Chapter I: MAKE no claim that the house wherein I dwell is a perfect one; it is (2)

There is a relief from the tyranny of hard fact in endeavoring to trace the meaning of these _nimbus_ clouds or the prophecy of this moisture-laden breeze. What will the next change be; of what complexion will be the weather to come? I foretell it frequently through my walls of glass that enable me from within to read the horoscope of the sky. The signs exist, if we may but comprehend them. They publish every event and indicate every change. Unvarying laws that may be understood by the intelligent observer control all atmospheric conditions, and particularly storms. By noting existing conditions the corollary is to be deduced. Blasius’s laws, as stated in his volume, Storms, are comprehensive, and whoever will take the pains to study them (for many portions of the volume call for hard study) may learn to foretell much about the weather, at least so far as relates to larger storms. Many immediate changes are easy to foretell—from the moon’s warning halo and the prophesying cry of the hair-bird, to the toad’s prescient croak from the tree. From observation the farmer and mariner generally become weather-wise. Out in the open air continually, they learn to interpret the signs, their vocations being more or less controlled by and dependent upon the weather. A habit of studying the weather brings one into closer relationship with nature. However superficial the knowledge, one must know something of nature in order to be a weather-prophet, that is, so far as prophesying from numerous well-known natural signs is concerned.

There are certain indices: the clouds no bigger than a man’s hand, that indicate what is coming in a weather way for a short time ahead. Many of the old signs are reliable. From time out of mind a red sunset has been viewed as a precursor of fair weather, and a red sunrise the forerunner of storm. A bright-yellow sky at sunset uniformly denotes wind, a coppery or pale-yellow sunset, wet; and attentive observers do not need the testimony of Admiral Fitzroy to know that a dark, gloomy, blue sky is windy, and a light, bright, blue sky is fair. A high dawn indicates wind, a low dawn fine weather. A gray sky in the morning presages fine weather. If _cumulus_ gathers in the north and rises, rain may be looked for before night. Frequently the _cumuli_ clouds—argosies serenely riding at anchor above the southern horizon—flash forth warnings that are never fulfilled; the lightning of heat, and not of storm. If stripes are seen to rise northward from the southern sky, a change may be anticipated from their quarter. Without clouds there can be no storm.

One of the most beautiful cloud-formations, the mackerel-sky, is well known to be usually indicative of a change. Oftentimes on the otherwise unclouded blue of the heavens delicate volutes or scrolls may be observed, like cobwebs spun upon the sky; these frequently portend a decided change within two days. If this form of cloud, more familiarly known as mares’-tails, curls down toward sunset, fair weather may be looked for; if up, it will most probably rain before dawn. Frequently narrow bands or stripes extend from east to west or north to south over the entire aërial arch, the storm invariably coming from the direction pointed out by the clouds.

Local signs go to show that in winter a dark-blue cloud over the lake foretells a thaw; when the lower portion, however, is dark and the upper portion gray, snow may be expected. A halo round the moon is a sure indication of rain, snow, or wind, and the larger the circle the nearer the storm. When the stars are more than usually bright and numerous, or when the hills and distant objects seem unusually sharp and near, I am certain of an approaching storm. “You all know the peculiar clearness which precedes rain,” observes Ruskin, “when the distant hills are looking nigh. I take it on trust from the scientific people that there is then a quantity, almost to saturation, of aqueous vapor in the air, but it is aqueous vapor in a state which makes the air more transparent than it would be without it. What state of aqueous molecule is that, absolutely unreflective of light—perfectly transmissive of light, and showing at once the color of blue water and blue air on the distant hills?” Distant sounds heard with unusual distinctness apprise me of rain. The aurora borealis, when very bright, is usually followed by a storm, and often intense cold. The rainbow after drought is a rain-sign.

Natural signs, other than the handwriting on the sky, are innumerable, and, again, the old sign-posts point out the way. Heavy dews indicate fair weather, while three consecutive white frosts, and often two, invariably bring rain or snow. Before a snow-storm the weather usually moderates, while there is always an interval between the first drops and the downpour. If it rains before seven it will clear before eleven, is a wise saw. Certain stones, which, when rain is in the near future, become damp and dark-looking, are excellent barometers. We have all of us noticed that fire frequently burns brighter and throws out more heat just before a storm, and is hotter during its continuance—an easterly storm, however, often being the exception.

The closing of the blossoms of numerous flowers during the day tells me it will rain; my flowers also give out a stronger odor previous to rain. The trefoils contract their leaves at the approach of a storm. The convolvulus and the pimpernel also fold their petals previous to rain, the latter flower being appropriately named the poor man’s weather-glass. When the chickweed’s blossom expands fully, no rain will occur for several hours; if it continue open, no rain will fall during the day. When it half conceals its flower the day is usually showery. When it entirely closes its white petals, steady rain will occur. “It is manifest,” observes Bacon in Sylva Sylvarum, “that there are some _Flowers_ that have _Respect_ to the _Sunne_ in two kindes; The one by _Opening_ and _Shutting_; And the other by _Bowing_ and _Inclining_ the _Head_; it is found in the great Flower of the _Sunne_; in _Marigolds_, _Wart-Wort_, _Mallow-Flowers_; and others.”

