Complete Prose Works

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SPRING OVERTURES--RECREATIONS

_Feb. 10_.--The first chirping, almost singing, of a bird to-day. Then
I noticed a couple of honey-bees spirting and humming about the open
window in the sun.

_Feb. 11_.--In the soft rose and pale gold of the declining light,
this beautiful evening, I heard the first hum and preparation of
awakening spring--very faint--whether in the earth or roots, or
starting of insects, I know not--but it was audible, as I lean'd on a
rail (I am down in my country quarters awhile,) and look'd long at the
western horizon. Turning to the east, Sirius, as the shadows deepen'd,
came forth in dazzling splendor. And great Orion; and a little to the
north-east the big Dipper, standing on end.

_Feb. 20_.--A solitary and pleasant sundown hour at the pond,
exercising arms, chest, my whole body, by a tough oak sapling thick as
my wrist, twelve feet high--pulling and pushing, inspiring the good
air. After I wrestle with the tree awhile, I can feel its young sap
and virtue welling up out of the ground and tingling through me from
crown to toe, like health's wine. Then for addition and variety I
launch forth in my vocalism; shout declamatory pieces, sentiments,
sorrow, anger, &c., from the stock poets or plays--or inflate my lungs
and sing the wild tunes and refrains I heard of the blacks down south,
or patriotic songs I learn'd in the army. I make the echoes ring, I
tell you! As the twilight fell, in a pause of these ebullitions, an
owl somewhere the other side of the creek sounded _too-oo-oo-oo-oo_,
soft and pensive (and I fancied a little sarcastic) repeated four or
five times. Either to applaud the negro songs--or perhaps an ironical
comment on the sorrow, anger, or style of the stock poets.

ONE OF THE HUMAN KINKS

How is it that in all the serenity and lonesomeness of solitude, away
off here amid the hush of the forest, alone, or as I have found in
prairie wilds, or mountain stillness, one is never entirely without
the instinct of looking around, (I never am, and others tell me the
same of themselves, confidentially,) for somebody to appear, or
start up out of the earth, or from behind some tree or rock? Is it a
lingering, inherited remains of man's primitive wariness, from the
wild animals? or from his savage ancestry far back? It is not at all
nervousness or fear. Seems as if something unknown were possibly
lurking in those bushes, or solitary places. Nay, it is quite certain
there is--some vital unseen presence.

AN AFTERNOON SCENE

_Feb. 22_.--Last night and to-day rainy and thick, till mid-afternoon,
when the wind chopp'd round, the clouds swiftly drew off like
curtains, the clear appear'd, and with it the fairest, grandest,
most wondrous rainbow I ever saw, all complete, very vivid at its
earth-ends, spreading vast effusions of illuminated haze, violet,
yellow, drab-green, in all directions overhead, through which the sun
beam'd--an indescribable utterance of color and light, so gorgeous yet
so soft, such as I had never witness'd before. Then its continuance: a
full hour pass'd before the last of those earth-ends disappear'd. The
sky behind was all spread in translucent blue, with many little white
clouds and edges. To these a sunset, filling, dominating the esthetic
and soul senses, sumptuously, tenderly, full. I end this note by the
pond, just light enough to see, through the evening shadows, the
western reflections in its water-mirror surface, with inverted figures
of trees. I hear now and then the _flup_ of a pike leaping out, and
rippling the water.

THE GATES OPENING

_April 6_.--Palpable spring indeed, or the indications of it. I am
sitting in bright sunshine, at the edge of the creek, the surface just
rippled by the wind. All is solitude, morning freshness, negligence.
For companions my two kingfishers sailing, winding, darting, dipping,
sometimes capriciously separate, then flying together. I hear their
guttural twittering again and again; for awhile nothing but that
peculiar sound. As noon approaches other birds warm up. The reedy
notes of the robin, and a musical passage of two parts, one a clear
delicious gurgle, with several other birds I cannot place. To which
is join'd, (yes, I just hear it,) one low purr at intervals from some
impatient hylas at the pond-edge. The sibilant murmur of a pretty
stiff breeze now and then through the trees. Then a poor little dead
leaf, long frost-bound, whirls from somewhere up aloft in one wild
escaped freedom-spree in space and sunlight, and then dashes down to
the waters, which hold it closely and soon drown it out of sight. The
bushes and trees are yet bare, but the beeches have their wrinkled
yellow leaves of last season's foliage largely left, frequent cedars
and pines yet green, and the grass not without proofs of coming
fullness. And over all a wonderfully fine dome of clear blue, the play
of light coming and going, and great fleeces of white clouds swimming
so silently.

