Complete Prose Works

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LOCUSTS AND KATY-DIDS

_Aug. 22_.--Reedy monotones of locust, or sounds of katydid--I hear
the latter at night, and the other both day and night. I thought the
morning and evening warble of birds delightful; but I find I can
listen to these strange insects with just as much pleasure. A single
locust is now heard near noon from a tree two hundred feet off, as I
write--a long whirring, continued, quite loud noise graded in distinct
whirls, or swinging circles, increasing in strength and rapidity up to
a certain point, and then a fluttering, quietly tapering fall. Each
strain is continued from one to two minutes. The locust-song is very
appropriate to the scene--gushes, has meaning, is masculine, is like
some fine old wine, not sweet, but far better than sweet.

But the katydid--how shall I describe its piquant utterances? One
sings from a willow-tree just outside my open bedroom window, twenty
yards distant; every clear night for a fortnight past has sooth'd me
to sleep. I rode through a piece of woods for a hundred rods the other
evening, and heard the katydids by myriads--very curious for once; but
I like better my single neighbor on the tree. Let me say more about
the song of the locust, even to repetition; a long, chromatic,
tremulous crescendo, like a brass disk whirling round and round,
emitting wave after wave of notes, beginning with a certain moderate
beat or measure, rapidly increasing in speed and emphasis, reaching
a point of great energy and significance, and then quickly
and gracefully dropping down and out. Not the melody of the
singing-bird--far from it; the common musician might think without
melody, but surely having to the finer ear a harmony of its own;
monotonous--but what a swing there is in that brassy drone, round and
round, cymballine--or like the whirling of brass quoits.

THE LESSON OF A TREE

_Sept. 1_.--I should not take either the biggest or the most
picturesque tree to illustrate it. Here is one of my favorites now
before me, a fine yellow poplar, quite straight, perhaps 90 feet high,
and four thick at the butt. How strong, vital, enduring! how dumbly
eloquent! What suggestions of imperturbability and _being_, as
against the human trait of mere _seeming_. Then the qualities, almost
emotional, palpably artistic, heroic, of a tree; so innocent and
harmless, yet so savage. It _is_, yet says nothing. How it rebukes
by its tough and equable serenity all weathers, this gusty-temper'd
little whiffet, man, that runs indoors at a mite of rain or snow.
Science (or rather half-way science) scoffs at reminiscence of dryad
and hamadryad, and of trees speaking. But, if they don't, they do as
well as most speaking, writing, poetry, sermons--or rather they do
a great deal better. I should say indeed that those old
dryad-reminiscences are quite as true as any, and profounder than most
reminiscences we get. ("Cut this out," as the quack mediciners say,
and keep by you.) Go and sit in a grove or woods, with one or more of
those voiceless companions, and read the foregoing, and think.

One lesson from affiliating a tree--perhaps the greatest moral lesson
anyhow from earth, rocks, animals, is that same lesson of inherency,
of _what is_, without the least regard to what the looker-on (the
critic) supposes or says, or whether he likes or dislikes. What
worse--what more general malady pervades each and all of us, our
literature, education, attitude toward each other, (even toward
ourselves,) than a morbid trouble about _seems_, (generally
temporarily seems too,) and no trouble at all, or hardly any, about
the sane, slow-growing, perennial, real parts of character,
books, friendship, marriage--humanity's invisible foundations and
hold-together? (As the all-basis, the nerve, the great-sympathetic,
the plenum within humanity, giving stamp to everything, is necessarily
invisible.)

_Aug. 4, 6 P.M._--Lights and shades and rare effects on tree-foliage
and grass--transparent greens, grays, &c., all in sunset pomp and
dazzle. The clear beams are now thrown in many new places, on the
quilted, seam'd, bronze-drab, lower tree-trunks, shadow'd except at
this hour--now flooding their young and old columnar ruggedness with
strong light, unfolding to my sense new amazing features of
silent, shaggy charm, the solid bark, the expression of harmless
impassiveness, with many a bulge and gnarl unreck'd before. In the
revealings of such light, such exceptional hour, such mood, one does
not wonder at the old story fables, (indeed, why fables?) of people
falling into love-sickness with trees, seiz'd extatic with the mystic
realism of the resistless silent strength in them--_strength_, which
after all is perhaps the last, completest, highest beauty.

_Trees I am familiar with here_.