Smoke rising straight in the air means fair weather. The odor of the _Mephitis_ is very pronounced before rain, owing to the heaviness of the atmosphere, which prevents odors from rising. Spiders do not spin their webs out of doors before rain. Previous to rain flies sting sharper, bees remain in their hives, or fly but short distances, and most animals and birds appear uneasy. “Sheep,” the Selborne rector states, “are observed to be very intent on grazing against stormy wet evenings.” One of the most reliable weather-signs in Texas is said to be supplied by the ant. The ants bring their eggs up out of their nests, exposing them to the sun to be hatched. When they are observed carrying them in again hastily, though there be not a cloud in the sky, a storm is near at hand. Swallows flying low near the ground or water is a rain-sign noted in the Georgics, the birds following the flies and gnats which delight in a warm strata of air. Aratus, the Greek poet, in the Prognostica, also cites the swallow’s flight low over the water as a rain-sign:

Fast skim the swallows o’er the lucid lake
And with their breasts the rippling waters break.

Previous to rain and just when it begins to rain, swallows fly swifter, doubtless to make the most of the insects while opportunity affords. Wheeling and diving high in the sky, the swallow flies to tell me the day will be fair. Chickens, it may be noticed, when steady rain sets in will continue searching for food after the rain has begun; if only a shower they will seek shelter before the rain begins. Foxes bark, and wolves howl more frequently when wet weather is approaching. Crows clamor louder before a change. Frogs, geese, and crows were looked upon as weather-prophets by the ancients, the crow especially figuring frequently as a foreboder of storm. According to Virgil, if they croak often, and with a hoarse voice it is a rain-sign:

Tum cornix rauca pluviam vocat improba voce.

If they croak only three or four times, and with a shrill clear voice it is a fair weather-sign:

Tum liquidas corvi presso ter guttere voces
Aut quater ingeminant.

Lucretius likewise introduces the crow as a weather-prophet:

... om’nous crows with various noise,
Affright the farmers; and fill all the plain,
Now calling for rough winds and now for rain.[4]

Footnote 4:

Creeche’s translation.

The crow’s raucous voice also figures in Aratus’s Prognostics of a Storm:

The aged crow on sable pinions borne,
Upon the beetling promontory stands,
And tells the advancing storm to trembling lands;
Or dips and dives within the river’s tide,
Or, croaking hoarse, wheels round in circles dark and wide.[5]

Footnote 5:

Milman’s translation.

And Chaucer, while following the majority of the poets in aspersing the crow, still makes him serve as a barometer:

Ne nevir aftir swete noise shall ye make,
But evir crye ayenst tempest and rain....

All nature reads the coming signs. The migratory woodcock will desert the fall covers in advance of the storm, even though the weather promise fair. Just before a storm, like its echo in advance, I have heard the Canadian forest resounding on every side with the cry of the great horned owl—_oh-hoo, oh-hoo! oh-hoo, oh-hoor-r-r-r_! Wild fowl are conscious of the change from afar. Even the domestic goose and duck are unusually garrulous previous to a storm, voicing their pleasure at the prospect of approaching rain. I recall a case in point while trout-fishing, where geese proved excellent weather-prophets. The day in question, September 14, 1875, the last day of the open season in Ontario, like the three or four preceding days, was warm, hazy, and delightful, with no perceptible omens to denote an approaching storm, save the graceful mares’-tails waving from the sky. But a large flock of geese, which appeared to dispute with the trout the possession of the pond, and which had frequently proved a source of annoyance while angling, were more than usually excited, screaming continually, and flying to and from the pond with loud gaggling. The sun descended behind the tamaracks with an angry frown, the moon became obscured by ominous clouds, the temperature fell suddenly, and a severe equinoctial storm set in.

Birds, however, can not be implicitly relied upon as weather-prophets, especially as harbingers of spring. Year after year, tempted by instinct and the tempered air, do the migratory birds take early flights to the northward. Suddenly on some genial morning, the vanguards appear. A blue-bird’s, or song-sparrow’s dulcet warble falls upon the ear, and we welcome the return of spring. But season after season we have to record the disappearance of the birds again, and the recurrence of stormy weather. Lured by the soft spring sunshine, and eager to revisit their northern homes, the birds, like human migrants to the south, frequently return too soon. Not until I hear the first sweet song of the white-throated sparrow am I convinced that spring has come to stay.

How far the weather is influenced by the changes of the moon is a disputed question. M. de Parville, a French meteorologist of note, has recently claimed that a long series of observations show that the moon which passes every month from one hemisphere to the other, influences the direction of the atmospheric currents; that the distance of the moon from the equator, or inclination of the moon’s path to the plane of the equator varies every year, passing from a maximum to a minimum limit, and that the meteorological character of a series of years appears to be mainly dependent upon the change of inclination when those extreme limits have been touched: the rainy years, the cold winters, and hot summers return periodically and coincide with certain declinations of the moon. In proof of his assertion, he presents a table tracing backward this connection between the rainy years and the moon’s declination.

In the European Magazine, vol. 60, p. 24, a table is given which has been ascribed to the astronomer Herschel. It is constructed upon a philosophical consideration of the attraction of the sun and moon in their several positions respecting the earth, suggesting to the observer what kind of weather will most probably follow the moon’s entrance into any of her quarters. Briefly summarized, the nearer the time of the moon’s entrance, at full and change or quarters, is to midnight (that is within two hours before and after midnight), the more fair the weather is in summer, but the nearer to noon, the less fair. Also, the moon’s entrance, at full, change, and quarters, during six of the afternoon hours, viz.: from four to ten, may be followed by fair weather; but this is mostly dependent on the wind. The same entrance during all the hours after midnight, except the two first, is unfavorable to fair weather.

