Rural letters and other records of thought at leisure, written in the intervals of more hurried literary labor

Front matter

RURAL LETTERS

AND OTHB& BECOBDS OF

THOUGHT AT LEISURE

Letter IV

Attar-merchant of Constantinople— Bartlett, the scenist — Mental travel— Moneyless millennium — Intellectual age — Trout fishing — Baiting with a worm — The first trout— Similarity of country to city life. 41^50

LETTER Y.

Hay-making — Meadow scenery — Sprague, the poet — Poets and financiers— "What is genius ? — Lord Durham and D'Israeli — Upholstery of sunsets. ..-.---.-- 51-59

Xli CONTENTS.

Landscape gardening— Selection of farms— Value of neighbors— Economy of seclusion— Dress in the country— Grounds and shrubbery- Cheap walks— Cottage insoucieuse— True country freedom. - 175-187

Letter XXI

Market for poetry— Farming and authorship— City residence— Subsistence of authors— Uses of faults— Young poets, - - - 188-197

THE FOUR RIVERS.

The Hudson-The Mohawk-The Chenango-The Susquehannah. 198-206 xiT CONTENTS.

TO THE UNKNOWN PURCHASER AND NEXT OCCUPANT OF GLENMART.

Beauties of Glenmary— Spare the trees— The venerable toad — Favorite squirrels — Spare the birds. 207-212

GLENMARY POEMS.

Thoughts while making thb grave of a new-boen child. - - 215

The Mother to her Child. - 218

A Thought over a Cradle. - 220

The Involuntary Prayer of Happiness. 222

OPEN-AIR MUSINGS IN THE CITY.

Daguerreotype of Broadway — Spring in the city — A day of idling — The Battery, as a promenade — The wharves on Sunday — Sabbath walk — Confined life — "Want of horses — Substitute for a private yacht — Omnibus li%iry — Deferringa of sorrow — Griefs recurrences— Evanescent impressions. 225-262

INVALID RAMBLES IN GERMANY, IN THE SUMMER OF 1845.

Leipsic cemetery - Funeral customs — German friendship — Hearing with the eye — Deaf and dumb tutor — German inattention to health — Leipsic conservatory — Musical composition — Music, in education — Concentration of coughing — Private boxes in churcli — Goethe's drinking-cellar — Napoleon's tent — Battle field of Leipsic — Poniatowski — The Fair of Leipsic — Apple market — Theatrical and show-booths — Wadded clothing — Pipe celebrity — Garter poetry — Resource of smoking — Jewish costumes — Disguise of beards — Good middle-aged caps — Hungarian peddlers — German students — Mere

CONTENTS. XV keepers-warm — Visit to Dresden — Women harnessed in carts — Royal palace — Manufacture of porcelain — Museum of china — Historical museum — Mnemonics for history — Madonna del Sisto— Museum of beauty — Strauss's concert — Tieck's house — German substitutes for tea and coffee — Fair at Dresden — Supplementary coat-tails— Terrace of Bruhl—Berlin. 253-805

LETTERS FROM WATERING-PLACES.

Letter VIII

Costume heightens perspective — Military tableau vivant — Fashion of hats for the Falls — The Falls by moonlight — Poetical similitude— Baron de Trobriand. 850-357

A PLAIN MAN'S LOVE: A Stort without incident, weitten in thb leisubk of illness, 859-880

LETTERS

FROM UNDER A BRIDGE

Letter I

My dear Doctor: Twice in the year, they say, the farmer may sleep late in the morning — between hoeing and haying, and between harvest and thrashing. If I have not written to you since the frost was out of the ground, my apology lies distributed over the " spring -work," in. due proportions among ploughing, harrowing, sowing, plastering, and hoeing. We have finished the last — some thanks to the crows, who saved us the labor of one acre of corn, by eating it in the blade. Think what times we live in, when even the crows are obliged to anticipate their income!

