THE SCOLYTIDIAN MASTERPIECE (One fifth of original size) ON THE MANUSCRIPTS OF GOD BY ELLEN BURNS SHERMAN And Nature, the old nurse, took The child upon her knee, Saying, "Here is a story-book Thy Father has written for thee." "Come wander with me," she said, "Into regions yet untrod; And read what is still unread In the manuscripts of God." Longfellow. THE ABINGDON PRESS NEW YORK CINCINNATI COPTKIQHT, 1918, BT ELLEN BURNS SHERMAN DEDICATED TO THE MEMORY OF ONE WHOSE RESPONSIVE- NESS TO EVERY CHARM AND MOOD OF NATURE I HAVE NEVER SEEN SURPASSED. E. B. S. CONTENTS I. WRIT IN WATER 7 II. THE WIZARDRY OF THE SOIL 33 III. THE REDOLENT WORLD 48 IV. FINDINGS OF THE EAR 61 V. OUR BROTHERS, THE TREES 78 VI. PASTURES FAIR AND LARGE 99 VII. NATURE'S FONDNESS FOR POLKA DOTS. . 117 VIII. A RARE PICTOGRAPH 129 IX. WHEN THE LEAF is WOO'D FROM OUT THE BUD 149 X. THE GREAT MANUSCRIPT . , 160 FOR PERMISSION TO REPUBLISH SOME OP THESE STUDIES, THE AUTHOR IS INDEBTED TO THE NORTH AMERICAN REVIEW, THE NEW ENGLAND MAGAZINE, OUTDOOR WORLD, THE CHRISTIAN REGISTER, AND THE NEW YORK SUN. WRIT IN WATER T TOW very kin is man to nature in his ^ - habit of adapting to myriad forms and ends every substance which takes the im- press of his spirit, from the hardest granite to the delicate spinnings of the silkworm. Does not nature, the mother of fair en- chantments, do the same thing with flower and feather, earth and water, and every other element with which she works? Behold her fair and naughty witcheries with water, with whose mutability she sug- gests a feminine counterpart to the more seemingly solid and masculine earth, espe- cially as it manifests itself in rugged moun- tain peaks. Watch her exultant transfor- mations with this most plastic medium, which almost seems like matter on its way to spirit the spirit which it attains when it is translated by the sun. She makes fogs, 7 ON THE MANUSCRIPTS OF GOD vapors, mists, clouds, rain, and rainbows with it; she distils it into dewdrops, or mixes it with earth for the creation of bogs and swamps, or mixes it with minerals for the healing of human ills ; she makes brine, surf, and whitecaps with it; she freezes it into snow, hail, and ice, and finally petrifies it, after her manner of running the entire gamut of possibilities. She hews the hardest rocks with it; she plays with it, sings with it, chants with it, and roars with it blesses and curses with it, according to the measure of her giving or her withholding. Beginning with a raindrop and ever add- ing the little more that finally makes so much, how innumerable is the series of water-wonders she creates till she reaches her climax in the ocean, over which she has so effectively waved her wand that it can be the great communistic bath-tub of the human race and at the same time lose noth- ing of its perennial sublimity. Like a great literary artist, who from the same inkstand and fountain of inspiration conjures a trio- let, a stately sonnet, a lyric, or a mighty epic, 8 WRIT IN WATER so does nature, writing from her vast cosmic inkstand of water, enscroll the earth with water-writ songs. Thus the whole globe is set to music the voice of many waters which, if one could hear it in its entire volume, might well be one of the mightiest scores in the music of the spheres. And how soothing it is, in the midst of the roar of a great city, to close the outward ear and with the inward one hear the glad little songs of thousands of brooks, the deep full choruses of great rivers, the solemn chants of waterfalls and cataracts, and the stead- fast music of the sea! Working with earth, the great artist may sometimes write passages which seem to be prose, but never when she writes with water. Even in her most utilitarian strophes of rainwater she uses wild rhythms and dra- matic intermezzos of thunder and lightning, sometimes closing her performance with the exquisite envoy of a rainbow. Nor does she ignore the artistic possibili- ties of the single drop. By a shrewd control of atmospheric conditions she distils in the 9 ON THE MANUSCRIPTS OF GOD dewdrop a more ethereal counterpart of the raindrop, and mimics in its dazzling tints the splendor of all the jewels with which mankind has pieced out the vocabulary of love and pride. With another intercelestial incantation she refines her medium to fogs and mists, abolishing the harsh angles of the world and throwing a veil of glamour over objects which have lost their mystery in the common light of day. This is na- ture, the mystic, as we again find her in some of her subterranean waterways yet to be mentioned. Before she has finished ex- periments with water in its refined form she makes a collaboration with the sun in the moving pictures of cloudland. These, by her own white magic, she continually changes on the reel of nights and days, so that never once in all the day-paged ages has she repeated herself. That nature herself feels a bit of pride in this celestial translation of her work one suspects from her clever arrangement of ocean, lake, and river mirrors which capture the reflections of the clouds and bring them 10 WRIT IN WATER within the myopic range of the man who for- gets to look up at the heavens. Working with her marvelous medium on the earth, nature keeps her old rule of doing nothing by leaps. From the tiniest rill a simple little rondeau sung in the wooded hills she goes on increasing her volume from pastoral brook and lyric rivulet till she writes a great epic in an Amazon or a Mis- sissippi. By the same imperceptible steps she passes from the ignoble puddle, whose very name classifies it, to the inscrutable pool, full of dreams, the little lake, the larger one, the great lake, the inland sea, and her magnum opus, the ocean. Each of these she further varies by her canny sor- ceries of depth, chemical composition, and reflection, now producing an emerald pool, a salt lake, a dead sea, or the inky ocean of the tropics. Still ringing new changes on her old songs, the gay leader of these unique orches- tras lures her brooks to some steep rocky cliff and dares them to rush over the brink. Be- ing her children, of course they accept the 11 ON THE MANUSCRIPTS OF GOD dare, and burst into a sonorous cascade of exultation, which was precisely what the dear old dreamer of dreams intended. This experiment successfully carried out, she "tries it on" with larger streams all over the world, crowning her achievements with Ni- agara, the Kaieteur, and the Takakaw Falls in the valley of the Yoho. Then, perhaps by the autosuggestion of falling water, she works out another idea: if falling water could be so effective, how would it look if rushed up into the air? Why not, indeed, when no sooner thought than done is the watchword of our fair enchantress? So, commanding her fearful underground Vulcans, she fashions the geyser as easily as a man gets steam from a teakettle. Com- pared with the tender little folk-song of the brook, the geyser is operatic in its effect, and somewhat more like a tour de force than waters which simply obey the law of gravity. Having successfully run a stream of hot water up in the air, one expects nature to reverse her tactics and engineer a river un- derground, and the dear Lady of Caprice 12 WRIT IN WATER does not disappoint our expectations. For with water, as with every other element in her control, she sooner or later plays the mystic, forever luring man with the game of hide-and-seek to keep his wonder alive. How many of these hidden underground streams there are that run "through caverns measureless to man" we know as little as we know the number of gold and silver veins yet to be discovered. Related to the subterranean stream in its charm of mystery are the thousands of springs that bubble out of the earth, now as pure as "dew distilled at even," or again flavored with all manner of minerals for the healing of all manner of ills. Here also nature plays another of her favorite games, "guess which," as she does with all her fruits, herbs, and other edibles and non-edibles. Out of a thousand different mineral springs there may be one which will cure you. "Go and find it, then," whispers the silence of this wise Dame Sans Souci; "the game is on with my mineral springs as it is with everything else in my treasure-packed 13 ON THE MANUSCRIPTS OF GOD universe, but the rules of the game are pre- cisely the same as those in 'Hunt the Lady's Slipper,' which you must play if you would find the one woman in a million I won't say which million with whom you would be happy." Thus with teasing nonchalance nature bubbles over in thousands and thousands of springs, but will never play the role of pa- ternalism to rob mankind of his initiative and the joy of adventure. Another trick of her coquettish habit of keeping man guessing is to put a fresh-water spring in the midst of a body of salt water, so that it is available only at low tide. Still more Shavian whimsies are a hot-water spring bubbling up out of cold water, as it is found in Saint Michael in the Azores and the Cascades of Hieropolis, falls which were turned to stone by their own deposits slowly made through the ages. Apparently nature enjoys playing not only with the position and composition of her spring waters, but with the size and fashion of the cups, now Lilliputian, now 14 WRIT IN WATER Brobdingnagian, in which she offers them to man. Such a suggestion bubbles up from some of the hot springs in Abyssinia, which issue from the top of what look like huge ant-hills, twenty feet high, but in reality are pyramids built by successive mineral de- posits of the water itself. Still stranger are the beakers she fashions in the shape of water-storing plants for arid regions like the deserts of Mexico. Such plants, "with pri- vate cisterns," are the Ibervillea sonora, the Beaucarnea cedipus, which has the basis of its trunk swollen to a diameter of seven or eight feet, the barrel cactus, and the Pilo- cereus fulviceps, of which a single plant may retain several hundred gallons of water. From these larger goblets nature tapers down till she plays doll's house with the naughty enticements of pitcher-plants, which she designs in thirty-five species in the tropics alone. Reading of these parched lands, where the sound of flowing or falling water is never heard, one feels a fresh compassion for the thirsty Israelites, who, on their painful jour- is ON THE MANUSCRIPTS OF GOD ney out of Egypt, either found no water at all, or found it too bitter to drink. The sympathetic reader finally takes on their symptoms, and finds solid satisfaction in a later record which chronicles the stop at Elim, where there were "twelve wells of water and threescore and ten palm trees." Even more pleasant is the exultant descrip- tion with which Moses cheered the weary hearts of the chosen people: "For the Lord thy God bringeth thee into a good land, a land of brooks of water, of fountains and depths that spring out of valleys and hills." Here we catch something more than the crass recognition of the practical uses of water. Moses was obviously a pragmatist with mar- gins, for we feel in his description of the promised land a distinctly poetic response to the call of the many-voiced waters. The same response to the spiritual glamour of water is felt in a fervid verse in Judges: "The river Kishon swept them away, that ancient river, the river Kishon" Something almost like a suggestion of awe is preserved in this record; it was not only 16 WRIT IN WATER a river with all the usual lure of an on-rush- ing stream, but Age had also lent it her poetic mantle of mystery. One feels the thought of the writer drifting backward on the tide of memory, and conjuring up the scenery on its banks and the various tradi- tions that may have been told of "Kishon, that ancient river, the river Kishon." As the river Kishon flowed not only through the land which it watered, but also with vivid, throbbing associations through the memory of the writer, so every brook and river in the habitable regions of the globe keeps a double course, one within its own banks and another, more perennial, in the cherished memories of men. For to all the water-writ melodies of nature man has added the overtones of his own associa- tions, glad, sad, and tender, national or per- sonal, or both. To the German, the Rhine and the Danube would still be very grandly rushing rivers and flow with undiminished majesty through his memory and literature, though their material waters had long gone dry. So would the ''yellow Tiber" lave its 17 ON THE MANUSCRIPTS OF GOD secondary literary banks and the Fountain of Bandusia bubble up refreshingly in Ho- ratian meters, though both the original river and the spring had been sipped to their dregs by the thirsty sun. So the Nile, the Ganges, the Jordan, the Thames, the Seine, the Dee, the Doon, the Shannon, and the Mississippi, like great characters, have woven themselves into the history, song, and story of their respective lands, becoming national assets, material and spiritual, whose value cannot be quoted in terms of the market place, but, rather, in those poetic weights and measures which take account of star-beams and shadows. More blithe and affable than the awesome mountain peak, the brook, river, and lake lend themselves to friendly association. You may fish in them, swim in them, bathe in them, row over them, sing over them, and make love over them, and find them faithful comrades who will match every mood of yours with one of their own. If you are great, they will reflect your greatness with the same selflessness with which they make 18 WRIT IN WATER themselves a mirror for the heavens, still all unconscious of the give-and-take which may make them famous. Avon and Grasmere are not merely the bodies of water which bear those names, but are forever haloed by their association with the greatness which they helped to foster. In like manner, Walden is Walden plus its associations with Thoreau, as Thoreau is Thoreau plus his associations with Walden and several other things, material and immaterial. In a still greater degree the rivers and lakes of the Holy Land have acquired a spiritual dis- tinction which no body of water in secular lands may claim. Only mention the "Sea of Galilee" to a devout Christian, and you have tuned all his meditations to the pitch of reverence. A good illustration of this effect is given by Whittier in his poem on Palestine : "Blue sea of the hills, in my spirit I hear Thy waters, Gennesaret, chime on my ear Where the Lowly and Just with the people sat down And the spray on the dust of His sandals was thrown." 19 ON THE MANUSCRIPTS OF GOD In addition to the national and religious affection inspired by certain rivers, lakes, or other bodies of water, most of us have a more personal and intimate memory of some far- away brook or lake of our childhood some gay little friendly brook, perhaps, that played with us, whose winning ways made us love all other brooks for its sake. Be- ginning its tutelage with a child, such a brook weaves a silver thread of poetry through all his early musings, and long after he has passed beyond the echo of its music his homing heart follows its winding curves over woodland ledge and meadow, as his feet followed it in days that have passed into the great river of years. It becomes at once a memory and an inspiration. So essentially poetic is flowing water to eye and ear, and so rich in its symbolic sug- gestions, that always it seems to give a gentle challenge to poets of all times: "I sing sing, too, my little brothers." And the challenge has been accepted by almost every poet worthy of the name, from David and Job to the least erected bard of our own 20 WRIT IN WATER time. Overwhelmed by the baffling miracles of water, Job exclaimed in rhapsody: "He bindeth up the waters in his thick clouds; and the cloud is not rent under them." "He cutteth out rivers among the rocks." "He hath compassed the waters with bounds, until the day and night come to an end"; while of the sea, catching its very pitch, he wrote, "Hitherto shalt thou come, but no further: and here shall thy proud waves be stayed." These and many more passages like them show clearly enough that Job did not look upon water, in any of its forms, merely as a material necessity; the cloud interested him more than the fact that its contents might greatly affect his crops. Like all poets, he felt the poetic spell of water, as David also felt and reflected it in his Psalms. Whether it plays a role itself, or serves as a highly dramatic background for charac- ters of flesh and blood, water is almost as indispensable to literature as to life. What were the mythologies of Greece and Rome, or its great epics, without the sounding sea, 21 i ON THE MANUSCRIPTS OF GOD where the gods played fast and loose with mortals? With no sea as an undulating stage for his bouts with gods and goddesses, an amphibious hero like Ulysses would be shorn of half his "godlike" charm. So long has one followed that hero, where the "rainy Hyades vext the dim sea," that one finds it impossible to think of him, even in his old age, settling down to end his days quietly with Penelope on dry land. One may be sorry for his intermittent widow, but one must agree with him and the poets that Ithaca was no place for him, but, instead, the murky sea, where Neptune could furnish enough conflict to meet the most exacting dramatic requirements. Yielding to the same sea-spell, which is a part of the aura of Ulysses, Tennyson puts these words in the mouth of the aged hero : "Push off, and sitting well in order, smite The sounding furrows; for my purpose holds To sail beyond the sunset, and the baths Of all the western stars, until I die." Not only are the classics infinitely en- riched by the waters which overflow the 22 WRIT IN WATER banks of life into literature, but by mythical reflections of fountains, lakes, and streams which furnish for distinguished shades alle- gorical comfort and a picturesque passage to The Happy Isles. Lethe, Styx, and Acheron have won their right to existence as surely as if they had real banks with actual water running between them. Thus all the enchantments which water lends to the earth are duplicated in a second incarnation in literature, where they per- form the same mission of irrigating its barren places and making its deserts to blossom as the rose. The great dramatic stories of the Old Testament, The Flood, The Passage through the Red Sea, The Smiting of the Rock by Moses, and the Tale of Jonah, do for the historical and genealogical plains of the Old Testament what springs and brooks do for the regions which they bless. In some instances the elu- sive message of the Water-spirit has been caught with such perfect accuracy by the poets that it seems a clear case of verbal in- spiration. ON THE MANUSCRIPTS OF GOD Many of the most haunting poems in the English language were thus born of water; witness Shelley's "Cloud," Byron's "Ocean," Arnold's "Dover Beach," and Tennyson's "Break, Break, Break," "The Brook," and "Crossing the Bar," not to mention "The Passing of Arthur," whose closing scene, in which the barge glides slowly over the water, makes an ethereal ending, a spiritual climax, ideally fitting for an ideal king. Launcelot, or a great many kings, whose names cour- tesy bids one suppress, might go down to dusty death the usual way without exciting reasonable protest. But there are other characters in fiction, and perhaps in life, who, in their passage to the kingdom of Ponemah, should go by water. This neces- sity was keenly felt by the authors of the old Anglo-Saxon epics. Unspoiled by the influences of an effete civilization, which might have robbed them of the kinship they felt with the great forces of nature, the heroes of those early epics made a fine dra- matic finish, after the manner of King Scyld: 24 WRIT IN WATER "Away then they bare him To the flood of the current, his fond loving com- rades As himself he had bidden. . . . The ring-stemmed vessel, Bark of the atheling, lay there at anchor Icy in glimmer, and eager for sailing; The beloved leader laid they down there, Giver of rings, on the breast of the vessel. "And a gold-fashioned standard they stretched un- der heaven High o'er his head, let the holm-currents bear him Seaward consigned him. . . ." By the same dramatic intuitions of a sixth sense which guided the Anglo-Saxon writ- ers, Coleridge used the sea as a background for his most memorable poem, as Joaquin Miller did for one of his strongest "Co- lumbus." In a word, if a poet will only listen closely enough to its tuition, any brook, river, or sea will half write his poem for him, if given the metrical right of way, as Schiller proved in his poem, "Der Taucher": 25 ON THE MANUSCRIPTS OF GOD "Und es wallet siedet und brauset und zischt, Wie wenn Wasser mit Feuer sich mengt." The plenary inspiration of the water- spirit is almost as unmistakable in single words of every language, as etymologists long ago discovered. Minnehaha, Shenan- doah, Oscawana, Musketaquit, Thalatta, Weiden-Bach, and our own word, brook, could never have been the names of rocks or mountains. Even more striking than the water-conferred music and limpidity of single words are the poetic clarity and beauty of almost every figure of speech in which water is the basis of the simile. The Bible is especially rich in tropes from this source: "Thy judgments are a great deep" and "Deep calleth to deep," sang David; and again, "All thy waves and thy billows are gone over me," and "All my springs are in thee." Isaiah also abounds in matchless figures of the same kind: "Then had thy peace been as a river"; "When thou passest through the waters, I will be with thee." Nearly all the poets and prophets of the 26 WRIT IN WATER Old Testament felt and made use of this poetic and spiritual quality of water, and the New Testament, in a heightened degree, continues in the sayings of Christ and his followers the beautiful imagery which it in- spired. Although the number and the strength of the metaphors from this source have perceptibly diminished in the centuries succeeding biblical times, there are still numerous illustrations in every generation which show that the poets have continued to draw some of their finest and strongest figures from water in all its varied forms. "And joy shall overtake us as a flood," wrote Milton; and Shakespeare: "There is a tide in the affairs of men, Which, taken at its flood, leads on to fortune; Omitted, all the voyage of their life Is bound in shallows and in miseries." Equally happy in the line of metaphorical inspiration was Wordsworth in his poems which have the most spacious atmosphere: ". . . . though inland far we be Our souls have sight of that immortal sea Which brought us hither." 