The next morning I was no sooner abroad than this happy impression was renewed and deepened. It was a comfort to the feet to be going neither uphill nor downhill, and it rested the eyes to be looking not at remote peaks and dimly discovered sheets of water, but into green branches so near that the leaves could be seen, and the blue sky through them. How sweetly the ripple of the brook came to my ears as it ran over its stony bed just beyond the velvety, smooth meadow! And the cawing of a dozen or two of crows, who were talking politics among the pines on the hillside, affected me most agreeably. There was something of real neighborliness about it. I would gladly have taken a hand in the discussion, if they would have let me. When a song sparrow started out of the hedge at my elbow it gave me a start of surprise. I had become so unused to such movements! A robin’s sudden cackle I thought almost the sweetest of music; the careless warble of a bluebird was nothing less than a voice from heaven; and a squirrel sputtering defiance from the stone wall set me laughing with pleasure. None of these sounds, nor anything akin to them, was to be heard on the desolate, boulder-covered top of Mount Washington.
Now the trees interlaced their branches over my head. Nothing could be prettier; and the effect was so novel! I stopped short to admire it. And anon, as the road made a little ascent, scarcely noticeable to one fresh from the steepness of a mountain cone, I found myself gazing down upon one of the most engaging scenes in the world; a sequestered valley farm, thrifty-looking, snugly kept, nestled among low hills, with a mountain river winding along the farther side of it, between the meadow and the woodland, now lost to sight, now shining in the sun. I had known the place for years, as I had known the worthy man who owns it; and I had looked at it many times from this very point; but I had never seen it till this morning. A pleasant thing it is when an old picture or an old poem, or both in one, is thus made new. If our eyes could but oftener be anointed!
The softness of the meadow, freshly sprung after the summer mowing, the glistening of the corn leaves, the narrow road,—a brown ribbon laid upon the green carpet,—that runs to the door and stops (for nothing goes by—nothing but the river, the clouds, and the birds), the shade trees clustered lovingly about the house, the whole pastoral scene, I saw it all with the vision of one who had been looking at a vaguely defined, far-away world, over which the eye wandered as the dove wandered over the face of the waters, and now had come suddenly in sight of home.
Yes, distance is a good painter, but nearness is a better one. So I felt for the time being, at all events, falling in with the mood of the hour; for it is well that moods alter, as it is well that the earth goes round the sun and season gives place to season. Man was not made to see one kind of beauty, or to believe in one kind of goodness. The whole world is hid in his heart. All things are his. The small and the great, the near and the far, light and darkness, good and evil, the intimacies of home and the isolations of infinite space, all are parts of the Creator’s work, and equally parts of the creature’s inheritance.
For to-day, then, I praise the valley. I am for having the hills close about me, rather than afar off and far below. I like to see the trees, and the leaves on them, rather than leagues on leagues of barely discernible forest; and a lonely pool of still water at my feet, with alders reflected in it, is more in my eyes than Lake Umbagog itself, hardly better than a blur upon the landscape, fifty miles away. To-morrow I may feel differently, but for to-day let me listen to the breeze in the pine branches and the brook pattering over stones, rather than to the eternal silences of the bare mountain-top and the brooding sky.
IN THE MOUNT LAFAYETTE FOREST
It is one of the cool mornings that descend rather suddenly upon our White Mountain country with the coming of autumn; cool mornings that are liable to be followed by warm days. I was in doubt how to dress as I set out, and for the first mile or two almost regretted that I had not taken an extra garment. Then all at once the sun broke through the clouds, and even the one coat became superfluous and was thrown over my arm. This state of things lasted till I had crossed the golf links and entered the woods. At that point the sun withdrew his shining, and now, between the clouds and the shadow and dampness of the forest, I have put on my coat again and buttoned it up; and what counts for more, I am driven to walk less slowly than one would always prefer to do in such a place.
A fresh breeze stirs the tree-tops, so that I am not without music, let the birds be as silent as they will. Nearly or quite the only voice I have so far heard was that of an unseen Maryland yellow-throat, some distance back, who sprang into the air and delivered himself of a song with variations, all in his most rapturous June manner. Why the fellow should have been in anything like an ecstasy at that precise moment is quite beyond my guessing. Possibly it would be equally beyond his, if he were to stop to think about it. Some sudden stirring of memory, perhaps. Natural beings seldom know just why they are happy. I recall the fact, unthought of till now, that I have not heard a yellow-throat sing before for several weeks, though I have seen the birds often. They are among the late stayers, and at this season have a more or less lonesome look, being commonly found not as members of a flock or family, after the manner of autumnal warblers in general, but here and there one, dodging about in a roadside thicket, or peeping out curiously at a casual passer-by.
Just as I am remarking upon the unusual silence my ear catches in the far distance the song of a white-throated sparrow. So very far off it is that the sound barely reaches me. Indeed, I do not so much hear it as become vaguely conscious that I should hear it if the bird were ever so little nearer. Yet I am sure he sang—as sure as if I had seen him. Probably experienced readers will divine what I mean, although I seem unable to express it.
The road is bordered with the dead tops of trees, thrown there in heaps by the road-makers. They form an unsightly hedge, which birds of various kinds resort to for cover. At this minute two winter wrens, pert-looking, bob-tailed things, scold at me out of it. My passing is a trespass, they consider, and they tell me so with emphasis. For the sake of stirring them up to protest even more vigorously (such an eloquent gesticulatory manner as they have), I stand still and squeak to them. Few birds can be quiet under such insults; and the winter wren is not one of them. There is nothing phlegmatic about his disposition. He is like some beings of a higher class: it takes very little to set him in a flutter. So I squeak and squeak, and the pair vociferate tut, tut, till I have had enough and go on my way laughing. Touchy people were made for teasing.