Chapter I: MAKE no claim that the house wherein I dwell is a perfect one; it is (3)

The airy spray of the beech I may admire only during winter, and only when it stands divested of its summer garniture may I behold the marvelous framework of the elm. Attractive as it is when robed in the bloom and leafage of summer, the thorn develops a new beauty in its gnarled and naked branches and the hoariness of its gray antiquity. Loveliest, too, are the birch and hemlock in midwinter; whilst the swamp, ablaze with the scarlet fruit of the _Prinos_ and smooth winterberry, presents its most vivid life above the snow. From it, likewise, I catch the gleam of the golden willow, with purple rufous lights that smolder amid the twigs and branchlets of the shrubs which seek its cool and solitude. Again, when the snow comes sifting down from the pallid sky, what magical effects do I not obtain amid the dark mysterious depths of the hemlock woods! Even then my hills and woods offer a glorious excuse for an outing. For have I not long pictured in imagination the shadowy vistas where I know the big white hares are in waiting?

It is worth scaling a dozen hillsides to breathe such air and obtain such views. No play of sunlight on an English South Down could be finer, and no lines of beauty fairer than those revealed by distant table-land and wide-extending vale. A silence, broken only by the roar of far-off railroad trains or the ring of the woodsman’s axe, rests like a benediction over all, a sleep of Nature—peaceful, deep, profound.

Within the shelter of the wood, beneath the refuge of the evergreens and undergrowth, it is warm; without, the gale may rave, and, above, the tree-tops wail a requiem for the departing year; but here below it is protected as within the walls of a building. On either hand extend the green arcades of the hemlocks, like the nave and transepts of a cathedral. The downy woodpecker and titmouse are here, ever present as choristers; the wild life of the woods is here, the companionship of bird and beast and dormant vegetable life. There is life beating beneath the mold, beneath the snowy mantle—the ermine with which Nature keeps her treasures warm. There is life—nimble, fleet, and stirring—above the tell-tale snow.

That is a fox’s track leading to his den on the hillside, the return trail of Reynard whose sortie toward the barn-yards you previously noticed. When he started on his foray his pace was a walk, as his footsteps close together reveal. Warily he was proceeding under cover of the darkness, planning the best means of ingress to his gallinaceous goal. All the caution of a skilled general on the eve of a decisive battle is apparent in his skulking foot-prints. His dreaded enemies are well known. Only yesterday the hounds were hot in his pursuit, and the echoes reverberated with the volley of barbarous vulpicides, which happily fell wide of its mark. But he will outwit them all! His trained cunning has taught him the danger of traps and gins; his fleet foot has long borne him through many a loop-hole of escape. The stork’s invitation to dine must needs be deftly perfumed and framed on an unusually tempting card to induce him to take his claret out of long-necked _carafes_ or his _pâté de foie gras_ from metal tureens.

The tracks leading back from the farmyard show him to have been jogging along at a more rapid gait. The prints are the same, except that they are farther apart, one following directly behind the other, Indian filewise, in an almost straight line. His object accomplished, there was no further need of extreme caution or dalliance. From a safe distance he had watched the lights in the farm-house till one by one they were extinguished, had waited until all was silent, and his keen scent apprised him that danger was past. It was then an easy matter to pounce upon and bear off the unsuspecting prey. Along his return trail there are feathers strewed here and there, attesting conclusively that his raid was successful.

Lightly he tripped along with elevated brush, the booty slung over his shoulder, to the safeguard of his den. Obviously before reaching his haven he has been startled by something. The tracks, still in a straight line, become much farther apart; the trot has given place to a canter for a few rods, when his former gait is resumed. The baying of a hound, perchance, from his kennel on the farther hillside, or the bark of a fellow-vulpine freebooter, has quickened his pace for the moment. Where he struck into a gallop the prints of his nails are visible; these do not show when he progresses on his customary trot or walk, so well are his feet protected for extended predations by the thick fur padding between the toes. His long sweeping brush never once touched the snow, burdened though he was by his plunder. This he carries well up, knowing the increased weight it would engender should he get it wet. A cat is not more careful of her dainty feet than is sly Reynard of his precious tail.

In general, a fox that has acquired a taste for poultry is considered rather an undesirable subject for the chase proper. A poultry fox always makes his headquarters near the farmsteads. His daily beat, therefore, is limited as to distance compared with his brethren who subsist by foraging in the woods, and whose nightly rounds embrace a very much larger territory. Usually a poultry fox, if started, does not take a straight line very far, but, after leading a short distance, commences to circle, coming round to the place of starting after the manner of the hare. A fox who subsists on game knows all the fat covers of the neighborhood where the most game lies. His extended tramps give him wind, fleetness, and endurance, while his familiarity with every rod of the covers stands him in excellent stead when hotly pursued.

A round glittering eyeball, bright as a coal of fire, is scrutinizing you from beneath a pile of brushwood at the edge of the cover. Scarcely is the gun discharged ere a small covey of quail spring close at hand. Investigation is needless to reveal the baffled assassin; the tell-tale tracks upon the snow, round like those of a fox, but smaller, and the distance between considerably less, divulge the nature of the trespasser. It is none other than a cat, the petted tabby of the farmstead, that spends a large portion of its time in stalking game—a poacher scarcely less destructive than its fierce wild congener. When once a taste for game has been formed, pursuit is thenceforward continual and relentless, till the offender usually ends by adopting a permanent woodland abode, where it thrives lustily, increasing in size and acquiring a heavy coat of fur.