27 ON THE MANUSCRIPTS OF GOD Again, in Emerson's "Two Rivers" we catch the fancy-loosing spell of water: "Thou, in thy narrow banks, art pent: The stream I love unbounded goes Through flood and sea and firmament; Through light, through life, it forward flows. "I see the inundation sweet, I hear the spending of the stream Through years, through men, through Nature fleet, Through love and thought, through power and dream." Rossetti's "glance like water brimming with the sky," and Shelley's lines, "Whence thou dost pour upon the world a flood Of harmony," are other illustrations which prove how much more dependable water is than wine as a second aid to inspiration. Even the twinkle of water as well as some of its brackish bitterness has been successfully reflected in a poem by Ben Jonson : "And sunk in that Dead sea of life, So deep, as he did then death's waters sup, But that the cork of title buoyed him up." 28 WRIT IN WATER Inspired by a less cynical water-sprite are Lowell's lines on the bobolink: "Half hid in tiptop apple-blooms he swings, Or climbs against the breeze with quiverin' wings, Or, givin' way to't in a mock despair, Runs down a brook o' laughter thru the air." With more temperamental use of the emotional pedals is the water-music of Heine's "Fischermadchen" : "Mein Herz gleicht ganz dem Meere, Hat Sturm, und Ebb' und Fluth, Und manche schone Perle In seiner Tiefe ruht." It is thus evident that not only for all the great experiences of life does water furnish a deep diapason of expression, but also for the lightest gossamer fancies, which it echoes at the other end of its ten-octave key- board, its vapor, mist, and dewdrop end. Making use of this upper end and the soft pedal, Shakespeare improvised his fairy fancy "I must go seek some dewdrops here And hang a pearl in every cowslip's ear." 29 ON THE MANUSCRIPTS OF GOD Again, Keats, at the bidding of a sister muse, made as dainty numbers in several lines in "Endymion": "Just as the morning south Disparts a dew-lipped rose, . . . To summon all the downiest clouds together For the sun's purple couch." A similar pianissimo rendering is the graceful air one finds in a stanza on "Rain," by Mr. Aldrich: "We knew it would rain, for all the morn A spirit on slender ropes of mist Was lowering its golden buckets down Into the vapoury amethyst." Fingering the same marvelously respon- sive keys, Holmes gave us in his "Sun-Day Hymn" this religious modulation of Aid- rich: "Our rainbow arch thy mercy's sign, All save the clouds of sin are thine." Nor must one forget, in acknowledging the debt of poetry to the many-voiced waters, the metaphorical wealth which is a by-product of a vast number of nautical 30 WRIT IN WATER terms, and the poetical haloes of the mythical inhabitants of the deep. Without water, we should not have Triton and his "bright- haired daughters," the Nereids, sirens, mer- maids, and sprites that wind in and out of the measures of the poets, leaving behind them eery echoes of river and sea. Nor should we have the exquisite lines from Keats, written under a similar inspira- tion: "The loveliest moon that ever silver'd o'er A shell for Neptune's goblet." Though the land of the poets is pre-emi- nently "a land of brooks of water, of foun- tains and depths," one also finds in the table- lands of prose many a refreshing spring and river. "Time is but the stream I go a-fish- ing in," said Thoreau, and if one examines the output of the best prose-writers of any century, one finds that it is often by the rhetorical use of water that they redeem their work from literary aridity. Finally, the good offices of water do not cease with the benefits which it confers on 31 ON THE MANUSCRIPTS OF GOD the physical and literary world. Rising still higher within the invisible banks of its in- fluence, it has caused an overflow of sym- bolism in the moral and religious world. Hence the use of water, in baptismal rites, to lodge, if possible, a suggestion of inward cleanliness. Thus, gratefully numbering the fine and varied ministrations of water, we discover it to be the subtle animating spirit of the earth, as the soul is the pervasive and animating force in man. II THE WIZARDRY OF THE SOIL For fairy tales of magic pall Beside the arts the dear Earth knows The Earth that hears the grass-blade call And works enchantment for the rose. T T AVE we not all noticed that, whenever ** a tramping party sits down to rest, the gentlemen of the company instinctively bore holes in the earth with their walking- sticks and the women with the tips of their parasols, or with bits of sticks if they hap- pen to belong to the Pan-emancipated band which scorns parasols? The evolutionist might tell us that this boring, punching habit is a vestigial trace of what was once a much stronger instinct in our very remote ancestors, who dug larger holes in the hills and lived in them. Or, a theologian might explain it as a modern adaptation of the same prying instinct which 33 ON THE MANUSCRIPTS OF GOD made Eve poach on Edenic preserves and still tempts her modern juvenile descend- ants to know the worst about their dolls. The consideration of this interesting habit of punching holes in the earth, however, is only a mental vestibule to the theme in hand, which is the earth itself, whose magic properties might well stimulate a mental boring much deeper than any a cane could achieve. Yet despite its wondrous wizardry in behalf of man, bird, and beast, what is more scorned and ignored than the plain, brown soil, trampled under foot of man? Even our catch-word, "cheap as dirt," bears witness to the popular misvaluation of one of the greatest of Nature's miracles. Wear- ing more gaudy vestments, made in heaven, clouds and rainbows catch the groundlings and even win the poet's praise by the lure of distance and the coquetry of evanescence, But the humble, steadfast soil veils its virtues in plain, homely tints, and wears a second heavier veil of familiarity, which only the inward eye of wonder may pierce. 34 THE WIZARDRY OF THE SOIL Yet give it any kind of seed, bulb, or slip to work upon, and a small pot of earth even a couple of handfuls will silently give you a true illustrated fairy story which will put to shame all the cruder human arts of fiction. In children's tales, which some of us never outgrow, the good fairy grants the favored hero or heroine three wishes. But the good brown Earth, a more lavishly indulgent god- mother, gives every one of us many thousand wishes. Is it a beautiful green carpet you wish for your lawn or meadow? "Certainly, my child," answers the kind godmother. "Wait but a few days while I call my genii, the sun, clouds, and earth-gnomes, and you shall have your carpet." Or is your wish a field of buttercups, daisies, or clover, a rosebush, or a bed of mignonette? With the same maternal willingness to give good gifts, the under-mother grants your desire. "You must wait a little longer for these fair marvels, my child," she an- swers; "for it is no journeyman's task to ON THE MANUSCRIPTS OF GOD manufacture in my secret laboratory the burnished gold chalices of millions of butter- cups. Nor is it every earth-gnome whom I would trust to fashion my delicate daisies with their hearts of gold. But, bless you, child, you shall have them, and nobody but the buttercups, daisies, and myself shall know how 'tis done. For the clover and roses you may need to wait a little longer still, since I must employ a score or more of mysterious processes, quite beyond your understanding, to give them their beautiful fragrance. The rose, especially, requires weeks and months, sometimes years, of my most occult cunning and patience to give its petals their velvet texture and to roll them all up in such captivating buds." "Trees? Ah, yes, my dears, I knew you would all like those, so I began working on them ages ago. These are my richest, rarest fairy gifts to man; and little he thinks, when he recklessly hews them down, what heaven- blessed wisdom I have put into them. But would you ever guess from the looks of your dark brown mother that she could trans- 36 THE WIZARDRY OF THE SOIL mute a part of her homely substance into redolent forests of pine, hemlock, and bal- sam, and other parts into deciduous trees with leaves of a thousand different pat- terns?" "How do I do it? Ah, child, does your fairy-book ever tell how the magician turned the charcoal to gold, or the owl back again into the beautiful princess that she was? No more shall I spoil my stories by telling how my subterranean magic is wrought. But, O, such wonderful secrets as some of them are! Some day a few of my secrets will be found out. Others will baffle the children of men while the world stands. One of the most complex of them all is the way I can supply in the same garden bed different colors and odors to plants which are growing side by side. I never mix those children up, but I must tend them as care- fully as you humans do an 'incubator baby.' " Thus the great earth magician might speak if her more eloquent silence could be translated into the cruder speech of man. 37 ON THE MANUSCRIPTS OF GOD But, as her silence would seem to bear wit- ness to her modesty, she might not continue to enumerate more of her enchantments. Hence some recipient of her bounty may well continue to celebrate other of her spells, runed in the garden of the humblest man who owns one. And here, in her fairy gifts tested by the sense of taste, the brown en- chantress adds to the complex problem of fragrance the equally knotty one of flavor. Or, does the dear old wiseacre, by some complex formula of her desperately deep chemistry, create something which is at the same time fragrance to the nostrils and flavor to the palate? Such a suggestion comes to us from the odors of strawberries, pineapples, and cantaloupes. How psychologically wise, moreover, is the wizardry which knows man's different reactions from the various colors of the fruits and vegetables which he eats! For days when the heat has tampered with his temper, she offers the cool green of the cucumber, and the paler shades of lettuce, limes, and lemons. 38 THE WIZARDRY OF THE SOIL With equally inerrant prevision for the days when winter steals the warmth of the sunshine, the earth-mother supplies rich, warm tints which will cheer the heart of man. Entering into a compact with old Sol, she makes an autumn collaboration in the red cheeks of winter apples, the jocund, yellow pumpkin, and golden corn. Between them they also duplicate in the rich hues of grapes and plums the rose and purple of an after- glow. Nor does the wizardry of the soil begin to exhaust itself in the wondrous trees, blossoms, and kindly fruits of the earth. Not the richest palace in the enchanted gardens of fairy tales has a millionth part of the treasures which the earth secretes in her veins of silver and gold and her deep- buried crypts of jewels and precious stones. Strange electric currents, also, course through her, and these she lends to men like Marconi, who ask for only one wish, but that one full of more wonderful possibilities than a hundred wishes of the average man. And still other strange gifts, as yet all unguessed 39 ON THE MANUSCRIPTS OF GOD by any human being, she holds back for a keener-eyed generation who shall know how to ask for them and how not to misuse them; for the brown enchantress is as wise in her withholdings as in her givings. Nor does her benevolence end with gifts to man alone. To every beast of the forest and field, from the lion to the rabbit, she also gives the gifts of a good fairy god- mother. "Squatter's rights" she grants any quadruped that roams the earth, and the most obscure mole or woodchuck may have for his subterranean home the pick of all her forest wilds. Even the painfully diligent ant is at liberty to give object-lessons in "Ethical Culture and Communism" wher- ever she can and will. For robins and many other birds she keeps a fine larder of worms and bugs, and for these same worms and bugs one knows not what finer diet of vermiculous tid-bits. As a merely nominal charge for all these services she levies what the earth-worm might call his road-tax. By this canny measure with worms and by imposing a 40 THE WIZARDRY OF THE SOIL similar tax on man, which he works out with plow, harrow, hoe, and fertilizer, the shrewd old enchantress not only keeps her soil light and fertile, but lures mankind from the fatal pitfalls of idleness. Yet is our brown mother not all fair, though we have thus far spoken her fair, as should all those who receive her rare boun- ties. But, like human nature itself, mother earth has many unregenerate streaks. While in one man's field she "hears the corn," as the prophet Hosea says the earth will, in another field in a barren country she is deaf not only to the corn, but to all burgeoning desires whatsoever in everything that would bloom and bring forth fruit. Yet so exceptional is this apparent indiffer- ence on the part of the good earth that one is moved to put in a plea for the defendant rather than to argue the case for the plaintiff. Is it, after all, not the fault of the heavens, which do not "hear the earth" when it calls for rain, as Hosea again prophesied that they would? Or, if the earth may not be exculpated on this plea, is not her barren- 41 ON THE MANUSCRIPTS OF GOD ness perhaps another deep device to develop the ingenuity and invention of man? May not her methods be like those of a good text- book which gives one or two examples and many problems? Such a view finds support in the wonder- ful records of irrigation in the arid plains of the West and elsewhere. The converse of her problem of aridity the earth also gives in her malarial swamps and bogs, which on their face seem anything but benevolent. But a study of these flaws in the nature of our fairy godmother and the deadly coquetry of her quicksands would lead us by analogy into the debatable land of theology, which has its own moral quicksands, known as temptations and "the problem of evil." In both cases it would seem that "the game's the thing" ; that is, how to make both the physical and the spiritual desert "re- joice, and blossom as the rose." If we are willing to admit (as most of us are) that we really prefer our friends and neighbors not so perfect that we cannot see them making improvements on their arid regions and 42 THE WIZARDRY OF THE SOIL waste lands and moral bogs, we must also admit that our good earth-mother may be a little better for being a little bad, inasmuch as she is more stimulating to human en- deavor than she would be with no bad streaks in her. Having thus satisfied the demands of candor in our estimate of enchantress earth, our love and loyalty call for a few more words of appreciation. With his usual insight and outsight, Booker Washington declares that the best way to keep the Negro clean and honest is to keep him close to the soil. This clean, wholesome influence of the earth, a whole- someness whose very breath one may catch from a freshly plowed field, is a force whose strength the world is only beginning to meas- ure. One wonders what inhabitant of the city ever knew how much he had lost by in- sulating himself with city pavements from healthful contact with the soil. Standing on the good brown earth (preferably his own little lot of it), sometimes lying on it when the sun has made it warm as the hand-clasp 43 ON THE MANUSCRIPTS OF GOD of a true friend, he comes to understand the larger kinship which links him to even the lowest forms of inorganic life. With his hand on the teeming earth-mold, the bene- ficent mother of millions of fair offspring, he can almost feel the throb of the great earth heart and believe with Lafcadio Hearn that "The stones and the rocks have felt; the winds have been breath and speech; the rivers and oceans of earth have been locked into chambers of hearts. And the palingenesis cannot cease till every cosmic particle shall have passed through the ut- termost experience of the highest possible life." Closely related to Hearn's illuminated vision of matter was David's intuition that he was "curiously wrought in the lowest parts of the earth." And from this inti- mation it is but a step to the belief in the immanence of God a spirit pervading all matter as the light the air, and continually directing all earth-wrought miracles. Thus viewed no longer as a monstrous mass of life- less soil, but as matter charged with an in- 44 THE WIZARDRY OF THE SOIL finite and divine force, all the earth beneath our feet becomes holy ground, and man may go back to it at the sunset of life with as little reluctance as falling leaves which live again in flowers. For it is not alone upon seeds and roots, which contain their own life-germs, that the earth exercises her mysterious forces. Something strikingly like the healing force of nature, which knits broken bones and heals wounds, the earth manifests in her assimila- tions and reincarnations of decayed matter. This habit is but another phase of the earth's wholesome philosophy of making the best of things, however gruesome those things may be. But this phase of the earth's beneficence has been celebrated, as only a poet knows how, by Mr. William Vaughn Moody: "Now limb doth mingle with dissolved limb In Nature's busy old democracy, To flush the mountain laurel when she blows Sweet by the southern sea, And heart with crumbled heart Climbs in the rose." 45 ON THE MANUSCRIPTS OF GOD What the earth does for the "muddy ves- ture of decay" of man and beast, she also does for every other unsightly object on her premises. If a farmer has old stumps and tumble-down stone walls, the earth will do her best to drape them with vines, ferns, and bramble-bushes. The recent efforts to abol- ish unseemly back yards is comforting proof that mankind at last is taking the cue from the greatest of all landscape gardeners, the earth. Finally, considering the million miracles of the soil, one is as much struck by the glad alacrity with which the earth gives good gifts to her children as by her wondrous power itself. The under-mother likes to say "Yes" to her children, whether they ask for pansies or potatoes, or for clay for bricks and pottery. And, although in some states she does give a stone with the bread, if not for it, she might justify her course as an in- direct direction for raising men. Then here's to the dear enchantress, earth, whom we love in her fair green kirtle or brown; the earth, who all our lives is 46 THE WIZARDRY OF THE SOIL our most indulgent nurse, and, even when the world discards us, takes us back to her bosom to be quickened anew with the pulse of spring. 47 Ill THE REDOLENT WORLD "I^ITERE they all collected in a volume, * * what a golden treasury of poetry and romance would be the thousand records, grave, sweet, and tender, which are evoked from every one's past by the swift coupling line of olfactory association! When one considers how unrivaled, as a poetic indexer and compiler, the nose is, it seems almost a pity that its purely utilitarian service in keeping man supplied with breath should overshadow its more subtle function of opening the flood-gates of memory. One feels, moreover, the need of another name for the nose which would better fit its psychical calling. Nose does very well as a name for an organ which shares with the other outer senses the duties of a bodyguard. But as a name for that marvelous sense which registers and indexes some of the most 48 THE REDOLENT WORLD memorable passages of our experience, the word "nose" is like a copper setting for an opal. This verbal lack is not felt with re- gard to the other senses, which serve so many hours of the day as statisticians and book- keepers of the hum-drum, odorless events of life. But the nose will none of these, making its entries instead from those fertile zones of human experience which are irri- gated by poetic emotions. To the million characteristic transactions of Wall Street, as to its hard, dusty pave- ments, the nose gives no heed. But the nosegay of arbutus, which Hester wore the last time she saw Gregory ah, yes, of that it makes, perchance, a ten-page entry, in its own indelible symbols. Not only does it make a record from its own findings, but it subpoenas all the other senses, by its wonder- ful tabulating system of association. From these, it gathers the last detail of the mise-en-scene in such a case: what Hester said, how she looked, how cold her hands were, how the curtain fluttered in the window behind her, and the ominous thud of the f all- 49 ON THE MANUSCRIPTS OF GOD ing log in the fireplace. Then all these items are filed away under the sesame label of "Odor of Arbutus" Afterward, years and decades pass; but let Gregory catch but an infinitesimal whiff of the fragrance of ar- butus, or hear the word spoken, and the curtains of memory will rise on the old scene, with the instantaneous flashlight that follows the turn of an electric switch. However veiled are the devices of dear old dame nature, sooner or later her children are sure to find her out. When she gives us an organ and says, "Use this to fill your lungs," we know that it is only her Socratic way of asking us to find out what else can be done with a nose. Then, like so many of her other gifts, we find this one a veritable Aaron's rod in its power to bud and branch into all manner of undreamed-of possibilities. Even while its possessor is yet a child, this poet-sense begins its work. Like a bee, it sips something from every fragrant blossom and stores it up in the honey-cells of memory. And as the flavor of honey made 50 THE REDOLENT WORLD by bees varies widely according to the kind and combination of sweets culled, so does the flavor of the memories distilled by the nose. One of the most grievous deprivations of city-bred children comes through the losses which they suffer in fragrant associations which are the inalienable gift of the child of the country. Could any coffers buy the memories of one who during the years of childhood had inhaled the holy fragrance of early morning in the country, when the sunbeams are sipping the dew from the grasses? Nature's very breath this is, given back to heaven as pure and sweet as heaven gave it to her. But the feverish breath of the city furnishes evidence enough for an ac- curate diagnosis of its disease. Who, again, for any mercenary values would surrender his memories of forests, where hemlock, spruce, pine, balsam, and woodland blossoms mingle their incense to the early morn? Related in its wholesome