HOW TO FIGHT THE DEVIL
OOK here, boys,” said Sam, “don't you want to go with me up to the Devil's Den this arternoon?”
“Where is the Devil's Den,” said I, with a little awe.
“Wal, it's a longer tramp than I've ever took ye. It's clear up past the pickerel pond, and beyond old Skunk John's pasture-lot. It's a 'mazin' good place for raspberries; shouldn't wonder if we should get two, three quarts there. Great rocks there higher'n yer head; kinder solemn, 'tis.”
This was a delightful and seductive account, and we arranged for a walk that very afternoon.
In almost every New-England village the personality of Satan has been acknowledged by calling by his name some particular rock or cave, or other natural object whose singularity would seem to suggest a more than mortal occupancy. “The Devil's Punchbowl,” “The Devil's Wash-bowl,” “The Devil's Kettle,” “The Devil's Pulpit,” and “The Devil's Den,” have been designations that marked places or objects of some striking natural peculiarity. Often these are found in the midst of the most beautiful and romantic scenery, and the sinister name seems to have no effect in lessening its attractions. To me, the very idea of going to the Devil's Den was full of a pleasing horror. When a boy, I always lived in the shadowy edge of that line which divides spirit land from mortal life, and it was my delight to walk among its half lights and shadows. The old graveyard where, side by side, mouldered the remains of Indian sachems and the ancients of English blood, was my favorite haunt. I loved to sit on the graves while the evening mists arose from them, and to fancy cloudy forms waving and beckoning. To me, this spirit land was my only refuge from the dry details of a hard, prosaic life. The schoolroom—with its hard seats rudely fashioned from slabs of rough wood, with its clumsy desks, hacked and ink-stained, with its unintelligible textbooks and its unsympathetic teacher—was to me a prison out of whose weary windows I watched the pomp and glory of nature,—the free birds singing, the clouds sailing, the trees waving and whispering,—and longed, as earnestly as ever did the Psalmist, to flee far away, and wander in the wilderness.
Hence, no joy of after life—nothing that the world has now to give—can equal that joyous sense of freedom and full possession which came over me on Saturday afternoons, when I started off on a tramp with the world all before me,—the mighty, unexplored world of mysteries and possibilities, bounded only by the horizon. Ignorant alike of all science, neither botanist nor naturalist, I was studying at firsthand all that lore out of which science is made. Every plant and flower had a familiar face to me, and said something to my imagination. I knew where each was to be found, its time of coming and going, and met them year after year as returning friends.