When I had made up my mind to write to you, I cast about for a cool place in the shade — for, besides the changes which farming works upon my epidermis, I find some in the inner man, one of which is a vegetable necessity for living out-of-doors. Between five in the morning and " flower-shut," I feel as if four walls and a ceiling would stop my breath. Very much to the disgust of William, (who begins to think it was infra dig. to

28 LETTER L have follow^ed such a hob-nail from London,) I showed the first symptom of this chair-and-carpet asthma, by ordering ray breakfast under a balsam-fir. Dinner and tea soon followed ; and now, if I go in-doors by daylight, it is a sort of fireman's visit — in and out with a long breath. I have worn quite a dial on the grass, working my chair around with the sun.

** If ever you observed," (a phrase with which a neighbor of mine ludicrously prefaces every possible remark,) a single tree will do very well to sit, or dine, or be buried under, but you can not write in the shade of it. Beside the sun-flecks and the light all around you, there is a want of that privacy, which is necessary to a perfect abandonment to pen and ink. I discovered this on getting as far as " dear Doctor," and, pocketing my tools, strolled away up the glen to borrow " stool and desk " of Nature. Half-open, like a broad-leafed book, (green margin and silver type,) the brook-hollow of Glenmary spreads wide as it drops upon the meadow, but above, like a book that deserves its fair margent, it deepens as you proceed. Not far from the road, its little rivulet steals forth from a shadowy ravine, narrow as you enter, then widening back to a mimic cataract ; and here, a child would say, is fairy parlor. A small platform (an island when the stream is swollen) lies at the foot of the fall, carpeted with the fine silky grass which thrives with shade and spray. Tlie two walls of the ravine are mossy, and trickling with springs; the trees overhead interlace, to keep out the sun ; and down comes the brook, over a flight of precipitous steps, like children bursting out of school, and, after a laugh at its own tumble, it falls again into a decorous ripple, and trips murmuring away The light is green, the leaves of the overhanging trees look trans-

THE BROOK HOLLOW 19 lucent above, and the wild blue grape, with its emerald rings, has wove all over it a basket-lattice so fine, that you would think it were done to order — w^arranted to keep out the hawk, and let in the humming-bird. With a yellow pine at my back, a moss cushion beneath, and a ledge of flat stone at my elbow, you will allow I had a secretary's outfit. I spread my paper, and mended my pen ; and then (you will pardon me, dear Doctor) I forgot you altogether ! The truth is, these fanciful garnishings spoil work. Silvio Pellico had a better place to write in. If it had been a room with a Chinese paper, (a bird standing forever on one leg, and a tree ruffled by the summer wind, and fixed with its leaves on edge, as if petrified with the varlet's impudence,) the eye might get accustomed to it. But first came a gold-robin, twittering out his surprise to find strange company in his parlor, yet never frighted from his twig by pen and ink. By the time I had sucked a lesson out of that, a squirrel tripped in without knocking, and sat" nibbling at a last-year's nut, as if nobody but he took thought for the morrow. Then came an enterprising ant, climbing my knee like a discoverer ; and I wondered whether Fernando Cortes would have mounted so boldly, had the peak of Darien been as new-dropped between the Americas, as my leg by his ant-hill. By this time, a small dripping from a mossfringe at my elbow betrayed the lip of a spring ; and, dislodging a stone, I uncovered a brace of lizards lying snug in the ooze. We flatter ourselves, thought I, that we drink first of the spring. We do not know, always, whose lips w^ere before us.

Much as you see of insect life, and hear of bird-music, as you walk abroad, you should We perdu in a nook, to know how much is frighted from sight, and hushed from singing, by your approach.

What worms creep out when they think you gone, and what chatterers go on with their story ! So among friends, thought I, as I fished for the moral. We should be wiser, if we knew what our coming hides and silences, but should we walk so undisturbed on our way ?

