How broadly and slowly the sun sinks behind the forest! The glowing points of his diadem reach to the zenith, and the purple clouds that float around the west, dazzle the eye as they lie in contrast with the soft blue sky. How bland the air is, like that of summer! We can almost drink it.
Well, mother, I am glad to be at home again at the tea-table. Here, Peter, don’t look sad now because you are not at your own home. We will go up in the summer and view Lake Erie in its beauty and vastness, and stroll along the beach, beneath the overhanging cedars and larches, and the broad-leafed chestnuts. Whose voice is that in the entry? Why, Kate, how do you do! Never mind, if you are married, you needn’t start so. I’m an old friend, you know, and your lips are as tempting as ever! Ah! I forgot there were strangers by. Madam Von Rosenbacker: Herr von Geist, a man after my own heart. Well, Kate, you haven’t altered much from what you were when we used to pick blackberries together. Indeed, I have lost the bottle of wine; you only escaped though by three days over the six months that I limited your marriage to. You shall have the champaigne, and I will come up in the summer to bring it, and will buy an indulgence from the tee-total society long enough to drink it with you. Now that she is gone, Peter, let me ask if you don’t think her a glorious woman? Her large blue eyes, her soft flaxen hair and rosy cheeks, and tall graceful figure, make her ‘splendid.’ Peter, she was the first girl that I ever ‘set my face against,’ as poor Power used to say; and now, old bachelor as I am, I envy her husband.
To bed we go, and Somnus touches our eyes with his wand of poppies. Ye gods! how sweet and soft a bed at home is, after travelling till one’s bones ache with jolting stages and jarring rail-cars!
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Up! up! friend Peter; here we are abed, while daylight is glimmering through the blinds. Just put your head out here at this window and snuff the fresh spring air. Hear the roaring of Fish Creek as it comes up over the wooded hills. By no means! Don’t suppose for the sixtieth part of a minute that I intend to hurry you away without breakfast; but you must step down into the kitchen, where the girl has prepared us a strong cup of coffee; as good, no doubt, as Mother Bee used to provide for our matin meal on College Hill. Here, Dancer, you must have some breakfast too.
Well, are we all ready? Powder, shot, and caps enough, and every thing in order? Eh! Peter, what are you twisting your mouth about? Ah, yes, indeed, I forgot. Here’s a dozen Principes to use as occasion may offer, and especially after dinner; which is to be sent up with the rest into the sugar-bush, where we will rendezvous about one o’clock, and in the afternoon help ‘sugar off.’ See the sunlight on the barns yonder; how warm it looks! Look off on that hill-side, where the snow lies so deep! How like a speck of gold it shimmers to the eye! and there goes Dancer on the crust, as if he enjoyed the freshness of the air, and the warm sunlight. Let us try the crust too, and if it will bear us, we shall save time by going across lots. Here we go, with our heels crunching the glittering pavement, leaving scarcely a vestige of our tread, the frost of last night has so effectually congealed it. Yonder across this valley which the hills prevent our seeing from the house, is the sugar-bush, sloping to the south. The canal we first crossed leads to the old mills down to the right yonder, where you see that grove of black-cherry trees, and the little house on the knoll. The mist that you see to the left, rises from the mill-dam, the monotonous hum of whose falling waters you have heard for some time. This is Furnace Creek, whose swift current harbors the most beautiful trout. That crow yonder on the dry hemlock is calling to his mate, and the speckled wood-pecker is tapping away at that old beech, that the nice insects within its decayed interior may come out to make him a breakfast. Hark! do you not hear the drum of that partridge? He is up there in that thicket of young beeches and hemlocks, on the other side of the road. As you hear the slow, measured drum which he gives at first, and which he hastens into a whirr like distant thunder, does not ‘The old Man’s Counsel’ come fresh to your memory, and almost ringing in your ear? Ah! this is the glory of true poetry, that it clothes the commonest things with a new interest, and forever after they become objects of love, at least of meditation. Who that has read the same author’s ‘Lines to a Waterfowl,’ does not gaze with other than a sportsman’s pleasure upon even a wild duck, if it flies past him after sunset. But there goes a flock of pigeons, and here over our heads; one! two! three! more than a hundred in each! What a rushing sound their wings make! They fly too high for us just now: but wait till we get on the cleared hill yonder to the right of the sugar-bush, and we shall have rare sport as they emerge from the trees and skim along the edge of the ‘clearing.’
Here we are in the sugar-bush. Are these not noble trees? For how many years have they stood thus interlocking their strong boughs like brethren! While Columbus was asking a supper for his boy at the convent door, three centuries and a half ago, these same trees were here, scarcely younger than now. Yonder is the hill we saw from the rude bridge below the mill-dam. Let us clamber over the log-fence and get into the clearing.
Well, Peter, this hill that we are on is just one mile from home, though it looks not half the distance. Is this not a glorious view? Hill and valley spread out like a map before us! The snow lies in patches upon the fields, and the sun is lighting up the tinned spire of the village church, which, as the stage passed it yesterday, you thought looked like a superannuated old man with a martin-cage upon his crooked back. There is the old homestead looking at us through the locusts that surround it, and there are the orchards off to the right, which in a few weeks will be white with blossoms. Now, steady, my boys! Do you see that flock of pigeons? Wait till they pass us, that our shot may take effect on their backs. Whang! hack!! bang!!! What! three barrels off and only a handful of tail-feathers! How they opened as we fired, as if to let the shot go through. Hist! don’t stir! Look up softly into the dry top of this hemlock, right over our heads: four, five, six! all in a huddle. I’ll fetch some of them with my last barrel. Snap! fiz! confound the cap! Hold still, they see us. I’ve got a fresh cap on: bang! Here comes one, tumbling through the limbs on to the snow. Is he not a handsome bird; with his glossy purple breast and slender blue neck! Load quickly, and let us be ready for the next flock.
Hear them scream and coo in the wood to the right. Hear the leaves crackle down on that slope where the snow is off under those tall beeches. The ground is fairly blue with them. Softly there over the dry brush! See them turning up the leaves for beech-nuts: they are all moving this way. Down, behind this log: they are not twenty yards off. Cock both barrels; and now fire! What a stunning sound they make, like the roaring of a tornado! Look, they have settled down again on the other side of the ravine. Well, here, Peter, what do you think of the fun now?—fourteen cock pigeons and one hen, to be divided between us. This is what I call sport: none of your reed-birds and meadow-larks, such as cockney sportsmen frighten away from the fields of Jersey or Long-Island. Here they come again by scores. Now let us see how good a shot you are. Two cocks on the topmost branch of that old maple, full forty yards to the trunk. No, no! don’t get any nearer, for they see you. Well done! Hear him thump on the leaves; and here comes the other, fluttering round and round like a shuttlecock. Ten to one that you shot him through the head. There! I told you so! His wings are not hurt, but a shot has cut away his bill. Here, Dancer, don’t bite him so, but bring him here! Chick, chick, churr! Mister Red-squirrel, we’ll ‘give you a few,’ as Jared used to say. On that knot in the green hemlock, he sits with his tail spread out over his head, for all the world like a young miss in a high-backed, old-fashined easy-chair. Well, we wont harm him, for the sake of the associations his comical appearance awakens.
Dancer is barking down in the ravine. There he comes! as if he were crazy; he is on the track of a hare! Do you see that pair of slender ears pricked up behind the roots of that fallen tree? Let me try my skill at a long shot. I’ve hit them, that’s poz! No, I haven’t either; for the nimble-footed thing is scudding away round the hill as safe as if I had not wasted my loading on her.