Wild Northern Scenes; Or, Sporting Adventures with the Rifle and the Rod

by S. H. Hammond

"Spalding," said the Doctor, "How I wish our little boys were out here with us. How they would enjoy themselves among these lakes and rivers. It is a hard lot that the children of our cities have in life. They struggle up to man and womanhood against fearful odds, and the wonder is, that they do not perish in their infancy; that they are not blasted, as the blossoms are, when the cold east wind sweeps over the earth."

"You are right, my friend," replied Spalding. "I should like to have our little boys, and girls too, for that matter, with us for a few days out here on these lakes. It would be a lifetime to them, measuring time by the enjoyment it would afford them. Still their city habits might make them tire of this freedom in a week. You and I enjoy it longer, because it brings back old memories and relieves us from the toils of business and the restraints of conventional life. You are right too in saying that the lot of our city children is a hard one. To live imprisoned between long rows of brick walls, breathing an atmosphere charged with the exhalations of ten thousand cooking stoves, the dust of forges and the smoke of furnaces, machine shops, gas works, filthy streets, and the thousand other manufactories of villainous smells; where the summer air has no freshness, no forest odors, or sweetness gathered from fields of grain, the meadows, or the pastures. To tramp only on stone sidewalks. To know nothing of the pleasant paths beneath the spreading branches of old primeval trees; no soft grass for their little feet to press; never to wander along the streams or the little brooks; to be strangers always to the beautiful things spread out everywhere in the country in the summer time. I always feel sad when I see the pale faces of the little children of the great cities, and marvel how so many of them grow up to be men and women. It is a hard lot to be cooped up in the city, vegitating, as it were, in the shade, where there is no grass for their little feet to press, no fences to climb, or fields to ramble over, or brooks to wade, or running water on which to float chips, and wherein to watch the little chubs and shiners dancing and playing about, or fresh pure air to breathe, or birds to listen to. It is a thousand pities that the cities could not be emptied every summer of their little people into the free and open country, where they could run about, and sport and play, and have free range and plenty of elbow-room. It would make them so much healthier and happier, so much more cheerful; their voices of gladness would ring out so much more joyously in the morning, and their songs be so much more sweet at night."

I remember an anecdote told me of a little child, born in the great metropolis, who had never, until her fifth summer, been outside of the paved streets of New York. Her mother had friends residing in one of the up-river towns, owning a beautiful farm overlooking the Hudson, and in early May she paid them a visit, taking her little daughter with her. Mary, of course, was delighted. Like a bird freed from its cage, she flew about here, there, everywhere, in-doors and out, among the chickens and the pigs, the turkeys and the lambs, enjoying to the full the thousand new things that her eyes rested upon all around her, and her young spirits in wild commotion under the bracing influences of the country air. "Mother! mother!" she exclaimed, as she came dashing into the parlor, her beautiful curls floating wildly over her shoulders, and her bright eyes wide open with wonder; "Mother I mother! come out here, quick! and see this funny tree, all covered over with snow-flakes, and how sweet it smells all around it." It was a plum tree in full blossom. That little child had never seen the beautiful spring blossoms on the fruit trees.

"I have no children of my own," remarked Smith, "and, therefore, may not be regarded as the best authority in regard to the manner of treating, or rearing children; but I have often wondered at the very great mistakes people sometimes make in regard to them. There are parents who mean no wrong, and yet who make no scruple of deceiving them in reply to their simple questionings, forgetting, or regardless of the fact, that a false answer to their innocent inquiries put in good faith, and in the earnest pursuit of truth, may plant an error in their minds, which may take years of experience, and often a painful amount of ridicule to eradicate. I knew a little boy years ago, a thoughtful, philosophic child, who speculated in his simplicity upon what he saw, as great philosophers do, in their wisdom, upon the various phenomena of Nature. His father, had a great barn, above which, as was the fashion long ago, perched upon a staff, a few feet above the ridgepole, was a weather-cock, fashioned out of a piece of board in the shape of a rooster. 'Father,' said the little boy, one day, 'what makes that rooster always point his head one way when the cold wind blows, and the other way when it is warm and pleasant?' 'He always looks towards the place where the wind comes from,' replied the father; 'when he gets too warm, and the sun is too hot for him, he turns his tail to the south, and the north wind is sure to come down, cold and chill, to cool him off.' 'Does he call the cold wind, father, and will it come when he looks, that way?' was the next inquiry. 'Certainly,' replied his father, carelessly. That was a wrong and a foolish answer.