purity to the fragrance of the morning and the forest is the fresh odorless odor which 51 ON THE MANUSCRIPTS OF GOD one brings in on one's clothes and person after a long walk on a cold winter day. What white is to the colors, this fragrant freshness is to the more positive perfumes. Windows that have just been washed and linen dried in the wind and sun also acquire this wholesome redolence, a redolence which one might reasonably fancy is psychically duplicated by the aura of a clean soul. Perhaps the next chromatic variation from the pure, white fragrance of cleanliness is the salt odor exhaled by the sea; for nature has the same delicately graded scale for her perfumes that she uses for the tints of blos- soms and the plumage of birds. Between the pianissimo fragrance of spring beauties and the heavy perfume of lilacs and hyacinths, she knows how to distil, from less to more, a thousand delicate variations, each producing a different psychical reac- tion. To the intimate spiritual recesses which are opened by mignonette, the locust has no key; neither has the spicy nasturtium or poppy any sesame for the holy of holies whose high priestess is the vestal lily of the 52 THE REDOLENT WORLD valley. From odors like those of pine, hem- lock, balsam, larch, and spruce, whose domi- nant effect is tonic wholesomeness, nature passes by imperceptible gradations to per- fumes that are heavy, nauseating, obnoxious, and mephitic. As a roughly representative scale of her aromatic keyboard, one might give spring beauties, new-mown hay, mignonette, ar- butus, bayberry, mint, thyme, sweet fern, sweet peas, locust, hyacinth, lilacs, magnolia, uicotina, musk, and civet. Of course the lower end of the scale may be carried on much further, even to include the noisome pestilence of scriptural record. Of all these discordant odors, however, the nostrils make only rebel entries on the pages of memory. Fortunately, the number of such entries is almost negligible in comparison with the savory salutations with which nature greets her children. In addition, moreover, to all her perfumes which seem to unlock the more spiritual doors of poetry and romance, nature has another series of odors, obviously designed 53 ON THE MANUSCRIPTS OF GOD to produce more complex effects. The fra- grance of all kinds of fruits, and of some vegetables, like celery and cucumbers, stim- ulates not only the fancy but the appetite as well. In other words, nature offers the nostrils an etherealized sample of her gift before she offers a bite. For what is an odor but a sublimated mist of its source, and hence a true sister of the cloud which is sublimated and illuminated water? One perceives a nice fitness, too, in na- ture's custom of first offering the aromatic shadow to the finer sense before offering the substance to its cruder fellow. Almost it looks a hint, also, that the recipient should likewise offer up some incense of gratitude. So it may happen, as I think it often does, that a pleasant odor stimulates centers far removed from those that are purely gusta- tory. We can thus understand that for some people a swinging censer may do what an organ prelude does for others. Notable among odors producing complex stimuli are those given out by oranges, apples, parched corn, strawberries, rasp- 54 THE REDOLENT WORLD berries and the delicate bouquet of choice wines. So distinctly pleasant and cheerful is the fragrance of apples, especially, that a dish of them is always good company to have near one. Neither does one tire so easily of the fragrance of apples as of the more pungent odors of rarer fruits a result undoubtedly premeditated by nature. Not only impersonal recollections, such as belong to the Apple of Discord, the Apples of Hesperides, and the Apples of Sodom, but far more intimate memories waken with a breath from this genial fruit. To Matilda, the odor of the rich-hued Fameuse may bring up a far-off vision of the fair-haired boy lover who used to fill her school-desk with apples of this particular variety. Or, again, some sedate judge, when he catches the aroma of a Northern Spy, may see all the details of a boyish escapade in a neighbor's orchard. The necromancy, or, rather, the leuco- mancy of the fragrance of popping corn, furnishes a captivating study of nature's very human Santa Claus habit of enhancing 55 ON THE MANUSCRIPTS OF GOD the value of some of her gifts by adding to them the element of surprise and mystery. In other realms, the pearl in the oyster, and the richly blended coloring on the backs of toads and frogs are cases in point. Whether nature, in pursuing this course, wishes merely to add zest to the pleasures she gives, or slyly to symbolize the moral that one should not too hastily judge by appearances, one may not know. But certain it is that one may make a prolonged examination of her benefactions to man in myriad lines and in every one there will be found several ex- amples of her habit of hiding the thimble where she is almost sure her children will not get warm for years or even centuries. Returning to the corn, by which the reader has been sidetracked, if one had never seen its white fragrant petals bloom in a well- shaken popper, who ever would have guessed by mere inspection of its hard, dry, odor- less kernels, that heat could instantly wiz- ardize them into deliciously redolent blos- soms? A still more striking illustration of na- 56 THE REDOLENT WORLD lure's habit of hiding aromatic treasures in most improbable places is the fragrant and costly ambergris, secreted by the intestines of the sperm whale. Another aroma of complex ministrations is the unique fragrance of maple sugar in the various stages of its evaporation between sap and the solid commodity known to com- merce. Only a visit to a sugar-camp in the woods will enable one to understand what a series of picturesque scenes from the slides of the past may be thrown upon the screen of memory by one little whiff from boiling maple syrup, as it nears the stage of sugar. Nor should one omit from the roll of olfactory honors those fumes which arise from debatable sources. Whatever inter- linear prods may be made by an unco Puri- tan sense, a truly catholic candor will not deny a tribute of praise to the secular incense which arises from a good cigar or a pot of ingratiating coffee or tea. If nature frowns upon the use of these gifts of hers, she was certainly guilty of plain coquetry in "lead- ing men on" by their seductive aromas. 57 ON THE MANUSCRIPTS OF GOD Near cousins of the fumes of nicotine are the odors of spices which lend a halo of poetry to the creative operations of the kitchen. There is always something cheer- ing in the olfactory rumor that sweet pickles, mince pies, and fruit cakes are in the mak- ing. Even a cook who may have but a short suit in amiability by association with her fragrant works, is invested, like the Vale of Tempe, with charms not her own. By the same necromancy of olfactory as- sociation, a certain street in the business sec- tion of New York always wears for the writer an aureola, because it is perfumed its entire length by the wholesale house of an importer of Indian spices. Passing from the neighboring thoroughfares to this par- ticular street, is like finding a clump of rose- bushes in a desert, or a Shakespearian sonnet in a newspaper. In addition to redolent delights shared by most of mankind, one must not forget those more sophisticated raptures known only to the nostrils of bibliomaniacs. But what un- hallowed pen may write of the poignant 58 THE REDOLENT WORLD ecstasy which is wakened by the odor of Rus- sia, calf, sheep, and morocco, or by the awe- inspiring mustiness with which a book makes solemn affidavit of its age? A sandal-wood paper-knife, also, which is a paper-knife and nothing more to him that hath no nose to smell, to the evolved nostril is a Mercurial passport to all the dream-land wonders of the Orient. Possibly some of us have hitherto ignored the significance of the services rendered by our unhonored noses. But if we will here- after take note of their findings in the realm of poetry and romance, we shall discover that the winged meditations which they rouse act as ventilators to musty thoughts and sentiments. From even this fragmentary survey of the olfactory treasures which nature has stored up for us, it is evident that though blind and deaf, if we could only smell the world, we should still pronounce it good. For nature is redolent, not alone in the sea- son when all her flowery censers are swing- ing in the breeze, but also when the autumnal 59 ON THE MANUSCRIPTS OF GOD ebb of leafy tides brings the "sweet odor of decay." Dying, the leaves and frost- touched ferns (notably the Dicksonia, or hay-scented) fill the air with a subtle mel- low fragrance, which stirs alike the embers of the past and the still glowing hopes of the future. Baffled by the sweet mystery of it all, one marvels yet again how nature from her same old mixing-bowl of brown earth, stirred by long sunbeam fingers, can produce a million different odors. And though for aeons and aeons she carries on her sweet nec- romancy under our very eyes nay, more, under our very noses we still know as little how she does it as the first man who ever yielded to the enchantment of a rose. IV FINDINGS OF THE EAR "For the world was built in order, And the atoms march in tune; Rhyme the pipe, and Tune the warder, The sun obeys them, and the moon." R. W. E. stars are still in their shining; and, in the making of giant trees, billions of acres of grass, and intermingled blossoms, there comes never a sound from the muffled machinery of nature's power-house. Who but the finest-eared may catch the feather- fall of the snow-flakes, that build their minia- ture mountains of winter and weave white draperies for the landscape ? Even the deep- est sockets and hollows of the hardest rocks were sculptured by no harsh, grating sound, but musically chiseled to a water-chant of the centuries. The few rare exceptions to nature's law of silence come much like the studied discords of music to heighten the 61 ON THE MANUSCRIPTS OF GOD effect of the harmony. Earthquakes, vol- canic eruptions, cyclones, and thunderstorms would make chaos of an orderly world if they came every day ; but, coming rarely and with sublimity, the word "noise" is too mean a word to be applied to them. Rather do they seem like the majestic gavel thumps of the Almighty to call the attention of a world grown deaf and blind to the silent, everyday miracles of creation. In the early dawn of chaos, when worlds were making, there was undoubtedly a sea- son when there were cosmic crashings not meet for ears of flesh and blood. But that did not matter, so long as there were no human ears near to be deafened by them. Before man was allowed to appear, the divine fiat, "Let there be silence," had gone forth. "The whole world is at rest and is quiet," wrote the prophet Isaiah, but the lesser world of man's creation is yet in a semichaotic condition, and the law of silence, though it has been passed in the upper house of the elect, is yet a long way from enact- ment. So there still ascends to heaven an 62 FINDINGS OF THE EAR appalling volume of noise, made by the bang, whang, clang, grate, grind, rasp, jingle, whir, whistle, and clatter which ac- company the manufacture and use of almost everything used by man, from the genera- tion of the force which runs cable cars to the simplest device for sharpening a scythe or a pair of scissors. One of the chief offenders against the pub- lic peace is the automobile with open muffler, whose blaring shriek, in season and out of season, has made any public thoroughfare a via dolorosa for the pedestrian, especially if he suffers from any disease of the ear. But movements are on foot to lessen these shocks to the nervous system shocks whose evil results have never been adequately measured. Little by little, man is trying to banish, as nature does, audible or other evidence of effort from his works. Those who watch this gradual diminution of noise from the operation of men's inven- tions can no longer doubt that the time is coming when man will have made his ma- chinery and the streets of his cities so noise- 63 ON THE MANUSCRIPTS OF GOD less that the transition to fields Elysian will be no abrupt change to totally different con- ditions, but a natural and easy gradation to a blessed country where even the jarring sounds audible only to the spirit will be absent. Rubber-footed tires, asphalt pave- ments, and the subdued hum of the modern sewing-machine (compared with the fearful threshing-tread of those of other days), all tell the same story. Man has begun to dis- cover that no machine is perfected until it makes no noise. In nature's world, which is God's, the un- surpassed model for noiseless perfection of mechanism is the human body, in which all the parts are fitly joined together so that a hundred complex processes are going on simultaneously in this marvelous labora- tory, and yet no sound is heard. Bones, blood, hair, nails, tissues, and countless secretions are being manufactured in abso- lute silence. Even the semi-voluntary move- ments of the body involved in breathing, bending the fingers, legs, and toes, are noise- lessly performed; but in the still finer forces 64 FINDINGS OF THE EAR of mind and heart, which are stronger than all the other powers of man's world, one finds the acme of noiselessness. For who can hear a thought, or catch the varying heart-vibra- tions, which make or mar the happiness of the world? and who but a spirit can hear the swift, wingless flight of imagination or the firm, footless tread of the will? Soundless, also, are nearly all the material translations of what is called genius in man. Whatever speaks from the soul of the painter is transferred silently to his canvas with the soft strokes of a brush. The author's fancies, no less quietly, are clad with the gauze of verbal vestments whose fabric is woven of symbols as fittingly intangible as the thoughts they cover. Even in sculp- ture, though the first rough outlining re- quires the noise of chipping, all the fine finishing work must be done with so fine a touch that it is next to noiseless. The other sister art, music, above all, triumphs over noise by means of regulating irregular vibra- tions so that noise is changed to a concord of sweet sounds. 65 ON THE MANUSCRIPTS OF GOD In society's long-accepted canon that no lady or gentleman is ever loud-voiced or boisterous, one discovers again the instinctive human protest against noise a protest that grows stronger the higher one mounts in the scale of civilization. "The loud laugh that speaks the vacant mind" speaks a great many other vacancies as well; and the same is true of the loud, harsh, strident voice or the voice of the alarm-clock variety, whose tones are delivered in a jerky staccato. "Don't you think," asks the heroine in "Aylwin," "the poor birds must sometimes feel very much distressed at hearing the voices of men and women, especially when they all talk together? The rooks mayn't mind, but I'm afraid the blackbirds and thrushes can't like it." In every department of knowledge and speculation, the loud accent of certainty is giving way to a more mellow tone of modesty. In obedience to this beneficent law of evolution, the modern sane and quiet style of pulpit oratory has taken the place of the old style of ecclesiastical eloquence, in 66 FINDINGS OF THE EAR which a prodigious amount of thundersome declamation and desk-thumping was deemed necessary a notion whose logic resembles that of the man who imagines that emphatic oaths give force to his remarks. Some people with emotional requirements, which nothing but loud hosannas can satisfy, find occasion for alarm in the quieter tone and temper of the modern pulpit; but such fearful ones should meditate on the words of Isaiah, who declared that the effect of righteousness is quietness. It is only among people so benighted that righteousness comes as an exciting novelty that religious fervor gives noisy evidence of itself, like the bub- bling fermentation of yeast in liquors; but, when the yeast has thoroughly worked, the bubbling and fermentation cease. The same force which has been making for quiet strength in the field of religion will eventually abolish noise from every depart- ment of man's activity ; but, at present, man still shakes his baby rattle in the calm pres- ence of his mother nature. Some of her own lapses from gentle decorum must never- 67 ON THE MANUSCRIPTS OF GOD theless be recorded: namely, the bray of the donkey, the hysterical staccato of hens, the metallic meditations of the guinea fowl, and the voice of the turtle-dove, unsoftened by scriptural association. But compare with the deafening turmoil of any great city the noble serenity of a forest, or the dreamy murmur of grasses on the meadows and plains. In the gentle andante of wind-blown grasses, nature seems to be practicing mod- ulations from pure silence into the first key of audible music, though the faint sh, sh, of falling snowflakes possibly comes before the grassy measures in her chromatic scale. Continuing her modulations from the songs of the meadow grasses, nature passes to the rustling cadences of the cornfield, where she not only fills the ear with never- to-be-forgotten melodies, but casts her spell over the other senses as well. Waving her invisible baton, she sets all the purple-tas- seled heads bowing to each other, in stately minuet, while the rustling of the long, dry leaves carries out the illusion of the rhythmic flutter of silken petticoats. This 68 FINDINGS OF THE EAR is only a beginning of nature's improvisa- tions on what might be called her dry scales. Still deeper and sweeter are the harmon- ies which she evokes from her liquid meas- ures. In the pattering rain, which is really only a liquid transposition of her lullaby of the leaves, she sings us a cradle-song; in the rill, a simple folk-song; in the brook, a slightly fuller melody; in the river, a four- part hymn with chorus; in the waterfall, a solemn chant; in the cataract, a glorious magnificat; while in the ocean tides and breakers she gives us her masterpiece, for whose orchestral performance she engages the leadership of the moon. Nor does nature stop with what might be called the tuneless passages of her classic music; for who but she composed the ex- quisite melodies which pour from the throats of the wood and hermit thrushes, the song sparrow, bluebird, lark, and bobolink? And, once again, with the throats of myriad birds, one finds our mother of infinite variety multiplying and adding to the effects 69 ON THE MANUSCRIPTS OF GOD wrought by water. Between the pure, spiritual notes of the wood-thrush and the mechanical iteration of the oven-bird and red-eyed vireo, she gives us hundreds of melodies, sweet, rollicking, ecstatic, weird, pensive, melancholy, serene, and tender. In the same class with the instinct-taught music of birds belongs the merry, aimless whistling of men and boys who have the cheerful dis- position of a bobolink. Here, as we approach the merging line where human voices are half nature's and half art's, one may fitly consider some of the musical triumphs of man. Yet before any purely audible effects receive attention, ac- knowledgment should be made to some of those unheard melodies which are sweeter. Notable among these is the still music of poetry, which may reach the inward ear through the eye alone. Only a cursory glance at the metrical treasures of the world proves how easily a master spirit may paral- lel in whatever medium he chooses to use any effect wrought by a sister art. Though veiled by its utilitarian ends, 70 FINDINGS OF THE EAR every great language is a marvelous instru- ment of a million octaves, made through long centuries and by unnumbered races, in instinct and habits, perchance, as wide asunder as the poles. Every thought and emotion of man, from the depths of his despair to the summit of his highest ecstasy and aspiration, has added its note and half- note, stop and pedal, to this enchanted in- strument. Not only man, with all the ebb and flow of the tides of his life, and all the lower animals, beast, bird, and fish, but every beauty of nature has echoed itself into its endless gamut, enriching and mellowing it, like man, with an untold number of associa- tions. Though the use of this marvelous instru- ment is free to the whole world, only those who have harmony in themselves can bring harmony out of it. One man sits down to use this most wonderful of all instruments, and desecrates its latent music by playing with one finger the cheapest kind of rag- time music of language. Another, like a Pan-blessed hermit, around whom all the 71 ON THE MANUSCRIPTS OF GOD birds of the forest hover, knows how to call forth all those throbbing, singing, sighing words that wake the haunting echoes of poetry, as they were wakened in Alfred Noyes's poem on "Drake": "Bring on the pride and pomp of old Castile, Blazon the skies with royal Aragon, The purple pomp of priestly Rome bring on; And let her censers dusk the dying sun, The thunder of her banners on the breeze Following Sidonia's glorious galleon Deride the sleeping thunder of the seas, While twenty thousand warriors chant her litanies." To the man who uses only the hardware receptacles of thought and feeling, poetry is only an unpractical habit of stringing words together to make them rhyme; but the poet is justified of his own, who know that his verbal magnetism means a sensitive and accurate perception of the chromatic tones of thought and feeling produced by all the reactions of life. The other profile of this fact was given by some one (whose name I forget) who said, "If you see deeply enough, you see 72 FINDINGS OF THE EAR musically," a truth more beautifully stated by George Eliot in her most inspired mood: "May I reach That purest heaven, be to other souls The cup of strength in some great agony, Enkindle generous ardor, feel pure love, Beget the smiles that have no cruelty Be the sweet presence of a good diffused, And in diffusion ever more intense. So shall I join the choir invisible Whose music is the gladness of the world." With eyes thus anointed with the dews of poesy, one sees that the unheard melodies of the world receive continual contributions from all those wholesome agencies (man's or nature's) which might be called the tun- ing forces of the universe. Chief est among them is love, which has been known to work marvels, as Paul testified it would, with the most discordant instruments. Working also in the same interests of silent harmony are