Complete Prose Works

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I, too, loved him. At last, after being with him quite a good deal
--after hours and days of panting for breath, much of the time
unconscious, (for though the consumption that had been lurking in his
system, once thoroughly started, made rapid progress, there was still
great vitality in him, and indeed for four or five days he lay dying,
before the close,) late on Wednesday night, Nov. 4th, where we
surrounded his bed in silence, there came a lull--a longer drawn
breath, a pause, a faint sigh--another--a weaker breath, another sigh
--a pause again and just a tremble--and the face of the poor wasted
young man (he was just 26,) fell gently over, in death, on my hand, on
the pillow.

CHARLES CASWELL.--[I extract the following, verbatim, from a letter
to me dated September 29, from my friend John Burroughs, at
Esopus-on-Hudson, New York State.] S. was away when your picture came,
attending his sick brother, Charles--who has since died--an event
that has sadden'd me much. Charlie was younger than S., and a most
attractive young fellow. He work'd at my father's and had done so for
two years. He was about the best specimen of a young country farm-hand
I ever knew. You would have loved him. He was like one of your
poems. With his great strength, his blond hair, his cheerfulness and
contentment, his universal good will, and his silent manly ways, he
was a youth hard to match. He was murder'd by an old doctor. He had
typhoid fever, and the old fool bled him twice. He lived to wear out
the fever, but had not strength to rally. He was out of his head
nearly all the time. In the morning, as he died in the afternoon, S.
was standing over him, when Charlie put up his arms around S.'s neck,
and pull'd his face down and kiss'd him. S. said he knew then the end
was near. (S. stuck to him day and night to the last.) When I was home
in August, Charlie was cradling on the hill, and it was a picture to
see him walk through the grain. All work seem'd play to him. He had no
vices, any more than Nature has, and was belov'd by all who knew him.

I have written thus to you about him, for such young men belong to
you; he was of your kind. I wish you could have known him. He had the
sweetness of a child, and the strength and courage and readiness of a
young Viking. His mother and father are poor; they have a rough, hard
farm. His mother works in the field with her husband when the work
presses. She has had twelve children.

FEBRUARY DAYS

_February 7, 1878_.--Glistening sun today, with slight haze, warm
enough, and yet tart, as I sit here in the open air, down in my
country retreat, under an old cedar. For two hours I have been idly
wandering around the woods and pond, lugging my chair, picking out
choice spots to sit awhile--then up and slowly on again. All is peace
here. Of course, none of the summer noises or vitality; to-day hardly
even the winter ones. I amuse myself by exercising my voice in
recitations, and in ringing the changes on all the vocal and
alphabetical sounds. Not even an echo; only the cawing of a solitary
crow, flying at some distance. The pond is one bright, flat spread,
without a ripple--a vast Claude Lorraine glass, in which I study the
sky, the light, the leafless trees, and an occasional crow, with
flapping wings, flying overhead. The brown fields have a few white
patches of snow left.

_Feb. 9_.--After an hour's ramble, now retreating, resting, sitting
close by the pond, in a warm nook, writing this, shelter'd from the
breeze, just before noon. The _emotional_ aspects and influences of
Nature! I, too, like the rest, feel these modern tendencies (from
all the prevailing intellections, literature and poems,) to turn
everything to pathos, ennui, morbidity, dissatisfaction, death. Yet
how clear it is to me that those are not the born results, influences
of Nature at all, but of one's own distorted, sick or silly soul.
Here, amid this wild, free scene, how healthy, how joyous, how clean
and vigorous and sweet!

_Mid-afternoon_.--One of my nooks is south of the barn, and here I am
sitting now, on a log, still basking in the sun, shielded from the
wind. Near me are the cattle, feeding on corn-stalks. Occasionally a
cow or the young bull (how handsome and bold he is!) scratches and
munches the far end of the log on which I sit. The fresh milky odor
is quite perceptible, also the perfume of hay from the barn. The
perpetual rustle of dry corn-stalks, the low sough of the wind round
the barn gables, the grunting of pigs, the distant whistle of a
locomotive, and occasional crowing of chanticleers, are the sounds.