THE COMMON EARTH, THE SOIL

The soil, too--let others pen-and-ink the sea, the air, (as I
sometimes try)--but now I feel to choose the common soil for
theme--naught else. The brown soil here, (just between winter-close
and opening spring and vegetation)--the rain-shower at night, and
the fresh smell next morning--the red worms wriggling out of the
ground--the dead leaves, the incipient grass, and the latent life
underneath--the effort to start something--already in shelter'd spots
some little flowers--the distant emerald show of winter wheat and
the rye-fields--the yet naked trees, with clear insterstices, giving
prospects hidden in summer--the tough fallow and the plow-team, and
the stout boy whistling to his horses for encouragement--and there the
dark fat earth in long slanting stripes upturn'd.

BIRDS AND BIRDS AND BIRDS

_A little later--bright weather_.--An unusual melodiousness, these
days, (last of April and first of May) from the blackbirds; indeed all
sorts of birds, darting, whistling, hopping or perch'd on trees. Never
before have I seen, heard, or been in the midst of, and got so flooded
and saturated with them and their performances, as this current month.
Such oceans, such successions of them. Let me make a list of those I
find here:

Black birds (plenty,) Meadow-larks (plenty,)
Ring doves, Cat-birds (plenty,)
Owls, Cuckoos,
Woodpeckers, Pond snipes (plenty,)
King-birds, Cheewinks,
Crows (plenty,) Quawks,
Wrens, Ground robins,
Kingfishers, Ravens,
Quails, Gray snipes,
Turkey-buzzards, Eagles,
Hen-hawks, High-holes,
Yellow birds, Herons,
Thrushes, Tits,
Reed birds, Woodpigeons.

Early came the

Blue birds, Meadow-lark,
Killdeer, White-bellied swallow,
Plover, Sandpiper,
Robin, Wilson's thrush,
Woodcock, Flicker.

FULL-STARR'D NIGHTS

_May 2l_.--Back in Camden. Again commencing one of those unusually
transparent, full-starr'd, blue-black nights, as if to show that
however lush and pompous the day may be, there is something left
in the not-day that can outvie it. The rarest, finest sample of
long-drawn-out clear-obscure, from sundown to 9 o'clock. I went down
to the Delaware, and cross'd and cross'd. Venus like blazing silver
well up in the west. The large pale thin crescent of the new moon,
half an hour high, sinking languidly under a bar-sinister of cloud,
and then emerging. Arcturus right overhead. A faint fragrant sea-odor
wafted up from the south. The gloaming, the temper'd coolness, with
every feature of the scene, indescribably soothing and tonic--one
of those hours that give hints to the soul, impossible to put in a
statement. (Ah, where would be any food for spirituality without night
and the stars?) The vacant spaciousness of the air, and the veil'd
blue of the heavens, seem'd miracles enough.

As the night advanc'd it changed its spirit and garments to ampler
stateliness. I was almost conscious of a definite presence, Nature
silently near. The great constellation of the Water-Serpent stretch'd
its coils over more than half the heavens. The Swan with outspread
wings was flying down the Milky Way. The northern Crown, the Eagle,
Lyra, all up there in their places. From the whole dome shot down
points of light, rapport with me, through the clear blue-black. All
the usual sense of motion, all animal life, seem'd discarded, seem'd a
fiction; a curious power, like the placid rest of Egyptian gods, took
possession, none the less potent for being impalpable. Earlier I had
seen many bats, balancing in the luminous twilight, darting their
black forms hither and yon over the river; but now they altogether
disappear'd. The evening star and the moon had gone. Alertness and
peace lay camly couching together through the fluid universal shadows.

_Aug. 26_.--Bright has the day been, and my spirits an equal
_forzando_. Then comes the night, different, inexpressibly pensive,
with its own tender and temper'd splendor. Venus lingers in the west
with a voluptuous dazzle unshown hitherto this summer. Mars rises
early, and the red sulky moon, two days past her full; Jupiter at
night's meridian, and the long curling-slanted Scorpion stretching
full view in the south, Aretus-neck'd. Mars walks the heavens
lord-paramount now; all through this month I go out after supper and
watch for him; sometimes getting up at midnight to take another look
at his unparallel'd lustre. (I see lately an astronomer has made out
through the new Washington telescope that Mars has certainly one
moon, perhaps two.) Pale and distant, but near in the heavens, Saturn
precedes him.

