Or^/yu^.
^]/. /^. ^^^-^
1 ^^ 1- 1
12- C>- %
,.y(?^^-(j;"
:TTr,v
^ 2- / f ?^
:-^W7V-'t;,'^?'M1r.;';f'
<viM #iiiM ^ ^'^mf%^'K
UP THE RIVER.
f! w. shelton,
AUTHOR OF HECTOR OF ST. BARDOLPH's, AND SALANDKR THE DRAGON.
Mitl] lUustotions fraiu (Driginivl icsigns.
■Neto*¥ocfe:
CHARLES SCRIBNER, NASSAU- STREET,
1853.
?PR
Entered according to Act of Congress in the year 1853, by
CHARLES SCRIBNEK,
in the Clerk's OflSce of llie Distrirt Court of me United States for the
Soutiiern District of New York.
TOBITT S COMBINATION-TYPE,
181 "William-st.
PREFATORY LETTER
ro
LOUIS GAYLORD CLARK.
Bourne.
IXTEEN years ago,
while living near the
;v C sea-coast, I was sitting
-^4^ in a parlour on a plea-
sant summer morning,
sauntering with a lazy-
eye over a volume of
Latin poems, a portion
of the delicate opuscula,
the dexterous handi-
work of V I N N I u 8
I remember turning over the snowy pages of
that book only because the fact is connected with one of
ii, PREFATORY LETTER.
more importance, — such is the mysterious principle of
association which makes each petty memory the co-link in
a lengthened chain. AVhile engaged in the scansion and
interpretation of a Sapphic Ode, compacted by Vinnius
with an unimpeachable accuracy and adjustment of its
several parts, a person bearing precisely the same name
as yours, was announced — when without formality, and
with a vigorous start, a friendship commenced, which up
to this day, has been frank, open, genial, and above dis-
guise — interrupted, it is hoped, by no unpardonable faults,
and embittered never by any unkindly suspicions.
According to the melancholy records of social inter-
course, it is a cause of gratulation, as well as a mutual
compliment to both, that this fearful lapse of time has
not become an impassable chasm, and that we hold the
same friendship in good preservation still. Such it may be
predicted will be the amiable fact, until if life remains, the
dark liair on these worthy crowns shall have become as
white as the driven snow, and the almond tree shall
flourish.
It is not often that a tolerable contact or juxta-posi-
tion can couLiuue even fur a decade of years. Business
PREFATORY LETTER. 111.
and the stern perplexities of life interpose their obstacles
to a close affinity, and cause the elements which were dis-
posed to coalesce, to fly apart with a centrifugal motion.
Thus you may sit at the festive board with a friend,
enjoy with him at intervals a day's ramble, or walk with
him in a pleasant garden ; but in a little time he is at the
ends of the earth, the ocean rolls between you, or he has
gone to " that bourne whence no traveller returns." The
mountains rise above the vales to divide friendships as
well as countries, and lift their hoary peaks to cut human
hearts in twain. In a few years you strain your eyes over
a dreary distance, where all which is between you and the
horizon appears vacant air.
As we sometimes turn back after journeying a long
distance to find again some Bantine thicket full of birds,
some flowering dell in the mid-wilderness where there was
a fountain of sweet waters, so we can but recur to these
green spots of the Past, and pluck a faded leaf from
memory. The arrowy course of these past years has its
mile-stones composed of monuments wreathed about, as
the case may be, with the green vines of spring, or with
the purple foliage of autumn, or with their white shafts
iv, rriEFATORY LETTER.
sunken in still whiter snows. The twin-spirits have been
torn asunder, the poet has ceased his numbers, and the
minstrel his song, and Beauty has perished in its prime,
and the noble heart has become cold for ever. In the
repose of Greenwood, (the suburbs of a living city)
marked by many a silver lake, and wood-crowned hill, and
cultivated garden, we have sometimes stood while the
earth opened to swallow up those who were dearest — or
pausing at the tomb of one too early lost, have exclaimed
almost in the plaintive words of the classic poet\ —
lieu ! quanto minus est cum reliquis versari
Quam tui memmisse.
But a tide less deep and dark than that of Styx too often
separates the friends who seemed like brothers — the wrig-
gling, shallow stream of selfish policy. Most acquaintan-
ces proceed less from knowledge than from the want of
it, and with those of deep feeling an admiration for many,
which has been quickly fanned into a flame, becomes
changed into a cynical mistrust for all, which poisons the
heart at its warm fountain. To advance in all knowledge
makes you in love with the pursuit, and instigates you to
go farther, except the knowledge of men.
PREFATORY LETTER. V.
I recollect upon that pleasant morning when first we
met, that we went to walk in the woods, ascending first
a hill-top from which a good view could be obtained,
and I said to you in the musical words of Sir William
Temple, " I will conduct you to a hill-side, painful indeed
at the first ascent, and steep, but else so smooth, so clear,
so full of goodly prospects and of harmonious sounds,
that the harp of Orijheus is not more charming." It was
the month of June, and the dog-wood was in blossom, and
the young bark of the birch and sassafras smelled sweet,
and the leaves just burst from their waxen buds had a
glossy and a tender freshness, and the dells were full of
singing birds, and the year was at its prime. For at the
latter end of May, and in early June, when the lingering
chills which come from ice-fields have given place to the
sweet, warm breath of summer, and the sun cheers and
gilds, without yet scorching with his rays, and the rose
blushes at that identical stage of its existence which is be-
twixt its early budding and its prime, there is a sense of
life and freshness which we annually enjoy for a little, and
then bid farewell to it, perhaps for ever.
It was at this season, so propitious, that we walked
Vi. PREFATORY LETTER.
together for the first time, my friend, talking of those
hopes which have scarce yet budded, and of those expect-
ations which have not yet bloomed. Then all seemed fair
and promising, and the thoughts of our heart borrowed
their liue from the landscape, for we were in the very
springtime of life.
A year later, I stood at this same spot alone, and
thinking of 3'ou, broke open the seal of that letter which I
held in my hand, for I never glance over an expected let-
ter on the sidewalk, hastily gobbling its contents, but
hold it in reserve for some moment of leisure or fitting
place. It was then that I first knew^ of the death of your
twin-brother Willis, who has written some of the most
heartfelt poetry which was ever penned. You spoke of
having started, but of arriving too late to be present at his
departure, for when you entered his house that night in
Philadelphia he was dead. I have lost the letter, which
was in few words, but remeniber well the impression
which it made upon me ; nor do I esteem you less be-
cause it may be said of you, oiotus in fratrem anwii pa-
teriii, and because you are ever casting flowers upon his
grave.
PREFATORY LETTER. Vll.
Since that first meeting, I have spent many pleasant
hours in your company, often sitting at evening and at
mid-winter in j'our cheerful study, where the lights still
blazed, while the storm howled without, and the snows
fell on the Icnobbed and bony fingers of the dry Alanthus,
whose knuckles were held up before j^our door — looking
upon the fire in the grate, turning over the leaves of costly
and freshly-printed books upon your table — examining
pictures, reading passages in prose and poetry from classic
authors — beguiling th« time with anecdote and talk.
And I have often floated with you on summer days
around the expansive btTy which pours its wealth of wa-
ters and treasures from every clime into the bosom of our
native city. I say native, although neither of us first drew
the breath of life within it. But we have been nestled
closely upon its great heart, and been nurtured almost
within its limits, and our hopes and affections are identified
with it, and it is like some beloved Argos to which the
eye constantly reverts. "Within our owm time, from being
comparatively small and without architectural adornment,
and ranked in an inferior class, it has risen into a magnifi-
cent and glorious city, enlarging its borders on every
Viii. PREFATORY LETTER.
hand, boasting its " streets of palaces and walks of state,"
bearing still it is true its provincial name — and although
surmounted neither by the dome of the Capitol, nor the
Monument of Washington, nor the halls of legislation, in
all respects the Metropolis of the Western Continent ; —
and much as I love the country and the smell of the new-
mown hay, my heart still throbs with exultation when I
come near enough to hearken to the hum of Manahatta, the
clashing of its ship-yards, the breathing of its Vulcanic
forges, the clangour of the foundries, the note of prepara-
tion, and the sound of" armourers closing rivets up" — not
for the big barbaric men who hold a spear, and whose
breasts are coated with overlapping plates, but mas-
sive coatings for the hot and steaming lungs of iron horses
and for the sheathing of the ships ; — for bolts and bands
and bars to envelope the very sinews of the arm of Peace.
Oh, how much superior to man are the physic powers
which he controls as with a tyrant's sway. Yes, I am
proud of that city which rises up superbly out of the deep,
and in which Commerce glories as her own. Hie arma
hie eurius. When I see the pictured and beaded Indians
listlessly and moodily still wending their way through its
PREFATORY LETTER. IX
streets, the same children of Nature which they were when
the keel of Hendrik Hudson first clove these weaves, ad-
vanced not one jot farther in civilization, except that the
scalping-knife is of necessity sheathed, and the tomahawk
is buried — bearing their fictile wares and barken manufac-
tures, and needle-work, and rattling baubles about their
necks, and bringing back at a single glance the memory
of the bai'baric Past, and then turn to the spectacle around
me, I ask myself is all this the illusion of the fancy ? Is
what I see the effect of magic and the doings of Genii, or
is it rather that I am standing upon the last vantage
ground of the human race, where the dead are quickened,
and a resurrection is taking place, and society sloughing off"
its old prejudices, is at last bursting its shackles and swa-
thing bands, and with gigantic strength is coming forth to
a better life, to a more exalted freedom, and to a higher
civilization.
And I have often floated with you on a summer even-
ing up the Eiver, \valking the decks of a gorgeous palace,
or perched high up at the extreme bow in a privileged
position near the good man at the wheel-house, and while
the sun sank low, and gilt the Western skies with an Ita-
X. PREFATORY LETTER.
lian splendour, and with a warm and lingering glow, we
shot by the lovely coasts, and enjoyed in all its variegated
lio-hts and shades the changes of that unfolding panorama.
What though the day were sultry, and no breath of air
was stirring on the shores, yet here the prow dashed
through the strong exhilarating breeze, while on the green
and sloping banks we saw the lambs strolling, their backs
clothed with Spanish fleeces, and the kine reclining in easy
attitudes on those rounded knolls and hill tops which re-
semble the tomb of the Old Bianor. And presently we
glided past the base of that most massive, solid wall of
perpendicular rocks, extending on the left for miles and
miles, more marvellous than the Giant's Causeway, yet
seemingly the work of men, built up as if by line and
plummet for the circumvallation of some immense cit}',
with the summit of the wall all evenly cut in a direct and
horizontal line, as if done by a chisel. Still as we pass by,
the work appears too great for men, or even giants. Some
convulsion of Nature must have wrenched open the lion-
like jaws, and while on the one side they remain solid and
petrified, on the other they are crumbled away and gone.
In their height and length, these walls make a mere mock
PREFATORY LETTER. xi,
at the mud-work and masonry of man. The forests at
their base, as you sail onward in the middle of the stream,
look like an irregular green stripe on a basement of per-
pendicular cliffs, and the great parallel splits or projec-
tions on their sides have the appearance of pilasters, and
the vines and foliage on the top hang over like light leaves
of ornamental acanthus. I for one have never seen the
walls which upheave majestic domes, which have been
built by Angelo and others, but I know that they cannot
equal the Palisadoes.
What an infinite variety of landscape is presented to
the eye as you pass up the River. Although you see no
castles, like those which are on the brink of the Rhine, yet
in all their towering and natural grandeur the cliffs shoot
up on which the castles ought to be ; — and whether the
fogs wreathe their summits, or they stand clear and well-
defined in an amber atmosphere, the eye never tires of en-
joyment. I have sometimes sat with you by the hour on
a starlit summer evening on the roof of your house on the
high hill at Piermont, looking over the broad basin of the
Tappaan Zee. Nearly opposite, nestled among the trees,
is the quaint and modest house of Washington Irving,
Xli. ' PREFATORY LETTER.
illustrious historian, most chaste and charming writer of
Eno-lish undefiled, holding possession undisputed of his
native patrimony of wit and humor, bounded by smiles
and tears. Long may he live upon the banks of that
Eiver whose legends are blended with his undying fame,
and whose tide is not more sparkling and full of pleasant
images thau his transparent style.
I now dedicate to you, my dear C, a volume which,
however simple in its contents, and in the class of subjects
of which it treats, has during the last twelve months, cost
me many hours of pleasant pains and patient elaboration,
and a large part of it has already passed before an eye
perhaps too partial to the author. But although it is
brought to an end for the present, I have not been able to
include within its moderate compass one half of the topics
and little adventures which are noted down in my tablets,
my ivory tablets. These contain hints written in pen-
cil, sometimes under a spreading tree, sometimes on the
bank of a sparkling stream, or in a meadow, but cannot
be deciphered ; and again when Memory has been en-
trusted with something worthy of preservation, she has
turned traitor.
PREFATORY LETTER. Xlll.
Many books have been already written of the like de-
sign. Of these, some handle topics which are rather sug-
gested by an agreeable retirement in the country, having
about them, like clothes which have been stored away in
rose leaves, a scent of the blossoms which grew around
the porch where the author was writing, but with no
direct allusion to the I'oses themselves. Others are
acknowledged and scientific works, accurately descriptive
of objects in the external world, but not forbidding by
their technicality ; — enriched with anecdote, and almost
invariably borrowing from the pleasant subject on which
they treat a style flowing and harmonious. Others still
are the works of amateur sportsmen and men of the world,
who throw around their favourite sports and amusements
in the open air and in the field, the charms and graces
which are conferred by cultivated taste and an elegant
education.
There is the " Journal of Summer Time in the Coun-
try " by the Eev. Robert Aris Wilmott, happily named,
because it seems to be inspired by the influences which
breathed around. My friend D made me a present
of a copy of this work not long ago. It is not so much a
Xiv. PREFATORY LETTER.
journal of objects in the country, as a diary of thoughts
and meditations, presenting on every page the results of a
fine and delicate taste and appreciation in literature and
the fine arts, enriched by apposite allusion and happy
quotation from authors both ancient and modern, but
especially the choice old writers and poets of England ;
abounding too in sharp criticism and valuable aesthetic
essays, — in all respects a volume well deserving the esteem
which it has met. One is brought into good company in
this book wherein we have at least a gleam, a twinkle,
and a recognition of beautiful thoughts which have been
concealed in their setting. Had I that alcove of books to
which Mr. Wilmott was so fond of retiring when he spent
his "Summer Time in the Country," nothing would have
pleased me better than to have made an excursion into the
fields of literature after recording my walk in the woods
or meadows ; but for the want of books of reference I was
hampered and impeded, and obliged to give up my design.
Into most of the works which I wanted I had formerly
dipped, and retained on the intellectual palate a grateful
sense and flavour of the good things contained within
them ; but as it is an insult to a man to address him by a
PREFATORY LETTER. XV,
wrong name, so it is to an author to quote him incorrectly
— as you stand convicted of the vanity of trying to im-
prove his sense. In the few quotations which I have
made which are not certified by reference I am afraid of
being guilty of this fault, and plead the excuse of living
in the country. It is true that within a few miles I have
access to libraries of my friends, which are replete in clas-
sic stores ; but I never was gifted with the patience of
Boswell to travel far in order to be certain of a word or
of a date. As to my own collection of books, I will get
down on the marrow-bones and make confession in this
part of my pilgrimage, for I always slam the door of my
library whenever I see a literary man, or especially a the-
ologian, draw nigh.
For one who has the reputation among his friends of
being a man of literary tastes, unless you made allowance
for a deficiency of purse, you might consider my collection
of books as an anomaly in character. I can say of them
truly, as of Falstaflf 's regiment, " No eye has seen suck
scarecrows. There they stand in the ranks, high and
low, rich and poor, old and young, some covered with gilt,
others literally in rags — some corpulent, and some thin as
Xvi. PREFATORY LETTER.
laths— some of them with dogs'cars, and others not— some
with their backs well whipped by the censors of the press
who hold the lash — others in clean and dainty linen, fos-
tered and pampered for the very dress which they wear ;
yet such as they are, standing side by side, Delphin Virgil
next to Pilgrim's Progress — Horace Delphin next to one
of Scott's novels. There never was a more beggarly array
outside of Coventry. I have no Chaucer, no Shakspeare,
no Cowley, no Evelyn, no any thing which I want most.
But I keep upon my parlour table a copy of the Bible and
of tiio Prayer Book to represent a standard library.
The.se remarks, however, on books in general, are
leading me from my design of mentioning some particular
works on rural subjects which have lately happened to be
on my table, or have fallen within my reach. Of Bartram
and Wilson and Audubon I need not speak, because they
hold a distinct and elevated position as scientific authori-
ties ; but in addition to research and accuracy on topics
which are by no means dry and unattractive, they are, for
the mere charms of style, to be ranked with some of the
best models of classic composition. Very few but the
purest men, gifted with a sentiment for the Beautiful, and
PREFATORY LETTER. XVll.
native taste, are disposed to devote a lifetime to such
researches, the whole tendency of which is to load them to
elevated views of the Divine perfections, to a cheerful mo-
ralizing, and the adoption of a healthy philosophy, which
looks upon the bright side of things. They are the bene-
factors of mankind.