_Feb. 19._--Cold and sharp last night--clear and not much wind--the
full moon shining, and a fine spread of constellations and little and
big stars--Sirius very bright, rising early, preceded by many-orb'd
Orion, glittering, vast, sworded, and chasing with his dog. The earth
hard frozen, and a stiff glare of ice over the pond. Attracted by the
calm splendor of the night, I attempted a short walk, but was driven
back by the cold. Too severe for me also at 9 o'clock, when I came
out this morning, so I turn'd back again. But now, near noon, I have
walk'd down the lane, basking all the way in the sun (this farm has a
pleasant southerly exposure,) and here I am, seated under the lee of
a bank, close by the water. There are bluebirds already flying about,
and I hear much chirping and twittering and two or three real songs,
sustain'd quite awhile, in the mid-day brilliance and warmth. (There!
that is a true carol, coming out boldly and repeatedly, as if the
singer meant it.) Then as the noon strengthens, the reedy trill of the
robin--to my ear the most cheering of bird-notes. At intervals, like
bars and breaks (out of the low murmur that in any scene, however
quiet, is never entirely absent to a delicate ear,) the occasional
crunch and cracking of the ice-glare congeal'd over the creek, as it
gives way to the sunbeams--sometimes with low sigh--sometimes with
indignant, obstinate tug and snort.

(Robert Burns says in one of his letters: "There is scarcely any
earthly object gives me more--I do not know if I should call it
pleasure--but something which exalts me--something which enraptures
me--than to walk in the shelter' d side of a wood in a cloudy winter
day, and hear the stormy wind howling among the trees, and raving
over the plain. It is my best season of devotion." Some of his most
characteristic poems were composed in such scenes and seasons.)

A MEADOW LARK

_March 16_.--Fine, clear, dazzling morning, the sun an hour high, the
air just tart enough. What a stamp in advance my whole day receives
from the song of that meadow lark perch'd on a fence-stake twenty rods
distant! Two or three liquid-simple notes, repeated at intervals, full
of careless happiness and hope. With its peculiar shimmering slow
progress and rapid-noiseless action of the wings, it flies on a way,
lights on another stake, and so on to another, shimmering and singing
many minutes.

SUNDOWN LIGHTS

_May 6, 5 P. M._--This is the hour for strange effects in light and
shade-enough to make a colorist go delirious--long spokes of molten
silver sent horizontally through the trees (now in their brightest
tenderest green,) each leaf and branch of endless foliage a lit-up
miracle, then lying all prone on the youthful-ripe, interminable
grass, and giving the blades not only aggregate but individual
splendor, in ways unknown to any other hour. I have particular spots
where I get these effects in their perfection. One broad splash lies
on the water, with many a rippling twinkle, offset by the rapidly
deepening black-green murky-transparent shadows behind, and at
intervals all along the banks. These, with great shafts of horizontal
fire thrown among the trees and along the grass as the sun lowers,
give effects more and more peculiar, more and more superb, unearthly,
rich and dazzling.

THOUGHTS UNDER AN OAK--A DREAM

_June 2_.--This is the fourth day of a dark northeast storm, wind and
rain. Day before yesterday was my birthday. I have now enter'd on
my 60th year. Every day of the storm, protected by overshoes and a
waterproof blanket, I regularly come down to the pond, and ensconce
myself under the lee of the great oak; I am here now writing these
lines. The dark smoke-color'd clouds roll in furious silence athwart
the sky; the soft green leaves dangle all around me; the wind steadily
keeps up its hoarse, soothing music over my head--Nature's mighty
whisper. Seated here in solitude I have been musing over my
life--connecting events, dates, as links of a chain, neither sadly nor
cheerily, but somehow, to-day here under the oak, in the rain, in an
unusually matter-of-fact spirit.

