Skunk River is a broad, still stream, with hilly banks heavily wooded with willow, oak, maple, sycamore and bass-wood. Here we find the earliest wild flowers in spring: blue and purple hepaticas blossom among the withered leaves on the ground while the branches above are still bare, and a little later crowds of violets and spring-beauties brighten the tender grass; clusters of diacentra—or "Dutchman's breeches," as the children call them—nod from the shelter of decaying stumps to small yellow lilies with spotted leaves and tufts of fresh green ferns.
The place is equally a favorite bird-haunt. The prairie-chicken, the best-known game-bird of the State, chooses rather the open prairie, but wild-ducks settle and feed here in their migratory journeys, attracting the sportsman by their presence; the fish-hawk makes his nest in the trees on the bank; the small blue heron wades pensively along the margin; and the common wood-birds, such as blackbirds, bluebirds, jays, sparrows and woodpeckers, chatter or warble or scold among the branches. Sometimes the redbird flashes like a living flame through the green tree-tops, or the brilliant orange-and-black plumage of the Baltimore oriole contrasts with the lilac-gray bark of an old tree-trunk.
Besides the small wild flowers there are many shrubs and trees that bloom in spring. The haw tree and wild plum put forth masses of small creamy-white flowers, the redbud tree blooms along the water-courses, the dogwood in the woods and the wild crab-apple upon the open hillside. The crab trees often form dense thickets an acre or two in extent, and when all their branches are thickly set with coral buds or deep-pink blossoms they form a picture upon which the eye delights to rest. Spring redeems even the flat prairie from the blank monotony which wearies the eye in winter. There are few places in this vicinity where the virgin sod has not been broken, consequently few spots where the original, much-praised prairie-flowers grow; but a tender green clothes all the plain, hundreds of meadow-larks sing in the grass, the tints and colors of the sky are lovely beyond words, and the balmy winds breathe airs of Paradise.
Even the town, whose ugliness has offended artistic taste and one's love of neatness all winter, clothes itself in foliage and hides its ungraceful outlines in bowery verdure. Lilacs scent the air, roses crowd through the broken fences, the milky floss of the cottonwood trees is strewed upon the sidewalks or floats like thistledown upon the air. To one sensitive to physical surroundings the change is like that from a sullen face to a smiling one, from a forbidding aspect to a cheerful one. The constant bracing of one's self against the influence of one's surroundings is relaxed: a feeling of relief and contentment comes instead. Our thirst for picturesque beauty may not be satisfied, but we accept with thankful hearts the quiet loveliness of spring. In this, as in deeper experiences, we learn that
At best we gain not happiness,
But peace, friends—peace in the strife.
Louise Coffin Jones.
A FORGOTTEN AMERICAN WORTHY
The pleasant agricultural village of Reading, in Fairfield county, Western Connecticut, presents much that is charming and picturesque in scenery, and is withal replete with historic incidents; but its chief claim to interest rests on the fact that it was the birthplace of Joel Barlow, who has decided claims to the distinction of being the father of American letters. Nearly seventy years have passed since the poet's tragic death, and the story of his life is still untold, while his memory has nearly faded from the minds of the living; nor would it be easy, at this late day, to collect sufficient material for an extended biography if such were demanded. Some pleasant traditions still linger in the sleepy atmosphere of his native village; a few of his letters and papers still remain in his family; contemporary newspapers had much to say both for and against him; the reviewers of his day noticed his poems, sometimes with approbation, sometimes with bitterness. There are fragmentary sketches of him in encyclopædias and biographical dictionaries, and several pigeonholes in the State Department are filled with musty documents written by him when abroad in his country's diplomatic service. From these sources alone is the scholar of our times to glean his knowledge of one who in his day filled as large a space in the public eye as almost any of his contemporaries, and whose talents, virtues and public services entitled him to as lasting a fame as theirs.
Not from any of these sources, but from the Barlow family register in the ancient records of Fairfield, we learn that the poet was born on March 24, 1754, and not in 1755, as is almost universally stated by the encyclopædists. His father was Samuel Barlow, a wealthy farmer of the village—his mother, Elizabeth Hull, a connection of the general and commodore of the same name who figured so prominently in the war of 1812. There is little in the early career of the poet of interest to the modern reader. He is first presented to us in the village traditions as a chubby, rosy-faced boy, intent on mastering the Greek and Latin tasks dealt out to him by Parson Bartlett, the Congregational minister of the village, who, like many of the New England clergy of that day, added the duties of schoolmaster to those of the clergyman. In a year or two he was placed at Moor's school for boys in Hanover, New Hampshire, and on completing his preparatory course he entered Dartmouth College in 1774. His father had died the December previous, and, with the view probably of being nearer his mother and family in Reading, he left Dartmouth in his Freshman year and was entered at Yale.