Downing's work on Landscape Gardening is the best
monument of its lamented author. Had he lived a little
longer, ho would have fulfilled all the aims of an honoura-
ble and earnest ambition — but in the prime of life, and in
the brightness of a summer morning, he sank and perished
in the waves of that very river whose banks he had done
so much to embellish and adorn.
N. P. "Willis is the author of " Letters from Under a
Bridge," a book marked by all the peculiarities of a cun-
ning and felicitous writer, who still from his home at Idle-
wild, contributes papers from time to time on similar
themes, which are considered among the most happy pro-
ductions of his pen.
My friend M ,\ who is too modest to place his
name on a title-page, and therefore, without his pormis*
sion, I shall not take the liberty of mentioning it, has given
XVili. PREFATORY LETTER.
to the public a book which with a peculiar aptitude at no-
menclature, he has styled " Up-Country Letters." The
title alone would be an inducement to take it up. It is
extremely breezy, and does great credit to its amiable
author, abounding in much delicate limning, and many
sketches of character. May it find a place on the shelves
of every library.
It is only within the few past weeks that I received a
copy of " Rural Hours, by a Lady," of which, though
anonymous, the authorship is well traced, and which is
already extensively and favourably known. I should be
sorry to omit the mention of this book, which perhaps
more than any other, cuts into the exact plan of this
volume. But it is much more full in all matters concern-
ing rural life — a complete compend, omitting nothing. In-
deed it would be diflBcult to think of any thing in the whole
range of Nature which attracts your immediate attention
in the few seasons of the year of which a mention is not
made in this ample volume. Even the little yellow but-
terflies which hover in companies by the wayside pool, are
kindly remembered.
But happily the subject of the country is still inex-
PREFATORY LETTER. XIX.
haustible, and there is an infinite variety in the objects
which it presents, and in the phases which afford them-
selves at every turn to the eye of the loving and faithful
painter. In some old Flemish pictures which I have ob-
served, every leaf upon a tree is minutely copied with a
truth and fidelity which the Daguerreotype could alone
rival ; — and this one tree would be a long study for a
master. If therefore a single tree, or even an old stump,
be worthy of transcription with its few knotted, gnarled,
crooked and dead branches, and the more ungainly, so
much the more picturesque, and better, — what multitudes
of pictures and images may be jotted down by the lover
of Nature, let him direct his steps whither he will, but
especially in those favourite and secluded spots which are
peculiarly his own.
There is indeed no object so desolate in the country
as to be devoid of interest, whether it be a stone fence, a
corn-stack, an old house, or an old barn. One of the
sweetest poems which Burns wrote was on so simple a
theme as the turning up of a field-mouse in a furrow. On
this account, it would appear that no apology can bo
needed for trenching upon trite themes, or that I have
XX. PREFATORY LETTER.
said so much about my chickens. Whatever spreads
abroad a love and admiration for rural pursuits, is so
much done for the good of men. The prosperity of the
country is marked, not so much by the growth of its
cities, as by the enlarging boundaries of its cultivated
lands. Great towns are peculiarly suitable for none but
those who have a vigorous ability to develope commerce,
or to occupy some appropriate position in the crowded
mart. The collection of useless members in their purlieus
produces congestion and deadly vice. It is certain that a
majority of the energetic young men who are growing up,
have a disposition to expend their enterprise in oiher fields
rather than in those literally which demand culture around
them. But there is nothing which exercises a stronger
influence in establishing a feeling of self respect, a love of
country, a pride of citizenship, a veneration for sacred
law and just government, than the sentiment which accom-
panies the possession of one acre of a man's native soil.
All the bank stock in the world would not produce the
same effect. And in our happy land, no man, not even
the poorest, is precluded from the possibility of such an
ownership. It is on these accounts no useless or unpro-
PREFATORY LETTER. XXI
fitable task to endeavour to throw around the idea of a
home in the country, however humble, a little of that rosy
embellishment which alleviates toil and adds to its intrinsic
value.
And now farewell. Already the frosts have whitened
the ground. Perhaps before another spring returns to
strew the earth with flowers, and the voice of singing
birds is heard again, I shall tempt the billows of the deep,
touch for the first time the shores of merry England,
stand by the grave of Shakespeare, the banks of Avon,
and of Ridal Water. May the voyage be prosperous, the
exploration pleasant, and the return speedy.
Oh, how canst thou renoUxVce the boundless store
OF CHARMS which NATURE TO HER VOTARY YIELDS
the bubbling FOUNTAIN, THE RESOUNDING SHORE,
THE POMP OF GROVES AND GARNITURE OF FIELDS ;
ALL THAT THE BOUNTEOUS RAY OF MORNING GILDS,
AND ALL THAT ECHOES TO THE SONG OF EVEN ;
ALL THAT THE MOUNTAIN'S TOWERING SUMMIT SHIELDS,
AND ALL THE DREAD MAGNIFICENCE OF HEAVEN
OH, HOW CANST THOU RENOUNCE, AND HOPE TO BE FORGIVEN?
3S e a 1 1 i e .
UP THE RIVER.
N ingenious friend of
-^ yours, (shall I say also
of mine ?) the author of
ii^'"^-. the 'Morning Watch,'*
^ i\ once wrote a charming
account of an event
which is apt to occur
in households. As it was true to
Nature, the language came home
'familiar as Household Words' to
the bosoms of those concerned;
and as it was in the unwrought
'^ "* ' vein of epistolary richness, it was
as pleasant as the receipt of a
bank-note enclosed in a letter through the post-
office. It has already been pasted in note-books, or
* And also of the "Up-Country Letters."
2 XJPTIIERIVER.
folded up, duly endorsed with the date, and deposited
in some pigeon-hole for future reference, as a docu-
ment worthy of being preserved. For my own part,
I have it in memory, which is tenacious of such
matters, and in a bound volume of the Knicker-
bocker JMagazine, which is still more to be relied
on than mere memory.
How delightful, and beyond the value of the
stamp, is a sincere letter ! Newspaper creates ex-
cessive anticipation, but what is that compared with
a well-known handwriting, and a red seal, broken
open with avidity because we know that a message
of friendship is underneath? But one gradually
gets out of the habit of letter-writing. As cares
multiply, and the freshness of life becomes changed
to the sere and yellow leaf, the springy feeling
vanishes which gave a letter its delight, and it be-
comes a cold and formal scrawl. For myself, the
notion seizes me to express myself with some degree
of heart in this mode, not perennially, (as girls at
boarding-school,) but annually; or rather let me
say, in a bad coinage, printem-ennially. The other
night, or rather morning, (for it was three by the
watch which ticked under my head,) as the full,
round, dry, brassy moon flooded my chamber with
light, and no sleep came, I said to myself, 'I feel
UPTHERIVER. 3
like writing a letter: I have not written one for a
year. It shall be to the dear friend of fifteen long
years of unintermitted friendship, and I will give
him an account of my first attempt at housekeeping.'
An orchestra of whip-poor-wills, sparrows which
sing at night, chimney-swallows, who keep up an
incessant twittering overhead, and dogs baying the
silent moon, raucous frogs in the near creek, crying
'Breke-ke-kex-koax-koax P and one mosquito, the
'first of the season,' did not act like McMunn's
Elixir on nerves indisposed to be at rest. ' Lucifer !'
At the word of incantation, a blue Will-o-the-wisp-
like star hung in mid-air, and a strangulating smell
of sulphur filled my nose. I sat down to write until
the gray dawn, then to lie down again and sleep
soundly until the smell of coffee and the tinkling bell.
My dear C — , {Here the letter proper begins,) if
there be any luxury, it is that of being under your
own roof, whether leaky or not. This sentiment is
never experienced but by Experience, and will
never be more forcibly expressed than in the words
of our own John Howard Payne, lately deceased
American Consul at Tunis, who is the author of
that ever-to-be-remembered song, beginning:
" 'Midst pleasxures and palaces though I may roam,
Be it ever so homely, there's no place like home."
4 UP THE RIVER.
My home at present, is a small, ve*y small
house, standing back from the highway, and almost
lost like a wren's nest amid the foliage. It is
said to be haunted, but no ghosts save those of my
own thoughts have as yet troubled me, or will
do so during my residence in it, as I am not particu-
larly interested in the theory of 'spiritual rappings.'
Unfortunately, as I had it well white-washed before
going into it, I get rubbed every day, and as the
story above stairs is only a half story, have my hat
smashed on going up, if I am such an ill-mannered
idiot as to wear a hat in the house. The stairs are
so precipitous, that I also tumble up and tumble
down. Herein the first difficulty was felt in my first
attempt at housekeeping. I had an old bureau very
dear to me, which I of course expected to have up
stairs, but after sundry trials with it, lengthwise,
and edgewise, and otherwise, the engineers stated it
as their opinion that it could not go up. What were
we to do, for this bureau was particularly needed ?
In a fit of ill-humor I had it deposited below, where
it represents an old side-board very well. The first
day's work consisted in tacking down matting,
which will look very decent and respectable while
the summer lasts; and in getting up bedsteads,
whereon to sleep during the approaching night ; and
UP THE RIVER 5
in unpacking a box of crockery, so as to obtain cups
and saucers, and plates, and a tea-pot, in order that
we might drink tea. For a loaf of bread and some
butter, and a bunch of radishes, we were indebted
to the kindness of a neighbour : and the first meal in
our new house, rest assured, was not without relish;
nor was the first rest under our roof not sweet. On
the next day, bright and early, being awakened by
the sound of a horn, I went out and purchased two
'shads,' one for breakfast, the other for dinner. Rest
assured, also, that with a cup of coffee and bread-
and-butter, and the shad, the breakfast passed off
well ; and in less than half an hour came a present
of a bunch of fresh asparagus and lettuce, while the
butcher passing by, and perceiving a new-comer,
provided us with a leg of lamb, which came in good
time for a new stove, just put up, and the garden was
redolent with mint. Thanks ! thanks ! My mind was
now much at ease, and I forthwith began to set my
house in order, as I was not in danger of starving in
the meantime, for our kind neighbours already had
their eye upon our wants. Our wants are many.
There is no end of the things essential and desirable
in housekeeping ; and after you have anticipated all
which you could think of, what a lack remains !
Cullenders, and sieves, and tubs, and buckets, and
e UPTHE RIVER.
pails, and nutmeg-graters, and spice-boxes, and bas-
kets, and ropes, and cords, and rings, and clothes-
pins, and nails, and tacks, and hammers, and
saws, and brushes, and no body can conjecture
what else ! After you have these, the demand is
still the same, and we have as yet been reduced to
the disagreeable necessity of borrowing much of our
next neighbor, who is very kind and forbearing.
Now I begin to see the responsibility of housekeep-
ing; but after all, the main difficulty is at the
start.
Having got fairly settled, one of my first thoughts
was in the direction of the garden, at which I went
to work with all the zeal imaginable, and it has al-
ready cost more than it will come to. This how-
ever, is only reckoning by dollars and cents. For
how hard it is to buy a fresh lettuce, or a cucumber
just plucked from the vines; a mess of peas picked
a half hour before they are cooked ; a bunch of rad-
ishes pulled a moment ago from the earth. Your
tomatoes, early potatoes, sweet corn, beans, and
salsify, bought in a market, are really valueless,
compared with those just gathered in your garden.
Taste and see. They are as far separate from one
another in excellence as staleness is from dewy
freshness; as the wilted shrivelled leaf from the
UP THE RIVER. 7
crisp, crackling, sparkling vegetation. What then,
if I have hired a man to dig my garden, shall I not
be recompensed? There is a sentiment about these
things. The moment that you begin to cultivate a
rood of ground, the dignity of a landholder begins.
You may at once discourse with those v\^ho own miles
of territory, and come to a serious consultation with
Professor Mapes as to the best modes of culture, the
best seed to be planted, and how to raise most on half
an acre. Since I planted my garden, which includes
the fourth of an acre, I have walked in it once or
twice a day, to see what has peeped out of the ground,
and whether I am going to have a mess of green
peas and sweet corn as early as the fourth of July.
My beans are the most ambitious vegetable which 1
have at present. They have outstripped corn, peas,
cucumbers, and potatoes, and exhibit themselves in
well-defined rows as you look from a distance. I
have some okra, parsnips, carrots, celory in the
ground, in reference to soup whereof a ready plate,
if well made, is not to be despised, and having a
good cellar
By the by, you ought to see my cellar — deep, ca-
pacious, cool as an ice-house, and already contain-
ing good store of milk, pot-cheese, and yellow but-
ter. The butter of Dutchess county is as good as
S UPTHERIVER.
that of Goshen, sweet, golden, and fragrant. A
daily collection of crusts, parings, etc., have lately
impressed my mind with the feasibility of keeping a
pig; not that there is any profit in it, but as I should
undoubtedly feed him w'ell, his pork would be more
rosy, tender, and delicious; the fat and lean more
amicably, inextricably blended. The hams, the sau-
sages, the cheeks, the head-cheese, the souse, pre-
pared and cured at home, are more relishable. Be-
side all this, there is an indefinable pleasure in look-
ing into pig-pens. The porcine grunt which greets
the sound of steps indicative of feed, the nose and
fore-foot thrust into the dry trough, and the spectacle
of animal appetite carried to the most magnificent
extent of which it is capable. There is satisfaction,
surely, in seeing the refuse which you have offered
accepted with such avidity. How unlike the ungrate-
ful beggars, who when you offer them a ticket for
really good soup, almost spit in your face ! To keep
a pig I am now nearly resolved. I like to see his
tail curl, if nothing else; and I like to see him
brought home on a man's shoulders in a bag, squeal-
ing tremendously.
I want to get a Shanghai hen. Do you know
any one who can spare a Shanghai hen? I would
not be without fowls, especially in the spring, when
U P THE III VER 9
they are so exorbitantly dear in market. Do you
recollect that spring chicken, whereof we partook
not long since ? When it came on table it occupied
as much space as a spread eagle on a gold coin, no
more. 'Speaking of chickens,' permit me to sym-
pathise with you on the loss of your rooster, the dis-
tressing intelligence of whose demise reached me in
the Editor's Table of the May Knickerbocker. As
I read your account of finding him one morning stiff
and stark, with his heels in the air, the tears almost
came into my eyes. What cut off your bird? Was it
the pip, or was it the gapes? I think my next-door
neighbour does not want me to keep chickens. I asked
him, 'if they cost as much as they came to.' 'Yes,'
he said, 'a great deal more.' He is probably afraid
that they will go scratching in his enclosures. I shall
keep the chickens and stand the damage. I must
have my fresh-laid egg for breakfast. You know
nothing about the value of eggs in the city, except
that they are so many for a shilling. An egg not bad
or doubtful, is good according to your ideas : but let
me tell you that a stale egg differs much in quality
from a fresh one ; and when you come to live in the
country, you grow wise in these things.
This is a beautiful region. The everlasting- moun
tains, inhabited by rattle-snakes, gird me in, and
10 UPTHERIVER.
the solitude is only broken by the occasional scream
of a steam-whistle on the Hudson River Rail-road.
What an eye-sore is that improvement of the age !
It has clipped off all the promontories which jutted
into the river, and marred the beauty of every choice
residence upon its banks, interposing- pools of stag-
nant water upon its line. But it is a great conve-
nience after all. Science is an irreligious Vandal,
and makes a mock at beauty. Farewell. Perhaps I
shall take a notion to write another letter when I
get my hennery in full action, and my pig-pen built.
Come and hear my cocks crow, my pig grunt, my
dog bark, and my cat mew !
II.
July 5th, 1852.
HIS year, by a freak of
the calendar, the glorious
Fourth falls upon Sunday,
and the large amount of
patriotism in the country
has to be bottled up until
Monday morning. When
this occurs, the clergy get
the start of the prophets
le groves by a single day,
and wrapping themselves up in
the American flag, supersede the
legitimate orators of the day by
"^ a little pulpit eloquence. Prin-
ciples of '76, star-spangled banner, forefathers of the
Revolution, blood-bought freedom, together with a
liberal allowance of gunpowder flashes illuminate the
12 UP THE RIVER,
track of sermons, while the Fourth-of-July Com-
mittee attentively listen, and the little Sunday-school
boys sit underneath, their pockets already filled with
Chinese crackers, which seem expressly made for the
barbarians. Are the citizens of this free country going
to be cheated out of their only holiday (Thanksgiving
excepted) by the intervention of a Sunday ? Certainly
not ! Toward sun-down, a little of the effervescence
begins to escape, and you hear the popping of occa-
sional guns in the hands of young men of a defective
piety, and stray sparks steal into a few Chinese
packs. Before sun-rise on the next day, the banging
and bell-ringing are incessant, and soon the demand
on horse-flesh is unparalleled with any day in the
year. It is the festival of livery-stable keepers, and
the blistering heat makes it the very purgatory of
horses. Villages to whose turn it does not fall to
'celebrate' soon look as solemn as the grave, while
the highways are thronged with both sexes going to
the fete; and the display of white trowsers and gay
bonnets is immense. Were I in New-York, I should
eschew the affectation of flying to the country to
the imaginary pleasures of troublesome pic-nics, and
would stand the disgusting racket of gunpowder ex
plosions for a sight of the soldiers and martial dis-
play, which fills me with delight. But not having
UP THE mVER. 13
a fancy for the fussification made in small towns, I
shall keep quiet, and write a letter to my friend the
'Old Knick,' no doubt at this moment in the
shady retreats of Dobbs' Ferry, unsealing packets
of the aforesaid diabolical crackers for the patriotic
and juvenile young Knicks.