It may be of interest to cite Bacon’s rules for prognosticating the weather, from the appearances of the moon:

1. If the new moon does not appear till the fourth day, it prognosticates a troubled air for the whole month.

2. If the moon either at her first appearance or within a few days after, has her lower horn obscured and dusky, it denotes foul weather before the full; but, if she be discovered about the middle, storms are to be expected about the full; and, if her _upper_ horn be affected, about the wane.

3. When on her fourth day the moon appears pure and spotless, her horns unblunted and neither flat nor quite erect, but between both, it promises fair weather for the greatest part of the month.

4. An erect moon is generally threatening and unfavorable, but particularly denotes wind; though if she appears with short and blunted horns, rain is rather to be expected.

The influence of the moon on the weather was one of the cardinal beliefs, not only of the ancients, but of our forefathers, and the old gardeners and orchardists believed implicitly in its effect on most operations connected with husbandry, regulating these operations with the greatest exactitude, according to the various phases of the planet. Harvard, in his treatise on the art of propagating plants, referring to the proper time for grafting, declares, “the grafts must alwaies be gathered in the old of the Moone.” Lawson, in his New Orchard and Garden, advises as the best time to remove sets, “immediately after the fall of the Leaf, in or about the change of the Moon;” and the best time for “graffing” as “in the last part of _February_ or _March_, or beginning with _April_, when the Sun with his heat begins to make the sap stir more rankly about the change of the Moon, before you see any great apparancie of leaf or flowers; but only knots and buds, and before they be proud, though it be sooner.”

Very frequent references to the moon’s influence with respect to forestry and its operations occur in Evelyn’s Sylva. In felling timber, he charges the forester to “observe the _Moons_ increase” (chap. iii, 13). And again, “the fittest time of the _Moon_ for the _Pruning_ is (as of _Graffing_) when the _sap_ is ready to stir (not proudly stirring) and so to cover the _wound_” (chap. xxix, 6.) The old lunar rules for felling trees are thus given by Evelyn (chap. xxx, 26): “Fell in the _decrease_, or four days after _conjunction_ of the two great _Luminaries_; some of the last quarter of it; or (as Pliny) in the very article of the _change_, if possible; which hapning (saith he) in the last day of the Winter _Solstice_, that _Timber_ will prove _immortal_: At least should it be from the _twentieth_ to the _thirtieth_ day, according to _Columella_: _Cato_ four dayes after the _Full_, as far better for the growth: But all _viminious_ Trees _silente Lunâ_; such as _Sallies_, _Birch_, _Poplar_, etc. _Vegetius_ for _ship timber_, from the _fifteenth_ to the _twenty-fifth_, the _Moon_ as before; but never during the _Increase_, Trees being then most abounding with moisture, which is the only source of putrefaction: And yet ’tis affirm’d upon unquestionable _Experience_, that _Timber_ cut at any _season_ of the _year_, in the _Old Moon_, or last _Quarter_, when the _Wind_ blows _Westerly_; proves as _sound_, and good as at any other period whatsoever; nay, all the whole _Summer_ long, as in any _Month_ of the _Year_.”

Few of our large storms are of local origin; they are hatched for the most part on the plains east of the Rocky Mountains, and thence move eastward, deflecting slightly to the north during winter. In Europe, the meteorologists assert, storms are more nearly round than in America, where they are of a more irregular oval form, varying in size from the diameter of a few miles to those that surge from the gulf to beyond the lakes.

But Blasius for storms! the supreme authority, the Aristotle of the clouds and air-currents. When all our ordinary signs fail, we have only to turn to the Hanover professor to read and learn.

Unquestionably, nevertheless, the most infallible of weather rules is that there is no rule. So far as ordinary signs go, there is nothing more true than that all signs may fail during a protracted drought, or continuous rainy weather. Vainly then the peacock screams, or the sun emerges from a dripping sky. At best the weather is a hoiden, and, perhaps, loves a frown better than a dimple. The rain may come and the rain may go, persistently following the course of a lake or river, favoring this locality and slighting that; deluging one county to leave the adjoining one parched with thirst. For it is true of the weather and other things besides; it never smiles but it laughs, it never rains but it pours.

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IV.

THE IDEAL HAVEN.

When my ship comes home I shall have a study of a very superior kind
built. A part of the scheme will be a garden and a greenhouse which
shall be especially adapted to the exigencies of authorcraft.—J.
ASHBY-STERRY, CUCUMBER CHRONICLES.

WHILE silence is pre-eminently golden in the study, the study, nevertheless should be more than “a chamber deaf to noise.” Situated away from disturbing household sounds, it should also be withdrawn from ready access on the part of all intruders. It should be a “den” in the literal sense of the word—a covert, a haven. Not that it should necessarily be below ground, but the way leading to it should be difficult to find; and, like the fox’s den, it should be provided with two entrances or means of escape, the more readily to baffle pursuers.

