There was the swish of wings, the snip-snap of a bird’s beak,
and it was all over
I watched him again, hearing subconsciously the voice of a great crested flycatcher over on a nearby tree, crying “Grief,” “Grief.” A moment and the little red tongue which I had noted before seemed to catch on the roughest part of the old fence post, and with a sudden scrape the Basilarchia scraped it off. I looked in amaze, for now I saw what it was. From the honey heart of some flower a little red worm had become attached to the tip of the butterfly’s proboscis, and all this licking of rough surfaces had been merely to get rid of him.
Up into the bright sunshine danced my black white admiral. There was the swish of wings, the snip-snip of a bird’s beak, and it was all over. The cry of the great crested flycatcher had been a prophecy indeed, and the white admiral had danced blithely out of existence.
But the equatorial haze had more tropical enchantment in store, for the midday sun was suddenly wiped out by an ominous figure. Some one had uncorked that bottle which held the heat genie confined, and he was looming from a black nimbus below into white piles of cumulus at the zenith. His eyes flashed red lightnings and he spoke in thunder tones. Somewhere over yonder I heard the great crested flycatcher crying “Grief,” “Grief,” again. It might be my turn next, and I patted the great orchid good-by and tiptoed through the sphagnum and climbed the hill again. It had been a brief but pleasant trip. A butterfly that found a tongue and a turtle that ate terrapin with a happy smile may belong with the genie in the Arabian Nights, or with Alice in Wonderland, or both. I know that I found them at the fountain head, under the grove of immemorial pines, below the brow of the terminal moraine where sleep the fathers of the hamlet.
DOWN STREAM
DOWN STREAM
IF you have ever known fishing, real fishing, not the guide-book kind, where you “whip” streams for fancy fish that bite mainly in fancy—there will come a day in late July when it will be necessary for you to go down stream. The excessive heat and humidity which has been killing you off by inches and other people by wholesale for weeks will suddenly vanish before a cool, dry northwester, a gladsome reminder to the New Englander that there is such a thing as winter after all; thank Heaven!
You know that the drought diminished waters still fizz out from under the dam and purl into the pool below the roadside where the sunfish congregate under the water weeds. Beyond this they prattle down the meadow under banks where the hard-hack stands pink and prim, where the meadow-sweet loves the stream so much that it bends toward it and half caresses, and where the meadow grasses in complete abandonment whisper of it in every wind and bend down and surreptitiously kiss it as it dimples by. Farther down where the woodland maples troop up to meet it and the willows sit and bathe pink toes in the current is the big rock, under which the current has dug a sandy cave in which linger big yellow perch, ready to rush out and snatch the worm that comes floating down stream. Here you will hesitate but finally pass on, for there is a lure which you cannot withstand in the deep pool farther down.
Because you are wise with the remembered wisdom of boyhood, you have left at home the expensive rod and reel. Just back from the swamp edge is a birch jungle where young trees stand as thick as canes in a Cuban brake. Here you find your pole; as large as your thumb at the butt, tapering, straight, clean and strong, fifteen feet to the tip. Cut it and trim the limbs from it and bend to it your ten feet of stout line at the end of which is a hook whose curve is as big as that of your little finger nail. A cork that would fit a quart bottle will fit your line if you gash it with your pocket-knife and slip the line in the gash. It will hold wherever you put it, yet you may slide it up and down at will. For the pool you should put it three feet from your hook, for you will wish to “sink” that deep. Wind a wee bit of lead about your line an inch above the hook, then pull out your bait box and select a fat angle-worm. Break him in two in the middle and string him on the hook so that the point is just inside the tip of his nose. Now you are ready for what adventure may lurk under the bubbly foam of the surface.
A willow and a maple lean together in loving embrace over the entrance to the deep pool. Above, their arms stretch toward one another and intertwine; below, their roots meet under water and sway down stream, forming a slippery steep down which the amber yellow water, singing a happy little song to itself, coasts into the amber black depths of the pool. Black alders stand cooling their feet all about the edge. Crowding them into the water are the great oaks and maples whose limbs yearn above the pool till they shut out the sun. Along one side the current has cut deep to the rough rocks and the water flows black and swift. On the other the back-wash circles leisurely and the bottom shallows to a bank of sand where the sunfish build their nests and the fresh-water clams burrow and put up suppliant mouths to the food-bearing current. Inshore it lifts to a sand bar, where you may stand and swing your pole without interference from the surrounding trees.