MULLEINS AND MULLEINS

Large, placid mulleins, as summer advances, velvety in texture, of a
light greenish-drab color, growing everywhere in the fields--at first
earth's big rosettes in their broad-leav'd low cluster-plants, eight,
ten, twenty leaves to a plant--plentiful on the fallow twenty-acre
lot, at the end of the lane, and especially by the ridge-sides of the
fences--then close to the ground, but soon springing up--leaves as
broad as my hand, and the lower ones twice as long--so fresh and dewy
in the morning--stalks now four or five, even seven or eight feet
high. The farmers, I find, think the mullein a mean unworthy weed,
but I have grown to a fondness for it. Every object has its lesson,
enclosing the suggestion of everything else--and lately I sometimes
think all is concentrated for me in these hardy, yellow-flower'd
weeds. As I come down the lane early in the morning, I pause before
their soft wool-like fleece and stem and broad leaves, glittering with
countless diamonds. Annually for three summers now, they and I have
silently return'd together; at such long intervals I stand or sit
among them, musing--and woven with the rest, of so many hours and
moods of partial rehabilitation--of my sane or sick spirit, here as
near at peace as it can be.

DISTANT SOUNDS

The axe of the wood-cutter, the measured thud of a single
threshing-flail, the crowing of chanticleer in the barn-yard, (with
invariable responses from other barn-yards,) and the lowing of
cattle--but most of all, or far or near, the wind--through the high
tree-tops, or through low bushes, laving one's face and hands so
gently, this balmy-bright noon, the coolest for a long time, (Sept.
2)--I will not call it _sighing_, for to me it is always a firm, sane,
cheery expression, through a monotone, giving many varieties, or swift
or slow, or dense or delicate. The wind in the patch of pine woods off
there--how sibilant. Or at sea, I can imagine it this moment, tossing
the waves, with spirits of foam flying far, and the free whistle, and
the scent of the salt--and that vast paradox somehow with all its
action and restlessness conveying a sense of eternal rest.

Other adjuncts._--But the sun and the moon here and these times. As
never more wonderful by day, the gorgeous orb imperial, so vast, so
ardently, lovingly hot--so never a more glorious moon of nights,
especially the last three or four. The great planets too--Mars never
before so flaming bright, so flashing-large, with slight yellow tinge,
(the astronomers say--is it true?--nearer to us than any time the past
century)--and well up, lord Jupiter, (a little while since close by
the moon)--and in the west, after the sun sinks, voluptuous Venus, now
languid and shorn of her beams, as if from some divine excess.

A SUN-BATH-NAKEDNESS

_Sunday, Aug. 27_.--Another day quite free from mark'd prostration and
pain. It seems indeed as if peace and nutriment from heaven subtly
filter into me as I slowly hobble down these country lanes and across
fields, in the good air--as I sit here in solitude with Nature--open,
voiceless, mystic, far removed, yet palpable, eloquent Nature. I merge
myself in the scene, in the perfect day. Hovering over the clear
brook-water, I am sooth'd by its soft gurgle in one place, and
the hoarser murmurs of its three-foot fall in another. Come, ye
disconsolate, in whom any latent eligibility is left--come get the
sure virtues of creek-shore, and wood and field. Two months (July and
August, '77,) have I absorb'd them, and they begin to make a new man
of me. Every day, seclusion--every day at least two or three hours of
freedom, bathing, no talk, no bonds, no dress, no books, no _manners_.

Shall I tell you, reader, to what I attribute my already much-restored
health? That I have been almost two years, off and on, without drugs
and medicines, and daily in the open air. Last summer I found a
particularly secluded little dell off one side by my creek, originally
a large dug-out marl-pit, now abandon'd, fill'd, with bushes, trees,
grass, a group of willows, a straggling bank, and a spring of
delicious water running right through the middle of it, with two or
three little cascades. Here I retreated every hot day, and follow it
up this summer. Here I realize the meaning of that old fellow who said
he was seldom less alone than when alone. Never before did I get so
close to Nature; never before did she come so close to me. By old
habit, I pencill'd down from time to time, almost automatically,
moods, sights, hours, tints and outlines, on the spot. Let me
specially record the satisfaction of this current forenoon, so serene
and primitive, so conventionally exceptional, natural.

An hour or so after breakfast I wended my way down to the recesses of
the aforesaid dell, which I and certain thrushes, cat-birds, &c., had
all to ourselves. A light south-west wind was blowing through the
tree-tops. It was just the place and time for my Adamic air-bath and
flesh-brushing from head to foot. So hanging clothes on a rail near
by, keeping old broadbrim straw on head and easy shoes on feet, havn't
I had a good time the last two hours! First with the stiff-elastic
bristles rasping arms, breast, sides, till they turn'd scarlet--then
partially bathing in the clear waters of the running brook--taking
everything very leisurely, with many rests and pauses--stepping about
barefooted every few minutes now and then in some neighboring black
ooze, for unctuous mud-bath to my feet--a brief second and third
rinsing in the crystal running waters--rubbing with the fragrant
towel--slow negligent promenades on the turf up and down in the
sun, varied with occasional rests, and further frictions of the
bristle-brush--sometimes carrying my portable chair with me from
place to place, as my range is quite extensive here, nearly a hundred
rods, feeling quite secure from intrusion, (and that indeed I am not
at all nervous about, if it accidentally happens.)