Look at this much-traveled esplanade, where the tracks show so thickly upon the snow. Overnight the hares and rabbits have been browsing upon the young beech, maple, and hemlock buds, with an occasional sally into the brier patches. The numerous trails indicate they have availed themselves of the bright moonlight to continue their feeding longer than usual. On moonlight nights the _Leporidæ_ always travel most; on cold, blustering nights they seldom leave their forms. Birds and animals dislike to venture out during stormy weather unless impelled by hunger. At such times a wood throbbing with animate life seems entirely deserted by its furred and feathered population. Vainly, then, the pointer or setter may quarter the ground; the game lies concealed and apparently scentless beneath the brush and hiding-places, refusing to leave its refuge unless almost stepped upon. An apparently similar disappearance of game is often noticeable when the weather is fair immediately preceding a storm. The squirrels are warmly housed in their nests within the trees. Many of the grouse seek shelter amid the dense hemlocks, sitting close to the trunks on the leeside of the storm, protected by the thick foliage and their own matting of feathers. The closest of beating then goes for little, so that in a wood where you know game exists in comparative abundance it appears a mystery whither all its wild life has fled.

The white hare and rabbit tracks—if the smaller _Lepus_ may be referred to as a rabbit—which strew the ground are identical save in size. There are first the marks of the hind feet, side by side, followed by those of the fore feet, one behind the other. Thus it is seen the gait is always a lope or bound, and that in springing the hare brings up with his hind feet nearest the head, alighting, however, on all fours at once. His long, powerful hind-quarters seem made of rubber sinews, the crooked stifles and great strength of thigh acting as levers to the supple body framed with special regard to speed—his sole protection. In reaching for the buds and young shoots of the undergrowth during the deep snows, he is materially aided by his long hind legs.

Under the beeches the squirrels have been busy scratching for the mast; these appear to be the most restless foragers of the wood, their trails being by far the most numerous. Like the hare’s and rabbit’s, their gait is a lope. As he lands from his spring, the hind feet of the squirrel touch the ground nearest the head, as in the case of the hare and rabbit, but the two forward feet, instead of striking one before the other, strike nearly side by side, like a single footfall. Occasionally, not often, he prints similarly to the rabbit in the position of the feet, although always smaller and somewhat less pointed. The large blacks and grays are persecuted by the smaller pugnacious reds, which frequently drive them entirely out of a wood, first pilfering their nests of the shack they have stored.

Here Master Reynard has been mousing, seated on a stump intently watching, his flowing brush clear of the snow; the air is tainted with his strong odor. Where he made a leap his footmarks are distinctly visible amid the numerous tracks of the field-mice—a dainty of which he is extremely fond. Yonder is the scene of an oft-enacted woodland tragedy, with Reynard in his great title _rôle_ of slayer. There, beneath the shelter of an uprooted beech, a grouse had repaired for his nightly slumber, his head screened from the moonlight under his protecting wings. The impress of his form is clearly molded upon the snow. But, alas! his now tattered plumage and a prowling fox’s foot-prints attest his grim awakening when his relentless foe discovered his retreat. For this had his wings so often rung defiance to the double-barrel; to this ignominious end had he come at last! Were the ghosts of murdered grouse to haunt the scenes of their earthly sojourn, they might rattle their featherless wings in triumph to know that on this self-same hillside, but a few rods from the scene of the tragedy, Master Reynard met his fate, a week afterward, in the jaws of clamorous hounds.

It requires a very warm day in winter to tempt a coon from his hibernacle. To-day his large flat prints and zigzag course are not observable; he is snugly clad in his fur overcoat within the fastness of a sheltering tree. The ground-hog is sealed in his burrow outside the wood, having “pulled his hole in after him”; this he covers up with leaves and earth, until, after his protracted slumber, he emerges to view his shadow in the spring.

That was an owl which skimmed the air so silently, on wings soft as eider-down, noiseless as a butterfly, and stealthy as a fox’s tread. It is not often one sees an owl, however; in the day-time he usually sleeps, seldom leaving his retreat till dusk, unless during gloomy weather. The little or screech owls are more frequently seen by day than the larger species. With the hawk, crow, jay, skunk, and fox, the owl is extremely destructive to eggs and young birds during the nesting season, large owls not hesitating to pounce upon full-grown hares, and sharing with the fox a great fondness for poultry. The skunk leaves a print similar to that of the fox and cat, barring its reduced size. There are invariably numbers of these threading the runways and leading to and from the farmsteads.

There is a murmur like unto many voices in the woods’ mysterious depths, as if Pan and his train of Oreads were holding a revel within. It is a combination of numerous sounds that produces these ceaseless whispers of the woods. You hear them in summer when the insect choirs are chanting an aërial melody and the hermit-thrush sings as if he had a soul; you hear them in winter when the wind sobs amid the needles of the pines, and the woodpecker’s hammer resounds unceasingly from hollow trees; you hear them now, on every hand, a chorus of voices, the forest’s pulsations—a palpable part and portion of its solitude. How weird the cry of the blue jay, the loon of the woods, whose startling scream sounds like that a faun might utter in despair! His sapphire coronet is not for you, however; he jeers at you in strident tones from his stronghold in the tree-tops, keeping close watch of you, but taking care to remain well out of range. Like his clamorous friend the crow, he has scented F. F. F. powder before. At intervals the airy treble of the tree-sparrow swells the sylvan choir—a minor but most melodious addition to the chorus. When the powdery snow patters upon the withered leaves and the stillness is otherwise almost unbroken, you may hear his carillon while he feeds on the tender buds of the sweet birch. “A merry heart goes all the day” is his motto and the tenor of his blithe refrain.