Herein I may adventure perhaps a little advice.
Though brimstone may be appropriate enough for
one of your cognomen, for mercy's sake, do not train
up the young to be familiar with the smell. I was
standing by the Park Fountain some few years ago,
waiting for the fireworks in front of the City Hall
to be let off, when a diminutive boy fired a heavily-
loaded, hard-rammed pistol at my very ear. I
thought I should have gone mad: I was deaf, dumb,
blind, nearly choked for the instant, and my next feel-
ing was one of revenge. What was my satisfaction,
then, to see an elderly gentleman, whose nerves had
been alike shattered, single out the offending urchin,
box his ears soundly, and, though I was sorry to
hear him swear, apply his foot with a hearty good
will to the juvenile rear I It did me more good
than the 'Battle of Navarino.' If it were worth
while, I could write an essay full of detestation for
Chinese crackers. Yet if you say a word about them
m this country, you are put down. I was on one
14 UPTIIERIVER.
Fourth-of-July evening sitting on a quiet piazza,
afar from the noise and smoke of the day, as I
thought, speaking of this very nuisance to a very
staid and religious man of family. I said that there
were some things connected with the observance ^f
this day which should be repugnant to a Christian
people. The reading of the Declaration of Indepen-
dence, beside being a great bore, because nearly all
were familiar with the document, was an unneces-
sary trumping up of old grievances, which ought to
be forgotten. It was the rekindling of animosities
with those toward whom we now entertained the sen-
timents of peace and good-will. And beside, I said,
for my Christian friend was an officer of the Ameri-
can Peace Society, 'indulging the young with pistols
and gunpowder '
"Oh, pa! pa! do let us have one pack more! We
won't set fire to anything, indeed we won't."
The delegate of the Peace Convention thrust his
arm into his coat-pocket, drew out a string of red
crackers, flung them to the boy, and told him to fire
them in the barrel. So the argument was ended.
Since my last to you, some little progress has
been made in housekeeping, gardening, and so forth.
I have had my lawn trimmed, and got a load of hay,
so that I shall be ready for horses or ready for asses.
UP THE RIVER. 15
The first are more useful, the latter more amusing.
1 look forward with higli aspiration to keeping- a
cow. A degree of comfort and satisfaction is in-
volved in havmg one on your own premises, and to
notice her meek look as she stands in the barn-yard
of a summer evening letting herself be milked, and
chewing the cud (how much better than chewing
the quid!); the form of the dairy-maid by the side
of the polished, brass-girt maple-pail: the hollow
sound of the snowy cataract, covered with bubbles
and effervescence, and the squeezing out of the last
rich drops ! Occasionally she will be vicious, for
some cows are undeniably born for condemnation;
and I do not know in the course of my rustic obser-
vation a w'orse animal, and one more possessed by
the devil, than an ill-disposed cow. She is stubborn,
heady, high-minded, will have her own way, open
gates w'ith her tongue, or her teeth, or her horns, eat
up your cabbages, and kick over the pail. Tie her
by the horns to the fence, and whip her well with a
long stick, but do not heave a paving-stone against
her side. Vaccine matter alone should make us
grateful to the whole herd. Above all things, never
sacrifice your temper to crooked horns. Think
of the satisfaction of sitting down at your tea-table,
with your elegant hereditary silver milk-pot, (or, il
J6 XIPTIIERIVETl
you have not silver, one of Britannia metal will dc
on a pincli,) containing undiluted milk. (We have
no pumps in this neighbourhood.) Go into your
deep-dug cellar, and look at those shallow dishes
whereon the rich cream gathers, and oh ! the golden
butter, the cheeses, the streams of buttermilk, desi
derated by pigs, the high enjoyment of a frozen py-
ramid on a sultry night !
I told you of losing my canary, did I not? At
any rate, I will furnish the particulars now. My
friend Lemon, going out of town, gave me one by
name Dicky, an accomplished singer. I walked
round to Archie Grieves's, in Barclay-street,* and
bought a package of rape-seed; and that afternoon
we bundled ourselves into the coach, with a deal
of bother, for who likes to carry a cage on his lap?
I got the troublesome trunks on board, took the car-
pet-bags and cage, and hung the latter on a hook
under the deck of the steamboat 'Armenia,' which
was soon on her way to Newburgh. Got the bird
ashore with much trouble and, after getting packed
* ••Auuhik's is the place to go to," says the Editor of the Knicker-
iiockf.r; "it is a perlect museum of four-footed beasts and fowls of the
air : dogs of all descriptions, big and little; monkeys, foxes, rabbits,
squirrels; all kinds of singing and other birds, including that •nm-
ari.t, a verital)le black swan. We took 'Young K.nmck' there one
morning, and ' by r Lady' twas as much as we could do to entice
him awav. He wanted to 'see the monkeys more I' "
UP THE IlIVER. 17
somehow or other into a crowded coach, held the
bird again with much inconvenience. Let him out
for an hour or so on Sunday morning, when he seem-
ed much at home. Put him in again, and then
placed the cage on the piazza. We have no cat. I
do not keep a cat. I had not seen one near the
premises. Tn less than ten minutes a nasty black-
and white one came creeping and skulking along the
fence, while my back was turned, knocked over the
cage, and let out the bird ; and as I ran out, nothing
could be seen but a glimpse of his yellow wing and
the tip end of the tail of the retreating cat. I found
Evelina in tears, but for my own part have no tears
in the socket for misfortunes of this kind. I have
the cage still on hand. Don't you know where I
could procure a good canary ?
To make up for the loss of our canary, we have a
thousand swallows in the chimney, who keep up a
continual twittering and chattering by night and by
day. There is a round hole in the fire-place, through
which a stove-pipe was wont to go. The other morn-
ing I found one of these birds sitting therein, dressing
up his blue wings with his beak, and looking into the
room most unconcernedly. It is a pleasure to see them
every evening, glancing about with the rapidity of
electric flashes, and diving down at last into the
18 UPTIIERIVER
square mouthed cavern, from which they are not at
pretsent in danger of being smoked out. They keep
their feathers in excellent order, and look as if they
liad been curried and rubbed down by Zephyr. We
have a nest of wrens near by. This bird, who al-
lows you to come near enough to put salt upon his
tail, is very musical, singing constantly, but in short
snatches immediately repeated, and not drawn out
like the notes of a canary, which are sometimes
enough to make you stop your ears with wax, and
hold your breath. The other day, several birds in
my enclosure. Sir Robert Lincoln, Robin, etc., the
whole conducted by Signor Redhead Woodpecker-
iNi, followed one another in a curious succession of
notes which very closely resembled the well-known
air in Robert le Diahle :
'Te-tcm — te tum-te turn — da-da-da-da.
• TuM-ra, ra, ra, radadada-de.
' Te RvM-ra ra,' etc., etc.
At this season of the year a great many birdlings,
with none too many feathers on their wings, in their
first attempts to fly, fall on the grass and chirp long
and loud, in answer to the call of the parent-bird, in
consequence of which you easily take them. I yes-
terday caught a young robin, but he pecked my hand
so severely that I flung him back into the lilac-bush.
UPTHERIVEIl 19
being of opinion that a bird with such a temper was
not worth a cage. Sitting in my quiet study in this
valley, which is remarkably cool, (because the air
perpetually draws through from the river like a fun-
nel,) and the birds continue to sing as vivaciously as
ever at mid-day, I was just thinking, as J listened to
the wren, the boblink, and the cat-bird, of the supe-
riority of nature to art. I have heard Jenny Lind
when the ears of five thousand were literally fed on
the most impalpable and attenuated notes of that di-
vine voice, as the same number of people were once
miraculously fed on a mere morsel of bread. But
what is Lind to JjInnet?
There sings with glee, upon the tree
Before my chamber-door,
The sweetest bird I ever heard
In all my life before
The trilling note which shakes his throat
Is ricli, and ripe, and round ;
Not Jexny's voice has to our choice
More melody of sound.
In wood and dell, I know full well,
"Where nightingales are heard,
She learned in part her blessed art
To in:itnte the bird.
Perhaps you may wish to know my success in
gardening. Never was the head of a neglected boy
more scratched than my enclosures have been by
my neighbors' fowls. If I have worked an hour to
20 UP THE RIVER.
put seeds into the ground, they regularly undo the
work by scratching them all up, and then making
sundry round holes to deposit their vermin-covered
])odies in the cooling earth. Confound them ! if I
kept such a thing as a loaded gun I would scatter
enough dotv7i over my garden to make a feather-bed.
But I will not do it, because I consider peace better
than peas. These delinquent chickens are perfectly
conscious of guilt. In a barn-yard, where they are
legitimately scratching on a dunghill, they let you
approach within a foot; but in a garden, where they
see you twenty yards off, they turn tail, put their
heads down, and run, as if they expected to be pep-
pered with shot. Notwithstanding these provoking
poachers, who have materially diminished my enthu-
siasm for the hoe and spade, I have managed to
raise a few radishes. What more refreshing and de-
lightful, especially in early spring, when sated and
disgusted with grease and animal diet, than a tum-
bler full of short-top, scarlet radishes, placed upon
your tea-table, to be accompanied with sponge-like
bread and grass butter? How fresh, crisp, crack-
ling, sparkling, they are, as you take them out of
water ! How you love to snap them in two like
brittle glass, dip the endn in a little salt, and crack
them to pieces in your feverish mouth ! Such in-
UP THE IlIVER. 21
dulgence is a harmless epicurism, which the present
state of sumptuary laws does not forbid. I do hope
that radishes may be spared, although I foresee that
the days of salad are numbered, because lettuce con-
tains opium, as is well known. On Sunday last we
enjoyed a simple and delicious dinner, which did not
keep the cook from church, and did not take half an
hour in preparation. I cannot say that I regret to
say, that it was neither the triumph of my own gar-
den, nor of my own larder; but what is pleasanter,
it was the proof of neighbourly kindness : a mess of
Windsor beans and of juvenile peas, with a head of
lettuce of the very tenderest and most crackling
description, dressed according to the recipe of Syd-
ney Smith, accompanied with a ruddy slice of
broiled ham, and some new potatoes. For these
and all His other benefits, God's holy name be
praised !
Postscript: July 14. — In my last, in the course
of some desultory remarks upon fowls, I stated my
wishes with regard to a Shanghai hen, not supposing
that many of that breed cackled on this side the Him-
alaya Mountains. This day, at the hour of three,
while dining very frugally on some marrowfat peas,
young beans, a salad, and some few slices of bacon,
22 UP THE RIVER.
while at the same time the refreshing rain was fall-
ing upon the parched earth, and the fogs drifted over
the mountains, I observed a carriage at the gate.
Presently there was deposited a basket well covered
with canvas; and on peeping in, 1 discovered a cock
and hen of the Shanghai breed ! A polite missive ac-
companied the same, and on the card which contained
the donor's name, was written in pencil, 'Behold
THE Shanghais !' This was the considerate gift of a
gentleman who has a charming place near the banks
of the Hudson river, to me at present a stranger.
I put the fowls in the corn-crib, and they have kept
up a prodigious cackling, drumming of the wings,
and crowing ever since. The Shanghais crow very
strong. I am now going into the business of raising
fowls in earnest, and will bring you a basket of
eggs when I come again. The oysters which I
promised you when I lived on the water-side I could
not well send, because when I had them ready, a
party of friends arrived, and we ate them up.
SuN-DowN. — The neighbours have been over to
look at the fowls. There is at present a prevalent
fancy for high breeds. They are imported from the
ends of the earth, and sold at a costly valuation.
The other day, being at the steamboat landing I no
ticed a box covered with slats, addressed to some
UP THE RIVER.
23
person in the western part of this State. It contained
a great variety of unknown fowls, by no means
like those which were seen by the hungry Peter,
which he considered 'common.' Their feathers
varied from the meekest dove-color to an almost
tropical brilliancy. Among the lot I recognized the
towering Shanghais ^nd the beautiful Lilliputian
Seabright Bantam, Pride m miniature.
II.
ill
July 18, 1852.
N my last I informed
you of the reception
of a couple of Shang
hais, a cock and a hen.
They are docile and
magnificent birds, dis-
tmguished by an erect
military carriage, and
with voices which ap-
pear to be clarified with
K rock candy. I put them
in the crib for three or
four days until they
should become domesti-
cated. But they imme-
diately take to their new
home. How diflTerent
■" from cats !
This is not the first time that I have received
presents of this kind: not long since some im-
UP THE RIVER. 25
perial sherry ; and I have my doubts whether the
course for me would not be to turn imperial beg-
gar, to come out boldly and state my wants, when
there is no 'manner of doubt' that they would
be supplied; for there are so many people who, to
quote the language of Mr. Smith, my neighbour,
' take an interest into me,' that I should have my
enclosures full of blood stock. 1 learn by your note
to me that you went to Morris's great sale at Ford-
ham fully cocked and primed with the intention of
procuring Shanghais, which was baffled because
only short-horns and Durhams were offered by the
auctioneer. A dreadful fatality attends our efforts,
when directed toward making a gift ! It would not
be at all surprising if I got another pair of Shanghais
from some quarter or other, but this would be a
work of supererogation, as I am already supplied.
The yellow legs of these fowls are covered with
down, and they afford a fine chance for the abandoned
chicken-stealer, as they permit you to take them
from the roost without flutter or noise. Their ex-
cellence was discovered by the missionaries at
Shanghai in China, and you will find their pictures
drawn to the life in books on poultry. If I mistake
not, that excellent work written by Mr. Abuah Cock
was published before the importation of the bird.
26 Ur THE RIVE 11.
Some people in these parts have lately turnec!
their chickens and even cattle into the oat-fields.
It would remind you of Pharaoh's times to walk
abroad, for the grasshoppers have become 'a burden.'
They literally strip the fields of vegetation, and go in
hosts. After consuming the corn, the hay, and the
oats, in their raging gluttony they hop into the win
dows, and attack the rugs and carpets. The othei
day they bit my hand and bit my cheek, and ate a
hole in my new coat, and their mouths are full of
molasses. Hops are abundant, but other crops will
be rare. Hay is already exorbitantly high, I mean
in the market. On the edges of the high-ways they
have literally gnawed out the roots of the grass, leav-
ing the surface as bare as the Boston Common after
the Fourth of July. Frogs, who have hitherto car-
ried off the palm in hopping, leap into the wells out
of sheer vexation, and remain in their cool seclusion
until drawn up in buckets.
While the locusts this year move in advance, and
the grasshoppers forage among the corn. General
Potato-bug has squatted down with his innumerable
hosts in the gardens and patches At night they be-
take themselves to their brown wings, and with their
stomachs full of potatoes sit down in a new place
I have impaled a half-dozen of them on the steel
UP THE lilVEll. 27
point which writes this, and I now proceed to attack
them with my pen. For other kind of bugs you use
quills, only the feather end, dipped in corrosive sub-
limate instead of corrosive ink. But of these ene-
mies of the Irish people nobody knows how to get
rid. They are a teeming nuisance, and if you mash
one of them on your hand it immediately raises a
blister, like the monkey's kiss inflicted on the dear
little sister of the baboon. It is supposed that the
incursion of the bugs is owing to the want of more
stringent game-laws, but in Pharaoh's times, when
they did not go a-shooting they had them in abun-
dance. It is more than probable, however, that
the Egyptians excelled in snares, and got more birds
than we do now by powder and shot. Ho torto o
ragione: am I right or wrong?
Nineteenth. — To-day it is hot, hot ! Walking
among the mountains to get milk-weed, I came up-
on a clear stream fretting over the stones. Search-
ing out a resplendent pool where the willows drooped,
taking a bird's-eye view lest some Musidora might
be at hand, looking around warily to see that the
coast was clear of snakes, I stuck my cane into the
velvet turf upon the marge, and hanging thereon a
Deacon shirt, upon my word, accoutred as I was, I
28 UP THE mVER.
plunged in. O foiis BandusicR splendidior vitro ! O
delightful rivulet in Dutchess county, clear as crys
tal ! how refreshing to the weary traveller in search
of milk-weeds ! How welcome each advancing rip-
ple, pictured and tinted with the wild rose which
grew upon tlie marge, as if the spirit of the flower
had become detached from its corporeal form, and
been translated to the lymph ! It was a bath of roses,
O my friend, which Croton fascets and pewter tubs
cannot aflbrd. For who would touch a filthy flesh-
brush ! — oh horrible ! — hung up for general use in the
steaming bath-house, when he can have the friction
of the willow-branches, which, like the long hair of
the Nereids, float upon the stream? More pleasant
far to let your head rest upon a rock, to be embraced
and cradled by the living waves, cast your eyes up
to the blue sky, mark the castles, mountains, and
Alpine masses formed by tlie while clouds, and with
a soul purified from every earthly stain, and every
jierve re-strung, imagine much, and gather strength
and courage in your buoyant arms, which just hung
nerveless at your side. There as I lay I heard with
satisfaction the sound of the broiling locusts, and the
horns which called the laborer to his meal, and the
enchanting music of the bobolink. The cat-bird sang
his superior cavatina in the bush; the larches and the
U P T H E 11 1 V E R . 29
mountain-pines swayed with a taint celestial melody ;
the willows sio^hed. Then came floating alonff in the
amber-cells of the refreshed brain sweet memories
of the poets; what Horatius says in his odes ; what
ViRGiLius in his eclogues; what Plinius in his let-
ters ; what the classic muse of Izaak Walton,
and all the Aldine bards. From the bath one
rises up a better man ; and he must be a grovel-
ling wretch indeed who would go to do a mean or
sordid act before his hair is dry. It allays the
mind, quickens intellect, abates ennui. Oh! how
flat, weary, stale, and unprofitable does life appear
'in a dry and thirsty land where no water is !' The
earth is regenerated in baptism. In my present
domicile I have one substitute for a bath, which I
admit is a poor one, and would meet with the con-
tempt of any Turk, and that is a sponge and big tub,
in which I dabble two or three times a day, reading
or writing at the same time. That is what I am do-
ing now, and it is no small matter to keep the paper
dry. Sometimes w-hen it rains I sit on a stone under
a gutter at the corner of the house pushing aside a
A-ild rose-bush, and so take it. This is good, but
the country is at present afflicted with drouth. The
corn wants a drink. The blades demand it both here
and in the state of Maine, but heaven and earth at
30 UP THE RIVER.
present distil nothing. What will become of us if
we want water as well as rum ?