You will see with half a glance, dear Doctor, that here was too much company for writing. I screwed up my inkstand once more, and kept up the bed of the stream till it enters the forest, remembering a still place by a pool. The tall pines hold up the roof high as an umbrella of Brobdignag, and neitlier water brawls, nor small bu'ds sing, in the gloom of it. Here, thought I, as far as they go, the circumstances are congenial. But, as Jean Paul says, there is a period of life when the real gains ground upon the ideal ; and to be honest, dear Doctor, I sat leaning on the shingle across my knees, counting my sky-kissing pines, and reckoning what they would bring in saw-logs — so much standing— so much drawn to the mill. Then there would be wear and tear of bob-sled, teamster's wages, and your dead-pull springs, the horses' knees. I had nearly settled the />er and contra, when my eye lit once more on " my dear Doctor," staring from the unfilled sheet, like the ghost of a murdered resolution. " Since when," I asked, looking myself sternly in the face; "is it so difficult to be virtuous ? Shall I not write when I have a mind ? Shall I reckon pelf, whether I will or no ? Shall butterQy imagination thrust iron-heart to the wall ? No !"

I took a straight cut through my ruta-baga patch and cornfield, bent on finding some locahty (out of doors it must be) with the average attractions of a sentry-box, or a church-pew. I reached the high-road, making insensibly for a brush dam] where I should

PLACE TO WRITE. 21 sit upon a log, with my face abutted upon a wall of chopped saplings. I have not mentioned my dog, who had followed me cheerfully thus far, putting up now and then a partridge, to keep his nose in ; but, on coming to the bridge over the brook, he made up his mind. " My master," he said, (or looked,) " will neither follow the game, nor sit in the cool. Chacun a son gout. I'm tired of this bobbing about for nothing in a hot sun." So, dousing his tail, (which, '' if you ever observed," a dog hoists, as a flag-ship does her pennant, only when the commodore is aboard,) he sprung the railing, and spread himself for a snooze under the bridge. " Ben trovato r said I, as I seated myself by his side. He wagged his tail half round to acknowledge^ the compliment, and I took to work hke a hay-maker.

I have taken some pains to describe these difficulties to you, dear Doctor, partly because I hold it to be fair, in this give-andtake world, that a man should know what it costs his fellow to fulfil obligations, but more especially, to apprise you of the mstempsychose that is taking place in myself. You will have divined, ere this, that, in my out-of-doors life, I am approaching a degree nearer to Arcadian perfectibility, and that if I but manage to get a bark on and live by sap, (spare your wit, sir !) I shall be rid of much that is troublesome, not to say expensive, in the matters of drink and integument. What most surprises me in the past, is, that I ever should have confined my free soul and body, in the very many narrow places and usages I have known in towns. I can only assimilate myself to a squirrel, brought up in a school-boy's pocket, and let out some June morning on a snake fence.

The spring has been damp for corn, but I had planted on a

22 LETTER I.

warm liillside, and have done better than my neighbors. The Owaga* creek, which makes a bend round my meadow before it drops into the Susquehannah — (a swift, bright river the Owaga, with as much water as the Arno at Florence) — overflowed my cabbages and onions, in the May freshet ; but that touches neither me nor my horse. The winter wheat looks hke " velvet of threepile," and everything is out of the ground, including, in my case, the buckwheat, which is not yet put in. This is to be an old-fashioned hot summer, and I shall sow late. The peas are podded. Did it ever strike you, by the way, that the pious ^neas, famous through all ages for carrying old Anchises a mile, should, after all, yield glory to a hean. Perhaps you never observed, that this fiUal esculent grows up with his father on his back.

In my " new light," a farmer's life seems to me what a manufacturer's might resemble, if his factory were an indigenous plant — machinery, girls, and all. What spindles and fingers it would take to make an orchard, if Nature found nothing but the raw seed, and rain-water and sunshine were brought as far as a cotton bale ! Your despised cabbage would be a prime article — if you had to weave it. Pumpkins, if they ripened with a hair-spring and patent lever, would be, " by'r lady," a curious invention. Yet these, which Aladdin nature produces if we but " rub the lamp," are more necessary to life than clothes or watches. In planting a tree, (I write it reverently,) it seems to me working immediately with the divine faculty^ Here are two hundred forest trees set out with my own hand. Yet how little is my parf in the glorious creatures they become !

* Corrupted now to Owego. Ochwaga was the Indian word, and sxeift water.