As I walk'd slowly over the grass, the sun shone out enough to show
the shadow moving with me. Somehow I seem'd to get identity with each
and every thing around me, in its condition. Nature was naked, and I
was also. It was too lazy, soothing, and joyous-equable to speculate
about. Yet I might have thought somehow in this vein: Perhaps the
inner never-lost rapport we hold with earth, light, air, trees, &c.,
is not to be realized through eyes and mind only, but through the
whole corporeal body, which I will not have blinded or bandaged any
more than the eyes. Sweet, sane, still Nakedness in Nature!--ah if
poor, sick, prurient humanity in cities might really know you once
more! Is not nakedness then indecent? No, not inherently. It is your
thought, your sophistication, your tear, your respectability, that is
indecent. There come moods when these clothes of ours are not only too
irksome to wear, but are themselves indecent. Perhaps indeed he or she
to whom the free exhilarating extasy of nakedness in Nature has never
been eligible (and how many thousands there are!) has not really known
what purity is--nor what faith or art or health really is. (Probably
the whole curriculum of first-class philosophy, beauty, heroism, form,
illustrated by the old Hellenic race--the highest height and deepest
depth known to civilization in those departments--came from their
natural and religious idea of Nakedness.)

Many such hours, from time to time, the last two summers--I attribute
my partial rehabilitation largely to them. Some good people may think
it a feeble or half-crack'd way of spending one's time and thinking.
May-be it is.

THE OAKS AND I

_Sept. 5, '77._--I write this, 11 A.M., shelter'd under a dense oak by
the bank, where I have taken refuge from a sudden rain. I came down
here, (we had sulky drizzles all the morning, but an hour ago a lull,)
for the before-mention'd daily and simple exercise I am fond of--to
pull on that young hickory sapling out there--to sway and yield to its
tough-limber upright stem--haply to get into my old sinews some of
its elastic fibre and clear sap. I stand on the turf and take these
health-pulls moderately and at intervals for nearly an hour, inhaling
great draughts of fresh air. Wandering by the creek, I have three or
four naturally favorable spots where I rest--besides a chair I
lug with me and use for more deliberate occasions. At other spots
convenient I have selected, besides the hickory just named, strong and
limber boughs of beech or holly, in easy-reaching distance, for my
natural gymnasia, for arms, chest, trunk-muscles. I can soon feel
the sap and sinew rising through me, like mercury to heat. I hold
on boughs or slender trees caressingly there in the sun and shade,
wrestle with their innocent stalwartness--and _know_ the virtue
thereof passes from them into me. (Or may-be we interchange--may-be
the trees are more aware of it all than I ever thought.)

But now pleasantly imprison'd here under the big oak--the rain
dripping, and the sky cover'd with leaden clouds--nothing but the pond
on one side, and the other a spread of grass, spotted with the milky
blossoms of the wild carrot--the sound of an axe wielded at some
distant wood-pile--yet in this dull scene, (as most folks would
call it,) why am I so (almost) happy here and alone? Why would any
intrusion, even from people I like, spoil the charm? But am I alone?
Doubtless there comes a time--perhaps it has come to me--when one
feels through his whole being, and pronouncedly the emotional part,
that identity between himself subjectively and Nature objectively
which Schelling and Fichte are so fond of pressing. How it is I know
not, but I often realize a presence here--in clear moods I am certain
of it, and neither chemistry nor reasoning nor esthetics will give the
least explanation. All the past two summers it has been strengthening
and nourishing my sick body and soul, as never before. Thanks,
invisible physician, for thy silent delicious medicine, thy day and
night, thy waters and thy airs, the banks, the grass, the trees, and
e'en the weeds!

A QUINTETTE

While I have been kept by the rain under the shelter of my great
oak, (perfectly dry and comfortable, to the rattle of the drops
all around,) I have pencill'd off the mood of the hour in a little
quintette, which I will give you:

At vacancy with Nature,
Acceptive and at ease,
Distilling the present hour,
Whatever, wherever it is,
And over the past, oblivion.

Can you get hold of it, reader dear? and how do you like it anyhow?