It is glorious toward the close of a sultry day,
when you can see the flood of rarified air play and
vibrate over the fields like a fine steam, to hear the
cry : ' There is a shower coming !' and presently
the sun is clouded, fresh breezes fan the forehead,
the clouds come trooping over the mountains in de-
lightful angry blackness, the thunder rolls, the
forked lightnings begin to play, the dust and leaves
whirl in eddies, and in the distance you hear a steady
roar, like the beating of breakers on the coast. Then
come a few hail-shots from the advance-guard of the
storm, then a few icy flakes and round pellets tum-
bling from the piazza. The winds grow furious ; the
trees bend low ; the brittle willow branches and worm-
eaten locust-boughs fall to the ground ; and at last, in
one illuminated sheet, illuminated by constant flashes
the rain falls. How great the disappointment when
the clouds promise the impending storm, marshal
themselves for an hour on the mountain-tops, then
pass by to discharge their honey on some othei
thirsty place ! Sometimes we are envious of Orange
sometimes of Westchester. We see the fallin;/-
showers in the distance, and know that other parts
of the heritage are refreshed while we pant and fan
UP THE RIVER. 31
ourselves, and the heated pig stretches himself at
full-length in the way-side gutter — a picture of
beastly luxury which makes one smile. While I
now write all this is coming to pass. My apples
and plums are fast falling to the earth, shaken off
by the wanton wind. The girl has just brought in
an egg laid by the Shanghai hen, guided to the nest
by a triumphant cackle, which proclaimed that
another egg was laid.
Speaking of birds, one remark, if you please, on
robins. There is a nest upon a neighbouring tree,
and I was glad to see their young mouths open, and
the earth-worm dropped by the parent-bird into the
ruddy gulfs. At last they took their first lessons in
the flying art, venturing from limb to limb, and from
bush to l)ush. A hawk, wheeling in bold circles,
and with his eye intent, at one fell swoop seized
one of these young innocents in his talons, and cropt
his education in the bud. He was pursued and
picked at by a number of little screaming birds, but
bore his prey aloft to a mountain rock, where he picked
out its eyes and fluttering heart. Munching and
chewing at his entrails, the gluttonous hawk might
say, ' This is a tender pullet, and has grown fat on
flies. Many an insect has he deprived of its new-
born young.' There is some truth in such ratiocina-
32 U P T H E R I V E R .
lion no doubt. What am I doing myself, at this
moment. Writing by candlelight, and the bugs and
millers, (to say nothing of the buzzing, disgusting
beetles, who bump their heads against the wall) bother
me so much, getting into the eyes, into the nose,
and into the mouth, that the paper on which this is
scrawled is full of victims. In one corner lies Mos-
quito at full length, hammered flat with a blow of
the fist, with his long antlers stretched out, and his
tune arrested in the midst: in another Mr. Miller
is laid out dead. I have killed an hundred organisms
more ingenious than any Yankee clock in as many
seconds, while others have committed suicide by fly-
mg into the flame. So might the hawk, if as wise
as the owl, pounce upon me in argument, and say,
'This IS all right. It is the way of the world.' But
I was sorry that this particular robin should mourn
the tragic fate of its young, and I will tell )'ou why.
The other day he did what no other adult robin
lever did in my knowledge, and caused a singular
portent or omen to occur. He hopped upon the
shoulder of a good boy, standing upon the lawn, and
for five minutes sang a song in his very ear. 'Oh!'
said the little boy, who stood as still as a piece of
sculpture, and scarcely breathed, 'it was so sweet!
it was so musical !' Perhaps it might have been to
UP THE RIVER. 33
thank the family for the protection afforded to his
nest, and for the veto on percussion guns, and for
the largess of daily crumbs. He seemed to say,
'My family are now fledged, and in a few days will
go to seek their fortune in the world. In another
year, when they become parents themselves, they
will build their nests upon the self-same bough.
Thanks, kind people ! Until another blooming spring
farewell !'
I have received a letter with this impertinent
query, 'At what time in the afternoon do you break-
fast?' I do not breakfast in the afternoon. I am out
to 'meet the sun upon the upland lawn,' to look up-
on the jeweled blades. Sometimes I oversleep my-
self (the other day by four hours) over the usual
time, for the want of a Yankee clock, but the next
morning balanced the books, and made the equation
right by a mistake the opposite way. My watch is out
of order, having been running four years without tin-
kering or quackery, which is longer than the human
system keeps a-going without medicine in these dys-
peptic times. My watch lies under my pillow, (tick
upon tick, or at least it did the other day, for when
I drew it out, it was half-past ten o'clock. I sprang
up in hot haste, swallowed hot coffee, and had the
breakfast swept away with the same rapidity that
34 U P THE RIVER.
some people dispatch dinner. In an hour after I sent
over to the neighbours to compare time, and lo !
it was half-past five o'clock, and a pleasant morn-
ing ! My time-piece had stopped, and the hands still
pointed to half-past ten. The Yankees make brass
clocks which are sold for one dollar, and not 'poor
pay poor preach' either, for they 'lectur" upon time
with all truth and propriety, and are an active exam-
ple of 'good works.' Will not the Yankees make a
piano at the same price, which will play as well as
their watches work? They cannot do it. This I
only say by way of throwing out the gauntlet and
challenging them to try, for if they can invent a
machine for a dollar to keep time, that is the most
important part of music.
I have been much amused in observing the action
of one or two patent churns to go by 'dog-power.'.
They work extremely well. Nothing short of a
horse, as you know, is taken into account as a unit
in the admeasurement of the mighty strength dis-
pensed by steam. We say an engine of so many
horse-power. Still, dog-strength is considerable,
and although it would not move a gigantic engine, it
will suffice for a machine. We make a distinc-
tion betwixt an engine and a machine. The one
shows ingenuity, the other power and ingenuity com-
UPTHERIVER. 35
bined. A dog has excellent lungs, full of breath.
Observe Carlo, or Ponto, or Nep, or Bose, (or
whatever your dog's name is,) when you ride out
You may drive at full speed, like my friend Smith,
over a plank-road — for Smith always drives fast —
but the dog which accompanies the horses goes ten
times as far, now" jumping up as if to catch them by
the lip, then running a quarter of a mile ahead after
butterflies or swallows, and returning again ; now
taking a- zig-zag course from one side to the other of
the road, and finding time to swim streams and fight
a dozen battles by the way ; yet always fetching up
with the carriage moderately panting, and with only
a few crystal drops distilling from the end of his
tongue. Observing these traits of endurance, the
Yankee, the ingenious Yankee, devoted his attention
to the application of dog-power. The horse, placed
on a vile treadino^-mill to ffet the chaflf out of wheat,
is inadequate to the task : his eyes bulge out of his
head, and he soon becomes blind and dies ; but a
man of common acutencss could see that the dog
was the very animal to accom})lish this kind of work.
Hence we date the origin of churning-machines to
go by dog-power. They have accomplished a per-
fect triumph; and those who have large dairies can-
didly confess that they could not do without them
36 UP THE RIVER.
I lately saw a dog in the course of training, and
at first he evidently did not like it. He held back,
refused to step, and was nearly choked by the collar.
But with a good deal of coaxing he was prevailed on
to make the machine churn a little. The other dog,
whom I have in my eye, for the mort part loved to
churn. At times he would skulk away when he felt
unwell or lazy, but he would frequently of his own
accord come and jump upon the mill, and set it
a-going an hour at a time, of his own free choice,
with no collar about his neck, when he could jump
off at any moment, and making the meanwhile the
goldenest and best butter in Dutchess county. The
master of this dog has placed a carpet on the rim of
the wheel, to prevent his feet from becoming sore —
a wise and humane precaution. I do not know when
I was more gratified than to see him the other day
orderly stepping it off over the carpeted circumfer-
ence, hanging his tongue out, it is true, and casting
side-long glances of the meekest kind, but perseve-
ring with a noble ambition toward the great work of
making good butter. It was a devotion of his dog-
powers alike beautiful and sublime, as far as beauty
and sublimity can be applied to the dairy.
UPTHERIVER. 37
Twentieth. — This morning the Shanghai hen laid
another egg, of a rich brunette complexion, which
we took away, and replaced by a common vulgar
egg, intending to reserve the Shanghai's in a cool
place until the time of incubation. Very much
amused was I with the sequel. The proud and
haughty superiority of the breed manifested itself by
detecting the cheat and resenting the insult. Shang
and Eng flew at the supposititious egg with the ut-
most indignation and picked it to pieces, scratching
the remnants of the shell from the nest. I am now
very much afraid lest Mrs. Eng should ' steal a nest,'
and set upon a parcel of eggs spoiled by the intense
heat. But as she understands the philosophy of
hatching better than I, perhaps she will make it all
right. I must take the hint conveyed by the severe
reproof of the broken shell, and remove no more
eggs. There is one peculiarity of these fowls which
deserves to be mentioned. When I removed mine
from the basket, I thought that the worthy donor
had clipped their wings to prevent them from flying
away, or scaling the hennery. On farther knowledge
I have learned that their style and fashion is that of
the jacket sleeve and bob-tail coat. Their eminent
domesticity is clearly signified by this, because they
cannot get over an ordinary fence, and would not if
38 UP THE IIIVER
they could. It is because they have no disposition
to do this, that Nature has cropt them of their su-
perfluous wings, and given them a plumage suitable
to their desires. ' Their sober wishes never learn to
stray.' They often come into the kitchen, but never
go abroad to associate with common fowls, but re-
main at home in dignified retirement. Another thing
remarkable and quite renowned about this breed is,
the oriental courtesy and politeness of the cock. If
you throw a piece of bread, he waits till the hen
helps herself first, and often carries it to her in his
own beak. The feathered people in the east, and
those not feathered, are far superior to ours in those
elaborate and delightful forms of manner which add
a charm and zest to life. This has been from the
days of Abraham until now. There are no common
people in those realms. All are polite, and the very
roosters illustrate the best principles laid down in
any book of etiquette. Book of Etiquette! What
is conventionalism without the in-born sense ! Can
any man or beast be taught to be mechanically po-
lite ? Not at all : not at all !
As this letter is all about birds, although not writ-
ten with a quill, but with an abommable steel pen,
of which the right-hand nib is w^orn out, I must tell
you that the swallows' nest has fallen down the
UPTHERIVER. 39
chimney full of young birds. I have just looked at
them through the round hole in which the stove-pipe
goes. They are very pretty, and as lively as young
kittens, picking one another's feathers and scrambling
over each other with much twittering and noise.
The parent swallows come doA\n chimney twenty
times a day to give them food. I could not help
contrasting their position at the bottom of such a
dark cell with the gay and joyous life to which they
are destined to emerge, feeding like the chameleon
on blue ether, and glancing along the valleys with
the rapidity of an electric flash. What gladness!
what vivacity ! what energy of the principle of life !
Sitting on the porch, when my own brain is dull and
apoplectic, and no pleasant dreams come athwart it,
I often envy the sailing swallows, and this may ac-
count for a dream of flying experienced in my night-
slumbers at least fifty times. The wings are indeed
furnished by imagination, but with a glorious, trium-
phant motion ' I mount, I fly :' and the sensation,
the thought, is as actual, as perfectly realized, as if
awake. What does this mean? The recurrence of
the dream so often, instigates me to reflection, and
compels me to think that it has signification. It tells
me that the birds which fly so fleetly are but an em-
blem of the spirit's exhilarating speed when it shall
40 UP THE RIVE R
have shuffled off this mortal coil ; that what is thus
anticipated shall come to pass, and that the soul
shall fly from realms to realms of beauty, for ever
and for ever. How cheering and consolatory is this
lesson, in which we are instructed by the birds !
I am occasionally annoyed by the filthy, nauseous,
and disgusting bats. One of these got in the room
the other night, and was very agitated, nervously
dodging and seeking the door, which, like the en-
trance of a cavern, opened on the abyss of night.
First I attacked him with a broom-stick, and then
knocked him down with a cane, because I was afraid
that he would get in my hair. Also I am annoyed
by the little owls : likewise by the wasps. Last
summer a little owl roosted on a pear-tree before my
door, and ulalooed in a manner to silence the very
wolves. I could not stand it, and took the trouble
to dress myself and go down and throw a stone at
him. He acknowledged the hint without waiting
long to see what virtue there is in stones, and flitted
off" to the tree under my neighbor's window, where
he quavered away all night with his deplorable ulu-
lations. He was one of those bullety little fellows
who make a clicking, wooden noise with their bills,
like the sound of Spanish castanets, and whose gray
ears stick out at the side of their heads, and with
UP THE IlIVER.
41
eyes as rotund as a wild grape. I heartily wished
that he was in Barnum's Museum. I used to be
amused with the owl who is perched on the mantel-
piece of your study. I thought that he was good
for an emblem, and that was all which he tvas good
for. He looked as grave as a Doctor of Divinity, or
a Professor of the dead languages. And how very
deep and unfathomable appeared his thought — 'deep-
er than plummet ever sounded.' Do you not ask him
questions? Do you not go to him for advice? De-
pend on it, he has more wisdom than he knows
what to do with, and might be an interpreter of hier-
oglyphics. But this epistle is too long. Time flies
as well as bats. The shades of evening begin to
descend, and, as Virgil says in his Eclogue, the
mountains throw a lenffthened shadow. Good eve-
nms:
August 15th.
HE drought during
the present season
has been severe, and
has joined in an of-
fensive league with
grass-hoppers and
potato-bugs to pro-
f^^ duce a diminution
of the crops. When
my law-n was shaved
a month or two ago,
notwithstanding the
expensiveness of
hay, I reserved a single stack,
and forbade it to be stored
away, because I had not a sofa
in the house. There I found it agreeable to lie every
evening for a half hour or so during the month of July,
looking up at the stars, listening to the music of the
spheres, and the more palpable sound of a feminine
UP THE RIVER. 43
voice, crying, 'Get up this instant! — come into the
house!' But I disregarded the feminine voice, and
paid attention to the celestial melody This is the
way to look at the heavens above you, O my friend !
and losing sight of things terrene, to hang as if sus-
pended in the middle of the concave vault, as though
your eye were central among the orbs, and yourself
were at the Delphi of the Universe. How much
companionship and study in the stars I Nor can I
wonder at Tycho Brache, who spent so many years
in cold and solitary spots to hold communion with
them; to welcome each new planet born to human
sight, and give his shining protege a name; to fol-
low in the burning track of comets, and be w'ith the
constellations even like
'Bright Phoebus, shepherd of the night,
Tending his flock of stars.'
Astrology is not dead yet, and horoscopes are not
yet banished. Oh ! how untimely and discrepant is
the tinkling sound which calls from meditations such
as these to come and drink a cup of tea. A couch
like this, scented with clover and verbena, with the
neavens for a dome and the night-dews for a diadem,
is better than Victoria's throne. Yet I have known
the same to be despised by an ungrateful beggar,
who told me that he had not slept a wink the night
44 U P T H E R I V E R .
before because the smell of the new-mown hay was
so strong. I gave that beggar a bowl of ambrosial
tea, and he would not drink it, but he requested
coffee. I threw the tea aw^ay, and gave him coffee.
He blew it in hot waves from the rim with his pout-
ing mouth, shook his head, and then worried it down
to the extremest dregs. He crooked his forefinger,
and told the girl to make him another bowl. She
refused to do it, but I told her to go into the cellar
and set the mill a-going; that may-be he was an
angel come upon us unawares, although he looked
like an angel in distress. He sw'allowed the con-
tents of the second bowl, and said, 'They not know
how to make coffee in this countree;' but presently
he stroked his stomach leniently, and remarked,
*Now I feel petter.' Then he went on to complain
of the new-mown hay. But the new-mown hay is a
couch for a king to lie on, although my little stack,
which was soft and ample a month ago has melted
down to a mere handful, and the dews of the night
have become too chilling.