all the forms of modern psychotherapy, which attempt to produce harmony in the body by tuning the soul. Among the varied phases of this movement 73 ON THE MANUSCRIPTS OF GOD is an interesting revival of the ancient prac- tice of using music to heal disease, mental and physical. Without intending to bring any charge of plagiarism against the recent methods of treatment, one may call attention to the fact that David successfully used the same method with Saul. When the soul of that mercurial king was disquieted within him, David, with his harp, accomplished what an indefinite number of soft answers might have failed to do. The Greeks, also, successfully treated rheumatism with a con- cord of sweet sounds ; and it is recorded that Terpander, with his harp, quelled an insur- rection in Sparta. The advantage of substituting music for the soft answer can easily be shown. In us- ing the latter method, it may be difficult to modulate the pitch and quality of the words used. An unlucky inflection on an appar- ently insignificant word of an otherwise per- fect soft answer may entirely destroy its power to heal. On the other hand, a pensive melody on a harp or guitar would not be sub- ject to the hazards of accent which thought 74 FINDINGS OF THE EAR must undergo in passing through language to the mind of another. Passing to a survey of the mechanical de- vices for producing audible music, one finds man giving abundant proof that he has in- herited from mother nature her gift of working miracles. Witness the evolution of the modern piano from the simple mono- chord, not to mention the large number of stringed instruments and the more vocifer- ous devices used by brass bands. Weighing the effects produced by all these instruments, one discovers that even in their minute detail man has duplicated nature's methods; for precisely what she does with her stops and pedals he does with his. Be- tween the simple music of the lute and that of an orchestra, one may get approximately the same range of variation which nature achieves between the music of a rill and her ocean oratorios. In the violin, one may claim that man has bettered his instruction, establishing a rivalry which might well make nature look to her laurels, were she so fool- ish as to care for such baubles. As it is, all 75 ON THE MANUSCRIPTS OF GOD her performances, instead, look like delicate hints and suggestions to lure her children to work miracles with her. "Dear children," she seems to say, "hear me play a wind fugue on the pine trees or through the reeds and grasses, or listen to this sylvan chant which I play with falling waters and rustling leaves. My perform- ance is nothing beside what you can do if you will only work out the various sugges- tions which I give you. When you have elaborated all these suggestions, even those which I make so softly that the outer ear misses them entirely, you may inherit a king- dom of heaven of your own making." Man, listening with his outer and his in- ward ear, year after year, generation after generation, to these luring hints of his fair mother, has added each year something to the melody and harmony of the world; nor is he more troubled than nature herself be- cause his miracles, like hers, seldom excite any wonder after the waning of a single moon. What did it matter, to the inspired man who Burbanked a tree and a cat into 76 FINDINGS OF THE EAR a violin, that his divine instrument is now a matter of as little wonder to the average man as primroses to the Peter Bells? Most beautifully, it would seem, nature, along with the other hints which she gives the man of true creative intelligence, gives always a clear perception of the fact that he is only a transmitter of light not his own. So, in direct proportion to the vital value of his contribution, he must give to the world his instrument or his invention with a selfless compulsion, as the flower gives its fragrance or the bird its song. 77 OUR BROTHERS, THE TREES "All overwrought with branch-like traceries In which there is religion and the mute Persuasion of unkindled melodies." Shelley. \ NY one who has watched the tree sur- -** geons at work upon their arboreal pa- tients in our parks, must have been struck with the similarity of the methods which they use and those known to thousands of hos- pitals all over the land. In springtime, many a tree on Boston Common looks as if it had undergone a very complex lapa- rotomy, and one almost shivers at the thought that the operation was performed without the use of anaesthetics. Sometimes the disembowelment of the tree is so extensive that the unsightly remains hardly seem to justify the time and skill spent upon them. But when these clever 78 OUR BROTHERS, THE TREES surgeons have used their disinfectants, cement, and bandages, and done all that hu- man hands can do, dear old nurse nature takes charge of the patients, dresses their wounds, and gives her wonderful cordials, manufactured by sun, air, earth, and cloud. So faithfully does she administer her hourly potions from the vials of April, May, and June, that another year we shall scarcely recognize the maimed trees, with their wounds all healed, and brave in the green garments of summer. Bravo! one cries. Even a wider social union than Burns craved has at last been recognized, and the trees also have been elected to the Larger Brotherhood of Man, and granted the full protective rights of citizens. But fewer years ago than one likes to admit, trees were commonly regarded as potential lumber, and a man would glance at a noble grove and, seeing neither the grove nor its trees, ask, "About how many foot of timber will that cut?" very much as poverty- stricken parents sordidly compute the value 79 ON THE MANUSCRIPTS OF GOD of their children in terms of the deadly pit- tances which they may earn in some mill or factory. Now the world is beginning to awake to the crime of sacrificing the child for its labor or the tree for its timber, when each has priceless values which may be destroyed by the blind and greedy god of commercialism. Like man himself, trees have had their dark ages and years of oppression. In the gray dawn of civilization, when man's ex- pression of himself was almost wholly physi- cal, the tree shared his savage estate, min- istering the crude necessities which were de- manded of it food from fruit and nut trees, fuel, shelter, and material for bows and arrows. As time went on, each generation demanded more of the tree, until so-called civilized man could turn in no direction with- out seeing in his belongings some bounty of the forest. The house in which he lived, its floors and panels of beautifully grained wood, the chairs he sat on, the bed he slept in, the table at which he ate or upon which he wrote, the corks of his bottles, the material 80 OUR BROTHERS, THE TREES part of his books, magazines, newspapers, and sometimes his stationery, were all gifts of the trees. The timber of his boats, ships, and of thousands of machines and hand-tools for every trade, and the wooden parts of pianos, organs, violins, and other musical instru- ments, came from the munificence of the forest. Not only its body did the tree sur- render to man, but all its choice ichors, known to the commercial world as turpen- tine, tar, resin, tung oil, varnish, rubber, cane and maple sugar, and medicinal contribu- tions like those of the eucalyptus tree. Even with the end of man's life, the services of the tree did not end. Protecting him still with its wooden cloak, and thereby dulling the edge of the mourner's grief, it went down with his body into the earth to share its reso- lution into dust. Yet all these gifts did not exhaust the benefactions of the forest. To the materially minded it could give only material gifts, yet it stood almost wistfully ready, one might fancy, to give, O, so much more and better 81 ON THE MANUSCRIPTS OF GOD things to those who would only ask for them. At last they came, those other askers, those who began to see the whole tree, the whole forest, and not its timber alone. Among them were the poets of each genera- tion, a small band at first, but continually increasing till the eyes of many were anointed and they too saw that the tree was made not for a servant only, but as a com- panion and friend to man, destined to grow in influence, and give him inspiration and vision. In a word, men began to worship the soul of the tree as well as its body, an at- titude in harmony with the modern watch- word of marriage, when it is a mating above that of the lower animals. As in the relationship between members of the human race too it was discovered that the comradeship and influence of different trees and different forests were infinitely varied. No two trees produce the same effect upon us. Neither do any two forests weave the same spell over us. Yet from every tree virtue of some sort goes out to the 82 OUR BROTHERS, THE TREES man or woman who will be wise enough to sit at its feet. While all trees are good company, some are much more affable than others, and make their appeal to more of our senses. To the writer the maple, especially the sugar maple, has always seemed one of the most motherly of trees, a suggestion borne out not only by its full matronly figure and rich autumnal tints, but also by the maternal largess which allows a springtime lechery of the sweetness of its veins. But who would think of ask- ing for a pail of sap from a Lombardy pop- lar, in her close-fitting hobble, and "touch me not" written in every line of her figure, whose angular uprightness has, neverthe- less, a charm all its own. With her ever-sky- ward glance, the Lombardy is a bosky nun, or a personification of Wordsworth's "Ode to Duty." Or might she be called an arbor- esque Laertes, pointing others the steep and thorny path to heaven? Related to the Lombardy, as a gentle grandniece might be to a more austere and rigidly righteous grandaunt, the white birch 83 ON THE MANUSCRIPTS OF GOD radiates an atmosphere of innocence which entitles her to be called the vestal virgin of the forest. Could any one sit at ease in a company of white birches except with clean hands and a clear heart? But one must make the most of this specialized virtue of the white birch, which is hers at the expense of much emotional range. With all her aura of virtue she is felt to be a young thing, and she never grows to be very old, and hence is without the experience which begets sturdy strength of character. One therefore misses in her society the full satisfaction of com- plete companionship felt in the presence of an old oak or elm, whose doughty fiber was wrought by years, perhaps centuries, of re- sistance to all the buffeting winds of the world. Neither is there any call of deep to deep in the society of a frivolous poplar, the but- terfly belle of the forest. One would like her for a partner for one or two dances, per- haps, but not for a life-mate; and one would never go to her in time of trouble, as to an understanding elm, oak, or hemlock. 84 OUR BROTHERS, THE TREES Miss Melancholy Willow, too, one would rather call upon than visit, though one must admire the subtle adaptation of her flowing draperies to the rhythmic brooks of which she is the tutelar divinity, as her roots are of their banks. Again, strangely duplicating the excesses of the human race, some trees, like the horse- chestnut, forbid any close intimacy because of their aromatic intemperance. On the other hand, the pine, balsam, spruce, hem- lock, larch, and linden observe that nice dis- crimination between the little more and the little less, and fetter us by one more sense than can the tree without fragrance. Other trees, with long pendant branches, seem to invite us to come and be cuddled, while others, like the prim and reserved bald cypress, as plainly hold us at a distance. The proportion of such trees, however, is rela- tively small, and it is a pity that mankind has not accepted nature's decree on this point; but, in addition to trees which were born prim, others have had primness thrust upon them by the landscape gardeners. 85 ON THE MANUSCRIPTS OF GOD From all such manicured and strait- jack- eted specimens the true nature-lover turns away, and seeks instead the "sweet disorder" which, in a tree's attire, as in a woman's, doth more bewitch than when "art is too precise in every part," if one may adapt Herrick's lines to the occasion. A tree is occasionally seen which has been trained into such drab conventionality that a man might feel obliged to wear a dress-suit when calling upon her, or else apologize for his negligee. Left to themselves and their own tangled charms, trees riot in all manner of fascinat- ing vagaries and wilful whims, even carry- ing their individuality into eccentricity, as one sees it in the rheumatic contortions of the apple-tree, the serpentine trunk of the weep- ing sophora, the angelica-tree, or devil's walking-stick, and the form and dropsical bark of the elephant-wood, with the bare twigs of its branches covered with a multi- tude of beautiful red blossoms. Trees with tumors and hunchbacks may also be seen by anyone who will follow any country road long enough. On the same highway to the 86 OUR BROTHERS, THE TREES Land of Heart's Desire, the writer has seen very exact counterparts of Meg Merrilies and Caliban. For there are freaks in the woodland world as there are among beasts, birds, and fishes, in accordance with Nature's habit of illustrating the grotesque in every department of her creation. In a word, nearly every adjective applica- ble to the human body would fit some tree. Even the mental and moral qualities of man- kind find their parallels among our brothers of the forest. Mr. Winthrop Packard tells us that the larch is a mugwump, its cones voting with the evergreens and its leaves with the deciduous trees. Something like a gregarious instinct too is shown by trees like the beech, while others hate the vulgar crowd and hold themselves aloof, a habit which is a necessity to an elm, if it is to show all the compelling lines of its beauty. Trees, then, like men, were not created equal, but, like the stars, differ from each other in glory. They have their distinctly aristocratic, middle, and lower classes. In the first belong the aristocracy of birth the 87 ON THE MANUSCRIPTS OF GOD "oldest families," like the baobabs, the yews, oaks (whom Keats called "those green-robed senators"), limes, cedars, Oriental planes, the sequoias, and Indian fig, or banyan, whose bending twigs take root until it builds itself "Into a sylvan temple arched aloof With airy aisles and living colonnades." One of these Indian figs, the Cubeer Burr, on an island in the river Nerbudda will ac- commodate in its shade seven thousand peo- ple, and feed them with its small scarlet figs, and furnish bird-music from a thousand warblers in its branches. Another distinguished representative of the first families is the maiden-hair tree, or Girikgo biloba, which traces its ancestry to the primary rocks, and boasts of ancestors which played highly important roles in Mesozoic times. Corresponding also to our aristocracy of brains is the sylvan aristocracy of grains. For, like men, trees may be grouped accord- ing to outward and visible signs or by their 88 OUR BROTHERS, THE TREES inward graces. By the latter classification high rank is accorded to the mahogany, oak, ash, Circassian walnut, ebony, and bird's-eye maple. But birches belong to "the upper middle class," according to the estimate of Mr. H. E. Parkhurst. In distinctly "higher circles" are the beeches, which proclaim their rank by the slender, lance-like shape of their leaf -buds, the simple, classic lines of their thin, silky leaves, and the unadorned beauty of their trunks, limbs, and twigs in winter. There are trees which depend upon their leafage for most of their charm, as Mark Twain tells us some women depend upon their clothes for most of theirs. But the beech can be naked and not ashamed. More- over, was it not long ago admitted to pa- trician circles by the Roman orator, Pas- sienus Crispus, who poured wine on its roots? If any tree belongs to the lower middle class, or plebeian rank, it should be the dwarf juniper and yet, much might be said in praise of that ground-loving tree. Thus are we confronted by the world-old problem of 89 ON THE MANUSCRIPTS OF GOD those who see a great brotherhood, but can- not and would not escape the difference 'twixt man and man. Neither would one escape the difference 'twixt tree and tree, to find the boredom of monotony. Like the Alps, the trees of wonderful girth and stature may awe us with their sublimity, but they do not draw us with love as may some lesser tree. We need both emotions, though not for the same length of time. The trees we love are those that will come and live with us, stretch their arms protectingly over our homes, and silently weave them- selves into the tenderest associations of our lives. A home without trees around it is like a literature without poetry in it. Even a very humble house nestled among trees warms the cockles of the heart as a treeless mansion cannot. The old roof -tree becomes a member of the family and, like the rest of the family, is carefully cherished and watched over whenever its health is men- aced by storms, moths, beetles, or any of the ills which trees are heir to. How deeply such trees may strike their 90 OUR BROTHERS, THE TREES roots into the human heart is known only to those who have lived on intimate terms with some of their sylvan brothers from childhood. Nor can one measure the fine spiritual losses of the man or woman who has missed the individual tuition of single trees or the higher education of a forest. For every tree, in a greater or less degree, is begirt with mystery, and lures the mind beyond the close-cropped circle in which it is too often tethered by the petty interests of life. This influence was felt centuries ago in the East, and finds quaint expression in the Varaka Purana, which promises heavenly bliss to the planter of certain trees. "He never goes to hell," asserts the Purana, "who plants an asyatha, or a pichumarda, or a banian, or ten jessamines, or two pome- granates, or a pachamra, or five mangoes." Even the superstitions of India show that a tree in that country is regarded as some- thing more than its wood-fibered body. Ac- cording to one tradition, the holes in trees are the doors through which the special spirits of those trees pass, a fancy which finds 91 ON THE MANUSCRIPTS OF GOD an interesting duplicate in the German be- lief that elves pass through the holes of trees, and that certain ailments, especially of hand and foot, may be cured by contact with these holes. Legends like these, and still more all the tree-begotten inspirations of poetry, make it clear that the myth-makers and poets need trees and forests as a nesting- place for their fancies quite as much as the birds and squirrels need them for their own dainty dwellings. Yet with all the rich dream-stuff which may be harvested from the forest or any single tree of it, comparatively little has been reaped for literature thus far, and most of that little has been garnered by the poets of America. This statement is made in serene certainty of the dissent of those who have made no comparative study of the subject and of those who cannot detect literary merit unless it wears a foreign label. The writer, however, is willing to be convinced of error if any one can match, by a foreign author on the same theme, Bryant's "Forest Hymn," Emerson's "Wood Notes," as well 92 OUR BROTHERS, THE TREES as many of his shorter poems on the same subject, Lowell's "Under the Willows," and many of the tree-inspired lines of Larder's "Sunrise" and the "Marshes of Glynn." As might be expected, many of Whittier's lines also beat with a pulse strongly ac- celerated by the forest: "Keep who will the city's alleys, Take the smooth-shorn plain Give to us the cedar valleys, Rocks and hills of Maine! In our Northland wild and woody, Let us still have part: Rugged nurse and mother sturdy, Hold us to thy heart! "Where are mossy carpets better Than the Persian weaves, And than Eastern perfumes sweeter Seem the fading leaves; And a music wild and solemn, From the pine-tree's height, Rolls its vast and sea-like volume On the wind of night." Illustrating another phase of the give- and-take which attends a close rapport be- ON THE MANUSCRIPTS OF GOD tween man and his sylvan brothers are Lowell's lines from "Under the Willows": "Myself was lost, Gone from me like an ache, and what remained Became a part of the universal joy. My soul went forth, and, mingling with the tree, Danced in the leaves." Undoubtedly, Wordsworth or Shelley might have written a better "Forest Hymn" than Bryant's, had they been as strongly moved by the forest as was the American poet. But the point here made is simply that no forest or tree apparently so moved them, though the ardent tree-lover is moved by everything about a tree. Like an en- amored youth who finds trivial no fact con- nected with his sweetheart, the tree-lover is responsive to every trait, feature, and habit of his sylvan divinities. The masterful grip of their roots in the soil; their smooth, rough, or deep-fissured bark; the wonderful grains of their wood; their slight or stately figures; the strange ichors in their veins; the lavish bounty of those that give nuts and fruit ; the 94 OUR BROTHERS, THE TREES cut and color of their leaves, and their beau- tiful tracery against the dome of blue; their soothing carpet of shade on the grass, or the swaying shadow on a curtain, made by a leafy branch at the will of the wind all these and scores of other charms fugitive and perennial spell the infinite variety by which a tree holds us in thrall. But most of all, the tree-lover delights in the empire of wildness which it is the prov- ince of the kings of the forest to maintain against all the heedless encroachments of civilization. How invaluable this wildness is to the world is little understood by the Philistine, who, if he could, would barber all the forests of their captivating individu- ality, and leave dear old nature never so much as a fairy ring where she might let down her hair, and go barefooted. In a city we may tolerate a park ready for callers, with all its trees shampooed and in full coiffure, and its grass looking as if the last finishing touch had been given with a fine-toothed comb. But never a light-footed fairy or sylvan god shall we find in such a 95 ON THE MANUSCRIPTS OF GOD place, nor any muse whose dictation will not sound like a phonograph. The paradox of the situation lies in the fact that the more civilized man becomes, the more he needs and craves a great background of forest wildness, to which he may return like a contrite prodigal from the husks of an artificial life. Many of us know that indefinable and ir- remediable ennui which is felt in the society of a man or woman whose mind is intellectu- ally "level and free from stones, half mow- ing and half tillage," and the latter some- times intensive a mind with no wild wood- lands or rocky pastures, where one might stumble on a bubbling spring of fancy or a briar-rose of sentiment. Precisely the same kind of ennui, only on a cosmic scale, we shall feel if our wild woods, and the uneven coun- try which is their vestibule, are little by little abolished. When men have recognized that the forest is a great standing army, divinely appointed to protect the human race not only from drought, flood, and famine, but from their counterparts in the intellectual and spirit- 96 OUR BROTHERS, THE TREES ual world, perhaps some of the time and money now spent on battleships and destruc- tive armies will be diverted to the mainte- nance of our beautiful and peaceful de- fenders, the trees. As a small thankoffering to many trees in whose companionship the writer has felt an unalloyed joy for which the rushing world knows no formula, the following poem to a king of the forest is gratefully dedicated: To A SEQUOIA Imperial brother of the ages gray, By right divine enthroned, we hail thee king. For such compelling majesty is thine That wanton-handed Time forbears to mar Thy godlike form, more fain to bid the years Augment the power that scepters thee with awe. So wait the vassal centuries on thee: With golden sunbeams weaving earth and air, With dew and raindrops weaving light, till thou Art clad in glory's wonder-garments broad Wrought out upon the silent looms of God. And still for thee the unworn shuttles move, That plied while ancient empires rose and fell, And all the shifting pageantry of time Dissolved in mist upon oblivion's shore. 