There are grouse tracks also that have left their reflection in winter’s mirror—the roving feet of the brown forest hermit, the daintiest print upon the snow. Unless disturbed, the ruffed-grouse will travel a great distance on foot through the woods in quest of food. A single bird will leave a surprising number of tracks in the course of his protracted wanderings, so that one is often puzzled at the comparative scarcity of birds. But even on the snow he is extremely difficult to detect, so closely does he blend with his surroundings. Not until he springs with sonorous pinions close at your side are you made aware of his precise location, when you wonder you had not observed him before. All game is alike in this respect—difficulty of detection—even to the brilliantly marked trout, which assume the general color of the bottom of streams in which they lie.

Should you shoot a crow amid your rambles, a swarm of mourners will quickly be in attendance on the remains. Within a few minutes every ebon inhabitant of the neighborhood, apprised by the alarm of its companions, may be seen winging its way thereto with loud cawings. It can not be the sense of sight alone that locates the dead, for the discovery will not unfrequently occur in thick cover or open glade.

One of the numerous runways of the hares, within gunshot of which you have taken position, extends through a glade, affording ample opportunity to observe the game. The eager hounds have struck the scent leading to a form in a thicket of brier where the quarry lies concealed. The startled hare leaps from his covert, with the hounds in full cry coming directly toward you, until, turning into another runway, the music recedes in the distance. Amid the frenzy of pursuit two other hares have been started, the deep baying indicating the course of the divided pack. Round and round the fleet hares circle, one of them after a prolonged flight approaching your standpoint. His agile dash for liberty has left his pursuers in the rear, and he pauses—a white silhouette of living beauty, and the embodiment of nimble speed—for a survey. He sits upon his great hind legs—his only safeguard—turning his long clean-cut ears forward and backward, each one singly, to focus the sound. The music swells into a grand _crescendo_, the twigs crackle beneath the trampling of many feet, and the hare is off again with the speed of the racer. The baying of the pack indicates the direction of pursuit, whether the game is coming or going. A hare always circles, returning sooner or later to the place he started from; he never “holes,” like the rabbit, unless in a log when exhausted. To baffle the dogs he will sometimes imitate his wily master, Reynard, by taking his back track for quite a distance, and then, leaping aside, to strike out on a fresh course; by this means he gains a breathing-spell and puzzles his foes.

So the sport progresses, and the bag mounts with the lengthening shadows. An owl is sounding his lone “tu-whoo!” when the hounds come in with lolling tongues and trembling flanks from the prolonged excitement of the chase. The last hare has carmined the snow with his life-blood, and the heavy spoils are harled and strung. The flaming fires of sunset are smoldering into ashen embers in the soft southwest; the tender violets of the remote table-lands chill to colder purples with day’s decline; the marshaled ranks of the skeleton trees stand out upon the hills as if limned in India ink; the mellow hyemal twilight deepens over woodland and valley, till the perfect winter day merges into the moonlit winter night and the _vale_ of the sport.

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VI.

DECORATIVE DECORATIONS.

All arts are one, howe’er distributed they stand;
Verse, tone, shape, color, form, are fingers on one hand.
W. W. STORY.

WHILE I make no pretense of vying with the shops of _bric-à-brac_ and curios—it has been said the modern house has come to resemble a magazine of _bric-à-brac_—yet, somehow, I find a great many objects which would be classed under this definition have gradually drifted or floated in, and have become as much of an artistic and companionable feature of the house as the paintings on the walls. Especially since the arrival of my ship, when several large bales with cabalistic marks and lettering proved on opening to be a veritable repository of ancient Oriental workmanship and design.

I can conceive of no more hideous nightmare than that which must haunt one who is obliged to live in intimate companionship with many of the so-called “ornaments” that dealers and the fashion of the hour force upon one, and that, in one guise or another, must ever be snarling and snapping at the unfortunate possessor. Littered up with all sorts of _outré_ and unmeaning knick-knacks, the home at once becomes a place to flee from; and instead of the spirit of quiet elegance and congruity which should prevail, there reigns a pandemonium of disconformity. Yet a certain amount of _bric-à-brac_ is not only admissible but requisite to the decorative atmosphere of the interior. Its effect depends upon the choosing. Given a correct eye for color and form and a natural feeling for harmony, Sir William Temple’s sentence is pertinent, “The measure of choosing well is whether a man likes what he has chosen.” Like my paintings, rugs, and etchings, so also my porcelains, bronzes, arms, and armor are pleasing objects for the eye to rest upon; and, ranged upon the shelves and about the apartments, minister equally in the expression and variety they lend to the surroundings.

I rejoice in my collection of arms and armor. Many rare antiques from the Stamboul bazaars my ship contained—lovely inlaid Persian guns, exquisitely mounted Albanian pistols, antique rapiers, daggers, and swords, ancient kandjars and yataghans, with scabbards of _repoussé_ silver, of velvet, of copper, of shagreen and Ymen leather; with handles of jade, agate, and ivory, constellated with garnets, turquoises, corals, and girasols; long, narrow, large, curved; of all forms, of all times, of all countries; from the Damascene blade of the Pasha, incrusted with verses of the Koran in letters of gold, to the coarse knife of the camel-driver. How many Zeibecs and Arnauts, how many beys and effendis, how many omrahs and rajahs have not stripped their girdles to form this precious arsenal which would have rendered Décamps mad with joy![7]

Footnote 7:

Gautier. Constantinople—Les Bazars.