But my great oak--sturdy, vital, green-five feet thick at the butt. I
sit a great deal near or under him. Then the tulip tree near by--the
Apollo of the woods--tall and graceful, yet robust and sinewy,
inimitable in hang of foliage and throwing-out of limb; as if the
beauteous, vital, leafy creature could walk, if it only would. (I had
a sort of dream-trance the other day, in which I saw my favorite trees
step out and promenade up, down and around, very curiously--with a
whisper from one, leaning down as he pass'd me, _We do all this on the
present occasion, exceptionally, just for you_.)

CLOVER AND HAY PERFUME

_July 3d, 4th, 5th._--Clear, hot, favorable weather--has been a good
summer--the growth of clover and grass now generally mow'd. The
familiar delicious perfume fills the barns and lanes. As you go along
you see the fields of grayish white slightly tinged with yellow, the
loosely stack'd grain, the slow-moving wagons passing, and farmers in
the fields with stout boys pitching and loading the sheaves. The corn
is about beginning to tassel. All over the middle and southern states
the spear-shaped battalia, multitudinous, curving, flaunting--long,
glossy, dark-green plumes for the great horseman, earth. I hear the
cheery notes of my old acquaintance Tommy quail; but too late for the
whip-poor-will, (though I heard one solitary lingerer night before
last.) I watch the broad majestic flight of a turkey-buzzard,
sometimes high up, sometimes low enough to see the lines of his form,
even his spread quills, in relief against the sky. Once or twice
lately I have seen an eagle here at early candle-light flying low.

AN UNKNOWN

_June 15_.--To-day I noticed a new large bird, size of a nearly grown
hen--a haughty, white-bodied dark-wing'd hawk--I suppose a hawk from
his bill and general look--only he had a clear, loud, quite musical,
sort of bell-like call, which he repeated again and again, at
intervals, from a lofty dead tree-top, overhanging the water. Sat
there a long time, and I on the opposite bank watching him. Then he
darted down, skimming pretty close to the stream--rose slowly, a
magnificent sight, and sail'd with steady wide-spread wings, no
flapping at all, up and down the pond two or three times, near me, in
circles in clear sight, as if for my delectation. Once he came quite
close over my head; I saw plainly his hook'd bill and hard restless
eyes.

BIRD-WHISTLING

How much music (wild, simple, savage, doubtless, but so tart-sweet,)
there is in mere whistling. It is four-fifths of the utterance of
birds. There are all sorts and styles. For the last half-hour, now,
while I have been sitting here, some feather'd fellow away off in the
bushes has been repeating over and over again what I may call a kind
of throbbing whistle. And now a bird about the robin size has just
appear'd, all mulberry red, flitting among the bushes--head, wings,
body, deep red, not very bright--no song, as I have heard. _4.
o'clock_: There is a real concert going on around me--a dozen
different birds pitching in with a will. There have been occasional
rains, and the growths all show its vivifying influences. As I finish
this, seated on a log close by the pond-edge, much chirping and
trilling in the distance, and a feather'd recluse in the woods near by
is singing deliciously--not many notes, but full of music of almost
human sympathy--continuing for a long, long while.

HORSE-MINT

_Aug. 22_.--Not a human being, and hardly the evidence of one, in
sight. After my brief semi-daily bath, I sit here for a bit, the brook
musically brawling, to the chromatic tones of a fretful cat-bird
somewhere off in the bushes. On my walk hither two hours since,
through fields and the old lane, I stopt to view, now the sky, now
the mile-off woods on the hill, and now the apple orchards. What a
contrast from New York's or Philadelphia's streets! Everywhere great
patches of dingy-blossom'd horse-mint wafting a spicy odor through the
air, (especially evenings.) Everywhere the flowering boneset, and the
rose-bloom of the wild bean.

THREE OF US

_July 14_.--My two kingfishers still haunt the pond. In the bright sun
and breeze and perfect temperature of to-day, noon, I am sitting here
by one of the gurgling brooks, dipping a French water-pen in the
limpid crystal, and using it to write these lines, again watching the
feather'd twain, as they fly and sport athwart the water, so close,
almost touching into its surface. Indeed there seem to be three of us.
For nearly an hour I indolently look and join them while they dart
and turn and take their airy gambols, sometimes far up the creek
disappearing for a few moments, and then surely returning again, and
performing most of their flight within sight of me, as if they knew I
appreciated and absorb'd their vitality, spirituality, faithfulness,
and the rapid, vanishing, delicate lines of moving yet quiet
electricity they draw for me across the spread of the grass, the
trees, and the blue sky. While the brook babbles, babbles, and the
shadows of the boughs dapple in the sunshine around me, and the cool
west-by-nor'-west wind faintly soughs in the thick bushes and tree
tops.