In how many houses, even those which are supposed to have been most carefully planned, are not the library and the study placed in close proximity to the front entrance, where anything like continuous repose is as far removed as the constellation Orion, and where the volume with which one endeavors to be engaged is forever chafed by the friction of passing inmates! Apart from mere noise, the discomfort of a library or study so situated is always great from the facility it offers to the wiles of innumerable outside forces. It is necessarily unpleasant to have certain visitors thrust unceremoniously upon one. You can not tell by the mere ring of the bell whether it is A, B, or C who has come to honor you with his presence—to bore or to charm; and without at every announcement making a sudden dive at the risk of being seen or heard, you are liable to be chambered for an hour with the very person you may most desire to avoid. Thoreau often waited for the Visitor who never comes; many of us must wait for the visitor who never goes.

Not that I would limit visitors to a circumscribed few, or banish welcome ones at an early hour. I entertain the highest regard for the maxim of Pope respecting the coming and the parting guest; yet, in the very nature of things, there are always some to whom one would fain send the conventional message, “not at home.” It was to obviate such monstrous misplacements as a library near the front door (a library merely in name), that Naudé, years since, in his Advis pour dresser une Bibliothèque, gave this excellent advice: “Let the library be placed in a portion of the house most removed from noise and disturbance, not only from without, but also from family and servants; away from the street, the kitchen, sitting-room, and similar places; locating it, if possible, between some spacious court and a fine garden where it may have abundant light, pure air, and extended and agreeable views.”

In the case of all houses where rooms are thus misplaced, some means of spiriting one’s self away through a side or rear door are absolutely essential to even a semblance of comfort. A study amid such surroundings, without safe and instantaneous means of flight from unwelcome callers is a grotesque misnomer. Is not a man’s house his castle? The term “growlery,” often applied to the study, undoubtedly arose from an apartment so situated, referring not to a cage where the master of the house may work off his surly moods, as some ladies erroneously suppose, but to the anathemas bestowed by its harassed inmate upon the architect who planned a place for retirement where retirement is only possible after midnight. All these can the more readily comprehend the force of a passage in Walden-“the mass of men lead lives of quiet desperation; what is called resignation is confirmed desperation.” A trap-door, concealed by an Oriental rug, that would respond to a certain pressure of the foot known only to the initiated, might be worthy of consideration by house-builders in this connection. Or some kind of reflecting-glass might be devised that would enable coming events of an unpleasant nature to cast their shadows before.

Even though one meet his modest accounts with all reasonable promptitude, there are still creditors oblivious to the amenities of life, who, instead of forwarding annual or semi-annual statements through the certain channel of the mails, send their “cards of compliment” for collection through the medium of middlemen or runners, who, even yet more callous to the finer feelings of humanity, and intent solely upon pouching their guerdon, invariably present themselves at the front door to force a passage within. Fancy an intrusion of this kind while you may be rereading The Eve of St. Agnes, or perusing The Good-Natured Man! Though it occur but once a year, the shock must still remain. At one time or another this form of visitant is bound to appear to every one; for the species of fiend exists in common with front-door book-agents, itinerant venders, census-takers, expressmen, telegraph-messengers, and the rest of the customary mob that charges upon one’s front entrance wherever and whenever it is the most accessible means of invasion. Even the parcels’-delivery, despite reiterated warnings, will not unfrequently persist in demanding ingress through the forbidden portal. Indeed, the front door is a constant factor of discord, the baiting-place of disquiet, the arch enemy of household peace.

Many of the vexations that are ever striving to wedge their way through the vestibule may be avoided by intelligent, well-drilled servants who are capable of reading human nature, and at a glance can distinguish the false from the true. A thoroughly competent house-maid should wear her cap internally as well as externally, and, like a thrasher’s sieve, be able to winnow the chaff from the wheat. But such discriminating Cerberi are as rare as they are desirable, and the melancholy fact exists that the servant is invariably ready to leave so soon as she or he has become really valuable or thoroughly accustomed to your ways.

Lamb, in one of his essays on Popular Fallacies, has said some excellent things about visitors. If certain visitors would only read these things, and, reading, comprehend! And if the visitor who never knows when to leave, as distinguished from those who, staying late, always leave too soon, would only peruse and ponder! In his category of intruders Lamb emphasizes “purposeless visitants and droppers-in,” and he sometimes wonders from what sky they fall. Whittier’s Demon of the Study, too, would indicate that the type still flourishes in New as well as Old England. Under the inspiration of an architect who is yet to be born, the house of the millennium will be able to avoid all unpleasant intrusions upon a privacy that is its inherent right, but which, alas! exists not in the home of the present.

It is apparent at once that the ideal haven can not hide itself amid the turmoil of the first floor. To fulfill its mission it must betake itself to surroundings more retired, and soar to a serener sphere. The true place for the study, therefore, is on an upper floor, and in the ideal house I would have it a spacious oriel approached by a hidden staircase.

Hawthorne’s idea was an excellent one—the study in the tower or upper story of his residence at Concord, which he approached by a ladder and trap-door, pulling the ladder up after him, and placing a weight over the door for additional security. Here he could look out upon his favorite walk amid the evergreens, almost touch the crowns of the leafy elms, and bathe in the sunshine that illumined the fertile plain across the roadway. His first residence at Concord—the Old Manse—was sufficiently remote to dispense with a trap-door, unless, indeed, this was an after-consideration owing to family reasons. At an opposite extremity of the village, far removed from Emerson and even the fleet feet of Thoreau, situated at a distance from the highway, the house itself of a gray neutral tone to baffle observation, and half concealed amid the shade of the distant suburbs, he was here free from all external annoyances. Here in the retired three-windowed study in the rear of the house, which overlooked the romantic Concord River below, he could set about his chosen task with no dread of interruption from the outside world.