Corn-husking is a merry festival, but the harvest-
ing of the hay arouses all the sylvan sympathies,
and puts you in a pleasant mood. There is a rich
broad mead before my door, and its distant edo-es
undulate in shadowy coves, over which the mountain
UP THE RIVER. 45
With its waving woods casts a deep shadow. Now
it is shorn as neat and trim as the beard of any pop-
injay. In the burning noontide, from day to day, I
watched the measured motion of the reaper's arms,
the heads and spears of the clover and tali grasses
as they fell in regular ranks before the whetted
scythes, and the tossing it on bright tines, and
turning it to be cured by the sun and air. This is
clean work, suited alike for patriarchs or boys, and
truly to be envied in a cloudy day, or when the sun
sinks low. Then have I marked the transfer of the
conic heaps into the arms of the lofty man upon the
loaded cart, the animated dialogue and witty re-
joinders between the workers on the ground and him
in air, as he packs down the fragrant masses beneath
his feet, and the pleasant pilgrimage from heap to
heap. There is a strength and grandeur in the
patient ox, exciting admiration and almost love, be-
side a well-considered keeping betwixt himself and
equipage. How^ do his great utility and the cum-
brous bulky masses which he has to draw; his ele-
phantine movement and clumsy grace; the plain
but outspread horns surmounting his expansive fore-
head, and his- big, liquid eye, accord with the un-
wieldy cart, with the burdensome yoke which bows
his ihick neck and spinal column to the ground, and
46 UP THE RIVER.
with the lona: groad which draws forth a hollow
sound as it is brought down with remorseless vio-
lence upon the frontal bones! And then the voca-
bulary, which he understands so well, composed of
a few roots of Hebraic simplicity: — 'Haw! Buck!
Gee haw ! Come around ! I tell yer to haw now !'
The author of the 'Babylonish Ditty,' a cunning
and melodious set of versicles, came here to spend a
Sunday in the country. He is a man of business,
but he does not talk of stocks over his meals, nor
sleep with a ledger under his pillow; but he inter-
mingles the counting-house and the Academy, and
gathers time to pick a flower by the wayside, to
play a tune on the guitar, or to throw off with facile
hand at just and dexterous intervals some little
balmy poem such as the occasion may require. It
was three by St. Paul's clock when we started off
together, attended to the depot by a witty body-
guard, and passing through the reeking streets over
as many husks of corn as would have fed a thou-
sand prodigals, and cobs enough to have treated all
the pigs of Cincinnati, radishes for which there was
no market, and the exfoliations of wilted cabbages,
the whole leaguing together in a grand compound
smell which would have made the town of Cologne
jealous, w^e emerged presently, with a great roaring.
UP THE RIVER. 47
rattling sound, to an expansive view of the Hudson
river. When I lived in the town there were, as
Coleridge has it, so many 'well-defined' odours in
my neighbourhood, that I gave each of them a name
in honour of the Common Council. That which pro-
ceeded from where the old he-goat used to sit on the
steps in Greenwich-Avenue, I used to call Odoriffe ;
and that where the pig-pens and distilleries joined
in a powerful compact I christened 'Big Tom,' and
so on with the rest ; and every morning I used to be
regularly saluted by them all. In the month of
August they acted on the offensive, and drove me
out of town, where now and then you might still en-
counter a wafted and struggling essence come out
on a visit to 'Bone-boiling Terrace,' to form a matri-
monial alliance with Quintessence, But oh! how
pleasant, after the company of Odoriffe, Big Tom,
and all that troop, the amicable jostling of daffodil
and lily, eglantine and wild roses, sweet clover, and
new-mown hay ! When from the cemetery of un-
buried cats, mephitic deleterious gases, and miasms
of the gutter, you come upon rivulets of fresh air,
the perfumed streaks which intersect the aerial
flood, the light zephyrs which have cooled their
wings in the broad waters of the Hudson, and the
delicious jets out-gushing from the caves of classic
48 UPTHERIYER.
Kaatskill, the contracted lungs swell out with greedy
suction, and in the first prickling sensation of the
invigorating draught, you sneeze tremendously with
delight. How does the thickened blood roll back in
ruddier globules from the heart upon the sallow
cheek, with an erubescence like that of a timid
maid, when the aromatic breeezes are borne from
recesses on the river's brink, from the wild spots,
sweet hollows, coves, and knolls, which bloom at
every season, with the violet, the butter-cup, the liver-
wort, the azalia, the blue gentian, and the rose
— enough to make a botanist hold up his hands with
glee:
' I KNOW a bank whereon the wild thyme grows,
Where cowslip and the nodding violet blows.'
But I shall be getting into the realm of thin senti-
ment among the Ciiloes, Phillises, Damons, and
pastoral personages, and Della-Cruscan shades.
When arrived at nightfall at my own door, I called
to Flora, with a most mitigating suavity of the
liquids and vowel sounds: *Fel— O— o— o— er_ah !
has any one called here since I have been gone?
Are there any letters or papers? Are the chickens
well?' A— yes, Sir; the hen has left her chickens
and gone to setting!' 'Good! good! let her not be
UP THE III VEIL 49
disturbed. Is there any cream in the house?' 'A—
no, Sir.' 'Are there any eggs?' 'A— no, Sir.'
Is there any ham?' 'A— no, Sir.' 'Are there any
radishes in the garden?' 'A— no. Sir.' 'Are there
any tomatoes?' 'A— no, Sir.' 'Is there any bread?'
'A— no, Sir.' 'Then go over to the neighbours and
get them, and put the kettle on, and let's have tea.'
In a short time the desired meal was accomplished,
and the Babylonian put his little boy to bed, for he
was drowsy in the extreme. The Sabbath dawned,
and it was like all the Sundays ever described
in print, 'so cool, so calm, so bright, the bridal of
the earth and sky.' The little stream which rolls at
the mountain's base before the door, was roughen-
ed by a susurring breeze into crisp waves sparkling
in the brightness of the sun. The sound of the
church-going bell was heard afar off. The author
of the ' Babylonish Ditty' came down attired in a
pair of cool, well-ironed breeches, white stockings,
and patent leather shoes, and his little boy in a ditto
style, with elegant ruffles on his shirt, and with a
variegated ribbon around his throat. My friend has
his place of business in the city, not far from where
the naughty Wall-street debouches with its tide of
worldliness against the buttresses of Trinity Church,
and then falls back to niin":le with the current in
50 UP THE KIVER.
the Broadway, and he said it was very grateful to
him to have his religious sensibilities excited among
the sequestered scenes of nature on a Sunday.
Then, as he walked along, with a sharp pen-knife
cutting a scimetar out of a shingle for his little boy,
he remarked on the vanity of town-worshippers ; of
the crowd of orjlded carriages before churches whose
inmates were listening to some 'crack preacher;'
of the number of young men who stood sucking their
cane in the porticoes, and staring at ladies; of the
well-dressed and fat dinners afterward partaken, and
lethargic slumbers indulged. 'How many worship
God,' said he, 'in sincerity and truth, of all the mul-
titudes who keep holy-day?' When he had done
cutting his townsmen and the shingle, we drew near
the antique church. It is in a thick grove of locusts,
and built long before the Revolution, and its interior
arrangements are extremely quaint, especially the
pulpit, where the very worthy minister holds forth.
The service always held in it is after the model
of the Church of England. C — asked with some
apprehension if a long sermon might be expected;
but on the present occasion it happened that there
was no sermon at all. They had been pulling down
the worm-eaten tower, and the people were
dispersing to their homes as we arrived. The excuse
UPTHERIVER 51
alleged was, that the strong smell of the bats made
the ladies sick. Some had ah-eady adjourned to the
neighbouring Dutch church, where Harvey Birch, a
character who figures largely in Cooper's novel, ' The
Spy,' was formerly confined. We found the whole
porch covered with rubbish, consisting of old nails,
decayed shingles, rafters gnawed to a thin and rag-
ged edge like crusts of bread, the mummies of de-
ceased bats, their thin vampire, black-ribbed wings,
so different from the rich and sun-lit plumage of
cherubs, sticking to the old boards.
Into what deeper, blacker Erebus can bat-spirits
go than the moonless nights into which they delight
to flit with jerking rapidity! From the eaves and
accidental loop-holes of this antique, sacred tower,
which they had profaned for a hundred years, these
obscene birds were now turned out in one filthy
flock into the open day. Many of them went right
smack into the golden sun, and fell stone dead on
the graves of revolutionary and holy men. Others
clutched the branches of old trees in the thickest
gloom of the mountain woods, and when night drew
on swarmed about the neigbouring garrets, to the
great dismay of long-haired women, diving into the
windows of unlit chambers, or any blacker cavern
than the surrounding night. The unfledged batlings
52 U P T 11 E R I V E R .
tumbled down at the base into the midst of timbers
and ancient rubbish, and now there was a cry of
alarm, an exclamation of surprise among the small
conclave who remained about the church, as if some
wonder had been brought to light. The wardens
and vestrymen who were holding a council in the
middle of the road, as they looked up through the
trees to the place where the lamented tower had
stood, with some respect to plans of rebuilding,
and whether they should call in the aid of Upjohn,
and what kind of cornice would afford the most re-
lief in this architectural distress, w^hen, lo ! it was
proclaimed that they were overrun with — chintzes,
shall I say? no — with bed-bugs! harbored among
the penurious feathers of the birds of night.
This obloquy also attaches to the cooing pigeons
and to the dear doves. But a council of investiffa-
tion, on putting their heads down closely to the de-
cayed beams, decided that the bugs by which they
were over-crawled were of a different kind. The
fair sex however, would not rely on the opinion of
the committee, and the kindling wood cannot be
sold. They did not care what the warden said, or
what the vestrymen thought: they Avould not admit
the condemned timbers into their houses or at their
hearths. Moreover, many have not been to church
UP THE KIVER. 53
Since. This is a valid excuse, and much better than
that usually advanced by those who do not go to
church on Sunday. For it must be confessed that
the reigning piety of the day is of a very slim de-
scription. It is liable to colds, and is afTected by
catarrhs, is scared by a passing cloud, and invariably
kept in-doors by a shower, but hastens thin-clad to
a ball on Monday night, 'in thunder, lightning, or in
rain.' But no one could wish his host friend to at-
tend a church if he were sure thathe was going to the
bugs.
The fate of the old tower is much lamented. It
was a picturesque object seen through the trees as
you came down the hills into the suburbs. The
landscape which it set off' misses it very much, and
the very eaves of the church which it has overlooked
and overshadowed so long, drip sympathizing tears.
Once it had a sightly steeple and a musically-sound-
ing bell. But the steeple had an inclination that
the centre of gravity should not fall within the base,
which sealed its doom, and the bell was transferred
to the near church of St. Harvey Birch, wherein
the Dutch worship; and last of all, the tower came
down, which was the crowning glory of the whole.
Now the edifice presents a Quaker-plainness, but
the quaint pulpit and sounding-board remain.
54 u r 1 II E II I Y E R .
The Babylonian was much grieved and disap-
pointed at the loss of prayers and a sermon, and his
little boy brandished his wooden sword in vindictive
ansrer affainst the bats. In the afternoon, numbers
of people came from a distance in carriages, but find-
ing the place vacant, the tower prostrate, and the
bat-odor enough to knock you down, they drew up
in a sort of general levee before the parson's door.
They wanted to know what was to be done in the
emergency, how long the church was to remain
closed, and whether the tower was to be rebuilt.
Thus was the sacred stillness of the day, so good
for meditation, turned into buzz and bustle by pro-
fane birds, to admire which a naturalist must have
the heart of a ghoul. When pinned to the surface
of a board by their extended wings, they afford the
most violent contrast which can be imagined to a
butterfly or bird of paradise Their flat heads, big
mouths, big ears, ugly little sharp teeth, hideous ex-
pression, and offensive smell, fairly make one sicken
with disgust. How angry they must have been to
be turned out of the tower of which they held the
lease for a hundred years, and paid the rent in gu
ano ! When the workmen began to hammer against
their hiding-places, they responded by the faintest pe
wee mewings, like a nursery of Lilliputian cats
U P T HE K I \' E R .
55
Well, they are gone, and where they will again find
such good quarters, I know not. Let them inquire
of some very wise owl. Rents are high.
I meant to have said something about a Sunday
in the country, but all this has been long ago charm-
ingly sketched in Crayon, and exhausted by a
more practised hand. Suffice it, when the sun sank
down, calm and contemplative we sat in chairs upon
the river's bank. Heat-lightning flashed in the bat-
tlemented clouds, while vapours imbued by the risen
moon rested in fantastic forms upon the mountain's
crest : the waves sparkled and flashed, and the
snowy sails glided by like shadows from the spirit-
land.
Twenty-fourth of August. — To-day, atabeauti-
fulseaton the Hudson, I saw a cherry-tree in full bear-
ing. The fruit was as large as the Morello, and as
agreeable to the palate as the English ox-heart. I
plucked and ate a few, drawing a comparison very
unfavorable to pbmis, which are now luscious and
abundant, and vary in size fruui a pigeon's egg to a
pear. Of peaches we mourn the almost total loss.
The fruitless limbs bring back the memory of many
an eager and a nipping air in the bleak months which
killed the buds. The watering mouths now long for
the red cheeks and somewhat (to me)indifl'erent pulp
56 UP THE RIVER.
of the Melicatoon. Where are Eldorado, Lemon-
Cling, and Lump-of-Gold, which whilom made the
eyes to dance with joy ? Oh ! how precious was the
fruitage ! how inestimable the treasure on the bend-
ing, breaking, limbs ! Nevertheless, of melons,
musk or water, there is no lack. How does the one,
like pme-apple, almost excoriate the palate ; and
how does the blood-red pulp of the other, so beauti-
fully variegated with its black and chocolate-colored
seeds, (cut it how you will,) awaken anticipation for
the parched and feverish tongue ! It is a gushing
fruit, and when the cooling chunks are in the mouth,
the mercury which is in the veins goes down to tem-
perate heat. You do but press it gently beneath the
palate, and that apparently solid substance which
painters love to imitate has all vanished. It was
but a mass of succulent and delicate veins and fibres
filled with juice. This they say will be a good 'ap-
ple year,' and truly I am glad of it, for there is no
fruit of which the loss is more severely felt. The
taste never tires. All people are fond of a good
apple. It is an interesting fruit from the very
start. How enchanting is the orchard in the de-
licious season of early spring, when it is in full
bloom ! How pleasant at a later period to see
the clean barrels stand beneath the trees ready to
receive the crisp and crackling Newtown Pippin,
UPTHEIUVER. 57
and Rhode-Island Greening, verdant as the grass,
the Russet, the Pearmain, the Lady apple, which
is so dear, and whose modest cheeks blush as if
at the frequent praises of its delicacy and excel-
lence. The apple is the companion of the win-
ter evening, associated with a cheerful room, a
bright fire, a pleasant tale, Scott's novels or Ara-
bian Nights. Perhaps it is nearly bed-time. Your
eyes grow dim. You are fatigued with study,
with chess, with checkers, with books ; you sigh,
you yawn, you stretch your arms above your head.
All of a sudden a happy thought strikes you. Bring
\N THK APPLES ! It is like magic. The foot-lights
go up, and the scene brightens.
I mean to have some crab-apple cider this win-
ter, if any can be had. I am subject to occa-
sional fits of jaundice, when my feelings are hurt,
or I have no money. The liver gets torpid, the
skin becomes yellow, the eyes suffused with a saf-
fron hue, {Difficili bile tmnet jecur,) and nothing but
crab-apple cider goes to the right spot, or does me
any good. I mean to freeze out the watery parti-
cles, bottle it up, put in a raisin, cork it, seal it,
bury it, and draw it out as jaundice may require.
Is there any harm in that? I should think not. I
will say to a friend : ' Aha ! now let me give you a
taste of something which will make your eyes open ;
58 TI P T II E R I V E R .
— something as delicate as Ariel, and as fruity as
was ever imprisoned in glassy walls ; — a pure juice,
full of native flavor ; — and if you do not smack your
lips, you are the incarnation of ingratitude.'
• Oh for a vintage which hath been
Cooled for a long age in the deep-delved earth !'
There is amber for you ! See the bubbles run-
ning races with each other to the beaded brim ! —
This is no sour trash, sugar-of-leaded, and pumped
full of gases in a New Jersey cellar and labelled
'Heidseek.' — This is Crab- Apple • Cider, O my
friend ! — Then he will taste it, while the widening
ripples of approbation chase one another over his ap-
preciating countenance, and you can see that he is
much refreshed and recreated, and he will perhaps
nod his head ominously, saying, ' If that be not good,
call me horse, spit on me.' All hospitality is flat
and ungenerous ; food, my friend, without some out-
ward sign to represent the grace of welcome. The
sign too must have a little of the warmth and spice
of friendship testified. Mark that, for it accords
with the established laws of genial, human nature.
It is as old as Adam and Eve's eldest children.
When your neighbours come to see you, they do not
UP THE RIVER. 59
come to eat and drink mainly, but recollect, that
the elements you offer, although they are just touch-
ed to the lips, are the outward emblems of kindness
and hospitality ; — do not therefore according to the
marvellous philosophy of the present day, be dis-
posed to discard these emblems as of no value. —
If the old side-board is abolished, have a care that
good feeling and charity and kindness do not decay.