97 ON THE MANUSCRIPTS OF GOD Nor kingly power alone thy vested right; High priest thou art of temples rarer far Than all the roof-bound chiselings of man, And round thy green-draped altars breezes swing A hundred flowery censers sweet: the rose, Campanula, and violet and white, White lilies set in mossy banks of green. Gay surpliced birds thy choristers that sing To far-off waterfalls and mountain streams, Intoning sylvan melodies divine. Sublime ambassador from heavenly courts, Though thine the speech transcending mortal ear, With mystic sense endow our holden eyes That we with vision purified may see The living God who veils himself in thee. 98 VI PASTURES FAIR AND LARGE \\THAT the "keeping-room" is to the * * rest of the house, the pasture is to the rest of the farm. Its very atmosphere sug- gests a friendly largess and hospitality, as any horse, cow, or sheep would testify could any of them be called on the witness stand. Over all the cultivated fields "Mustn't touch" is written for the stock as plainly as it is for the children in the rooms which hold their mothers' choicest bric-a-brac. But in a pasture you need not keep off the grass; instead, you may sit on it, lie on it, or eat it as may be your need or habit. The wheat-field may receive formal standing calls, but it offers you no seat, and is too busy to entertain callers until the harvesting season is over, and then one finds it too worn out to be very entertaining. Not so the genial, democratic pasture, which is at home 99 ON THE MANUSCRIPTS OF GOD to any living creature at any time, come he to feed his flocks or his dreams. A cultivated field of oats or barley has a charm all its own, enhanced when the wind passes over it and ripples it into poetry. As a field of oats or barley it may be well-nigh faultless, yet its perfection after a time nudges us with that old maxim, "For every- thing you gain you lose something," and with that key-word comes the remembrance of a pine-bordered pasture on the hillside above the cultivated field, a pasture whose wide outlook, and rugged profile of rocks and bowlders, wild berries and ferns make it far richer in the diversity of its suggestion than any cultivated field. The shrewd business man may be lured by advertisements of "level fields free from rocks and stones," but the eye of the dreamer is caught and held by a minor clause which mentions a "spring-watered" or "brook- watered pasture with woodland adjoining." For him the very word "pasture" is rich in gentle and poetic associations, wholly un- stirred by other words which apply to any 100 PASTURES FAIR AND LARGE other kind of land. Without the background of the pasture where David fed his flocks, should we ever have had the twenty-third psalm, or the pastoral notes that echo so tenderly through many another? And what need a pasture mind if a field below it raise a thousand barrels of oats or corn, when on the pasture's hillside a shepherd-king har- vested an immortal psalm which has re- freshed the spiritually thirsty for nearly three thousand years? All the other cleared land of a farm is pre- occupied with industries, like plowing, har- rowing, sowing, weeding, and harvesting. But a pasture offers leisure to meditate and entertain visions. This may have been one of the reasons why the wonderful tale of the Nativity was told to shepherds, who were apparently deemed prepared to hear so great tidings. One can hardly fancy an angel making such an announcement to a man whose business was so engrossing that his mind held no fair pasture lands, where the flocks of fancy and imagination might wander and graze. 101 ON THE MANUSCRIPTS OF GOD Something in the very furnishings of a pasture gives the friendly invitation to tarry awhile and muse and wonder. In other places, winding roads may lure you on and on with the promise of what lies beyond their next curves. But a pasture says gently but plainly, "Sit awhile," offering you your choice of hundreds of rare seats, like pul- pited bowlders, lichen-covered rocks, low stone walls, moss-covered logs and stumps, or rustic divans made by wild apple-trees, which coquettishly thrust out their arms at right angles to their trunks. Lacking these, there is always the earth, the very lap of nature, which is sure to hold you. In a word, a pasture, like June, is "full of invitations sweet," and finely varied to meet your quest. If you are hungry, a pasture may offer you wild strawberries, raspberries, blueberries, blackberries, or huckleberries, according to the season. Some even have grumpy but kindly old apple-trees hidden away in odd corners of their storerooms to tempt one to dare all that may become a boy. Chestnuts, butternuts, beechnuts, and hazel- 102 PASTURES FAIR AND LARGE nuts are also among the refreshments fur- nished by many a resourceful pasture. If you are thirsty, a bubbling spring or brook will not only slake your thirst, but revive a score of fragrant memories, long parched perhaps by the drought of years. Nor does the hospitality of a pasture cease with its offerings of creature comforts. Most pastures, being set on a hill, command a finer view than any other part of a farm. From one particularly versatile pasture known to the writer one gets a view of a continuous line of mountain peaks and slopes on nearly three fourths of the horizon. Over these, from the reel of nights and days, pass the wonderful moving pictures of cloudland and starland, with f oreglow and afterglow, which weave, over the east and west, royal crim- son, rose, and golden draperies, well fit to be the very curtains of heaven. All these chang- ing glories of dawn and sunset, and the ever- shifting mountain shadows, purple, blue, and gray, go with the freedom of the pasture. Then, knowing it is not good for man to keep his face continually skyward, nature 103 ON THE MANUSCRIPTS OF GOD turns downs her celestial lights and makes a gray day, that man may look downward, where the little earth-lights shine. And of these, where may one find more in their wild native grace than in a pasture, which matches its democratic hospitality to man and beast in its catholic tolerance of all manner of lowly blossoms, plebeian weeds, and down- trodden shrubs, which are exiled from the rest of the farm because they "spoil the grass." The outcast thistle, the slighted steeple- bush, milkweed, mouse-ear, bracken, and mullein-stalk find the pasture a veritable Home for the Friendless of plantdom, and in its large and charitable air they flourish and weave for themselves such gracious gar- ments of beauty that they seem no longer despised weeds, but as worthy of our wonder and admiration as the most pampered flower in our gardens. Where else so abundantly as in an equal-suffrage pasture does a thistle show us the richest hues of its royal purple, and the silver-white down of its winged seeds? And where so advantageously as on 104 PASTURES FAIR AND LARGE some hill-slope of such a kindly pasture may the mullein set hundreds of its blossom-lit candlesticks to piece out the waning light of summer? Here too the sweetbrier rose, queen of all wildings, holds her rustic court, for her sake alone making any pasture worthy of a pilgrimage to it. A sweetbrier may now and then salute you from a roadside, but how can one have any privacy with her along the highway, with passers-by likely to interrupt the rarest secrets she may have for one's ear? No, indeed, it is only in a pasture that you may hold long and inti- mate communings with this shy divinity of flowerdom. Such a privilege was once mine for weeks in New Hampshire country, where grew four most captivating sweetbrier bushes, whose dainty pale blossoms were so thor- oughly protected by long stalwart thorns that to "love the wood-rose and leave it on its stalk" was less a virtue than the Falstaf- fian part of valor. In spite of its body- guard, however, the incense of the sweetbrier 105 ON THE MANUSCRIPTS OF GOD has greater power to attract than its thorns have to repel. One feels irresistibly drawn to get as near as possible to the very soul of a blossom whose breath is one of the most delicately sweet odors in all the world of petals. As we seem to get closer to our friends by a hand-clasp, so we instinctively try to get nearer a fragrant blossom by holding it to our nostrils, or by pressing its leaves. To please a captious poet, we may be willing to leave all but one of the blossoms on its stalk; for, unlike many other plants with fragrant blossoms, the sweetbrier does not specialize its fragrance in its petals, but is sweet through and through, branch, leaf, and flower, so that one can get almost the same redolence by pressing the leaves of the sweet- brier as that exhaled by her petals. With this redolence, which is part of the evolved vocabulary of floral Esperanto, the blossoms manage to say as many different things and in as many different ways as the poets, from one-octave to eight-octave range. To learn Floralese one must adopt the same methods 106 PASTURES FAIR AND LARGE used in acquiring any other language, namely, daily association with those who speak it. Naturally, the closer and longer the association, the more perfect the mastery of the language. But a sweetbrier is such an inspired tutor that in a few weeks one may learn more from her than in months under the tuition of a stolid instructor like the rub- ber-plant. Like all great teachers, this Hypatia of the pasture gives instruction by giving herself, by the charm which is the radio-activity of her personality, chemically speaking. After enough causeries with her to catch her code, one receives the suggestion that, if absolute purity, innocence, and gentleness could express themselves in redolent terms, their fragrance would be that of the sweet- brier. Other roses there are whose fragrance, texture, and multi-petaled beauty can "tease us out of thought;" but, compared with the exquisite simplicity and fragrance of the sweetbrier, their perfume hints of the so- phistications of a hothouse. Deep-tinted, matronly roses one fancies 107 ON THE MANUSCRIPTS OF GOD may thrive on plain rain-water and the full- est beams of the sun. But the petals of the pale sweetbrier, so ethereal in tint, texture, and fragrance, give one the impression that they have drunken only of the pure distilla- tion of dewdrops, and taken their color from the first damask glow of the dawn. This extremely virginal effect in the aura of the sweetbrier is heightened by her strong de- fensive armor of thorns. Touch me not or "Ich stecke dich," is as plainly the motto of her house as though written in all the annals of heraldry. Of all flowers, she seems the most "unspotted from the world/' and we would always keep her so. To that end may all friendly pastures grant her on their hills entailed rights while grass shall grow and water run. Having done obeisance, as is fitting, to the queen of the pasture, one may consider other humble-minded plants that find the pasture a Cradle of Liberty Chiefest of these is the sweet-fern, which deserves all the consolation it may draw from the definition of a weed, as "a plant whose virtues have not 108 PASTURES FAIR AND LARGE been discovered." Although some of its vir- tues have been discovered, few farmers can remember them, though they can be eloquent concerning its vices. Like a prophet in his own country, the sweet-fern is most appre- ciated by those who in their childhood have not been familiar with it. The camper knows that it is good for bedding and pil- lows, and the artist knows that its rich and varied autumnal coloring of old rose, buff, bronze, and wine makes one feel like drink- ing to it with one's eyes, while the psycholo- gist discovers that its delightfully spicy odor furnishes an unduplicated key to enchanted doors of mystery. The Dicksonia, or hay-scented fern, is an- other of the "best families" having one of its permanent residences in the pasture. Such a gracious, friendly little fern it is, snuggling up to any old Caliban of a bowlder, or un- couth stone wall, as if it said, "I don't mind your hard, bony joints; I will cover some of them with my pale green draperies" which it does, running up hill and down with the stone wall and softening its rugged lines, as 109 ON THE MANUSCRIPTS OF GOD a smile may soften the asperity of an un- pleasant truth. Not only are there in almost every pas- ture hundreds of lowly plants and shrubs whose acquaintance is well worth making, but as many fascinating insects, worms, ants, beetles, moths, and butterflies, which share the honors of host and hostess to guests of the pasture. Squirrels, chipmunks, wood- chucks (a name which is a pasture title-claim in itself), hedgehogs, "woodpussies," eu- phemistically speaking, and sometimes cows are also on the entertainment committee of the pasture, and each one has much strange and interesting lore to impart to those who have ears to hear. The city man who thinks of a cow solely as a sedate four-cornered animal that gives milk will discover, on prolonged acquaint- ance, that a cow, while not a sprightly or vivacious quadruped like the squirrel, or tem- peramental like a cat, has other than copy- book virtues well worth the study of the most intelligent biped. On her native heath, the pasture, one sees how nobly simple, calm, no PASTURES FAIR AND LARGE and unaffected a cow can be and withal so sturdily independent in all her acts. Once in a great many moons men may remember "nothing is more vulgar than haste"; but the cow daily lives up to that maxim, and, never J aving heard of Fletcher or Gladstone, she yet surpasses both in the prolonged and unwearied rhythm of her jaws. One also learns in a pasture that cows are as different from each other in their moods and manners as are cats and dogs. While cows, as a rule, cannot be said to be highly imaginative, they are by no means unresponsive to the lure of the difficult and forbidden. While camping in the New Hampshire pasture I have mentioned, I once saw a cow, of Evelike disposition, trying to reach an apple on a high bough over her head. There were several other apple-trees near, whose fruit was easily within her reach. But she would none of them. The difficult was the beautiful to her, and for several minutes she stretched her neck upward to its utmost accordion-capacity, at the same time curling out her tongue to bridge the ill ON THE MANUSCRIPTS OF GOD distance between her and the elusive apple, which still escaped her by a paltry fraction of an inch. It was a hard, green apple, that might have set on edge the teeth of the cow's descendants, but she knew not how kind was Fate in her denial, and those of us who watched her reflected that, had only the for- bidden fruit of Eden grown on a bough as far beyond the reach of Eve as was this apple beyond the reach of the cow, we might still but no ; Eve would have coaxed Adam to climb the tree! Returning, however, to our cow, tempo- rarily sidetracked by Eve, if one must speak all and truly a habit always attended by risks one learns by living in a pasture that the manners of a cow sometimes leave much to be desired. That delicate perception and consideration for the feelings of others which lie at the root of all good manners are wholly lacking in a cow. Nevertheless, although this fact may have most discomforting illustrations, one cannot cherish unkindly feelings toward the cow, since her lack of tact grows out of her lack 112 PASTURES FAIR AND LARGE of imagination. Neither can one blame her for her innocent ignorance of property rights. When she devours a panful of apples carelessly placed on an unguarded camp-table, or eats a choice head of lettuce in a pail of water near by, or swallows, can- nibalistically, a pound of her own best brand of Jersey butter, one must remember that from the cow's point of view all these items on her bill of fare seem as naturally and pleasantly hers as the unforbidden grass under her feet. Even when she benevolently assimilates half a cake of washing-soap, leaving on the other half of the cake the curved and au- thentic signature of her jaws, one's regret is tempered by the fancy that she may be unconsciously responding to modern anti- septic standards of living. It would be ungracious, however, to close this bovine record by the mention of these less endearing idiosyncrasies of a cow, when the permanent recollection of her and her mates is mellowed and idealized by distance. Forgetting all her little lapses, growing out 113 ON THE MANUSCRIPTS OF GOD of inability to define the limitation of her rights, one remembers her as the artists love to paint her, lying easefully under the trees, unvexed by the turmoil of the world, and giving to the landscape a vital touch which makes a connecting link between it and man. Finally, no inventory of the assets of a pasture would be complete without some mention of the glamour of its "woodland ad- joining" and the bo-peeping birds, blossoms, and ferns that live in it. From the adjoining woodland come to the ears of the cosmo- politan house-party in the pasture the rarer songs of rarer birds which seldom leave their wooded privacies. When the hermit thrush, the wood thrush, and the veery give their choicest scores, morning, noon, and evening, they make any seat in a near-by pasture more valuable than a season symphony ticket. One might go on writing volumes on the entertainment offered by the natural resi- dents of a pasture and the fugitive winged minstrels which flit through and around it. But enough, perhaps, has been said to show that a pasture, often scorned by a farmer as 114 PASTURES FAIR AND LARGE the least of Bis possessions, may be not only a veritable vineyard of visions, but a most livable, lovable spot, especially when shared with livable, lovable camp-comrades, with hearts for any fate. In these days, when the noisy and noisome conquests of steam, electricity, and gasolene threaten to blot out so many of the still green places of the world, like a last hope seems a pasture, with its unspoiled margin of quiet wildness. Many moods and moments we have when we need the greater voices of nature, vocal in towering mountains, sea and cataract, which call and respond to the deep- est deeps within us; and these by their own compelling majesty have partially restrained the vandal hand of man. But we also need, for the more frequent and homely cravings of mind and heart, those humbler delectable regions of nature which are less stimulating in their demand. Then it is that one may find in a modest, friendly pasture many a well-spring of meditation and peace. Laid out by its olden orthodox survey, heaven itself would be but a glittering ex- 115 ON THE MANUSCRIPTS OF GOD position of glory, if one could not be assured that it held somewhere a vast background of pasture-land, where one might keep in immortal fragrance the tender memories of earth. lie VII NATURE'S FONDNESS FOR POLKA DOTS TT would be interesting to know for what * particular one of her creations nature first designed the polka dot. However that may be, the result was evidently pronounced good, for this dot appears on nearly every- thing from hard, mottled stones and the bark of trees to the daintiest of feathers and flow- ers. One would like to believe that the beauty of the polka dot, in all its glorified forms and tints, was to nature an end in itself. Perhaps it was. But one must also acknowl- edge the findings of the naturalists, who have studied nature's cipher so long that they know a good deal of her code and can tell with considerable certainty just why she dots an eye in one case and does not in another. Be it granted, then, at the outset, that the 117 ON THE MANUSCRIPTS OF GOD polka dot plays a large part in the scheme of coloration which protects the wearer, allures its mate, warns an unwary enemy, or mimics the protective device of some other creature. Admitting all this, however, there still seems to be evidence to show that nature is fond of the polka dot, per se; otherwise, she would have achieved any of the ends men- tioned in some other way, as she so well knows how to do. She is always doing things in some other way in scores of other ways ; there is nothing she likes to do better. When she chooses as she does in South America she gives a butterfly a pungently disagree- able odor which protects it, in spite of its lack of adaptive coloring. Again, she hatches one egg by making a bird do time by sitting upon it; another egg is incubated in the sand, the warmth of that cosmic brooder, the sun, answering as well at a dis- tance of some ninety-three million miles as the warmth of a hen at closer range. An equal versatility of method is