"That little boy, relying in his simple faith upon the wisdom and truthfulness of his father, believed for a long time, that the weathercock on the top of the barn, could bring the cold north, or the warm south wind, by turning upon its perch. He was cured of his error only by being laughed at for his simplicity. Parents should never deceive their children by a careless or a wrong answer to the simple questions put to them by these little searchers after knowledge."

"I remember," said the doctor, "and it is one of the earliest incidents which my recollection has treasured, that I was out one evening in autumn, with a boy older than myself, gathering hazel nuts. The sun had sunk behind the hills, and the shadows of twilight were gathering in the valley. It was a beautiful and calm evening, the solemn stillness of which, was only broken by the 'tza! tza!' of thousands of katydids among the bushes. I asked my companion what it was that made the noise I heard, and he, supposing that I referred to sounds that came up occasionally from the lake, after listening for a moment, answered that it was made by the wild geese. In my simplicity I believed it, and it was not until I caught, the next season, a katydid while it was in the act of singing, that I discovered that the music among the hazel bushes was not made by the wild geese."

"I never respect a man or woman," said Spalding, "whose heart does not warm towards little children, who takes no pleasure nor interest in their society, who has no patience to listen to their simple thoughts expressed in their simple way. 'Mother,' said a little child of four or five years of age, one evening when the summer air was warm, and the skies were bright above, as she sat beside her mother, on a bench beneath the spreading branches of the tall old elms in front of the house; 'mother, what makes the stars come out, only after the dark has come down, and why don't the moon go up into the sky like the sun in the day time?' I listened anxiously for the reply. I knew the kind heart of that mother, how truthful it was, and how earnest and pure in its affection for its gentle and only darling. 'Sit here upon my lap, Mary,' said the mother, 'and I will try and explain it all so that you will understand it.' And she told the little child how God made the sun to rule the day, and the moon and the stars to rule the night; how that the stars were always in the sky, but how the superior brightness of the sun put them out in the day time; how the stars, that twinkled like little rush-lights in the heavens, were great worlds, a thousand times larger than this earth, made and placed away up in the sky, by the same great and good God who made the world we live in. Little Mary was silent and attentive to the simple lecture, until it was finished, and then asked, so simply and confidingly, that I could not help smiling to think that the mind of childhood should be running upon a subject, and seeking a solution of the same question which has puzzled the profoundest philosophers through all time: 'Mother,' said the little one, 'are there people in the moon and in the stars, them great worlds that look to us so like candles in the sky?' 'That question, my child,' said the mother, 'I cannot answer.' 'I believe,' said the child, that there are people in the moon, and in all the stars.' 'Why?' asked her mother. 'Because I don't believe God would make such big and beautiful worlds without making people to live in them.' What more has the profoundest philosopher who ever lived said, to prove that those mighty worlds which are seen in the heavens at night, that are scattered all through the universe of God, rolling forever on their everlasting rounds, are peopled by living, moving, sentient beings?"

CHAPTER XI.

A CONVENTION BROKEN UP IN A BOW—THE CHAIRMAN EJECTED.

We sent forward our boatman with the luggage early in the morning, up Bog River towards Mud Lake, the source of the right branch of that river, lying some thirty miles deeper in the wilderness, counting the sinuosities of the stream, and said to be the highest body of water in all this wild region. We were to spend the day on Tupper's Lake, and follow him the next morning. Our boatman built for our accommodation, a brush shanty in the place of our tents. We rowed about this beautiful sheet of water, exploring its secluded bays and romantic islands, trying experiments with the trout wherever a stream came down from the hills, and trolling for lake trout while crossing the lake. Near the shore, on the west bank, perhaps half a mile from the falls, is one of the coldest, purest and most beautiful springs that I ever met with. It comes up into a little basin some six or eight feet in diameter, by two or three in depth. The bottom is of loose white sand which is all in commotion, by the constant boiling up of the clear cold water. From this basin a little stream goes rippling and laughing to the lake. Towards evening we returned to our shanty with abundance of fish for supper and breakfast, taken, as I said, in simply trying experiments as to where they were to be found in the greatest abundance.