You must have some regard for the composite nature
of man, and not think that you are wise and that
the old custom is a fool ; — for after all, old and
civilized custom is in accordance with the laws of
our being, and social state. From such reasoning
as the above, more than for my own yellowness or
jaundice, I will be provided with crab-apple cider
in the fall. The crab is somewhat acid, but when
expressed, the fluid is brisk, sparkling and refresh-
ing. There is an apple-tree of an unknown kind be-
hind my house, and ever and anon the apples fall
with considerable violence and wath a thumping
sound upon the roof, roll down upon the piazza
and thence to the ground. The other night they
startled me in my bed, and I thought that the knock-
ing spirits were on hand. I came down stairs to
see that all was right, and being loth to re-
60
UP THE RIVER.
turn again, sat down, seized a pen, spread out
paper, and to this circumstance, the present
long-winded, I fear uninteresting epistle is partly
due.
October, 1852.
HEN my Shanghai began
to lay eggs, I preserved
them scrupulously as those
of no common fowl, and
placed them in a shallow
earthen vessel to be ready
for incubation. She sat
upon fifteen, all moderate-
ly-size^, of a mulatto col-
our, and I expected fifteen
chickens in the process of
time. Great was my im-
patience, as the three
weeks were nearly fulfill-
ed, and I watched her upon the nest from day to
day, most meekly and quietly brooding. One day,
62 UP THE RIVER.
1 gently lifted her, as she protested with subdued
clucking, and counted only fourteen eggs. How was
this? 'Fel— o— ER— AH ! how many eggs did we
place in this nest.' — 'A— fifteen, sir.' — 'Here are only
fourteen: what has become of the other?' — 'I do'-
know, Sir.' — That was very strange, for who would
rob a hen's nest when she was in the act of setting?
In a few days after only thirteen remained, on which
I suspected that some sly rat had watched his chance,
and indulged his sucking propensity. But it pre-
sently appeared that this unnatural Shanghai picked
them to pieces, and ate them. One morning, in
consequence, she got desperately sick, and wandered
into the thick weeds of the garden, poking her head
among the currant-bushes and burdocks, where she
remained for some hours until every egg became
cold. The carpenters who were making the fence
told me to take her by the legs and hold her head
downward. I dic^so, stroking the feathers of her
neck, when the egg leaked out of her throat. She
was immediately well, and resumed sitting. It
could not be expected, however, after such a misfor-
tune, that any chickens should be produced.
One day after breakfast, Flora came in with
great eagerness, as I was sipping my second cup of
Mocha, and said that the hen had a chicken. Sure
UPTHERIVER. 63
enough, on going beneath the shed, 1 could hear its
smothered chirp; and on raising the mother up,
beheld the chick, as yet a little embarrassed by the
shell, but quite large and lively, with yellow legs
slightly feathered, and all the characteristics of the
Shanghai breed. I went to my study to fold a few
letters, and on returning still heard the cry. Made
a pilgrimage to the garden, to get a cauliflower for
dinner. When I came back, the voice of the chicken
was no longer heard. Lifted up the hen, and found
the little thing stone dead: took it up, examined it
for a minute, and threw it on the straw. Pshaw!
When the next chicken was hatched, I went out to
take it away to put it in a basket in the kitchen fire-
place, and feed it 'out of hand,' and learned to my
surprise that Shanghai had eaten it up ! That the
savage and irascible sow will devour squeaklings is a
fact well known. That the hen, that very figure
and illustration of maternal tenderness, is sometimes
guilty of the same act, never before came to my
knowledge. Out of fifteen eggs my Shanhai has
only two chickens, who go tottling about, stumbling
and bungling over the little hillocks: a small brood,
and I am afraid that these will fall victims to casu-
alty or a sly rat. It is very hard to be guarded with
any certainty against a sly rat. He has a poking
64 U P T H E R I Y E 11 .
nose, a peeking eye, a ransacking smell, an inaudi-
ble foot-fall; and, added to all, a consummate un-
principled judgment. Before you know it, he has
sucked vour eggs, gnawed your hams, or emptied
your oil-betty. Good rat-catchers are much wanted
throuffhout Christendom.
Monday. — As I walked from the post-office, on
the borders of the stubble-fields, and read papers by
the way, an incident befel — not that I walked off a
bridge, or saw my name in print ; but happening to
lift my eyes from the page and look up in the sun,
I sneezed as if I had taken a pinch of rose-scented
snuff. I know not how it is, but as I grow older I
sneeze with redoubled violence, sometimes as if it
would really tear me to pieces. Some people can-
not make a noise in any other way ; and one old
gentleman of my acquaintance has a fit of this kind
every Sunday morning in church, the whole fit in-
cluding seven successive sneezes of the most violent
kind. But this is not the incident. Scarcely had I
sneezed, when a peal of puerile laughter broke upon
my ear ; and turning round, I beheld a small boy
with blue eyes, having a little bundle and a Maltese
kitten in his arms. ' Oh,' said he, ' when you
UP THE RIVER. 65
sneezed, those pigs in tlie field ran as fast as they
could go !'
The boy had such a happy face, was in such a
chuckling mood, so free from care and so disposed
to talk, that I folded up the mammoth sheets, so
full of sarcasm and rebuke, to be edified as with the
bright pictures of a primer or little book. Before
advancing the length of a corn-field, he opened
his budget — not the little bundle in which his
worldly^ goods were enclosed within a cotton ker-
chief, but the budget of his history — and told me all
things that ever he did : what was his name ; that
his parents were dead ; that he was born in Hamp-
shire ; that he was twelve years old ; that he could
read ; that he had been to Sunday school ; that he
was now out of place ; and that he was on a jour-
ney.
'How far are you going, my little man?'
' To Rochester, Sir.'
' That is a great way for you to travel. How
much money have you got V
' I've got a shilling,' said he, laughing with great
glee; ' I'm going to keep that till to-morrow, to buy
my dinner with.'
' Yes ; but when you travel on the rail-road you
must pay a dollar or two. What will you do ?'
156 UPTHERIVEB.
' 0, I'll tell them that 1 want lo go, and they'll
let me.'
It was in vain that I could impress upon his ap-
prehension that he was venturing far upon a little
capital ; for he soon burst into another fit of gay
Iiughter, as he held up the kitten and changed the
theme.
* What are you going to do with the kitten V
said I.
' Oh, I do as every body tells me : my mistress
told me to take her a mile and let her go.'
Having now arrived at my own gate, I told him to
let the Maltese loose, and she ran mewing along the
garden-fence. When I caught her, and brought her
into the kitchen, I found that she was blind. ' The
world is generous,' thought I, ' to send a little boy
on foot three hundred miles with a shilling in his
pocket, and make him drop a blind kitten bv the
way.'
Sunday Morning. — When the sun rose this morn-
ing, a white smoke, like that which uprises from the
crucible of the alchemist, covered the whole earth ;
and as Homeros expresses it, you could see about
as far as a stone's cast, supposing that the stone were
not thrown from a slinff. When to the tintinnabula
UP THE mVER. 67
tion of the breakfast-bell, inviting to appease a gen-
tle appetite, (how different from the stunning gong
which calls whole gangs to 'raven like a wolf!')
when, as the volatile spirit of coffee came through
the key-hole and brooded over the pillow, from which
I awoke refreshed, I passed down the broad and
polished oaken stair-case which adorns my friend's
house on the banks of the Hudson, and stepped upon
the piazza, all was a blank. Of the infinite beau-
ties of Nature, which seemed to have taken the
white veil, not one was visible, save a few blue
morning-glories on the porch, on the hither edge of
this vapory sea. Blue is a hopeful color, not pro-
perly the badge of dejection, nor to be worn in the
button-hole of a jaundiced man. While the winter
lingers. Blue-bird first carols on the unbudding
bough ; while the snow yet remains in patches, Vio-
let ventures to peep out on the cheerless scene ;
while the clouds hesitate to depart the blue sky gives
a little hope ; blue eyes beam on you with the great-
est tenderness ; and so I thought when Morning-
glory first greeted me on the dewy porch. Methinks
that morning-glory has not received its meed of jus-
tice, O my friend ! It is not enough bepainted in
pictures, or celebrated in song : it is too often put
off with a mere bean-pole for support, or with an
68 UP THE RIVER.
ungainly stick ; discarded from porch, arbour, tiellis,
bower, net-work, floral temple, aerial garden-arch
and architecture ; given up to the tender mercy and
support of coarser plants ; yet it affords the best
moral lesson among the flowers, for it shuts up early,
without even a taste of mountain-dew, and you have
never seen it blue at night.
At the hour of ten my friend's carriage was at the
door ; a plain oblong box, without top, fit for the
country ; painted of a subdued claret color, mounted
upon springs, in which his plump and rosy children
climbed, gleefully delighted to ride to church ; and
as we took our seats, just then the powerful sun
controlled the day; while in many a graceful fold-
ing, looping and festooning, the misty curtain rose
upon the enchanting scene. There in the fore-
ground, at the base of that clean slope, grassy law-n,
Hudson, river of rivers, rolled ; and as I stood on
the piazza, with prayer-book in my hand, I noticed
that, with respect to its width, it was, like ' All of
Gaul,' divided into three parts. First, near the
shore a great extended mirror, smooth, glassy ; then
a roughened channel ; and opposite, beneath the im-
pending, wood-crowned banks, a Stygian stream,
full of shadows. It was Indian summer, (short-lived
season !) belted betwixt sweltering heats and arctic
UPTHERIVER. 69
ice and every hour of its golden days is blissful and
balmier than balm — ' from morn to noon, from noon
till dewy eve,' all luxury and delight. Oh, the sun-
rising out of that sea of silvery vapour, where one by
one the mountain-tops reveal themselves in grandeur,
surmounting pine and conic summit down to the ex-
pansive base, w'here runs the flashing rill ; while all
within the scooped-out hollows the mist still rolls in
snowy gulfs, till the meridian splendour of the sun dis-
pels the illusion ! Oh! the blue hazy atmosphere tender
as beams of the full-risen moon, softening those pic-
tures of the earth which only eyes like Claude's
know how to fix and pencil down ! And oh, the
luxury of life on such a day — Sabbath of Sabbaths !
The tinkling kine go down the vale, and all the pas-
toral picture satisfies the sense, W'hile from the dis-
tant spire the ' bells — bells — bells !' come hovering
on the air with sweeter melody !
Winding about the grassy slope we came into the
woods, talking of Titus Livius — something turned
the conversation that way — and passed through a
rustic gate, whoso hinges were of green withes, and
pivoted upon a stump ; master-piece of the farmer's
art, the extempore composition of a half-hour, when
his hatchet w'as unemployed in the woods. So in-
geniously is it put together, that the elbows and
70 U P T H E R I V E R .
crooked part of the wood seem to have been pre-
destined, and to have grown up in their gnarled and
knotted crookedness, for the express purpose of that
gate. If I had an eye, I would draw it upon this
paper, as a very pleasing object to look upon ; for
when in the course of taking a ride you are inter-
rupted by such a gate, it well repays for the trouble
of opening and shutting, to find the tokens of talent
and artistic skill. That is a charming ride through,
those woods in the spring, when the sassafras, the
birch, and all the aromatic woods are bursting their
plump buds, and when the tender grape gives a good
smell. It is so in the midsummer. Coolness re-
sides in those deep dells ; hollows scooped out,
where, as you look down by the way, you must drop
a plummet very deep before it would reach the tops
of the lofty oaks, or sink among the thick green fo-
liage of the trees. The oak throws its over-master-
ing arms above you, and exhibits its crown beneath.
These are the snuggest nestling spots for birds.
Here the gray squirrel throws his ornamental tail
above his back, or picks a hazel-nut with delicate
grace; and the mischievous blue-jay dives into the
thickest shades with a sharp scream, that guilty
bird!
Riding on that pleasant Sunday morning, as pres-
UP THE KIVEK. 71
(nilly wo passed beneath a canopy of ciiestiiut
boughs, we heard again the tinkling water-brooks
and Sunday bells. The mountains which gird us
in on every hand are now changing their foliage
from the many varieties of green, which belong to
spring and summer, to the triumphal colours which
mark the spanning rainbow or the setting sun.
Among all the trees the pepperidge now distm-
guishes itself even beyond the maple for its superb
tints. The intermingling of purple with the yet
green tops of the locust-groves is indescribably rich,
or with the orange-yellow of the oak, around which
the American ivy is entwined, or hangs in festoons
upon the fences ; and wherever the eye turns, the
display of rainbow colours is seen on every hand.
But you must travel farther north to see the pomp
of the dying year. Do you remember that ' Ride
through the Gulf,' written by Carolus Brooks ? It
is a sumptuous account.
At this season, so voluptuous in its softness, some
apple, plum, peach, and pear trees venture to bloom
anew. I have sometimes found the ripe strawberry
in the open air. 'Doubtless God might have made
a better berry,' says an old writer, 'but he never
did ;' and so I thought when taking a last leave in
the fall of the exquisite flavor of that fruit of fruits
72 ^'P THE RIVER.
I made a basket of the dry husks of corn, placed
therein a handful gathered with patient industry
among the red and decaying leaves. Now also do
the grapes abound, Isabella and Catawba vie in
purple blush, but Scuppernong is too effeminate for
the cold North. Not long ago I walked under a
glassy dome, with the most glorious clusters above
my head, transparent to the very heart, and burst-
ing their tender skins with juice. A rill of great
transparency really oozed from the corners of my
mouth ; and as the generous host gave me by the
stem a full-grown bunch, I ate them with a feeling
of self-reproach. How many a sick and parched
mouth would have been revived by what 1 wantonly
ate up with the most abandoned luxury ! These
are for the tables of the rich; but the time is com-
ing when the vine-clad hills shall be a feature in
the glorious land, and the vintage a festive season
to the sons of toil. Then shall Nature perfect the
convulsive effort to alleviate a mighty wrong. Bac-
chus and Ceres shall be made friends. But what
are those golden balls in yonder stubble-field,
among the standing stacks of corn ? Pumpkins
my friend. Of these the crop is plentiful and good
and though I do not like the ordinary pumpkin-pie,
far be it from me to rejoice not in the prospects of
UPTHERIVER. 73
those who do. It is the height of folly to set up
your own taste as a standard for the world. Never
did this crop more dot the fields ; and I can assure
you, that it is a sight at least to feast the eye where
you behold the distant slope all covered with the
auriferous fruit of this vine ; while I can anticipate
in my heart the full sentiment of a New England
Thanksgiving.
We must make the most of mid-summer, the most
of Indian summer, the most of splendid October ;
for with the fall of the leaf the pastoral feeling will
subside, and it is hard to write an Idyl by a stove.
But now, as I pass through the woods, or explore
the bottom of dells like the aforesaid, I can with
my whole heart draw out the ivory tablets, silver-
clasped, which you gave me, what time we wander-
ed into BoNFANTi's on a pleasant day, and sitting
down on some stump, some rock, some bank, where
the living waters gush, endeavor to transcribe a lit-
tle of the feeling which I had in full force when, a
boy, I read Theocritus and Moschus, and, when a
man, I revelled in sweet William's Midsummer
Night's Dream. Virgilius, in his Eclogues,
could never stir up in me rich sylvan sympa-
thies, or lull me in a dream. In vain did he
talk of cheese and chestnuts, fleeces and kine. 1
74 UP THE RIVER.
nevei could hear the bells tinkle on his herds. Eclo-
gue is not Idyl. He does well hj jjius ^Eneas, but
not quite so well by Corydon, and Dam^eas, and Ty-
TYRUs, and all that set Only one line still tarries
on remembrance, and comes up involuntarily on the
tongue :
' Tttyre dum redeo, brevis est via, pasce capellas.'
I saw something in the woods to-day which struck
me sentimentally : is it worth mentioning ? — a dead
catydid at the bottom of a clear spring. Numbed by
the frosty night, from a sublime height he fell into
this glassy sarcophagus, where his green body was
laid out on little white pebbles, swathed in lymph,
fit sepulchre for a nightingale or a catydid. When
you hear the hoarse cicada sing in the sweltering
heats of August, soon after look for temperate
nights ; and by the time the lightning bugs have
ceased to twinkle on the mead, and casual glow-
worms shine with a dull lustre in the path, you may
expect the welcome music of the catydids, who love
to congregate in the willow-groves, ever repeating
that mournful story of the broken bottle ; and the
rule is, that when the first frosts whiten the earth
they hush their song. We had some nipping nights
not long ago, and sat in the cheerless rooms with a
mournful feelmg of the decaying year. But again
UP THE RIVER. 75
the windows and doors are flung- wide open in the
heavenly nights ; round as young Norval's shield
the full moon rides aloft, and feebly and in fewer
numbers the catydids resume their song.
Give me any music but the mosquito's roundelay,
say I. I have watched them on my hand until then-
bodies became little red globules, like the bottles
in the windows of an apothecary's shop. After ob-
serving curiously for some time the play of their
delicate antlers and white speckled legs, like the
StatQ-prisoners' breeches at Sing-Sing, you would
hardly kill one of these more than you would your
own child, because he has your own blood in his
veins. We have hardly been bothered with a mos-
quito among these mountains this summer ; but
when I staid in town the other night, only one of
these tormentors interrupted the rest of a tired man.