There are, moreover, glistening helmets and coats-of-mail, corselets, maces, spears and hauberks, battle-axes and halberds, bucklers of tortoise-shell and Damascene steel—all the implements of the ferocious ingenuity of Islam. On the blue blade of this magnificent yataghan, still keen and glittering, its ivory handle inlaid with topaz and turquoise, is graven the number of heads it has severed. These cruel swords, now crossed so peacefully, were once crossed in savage strife and brandished in hate upon the battle-field amid the blare of Mussulman trumpets and the shouts of murderous Janizaries. Often, as the sunlight strikes the lustrous steel, do they seem to leap into life and flash anew in remembrance of the battle-cry of Mohammed. Though mostly of great age, my arms and armor are all in a state of perfect preservation. For mere antiquity in art objects or curios is not desirable in itself. Age has its charms unquestionably, but it becomes a valuable factor only when accompanied by beauty. Where an object loses its pristine beauty through time, age is a detriment rather than a desideratum. With many classes of art objects time heightens their attraction, or at least does not detract from it. In all such, age is a desirable quantity. To be old is generally to be rare; but an object may be rare and still be undesirable. Objects that are extremely sensitive to wear are usually worthless when old. Others, like tapestries and Oriental textiles, are improved by use, and gain in richness and value through age. An ancient textile or article of _bric-à-brac_ is only desirable when, added to intrinsic beauty of texture, color, form, or design, it preserves its youth in its antiquity, or acquires additional attractiveness through time.

Naturally, my ship contained many fine stuffs and hangings—old Flemish, French, and Italian tapestries, embroideries from Broussa and Salonica, Spanish brocades, and brocades from Borhampor and Ahmedabad, with some priceless ancient altar cloths, chasubles, and dalmaticas I had long desired to possess. Yet with all these and other acquisitions, now that the bloom of first possession is brushed off, may I declare without prevarication that I am fully satisfied? Increase of appetite but grows on what it feeds. Collecting begets collecting, the desire for possession constantly increasing, ever goading one on to unrest in the quest of the unprocurable. How much one misses with a little knowledge, and how much one gains! The love for beauty too often proves a bane. Even a love for books is as dangerous as a love for _bric-à-brac_ or art objects—the book in the end becoming an art object. Gradually, from the ordinary editions one passes to the good editions, while from the good it is but a step to the rare, and the seething maelstrom of book-madness. My ship brought me many of my decorations; my books, with few exceptions, I must procure myself.

But though sometimes productive of regrets, no one should be without a hobby, or hobbies. “Have not the wisest of men in all ages, not excepting Solomon himself—have they not had their hobby-horses?” asks Sterne. “The man without a hobby may be a good citizen and an honest fellow,” observes George Dawson, in his altogether lovely volume, The Pleasures of Angling, “but he can have but few golden threads running through the web or woof of his monotonous existence.” A hobby is the best of preceptors, and rides straight to the mark. From a good collection of porcelains one may study the Chinese dynasties, and prepare himself for an Asiatic tour by a study of his rugs. Unconsciously the collector of arms and armor becomes a student of the history of numerous peoples and an eye-witness of many of the noted battles of the world. Were I desirous to thoroughly familiarize myself with the history of the American red man I should first proceed to collect Indian implements of the chase and war, supplementing these by close study in the fertile field of literature pertaining to the Indians. But my bows and arrows I should shoot first; they would be the guide to the target.

One of the essays of Elia has demonstrated the fallacy of the adage “enough is as good as a feast.” In decorations it were a scant feast without the endless form and color supplied by the potter’s art. Of all art objects, a truly fine piece of old porcelain is amongst the most beautiful. In color it may outshine a precious stone; in form, rival that of a beautiful object of Nature herself. Its very frailty and frangibility intensify its charm, and when possessing both grace of contour and enchantment of color it becomes an object of beauty by the canons of the most perfect art, exciting the profoundest and purest pleasure—profound pleasure to all who behold it, supreme pleasure to him who possesses it.

I speak of the finer examples of Oriental ceramics, though I grant there is much to admire in some of the Italian soft-paste porcelains, notably the lovely Capo di Monte productions of the first period and the fascinating Doccia _terraglias_. Royal Worcester, despite its finish, always looks new, and Sèvres wares I invariably associate with a gilded French _salon_ and crimson brocatelle. These may be of excellent design and highly wrought decoration, representing infinite labor, skill, and minutiæ of detail; but they seldom seem effective compared with the handiwork of the Oriental. For the most part European ceramics may not be included under Prof. Grant Allen’s term, “decorative decoration.” Among Oriental porcelains, it is well known that articles produced to-day may not be compared with the same class produced in the past. The secret of the marvelous old glazes has been lost, like the secret of the famed old Toledo blades, and the craft of the ancient metal workers. It is the remote Celestial we admire and revere.

Apparently, my ship must have touched some of the out-of-the-way ports of Holland, that paradise of blue and white, for her collection of ceramics was rich in this form of Oriental porcelains. It has been asserted that the love for blue and white is a fashion, a craze that can not endure. But fine blue and white from its very nature is beyond the caprice of fashion, and must be enduring for all time. What other blending approximates so closely to Nature? It is but a Celestial reflex of the firmament—the most beautiful of all sky formations, the summer _cumulus_ cloud. A coolness of color it has possessed by no other form of porcelain unless by the incomparable old solid blue and blue-green enamels.