Oaks, (many kinds--one sturdy Willows.
old fellow, vital, green, bushy, Catalpas.
five feet thick at the butt, I sit Persimmons.
under every day,) Mountain-ash.
Cedars plenty. Hickories.
Tulip trees, (_Liriodendron,_) is of Maples, many kinds.
the magnolia family--I have Locusts.
seen it in Michigan and southern Birches.
Illinois, 140 feet high and Dogwood.
8 feet thick at the butt [A]; does Pine.
not transplant well; best rais'd the Elm.
from seeds--the lumbermen Chesnut.
call it yellow poplar.) Linden.
Sycamores. Aspen.
Gum trees, both sweet and sour. Spruce.
Beeches. Hornbeam.
Black-walnuts. Laurel.
Sassafras. Holly.

AUTUMN SIDE-BITS

_Sept. 20_.--Under an old black oak, glossy and green, exhaling
aroma--amid a grove the Albic druids might have chosen--envelop'd in
the warmth and light of the noonday sun, and swarms[10] of flitting
insects--with the harsh cawing of many crows a hundred rods away--here
I sit in solitude, absorbing, enjoying all. The corn, stack'd in its
cone-shaped stacks, russet-color'd and sere--a large field spotted
thick with scarlet-gold pumpkins--an adjoining one of cabbages,
showing well in their green and pearl, mottled by much light
and shade--melon patches, with their bulging ovals, and great
silver-streak'd, ruffled, broad-edged leaves--and many an autumn sight
and sound beside--the distant scream of a flock of guinea-hens--and
pour'd over all the September breeze, with pensive cadence through the
tree tops.

_Another Day_.--The ground in all directions strew'd with _debris_
from a storm. Timber creek, as I slowly pace its banks, has ebb'd low,
and shows reaction from the turbulent swell of the late equinoctial.
As I look around, I take account of stock--weeds and shrubs, knolls,
paths, occasional stumps, some with smooth'd tops, (several I use as
seats of rest, from place to place, and from one I am now jotting
these lines,)--frequent wild-flowers, little white, star-shaped
things, or the cardinal red of the lobelia, or the cherry-ball seeds
of the perennial rose, or the many-threaded vines winding up and
around trunks of trees.

_Oct. 1, 2 and 3_.--Down every day in the solitude of the creek. A
serene autumn sun and westerly breeze to-day (3d) as I sit here, the
water surface prettily moving in wind-ripples before me. On a stout
old beech at the edge, decayed and slanting, almost fallen to the
stream, yet with life and leaves in its mossy limbs, a gray squirrel,
exploring, runs up and down, flirts his tail, leaps to the ground,
sits on his haunches upright as he sees me, (a Darwinian hint?) and
then races up the tree again.

_Oct. 4_.--Cloudy and coolish; signs of incipient winter. Yet pleasant
here, the leaves thick-falling, the ground brown with them already;
rich coloring, yellows of all hues, pale and dark-green, shades from
lightest to richest red--all set in and toned down by the prevailing
brown of the earth and gray of the sky. So, winter is coming; and I
yet in my sickness. I sit here amid all these fair sights and vital
influences, and abandon myself to that thought, with its wandering
trains of speculation.

Note:

[10] There is a tulip poplar within sight of Woodstown, which is
twenty feet around, three feet from the ground, four feet across about
eighteen feet up the trunk, which is broken off about three or four
feet higher up. On the south side an arm has shot out from which
rise two stems, each to about ninety-one or ninety-two feet from the
ground. Twenty-five (or more) years since the cavity in the butt was
large enough for, and nine men at one time, ate dinner therein. It is
supposed twelve to fifteen men could now, at one time, stand within
its trunk. The severe winds of 1877 and 1878 did not seem to damage
it, and the two stems send out yearly many blossoms, scenting the
air immediately about it with their sweet perfume. It is entirely
unprotected by other trees, on a hill.--_Woodstown, N. J., "Register,"
April 15, '79_.

THE SKY--DAYS AND NIGHTS--HAPPINESS

_Oct. 20_.--A clear, crispy day--dry and breezy air, full of oxygen.
Out of the sane, silent, beauteous miracles that envelope and fuse
me--trees, water, grass, sunlight, and early frost--the one I am
looking at most to-day is the sky. It has that delicate, transparent
blue, peculiar to autumn, and the only clouds are little or larger
white ones, giving their still and spiritual motion to the great
concave. All through the earlier day (say from 7 to 11) it keeps a
pure, yet vivid blue. But as noon approaches the color gets lighter,
quite gray for two or three hours--then still paler for a spell, till
sun-down--which last I watch dazzling through the interstices of a
knoll of big trees--darts of fire and a gorgeous show of light-yellow,
liver-color and red, with a vast silver glaze askant on the water--the
transparent shadows, shafts, sparkle, and vivid colors beyond all the
paintings ever made.