I laid my deliberate plan to deprive him of life, in-
dulging him for a long time in his far-away hum-
mings, his flights to the ceiling and return, his cir-
cling movements overhead, his tipping touches and
retreat, until the moment should come for a fair,
well-ordered slap, which should stop his music for
the night. But amiable humor was well-nigh wor-
ried out in waiting for revenge. Now he alighted
on my knuckle, now on my finger's end just outside
76
UP THE RIVER,
the nail, on the eye-lid, on the lip, on the lappet of
the ear, till last of all, he ventured to apply his
sucking apparatus to a cheek somewhat pale, and
ill supplied with blood. Then did I slap my face as
it had not been slapped since puerile days. * Have
you killed him V ' I have,' replied I, speaking to
myself, and forthwith, satisfied with the exploit, fell
into a tranquil sleep, dreaming of woods, and fields,
and water-brooks, and pleasant scenes
VI.
October, 1852.
^ !h. Returned from
^^-^ -. \-T-= the city the other
evening-, taking
the five o'clock
train. It was
dismal, cold, drip-
ping weather; the
windows of the
cars were obscu-
red with drops,
and when it be-
came pitch-dark,
my heart was al-
most broken. As
we passed under the stone bridg-
"^^v,- es, the clatter was enough to
drive a nervous rnrin out of his wits. The annoy-
78 U P T H E R I V E R .
ance of the wet conductors continually demanding
your ticket, for which you are obliged to hunt in
all your pockets, is excessive. Some people insert
their tickets under the rim of their hats. The cus-
tom is good on the score of convenience, but it is
not pleasant to be thus placarded. When we stopped
opposite Newburgh, a ' city set on an hill,' the lights
in the factories and mansions shone with a pictu-
resque effect. There I got out, while the mist was
chilling in the extreme, and it was as dark as pitch.
A long row of soiled carriages stood stuck in the
mud. I fumbled my way to the end of a long, nar
row platform about a quarter of a mile, to search
for my trunk, which was buried up amidst a multi-
tude of trunks, and found it with difficulty. Rode
five or six miles in company of five or six ' darnj)
strangers,' and alighted at last at my own door.
The house was shut up, and like the ' halls of Bal-
clutha, it was desolate.' After stumbling over
chairs, I u}anaged to find a Ijucifer match, and draw-
ing it in a long lucid train, like that of a comet,
over the kitchen wall, it oozed out at last in a blue
flower of sulphurous flame, and, feebly simmering,
went out. Struck another on the stove-pipe with
better success. The cheerlessness of the vacant
mansion was made apparent. ' Fel — o — erah I'
UPTHERIVER. 79
I cried with tender reminiscence. This leads one
to mention a sketch or two of domestic adventure.
FLORA.
We had dismissed our little servant-maid be-
fore departing. The fiat had gone forth against
her : she was not available in household af-
fairs. 'Fel-o-o-eraii,' I said, 'you must leave
us. You are a good girl, but you are too
young. Pack your chest, and when the coach
arrives be ready to go with me. You have had a
month's warning.' But Felora continued sedulously
employed in the washing of dishes, and neglected the
packing of the trunk. ' Felo-erah, are you ready V
' A-rio, Sir.' ' Well, there is not a half-hour to
spare. Go up stairs immedrately and be ready.'
But the little maid became disobedient ; she moped
weeping in the chimney-corner among the pot-hooks,
raking the ashes. ' What are you about, child V
She was the first servant we ever had, and the la-
bour was not hard, and she had been gently entreated.
For it is sometimes disgusting in a household to be-
hold the severity of exaction from a poor little ser-
vant-of-all-work. When you have your butler and
80 UPTHERIVER.
your baker, your pastry-cook, your chamber-maid,
your coachman, your footman, your fat and well-
fed menials, who keep high-life below stairs, and
waste much substance, have a sharp eye on them in
this republican country, and see to it that they do
enough. Otherwise they will insult you in your
own domicile, and shake a cow-hide over your head.
They will have the arrogance to speak good En-
glish in your presence, and to vie with you in the
choicest phrases of which the language admits.
Crop this impudence in the bud.
At the same time, if you have only one poor
little maid-servant, do not imagine that she is
butler, baker, house-keeper, cook, chamber-maid,
coachman, footman ; and that you can set up to live
in style. Learn to wait a little on yourself, if you
cannot pay for being waited upon. Shut up your
windows at night, and black your own boots in the
morning. Go frequently upon your own errands.
Open the door yourself when the bell rings, that
those outside may not stand for ten minutes while
they hear a voice within imperiously from the stair-
landing summoning the poor little maid-servant from
the garret or from the ' cellar kitchen' ' to go and
see who is there.' She receives little, and then
UPTHERIVER. 81
she is ordered about from sun-rise till late at
night to do this and to do that ; to go here
and to go there ; to lift heavy weights and
draw heavy burdens ; to run up stairs and to
hurry into the cellar ; to go over to the next neigh-
bor's ; to bring a pitcher of water, another, another,
another, another, another ! if it be hot weather ; to
wash, and to iron, and to cook ; and to break her
little heart in attempting to do all things, and to be re-
munerated with nothing but sour looks and a severe
scolding
* Fel-o-e-rah, are you ready ? The coach is com-
ing.' ' A-yes, Sir ;' and she comes down the steep
garret-stairs holding in her arms a little box contain-
ing her worldly goods ; her tidy bonnet is fastened
by a blue ribbon beneath h^r chin, and her pretty
English cheeks red with weeping. Flora almost
positively refused to go, but stopped on this side of
actual disobedience, and submission when it did
come came like a virtue, and caused me to feel like
turning a suppliant out of doors. Florencha (that
was her name) went to take her last look at the chick-
ens. She had fed my Shanghais with singular
ability, but alas ! she was not endued by nature with
mental qualifications, which was no fault of the poor
82 UPTHERIVER.
child's ; nor was her memory tenacious of instruc-
tion. I returned her in safety to the paternal
roof.
When I returned to my own vacant house on the
aforesaid rainy night, my heart almost smote me.
There was a tender pathos in the silent kitchen :
the disposition of all things gave indication of a hasty
departure ; it was a reminiscence of Florencha :
the night-lamp crusted with a sooty crown ; the
parti-colored beans arranged upon a board on a bar-
rel ; the expressive broom standing in a corner ; the
Indian meal in a saucer — last meal given to the
Shanghai chickens ! The stove-pipe looked very
black, and the stove very cold and dismal. And
there on the mantle-piece was the forgotten prayer-
book, forgotten in the hurry of departure, with a
leaf turned down at the catechism. Every Sunday
evening I used to say, (she was a mere child,) 'Fel-
0-o-E-RAH, have you learned your lesson ? ' A — yes,
Sir.' ' Let me hear you. What is your name V
' N. or M.' 'Oh no, what is your Christian name?
* Flora Fairchild..' ' Yes, Fairchild is your pa-
rents' name ; what name was given to you in bap-
tism ?' 'Florencha.' ' That is right. Fel-0-o-o-
er-re-e-en-cha ! now tell me,' etc.
To return to a dark, and dead, and desolate abode,
UPTHERIVER. 83
is like going into the chambers of Ilerculaneum and
Pompeii. In the hurry of events and refreshing in-
fluence of a change of scene, you hq.ve taken no
note of time since your departure, and on returning
home you feel as if you had been gone a long time,
I went into my study — my library, if the room is
worthy to be called by such a name — and after the
rasping of innumerable matches against a piece of
rough paper, and (that proving of no avail) on the
sole of my boot, managed to ignite the study-lamp.
It would not burn until I had trimmed the wick and
poured water into it, which sank duly to the bottom,
the oil-wave coming uppermost. Then the room
became a little cheerful, and the gilded superscrip-
tion of the books on the shelves visible. The names
of Rabelais, Swift, Sterne, Shakspeare, Charles
Lamb, and others, glared out. Mypipe lay upon the ta-
ble, containing still a smokable pinch of Scarfalatti.
For comfort sake I put it into my mouth and smoked it.
My pen lay where I had left it, rusted down on the
mahogan) board, and a little thick ink remained in
the font. I took it up and wrote with it as if it had
been a relic of by-gone ages. Over the table hung
a fine, almost invisible silken thread, at the end of
which, betwixt me and the lamp, was suspended a
little spider, who with nautical endeavor began to
84 UPTHERIVER.
climb. With my thumb and fore-finger I broke the
thread asunder, and snapped the spider on the floor.
I never like to crush a spider, nor to clear away
with the besom of destruction the net-work which
he has woven in the room-corners. It is a trap for
the nauseous and disgusting fly, for the spiteful and
vindictive hornet. When you have innocently laid
your hand on some book or cushion, and have been
stung by one of these, how gratifying to see him
presently entangled in a web, while the agile little
insect comes down the ropes, and with his delicate
fingers winds him round and round, and pinions his
arms, struggle as he will !
THE VALETUDINARIAN.
' M ,' I said, ' I have brought you to a
cold, dreary house !' I must tell you that I had
been fool enough to bring a friend to my house,
and he an invalid man. Sitting in the cars I
espied him, and with a devilish selfishness said, ' I
will have that man to share with me the dreariness
of this cold and misty night.' I walked up to him,
and tapped him on the shoulder. 'Ah !' said he,
UPTHERIVER. g5
* Come,' said I, in a chirping tone of concealed hy-
pocrisy, 'and make my house your home. There
is nobdody there, but we will have a good time of it.
You are going to the Point. Never mind, come with
me.' In a moment of delusion the infatuated man
agreed. After we had conversed for a few minutes
in the study we began to feel cold. 'Now,' said I,
we must have a rousing fire, and a cup of hot tea:
that will make us feel better. Excuse me for a
moment; amuse yourself till I return. I will step
over and ask Palmer to come and kindle a good
fire, and help me along. All will be right.' 'Well,'
said he. Palmer is my right-hand man. There
is an old farm-house about fifty yards off. It used
to be a tavern in the Revolutionary War. It has
settled a good deal within the last hundred years ;
that is to say, the walls, the floors, and the beams
are sunken very much from the horizontal line ob-
servable in the floor of a bowling alley ; and the
chimneys look weather-beaten. Still it is a stout
and substantial old house, and there is no doubt
that it would last with a little more patching another
hundred years. There is a long piazza in front of
it, which is much sunken, and in the yard an old-
fashioned well, which has afforded drink to cattle
and to men for a century and more. The waters are
56 UP THE RIVER.
still transcendently sweel and lucid. When the
summer-heats raged in the past August, I used to
stop and imbibe, taking my turn out of the tin cup
with the itinerating pedlar who had unburdened his
back of the wearisome load, and placed it beside the
trough. Your wine of a good vintage may make the
eyes glisten a little at the tables of luxury, but depend
upon it a well of water, pure water, gushing up by the
way-side, to the weary and heavy-laden is drink in-
deed. As I ascended the steps of the piazza, I ob-
served that there was a single mould-candle burning
within, and knocked confidently at the door of the
house. It was opened. ' Is Palmer within?' 'No,
John is absent. He will be gone over Sunday.'
Alas ! alas ! 1 turned on my heel, opened the garden-
gate, and finding the path through the peach-trees
with some difficulty on the misty night, went back
to the forlorn study.
My invalid friend looked dismal enough. * Come,'
said I, slapping him on the back very gently, (to
have done it roughly on the present emergency
would have been to insult him,) 'we have to take
care of ourselves. What is more easy? We must
flare up. We must have a little light, a little fire.
My next-door neighbour is away. That makes not
the least diff'erence.' With that I liffhted the astral
UPTHE RIVER 87
lamp — no, the globe-lamp — a contemptible affair,
which is a disgrace to the inventor. You raise the
wick as high as possible before it will shed any light
at all. In a moment it glares out, and presently be-
comes dim, filling your apartment with suffocating
smoke and soot. Confound the lamp, with its brazen
shaft and marble pedestal ! I could with a good will
dash it on the floor.
I remembered that there was an abundance of
shavings under the shed. Going out, I collected an
arm-full and rammed them into the kitchen stove,
put in a few chips, and a stick or two of wood, and
applied a match. Then I took the tea-kettle, and
tramping to the well, filled it with water, placed it
upon the stove, and it presently bubbled. Took
down a caddy of black tea. After a while I found
a loaf of stale bread, which makes excellent toast.
In three quarters of an hour, during which I spent
the time in purgatory, I returned to the study and
said, touching my friend on the shoulder, 'Tea is
ready.' We went into the kitchen and sat down. I
said grace. The lamp smoked, the fire burned poorly,
the tea was cold, my friend shivered, and I after-
ward heard that he said that I seemed to think that
the globe-lamp was both light and warmth. The
ungrateful wretch ! After tea, the first natural im-
88 U P T II E R I Y E R
pulse was to get warm, and still keep ourselves
alive. My friend behaved extremely well, all things
considered ; and as the stove wanted replenishing
with shavings every five minutes, he acted once or
twice as a volunteer on this mission. He tried to
he cheerful, but his visage looked sad. 'How stern
of lineament, how grim!' For my part, I could not
but enjoy an inward chuckle, like one who has the
best of a bargain in the purchase of a horse. People
come to your house to be entertained. In the hands
of your hospitality they are like dough to be moulded
into any shape of comfort. They fairly lay them-
selves out to be feted, and feasted, and flattered, and
soothed, and comforted, and tucked in at night.
They enjoy for the time being a luxurious irrespon-
sibility. With what composure do they lounge in
your arm-chair, and lazily troll their eyes over the
pictures in your show-books ! How swingingly they
saunter on your porch or in your garden, with their
minds buoyant as thistle-down, lightly inhaling the
aromatic breeze, fostered by all whom they meet, and
addressing all in lady-tones. Bless their dear hearts,
how they do grind their teeth for dinner! Dinner!
Sometimes it is no easy matter to get up a dinner.
While they are in this opiate state, the man of the
house is in cruel perplexity, and beef-steaks are rare.
U P T II E R I V E R . 89
Oh ! it is a rich treat and triumph, now and then, to
have these fellows on the hip; to see them
put to some little exertion to conceal their feelings,
when they have expected all exertion to be made on
the other part ; to scan their physiognomy, and to
read their thoughts as plainly as if printed in the
clearest and most open type: 'This does not pay.
You will not catch me in this scrape again. I will
go where I can be entertained better.' I say that I
enjoy their discomfiture, and consider it (if it happen
rarely) a rich practical joke. It is entirely natural,
and in accordance with correct principles, that they
should feel exactly as they do. Does it not agree
with what I have already said? Constituted as we
are, there must be the outward and visible sign to
stir up the devotion of the heart. Your grace of
warm welcome will not do. Give your friend a
good dinner, or a glass of wine ; let the fire
be warm and bright. Then he will come again.
Otherwise not. It is human nature, At any rate,
it is my nature. Here, however, we draw the fine
hair-line of distinction. If your friend thinks more
of the animal than of the spiritual; if he neglects
any duty, undervalues any friendship, because the
outward is poor, meagre, of necessity wanting, call
him your friend no more!
90 U P T H E R I V E R .
'Let us g-o to bed,' said I. 'Done,' said he. 'No,
not done. The beds are to be made. There is no
chambermaid in the house. What of that' Excuse
me for a moment while you ram a few more shavings
into the stove.' I go up stairs into the spare cham-
b3r. I can find nothing. After a half-hour's work,
I manage, however, to procure pillow-cases, sheets,
blankets. I go down stairs and tap my shivering
friend on the shoulder, and say, chirpingly, ' Come,
you must go to your snuggery, your nest. You will
sleep like a top, and feel better in the morning.'
I get him into bed, and after his nightcap is on,
and his head upon the pillow, I say, 'Good night;
pleasant dreams to you.'
'Good night,' he responded, with a feeble smile.
Then I tumbled into my own bed, which was made
up anyhow, looking out first on the moon just rising
above the fogs. Oh! thou cold, dry, brassy Moon!
do not shine into my chamber when I want repose.
Phcebe, Diana, Luna, call thee by whatever name,
let not thy pale smile be cast upon my eyes ! If so,
sweet sleep is gone, and pleasant dreams. Out, out,
OUT with thy skeleton face, O volcanic, brassy Moon !
When the morrow came, I went into my friend's
chamber, and, as if he had been a king or a prince.
UP THE RIVER. (Jl
asked liim how he had rested during the night, and
if the coverlets had kept him warm. He was com-
pelled to say, as he was a man of strict veracity,
that he had been a little cold. The undiscriminating
varlet ' I had given him all the blankets in the
house.
It was Sunday morning. A Sunday in the country
is a theme on which my invalid friend, who is an
author, had expatiated with wonderful effect in one
of his books. When he came down stairs, as the
shavings were not yet lighted, I took him by the
arm, and proposed a walk on the grass. But the
grass was wettened by copious dews. He returned
chilled, and hovered over the cold stove. It was
nearly time for breakfast, but I had not given him a
word of encouragement on that point. Breakfast
was a puzzler. All of a sudden, striking my hand
on my forehead, as if in the elicitment of a bright
idea, I rushed out of the kitchen, crossed the little
garden, and knocked at the door of the old farm-
house.
The face of the good landlady was forthwith visi-
ble. * Madame,' I said, ' I am in a little quandary.
