THE CHIMNEY CORNER.
Gems.
Gems, in fact, are a species of mineral flowers; they are the blossoms of the dark, hard mine; and what they want in perfume, they make up in durability.
THE MAYFLOWER.
Meditations of the oak.
I sometimes think that leaves are the thoughts of trees, and that if we only knew it, we should find their life’s experience recorded in them. Our oak—what a crop of meditations and remembrances must he have thrown forth, leafing out century after century! Awhile he spake and thought only of red deer and Indians; of the trillium that opened its white triangle in his shade; of the scented arbutus, fair as the pink ocean shell, weaving her fragrant mats in the moss at his feet; of feathery ferns, casting their silent shadows on the checkerberry leaves, and all those sweet, wild, nameless, half-mossy things that live in the gloom of forests, and are only desecrated when brought to scientific light, laid out, and stretched on a botanic bier. Sweet old forest days! when blue jay, and yellow-hammer, and bobolink made his leaves merry, and summer was a long opera of such music as Mozart dimly dreamed. But then came human kind bustling beneath; wondering, fussing, exploring, measuring, treading down flowers, cutting down trees, scaring bobolinks, and Andover, as men say, began to be settled.
The brook in winter.
Let us stop the old chaise and get out a minute to look at this brook,—one of our last summer’s pets. What is he doing this winter? Let us at least say “How do you do?” to him. Ah, here he is! and he and Jack Frost together have been turning the little gap in the old stone wall, through which he leaped down to the road, into a little grotto of Antiparos. Some old rough rails and boards that dropped over it are sheathed in plates of transparent silver. The trunks of the black alders are mailed with crystal; and the witch-hazel and yellow osiers fringing its sedgy borders are likewise shining through their glossy covering. Around every stem that rises from the water is a glittering ring of ice. The tags of the alder and the red berries of last summer’s wild roses glitter now like a lady’s pendant. As for the brook, he is wide-awake and joyful; and where the roof of sheet ice breaks away, you can see his yellow-brown waters rattling and gurgling among the stones as briskly as they did last July. Down he springs! over the glossy-coated stone wall, throwing new sparkles into the fairy grotto around him; and widening daily from melting snows, and such other godsends, he goes chattering off under yonder mossy stone bridge, and we lose sight of him. It might be fancy, but it seemed that our watery friend tipped us a cheery wink as he passed, saying, “Fine weather, sir and madam; nice times these; and in April you’ll find us all right; the flowers are making up their finery for the next season; there’s to be a splendid display in a month or two.”