Not that my ship’s stores were limited to the blue and white so lavishly distributed among the appreciative Dutch burghers by the fleets of a former day. There were also many _chrysanthema_ that could only have been gathered from the classic gardens of the Celestial himself—specimens from the periods of Wan-li, Kia-tsing, Ching-te, Ching-hoa, Siouen-te, and yet still earlier rulers of the great dynasty of the Mings; diaphanous egg-shells of the reign of Yong-tching; Kien-long glazes fabricated in imitation of the color and texture of old bronzes; delicate sea-green _céladons_; solid deep iridescent reds; and frail translucent white pastes—marvels of the furnaces of the past. It would require a Jacquemart or a Dana to describe them. However alien races may regard the Mongolian and his flowing pigtail, there can be but one opinion of the forms and colors crystallized in these his airy inspirations. Matchless stands the ancient Chinese potter’s art. The world might find a substitute for his tea; his finer vases, jars, and bottles, and his fantasies in storks and dragons are unique this side of paradise. From the ordinary blue of Nankin to the “blue of the head of Buddha,” the “blue of heaven,” the “blue of the sky after rain,” the “lapis lazuli,” and the priceless “turquoise,” my blue porcelains are a study of the clouds and the sky.

Blue! “the life of heaven,” the hue of ocean, the violet’s joy; type of faith and fidelity, it has remained for the almond-eyed molder of clay to render thy beauty tangible. When I admire the hues of a Chinese vase or bottle, I remember that each color is regarded as a symbol; the fundamental colors being five, and corresponding to the elements (water, fire, wood, metals, earth), and to the cardinal points of the compass. Red belongs to fire, and corresponds to the south; black to water and the north; green to wood and the east; white to metal and the west. Dark blue corresponds to the sky, and yellow to the earth; blue belongs to the east. Blue is combined with white, red with black, and dark blue with yellow. The dragon, which in the Chinese zodiac corresponds to our _Aries_, also personifies water, while a circle personifies fire.[8]

Footnote 8:

Jacquemart. Histoire de la Céramique.

Of the bloom of the peach my ship contained no example, so factitious a value has been set upon this color by pretended connoisseurs. In place of the peach-blow, I found gleaming among my ceramics a much more beautiful form of opalescent porcelain—two vases of the extremely rare “topaz,” brilliant as the gem itself, and of which these are unique examples. Did I say my rugs supplied the rarest colors? I had forgotten my old bottle of _bleu de ciel_ and my ancient vase of _sang de bœuf_!

The bronzes my ship contained differed essentially from the generality of those I had previously known. Apart from a few fine specimens enriched with gold and silver, and a superb figure of Buddha, they consisted for the most part of a singularly beautiful collection of ancient tripods, temple-censers and incense-burners, with dark patine and antique-green surfaces, and engraved ornamentation and ornamentation in relief. The largest incense urn occupies a prominent place in the hall, and often curls its fragrant clouds through the mouth of its dragon. I light it when I read A Kempis and the Religio Medici.

Yet the stores of my ship would have been incomplete without an old hall-clock that marks the time for me. An old Dutch inlaid hall-clock of all clocks for symmetry, beauty, and sonority! It measures rather than accelerates the flight of the hours; and with its quarter chimes, its deep hour-bells, its moons, and its calendars, it punctuates not only the moments and the hours, but chronicles the passage of the months and the years. I need not consult a watch for the time, or a calendar for the day of the month and the phases of the moon—the musical voice and the index-fingers of my clock proclaim them for me.

Among my most valued curios is a superb violoncello. A glance shows that it has been long and tenderly caressed by the virtuoso who once possessed it and developed its melodious voice. Even its ancient case and the green baize of the lining attest the care it has received. Scarcely a scratch is visible on the lustrous wood, and its curves are as harmoniously proportioned as those of a Hebe. There is a rich, mellow tone to the wood, and the bow draws tones no less rich and mellow from its deep caverns of sound. Though there are no traces of the maker’s name or the date of manufacture, the lovely glaze of the spruce top and maple back at once proclaim its antiquity. Beneath the strings the rosin has left a fine mahogany stain; and there are worn spots on the hoops where it has been pressed by a loving knee. The grain of the top is as straight as if it had been molded. At the base of the gracefully turned scroll, in old English script, is carved an “H,” its only mark.

I find the same difference between a violin and a violoncello as there exists between a piano and an organ. The difference of tone between individual violoncellos is, if anything, more marked than in most other musical instruments. There could be nothing more sonorous and more delicately shaded than the magnificent baritone of my old violoncello as it interprets the Cavatine by Raff, or chants the Andante by Mozart. Sometimes, methinks, it gives forth a still richer consonance when it renders Stradella’s grave Kirchen-Arïe; or, indeed, whenever noble church music of any kind is drawn from its resonant depths. Then its voice seems almost human, and the strings quiver apparently of their own accord. Is it fancy, after all? Are not its strings sometimes swept by unseen fingers—the tender touch of The Warden of Barchester, good old Septimus Harding—who possessed it in years gone by; who so often found solace in its companionship from the tyranny of the archdeacon and the bickerings of Barchester Close! I almost find myself, like the warden, passing an imaginary bow over an imaginary viol when annoyed or harassed away from home, so strong is its personality and so soothing its companionship.[9] Trollope has never been sufficiently appreciated, it appears to me; and among his best works is his simplest one. The character of the warden, so exemplary and yet so vacillating, the old men of the hospital who love him so tenderly, the crafty and worldly archdeacon, and, withal, the mellow ecclesiastical light that pervades the churchly precincts of the Close, form a picture beautiful in its quiet coloring and simplicity. It is far less a novel than an idyl, and as such it should be read and must be regarded.