I don't know what or how, but it seems to me mostly owing to these
skies, (every now and then I think, while I have of course seen them
every day of my life, I never really saw the skies before,) have had
this autumn some wondrously contented hours--may I not say perfectly
happy ones? As I have read, Byron just before his death told a friend
that he had known but three happy hours during his whole existence.
Then there is the old German legend of the king's bell, to the same
point. While I was out there by the wood, that beautiful sunset
through the trees, I thought of Byron's and the bell story, and the
notion started in me that I was having a happy hour. (Though perhaps
my best moments I never jot down; when they come I cannot afford to
break the charm by inditing memoranda. I just abandon myself to the
mood, and let it float on, carrying me in its placid extasy.)

What is happiness, anyhow? Is this one of its hours, or the like of
it?--so impalpable--a mere breath, an evanescent tinge? I am not
sure--so let me give myself the benefit of the doubt. Hast Thou,
pellucid, in Thy azure depths, medicine for case like mine? (Ah, the
physical shatter and troubled spirit of me the last three years.) And
dost Thou subtly mystically now drip it through the air invisibly upon
me?

_Night of Oct. 28._--The heavens unusually transparent--the stars out
by myriads--the great path of the Milky Way, with its branch, only
seen of very clear nights--Jupiter, setting in the west, looks like a
huge hap-hazard splash, and has a little star for companion.

Clothed in his white garments,
Into the round and clear arena slowly entered the brahmin,
Holding a little child by the hand,
Like the moon with the planet Jupiter in a cloudless night-sky.

_Old Hindu Poem._

_Early in November._--At its farther end the lane already described
opens into a broad grassy upland field of over twenty acres, slightly
sloping to the south. Here I am accustom'd to walk for sky views and
effects, either morning or sundown. To-day from this field my soul
is calm'd and expanded beyond description, the whole forenoon by the
clear blue arching over all, cloudless, nothing particular, only sky
and daylight. Their soothing accompaniments, autumn leaves, the cool
dry air, the faint aroma--crows cawing in the distance--two great
buzzards wheeling gracefully and slowly far up there--the occasional
murmur of the wind, sometimes quite gently, then threatening through
the trees--a gang of farm-laborers loading cornstalks in a field in
sight, and the patient horses waiting.

COLORS--A CONTRAST

Such a play of colors and lights, different seasons, different hours
of the day--the lines of the far horizon where the faint-tinged edge
of the landscape loses itself in the sky. As I slowly hobble up the
lane toward day-close, an incomparable sunset shooting in molten
sapphire and gold, shaft after shaft, through the ranks of the
long-leaved corn, between me and the west. _Another day_--The
rich dark green of the tulip-trees and the oaks, the gray of the
swamp-willows, the dull hues of the sycamores and black-walnuts,
the emerald of the cedars (after rain,) and the light yellow of the
beeches.

NOVEMBER 8, '76

The forenoon leaden and cloudy, not cold or wet, but indicating both.
As I hobble down here and sit by the silent pond, how different from
the excitement amid which, in the cities, millions of people are now
waiting news of yesterday's Presidential election, or receiving and
discussing the result--in this secluded place uncared-for, unknown.

CROWS AND CROWS

_Nov. 14_.--As I sit here by the creek, resting after my walk, a warm
languor bathes me from the sun. No sound but a cawing of crows, and no
motion but their black flying figures from over-head, reflected in
the mirror of the pond below. Indeed a principal feature of the scene
to-day is these crows, their incessant cawing, far or near, and their
countless flocks and processions moving from place to place, and at
times almost darkening the air with their myriads. As I sit a moment
writing this by the bank, I see the black, clear-cut reflection of
them far below, flying through the watery looking-glass, by ones,
twos, or long strings. All last night I heard the noises from their
great roost in a neighboring wood.

