upon facts as letters of an alphabet, by which one may spell out the hidden meanings of things. Some trees, like the apple, suggest goodness and humility. They put on no airs. They do not exalt themselves. They are patient of climate, full of beauty in blossom, and, in autumn, beautiful in fruit.

The oak, when well grown, has the beauty of rugged strength, and sometimes it has grandeur. Certain live-oak trees on Helena Island, near Beaufort, S. C., with long, pendant moss, like a Druid’s beard, impressed us with a feeling of the sublime in vegetation which we never experience in the presence of any other tree. Down on our backs we lay, and gazed up into their vast tops with a pleasure never since renewed. These were the types of patriarchal dignity.

The American elm is the tree of grace and beauty. It is stately without stiffness. It carries itself up to such a height that its drooping boughs do not suggest feebleness, as the weeping-willow does. And yet, one never has the feeling of sympathy with it or of personal intercourse. One may sit under its branches, but no one ever sat on or among them. We admire, but do not sympathize. Still less did any one ever love a hickory-tree. They are beautiful and stately, but self-contained. When young, they are dandies; and when old, aristocrats.

Not so the chestnut-tree. This darling old fellow is a very grandfather among trees. What a great, open bosom it has! Its boughs are arranged with express reference to ease in climbing. Nature was in a good mood when the chestnut-tree came forth. It is, when well grown, a stately tree, wide-spreading, and of great size. Even in the forest the chestnut is a noble tree. But one never sees its full development except when it has grown in the open fields. It then assumes immense proportions. Having a tendency when cut down to send up many shoots from the stump, old trees are often found with four or five trunks springing from the same root. In such cases, no other American tree covers so wide a space of ground. Not even the oak attains to greater size or longevity. The Tortworth chestnut, in England, is supposed to have been standing before the Conquest, 1066, and must be not far from a thousand years old. The longest known tree in America is the “Rice” chestnut, on the estate of Marshall I. Rice, at Newton Centre, Mass. It measures twenty-four feet and three tenths in circumference at the base, seventy-six feet in height, and spreads its limbs ninety-three feet. It is vigorous, and still bears enormous crops. This, however, is a mere stripling compared with the famous chestnut-tree of Mount Ætna, whose trunk measured about one hundred and sixty feet in circumference, or some fifty-three feet in diameter, and which could shelter a hundred horsemen beneath its branches! But this tree, long hollow, is about giving up the ghost, even if it has not already done so, no doubt dying in the peaceful consciousness of having spent a virtuous life, and fed thousands of people with two thousand years’ full of nuts!

There is living in vigor at Sancerre, in France, a tree which, at six feet from the ground, measures thirty feet in circumference. Michaux says that he measured several trees in the Carolina mountains of fifteen or sixteen feet in circumference; which, if a boy is expected to climb them, is full large enough.

A chestnut-tree in full bloom is a fine sight. It blossoms about the first of July, in clusters of long, yellowish-white filaments, like a tuft of coarse wool-rolls. The whole top of the tree is silvered over. We have never seen them so finely in blossom as this year, and we foresee a grand harvest for the boys. O, those golden days of October! The thought of them brings back the days of boyhood, the brilliant foliage of the forest just putting on its regal garments; the merry sport of squirrels racing on the ground (if one lies dead-still to watch), or scampering up the trunks, and leaping from tree to tree with chirk and bark, if disturbed.

It was a great day when, with bag and basket, the whole family was summoned to go “a-chestnuting!” There was frolic enough, and climbing enough, and shaking enough, and rattling nuts enough, and a sly kiss or two,—but never enough,—and lunch enough, and appetite enough. The silver brook on the hillside carried down, on its murmuring current, the golden leaves which the trees, with every puff of wind, sent shimmering down through the air. Barefooted, as we were all summer long, the prickly chestnut burs were too sharp for our little tough feet, and we were glad to pick our way cautiously under the trees.

Long live the chestnut-tree, and the chestnut woods on the mountain-side, and the boys and girls who frolic under their boughs! And long live the winter nights, with the homely fare of apples and nuts, and no stronger drink than cider; and a merry crowd of boys and girls, with here and there the spectacled old folks; all before a roaring hickory fire, in an old-fashioned fireplace, big as the western horizon with the sun going down in it, and with a roguish stick of chestnut wood in it, which opens such a fusillade of snaps and cracks as sets the girls to screaming, and throws out such mischievous coals upon the calico dresses, as obliges every humane boy to run to the relief of his sweetheart all on fire!

No doubt many an old gentleman will read this article with a face growing more and more full of smiles, and taking off his spectacles at the end, and, looking kindly over at his aged dame, will say, “Do you remember, Polly, when we were at Squire Judson’s—” “Well, well, father, you are too old to be talking about such youthful follies.” Nevertheless, she smiles and looks kindly over at the old rogue who kissed her that night, proposed on the way home, and was married before Christmas.

XIII.

GREEN PEAS.

_August 20th._