Among the objects of beauty and interest now beginning to appear quite
plentifully in this secluded spot, I notice the humming-bird, the
dragon-fly with its wings of slate-color'd guaze, and many varieties
of beautiful and plain butterflies, idly flapping among the plants and
wild posies. The mullein has shot up out of its nest of broad leaves,
to a tall stalk towering sometimes five or six feet high, now studded
with knobs of golden blossoms. The milk-weed, (I see a great gorgeous
creature of gamboge and black lighting on one as I write,) is in
flower, with its delicate red fringe; and there are profuse clusters
of a feathery blossom waving in the wind on taper stems. I see lots of
these and much else in every direction, as I saunter or sit. For
the last half hour a bird has persistently kept up a simple, sweet,
melodious song, from the bushes. (I have a positive conviction that
some of these birds sing, and others fly and flirt about here for my
special benefit.)

DEATH OF WILLIAM CULLEN BRYANT

_New York City_.--Came on from West Philadelphia, June 13, in the 2 P.
M. train to Jersey City, and so across and to my friends, Mr. and Mrs.
J. H. J., and their large house, large family (and large hearts,)
amid which I feel at home, at peace--away up on Fifth avenue, near
Eighty-sixth street, quiet, breezy, overlooking the dense woody
fringe of the park--plenty of space and sky, birds chirping, and air
comparatively fresh and odorless. Two hours before starting, saw the
announcement of William Cullen Bryant's funeral, and felt a strong
desire to attend. I had known Mr. Bryant over thirty years ago, and he
had been markedly kind to me. Off and on, along that time for years as
they pass'd, we met and chatted together. I thought him very sociable
in his way, and a man to become attach'd to. We were both walkers,
and when I work'd in Brooklyn he several times came over, middle of
afternoons, and we took rambles miles long, till dark, out towards
Bedford or Flatbush, in company. On these occasions he gave me clear
accounts of scenes in Europe--the cities, looks, architecture, art,
especially Italy--where he had travel'd a good deal.

_June 14.--The Funeral_.--And so the good, stainless, noble old
citizen and poet lies in the closed coffin there--and this is his
funeral. A solemn, impressive, simple scene, to spirit and senses. The
remarkable gathering of gray heads, celebrities--the finely render'd
anthem, and other music--the church, dim even now at approaching noon,
in its light from the mellow-stain'd windows-the pronounc'd eulogy on
the bard who loved Nature so fondly, and sung so well her shows and
seasons--ending with these appropriate well-known lines:

I gazed upon the glorious sky,
And the green mountains round,
And thought that when I came to lie
At rest within the ground,
'Twere pleasant that in flowery June,
When brooks send up a joyous tune,
And groves a cheerful sound,
The sexton's hand, my grave to make,
The rich green mountain turf should break.

JAUNT UP THE HUDSON

_June 2Oth_.--On the "Mary Powell," enjoy'd everything beyond
precedent. The delicious tender summer day, just warm enough--the
constantly changing but ever beautiful panorama on both sides of the
river--(went up near a hundred miles)--the high straight walls of
the stony Palisades--beautiful Yonkers, and beautiful Irvington--the
never-ending hills, mostly in rounded lines, swathed with
verdure,--the distant turns, like great shoulders in blue veils--the
frequent gray and brown of the tall-rising rocks--the river itself,
now narrowing, now expanding--the white sails of the many sloops,
yachts, &c., some near, some in the distance--the rapid succession of
handsome villages and cities, (our boat is a swift traveler, and
makes few stops)--the Race--picturesque West Point, and indeed all
along--the costly and often turreted mansions forever showing in some
cheery light color, through the woods--make up the scene.