Montaigne’s was a model study, a true sanctum. Without the quiet and reclusion it afforded, the pervading charm of the Essays would never have been ours. Instead of sauntering and loitering along with the easy abandon they do, they would have hurried and galloped by at breakneck speed, striding the noisy highway rather than pacing the shady lane. The placid, thinking, receptive mind of Montaigne was obviously the direct outcome of the calm and tranquillity exhaled by the inaccessible round Tower of Périgord.

The enchanting landscape, too, that smiled through the spacious windows was, no doubt, a constant inspiration, serving to rest the eye and mind when they were wearied by the tyranny of print, or fatigued by protracted writing. There would doubtless be more Montaignes were it possible to reproduce the life and surroundings amid which the Essays were inspired. Genius is capable of much; but, to be at its best, even genius must be in the mood, and moods are largely the result of surroundings. “No doubt,” observes Lord Lytton, “the cradle and nursery of definite thought is in the hazy limbo of Reverie. There ideas float before us, rapid, magical, vague, half formed; apparitions of the thoughts that are to be born later into the light, and run their course in the world of man.”

“Like the rain of night,” remarks Henri Amiel in the Journal Intime, “reverie restores color and force to thoughts which have been blanched and wearied by the heat of the day.”

The true flavor of a fine vintage may not be savored if the wine be roiled, or served at an improper temperature; the fine effluence that should emanate from the study—the framing of one’s mood and the molding of one’s thoughts, is only to be obtained in its perfect measure when the mind is freed from all disturbing influences.

Let us mount the classic staircase with Montaigne, and view the apartment so minutely described in the third chapter of the Third Book. The well-filled book-cases, the sunlight, the seclusion, the inviting prospect, the fireplace, and the immunity from noise, all are there:

“At home I betake me somewhat the oftener to my library, whence all at once I command and survey all my household; it is seated in the chiefe entrie of my house, thence I behold under me my garden, my base court, my yard, and looke even into most roomes of my house. There without order, without method, and by peece-meales I turn over and ransacke, now one booke and now another. Sometimes I muse and rave; and walking up and downe I endight and enregister these my humours, these my conceits. It is placed on the third storie of a tower. The lowermost is my Chapell; the second a chamber with other lodgings, where I often lie because I would be alone. Above it is a great wardrobe. It was in times past the most unprofitable place of all my house. There I past the greatest part of my lives dayes, and weare out most houres of the day. I am never there a nights: Next unto it is a handsome neat cabinet, able and large enough to receive fire in winter, and very pleasantly windowen. And if I feared not care, more than cost; (care which drives and diverts me from all businesse) I might easily joyne a convenient gallerie of a hundred paces long, and twelve broad, on each side of it, and upon one floore; having already for some other purpose, found all the walles raised unto a convenient height. Each retired place requireth a walke. My thoughts are prone to sleepe, if I sit long. My minde goes not alone as if ledges did moove it. Those that studie without bookes, are all in the same case. The forme of it is round, and hath no flat side, but what serveth for my table and my chaire: In which bending or circling manner, at one looke it offreth me the full sight of all my books, set round about upon shelves or desks, five rancks one upon another. It hath three bay-windowes, of a farre-extending, rich and unresisted prospect, and is in diameter sixteen paces wide. In winter I am less continually there: for my house (as the name of it importeth) is pearched upon an overpearing hillocke; and hath no part more subject to all wethers than this: which pleaseth me the more, both because the accesse unto it is somewhat troublesome and remote, and for the benefit of the exercise which is to be respected; and that I may the better seclude myselfe from companie, and keepe incroachers from me: There is my seat, that is my throne. I endeavour to make my rule therein absolute, and to sequester that only corner from the communitie of wife, of children, and of acquaintance. Else-where I have but a verball authoritie, of confused essence. Miserable in my minde is he, who in his owne home, hath no where to be to himselfe; where he may particularly court, and at his pleasure hide or with-draw himself. Ambition paieth her followers well, to keepe them still in open view, as a statue in some conspicuous place.”[6]

Footnote 6:

Florio’s translation.

Aside from the quiet, sequestration, and conveniences of the philosopher’s study, it will be observed that among its many desirable features was that of its being “very pleasantly windowen” (_très-plaisamment percé_), the windows commanding a “farre-extending, rich, and unresisted prospect” (_trois veuës de riche et libre prospect_). Assuredly the sunshine and light that warmed and brightened the apartment, and the unlimited view of hill and plain, were a stimulus to the writer.

