Possibly the old book catalogues are sent as a lesson in self-control, and to teach one to endure disappointment as patiently as human nature will allow.
Not the least interesting volume of my library is my herbarium. Still every pressed flower retains much of its original color, reviving the scene of many a pleasant ramble. Commencing with the first cluster of spring beauty and white shad-blow spray, and ending with the last purple aster and blue gentian of autumn, it is thus a sentient floral calendar—a fragrant anthology of the seasons. It is one of my pleasantest volumes for winter reading, every flower of which is a chapter written by Nature herself. This involucre of white dogwood, for instance, becomes a vernal landscape riotous with bloom, while these feathery mespilus blossoms bring up the April hillsides sprinkled with hepaticas and violets. This bunch of trilliums recalls a distant beechwood in early May carpeted with the snowy triangular flowers and misty with the beech’s unfurling leaves.
And this pink lady’s-slipper!
Once more I trace the sinuous curves of the Wiscoy and am lulled by the drowsy murmur of the stream. How cool the water swirls beneath the overarching hemlocks, and how it is churned into foam in the deep, dark pool at the tail of the rapid, where I know the big trout I hooked and lost the previous year is waiting for another taste of my “cochybondu”! It is just at the base of the steep shaded hillside where the sun never penetrates. If my trout chooses to display his rubies and chrysoberyls he must thread his way up the current or float down to the meadow far below. When I have hooked and basketed him, another big fellow will occupy his place in the same deep, dark pool.
It is the choice spot of the stream within a reach of half a mile, and invariably holds the strongest fish and most accomplished taker of ephemeræ. His pannier must needs be large, so many flies and midges and worms and bugs and beetles drift past his lair, and are sucked in by the eddy into his awaiting maw. The sudden dive of a water-rat proclaims a rival angler, who may also have his eye on my trout, and bring him to bag, perchance, if I miss him to-day.
An aroma of mint, mingled with the fragrance of wild flowers and ferns, follows me along the banks; and there, in the swamp where the partridge drums, my pink lady’s-slipper gleams. The twisting roots of the hemlock plunge deep into the pool; and with a slap of his red tail the big trout rises just beyond them in the foam-flecks of the eddy, precisely where he rose the previous year. How the water growls round the bank it has mined, and chafes and scolds at the obtruding prongs! And how picturesquely, too, the old hemlock leans over the stream, shading the trout for the last time! Another athlete and trained fly-catcher must lead the somersault acts hereafter; for a day at least the small fry may rest secure. But, alas! with a sudden rush, my trout has wound the leader fast around the hemlock’s roots, as he has wound so many leaders before; and, with a farewell flash of his encarmined sides, I seem to hear his parting message: “Multæ lapsæ inter truttam et bascaudem sunt!” The pressed flower remains to remind me of the struggle and my June holiday.
Looking now at the pink lady’s-slipper from the Wiscoy woods, I am glad, after all, I did not take my trout, however great a triumph his capture might have afforded me at the time. For, if the water-rat has not caught him meanwhile—and the maxim the trout flung at me virtually precludes this possibility—he is undoubtedly still swimming in his favorite pool. Granting I had caught him and that a fish of equal size had taken his place, it would yet be another trout, not my trout which I hooked and lost. The stream flows more musically and more limpid to me knowing he is still stemming the current, and that he regained his freedom.
This spike of cardinal flowers carries me a hundred miles away; and once more am I drifting down the Oswego River on a hazy autumnal afternoon, indifferent whether the great green bass rise or not, so golden is the September day. It is enough to be idling beneath the roar of the rapid, to mark the different hues of the water, the play of the slanting sunbeams, the undulations of the wooded shores. Surely the landscape needs no more. Ah, yes! just that bit of color skirting a still bayou, the flame of cardinal flowers and their reflected images below. What an illustrated volume! the imperial folio of the seasons! And what a succession of illuminated pages it discloses from the rubric and the preface until the last leaf is turned! every subject indexed and paged by the grand author, Nature; its types as fresh as if they had only run through one, instead of thousands of editions.
In dreams do I behold in all the great libraries the procession of the books that nightly emerge from the seclusion of their shelves—countless flowers from the Muse’s hill and garlands from the meadows of the classics. At a signal from the most antiquated tome, I see a sudden movement among their ranks, and hear a rustling of innumerable leaves, as the souls of the immortals are quickened into life, and the spirits of old authors assemble for converse. Platoons of majestic folios, some in calf, some in sheep, and some in stamped pigskin appear, columns of venerable and vellumed quartos, tiers of tall octavos, troops of lovely Elzevirs, Aldines, and sedate black-letter editions file by with measured tread. Volumes black with age move with step as elastic as those clothed in more modern garb. Indeed, old and young seem to be indiscriminately mingled, without regard to costume or richness of attire. Only, I observe that the procession is composed solely of the dead.
I notice, moreover, that it is only the books of real merit or great renown that are called to take part in the pageant; and that the participants vary with each succeeding night, appearing entirely without regard to chronological order, though all the beautiful world of belles-lettres, philosophy, and science that has charmed and instructed mankind throughout the ages, forms the processional. Thus a copy of Plato and a first folio of Shakespeare pass by, side by side, followed by The Canterbury Tales and the Faerie Queen, hand in hand. Or is it Goethe’s Faust and Plutarch’s Lives? It is sometimes difficult to catch the titles, so numerous are the volumes that take part. As the eye becomes accustomed to the dimness, the titles are more easily traced, and I distinctly recognize Horace and Virgil, Milton and Keats, Herrick and Hood, Montaigne and Pascal, Lamb, Thackeray, Cervantes, Molière, Theocritus, Dante, Schiller, Balzac, Dumas the Elder, Pope, Burns, Goldsmith, Addison, Hawthorne, Bulwer, Dickens, Irving—until the eye is dazed at the multitudinous names. Night after night the procession forms and the participants vary—there are so many volumes to take part, so many that may not be overlooked. Richard Jefferies, his beautiful thoughts scarcely dry on the page, I note has just been called forth from the shelves, and Thoreau has already marched with Walton and Gilbert White.