A Rambler's lease

by Bradford Torrey

To my thinking there is no call upon a man's purse which should be responded to with greater alacrity than this of the tax-gatherer. In what cause ought we to spend freely, if not in that of home and country? I have heard, indeed, of some who do not agree with me in this feeling. Possibly tax-rates are now and then exorbitant. Possibly, too, my own view of the subject might be different were my quota of the public levy more considerable. This year, for instance, I am called upon for seventy-three cents; if the demand were for as many dollars, who knows whether I might not welcome it with less enthusiasm? On such a point it would be unbecoming for me to speak. Enough that even with my fraction of a dollar I am able to rejoice that I have a share in all the town's multifarious

outlay. If an additional fire-engine is bought, or a new school-house built, or the public library replenished, it is done in part out of my pocket.

Here, however, let me make a single exception. I seldom go home (such language still escapes me involuntarily) without finding that one or another of the old roads has been newly repaired. I hope that no mill of my annual seventy or eighty cents goes into work of that sort. The roads—such as I have in mind—are out of the way and little traveled, and, in my opinion, were better left to take care of themselves. There is no artist but will testify that a crooked road is more picturesque than a straight one; while a natural border of alder bushes, grape-vines, Roxbury wax-work, Virginia creeper, wild cherry, and such like is an inexpensive decoration of the very best sort, such as the Village Improvement Society ought never to allow any highway surveyor to lay his hands on, unless in some downright exigency. What a short-sighted policy it is that provides for the comfort of the feet, but makes no account of those more intellectual and

spiritual pleasures which enter through the eye! It may be answered, I know, that in matters of general concern it is necessary to consult the greatest good of the greatest number; and that, while all the inhabitants of the town are supplied with feet, comparatively few of them have eyes. There is force in this, it must be admitted. Possibly the highway surveyor (the highwayman, I was near to writing) is not so altogether wrong in his "improvements." At all events, it is not worth while for me to make the question one of conscience, and go to jail rather than pay my taxes, as Thoreau did. Let it suffice to enter my protest. Whatever others may desire, for myself, as often as I revisit W——, I wish to be able to repeat with unction the words of W——'s only poet,[5:1]—

"How dear to my heart are the scenes of my childhood!"

And how am I to do that, if the "scenes" have been modernized past recognition?

My own landed possessions are happily remote from roads. Not till long after my day will the "tide of progress" bring them "into the market," as the real-estate brokers are fond of saying. I have never yet been troubled with the importunities of would-be purchasers. Indeed, it is a principal recommendation of woodland property that one's sense of proprietorship is so little liable to be disturbed. I often reflect how altered the case would be were my fraction of an acre in some peculiarly desirable location near the centre of the village. Then I could hardly avoid knowing that the neighbors were given to speculating among themselves about my probable selling price; once in a while I should be confronted with a downright offer; and what assurance could I feel that somebody would not finally tempt me beyond my strength, and actually buy me out? As it is, my land is mine; and, unless extreme poverty overtakes me, mine it is reasonably certain to remain, till death shall separate us.

Whatever contributes to render life interesting and enjoyable goes so far toward

making difficult its final inevitable surrender; and it must be confessed that the thought of my wood-lot increases my otherwise natural regret at being already so well along on my journey. In a sense I feel my own existence to be bound up with that of my pine-trees; or, to speak more exactly, that their existence is bound up with mine. For it is a sort of unwritten but inexorable law in W——, as in fact it appears to be throughout New England, that no pine must ever be allowed to reach more than half its normal growth; so that my trees are certain to fall under the axe as soon as their present owner is out of the way. I am not much given to superstition. There are no longer any dryads, it is to be presumed; and if there were, it is not clear that they would be likely to take up with pines; but for all that, I cherish an almost affectionate regard for any trees with which I have become familiar. I have mourned the untimely fate of many; and now, seeing that I have been entrusted with the guardianship of these few, I hold myself under a kind of sacred obligation to live as long as possible, for their sakes.

It is now a little less than a fortnight since I paid them a visit. The path runs through the wood for perhaps half a mile; and, as I sauntered along, I heard every few rods the thump of falling acorns, though there was barely wind enough to sway the tree-tops. "Mother Earth has begun her harvesting in good earnest," I thought. The present is what the squirrels call a good year. They will laugh and grow fat. Their oak orchards have seldom done better, the chestnut oaks in particular, the handsome, rosy-tipped acorns of which are noticeably abundant.