Fortunate is he who has a pleasing prospect to look in upon him—it invigorates and cheers like a cordial. Whatever the time of year, the distant hills, visible through my windows, are a source of companionship and charm. So constantly are they before me, I have begun to consider them as my own, a remote part of the garden and the grounds to which they form the frame. I love to watch their changing expression and note their play of light and shade. Meseems they almost resemble a human countenance in the varying sentiments they convey. Content and malcontent are as plainly expressed by their mobile curves as they are by the lines of the human face. Like the rest of us, in sunshine they smile, in storm they frown. They are warm, or cool, as the mood takes them; as they reflect or absorb the sky and atmosphere. For days they rest in absolute calm; again they recede, and, again, they advance. Mirroring every change of the day and of the passing seasons, they are a dial that tells the hour, the time of year to me. The sun salutes one side of their profile the first thing in the morning; his parting rays illumine the other side the last thing in the evening. They hasten the dawn, and prolong the twilight. The full moon rising from the far horizon behind them, silvers their wooded slopes ere it gilds the topmost gables of my house. They catch the first drops of the summer shower, and receive the first flakes of the November snow. The loveliest blues and purples seek them, drawing a semi-transparent veil over them. On hot summer noontides the cloud-flocks repose upon them, and the orange afterglow lingers long upon their tranquil heights. In spring the earliest violets carpet their sheltered places; in autumn they yield me the last blue gentian bloom. I see the wind lifting their green skirts, and fancy I hear his voice murmuring through their umbrageous depths. My hills ever catch and focus color, and toy and play with wind and sun. Whether shimmering in midsummer glare, or standing out against the wintry sky, or slumbering in the haze of the dreamy autumnal day, they are my finest landscape paintings. When the snow has spread its shroud over the silent fields they still speak to me in color—gray, bronze, and purple—by turns during the day; a kaleidoscope of tones when the sun sinks behind their serried ranks of trees.

Seeing them thus year after year they have come to possess a personality; and when a rarefied atmosphere brings them unusually near, I find myself casting an imaginary lasso at them to bring them still closer to me that I may stroke their lovely contours. So familiar have I become with them, I have only to look out of my windows, and I am treading their luminous heights, and am fanned by the breeze that perpetually blows upon their peaceful crests.

With the wind from the southeast, I hear the roar of the railroad trains, panting and steaming, coming and going along their slopes, leaving a trail of smoke to mark the passage of their flight. The ceaseless tide of travel ever hurries on. How many of those seated in the luxurious coaches note the beauty of my hills? Cloud-shadows chase each other, and hawks wheel over their summits, while the train speeds on, intent upon overtaking other hills and its remote destination: the beauty of my hills remains for me.

A knock at my study-door interrupts my musings, and my hills abruptly recede. Not that my friend Sherlock drives them away; he is so versatile and colorful himself that the charm of his presence and conversation takes the place of my hills. I never learned until to-day why he has remained a bachelor. It was only when conversing about the ideal home that the true reason occurred to me—he has failed, not in discovering the ideal woman, but the ideal architect to carry out his admirable conceptions of the perfect house; and rather than fall below his artistic standard he passively submits to fate, and awaits the architect who is to be.

“You seem to overlook the probability of my being referred to a committee _inquirendo lunatico_, should my views ever be carried out; and it seems dangerous to commit them to print,” was my friend’s rejoinder to a request that he present his views in detail.

“But the simple story of my house will at most be read by a few,” I replied; “and these few will charitably give us credit for good intentions; moreover the critics are not nearly as black as they are painted.”

“My ideas,” continued my friend, “fly so rudely in the face of all convention that people would consider the order of Nature reversed. ‘A kitchen in the front yard!’ I hear them say, ‘Away with him!’

“Nevertheless, had I the courage of my convictions, together with ten times as much money as I shall ever possess, I would build my house all front, and no rear!

“A capacious vestibule, say 20 × 20 feet, should be, not the entrance exactly, but a means of exclusion for unwelcome visitors. A door on one side should open to my lady’s reception-room where she should receive all formal and business calls; in short, every one whom she took no pleasure in seeing at all.

“This reception-room should be connected with the domestic end of the house; the store-rooms, servants’ hall, kitchen, kitchen-pantries, and, _back of these_, the dining- and breakfast-rooms.

“On the opposite side of the vestibule should be a door, similarly accommodating all unwelcome guests of the master, being the entrance to the office, and connected by a heavy _portière_ and door with the den and library. From these masculine apartments a staircase, concealed in the wall, should enable the good man of the house to disappear to his bath- and dressing-room; and there should also be an outer side-door from the den, through which could be ‘fired’ (and admitted also) such tardy and bibulous friends as might meet the disapproval of madame.

“The back of the vestibule should open and expand into the hall—a great living-room connecting the library at one end with the dining-room at the other, and out of which should open such little parlors and snuggeries as inventive genius might suggest.

“Into this hall, the real house, only those one wished to see should be admitted. Here the great staircase should rest the eye, and the great hearth should blaze. On occasions of festivity the guests, in their wraps, should ascend by a modest staircase in the vestibule to their disrobing rooms, and thence descend by the grand staircase.

“The kitchen being at one end of the front part of the house, and so conveniently accessible to the butcher, baker, and candlestick-maker, would leave all the space behind the house for piazzas, terraces, and gardens, with such fountains, statuary, and conservatories as might be within reach of the goodman’s purse; and all where the reporter and unwelcome caller could not intrude; for they would be secluded alike from the general public and the ordinary domestic offices. The principal apartments of all Japanese houses, I may observe, are at the back of the house, looking out upon the garden with its lilies, irises, pæonias, azaleas, its foliage plants and flowering shrubs.

“Thus you perceive my ideal house requires four staircases: the great one in the great hall, the modest one in the vestibule, the secret one (to escape creditors), and the one for the servants.