OXEN REMEMBERED. 23

This reminds me of a liberty 1 have lately taken with Nature, which I ventured upon with proper diffidence, though the dame, as will happen with dames, proved less coy than was predicted. The brook at my feet, from its birth in the hills till it dropped into the meadow's lap, tripped down, hke a mountain-maid with a song, bright and unsullied. So it flowed by my door. At the foot of the bank its song and sparkle ceased suddenly, and, turning under the hill, its waters disappeared among sedge and rushes. It was more a pity, because you looked across the meadow to the stately Owaga, and saw that its unfulfilled destiny was to have poured its brightness into his. The author of Ernest Maltravers has set the fashion of charity to such fallings away. I made a new channel over the meadow, gravelled its bed, and grassed its banks, and (last and best charity of all) protected its recovered course with overshadowy trees. Not quite with so gay a sparkle, but with a placid and tranquil beauty, the lost stream glides over the meadow, and, Maltravers-like, the Owaga takes hei' lovingly to his bosom. The sedge and rushes are turned into a garden, and, if you drop a flower into the brook at my door, it scarce loses a oreath of its perfume before it is flung on the Owaga, and the Susquehannah robs him of it but with his life.

I have scribbled away the hours till near noon, and it is time to see that the oxen get their potatoes. Faith ! it's a cool place under a bridge. Knock out the two ends of the Astor House, and turn the Hudson through the long passage, and you will get an idea of it. The breeze draws through here deftly, the stpno wall is cool to my back, and this floor of running water, besides what the air steals from it, sounds and looks refreshingly. My letter has run on, till I am inclined to think the industry of running water " breeds i' the brain." Like the tin pot at the cur's tail, it seems to overtake one with an admonition, if he but slack to breathe. Be not alarmed, dear Doctor, for, sans potatoes, my oxen will loll in the furrow, and though the brook run till doomsday, I must stop here.

LETTEK II.

My dear Doctor: I have just had a visit from the assessor. As if a man should be taxed for a house, who could be luxurious under a bridge ! I have felt a decided " call" to disclaim roof and threshold, and write myself down a vagabond. Fancy the variety of abodes open, rent-free, to a bridge-fancier ! It is said among the settlers, that where a stranger finds a tree blown over, (the roots forming, always, an upright and well-matted wall,) he has only his house to finish. Cellar and chimney-back are ready done to his hand. But, besides being roofed, walled, and watered, and better situated, and more plenty than over-blown trees — bridges are on no man's land. You are no " squatter," though you sit upon your hams. You may shut up one end with pine boughs, and you have a room a-la-mode — one large window open to the floor. The view is of banks and running water — exquisite of necessity. For the summer months I could imagine this bridge-gipsying delicious. What furniture might pack in a donkey-cart, would set forth a better apartment than is averaged in "houses of entertainment," (so yclept,) and the saving to your soul (of sins committed, sitting at a bell-rope, ringing in vain for water) would be worthy a conscientious man's attention.

VOL. I. 2

I will not deny that the bridge of Glenmary is a favorable specimen. As its abutments touch my cottage-lawn, I was under the necessity of presenting the public with a new bridge, for which act of munificence I have not yet received " the freedom of the town." Perhaps I am expected to walk through it when I please, without asking. The hitherward railing coming into the line of my fence, I have, in a measure, a private entrance ; and the whole structure is overshadowed by a luxuriant tree. To be sure, the beggar may go down the bank in the road, and, entering by the other side, sit under it as well as I — but he is welcome. I like society sans-gene — where you may come in or go out without apology, or whistle, or take off your shoes. And I would give notice here to the beggary of Tioga, that, in building a stone seat under the bridge, and laying the banks with green-sward, I intend no sequestration of their privileges. I was pleased that a swallow, who had laid her mud-nest against a sleeper overhead, took no offence at my improvements. Her three nestlings made large eyes when I read out what I have scribbled, but she drowses on without astonishment. She is a swallow of last summer, and has seen authors.

