They have had other troubles. A son who lived at home and shared the farm, married a shallow, heartless girl, who left him, and so broke his heart and his whole hold on life that he could not bear the place without her, and has led a wandering, broken sort of existence since. Their other boy, though, is a good son indeed. He is part owner in a small cooperage and he drives over from week to week, puts in solid help on the farm, and brings his wife and babies to make cheerful Sundays for the old people.
Jacob and his wife love animals. The last time I was over there the cosset lamb came into the kitchen to ask for milk. Mrs. Damren was caressing two new red calves as if they were kittens, while Flora, Jacob’s foxhound, and her two velvet-skinned, soft-eyed puppies played round them.
We drive over to the pond from time to time for swamp treasures of different kinds. Jacob has a tumble-down, lichen-covered boathouse where water-pewees and white-bellied swallows nest, in which he keeps a few of the worst boats in the world (with ash oars shaped like flattened poles and heavy as lead), and lets them out to people who come for pickerel or water-lilies. The whole western end of the pond is a laughing expanse of water-lilies and yellow Beaver Lilies, with the bright yellow butterfly-shaped blossoms of bladderwort in among them. Beyond these you come to a mixture of floating islands, tussocks, intricate channels of black water, and stretches of shaking cotton grass, which in June and July hide a host of slim-stemmed rose-colored swamp orchids, Arethusa, calopogon, and pogonia. You pole and shove your boat between the floating islands, submerging orchids and cotton-grasses alike in the black peat water, and beyond them reach the parti-colored velvet of the peat bog itself.
Balsam fir grows here, sweet rush and sweet gale, and quantities of Labrador Tea, with shining dark leaves (of which Thoreau made tea when camping on Chesuncook) and masses of delicate-stamened white flowers, which give out a warm resinous sweetness. All around there is the general bog fragrance of sphagnum and water-lilies, and the woodsy perfume of the rose-colored orchids.
Farther in shore, among the balsam firs, the growth dwindles to a general velvety richness of gem-like green and crimson mosses, blueberries, and cranberries and huckleberries, the large handsome maroon-crimson flowers of the Pitcher-Plant, and the little bright-yellow-flowered Sundew, getting its nourishment from the insects caught in its sticky crimson filaments.
The pond is alive all summer with butterflies and birds. We spent a day there in June, and tried to follow a pair of Carolina rails, which ran and hid among the cotton-grasses, and ran again, and suddenly vanished as completely as if they had melted in air. We put up a bittern, but did not find her nest. Scores of red-wing black-birds had nested in the clustered bushes of the floating islands. We laid our oars down on the shaking cotton grass as a sort of bridge and worked our way from island to island, while a perfect cloud of birds chuckled and wheeled round us, uttering their guttural warning cries and their fresh “Hock-a-lees!” We looked into three red-wings’ nests, and one king-bird’s, all with eggs. The red-wing’s eggs were pale blue, scratched and blotched with black as if by a child playing with ink and pen, while the king-bird’s were a beautiful cream-color, marked in a circle round the large end with rich brown blotches.
As we went on to gather Pitcher-Plants and Sundew, we saw an eagle fishing over the lonely little lake; saw, too, a thing I have never seen before or since, for he caught a fish so big it pulled him under. He vanished out of sight completely, came up with a great flap, and, making heavy work of it, and flying so low he almost touched the water, he made off and gained the woods with his prize.
Besides our orchids and pitcher-plants (we washed the pitchers clear of insects, and drank from them), we had come for stickle-backs, which are found in the clear shallows by one of the small beaches. We had a net, and glass jars. They are such quick darting creatures that it is hard to get them. They are the liveliest of all pets for an aquarium, and prosper very fairly in captivity.
Early in the morning, when we first reached the pond, the bobolinks were rising and singing all over the lower water meadows, and the mists were turning to silver in the early sunlight. When we came up from the bog in the late afternoon the bobolinks were silent, but a mother sand-peep wheeled and cried about the field, afraid that we would find her chickens.
We cooled our hands and faces in the clear water and washed off the black peat mold, and went up to the farm. Mrs. Damren had fresh gingerbread for us, and creamy milk, and we sat round a table with a cheerful red cloth. The room was very homelike, with a good deal of dark wood, and bright pots and pans. A shot-gun and a rifle hung over the mantel, the guns poor Jacob will never use again. His hunting dog sat close to his chair.