“When I consider that this is only two more than all civilized houses have, I am surprised at the moderation and restraint of the average house-builder. But pray remember I am anxious to avoid that committee of lunacy; and I have not yet begun to build.”

Personally, I entertain the highest regard for my versatile friend’s ideal. Were I to suggest any change in the main points, so admirably conceived, it would be to have the study removed to a still serener sphere, as has already been suggested. Even with my friend’s excellent barricade, still, on _some_ occasion when least expected—perchance a most momentous one, just as a long-lost conceit had winged its return—the dreaded intruder might force an entrance, and put the thought to instantaneous and irremeable flight.

The size of the study, methinks, should be small rather than large; yet ample enough to harbor the cheering grate-fire, the easy-chairs, the center-table, the writing-desk, the well-filled book-cases, and the artistic glass cabinet or cabinets, for such precious works as should be kept under lock and key and never loaned, or even touched by sacrilegious hands.

Let these gems be worthily set as becomes their quality and rarity, so they may minister to the delight of the eye and the pleasure of the touch as they contribute to the delectation of the mind. “Sashes of gold for old saints, golden bindings for old writings,” Nodier expresses it; and Charles Asselineau affectionately exclaims: “My Books, I love them! I have sought them, gathered them, searched for them; I have had them habited to the best of my ability by the best tailors of books.” My glass cabinet is my casket, my jewel-case; and in the many-colored morocco of the bindings that reflect the precious riches contained within them, I see all manner of jewels flash and glow. In these, and in some of the superb marblings employed in the finer French bindings—and here the exquisite beauty of the perfect half-morocco binding is apparent—I derive a satisfaction akin to that I receive from the contemplation of any fine art object. The airy conceits and felicities of phrase of a favorite author become yet more entrancing when held by these colored butterfly-wings and variegated plumes dreamed out by the artist, and stamped in permanent form by the skill of the binder.

Thought is inclined to wander amid the freedom of a large room. But though the study should not be a vast apartment, it should be sufficiently spacious for comfort and to avoid overcrowding. Sufficiently large it should also be and the ceiling sufficiently high to insure a pure atmosphere. On account of ventilation, a fire-place is of great advantage in the room where one is engaged in sedentary pursuits. It is the next thing to the walk and the elixir of the open air. De Quincey worked in a room seventeen by twelve, and not more than seven and a half feet high. The low ceilings must have oppressed him; and the vitiated air and sense of suffocation, it is not unlikely, led him to yield to the dangerous stimulus that inspired the Confessions.

Most wisely has Leigh Hunt discoursed upon the study and its surroundings in that ever-pleasing essay, My Books. “I do not like this fine large study. I like elegance. I like room to breathe in, and even walk about, when I want to breathe and walk about. I like a great library next my study; but for the study itself give me a small, snug place, almost entirely walled with books. There should be only one window in it looking on trees.... I dislike a grand library to study in. I mean an immense apartment with books all in museum order, especially wire-safed. I say nothing against the museum itself, or public libraries.... A grand private library, which the master of the house also makes his study, never looks to me like a real place of books, much less of authorship. I can not take kindly to it. It is certainly not out of envy; for three parts of the books are generally trash, and I can seldom think of the rest and the proprietor together.”

To be attractive and cozy, the study need not be extravagantly furnished. As in other apartments of the house, light is one of its first requisites; with color, ease, quiet, and, if possible, a pleasant prospect. In the study, above all, no discordant elements should intrude. The general tone of the walls, decorations, and furnishings, while rich, should yet be subdued and restful. A glaring placque, a staring figure in the wall or carpet pattern, or any subject unpleasing in its nature or sentiment, whether in paintings, pictures, or ornaments, has no place in an apartment which, by its very atmosphere, should conduce to reverie and a contemplative frame of mind. Let dreamful landscapes, rather than figures in action, adorn and complement the rich slate or sage of its walls and hangings; and I picture my ideal study, when my second ship comes in, hung round about solely with Daubigny’s tender twilights and peaceful river-reaches on his calm and slowly gliding Oise.

For the closer concentration of thought, the working-chair would be placed in the most attractive corner of the apartment, back of the spacious writing-desk, with its amplitude of drawers and pigeon-holes; its topmost shelf and other convenient places so arranged with pictures and portraits of favorite authors and dear or absent friends as to create and constantly diffuse an atmosphere of congenial companionship.

A carved book-rest should hold the dictionary in place close to the working-chair, and a revolving case within arm’s reach should bring to it desired works of reference and such especially treasured volumes from which ideas may be collected—another name for inspiration. I would mention some of these—each worthy of crushed levant covers, the handicraft of a Padeloup or Payne—but for the fact that every one should choose such inspirations for himself. One may not be guided by another’s choice in a face or book that charms.

Once during the day, but always unperceived, save for an added freshness pervading the apartment, my study should respond to the touch of gentle fingers. Then, as I mount the secret staircase when I would be alone—a lingering aroma of violets and the vanishing rustle of a silken robe.

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V.

WHEN LEAVES GROW SERE.

For we, which now behold these present days,
Have eyes to wonder, but lack tongues to praise.
SONNET CVI.

Not all the joy, and not all the glory,
Must fade as leaves when the woods wax hoary.
SWINBURNE.

THERE is a sigh in the passing breeze as the autumn days steal on—a sigh for the summer fled. I hear the change, the admonitory whisper of the leaves, almost ere the transition becomes perceptible, for Nature as yet has scarcely altered her outward garb.

