Outings at Odd Times

by Charles C. Abbott

A treasure in other lands, why should it not be in ours? If he who causes two blades of grass to grow where but one grew before is a public benefactor, so he who adds the lotus to our meadows must likewise be so accounted. “A piece of color is as useful as a piece of bread.”

With the blooming lotus within reach, let us come now to a few plain statistics. In the little mill-pond it has been exposed to precisely the same conditions as the native plants, and now flourishes in absolute perfection. Mingled with the fully expanded blossoms may always be seen the buds in every stage of growth, and this from early summer until frost. Happily there is not, as is so often the case, a magnificent but brief display, then nothing but leaves. If not a joy forever, it is at least one of a protracted season. Buds or blossoms, they are alike beautiful. Among many that are pale yet distinctively tinted there often stands out one or more with the loosening petals tipped with deepest crimson. Far more are like gigantic tea-rose buds, that soon open like a tulip, creamy white and rosy at the tips. Often these glorious flowers measure ten inches across when fully open, and are supported by stems extending far beyond the tallest leaves. One such that I measured was more than eight feet high.

When the flower is fully expanded, the huge seed-pod, or torus, is a prominent object. Herodotus likened it aptly to the nest of a wasp. It is of the richest yellow, and surrounded by a delicate fringe of the same color. The seeds are seen imbedded in the flat upper surface, gems in a golden setting so lavish that their own beauty is obscured. After the petals have fallen—they are miniature boats of a beautiful pattern, that, catching the breeze, sail with all the grace of model yachts—this great seed-pod continues to grow, and is a curious funnel-shaped structure, holding the many seeds securely, yet not concealing any. The latter become as large as hazel-nuts, and are quite as palatable. And so, here in New Jersey, one can be a lotus-eater, can float in his canoe and pluck fruit from giant lilies. But be not too free to do so. It is not the fabled lotus, after all, and one’s digestion may be more disturbed than his mind pleasantly affected.

In this isolated pond, seen by but few, and unknown to hundreds living near it, a bit of a far Eastern landscape is reproduced—a forest of graceful lotus, with its strange leaves, matchless blossoms, and wonderful seed-pods; and what has been here effected is being repeated in the mud-hole of my pasture meadow.

Less than a year ago, when spring was well advanced, I placed a root in the mud, and left it to battle with the crowding native growths. Certainly the advantage was all upon one side, but it did not lose heart at being pitted against such heavy odds. Now it overshadows them all. For a time they are permitted to be co-occupants, but not for long. The lusty lotus is even now reaching out to a wide stretch of marshy meadow; and there too, I doubt not, it will flourish as at my neighbor’s. It is a rightful ambition to be able to sit down beneath one’s own vine and fig-tree. Let me add the lotus, for it has come to stay.

For how long have water-lilies been on sale in our streets and at our railway stations, auguring well for the love of aquatic plants? And that strange and scarcely known lily, alas! of almost mephitic odor, the xerophyllum, is hawked about Philadelphia streets in early June, loved for its beauty despite the unfragrance; and so too this famous flower of other lands must soon appear, but not to sink to the level of a mere pretty blossom: it is too suggestive a plant to meet with such a fate. What Margaret Fuller once wrote to Thoreau well bears repeating: “Seek the lotus, and take a draught of rapture.”

An Open Well.

It is none of my business, but I feel a twinge of indignation when, as is frequently the case, I meet with a pump-maker. His long wagon, with its load of wooden tubes and other fixtures of the latest patterns of simple or compound pumps, is a positive eyesore; for, labor-saving as this may all be, it means, nevertheless, the obliteration of the open well, and for the old windlass, or still older sweep, a hideously painted post of wood or iron. He who has drunk, at midday in July, from an old oaken bucket, knows how great a loss one suffers by the change. Not even Hawthorne’s rills from the town pump can quite reconcile one. Perhaps it is a fool’s errand, but I have walked a mile out of my way, scores of times, for no other purpose than the pleasure of hearing the bucket splash in the waters of a deep well and to draw it up, by means of the well-poised sweep, “dripping with coolness.”

It may be fancy, but even modern well-diggers are a different and prosy folk compared with the old masters of the art—for art it was, they held, to locate with the divining-rod just where the never-failing spring was “bubbling” far beneath their feet. Was a well to be dug? Then Ezek Sureshot must do the work; and not until years after did it occur to any one that Ezek never failed to learn the wishes of the women-folk before he took up the forked witch-hazel and quartered the ground. The result was always the same: that mysterious switch never failed to point within an inch of the desired spot. Ezek was never known to disappoint his customers, so not one suspected his duplicity or lacked faith in the divining-rod. Ay! and there are yet hosts of people who still uphold its power to locate not only water, but lost articles. A wheat stubble was recently gone over, crossed and criss-crossed, with a divining-rod, to recover a piece of metal. As the field was divided by the man into square yards, it is not strange the bit of iron was found, but the credit was given to the rod, which pointed earthward at the moment the man’s foot struck the missing object. “In spite of what people say, there’s something very curious about it,” was the remark of one of the “head men” of the village. But this is a digression.

Happily, there are yet a few open wells scattered over the country, and one of these, with its sweep, is within my range. Of itself, perhaps, not a great deal can be said; but not every hole in the ground has such surroundings. How seldom do we find still standing, and in good repair, houses that were built early in the preceding century! Looking west from my study windows, there may be seen a substantial stone mansion, built in 1708. Woe betide the tall man that enters it carelessly in the dark! The ceilings are unaccountably low. Evidently there were few giants in those days, at least among the early Quakers. And, looking east, can be seen yet another house, nearly as old, built of huge oak logs, the ceilings of which likewise threaten the careless six-footer. Surely, if my ancestors were tall, they must have been painfully stoop-shouldered! By the kitchen doors of all the original houses there were open wells; and the sweep appears to have been the first apparatus in use for drawing water. From the doorstep to the well-curb extended a rude pavement of flat stones, and, if all poetry was not smothered in the old-time peoples’ breasts, there was an elm, or drooping birch, casting a delightful shade in summer over all. Later the weeping-willow became the favorite tree. Such was the pretty picture seen upon every farm; compare it with the ugly windmills that now rear their hideous nakedness against the sky.