THE FIRST FROST--MEMS

Where I was stopping I saw the first palpable frost, on my sunrise
walk, October 6; all over the yet-green spread a light blue-gray veil,
giving a new show to the entire landscape. I had but little time
to notice it, for the sun rose cloudless and mellow-warm, and as I
returned along the lane it had turn'd to glittering patches of wet. As
I walk I notice the bursting pods of wild-cotton, (Indian hemp they
call it here,) with flossy-silky contents, and dark red-brown seeds--a
startled rabbit--I pull a handful of the balsamic life-ever-lasting
and stuff it down in my trowsers-pocket for scent.

THREE YOUNG MEN'S DEATHS

_December 20_.--Somehow I got thinking to-day of young men's
deaths--not at all sadly or sentimentally, but gravely, realistically,
perhaps a little artistically. Let me give the following three cases
from budgets of personal memoranda, which I have been turning over,
alone in my room, and resuming and dwelling on, this rainy afternoon.
Who is there to whom the theme does not come home? Then I don't know
how it may be to others, but to me not only is there nothing gloomy or
depressing in such cases--on the contrary, as reminiscences, I find
them soothing, bracing, tonic.

ERASTUS HASKELL.--[I just transcribe verbatim from a letter written
by myself in one of the army hospitals, 16 years ago, during the
secession war.] _Washington, July 28, 1863._--Dear M.,--I am writing
this in the hospital, sitting by the side of a soldier, I do not
expect to last many hours. His fate has been a hard one--he seems to
be only about 19 or 20--Erastus Haskell, company K, 141st N. Y.--has
been out about a year, and sick or half-sick more than half that
time--has been down on the peninsula--was detail'd to go in the band
as fifer-boy. While sick, the surgeon told him to keep up with the
rest--(probably work'd and march'd too long.) He is a shy, and seems
to me a very sensible boy--has fine manners--never complains--was sick
down on the peninsula in an old storehouse--typhoid fever. The
first week this July was brought up here--journey very bad, no
accommodations, no nourishment, nothing but hard jolting, and exposure
enough to make a well man sick; (these fearful journeys do the job for
many)--arrived here July 11th--a silent dark-skinn'd Spanish-looking
youth, with large very dark blue eyes, peculiar looking. Doctor F.
here made light of his sickness--said he would recover soon, etc.; but
I thought very different, and told F. so repeatedly; (I came near
quarreling with him about it from the first)--but he laugh'd, and
would not listen to me. About four days ago, I told Doctor he would in
my opinion lose the boy without doubt--but F. again laugh'd at me.
The next day he changed his opinion--brought the head surgeon of the
post--he said the boy would probably die, but they would make a hard
fight for him.

The last two days he has been lying panting for breath--a pitiful
sight. I have been with him some every day or night since he arrived.
He suffers a great deal with the heat--says little or nothing--is
flighty the last three days, at times--knows me always, however
--calls me "Walter"--(sometimes calls the name over and over and over
again, musingly, abstractedly, to himself.) His father lives at
Breesport, Chemung county, N. Y., is a mechanic with large family--is
a steady, religious man; his mother too is living. I have written to
them, and shall write again to-day--Erastus has not receiv'd a word
from home for months.

As I sit here writing to you, M., I wish you could see the whole
scene. This young man lies within reach of me, flat on his back, his
hands clasp'd across his breast, his thick black hair cut close; he is
dozing, breathing hard, every breath a spasm--it looks so cruel. He is
a noble youngster,--I consider him past all hope. Often there is no
one with him for a long while. I am here as much as possible.

WILLIAM ALCOTT, fireman. _Camden, Nov., 1874_.--Last Monday afternoon
his widow, mother, relatives, mates of the fire department, and his
other friends, (I was one, only lately it is true, but our love grew
fast and close, the days and nights of those eight weeks by the chair
of rapid decline, and the bed of death,) gather'd to the funeral
of this young man, who had grown up, and was well-known here. With
nothing special, perhaps, to record, I would give a word or two to his
memory. He seem'd to me not an inappropriate specimen in character and
elements, of that bulk of the average good American race that ebbs and
flows perennially beneath this scum of eructations on the surface.
Always very quiet in manner, neat in person and dress, good
temper'd--punctual and industrious at his work, till he could work no
longer--he just lived his steady, square, unobtrusive life, in its own
humble sphere, doubtless unconscious of itself. (Though I think there
were currents of emotion and intellect undevelop'd beneath, far deeper
than his acquaintances ever suspected--or than he himself ever did.)
He was no talker. His troubles, when he had any, he kept to himself.
As there was nothing querulous about him in life, he made no
complaints during his last sickness. He was one of those persons that
while his associates never thought of attributing any particular
talent or grace to him, yet all insensibly, really, liked Billy
Alcott.