Yet daily the shadows lengthen, the haze deepens, mellower grow the evening skies, until, no longer vacillating between summer and autumn, the first frost smites the low-lands, and the division line of the seasons is visibly proclaimed.

“We hope in the spring, only to regret in the fall.” But shall I regret the vanished summer? Will not yonder hillside glow as all the summer meadows have never glowed? these yellowing woods outshine the sunshine of spring? Suddenly, through my windows, I note where the first fires have begun to burn. I watch the flames creep stealthily along the hills, smoldering, perchance, in a distant hollow, anon riding the higher crests, illuming sumac-sentineled ravines, invading the brier patches, and lighting sproutland and swamp with living fire. High on the uplands the splendor hangs, low in the valleys the glory falls. Steeped and flooded with its color, the landscape gleams like an opal beneath the autumn sun. What poet, what prose painter, what cunning artificer of phrase can depict the tidal wave of beauty of the latter year?

Shall I regret the summer with the October carnival at hand, when the woodcock whistles from the alder thicket and the grouse bursts through the painted covert? It is for this the sportsman has longed and waited during the lingering months of summer. Stanchly as he is drawn upon the covey, I am sure The Spanish Pointer, in the old print above the writing-desk, feels the advent of the season, and thinks, with the latter-day philosopher, that “the preacher who declared that all is vanity, never looked at a fall woodcock over the rib of a good gun.”

Always on his point on the knoll, the pointer’s riveted attitude now has an added meaning. His eye still fixed upon the quarry, he nevertheless moves unceasingly in his frame. There is no deception, no optical illusion; he _moves_—not forward or backward, but with an oscillating, sideward motion, as if the constant strain on his powerful tendons had caused them to relax. Rigid as a statue has he stood throughout the summer, the blue blood of generations of pointers holding him unflinchingly upon the game. Perhaps now the scent has grown cold. Or has he wearied of waiting for the volley of the barrels, and, looking up for a moment at the crimsoning copse, bethought him that a fresh season has dawned, and there are fresh coveys to spring? The grim lion by Barye, in the etching that hangs above him, remains motionless. Though you would dread to meet the beast of prey on the desert where he is stalking, he shows no signs of animation on the wall whence he looks down upon you. Only the old pointer moves unceasingly in his frame. Is the movement of the picture due to the furnace heat behind the partition wall? To you, perhaps. To me he is plainly motioning to the covers.

Methinks, also, that my good Irish terrier, who is often by my side, looks up at the fox’s pelt more intently as autumn draws on apace. The fox may suggest the covers and its denizens to him, as the motion of the pointer suggests them to me—the fleet forms that haunt their mazy fastnesses, the hares and rabbits and vanishing shadows his steel sinews are eager to pursue. Surely his sharply pointed ears, his quivering muscles, and his glittering hazel eyes are in sympathy with the movements of the pointer, and second his invitation to the woods.

Musing upon the ancient print, with its rolling background of hill and dale, I sometimes picture the scene of desolation which would ensue were the woods and waters stripped of their native tenants—the game which is at once their glory and their joy. Fancy the landscape denuded of the wild life that is as indigenous as its flora, that is nurtured upon its mast, and derives sustenance from the very twigs and leaves of its vegetation. Conceive, if it be possible, streams with no trout to people their pools and shallows, waters that never mirrored the wood-drake’s mail, and lakes unruffled by the web of wild fowl.

Imagine the woodlands with no grouse to beat the reveille of spring, no hares to thread their shaded labyrinths, no fox to prowl through their coverts. Silence the scream of the hawk, and the voice of the owl, crow, and jay, and instantly the landscape would be deprived of half its beauty, its innate beauty of sound. Game is the essence of the woods and free, uncivilized Nature—the division line that separates the wild from the tame—and he whose nerves have never tingled at the electric whir of a game-bird’s wing and the responsive boom of the double-barrel, has remained insensible to one of the most inspiring exhilarations of the senses. Just as the library refreshes and stimulates the mind, so do the woods, the streams, and the stubbles become a field of health for the body, and by the invigorating and elevating recreation they yield do field sports serve to strengthen both mind and body. Enough for me that autumn is here; I must accept the invitation of the old pointer, and examine for myself what the woods have in store.

Brilliant as they are in the flush of their October splendor, they will lose but little of their beauty as autumn wanes. The bare trees extend and expand the landscape for me, contributing enchantments of distance that only denuded vegetation may reveal. Then, with the weather in a gracious mood, I obtain effects that the green entanglement of summer never knew. The purple bloom upon my hills is never half so exquisite as when a thaw has freed them temporarily from their coverlet of snow, disclosing their russet slopes and leafless trees. A new palette of color is presented in these subtle gradations of umber and ochre, of drab and of bronze, that drape the withered stubbles. Sere and faded in the latter year, the lonely marsh is yet glorious with subdued hues when touched by the afternoon splendor. The hush which broods upon the landscape, too, has a charm of its own, in harmony with the quiet tones of the slumbering woods. The very lisp of the chickadee and solemn tap of the nut-hatch only intensify the repose of Nature; and I question if the combined glories of the midsummer twilight, when the bat and night-hawk raced upon the evening sky, yielded anything so radiantly beautiful as the slant November sunlight streaming through the trees of the lowland, its vivid crimsons reflected in the pools below.