A WINTER DAY ON THE SEA-BEACH

One bright December mid-day lately I spent down on the New Jersey
sea-shore, reaching it by a little more than an hour's railroad trip
over the old Camden and Atlantic. I had started betimes, fortified by
nice strong coffee and a good breakfast (cook'd by the hands I love,
my dear sister Lou's--how much better it makes the victuals taste,
and then assimilate, strengthen you, perhaps make the whole day
comfortable afterwards.) Five or six miles at the last, our track
enter'd a broad region of salt grass meadows, intersected by lagoons,
and cut up everywhere by watery runs. The sedgy perfume, delightful
to my nostrils, reminded me of "the mash" and south bay of my native
island. I could have journey'd contentedly till night through these
flat and odorous sea-prairies. From half-past 11 till 2 I was nearly
all the time along the beach, or in sight of the ocean, listening
to its hoarse murmur, and inhaling the bracing and welcome breezes.
First, a rapid five-mile drive over the hard sand--our carriage wheels
hardly made dents in it. Then after dinner (as there were nearly two
hours to spare) I walk'd off in another direction, (hardly met or saw
a person,) and taking possession of what appear'd to have been the
reception-room of an old bath-house range, had a broad expanse of view
all to myself--quaint, refreshing, unimpeded--a dry area of sedge
and Indian grass immediately before and around me--space, simple,
unornamented space. Distant vessels, and the far-off, just visible
trailing smoke of an inward bound steamer; more plainly, ships, brigs,
schooners, in sight, most of them with every sail set to the firm and
steady wind.

The attractions, fascinations there are in sea and shore! How one
dwells on their simplicity, even vacuity! What is it in us, arous'd by
those indirections and directions? That spread of waves and gray-white
beach, salt, monotonous, senseless--such an entire absence of art,
books, talk, elegance--so indescribably comforting, even this winter
day--grim, yet so delicate-looking, so spiritual--striking emotional,
impalpable depths, subtler than all the poems, paintings, music,
I have ever read, seen, heard. (Yet let me be fair, perhaps it is
because I have read those poems and heard that music.)

SEA-SHORE FANCIES

Even as a boy, I had the fancy, the wish, to write a piece, perhaps a
poem, about the sea-shore--that suggesting, dividing line, contact,
junction, the solid marrying the liquid--that curious, lurking
something, (as doubtless every objective form finally becomes to the
subjective spirit,) which means far more than its mere first sight,
grand as that is--blending the real and ideal, and each made portion
of the other. Hours, days, in my Long Island youth and early manhood,
I haunted the shores of Rockaway or Coney island, or away east to
the Hamptons or Montauk. Once, at the latter place, (by the old
lighthouse, nothing but sea-tossings in sight in every direction as
far as the eye could reach,) I remember well, I felt that I must one
day write a book expressing this liquid, mystic theme. Afterward, I
recollect, how it came to me that instead of any special lyrical or
epical or literary attempt, the sea-shore should be an invisible
_influence_, a pervading gauge and tally for me, in my composition.
(Let me give a hint here to young writers. I am not sure but I have
unwittingly follow'd out the same rule with other powers besides sea
and shores--avoiding them, in the way of any dead set at poetizing
them, as too big for formal handling--quite satisfied if I could
indirectly show that we have met and fused, even if only once, but
enough--that we have really absorb'd each other and understand each
other.)

There is a dream, a picture, that for years at intervals, (sometimes
quite long ones, but surely again, in time,) has come noiselessly up
before me, and I really believe, fiction as it is, has enter'd largely
into my practical life--certainly into my writings, and shaped
and color'd them. It is nothing more or less than a stretch of
interminable white-brown sand, hard and smooth and broad, with the
ocean perpetually, grandly, rolling in upon it, with slow-measured
sweep, with rustle and hiss and foam, and many a thump as of low bass
drums. This scene, this picture, I say, has risen before me at times
for years. Sometimes I wake at night and can hear and see it plainly.

IN MEMORY OF THOMAS PAINE.

_Spoken at Lincoln Hall, Philadelphia, Sunday, Jan. 28, '77, for 140th
anniversary of T. P.'s birthday._