dis- played in the production of seeds and spores. One fern bears its spores on the under side 118 NATURE'S FONDNESS FOR POLKA DOTS of its fronds; another runs up a separate stalk for them. One seed falls directly to the earth and another has wings and joins the aviators. One animal is protected by his stripes and another by his spots, which brings us again to our subject. Following the long, long trail of the polka dot, one discovers nature's thrifty habit of making the most of every one of her designs. This harmless auto-plagiarism finds inci- dental testimony in such names as the tiger lily, the trout lily, the leopard-frog, and the leopard moth. Again, a study of seashells, of which there are legions and legions, shows the polka dot in a bewildering number of sizes and colors, and the same embellishment is worn by a vast number of fishes (like the spotted kelpfish, and giant starfish) and reptiles. On some fishes the brook trout is a notable example one finds an illuminated edition of the polka dot, or a dot with something like a prismatic halo, an effect nearly dupli- cated in the leaves of the adder-tongue, or trout lily, as it is better named by John 119 ON THE MANUSCRIPTS OF GOD Burroughs. Hundreds of other leaves, like the croton's and cucko-pint's, also flaunt the order of the polka dot, while the petals of thousands of flowers owe the last touch of their charm to the deft addition of spots and splashes of contrasting or harmonizing color. Without the accent of its tiger spots, what would the tiger lily be save a peroxide sub- stitute for the buxom country belle of the garden? And what, indeed, the leopard it- self, if, with the assistance of Burbank, it should accept the challenge of Scripture and change its spots? Not only does the polka dot beautify the furs of many animals, but used singly, in its star form, it lights up the forehead of a dark horse, or gives a chic air of distinction at the throat of black Miss Tabby. The collector of eggshells likewise knows that his treasures owe half their beauty to polka dots, cunningly diversified in size and color. Hardly second to the beauty effected by spots on the petals of flowers, is the beauti- ful finish which they give to the feathers of birds and fowls, of all sizes. Something like 120 NATURE'S FONDNESS FOR POLKA DOTS the "final touch," the color accent, which the French achieve by a black piping or knot of narrow black velvet ribbon, the great modiste, nature, attains by the use of polka dots on the breast, wings or tails of her most modish birds. Witness the white polka dots on the loon, the guinea, fowl, the beautiful dappled breast of the blue-winged teal, and the spotted sand-piper. The sparrow hawk, the belted kingfisher, the vesper and song sparrow, the meadow lark, brown thrasher, wood and hermit thrushes, and the gorgeous flicker furnish other illustrations of nature's canny artistry with polka dots. Beside the diversity produced by chang- ing the size of the spot, or making it slightly oval in shape, it is infinitely varied, as man has varied his use of it in fabrics, by the use of different colors in the spot itself and its background, till it reaches its de luxe form on the superb wings of moths and butterflies and on the tails of peacocks. Nor do the glorified spots on the peacock's tail lose any- thing of their beauty because we are told that their iridescence helps obscure their 121 ON THE MANUSCRIPTS OF GOD visibility, or because they may have been the result of the aesthetic preferences of the female birds. Similarly, the wonderful eye-spots on the wings of moths are just as beautiful when we know (on the authority of Darwin) that they are pierced by birds and thus protect the more vital parts of the moth. The anno- tations of the naturalists only add another nimbus of wonder to the polka dot, little as it may need it. "If the beauty of flowers," writes Mr. E. Poulton, F. R. S., "has fol- lowed so completely from insect selection, are we not compelled to admit that insects possess an aesthetic sense a sense which could discriminate between the slightly dif- ferent attractions displayed by suitors, just as we all admit that it has discriminated be- tween the slightly different attractions dis- played by flowers?" However these wonder-spots may have been produced, it is doubtful whether any of the lesser masterpieces of nature surpass the subtly exquisite tinting of the polka dot and its background as it is found on the 122 NATURE'S FONDNESS FOR POLKA DOTS wings of certain moths and butterflies, though some of the elite of frogdom are close rivals in the color contest. The magnificent pale green wings of the actius luna, with its glorified spots, and the demas propinquilinea, the sphinx Jamai- censis, the telea polyphemus, and the Owl's- head butterfly from India might well serve as chromatic models for an interior deco- rator, or color schemes for ravishing gowns and hats. Or, if a modiste wished other ''exclusive" patterns, she might find among the thousand fungi of America hundreds of color modulations of unique charm. Here also one finds Nature rioting in masterful triumphs with the polka dot, from the modest parasol mushroom in a cream gown with umber spots and the russula vivi- scens, in white with pale green spots, to the violet cortinarius in lavender with brown polkas and the brilliant orange and white of the deadly amanita muscaria. Among the more lowly wearers of the Order of the Polka Dot are toads, frogs, turtles, bugs, beetles, and worms. People 123 ON THE MANUSCRIPTS OF GOD who sum up with an "Ugh!" their entire reaction on these humble creepers and crawlers have little notion how much beauty they miss by avoiding a closer acquaintance with them. Even our most common brown toad, that obliterates himself in the garden by wearing embossed polka dots in the earth's own soft-brown colors, is an eloquent preacher of the doctrine of adaptation to one's environment. Wandering farther afield, one finds the same doctrine preached in more florid style by frogs whose richly tinted and mottled jackets quite equal the most sumptuous wings of birds, moths, or butterflies. The leopard frog, which is one of the most beautiful in North America, and the Florida tree frog are good examples of nature's knack of doing the same thing in an entirely different way. The latter frog may be green, or brown, distinctly spotted or not, and may be found while the change from green to brown is in process, a condi- tion which emphasizes the spots. How can one jump away from a frog, or wish him to jump away, when his royal vest- 124 NATURE'S FONDNESS FOR POLKA DOTS ment may be broidered with polka dots, rim- med with light, on a background of shaded greens, beautifully blended with warm soft browns, brick reds, and old rose, or terra cotta hues? Once more, on a smaller scale, one may find tiny duplicates of a great many of the de luxe polkas and their shaded backgrounds among worms upon which we wisely or needlessly set foot. Even the calico bean, which to-day is and to-morrow is boiled into drab digestibility, when it is first taken from the pod, wears in dainty old rose the insignia of the Order of the Polka Dot. Yet are we forced to conclude that this order is not conferred by nature as an outward and visible sign of any inward grace, else it would not be worn by the deadly amanita or by poisonous rep- tiles. Indeed, the lower world pretty gen- erally understands that bright garish colors mean "Look out, it tastes nasty!", as the would-be eaters of the leopard moth could testify. Still more ignoble wearers of the order 125 ON THE MANUSCRIPTS OF GOD under consideration are mouldy bread and cake, cream belated of its skimming and garments mildewed by exposure to damp sunless weather. Yet on these seemingly un- attractive objects one sometimes finds a col- lection of richly tinted spots which stir all the founts of wonder. Perhaps freckles, which are beautifully duplicated on a conch shell, should also be included in our inventory. And this famil- iar variation of the polka dot we certainly would not have abolished from the sun- kissed face of any boy who wears them. With him the freckle is a heaven-conferred badge of wholesome, hatless living, and not without a sigh can one see his freckles fade into the common monotone of a grown-up complexion. Knowing the innumerable artistic wiles with which nature works from a single start- ing point, one is tempted to a farther sus- picion. Are her fields of grass, dotted with daisies, and the star-studded heavens them- selves, only more of her superlative triumphs with polka dots? 126 NATURE'S FONDNESS FOR POLKA DOTS On third and fourth thoughts, one is con- vinced that not even with the star-spangled skies does nature end her experiments in this line, since no one ever caught her end- ing anything, when she knows a smoother way of shading it into something else, or of hiding her trail by crossing an invisible stream to an invisible territory, if one may change the figure. Crossing this invisible stream after her, one comes out on the other side in the im- material realm of mind, where one finds our dear old Sorceress still at her old tricks, ex- perimenting with intellectual polka dots to give tone and variety against a background of neutral souls in dull gray tints. How otherwise may we account for the fine dappled fancies of the wits and poets, the pied epigrams of the proverb-makers and the mental polka dots de luxe of Shake- speare? And if in this province one asks how and why, it may be possible that some philoso- pher will tell us that here also the intellec- tual polka dot is the result of the "aesthetic 127 ON THE MANUSCRIPTS OF GOD preferences" of the opposite sex, and that this psychical coloration may be "protec- tive," "typical," "alluring," "warning," or "mimetic." Still farther one might follow the trail of the polka dot, did it not lead into a region somewhat preempted by the clergy, who pray for a passport which shall read "with- out spot or wrinkle or any such thing," thus plainly admitting the existence of the polka dot in the moral world as well. Neverthe- less, even here (if the laity may be allowed to speak in a gentle and tentative tone) , one is haunted by a doubt whether a soul with- out a single spot or wrinkle not a single one, be it understood would draw us so humanly and tenderly as one with just a few endearing moral freckles. 128 VIII A RARE PICTOGRAPH campers in southern New Hamp- shire were sitting in a pine grove near their tents, when one of their number dis- covered a partially barked fragment of a pine bough, a little over two feet long, upon which was some very interesting etching. Stripping the bark farther on the bough, the discoverer found that the etching con- tinued with certain breaks, which may have been poetic paragraphing, the entire length of the stick. The designs on the bough were so elusive, suggestive, and artistic, that they provoked further search whenever the grove was re- visited. As a result, there was gathered, before the summer was over, a pretty com- plete local edition of the work of that gifted beetle, painfully known to entomology as the 129 ON THE MANUSCRIPTS OF GOD Pityophthorus sparsus Lee, or "White pine wood engraver." It was not till the follow- ing summer, however, that the masterpiece of the grove was discovered, just as it was about to be fed to the flames of the camp- fire, a circumstance which will recall parallel cases in the history of manuscripts by more consequential authors of the human race. Yet, however obscure the birth and environ- ment of these lowly artists, it gives one chilly pause to remember how near our reckless camp -party came to destroying what may prove to be the magnum opus of the Shake- speare of Beetledom, unless some heartless whiffler should successfully Baconize its fame with the critical dust of barren and irrelevant pedantry. Compared with the final masterpiece dis- covered (from which the accompanying photographs were taken) all the other picto- graphs found were obviously the work of mere amateurs, hacks, or feeble imitators. For among beetles (Scolytidae) as among more evolved artists, one star differeth from another star in glory. But this particular 130 A RARE PICTOGRAPH pictograph has been praised by no less of an authority than John Burroughs, who wrote : "It is the most astonishing etching done by an insect that I have ever seen. No barbarian warrior ever decorated his war club with anything like such delicacy and beauty." There are those one must admit in pass- ing who will consider these wonderful traceries merely as utilitarian tracks of beetles in quest of incubators and food. But careful scrutiny of these photographs by the inward eye yields several richer interpreta- tions, and, withal, more logical. Would a man, even a literary man, who was eating an apple, etch it all over, in the process, with beautiful designs? Let the records of common experience an- swer the question. We are therefore forced to the conclusion that this pictograph is the work of highly intelligent and evolved beetles, to whom food and lodgings were but means to higher ends. They did not etch to eat, but ate to etch again another day, using the only medium available to them to express their 131 ON THE MANUSCRIPTS OF GOD reaction on the bosky beauty of their en- vironment thus illustrating in microscopic fields the achievements of one "Who breaks his birth's invidious bar, And grasps the skirts of happy chance" forever proving that nothing can smother the true Promethean spark, even when it is lodged in the lowly breast of a beetle. To the casual observer, these etchings might easily pass as the work of some vermic- ulous Whistler or Corot. But those who are familiar with the Blake-like fancies of the genus Pityopthorus, or its gifted kindred of the genus Ips, would never confuse even the most distinguished works of a worm with those of our artists. A second error into which one might easily fall has its source in the pictograph itself. At first blush, it looks like nothing so much as a bold plagiar- ism from a Japanese model. It has the same unfettered grace and fancy, and several of its figures suggest the sacred dragons of the Orient. Even a cursory glance at the photographs 132 A RARE PICTOGRAPH given will convince the reader that this is the work of no Peter Bellish beetle, oblivious of the beauty of its surroundings, but an observing insect, keenly alive to every beau- tiful form within its range of vision. If the reader will carefully study these photo- graphs, he will find vivid impressionistic sketches of leaves, ferns, flowers, roots, twigs (pine twigs, especially), bugs, beetles, un- dulating worms, lizards, dragon-flies, moths, butterflies, cones, mosses, and mushrooms, each reproduced with much accuracy of effect, and at the same time so skillfully uni- fied into one impressive whole that they sug- gest a Balzacian Comedie Entomologique. Much more, one suspects, is shown on this strange pictograph than the dull human eye may verify from its own crude and limited perception. Here and there, margined by leaves and ferns, one finds quaint little groups of tiny figures that might be earth gnomes or pixies, invisible in real life to the human eye. Some of these groups, with their sylvan entourage, recall the work of Corot in the same field, 133 ON THE MANUSCRIPTS OF GOD though many of the scenes found in the pictograph are more warlike than those of the French artist. As a whole, the pictograph is animated by a certain joy of living in which one feels an amorous inspiration as well as the more im- personal afflatus of Pan, even as one feels in the beautiful stanzas of "In Memoriam" the double inspiration of nature and friend- ship. In each case the twofold inspiration saves the work of each artist from the barren exposition of a botanical vivisectionist who loves his herbarium better than the wood rose on its stalk. In a word, our pictograph is the record of poets whose perception is rain- bowed with imagination. As one studies the figures of the picto- graph, one wonders what a skillful carver of the human race could do on a pine bough of the same size, were he asked to unify into one coherent whole his sylvan impressions of the same grove in which this classic was found. That the early human inhabitants of our country certainly failed to produce anything half so artistic in their pictographs 134 A RARE PICTOGRAPH and petroglyphs is easily proved by a com- parison of the early samples of picture writ- ing by the Amerinds and the study in hand. An impartial comparison of the petro- glyph at Millsboro, Pennsylvania (of which an illustration is given), the work of Amerinds of the Pueblo kind, and the picto- graph of our New Hampshire Scolytidae will convince the most skeptical that the honors are all with the lowly artists of the Granite State. In the work of the latter, too, there are a subtle elusiveness and suggestiveness that pique the fancy. The more one studies it, the more it yields between its lines. Some of its sections convey a distinctly lyric effect and others are as unmistakably epic in their spirited etching. There are also certain quiet lines indicative of bucolic calm beside still waters. To ignore this little classic and make no attempt to discover the message it conveys, simply because its authors were beetles, seemed unworthy of the fair and catholic spirit which should belong to literary criti- 135 ON THE MANUSCRIPTS OF GOD cism. The writer consequently determined to discover the key to the pictograph, re- membering that far more difficult feats were achieved by those who studied the Rosetta stone until it led to the decipherment of the ancient monuments of Egypt. In a case like this, however, the outer eye was ob- viously of little use in comparison with the subliminal one. By the light of the latter, the gracefully intricate lines of the Pine Pictograph at last yielded their secrets, al- though the reader needs to bear in mind that the English language can give but a meager notion of the quaint and dainty fancies of the original. But the following free trans- lation may give the general trend of the Scolytidian musings carved on the bough: O, cool sweet woods about me Where young leaves bud, and swaying ferns Salute the breezy morn; O, juicy luscious pine-bark made for us, And mosses soft that tremble not When earth-gnomes dance with down-light feet To murmurous music of the leaves. Awake! ye dainty snails, that sleep in cradles strange, 136 A RARE PICTOGRAPH The morn has come; The graceful lizard winds him in and out Among the knotted roots in quest of food; The agile worm with curious hoops Adorns the fallen tree; Late slumbering violets, awake! And dye your petals sweet, With purple shadows from the hills. O, wondrous moths, with dappled wings, Fly low, that we may picture forth Your charming form and flight; Gay dragon-fly, in gauzy shimmer-sheen, Dart not so swift above us, But pause the while we trace Upon this bough your lithe and slender shape. Now leaps my heart! for hither comes The fairest form of all The queen of morn and noon and eve; Come, come, my love, sweet Pity-op; How wide the space that lies between our hearts, Though I with wings as swift as dragon-flies Or thoughts of dinner close at hand, Rush wildly to salute my love. Come sit with me, sweet Ips-i-me, Beneath this dainty twig of pine, And such delight shall fill our hearts That all the creeping world may go its way So thou, my love, dost by me stay. 137 ON THE MANUSCRIPTS OF GOD So one might go on, indefinitely, with the paraphrase of this inimitable pictograph, but one is loath to mangle its exquisite measures with the clumsy makeshifts of an English version. Even Professor Murray, whose translations of Euripides should win him a seat on Parnassus, declares that they only dimly convey the beauty of the original. How much more impossible is it to do jus- tice to the delicate conceptions of our little poets of beetledom. Suffice it to say, that few contemporary writers sustain the inter- est of their compositions more successfully than it is done in this bosky Pictograph. Carping critics there may be who will in- sinuate that certain passages, notably the lines, Though I with wings as swift as dragon-flies Or thoughts of dinner close at hand, are covert plagiarisms from Shakespeare; but such a charge is manifestly absurd. There is not one chance in a thousand that any of the collaborators of this classic ever heard of Shakespeare. The same answer 138 A RARE PICTOGRAPH may be made to those who may go out of their way to prove that the last five lines given were suggested to their authors by similar ones by Omar Khayyam. As Cole- ridge once wisely observed, "There are peo- ple who cannot conceive of original springs, great and small, but must charitably derive every rill they behold flowing from a per- foration in some other man's tank." Another class of critics there may be who would attempt to trace in this unique master- piece the influence of the Italian Renaissance or the Rossetti school of poetry. But again, one may waive the findings of all such inconsequent big-wigs, and for once feel cer- tain that this pictograph would have been no different had there never been any such thing as The Italian Renaissance or any such man as Rossetti. This is a great com- fort, when one remembers how many other things have been made to feel the influence of some renaissance or other. And now the question arises, has recogni- tion come too late to warm with glory the hearts of the composers of our pictograph, 139 ON THE MANUSCRIPTS OF GOD or may one indulge in the more joyous con- clusion that they are quite above the last infirmity of noble minds? In the latter case, the fame of their achievement may be made over to the Granite State where this mas- terpiece was written, adding yet another star or stars to the galaxy of the literary firma- ment of New Hampshire. All attempts to discover anything about the early life and environment of the authors of this pictograph, in the region where it was found, were futile. None of their neighbors could give any information about the work, or its authors, thus underscoring again those pertinent lines by Aldrich: The butcher who served Shakespeare with his meat Doubtless esteemed him lightly as a man Who knew not how the market prices ran. Interviewing a member of the same species, the Pityophthorus sparsus Lee, to which the authors of this pictograph belong, one was not surprised to meet a modest, un- assuming beetle, of much repose of manner though the fact that the beetle was dead 140 A RARE PICTOGRAPH may have