HAPPINESS AND RASPBERRIES

_June 21_.--Here I am, on the west bank of the Hudson, 80 miles
north of New York, near Esopus, at the handsome, roomy,
honeysuckle-and-rose-enbower'd cottage of John Burroughs. The place,
the perfect June days and nights, (leaning toward crisp and cool,)
the hospitality of J. and Mrs. B., the air, the fruit, (especially my
favorite dish, currants and raspberries, mixed, sugar'd, fresh and
ripe from the bushes--I pick 'em myself)--the room I occupy at night,
the perfect bed, the window giving an ample view of the Hudson and the
opposite shores, so wonderful toward sunset, and the rolling music
of the RR. trains, far over there--the peaceful rest--the early
Venus-heralded dawn--the noiseless splash of sunrise, the light and
warmth indescribably glorious, in which, (soon as the sun is well up,)
I have a capital rubbing and rasping with the flesh-brush--with
an extra scour on the back by Al. J., who is here with us--all
inspiriting my invalid frame with new life, for the day. Then, after
some whiffs of morning air, the delicious coffee of Mrs. B., with the
cream, strawberries, and many substantials, for breakfast.

A SPECIMEN TRAMP FAMILY

_June 22_.--This afternoon we went out (J. B., Al. and I) on quite a
drive around the country. The scenery, the perpetual stone fences,
(some venerable old fellows, dark-spotted with lichens)--the many
fine locust-trees--the runs of brawling water, often over descents of
rock--these, and lots else. It is lucky the roads are first-rate here,
(as they are,) for it is up or down hill everywhere, and sometimes
steep enough. B. has a tip-top horse, strong, young, and both gentle
and fast. There is a great deal of waste land and hills on the river
edge of Ulster county, with a wonderful luxuriance of wild flowers
and bushes--and it seems to me I never saw more vitality of
trees--eloquent hemlocks, plenty of locusts and fine maples, and
the balm of Gilead, giving out aroma. In the fields and along the
road-sides unusual crops of the tall-stemm'd wild daisy, white as milk
and yellow as gold.

We pass'd quite a number of tramps, singly or in couples--one squad, a
family in a rickety one-horse wagon, with some baskets evidently their
work and trade--the man seated on a low board, in front, driving--the
gauntish woman by his side, with a baby well bundled in her arms, its
little red feet and lower legs sticking out right towards us as we
pass'd--and in the wagon behind, we saw two (or three) crouching
little children. It was a queer, taking, rather sad picture. If I had
been alone and on foot, I should have stopp'd and held confab. But on
our return nearly two hours afterward, we found them a ways further
along the same road, in a lonesome open spot, haul'd aside, unhitch'd,
and evidently going to camp for the night. The freed horse was not far
off, quietly cropping the grass. The man was busy at the wagon, the
boy had gather'd some dry wood, and was making a fire--and as we went
a little further we met the woman afoot. I could not see her face, in
its great sun-bonnet, but somehow her figure and gait told misery,
terror, destitution. She had the rag-bundled, half-starv'd infant
still in her arms, and in her hands held two or three baskets, which
she had evidently taken to the next house for sale. A little barefoot
five-year old girl-child, with fine eyes, trotted behind her,
clutching her gown. We stopp'd, asking about the baskets, which we
bought. As we paid the money, she kept her face hidden in the recesses
of her bonnet. Then as we started, and stopp'd again, Al., (whose
sympathies were evidently arous'd,) went back to the camping group to
get another basket. He caught a look of her face, and talk'd with her
a little. Eyes, voice and manner were those of a corpse, animated by
electricity. She was quite young--the man she was traveling with,
middle-aged. Poor woman--what story was it, out of her fortunes, to
account for that inexpressibly scared way, those glassy eyes, and that
hollow voice?