A foot-passenger has just gone over the bridge, and, little dreaming there were four of us listening, (the swallows and I,) he leaned over the railing, and ventured upon a soliloquy. " Why don't he cut down the trees so's he can see out?" said my unconscious adviser. I caught the eye of the mother-swallow, and fancied she was amused. Her swallowlings looked petrified at the sacrilegious suggestion. By the way, it is worthy of remark, that though her little ones have been hatched a week, this estimable parent still nts upon their heads. Might not this con-

WH£:RE are we ALOiNE. 21 tinued incubation be tried with success upon backward children ? We are so apt to think babies are finished when their bodies are brought into the world !

For some minutes, now, I have observed an occasional cloud rising from the bottom of the brook, and, peering among the stones, I discovered one of the small lobsters with which the streams abound. (The naturalists may class them differently, but as there is but one, and he has all the armament of a lobster, though on the scale of a shrimp, the swallows agree with me in opinion that he should rank as a lobster.) So we are five. " Cocksnouns !" to borrow Scott's ejaculation, people should never be too sure that they are unobserved. When 1 first came under the bridge, I thought myself alone.

This lobster puts me in mind of Talleyrand. You would say he is going backward, yet he gets on faster that way than the other. After all, he is a great man who can turn his reverses to account, and that I take to be, oftentimes, one of the chief secrets of greatness. If I were in politics, I would take the lobster for my crest. It would be ominous, I fear, in poetiy.

You should come to the country now, if you would see the glory of the world. The trees have been coquetting at their toilet, waiting for warmer weather ; but now I think they have put on their last flounce and furbelow, spread their " bustle" and stand to be admired. They say '* leafj/ Jvne." To-day is the first of July, and though I give the trees my first morning regard (out of doors; when my eyes are clearest, I have not fairly thought, till to-day, that the foliage was full. If it were not for lovers and authors, who keep vigil and count the hours, I should suspect there was foul play between sun and moon — a legitimate day made away with now and then. (The crime is not unknown in the upper circles. Satm-n devoured his children.)

There is a glory in potatoes — well hoed. Corn — the swaying and stately maize — has a visible glory. To see the glory of turnips, you must own the crop, and have cattle to fat — but they have a glory. Pease need no paean — they are appreciated. So are not cabbages, which, though beautiful as a Pompeian winecup, and honored above roses by the lingering of the dew, are yet despised of all handicrafts — save one. Apt emblem of ancient maidenhood, which is despised, like cabbages, yet cherishes unsunned in its bosom the very dew we mourn so inconsistently when rifled from the rose.

Apropos — the dehcate tribute in the last sentence shall serve for an expiation. In a journey I made through Switzerland, I had, for chance-traveUing companions, three Scotch ladies, of the class emulated by this chaste vegetable. Tliey were intelhgent, refined, and lady-Uke ; yet, in some Pencillings by the Way, (sketched, perhaps, upon an indigestion of mountain cheese, or an acidity of bad wine — such things affect us,) I was perverse enough to jot down a remark, more inv-idious than just. We are reached with a long whip for our transgressions, and, but yesterday, I received a letter from the Isle of Man, of which thus runs an extract : "In your description of a dangerous pass in Switzerland, you mention travelling in the same public conveyance with three Scotch spinsters, and declare you would have been alarmed, had there been any neck in the carriage you cared for, and assert, that neither of your companions would have hesitated to leap from a precipice, had there been a lover at the bottom. Did either of us tell you so, sir? Or what ground

THE ORIOLE. 29 have you for this assertion ? You could not have judged of us by your own beautiful countrywomen, for they are proverbial for delicacy of feeling. You had not yet made the acquaintance of mine. We, therefore, must appropriate entirely to ourselves the very flattering idea of having inspired such an opinion. Yet allow me to assure you, sir, that lovers are by no means so scarce in my native country, as you seem to imagine. No Scotchwoman need go either to Switzerland, or Yankee-land, in search of them. Permit me to say then, sir, that as the attack was so pubhc, an equally public amende honorable is due to us."