had much to do with the latter characteristic. In its personality, this beetle is not impressive from size, as its length is not more than an inconsiderable fraction of an inch. But what has physical size to do with genius ? In the place where this silent representa- tive of his species was interviewed, the whole genus enjoyed a bad eminence from an ethical point of view. Cold, impartial statis- tics showed that millions and millions of dol- lars' worth of timber had been destroyed by the Scolytidae, and in the destruction, the "white pine wood engraver" and his naughty kin, of the genus Ips, were the ruthless leaders. Finally, for the benefit of those who do not care to read between the lines of the work reviewed, but merely for the cold scientific facts, these Gradgrindian conces- sions will be made: The beautiful etchings which have fur- nished the text for this article are made in this way: "The adult beetles excavate their radiat- 141 ON THE MANUSCRIPTS OF GOD ing curved egg galleries from a central cavity. The eggs are placed in little niches along the sides of these galleries, from which minute larvae or grubs hatch and burrow at right angles to the mother gallery through the inner bark to the surface of the wood. These are known as larval mines or food burrows, because they are made by the larva? in quest of food. When the larvae have reached full growth, they transform, at the end of the burrow, into adults like their parents. Then they emerge and repeat the process." This is the plain unvarnished tale of the pine-carved bough, as courteously furnished to the writer by Dr. A. D. Hopkins, the ex- pert in charge at the Bureau of Entomology in Washington. This, perhaps, is all that science may demand. But, considered as a highly specialized work of art, which it un- deniably is, were it just or fitting to review it wholly in a matter-of-fact way? Nay, nay, that would be too much like estimating as a historical record "A Midsummer Night's Dream," to which this pictograph 142 A RARE PICTOGRAPH bears a striking resemblance and for which it would make a capital series of illustrations. Possibly some of the chronologically nice may object to the interpretation of the pic- ture-writing given, on the ground that part of the etching was done by larvae before they saw the outer world so minutely reproduced in the pictograph. One must admit that this fact does conflict with the theory ad- vanced in the earlier part of this review, and seems to prove that the pictograph is a mere lusus natures, instead of a consciously artis- tic work of a high order. This objection, however, is nothing in comparison with many scientific obstructions, which in other fields have been blown away like thistledown by the method popularly known as "reconcilia- tion." In this case, the reconciliation is simple and convincing in proportion to the mental amenability of the reader. It should be remembered that Mrs. Pity- ophthorus has seen the outer world, of moss, leaves, twigs, bugs, and moths before she lays her eggs in the gallery which she makes on the pine bough. Hence the artistic re- 143 ON THE MANUSCRIPTS OF GOD action of Madame Pity on the world about her undoubtedly is felt as a prenatal influ- ence on the larvae, which faithfully record in their etchings the pictures held in the mind of Mother Pity. Like the bird's song which is not taught, but comes as an inherited in- stinct, the Sparsian genius, in another field, is also a natal gift. But far back in the early stages of the development of the scolytidae it is conceivable that the mother Pity op, like man, did not observe the beauties of nature so keenly as now, and as a result, it is probable that the prenatal impetus given to the larvae was much less artistic, so that the early pictographs did not effect the as- tonishing union of use and beauty in their lines which is evident in the original of these photographs. The fact that there is extant no reproduc- tion of any pictograph of the Dark Ages of the Scolytida? would seem to bear out this theory. Had any such masterpiece been produced, it would undoubtedly have been saved. Supporting this view is the well- known edict of Concord that there is no such 144 A RARE PICTOGRAPH thing as luck in literature. None of these theories, however, is advanced with dog- matic intent. Here, as in all other provinces of speculation, there should be given full liberty of individual interpretation. Some, indeed, who study these photographs may regard our pictograph as a plain Beetle Diary, a rival of the one by Pepys ; and much might be said in support of this conclusion. But these variations of conjecture are of comparatively minor importance. The pivotal fact disclosed in studying the haunts and habits of beetles is the continuous romance and mystery that one finds every- where, whether one bores through the bark of a tree, or digs down into the earth, or ex- plores the water or air. As oblivious of men as most men are of it, the beetle woos and weds, and attempts to rear its young. Then comes the conflict which makes the plot of the story, which may turn out a tragedy. When the beetle thinks all the world its own (as it may have seemed in the early nineties when the beetle hordes invaded Pennsylvania and West Virginia, 145 ON THE MANUSCRIPTS OF GOD destroying millions of dollars worth of tim- ber) there comes "a frost, a chilling frost," and a fungus frDin one knows not where at- tacks the beetle and wipes all his battalions out of existence. Or, again, a parasitical insect bores down through the bark which covers the beetle dormitories, and eats the dreaming baby beetles as nonchalantly as the human race eat oysters. We are thus once more confronted by the same old interrogations which the universe levels against man wherever his research may lead him. Why is there a destructive force made to lie in wait for every beautiful thing in the universe, from the smallest flower that blooms to the noble pine ignobly slain by beetles? Why indeed, unless it be to evoke from man as it always has done something mightier than any destructive force about him. For nature, like the good teacher she is, puts in her mammoth textbook of the uni- verse not only a million problems, but along- side of each set of them one or more ex- amples to show how the problems may be 146 A RARE PICTOGRAPH solved. On one page she shows the beetle destroying the pine, but on another page she shows how the beetle may be destroyed by a parasite, thus giving a hint toward the solution of all similar problems. Or, vary- ing her problem and example, she shows man how the sometimes odious law of contagion may be craftily used (as he has learned to use it with the "wilt disease") to put an end to the devastations of the brown-tail moth. And while the entomologist is solving his problems by pitting one destructive force against another, the sociologist is hard at work upon the far more knotty problem unsolved through the ages of destroying the parasites which attack the soul and body of man himself. 147 ON THE MANUSCRIPTS OF GOD U. 8. Bu. Eth. PETEOGLYPH AT MILL8BOHO, PENNSYLVANIA Note: The photographs from which these illustrations were made, were taken by Mr. Herbert Gleason of Boston, whose work might well ex- cite envy in the breasts of the tiny artists who made the original. Grateful acknowledgments are also due to Dr. Charles W. Johnson of the Museum of Natural History in Boston, for various scientific data and to Dr. A. D. Hopkins of the National Museum of Washington, for the identification of the signatures of the authors of the pictograph and the full names of the beetle authors. (E. B. S.) 148 IX WHEN THE LEAF IS WOO'D FROM OUT THE BUD T S there a whim or fancy in feminine attire ** for which one may not find a precedent in nature? Did ever a woman wear a silk petticoat with more elaborate ruffles upon ruffles, and scallops, than are flaunted in any garden by the luxurious kale, whose tran- sient glory limply departs in a dish of greens? Scarcely less elaborate in form and coloring are the curly-cued leaves of that highly evolved chromatic triumph, a head of lettuce in russet, bronze, and old rose. How dainty too are the fairy fripperies worn by parsley, parsnip, carrots, and our common roadside yarrow, though all yield in grace to Miss Asparagus, whose ethereal leafage is so perilously like green aigrettes that one al- most suspects her of plagiarism. Between the Whistler-like delicacy of the 149 ON THE MANUSCRIPTS OF GOD asparagus and the broad, coarse-fibered leaf of the common pie plant, or the palm, what a bewildering diversity of marvels does nature display when the folded leaf is woo'd from out the bud! Considering this diversity in the gowning of plants, shrubs, and trees, one perceives that women "favor" nature far more than do their brothers, who use only a limited range of goods and cuts in their raiment. Yet women, in the myriad of fabrics and models which they adopt, from the gauziest of diaphanous weaves, through every thinkable weight and shade of cotton, wool, silk, satin, and velvet, cannot surpass the cuts and colorings seons ago conceived by nature for the exquisite robing of plants and trees. Ah me ! what an art school would that have been for any student who could have been present in the great open studio of nature, when the leaves of plants and petals of flowers were being designed, and the secret life-law of their unfolding forever imparted to them! Who would not fain have heard the secret edict, with its close-sealed reasons, 150 WHEN THE LEAF IS WOO'D which decreed its round, dancing leaves to the poplar, its changing leafy glories to the maple, and the aristocratic cuts and rich autumnal tints to the oaks? If one can fancy any studio of nature with walls nearer than the blue of heaven, let one picture such an inclosure, completely lined, in graded rows, with the millions of different kinds of leaves fashioned for plants, shrubs, and trees. Perhaps some natural history museum of the future will reserve a large room, showing on its walls, below a line on the level with the eye, samples of all the leaves in the world, if that is a possibility. Such a collection would be an autographic treasure-house; for the leaf is the signature of the tree, or one of them, and as significant of it as a man's autograph is of him. One set of columns might give all the round leaves from the smallest leafy circle, and grading up to those big enough to make a hat. Other columns could be reserved for oval leaves, of which there are an unthink- able number, and as unthinkable a number of different ways of notching their outlines. 151 ON THE MANUSCRIPTS OF GOD The countless varieties of spear- and lance- shaped leaves, varying in size from a pine- needle to one which could do deadly execu- tion were it made of steel, would also call for a large number of rows on our hypo- thetical walls. Very superb too would be the exhibit which could be given of compound leaves, from the dainty wood sorrel to the large and elaborate horse-chestnut. Skeleton leaves, striped, mottled, red, yellow, old-rose, and wine-colored leaves; leaves scented, shirred, and specialized, like those of a great variety of pitcher-plants, would each add their long list of wonders to the collection. Other columns would hold the thick, fleshy leaves, of thirsty lands, that would drink them dry but for the small number of their pores and their firm, resisting texture. Thousands of other leaves too might be found to grade down from the thick leaf to those as thin as the gauzy wings of a dragon-fly. Not only the innumerable variations of contour, edge, and thickness would call for row upon row of illustrations, but the sur- 152 WHEN THE LEAF IS WOO'D face differences, appreciable to the touch, would involve another problem in cross classification. Between the soft, velvety leaf of the geranium and the rough surface of the sunflower's leaf or that of the pumpkin, nature knows how to ring her usual num- ber of changes, which include leaves soft as the finest silk or satin known to com- merce, as well as those which match its rough homespun. Whatever one's wildest fancy might call for, from the glossy silk of the wax begonia leaf to the heavy reseda-tinted velvet of the mullein, nature could fur- nish for this exhibition. Nor do the charms of leaves end with their grace of form and color. Other arts they know and practice to captivate the ear. The "frou-frou" of feminine garments, which moved Herrick to write, "Then, then, methinks, how sweetly flows The liquefaction of her clothes," finds its prototype in the leafy frou-frou of the belles of woodland, while they dance the Pan-written numbers played by Maestro 153 ON THE MANUSCRIPTS OF GOD Wind. To the ear these dances are as sooth- ing as the forms and colors of the leaves are to the eye. No matter how intricate the musical cadences, never a leaf fails to keep time to the music, though each differ- ent leaf dances very differently the same measures. The poplar, whose motto is al- ways "On with the dance," is so coquettish, original, and graceful in her interpretations of wind measures, that she might be called the Isadora Duncan of Leaf-Land. To watch her dance the Tempest Fling is to see an arboresque adaptation of the lines, "A health, then, to the happy, A fig to him that frets, It isn't raining rain to me, It's raining violets." Some time, perchance, a bosky Beethoven will write a full score of the dances of the leaves, which will include all the symphonies from the softest lullaby, which lulls the wee fledgling in its nest, to the wild, tempestuous measures which precede a hurricane. The Indian of other days, the Indian whose poetic spirit still lives in hundreds of 154 WHEN THE LEAF IS WOO'D our most musical geographical names, doubt- less could have told the month of the year quite exactly by his sense of hearing, when the wind swept the forest. For the coming- out dances of the tender young leaves are quite different to the ear from the music of the full-grown and hardy ones, or the dry rustle of sapless ones about to fall. It is like the difference between a choir of young girls and boys and a choir of elderly men and women. The first leafy music of May might be an easy modulation of the songs the meadow grasses know. Through June and July the tone grows fuller and stronger, but begins to change in quality with the autumnal changes of the leaves. Yet all the leafy accomplishments mentioned did not suffice the great artist of the open. With nonchalant disregard of the well-known Shakespearian warning, she not only dared to paint the lily, but made a brilliant suc- cess of it, once more establishing for the feminine world another precedent of change. Beautiful as are the leaves of the maple, oak, and other deciduous trees, she 155 ON THE MANUSCRIPTS OF GOD knows another series of enchantments she can cast upon them with the fairy wand of autumn. Once, twice, thrice, she waves her wand and the deep green leaves blush rosily at their tips. A fourth, a fifth, and one knows not how many more waves of the wand, and the maple leaves glow crimson, scarlet, and garnet or turn to molten gold, as if touched by the hand of Midas. Again and again while the world sleeps, the invisible wand is waved, till at last we see the original of Lowell's charming lines: "What mean these banners spread, These paths with royal red So gaily carpeted? Comes there a prince to-day? Such footing were too fine For feet less argentine Than Dian's own or thine, Queen whom my tides obey." But long after the royal red of the maple carpeting is spread, the waving of the wand continues, for a stronger incantation is needed for the richer aftermath of color 156 WHEN THE LEAF IS WOO'D which dyes the hardy oak leaves and bleaches those of birch and beech. One by one the oaks yield to the spell, till their deep hues of scarlet, wine, russet, and umber are woven into rich woodland tapestry which better satisfies the eye than the gaudier pageant of color made by the maples. Far beyond the outposts of winter the oaks sturdily flaunt their deep warm colors, only com- panioned and sometimes outstayed by a lonely birch or beech, which, even in the teeth of late winter gales, doughtily waves its rust- ling banner of buff or white. Finally, the last leaf is vanquished ; but be- fore the surrender, each has bequeathed to the parent stem or stalk that bore it all the stores of nutriment which it has industriously garnered from air, sun, and rain, when it seemed to be idly dancing in the breeze. How great this bequest may be to a tree, one may estimate from a computation made by one who attempted the seemingly impossible and counted seven million leaves on an elm. From this leaf surface of about two hundred thousand square feet, or five acres, the sur- 157 ON THE MANUSCRIPTS OF GOD rounding atmosphere receives its daily gift of moisture in the form of vapor, and the tree the food which helps it grow. Another gracious habit of leaves is not revealed until the time of their fall, for which they make a unique preparation, charmingly described by Professor Geddes: "Across the base of the leaf-stalk, in a region which is normally firm and tough, there grows inward a partition of soft juicy cells actively multiplying and expanding into a springy cushion, which either foists the leaf off, or makes its attachment so delicate that a gust of wind serves to snap the narrow bridge between the living and the dead. That the scar should have been thus prepared, be- fore the operation, is one of the prettiest points of the economy of woodland nature." Another pretty point in nature's drama of the leaves an end of less apparent de- sign is the capriciously beautiful outline patterns made upon the earth and sidewalks by the fallen leaves, especially by those of deep-cut design, like the pin oak's and the red oak's. Very reluctantly does one see 158 WHEN THE LEAF IS WOO'D their sometimes charming arrangement dis- turbed by ravaging winds or lost in their snowy burial. Yet our hopes are not buried with them, for we know that when they have become a part of the mold which they enrich, the phoenix spirit of nature still lives in the heart of the tree, waiting its April call from sun and cloud. Then again the exquisite moving pictures of leaf-land slowly appear on the miraculous slides of summer. The new leaf -buds peep forth, and doff their little brown winter nightcaps to greet the world in every hue of bronze, rose, red, and dainty green. And mankind, beholding the coming and going of generation after generation of leaves, becomes scripturally wise, forgetting those that are behind to joy in those that are yet to come. For "Ever a spring her primrose hath, and ever a May her May, Sweet as the rose that died last year is the rose that is born to-day." And all that is true of the rose of last year is as true of the leaf that is born to-day. 159 THE GREAT MANUSCRIPT "But chief, ambiguous man, he that can know More misery, and dream more joy than all." Shelley. TN reviewing the works of any human * author, one generally finds some one volume of superlative merit, the masterpiece of the edition. And notwithstanding that the manuscripts of God, in heaven and in earth, make an edition whose bare enumeration paralyzes thought, the world is unanimous in its vote on the greatest of all these works. Published in two wonderful volumes, known as man and woman, this masterpiece admits of no hard-and-fast classification as history, romance, or poetry, but it contains much of each, like the great bibles of the human race. Although the name of the author and publisher is not openly declared on the manu- 160 THE GREAT MANUSCRIPT script itself, it is repeated throughout the work, in cipher, which is understood by all who know how to read between the lines. This cipher, however, is much clearer in some editions than in others, for it must be confessed that there are men and women who have "well-nigh wormed all trace of God's finger out of themselves." The preface of this manuscript, exten- sively reviewed as The Law of Evolution, was written large in the history of cruder animal life, reaching back through dismal seons to the ooze and slime beds of early creation. Each of the volumes mentioned is divided into three closely interrelated parts. The first, known as body, was for ages the only one which could be read at all, and even in such reading, all its marginal references were overlooked by everybody save a few seers and poets. But it is with the vastly more alluring second and third parts, known as mind and heart, that this paper is chiefly concerned. For despite the warning of Scripture, that the hearts of kings are un- 161 ON THE MANUSCRIPTS OF GOD searchable, one may assume for the time being that the hearts of other people are not. Searching them by their own light, and the light of the searcher's heart, one reaches the conclusion that the most marvelous characteristic of man is the endless gamut of his responsiveness and its manifold ex- pression. All other wonders of creation pale beside a being so endowed that he is related to everything in the universe. Not only is there nothing human which is foreign to him, but virtually nothing sentient or non-sentient to which he is totally indifferent, or in which he is incapable of becoming interested. This description, of course, ignores the man who is "dead to rapture or despair," and refers to evolved man, as the being who has the greatest capacity for being alive. Such a man is responsive, in varying degrees, to everything that lives and moves and has being. Nor does his sense of kinship stop with those of his race and kind, or with the horse, dog, or cat, which he loves to stroke, but tapers off into fine capillary attachments to birds, bumblebees, rivers, rocks, trees, 162 THE GREAT MANUSCRIPT flowers, the very grass beneath his feet, and the good brown earth under the grass. Between the Alps and the tiniest blossom, that must be wooed out of its hiding place, what unnumbered millions of things there are that can move him, either to a pianissimo response or to thoughts and feelings that lie too deep for tears ! And in what numberless ways of expression, either lightly or deeply, can he so rival Nature that he can move his fellow men to the same vast range of thought and feeling. Yet all his wisdom and cun- ning cannot devise an instrument so deli- cately attuned as himself to vibrate to all the harmonies of the world, from the chirp of a cricket to the "immemorial music of the sea." Through his five senses and one knows not how many more life continually plays upon the myriad strings which respond