MANHATTAN FROM THE BAY

_June 25_.--Returned to New York last night. Out to-day on the waters
for a sail in the wide bay, southeast of Staten island--a rough,
tossing ride, and a free sight--the long stretch of Sandy Hook, the
highlands of Navesink, and the many vessels outward and inward bound.
We came up through the midst of all, in the full sun. I especially
enjoy'd the last hour or two. A moderate sea-breeze had set in; yet
over the city, and the waters adjacent, was a thin haze, concealing
nothing, only adding to the beauty. From my point of view, as I write
amid the soft breeze, with a sea-temperature, surely nothing on earth
of its kind can go beyond this show. To the left the North river
with its far vista--nearer, three or four war-ships, anchor'd
peacefully--the Jersey side, the banks of Weehawken, the Palisades,
and the gradually receding blue, lost in the distance--to the right
the East river--the mast-hemm'd shores--the grand obelisk-like towers
of the bridge, one on either side, in haze, yet plainly defin'd, giant
brothers twain, throwing free graceful interlinking loops high across
the tumbled tumultuous current below--(the tide is just changing to
its ebb)--the broad water-spread everywhere crowded--no, not crowded,
but thick as stars in the sky--with all sorts and sizes of sail and
steam vessels, plying ferry-boats, arriving and departing coasters,
great ocean Dons, iron-black, modern, magnificent in size and power,
fill'd with their incalculable value of human life and precious
merchandise--with here and there, above all, those daring, careening
things of grace and wonder, those white and shaded swift-darting
fish-birds, (I wonder if shore or sea elsewhere can outvie them,) ever
with their slanting spars, and fierce, pure, hawk-like beauty and
motion--first-class New York sloop or schooner yachts, sailing, this
fine day, the free sea in a good wind. And rising out of the midst,
tall-topt, ship-hemm'd, modern, American, yet strangely oriental,
V-shaped Manhattan, with its compact mass, its spires, its
cloud-touching edifices group'd at the centre--the green of the trees,
and all the white, brown and gray of the architecture well blended,
as I see it, under a miracle of limpid sky, delicious light of heaven
above, and June haze on the surface below.

HUMAN AND HEROIC NEW YORK

The general subjective view of New York and Brooklyn--(will not the
time hasten when the two shall be municipally united in one, and named
Manhattan?)--what I may call the human interior and exterior of these
great seething oceanic populations, as I get it in this visit, is to
me best of all. After an absence of many years, (I went away at the
outbreak of the secession war, and have never been back to stay
since,) again I resume with curiosity the crowds, the streets, I knew
so well, Broadway, the ferries, the west side of the city, democratic
Bowery--human appearances and manners as seen in all these, and along
the wharves, and in the perpetual travel of the horse-cars, or the
crowded excursion steamers, or in Wall and Nassau streets by day--in
the places of amusement at night--bubbling and whirling and moving
like its own environment of waters--endless humanity in all
phases--Brooklyn also--taken in for the last three weeks. No need to
specify minutely--enough to say that (making all allowances for the
shadows and side-streaks of a million-headed-city) the brief total of
the impressions, the human qualities, of these vast cities, is to me
comforting, even heroic, beyond statement. Alertness, generally fine
physique, clear eyes that look straight at you, a singular combination
of reticence and self-possession, with good nature and friendliness--a
prevailing range of according manners, taste and intellect, surely
beyond any elsewhere upon earth--and a palpable outcropping of that
personal comradeship I look forward to as the subtlest, strongest
future hold of this many-item'd Union--are not only constantly visible
here in these mighty channels of men, but they form the rule and
average. To-day, I should say--defiant of cynics and pessimists, and
with a full knowledge of all their exceptions--an appreciative and
perceptive study of the current humanity of New York gives the
directest proof yet of successful Democracy, and of the solution
of that paradox, the eligibility of the free and fully developed
individual with the paramount aggregate. In old age, lame and sick,
pondering for years on many a doubt and danger for this republic of
ours--fully aware of all that can be said on the other side--I find
in this visit to New York, and the daily contact and rapport with its
myriad people, on the scale of the oceans and tides, the best, most
effective medicine my soul has yet partaken--the grandest physical
habitat and surroundings of land and water the globe affords--namely,
Manhattan island and Brooklyn, which the future shall join in one city
--city of superb democracy, amid superb surroundings.