I make it here. I retract the opinion altogether. I do not think you " would have leaped from the precipice, had there

been a lover at the bottom." On the contrary, dear Miss ,

I think you would have waited till he climbed up. The amende, I flatter myself, could scarce be more complete. Yet I will make it stronger if you wish.

As I look out from under the bridge, I see an oriole sitting upon a dog-wood tree of my planting. His song drew my eye from the paper. I find it difficult, now, not to take to myself the whole glory of tree, song, and plumage. By an easy delusion, I fancy he would not have come but for the beauty of the tree, and that his song says as much in bird-recitative. I go back to one rainy day of April, when, hunting for maple saphngs, I stopped under that graceful tree, in a sort of island jungle, and wondered what grew so fair that -was so unfamiliar, yet with a bark like the plumage of the pencilled pheasant. The limbs grew curiously. A lance-like stem, and, at regular distances, a cluster of radiating branches, like a long cane thrust through inverted parasols. I set to work with spade and pick, took it home on my sL;0^1der, and set it out by Glenmary brook ; and there it stands to-day, in the full glory of its leaves, having just shed the white blossoms with which it kept holyday in June. Now the tree would have leafed and flowered, and the bird, in black and gold, might perchance have swung and sung on the slender branch, which is still tilting with his effort in the last cadenza. But the fair picture it makes to my eye, and the delicious music in my ear, seem to me no less of my own making and awaking. Is it the same tree, flowering unseen in the woods, or transplanted into a circle of human love and care, making a part of woman's home, and thought of and admired whenever she comes out from her cottage, with a blessing on the perfume and verdure ? Is it the same bird, wasting his song in the thicket, or singing to me, with my whole mind afloat on his music, and my eyes fastened to his glittering breast ? So it is the same block of marble, unmoved in the caves of Pentelicus, or brought forth and wrought under the sculptor's chisel. Yet the sculptor is allowed to create. Sing on, my bright oriole ! Spread to the light and breeze your desiring finger, rmj flowering tree ! Like the player upon the organ, I take your glory to myself ; though, like the hallelujah that burns under his fingers, your beauty and music worship God.

There ay# men in the vrorld whose misfortune it is to think too little of themselves — rari nantes in gurgite vasto. I v/ould recommend to such to plant trees, and live among them. This suggesting to nature — working, as a master-mind, with all the fine mysteries of root and sap obedient to the call — is very king- like. Then how elevating is the society of trees ! The objection I have to a city, is the necessity, at every other step, of passing some

DRAWBACK OF CITY LIFE. 3]

acquaintance or other, with all his merits o« demerits entirely tiirough my mind — some man, perhaps, whose existence and vocation I have not suo^o-ested — (as I mio;ht have done were he a tree) — whom I neither love, nor care to meet ; and yet he is thrust upon my eye, and must be noticed. But to notice him with propriety, I must remember what he is — what claims he has to my respect, my civihty. I must, in a minute, balance the account between my character and his, and, if he speak tv me, remember his wife and children, his last illness, his mishap or fortune in trade, or whatever else it is necessary to mention in condolence or felicitation. A man with but a moderate acquaintance, living in a city, will pass through his mind each day, at a fair calculation, say two hundred men and women, with their belongings. What tax on the memory! What fatigue (and all profitless) to them and him I ■ " Sweep me out hke a foul thorou"^hfare !" say I. "The town has trudo-ed throuo^h me 1"

I hke my mind to be a green lane, private to the dwellers in my own demesne. I like to be bowed to as the trees bow, and have no need to bow back or smile. If I am sad, my trees forego my notice without offence. If I am merry, or whimsical, they do not suspect my good sense, or my sanity. We have a constant itching (all men have, I think) to measure ourselves by those about us. I would rather it should be a tree than a fop, or a politician, or a 'prentice. We grow to the nearest standard. We become Lilliputians in Lilliput. Let me grow up like a tiee.

But here comes Tom Groom with an axe, as if he had looked over my shoulder, and started, apropos of trees.

"Is it that big button-ball you'll have cat down, sir?"

" Call it a sycamore, Tom, aid I'll come and see." Itas a fine old trunk, but it shuts out the village spire and must come down.