in thought and feeling, now waking melodies no man has ever been able wholly to transcribe, or discords which spur him on to more perfect harmonies. Nor space nor time can muffle the heaven- writ airs which the universe silently plays 163 ON THE MANUSCRIPTS OF GOD upon this strange instrument, man. Through his eye, star-beam and sunset and the scroll of the buried ages reach his spirit as in- stantly as the color and fragrance of the violet at his feet. Not even the earth and all its fullness can exhaust man's responsive capacity. Great as the world is, it is contained in man several times and over. Hence the blind outreach- ings of this unsatisfied remainder of man, whose infinity gropes for Infinity as the river seeks the sea. From this groping have sprung all the religions of the world, bear- ing witness to a capacity which failed to find satisfaction in all the world's influx through the five great channels of sense. As all the rivers run into the sea and the sea is never full, so despite all that flows into the mind and heart, tHeir receptivity has never been overbrimmed. Stranger still, with all that has been said and written about mind, and all that we know of its achievements, no one has ever seen what is called mind or soul, which for- ever eludes us like the fourth dimension, or 164 THE GREAT MANUSCRIPT a Spanish to-morrow. And in this invisi- bility and elusiveness one finds its closest re- semblance to the Power which evoked it, and in the wonders wrought by it, a mighty bolster to our faith. For if a force so silent and elusive as the finite mind can project into the material world creation after crea- tion, now delicate as the poetic pinions of imagination, now solid as the sculptured stone of a cathedral, why should it be thought that an Infinite mind would find greater difficulty in projecting into space the worlds which people it? Unfortunately, the Mercury-like fleetness of the mind, as well as its magic cloak of in- visibility, blinds us concerning the vast scope of its powers. Because it never tells us when it runs away, and is so cheerfully our body servant when we need it for the humdrum affairs of life, we too often assume that it is tethered to our little personality, and per- fectly content to do intellectual chores for us. But we have no warrant for such a con- clusion. Nor does the fact that our mind uses our 165 ON THE MANUSCRIPTS OF GOD little everyday brain prove that it may not use some other brain. In a word, we cannot be certain how many shares we hold in the Cosmic Company, Limited, which we call our mind. But from the fact that it is sel- dom idle or napping, one must conclude that when it is not using our brain, it may be just as profitably employed. We therefore have ground for doubt when we hear a man say that he knows his own mind. On the con- trary, it looks as if it might be the last thing he knows about himself. Even when mind is writing about mind, the subject, which is both active and passive, may be looking over one's shoulder and chuckling to think how much the process resembles an attempt to get a full-length reflection of one's body in a hand mirror. But if the time should ever come when man will encourage his shy mental sprite, by unlimited faith, to a full confession of its capacity, it may become as easy to get a full-length photograph of the mind as of the body. As might be expected, this unlimited faith 166 THE GREAT MANUSCRIPT in the power of the mind has always be- longed to those who held the greatest num- ber of shares of intellectual preferred stock. Such was the exhilarating faith of the Chinese sage who said, "if a man is minded to beat a stone, the stone will have a hole in it," and the telescopic vision of prophets, who saw a time when men would be too wise to keep on with the murderous futility of war. Even that very secular seer, Horace of Sabine villa, reviewing the comparatively meager feats of the mind up to his own time, declared that nothing was difficult to mortals. This faith was still more em- phatically maintained by Christ, who was continually girding at those who imposed any limitation upon the possibilities of the soul a belief whose ground has been strengthened by the history of every genera- tion of the world. Each succeeding year some new victory is won by man in the king- dom of matter or spirit. Dream after dream, the inventor's, the chemist's, the alchemist's, the physician's, the philanthropist's, and the reformer's (each of which may have long 167 ON THE MANUSCRIPTS OF GOD suffered the scorn of the want- wit) , has been wooed into fruitful reality. The marvel of man's collaboration with the sun in photography was not enough. Some one wished the figures of the photo- graph to move, and the movies had to come ; neither was that enough. Edison thought they might as well talk, so he made them talk. In like manner, the alchemist's dream may shatter the value of precious stones, as the dream of the poet and the musician have turned the tide of a military victory, and the rapt vision of a seer transformed the spirit of the world. In other words, the spirit of man, which Solomon called the candle of the Lord, in process of time may become an electric chandelier, with scores of other im- provements beside that of indirect lighting. Like electricity, the human mind seems capable of furnishing power for any enter- prise, from the construction of a vast sus- pension bridge, or tunnel, and the manu- facture of laboratory jewels, to the produc- tion of a spineless cactus or a seedless orange. So much, indeed, is the action of mind like 168 THE GREAT MANUSCRIPT that of electricity, that one might compare it to a fine invisible wire, which connects with an inexhaustible storage battery lying be- yond the range of human vision. Although one may not know how many other plants the mind may run when, in dreams or abstractions, it acts like an absentee lord from the estate of which we are tenants, we are certain that one of its headquarters is the human brain. Here it carries on a bewildering variety of indus- tries, secreting thoughts, fancies, and schemes, and storing up a vast collection of memories, each furnished with an electric switch of association. Here too it weaves our hopes, doubts, fears, faiths, loves and hates and sends them to the heart to be dyed into emotions that either help to make the world go round or make it stick on its axis. What an incredible form of intensive culti- vation is this the mind carries on in the little area covered by the cranial dome! With plants capable of fertilization and cross- fertilization from the intellectual pollen which any wind of chance may carry, the 169 ON THE MANUSCRIPTS OF GOD mind may raise a million crops from the same brain without duplicating one raised from another brain. The material industry which resembles those carried on in the brain is a great seed- raising establishment. Very few minds, of course, raise all the different kinds of seeds which might be produced on their cranial soil, and this is well, since in every brain there is some one kind of seed which will grow better than any other. One man raises seeds for a great crop of railroads, and an- other, a clergyman or teacher, the seeds of ideals to be sown from time to time in other minds to assist the making of full-grown men and women. In the same line of spirit- ual horticulture is all good literature, and poetry especially, whose seeds are winged and hence capable of very wide dissemina- tion. Observing the different crops grown from different brains, the query rises whether the quality of the brain soil may materially con- dition the mind's crops, or might a fine mind raise fine crops from any brain? Or, other- 170 THE GREAT MANUSCRIPT wise stated, could a fine mind make a fine brain by using it, as the master violinist im- parts to the fibers of his instrument some of the harmonic quality of his own soul. Or, can there be such a difference of brain-cell and -tissue that even a fine mind would be baffled of its end, as Beethoven might have been had he tried to play his symphonies on a harmonica? Could a mind like Shake- speare's have used the brain of Jonathan Edwards and still have produced the works of the Bard of Avon, or was the mental organ of Shakespeare as exquisitely adapted to the use he made of it as the organs of a wood thrush are to the spirit of song which uses them? One would expect a brain like Mark Twain's or Dooley's to have more crinkly convolutions from which mental rip- ples could come than one would find in the brain of a man in whom an inordinate seri- ousness furnishes an obstructing wall to shut out the funshine of his neighbor. Whether its individuality lies in itself or in the organ which it uses, or in both, the mind, with all its impalpable quality, dis- 171 ON THE MANUSCRIPTS OF GOD plays features as fixed as those of the face and infinitely more diverse. To describe them all one would need to use most of the adjectives of all languages and borrow also their figurative meanings. For example, one may speak of open and shut minds; clear, foggy, tidy, cluttered, stuffy, well- ventilated, acute, obtuse, shallow, faithless, barren, pro- lific, rich, and indigent minds; and this is only a beginning of an endless list of possible classifications. In addition to all the native qualities which a mind may have, it may have nearly as many which are induced. A Boston mind (if there is such a thing) is a case in point. Of the varieties mentioned, the open mind is probably one of the most comfortable and profitable and may be the same kind labeled in Holy Writ as the "willing mind." It has a very large anteroom, where it is willing to meet without suspicion, prejudice, or painful formality, any claimant for its atten- tion, and its reward is often the entertain- ment of angels unawares. But O how different is the shut mind! 172 THE GREAT MANUSCRIPT What a liveried retinue of obstructions one may meet at the very threshold! To get a new idea into such a mind may be as pro- tracted a feat as getting a dozen trunks through a custom house. Despite all this mental diversity, which sometimes seems painfully extended, there is for each mind, no matter how phlegmatic its habit, something in the world to be ferreted out, and the game is the more in- teresting because one may be some time in doubt what one's particular quarry is. But one may start with the conviction that it is never the same as one's neighbor's. The Maker of the game attended to that. For his outline of an individual life-play is built on lines strangely like those unconsciously adopted by human story-tellers and play- wrights. There must be an obstacle and its overcoming, a knot and its untying or there is no story, no play, no life. Hence the interest cannot begin until a man discovers what the particular obstacle in his life-plot is. As on the play-stage, too, the interest of the plot may be doubled if a 173 ON THE MANUSCRIPTS OF GOD character has several obstacles to overcome those with which the world supplies him, and those within himself. When the latter are pretty evenly pitted against a great mind and heart, they may greatly assist per- sonality, endowing it with a dramatic sus- pense and climax, lacking in the man whose temperamental giants were mostly slain by his ancestors. Unless the human mind is at work on one or both of these obstacles, it cannot be said to be "in the game" or playing the role for which it was cast. It is either out of the play entirely, a super, or an unidentified member of the mob, its occupation gone when its temporary connection with some company is at an end. In the vernacular of the world-stage, the man or woman not in the cast is known as an idler or drifter, and as such may become a serious obstacle in the way of those actively playing their life-roles. The latter condition involves waste and, in a greater or less degree, disables the Cosmic Company, for whom its Manager provides just about men and women enough to run 174 THE GREAT MANUSCRIPT the manifold enterprises of a growing world. To this end is apportioned for every calling, from the rag-picker's to the poet's, a certain quantity and quality of mind-stock. But a single metaphor can convey no idea of the unlimited field of action which is open to mind. Like the kingdom of heaven, which Christ compared to a sower, to a mustard- seed, to leaven, to a treasure hid in a field, to a merchantman, and to a net which was cast into the sea, the human mind requires an indefinite number of figures to mirror its vast energies and capacities. This is espe- cially apparent when one studies its more complex action in partnership with the heart, such as is involved in all emotional experience. One may possibly observe the processes of pure mind in the solution of mathematical problems, and in the sometimes barren ab- stractions of philosophy, chilled to a tem- perature of thirty-one degrees Fahrenheit. But in all the pulsing experiences of life, by which man is unfolded, from his most intimate relations to those as wide as the 175 ON THE MANUSCRIPTS OF GOD human race, there is always a joint action of the heart and head, or a vote from both houses in the Republic of Man. Unless this form of individual legislation exists, a man is living Tinder an unconstitutional mon- archy, tyrannously ruled by his red or white corpuscles, however free he may think him- self. Unfortunately, the head and heart are often mentioned as if they were entirely in- dependent organs in separate compartments. But nature makes no such sharp demarca- tions in their functions. She never does for any organ, but makes it collaborate, visibly or invisibly, with all the rest, suffusing and blending its functions and their influence, as she does those of the heart, by means of the arteries, veins, capillaries, and the organs of respiration. In like manner there are thoughts of aortic force, and others which are arterial, venous, and capillary, in their function and influence. If one could watch a thought from its be- ginning to its end if it ever has one it would be discovered that something quite as 176 THE GREAT MANUSCRIPT wonderful as the route and changes of the blood in its course happens to every thought which gets into the mental circulation. A certain percentage of one's thoughts ap- parently go to the heart to get warmth and color. When a thought or group of thoughts takes the deepest, finest shade the heart can give, the phenomenon is known as love ; and if the colors are fast, the effect is called con- stancy. A lighter shade of the same emo- tion is friendship. When the color of either of these emotions does not wear well, it may be due to the fact that one's first undyed thoughts were woven of illusion; or, if woven of realities, that they were sent to the wrong dyeing plant, perhaps to the gall, liver, or spleen, instead of the heart. So the risks that attend the mental cir- culation are as great as those of the physical, and each set of risks reacts upon the other. A thought, moreover, is such a rapid absorb- er of color that it is almost impossible to keep one in the mental circulation for any length of time without having it take on some tint, good or bad. We hear of black 177 ON THE MANUSCRIPTS OF GOD thoughts, but it is probable that thoughts may have a great many other hues, including green, yellow, pale-blue, dark-blue, rose, and deep crimson. Probably the blackest kind of thoughts were only pearl gray when they first left the mental looms, and everyone knows that the palest damask rose of fancy may be dyed into the deepest scarlet of feel- ing. All kinds of prejudices are familiar examples of thought which have absorbed too much color, or the wrong shade. Nor is the circulation of a thought con- fined to the individual system belonging to the brain in which it seemed to originate. By means of speech, the printed or written page, a few inspired strokes of an artist's brush, a sculptor's chisel, or the tiny dots used by a musician, a thought or a feeling may get into the circulation of the whole world. Thus through eye and ear, and their finer inward extensions, we are knit into the mental and emotional circulation of the entire human race, becoming mem- bers one of another in a sense as literal as it is figurative. 178 THE GREAT MANUSCRIPT With all its lubricity, then, mind is at once the most ductile, as well as the strongest force known to man. Even had it done noth- ing else, how stupendous are its achieve- ments through thousands of languages, made marvelously effective by its joint action with the emotional troops drafted into its service. Let one draw aside for a moment the heavy veil of familiarity which hides most of the wonders of the world, including those wrought by man, and consider how like a tale of enchantment is the history of alpha- bets and what man has done with them. What other finite force in the universe, save mind, and its dynamic partner, the heart, could breathe the breath of life into a small collection of immaterial symbols and knit them together into syllables, words, and sen- tences that pulse with tenderness, throb with passion, or glow white with the highest aspirations of the spirit? Whatever the mind may grasp from the boundless realms which are its empire, what- ever the emotions of the heart, love or pity, hate or scorn, hope or fear, language has 179 ON THE MANUSCRIPTS OF GOD some word, or group of words, as delicately adapted to their expression as are the pinions of a bird to its weight and the apex of its flight. Even for the finest fringes of fancy, thought, and feeling, the half inarticulate murmurs of the spirit, man can conjure from syllables and words an ethereal embodiment matching his mental content as its fragrant petals match the soul of a rose. With its ever recurring additions from every age and race, and the individual impress of single great spirits upon it, language is the com- posite psychological photograph of the hu- man race. Or, to change the figure, it is a psychological scale for mental and emotional weights and measures, more delicately ad- justable than any used by chemist or apothe- cary. By means of a vowel, consonant, or syl- lable, more or less, an adjective, adverb, or exclamation, man weighs his thoughts and feelings as he has learned to weigh the heavenly bodies. When no word or sentence in its literal sense meets his need, he calls upon his Ariel-like faculty, the imagination, 180 THE GREAT MANUSCRIPT to help him with figures of speech, and for these the world and his own experience offer an inexhaustible source. So it is possible for men of the widest mental and moral divergence to use the same language and yet show as vast a difference in their verbal efflorescence as a sunflower and a lily of the valley, which draw from the same soil and air the raw material with which each petals forth its individuality. Yet all this is only a fraction of the far- reaching results attained by means of lan- guage and printing-presses, which are per- haps the most valuable of all of man's inven- tions. By their agencies, man has abolished the thick partitions of the centuries between the past and the present and looked into the very hearts of his brothers who lived thou- sands of years ago. Through the printed page, more wonderful than any enchanted mirror of fairyland, we see the never-ending pageant of the world pass, Jew and Gentile, bond and free, heroes, villains, warriors, martyrs, saints, seers, and prophets, each, through the printed page, bequeathing an in- 181 ON THE MANUSCRIPTS OF GOD spiration or a warning, as our own age, through the same agencies, will leave its legacies to the future. Not only does language save for us the record of the material progress of every nation, but all its finer garnerings of thought and feeling, preserving in the exquisite vials of poesy the spiritual vintage of the rarest souls of each generation. Thus are we made free stockholders in the richest of all corporations, the Cosmic Men- tal Harvesting Company, Unlimited, from which we receive daily, almost hourly, divi- dends, though we know it not. To this great company every one makes some contribution also from his mind, heart, and personality, either strengthening or watering the cosmic stock. Perhaps a more evolved generation than ours may see these mental and emo- tional currents, which, like streams, course from every individuality in their strangely varied and winding channels, starting at an act performed, an idea spoken, written, painted, or sung, or borne on the finer waves of secondary ether. If all these streams of 182 THE GREAT MANUSCRIPT influence from the dead and the living could be seen, they might be found to bear a strik- ing resemblance to the great water systems of the world, with their myriad rills, brooks, rivers, lakes, and oceans. Some of us con- tribute little rills of influence and others are Amazons of power and inspiration. Many are placid dreaming lakes, and a few fur- nish the world with its great mental oceans, as Shakespeare did; and still others, like Phillips Brooks, temper the psychical zone in which they live by a warm Gulf Stream from their own great hearts. Strangely like the history of physical streams, too, is that of psychical currents which may become obstructed or stagnant, or may receive tributaries that pollute or purify them. Nor less than the physical river, whose waters are ever changing within its banks, does the river of thought, feeling, and action change from day to day, often- times, like its counterpart, washing itself clear, in the long and widening channel of the years. Thus does the history of the individual 183 ON THE MANUSCRIPTS OF GOD duplicate the vaster history of the human race, working out the great plan, which "Drew as a bubble from old infamies And fen-pools of the past The shy and many-colored soul of man," as Mr. George Stirling so exquisitely puts it. Studying the ever-broadening empire of thought, from its beginning in the "fen- pools of the past," and remembering that no one has yet discovered a limit to the possi- bilities of the mind's achievements, it seems quite conceivable that some day it will con- quer interplanetary space as it has already put a girdle around our own globe. That done, we may look for thoughts expanded from the provinciality of a single world to interplanetary breadth and scope. From this possibility, become an actuality, others will as surely follow, until man's thoughts, enlarged from their present childish com- prehension of divine thought, shall meet and merge with those of God. 184 "' e*n UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA LIBRARY