"This mighty oak—
By whose immovable stem I stand, and seem
Almost annihilated—not a prince
In all that proud Old World beyond the deep
E'er wore his crown as loftily as he
Wears the green coronal of leaves with which
Thy hand has graced him."
The scenery about Cummington and Hawley tempted us to a frequent use of our sketching-materials. Mr. Stillman, too, found several birds new to him, and took some beautiful landscape photographs. Miss Sartoris gave him new ideas about choosing views where mountain and cloud, trees and reflections, composed well, and his photographs became much more artistic. He began to talk about the importance of placing his darkest dark here, and his highest light there, of balancing a steeple in this part of his picture by a human interest in the foreground, of massing his shadows, of angular composition, of tone and harmony, and the rest of the cant of the studio. Nor was it all cant; Miss Sartoris had taught him to see more in nature than he had ever seen before, and while his ambition had hitherto been to secure sharp photographs of instantaneous effects—mere feats of mechanical skill—his aim was now to produce pictures satisfying to highly cultivated tastes. He acknowledged that all this was due to Miss Sartoris, who had opened a new world to him, though it seemed to me that he really owed quite as much to Miss Prillwitz, but for whose influence he would never have taken up photography. I was a little jealous for our princess, and felt that, though Miss Sartoris was young and fair, and Miss Prillwitz old and wrinkled, this was no reason why honor should not be rendered where honor was due.
There was a pond with a bit of swamp land on uncle's farm, which he considered the blot on the place, but which Miss Sartoris declared was a real treasure-trove for a picture. One end was covered with lily-pads, and great waxy pond-lilies were opening their alabaster lamps here and there on the surface, while the yellow cow-lilies dotted the other end with their butter-pats. Cat-tails and rushes grew in the shallower portions, and here was to be found the rare moccasin-flower, a pink and white orchid of exquisite shape. Miss Sartoris painted a beautiful picture here. She said it reminded her of the pond which Ruskin describes with an artist's insight and enthusiasm.
"A great painter sees beneath and behind the brown surface what will take him a day's work to follow; and he follows it, cost what it will. He sees it is not the dull, dirty, blank thing which he supposes it to be; it has a heart as well as ourselves, and in the bottom of that there are the boughs of the tall trees and their quivering leaves, and all the hazy passages of sunshine, the blades of the shaking grass, with all manner of hues of variable, pleasant light out of the sky; and the bottom seen in the clear little bits at the edge, and the stones of it, and all the sky. For the ugly gutter that stagnates over the drain-bars in the heart of the foul city is not altogether base. It is at your will that you see in that despised stream either the refuse of the street or the image of the sky; so it is with many other things which we unkindly despise."
We all regretted when our short visit at The Maples came to an end, but Miss Prillwitz felt that she must be hastening back to the Home, and we had already transgressed the bounds which we had set to our outing. We decided to vary our journey by returning through Berkshire. We drove, the first day, to Pittsfield, a flourishing little city, and now for the first time we felt ourselves out of place in the peddler's carts. Nowhere else had we attracted any special attention. It was a common thing for tin-peddlers to take their feminine relatives with them on their jaunts, and as we dressed very plainly, and conducted ourselves with gravity, no one gave us a second look.
At Pittsfield, however, we came in contact once more with "society," and the loungers on the hotel veranda gave us a broadside of astonished looks as we alighted. "It is very disagreeable to be stared at in this way," Winnie remarked to Miss Prillwitz as we entered.
"My tear," replied the good lady, "it takes four eyes to make a stare."[A]
[A] A remark once made by Professor Maria Mitchell to a student of Vassar College who had made a similar complaint.
Winnie colored deeply, for she knew that if she had been less self-conscious she would not have felt the curious and impertinent gaze. We left Pittsfield so early the next morning that none of the hotel loungers were on the piazza to comment on our appearance.
We drove, that day, over the lovely Lenox hills, once covered by stony pastures, dotted here and there by lonely farm-houses, but now a succession of beautiful parks and aristocratic villas and mansions. Mr. Stillman had his camera out, and photographed a number of the handsome residences as we passed, and one of the gay little village-carts driven by a young woman dressed in the height of fashion, and presided over by a footman in livery.