Some thirty-five years ago, in New York city, at Tammany hall, of
which place I was then a frequenter, I happen'd to become quite
well acquainted with Thomas Paine's perhaps most intimate chum, and
certainly his later years' very frequent companion, a remarkably fine
old man, Col. Fellows, who may yet be remember'd by some stray relics
of that period and spot. If you will allow me, I will first give a
description of the Colonel himself. He was tall, of military bearing,
aged about 78, I should think, hair white as snow, clean-shaved on
the face, dress'd very neatly, a tail-coat of blue cloth with metal
buttons, buff vest, pantaloons of drab color, and his neck, breast and
wrists showing the whitest of linen. Under all circumstances, fine
manners; a good but not profuse talker, his wits still fully about
him, balanced and live and undimm'd as ever. He kept pretty fair
health, though so old. For employment--for he was poor--he had a post
as constable of some of the upper courts. I used to think him very
picturesque on the fringe of a crowd holding a tall staff, with his
erect form, and his superb, bare, thick-hair'd, closely-cropt white
head. The judges and young lawyers, with whom he was ever a favorite,
and the subject of respect, used to call him Aristides. It was the
general opinion among them that if manly rectitude and the instincts
of absolute justice remain'd vital anywhere about New York City Hall,
or Tammany, they were to be found in Col. Fellows. He liked young men,
and enjoy'd to leisurely talk with them over a social glass of toddy,
after his day's work, (he on these occasions never drank but one
glass,) and it was at reiterated meetings of this kind in old
Tammany's back parlor of those days, that he told me much about Thomas
Paine. At one of our interviews he gave me a minute account of Paine's
sickness and death. In short, from those talks, I was and am satisfied
that my old friend, with his mark'd advantages, had mentally, morally
and emotionally gauged the author of "Common Sense," and besides
giving me a good portrait of his appearance and manners, had taken the
true measure of his interior character.

Paine's practical demeanor, and much of his theoretical belief, was a
mixture of the French and English schools of a century ago, and the
best of both. Like most old-fashion'd people, he drank a glass or two
every day, but was no tippler, nor intemperate, let alone being a
drunkard. He lived simply and economically, but quite well--was
always cheery and courteous, perhaps occasionally a little blunt,
having very positive opinions upon politics, religion, and so forth.
That he labor'd well and wisely for the States in the trying period of
their parturition, and in the seeds of their character, there seems to
me no question. I dare not say how much of what our Union is owning
and enjoying to-day--its independence--its ardent belief in, and
substantial practice of radical human rights--and the severance of
its government from all ecclesiastical and superstitious dominion--I
dare not say how much of all this is owing to Thomas Paine, but I am
inclined to think a good portion of it decidedly is.

But I was not going either into an analysis or eulogium of the man.
I wanted to carry you back a generation or two, and give you by
indirection a moment's glance--and also to ventilate a very earnest
and I believe authentic opinion, nay conviction, of that time, the
fruit of the interviews I have mention'd, and of questioning and
cross-questioning, clench'd by my best information since, that Thomas
Paine had a noble personality, as exhibited in presence, face, voice,
dress, manner, and what may be call'd his atmosphere and magnetism,
especially the later years of his life. I am sure of it. Of the foul
and foolish fictions yet told about the circumstances of his decease,
the absolute fact is that as he lived a good life, after its kind, he
died calmly and philosophically, as became him. He served the embryo
Union with most precious service--a service that every man, woman
and child in our thirty-eight States is to some extent receiving the
benefit of to-day--and I for one here cheerfully, reverently throw
my pebble on the cairn of his memory. As we all know, the season
demands--or rather, will it ever be out of season?--that America learn
to better dwell on her choicest possession, the legacy of her good and
faithful men--that she well preserve their fame, if unquestion'd--or,
if need be, that she fail not to dissipate what clouds have intruded
on that fame, and burnish it newer, truer and brighter, continually.

A TWO HOURS ICE-SAIL

_Feb. 3, '77_--From 4 to 6 P. M. crossing the Delaware, (back again
at my Camden home,) unable to make our landing, through the ice; our
boat stanch and strong and skilfully piloted, but old and sulky, and
poorly minding her helm. (_Power_, so important in poetry and war, is
also first point of all in a winter steamboat, with long stretches of
ice-packs to tackle.) For over two hours we bump'd and beat about,
the invisible ebb, sluggish but irresistible, often carrying us long
distances against our will. In the first tinge of dusk, as I look'd
around, I thought there could not be presented a more chilling,
arctic, grim-extended, depressing scene. Everything was yet plainly
visible; for miles north and south, ice, ice, ice, mostly broken,
but some big cakes, and no clear water in sight. The shores, piers,
surfaces, roofs, shipping, mantled with snow. A faint winter vapor
hung a fitting accompaniment around and over the endless whitish
spread, and gave it just a tinge of steel and brown.

_Feb. 6_.--As I cross home in the 6 P. M. boat again, the transparent
shadows are filled everywhere with leisurely falling, slightly
slanting, curiously sparse but very large, flakes of snow. On the
shores, near and far, the glow of just-lit gas-clusters at intervals.
The ice, sometimes in hummocks, sometimes floating fields, through
which our boat goes crunching. The light permeated by that peculiar
evening haze, right after sunset, which sometimes renders quite
distant objects so distinctly.