Footnote 9:

The Warden; Barchester Towers.—Anthony Trollope.

Music and flowers! The one suggests and complements the other. The home should never be without either—they are its brightest sunshine, next to lovely woman’s smile and the laughter of a child. Averaged throughout the year, a dollar a week is a modest, reasonable outlay for a man of limited means to expend for the luxury of flowers in the house. Every petal holds a beautiful thought, so long as the flower is beautiful and the petals are fresh. Even a few green leaves with a single fresh blossom or two are a solace to the eye and a balm to the mind.

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VII.

MY STUDY WINDOWS.

How perfect an invention is glass! The sun rises with a salute, and
leaves the world with a farewell to our windows. To have instead of
opaque shutters, or dull horn or paper, a material like solidified
air, which reflects the sun thus brightly!—THOREAU.

TO-DAY a slaty sky, accompanied by vaporous clouds throughout the afternoon, is succeeded by a pale sunset, a vivid primrose band extending far, and lingering late along the southern horizon.

I hear an angry wind at night, first tongued by the distant trees. Rising close to the edge of the river, the copse catches the least breath of the west, transmitting its voice through the trees. Each tree thus becomes a harp or viol played upon by the air in motion, producing a varied music according to the character of its spray. How different the sound of the summer wind! the whispering and rustling of trillions of living leaves; one might distinguish the season by the sense of hearing alone. Now that vegetation is devoid of foliage, there is so much less to obstruct the current of the air brought pure and undefiled from the Western plains. This air, additionally sifted and clarified by its passage through countless woods and primeval forests, I inhale in full draughts within my comfortable room. Gathered by the cold air-boxes, this oxygen and nitrogen is tempered and warmed by a single pound of steam below, before rising fresh and delicious through the registers above. Thus even in midwinter do I receive the essence of the meadows and the woods.

Not less comfort and delight do I owe to glass than to coal. It retains the heat and excludes the frost. Scarcely the space of a foot separates my easy chair and summer warmth from falling flakes and wintry cold. It lets in the balm of the sky and the grace of the leafless trees; it serves to simulate summer. Transparent to light and to outward forms, glass is merely translucent to sounds. I look out and see the trees rock and toss beneath the gale; I listen, and hear the wind rejoicing in his strength. Light and sunshine stream through my window-pane as though it were a part of the atmosphere. It is almost like the atmosphere—transparent, invisible, inodorous. No material used in the construction of the house imparts such an air of richness from without as polished plate-glass. Is it not equally desirable within, to look out through? Let the carpets, if necessary, have less depth of pile; but let in the landscape and the light as clearly as we may. To look at exterior objects through vitreous waves is to cheat the sight and rob pleasant surroundings of their charm.

Again, the glass that brings the landscape into my room shuts out the external world as readily as it lets it in—in the form of stained glass it passes from transparent to translucent, but still retains its life through color. I would have in my hall above the landing a wheel-window of ancient stained glass to render daylight doubly beautiful and refined—a flood of violet like that concentrated and diffused by the windows of the tall clere-story of Tours. But the gorgeous stained glass of mediæval days, such as still blazes in the old cathedrals, is an art of the past, and my ship contained it not amid her precious stores.

Yet once more is glass transformed, and from transparent and translucent is changed to opaque—opaque, yet not opaque. Neither clear nor colored, it possesses still more life in this its other form. For my mirrors not only receive light and color, but stamp them indelibly upon their surface. Placed in certain positions, they even enable me to see through opaque surfaces. By a glance into the hall through the door of the room where I sit I may discern what transpires in the adjoining room, though divided from it by a solid wall. Without my mirrors I could not even recognize my outward self. They double the objects in my house; they double the number of my guests; they possess a double life. They take the place of a Daubigny, for do they not reflect the Daubigny? And lovely woman, how could she look so sweet without her second self—her mirror!

The primroses in my garden are harbingers of spring; the primrose band in the south was the precursor of storm. All night the wind raved, bringing snow and still more wind with returning day. The weather-cock creaks ominously in its socket, pointing alternately west and northwest. I note a drop of twenty degrees in the temperature, and hereafter I shall distrust the primrose band.

Again the strange light in the south, shining brightly throughout the afternoon. This band appears most vividly through a vista of the grounds which focuses a distant slope crowned with deciduous trees and isolated pines. I notice it, at times, during late autumn and early spring, or on mild winter days when the moisture of the atmosphere may be perceptibly felt. The weather-vane always points to it, though no air be stirring—indeed, it only occurs during a calm. Glowing through the skeleton trees, a lustrous primrose or lively crocus, it illumines and transfigures the entire horizon of the south, as if inviting to follow it to a blander clime. It seems almost more beautiful than sunlight; it is colored sunlight screened from glare. When I attempt to trace it to the range of the southern hills it keeps receding to the hills and trees beyond—always present, ever out of reach. An observer standing there, in turn, would see it farther on, and these farther hills and trees would yield its luminousness to the landscape more southward still.

Is it typical of life—man grasping at an object only to see it disappear, seizing a pleasure to find it evanescent, relinquishing a hope for one yet more ephemeral; ever reaching for happiness to meet with disappointment at the goal?

Whence its origin? in what distant sky does it first appear? The swift wings of the hawk might trace it to its source; for me it is intangible. Doubtless with a word the meteorologists would dispel the charm it holds. I prefer to regard it as an occult force, a mysterious weather-sign to flash upon the wintry gloom and foretell the coming storm. In the present instance it brought yet more moisture, and was succeeded the following day by fog and driving mist, changing in the evening to sudden cold and wind.

A windy moonlight night, with clouds chasing each other like crests of advancing waves. The moon rides high in the west; the strong wind sweeps from the west. Æolus and all his retinue are abroad. The hillside trees toss and boom like the sea—it is high tide in the air. The air becomes a sea, the clouds its surge, the trees the shingle upon which it beats. It fascinates like the sea! When the moon appears between the rifts it seems stationary; when partly concealed under a white cloud, it appears coursing rapidly westward, while the clouds seem traveling slowly eastward. The moon then becomes the voyager, and the squadrons of the sky the loiterers. Its luminousness is but slightly masked by the silver clouds, their translucency making them seemingly a source of light. Every now and then it disappears beneath a mass of inky breakers, gilding their outer crests ere taking its sudden plunge; it looks as if it were dropping from the sky. Almost immediately it reappears, so fast the clouds are moving. Anon it dips beneath a snowy surge, to re-emerge and sink below a Cimmerian roller, just as a swimmer dives into and is lost in the surf. Meanwhile, the wind roars like an angry sea. This glory of the wintry night my glass brings into my room. But the silver lining and life of the moonlit clouds can not be traced in written words, nor the varied voices of the wind be rendered into musical bars. The moon and the sun shine so that all may see. The wind blows so that all may hear.

I hear a new creak in my neighbor’s weather-vane amid the moaning of the wind; or is it the repeated far-off blowing of a horn? Twice on my going to the door the sound suddenly ceases, to continue fitfully on my return. I discover it is produced merely by the side-light above my writing-table. Do we not thus frequently attribute ulterior motives to causes which exist only in imagination, or whose source originates with ourselves? Often is the humming in our ear.

At times the small black fly upon the pane
May seem the black ox of the distant plain.

How deceptive is sound! The leaf-cricket’s chant on hot summer nights seems to proceed from the lawn, rods away; he is singing in the honeysuckle vine a few feet overhead. Not unfrequently, when sitting within doors, am I obliged to consider whether the monotonous humming I hear is the planing-mill far remote or the purring of the cat—my pet Maltese, who looks at me with her beryl-like eyes and arches her back to be stroked. But though she pricks up her ears when I scratch the under surface of the table, she does not long mistake the counterfeit for the wainscot mouse.

Little sounds, like the petty annoyances of life, are frequently the most unpleasant. A great annoyance one meets forcibly, knowing it to be a necessary evil that must be put out of the way. The snake is killed or evaded; the fly remains to harass. The roaring of the gale, the downpour from the sky—sounds loud and violent—are soothing rather than the reverse; the rattling of a window-blind is far more annoying. Who but the man that is filing it can hear without a shudder the filing of a saw, and who but the katydid himself can passively endure the katydid’s stridulation?

A monotonous sound, providing it be not a rasping sound, the ear becomes accustomed to, and misses when it ceases. The ticking of a clock, in itself unmusical, is, nevertheless, soothing; you awaken when it suddenly stops. The nocturnal cricket’s reiterated cry is a somnolent sound—a voice of the darkness and the dew. The grasshoppers’ jubilant chorus sings away the fleeting summer hour, and by its rising and falling pulsation marks the waxing and waning of the year. Even when immelodious, most sounds of external Nature are not irritating. The rattling of the window-pane exasperates—one intuitively anathematizes the carpenter; the angry creaking of the boughs has a meaning, and one accepts it as a fitting and necessary accompaniment of the gale. The harsh barking of a dog rouses one from slumber; it is plainly in most cases an annoyance which has no just reason for existence—the neighborhood were better off without it.

The railroad whistles, scarcely farther removed and far more plainly heard, are not annoying. At once they are accepted by the mind as possessing a reason. For behind the whistle are the vast driving-wheels, the passengers, the mails, and the merchandise. When I hear the locomotive’s whistle I feel the locomotive’s power, and the significance of its strength. It is the voice of might and speed; the exultant neigh of the great iron charger. It sounds the hours for me. Day after day—night, morning, and afternoon—with the same exactitude, scarcely a minute after the engineer has opened the sounding-valve, do the cars, arriving and departing, pass along the opposite shore of the river. Far off among the distant valleys resounds the clatter of the oncoming train; now lost for a moment, now more distinctly heard. A mile and a half away on the still night air the whistle sounds, and the awakened echoes respond. I hear the roar through the gap of the hills, the crash across the bridge, the reverberating flight along the bank, the gradual receding and absorption of the sound. Nightly, expectantly, I listen for it, and miss it when the train is late.

How much does not the arrival of the night express signify! how much of pain or pleasure to those it bears! Friends who have parted, and friends who are waiting; news sad and joyous; regrets and hopes; hatred and love; laughter and tears; all the emotions and passions harbored in human hearts are present in the rapid flight of the train. The engineer at the throttle, the fireman who supplies the fuel—calm, watchful, serene at their posts amid the deafening roar and jar—I think of them when the whistle sounds, plunging onward through the darkness and the storm.

What a fascination exists in the flight of a train—an exhilaration to those on board, an ever-recurring marvel to those who witness it pass by! A speck in the distance, it momentarily enlarges till, thundering past, it instantly recedes, as swiftly lost as it was swift to appear. Onward it flies, annihilating space, outspeeding time, flinging the mile-posts behind, bearing its burden to remote destinations. A moment it pauses to slake its thirst, or to deposit a portion of its burden, replacing it with fresh freight in waiting. Still onward it flies, linking villages and towns, spanning streams, connecting valleys, tunneling hills, joining States. Ever the crash and the roar, the great trail of smoke and steam, the engineer at the throttle—calm, watchful, serene—plunging through the darkness and the storm! This the whistle means for me.

Instantly I detect the whistles of the different roads, some more musical, some more acute, some deeper, more sonorous in tone. Varying in resonance according to the state of the atmosphere, they apprise me of the temperature without, like the audible vibration of the rails themselves when passed over by the cars. Clear and musical in the early summer mornings, during cold weather they are more sibilant and piercing. They are a weather-vane to the ear, blown by heat or cold, responsive to the moisture or the dryness of the air. I observe similar acoustic effects in the tones of the distant bells. So that I may often prognosticate the weather as surely by external sounds as by the shifting barometer of the hills.

Even through my windows I like to analyze the sentiment of animate sounds. “The nature of Sounds in general,” remarks the author of Sylva Sylvarum, “hath been imperfectly observed; it is one of the subtellest Peeces of Nature.” During a ramble through the woods and fields I am impressed by the various emotions conveyed by bird voices alone. Through them the woods and fields acquire an added meaning; they are the interpreters of Nature. Thus, the voice of the jay is a signal to inform his companions of danger; the scream of the hawk, a note of menace to intimidate his prey and cause it to reveal its whereabouts. The woodpecker’s tap is a sound of industry. The mourning-dove’s notes express sorrow; the hermit-thrush’s, ecstasy; the veery’s, solitude; the white-throated sparrow’s, content. The voices of the bluebird and song-sparrow are sounds of welcome, an exordium of spring. The plaintive whistle of the wood-pewee, the liquid warble of the purple finch, and the refrain of many a companion songster, it would require the fine ear and fancy of the poet to interpret aright. Perhaps Frederick Tennyson well defines the sentiment they express in his melodious rendering of the blackbird’s song:

The blackbird sings along the sunny breeze
His ancient song of leaves and summer boon;
Rich breath of hayfields streams through whispering trees;
And birds of morning trim their bustling wings,
And listen fondly, while the blackbird sings.

And how deliciously one of the sweet old Swabian singers has also voiced the blackbird of Europe, and interpreted his rippling strain:

Vög’le im Tannenwald pfeifet so hell—
Pfeifet de Wald aus und ein, wo wird mein Schätzle sein?
Vög’le im Tannenwald pfeifet so hell.

Songster in pine-wood whistleth so clear—
Whistleth the wood out and in, where hath my sweetheart been?
Songster in pine-wood whistleth so clear.

Is it a Minnesinger? I wonder; for I can not place the poet who hymned the feathered minstrel so sweetly. My German friend the professor, who improvises in music as deftly as Heine improvised in verse, and to whom I repeated the lines the other day, was struck anew by their haunting melody. Seating himself at the piano, he immediately set them to this exquisite accompaniment. The music has been ringing in my ears ever since—a very echo of the songster, rising clear and jubilant from the shade of the wood. The words have been set to music before, a version being included in that melodious collection of national, student, and hunting songs entitled Deutscher Liederschatz. But this is commonplace compared to the rendition of my German friend. Try it those of you who have a voice to try; or let your sweetheart try it for you. You will then appreciate the consummate art of the music—the ascending scale of the second bar felicitously phrasing the whistle of the bird, and the falling inflection of the third happily portraying the cool, shadowy depths of the wood. And how like a silvery bird note of June the upper “g” in the seventh bar sounds the close of the refrain!

[Music:

_Allegro mf._ —— H. GANZEL.

Vögle im Tannenwald pfeifet so hell,
Songster in pine-wood whistleth so clear,

Pfeifet de Wald aus und ein;
Whistleth the wood out and in;

Wo wird mein Schätzle sein, wo wird es sein?
Where hath my sweetheart been, where hath she been?

Wo wird mein Schätzle sein, wo wird es sein?
Where hath my sweetheart been, where hath she been?

]

No poet or prosatist, however, comes so near to the bird as the great prose-poet of the Wiltshire Downs:

“The bird upon the tree utters the meaning of the wind—a voice of the grass and wild flower, words of the green leaf; they speak through that slender tone. Sweetness of dew and rifts of sunshine, the dark hawthorn touched with breadths of open bud, the odor of the air, the color of the daffodil—all that is delicious and beloved of spring-time are expressed in his song. Genius is nature, and his lay, like the sap in the bough from which he sings, rises without thought. Nor is it necessary that it should be a song; a few short notes in the sharp spring morning are sufficient to stir the heart. But yesterday the least of them all came to a bough by my window, and in his call I heard the sweet-brier wind rushing over the young grass.”[10]

Footnote 10:

Richard Jefferies. Field and Hedgerow.