I have a friend with me ; beside ourselves there is
nobody and nothing in the house. Will you have
92 UP THE RIVER.
the kindness to provide us breakfast, dinner, and tea
to-day V
She most obligingly consented. In half an hour
I conducted the author triumphantly to the old man-
sion. The clean white table-cloth was spread ; the
room was ' as warm as toast,' and my friend's spirits
revived. We went to church. His responses were
heart-felt and audible. On returning, the w'alk made
his blood circulate a little, and as he sat in the
rocking-chair in the old farm-house waiting for the
broiled chicken, and looking up at the white-washed
beams, he was the picture of contentment. I was
almost provoked with myself for getting him into
such a comfortable fix. We had seated ourselves at
the table, and were pleasantly, I think I may sd.y luxu-
riously, engaged in the empicking of chicken-bones,
when a remarkable incident occurred. It was ob-
served that there was not a drop of water in the
pitcher. This was an oversight. The landlady
with the kindest alacrity hurried to the ancient .well ;
and she had just opened the door on her return,
when putting down the pitcher, and wringing her
hands, she cried out :
' Oh ! quick ! quick ! do come ! do come ! The
fox ! the fox ! the fox !'
We deserted the dinner-table in an instant, ran
UPTHERIVER. 93
out on the piazza, and oh ! what a sight ! Within
a few yards, within pistol-shot, a splendid, sanctimo-
nious, sly Reynard glided with a mouse-foot pace,
crouching as he went, out of the neighbouring green
patch, leaped softly over the stone-wall, crossed the
Tjad, and took a zig-zag course through the opposite
corn-field; waving his brown tail, which was of the
most extensive kind.
The provocation was most intense. Mister Pal-
mer, his hair standing on end, rushed to the house-
corner and called his black dog. ' Here, Boos !
Boos ! Boos ! Boos !' But Boos w^as barking at an
ill-looking customer who just at that predicament
of time tried to open the gate. He seized him (Boos)
by the collar ; he dragged him up the road, but the
latter was altogether behind the age. Although he
did not succeed in striking the scent, his master as-
sured me that if he had once got a sight of the ani-
mal he would have collared him. In about fifteen
minutes after this, a couple of spotted hounds, hunting
on their own hook and on the Sabbath-day. leaped
over the wall, and went nosing about to the right
and left, hither and thither, through the corn-field,
and we heard them yelping until sun-down. The
fox escaped.
94 UP THE RIVEK.
The next morning my friend went away. I can-
not say that he felt very sad at parting with me ; nay,
I thought that his face brightened up into a genial
smile as the coach drew near, and that there was
something concentrated in his expression as he gave
the house a parting glance, like that of one who
bids farewell to the hard rocks and inhospitable
coast on which he has been shipwrecked.
My remaining Shanghai chicken is dead. Two
only were hatched. One fell off the perch on a nip-
ping, frosty night ; the other ran trembling about in
the bleak weather, crying and chirping piteously.
One morning I brought it into the house nearly dead,
fed it with bread-crumbs, and put it in a basket by
the fire, when it soon revived. It used to runabout
the kitchen familiarly, and sometimes came into the
parlour. It was this presumption which proved fatal
to the chick. One evening, when we had searched
for it to put it in the basket for the night, it was no
where to be found. It was not in the closets, in the
corners, under the tables, under sofas, under the
chairs. Holding the light at last under the stove,
there lay the chicken, stone dead, his feathers much
UP THE RIVER. 95
scorched. I was like the poor man robbed of his
one little ewe-lamb. Oh, how mistaken are we in
our deeds ! Wipe off the frosty rime, rescue from
the bleakness of the invisible wind, pull the poor
freezling out of a snow-bank, and it runs into a hot-
mouthed furnace of its own accord. T shall not let
my Shanghai hen set on eggs again. She is not
motherly, and my opinion is somewhat modified as
to the peculiarity of the breed. They must be
hardened and acclimated to the severity of our win-
ters. They have few feathers, and those very light
and downy, and their rear is ill-protected by the
usual appendage of a tail. As I told you, they are
pretty well bobbed. Their yellow legs are covered
to the toes with a soft down, which shows them to
be sensitive to cold, for which nature has provided
them with stockings. I thought that their senti-
ments — their instincts, I ought to say — were gener-
ous ; but Mrs. Palmer told me that the rooster would
not let the chickens have anything to eat, but snap-
ped up all the meal. I could hardly believe that
the rooster would act in such wise, for he is a very
strutting, noble-looking fowl. Those who come to
my house admire his action as they would that of a
good horsfe. I intend to cultivate the stock, because
96
UP THE RIVER.
I have more faith in it than some do : and Captain
S. told me that I should have a young pullet in the
spring.
VII.
November, 1852.
HE last vestiges
of summer are gone
with the departing
year. The garden-
gate is closed, the
rusty scythe is hung
up, the cider-mills
now creak and
groan, while the
few remaining ap-
ples on the trees
have their cheeks
frost-bitten. The
threshing-floors are
the scene of much
riot and racket.
The flails glance in the air, flung aloft by strong
arms, the fanning mills are in perpetual motion,
98 UP THE RIVER.
and the old horse is condemned to his annual punish-
ment of the treadmill. It is painful to see him mo-
notonously stepping on an inclined plane by the
hour together, weeping out perhaps his remaining
eye, and while winnowing the grain for others,
rapidly getting himself in condition to be turned
out to die. I have some respect for the Yankee who
invented the churning-machine to go by dog-power,
but none whatever for the WniTNEY-like ingenuity
which contrived this torture for the noble horse.
Yes : he will soon be turned out to die, like that raw-
boned animal which I saw the other day on the turn-
pike. He had been a farmer's horse, and for many
seasons had ploughed the fields and did his share
of arduous duty. He had earned the hay and oats
and comfortable stable which should have been his
reward in old age. Bnt his master had not mercy
enough to cut his throat, although he could have got
the money for his skin ; and now he wanders about
starving, and will do so, until the town's people remove
his carcass from the road, a stalking monument
of base ingratitude.
The other day, while reading a book, I heard a
sound on the highway like the tramping of a com-
pany of dragoons. On looking out, lo ! the whole
road for the distance of a quarter of a mile was
UPTHERIVER. 99
literally crowded with jackasses, with their ample
ears, and tails knobbed like a lion's, following a sin-
gle horseman, who rode solemnly in advance. Their
approach was productive of great excitement among
the horses grazing in the fields, who gallopped up
and down along the fence, neighing prodigiously. I
asked the conductor: 'How many asses have you?'
He replied, 'A hundred and twenty-five.' 'Where
do you take them?' 'To New-Haven.' The next
day another troop as large passed by, and on the
next another, all going to New-Haven. They are
not, however, sent there to be put to college, but are
thence shipped to the West Indies. The exportation
of asses from the country is immense : yet the race
does not appear materially diminished. The trade
has long been carried on at New-Haven, and there
is perhaps no place where there is so much erudition,
and at the same time so many long ears.
Ever since the white frost appeared, and the air
has become sharp, your ears are stunned at the
break of day by long-continued and most agonized
squealings. They come from all parts of the com-
pass. The tender pigling, the bristling, obese grunter,
turns his white bleared eye, now suffused with flame,
for the Jast time, with a tender reminiscence, to the
vacated pen, to the soft, wallowing sty. Visions of
100 UP THE RIVER.
potato-parings, refuse, and sweet nubbins, straw-laid
bed, and ring-tailed darlings, mingled with an in-
stinctive presentiment of the whetted knife. Piggy
does not march to his execution with the silent, dog-
ged resignation of a condemned criminal, but inva-
riably with a resistance of the strong police, and im-
mense lamentations. As he always went contrary
when driven, from the time of the ringing of his
rooting snout, he now uses his vast muscular energy
to take his own part, and issues a squealing protest
against being killed. He resists with all his might,
as he is dragged, pulled, and pushed along to
slaughter. But Piggy should reflect that he is not
the only animal who must eat. His destiny is com-
pound : To EAT AND TO BE EATEN. The first part he
has fulfilled according to his nature. For the latter
part he is not responsible. You will now see him
divested of his bristles, washed as white as snow in
a scald-bath, and strung up by the heels, with his
jaws stretched apart by a dry corn-cob. The next
morning, frozen as hard as a rock, he will be stored
with other produce in a wagon, with his hoofs stick-
ing out from beneath a blanket,while the countryman,
his head crouched on his shoulder to protect him
from the north-east wind or a driving snow-storm,
slowly wends his way to market. His final sepul-
UP THE RIVER. iQl
chre is the human stomach. He whose habitation
was so lately a pig-sty, and his foot in the trough,
whose aspect was most beastly, most hideous, will
soon become a part of 'fine lords and fine ladies,.'
and no doubt enter — I say it without disrespect — in-
to the grand mausoleum of the President of the
United States. Behold that Senator expound the
Constitution ! Behold that Judge upon the Bench !
For some part of his composition he is indebted to
the sty.
So much for the transmigration of bodies, of
which there can be no doubt, and the flesh of pig be-
comes beatified in transparent corporation. It re-
sides in the vigor of the manly arm ; it is in the pur-
ple blush of youthful beauty; it is in plumpness, and
flowing lines, and tender lineaments, going before a
creasy age, when the stomach abjures fat. When,
during the past summer, it was my amusement to
hasten to the sty, at the emptying of the desiderated
slop-pail ; when I listened to the porcine grunts, and
was a witness of that beastly emulation to obtain
the tit-bits of the leavings, and the choicest of the
peels, when I turned away from the ill-smelling mud,
and reflected seriously how much is conveyed in the
very name of hog, I can scarcely realize the trans
fusion of such grossness to so much delicacy and
102 UP THE RIVER.
delight. Each household is now enlivened with
preparation for a 'feast of fat things.' The kitchen
is a scene of continual festivity: every tub is in re-
quisition; the empty larder is replenished: the lean
poor wax fat. What a hissing and what a frying !
What an unctuous smell ! What an herbal fragrance !
The cloven feet are turned to bowls of transparent,
palpitating jelly. And souse ! souse ! Souse is a
gelatinous, emollient, dainty morsel. Spare-ribs are
as delicate as delicate can be ! Steaks ! Cook them
in a devil-dish, with a little currant-jelly and sauces,
after the Doctor's fashion, and they are beyond all
praise. But when I come to speak of crackling! —
'fat, call it not fat!' — O Charles, Charles! I yield
the palm to thee ! — That pen of thine could add a
charm to every subject, and like the winter-time
bedeck with greenest sprigs and fragrant parsley
the very front of pig !
Again the little ruddy chunk, with its alternate
layers of lean and fat, suited alike for Jacob Sprat
or for his excellent wife, whose tastes were di-
verse, used always to be served up at judi-
cious intervals in a dish called sour-crout. This
dish we reverence for the sake of our Dutch ances-
tors ; and although the cabbage at a certain stage
has volitant principles, which, beginning at the kit.
UP THE RIVER. 103
chen, walk without ceremony into the parlour, and
stop not short of the cock-loft and rafters — a sort of
spiritual cat — yet it has to the initiated a fierce
relish, which can scarcely be described. The St.
Nicholas Society will bear me out in what I say.
But if there be any relish of life for which we are
indebted to Piggy, it is sausage; and sausage, we
have been always taught, to be relished, must be
eaten at home. I remember, when a boy, the par-
ticularity of old grandmothers in the preparation
of sausage. What cleanliness was required ! How
adequately the powdered sage and other herbs were
mingled in its composition ! And when it came up-
on the table, with buckwheat cakes, buttered and
cut into four quarters, on a hot, full-sized plate, up-
on my word, if the coffee were well-composed, no
breakfast could be more complete. But to hear me
talk in this way, you might take me for a sensual
epicure, instead of being, as I am, a man who can
live upon a dry crust, and except at few-and-far-be-
tween intervals of hilarious health, cares not what
he eats, so long as it be well-served and clean :
• I CANNOT eat but little meat,
My stomach is not good.'
Perhaps Mrs. Hale's immortal cookery-book gives
the best receipt for sausage. Having said thus
104 UP THE HIVE R.
much for Piggy, I have only done it to show how ad-
mirably every part of creation fulfils its destiny, and
contributes to its proper end. But I must turn the
tables, by revealing a little of my own proper senti-
ment. Pork 1 like, but it must be in homcepathic pro-
portion. Last winter I lived on the sea-shore, and at
' killing-time,' somebody sent me a chunk of aromatic
head-cheese. Sitting up late at night before a good
fire, and writing as I am now in the 'small hours,' an
inclination came over me to partake of supper. 1
threw upon the coals a half-dozen fine oysters, and
when they were roasted nearly to a crisp, partook
of them with a little good bread-and-butter. After-
ward, to do justice to my friend's gift, I put into my
mouth a small piece of head-cheese ! I never was
more convinced of the grossness of fat. Upon my
word, no Israelite ever loathed a morsel of the un-
clean animal more heartily than I did that bit of
head-cheese. It sickened me on the spot !
But all people cannot attain to shell-fish. When
I went a-trouting in Vermont, William Mallory,
by profession a fisherman, as we sat down to take
our dinner on the turf, after a successful day's sport,
used to tilt his bottle of raw whisky to his lips, and
then cut off a chunk of fat pork. 'Gentlemen,' he
said, 'there is nothing that so sets onto the stomach.'
UP THE II I V E R ,
105
'Yes,' said I, 'this way of taking dinner is pleasant.'
'Oh,' said he, 'that isn't all of it. It's more'n that.
It's jiatur.'' But before I get through, or have shown
for how much enjoyment we are indebted to the sty,
I must make you realize what has often passed be-
fore my own eyes. There is a play-ground, and a
hundred boys are kicking at a foot-ball. Now it
flies high in air, and into the next field. They all
tumble over the rails, following each other like a
flock of sheep. Now they have it in a corner, and
what a stubbing and a-kicking, accompanied by a
cry of ' shinnee ! shinnee !' and at last they get it out,
and with youthful cheeks flushed with health and
exercise, with a succession of well-aimed kicks, they
drive it home to the goal. Now if Piggy had not
squealed with agony in the morning, this game could
not have come oflf toward eve.
<^^i:^
VIII.
December, 1852.
--/
HE year is passing
away— passing away ;
but how lamb-like !
The voice of 'Bluster-
ing Railer' has scarce
been heard ; the
breeze comes soft and
^// melting, as if hot-
wafted from the aro-
matic South ; the jol-
ly sleigh-bells have
not been tuned, and
^= the river freely rolls
within its banks.
Soon, alas ! it will
be seen no more as a
feature in the landscape. But as we prize an absent
friend like gold, as one remembers beauty when de-
UP THE RIVER. 107
parted, so I have learned to estimate the river ; not
w^hen, released, it flashes in the sun, but when, like
Alpheus, it has retreated to the shades ; and when
a winding-sheet of snow is on its breast, and when
a glass is on its face, and undistinguished from the
common earth, its sound goes forth no more, and the
granite hills stand up like monuments of its depart-
ed glory. Now its great heart throbs ; its pulse
ebbs and flows : its face sparkles with animation,
and mirrors many a pleasing image. The winter
tarries : Death has yet failed to assert his silent
reign.
Rejoice, homeless and poverty-stricken ! Truly
says the sentimental one, ' God tempers the wind
to the shorn Iamb.' But when He gives to it a cut-
ting edge, and bars the living streams, He opens
human hearts, and keeps the tear of Pity from being
frozen. Thus while the bosom of the bounteous
Earth is cold, the golden harvest is transferred to
gentler zones, and Ruth goes gleaning.
******
Now among the Highlands the mist ascends in
the moist, unseasonable weather. It rolls in and
out of the deep clefts and gorges, creeps over the
table-land, and every peak smokes like a volcano.
108 UP THE RIVER
When the sun went down last night, obscured be-
hind the hills, the eaves dripped, and presently there
came a drenching rain. ' This weather cannot last,
albeit it is kindly to the poor.' Presently the wind
blew shrill around the house-corners, whistled down
the chimney, and then was heard shrieking and dy-
ing away afar off. ' It is chopping about ; we shall
have it cold toward morning.' I went to the outer
door, and 'flung it freely open to the storm.' The
drizzling rain had become changed to flying sleet
and peppering hail, borne upon sudden gusts ; the
moon over the mountains waded painfully ; the
apple-boughs began to crackle. ' It grows colder ;
the year will go out like a lion.' And as it was
too late to replenish the fire, I took the candle and
w^ent to bed.
How pleasant, when you are snug and warm, to
hear the crusted branches rub the panes, or the hail
pelt against them like fine shot, now and then to be
varied by a swash — the roaring of the winds, which
makes the house jar ! So wore the night ; but when
the morrow's sun arose, it shone upon a scene more
radiant than the one which 'charmed the bid :' each
rounded hill a crystal dome ; the mountain-corridors
all chandeliered betwixt their glassy walls ; the for-
est trees festooned from limb to limb with w^hitest
UP THE RIVER. 109
wreaths ; the steep declivities bristling with icy spikes
sun-tipped, surn:iounted by a single star, and all the
earth bestrewn with untold wealth, as if the Ester-
HAZYs of the realm had swept along, and every bush
bore jewels. Good my friend, I thought of Koh-i-
noor ! I never saw such cold, yet radiant emula-
tion ; gem rivalling gem, as prism flashed to prism.
The stalks stood up cased in transparent mail ; the
sun-flower's head could boast a gaudier crown ; the
eaves were hung with bright stalactites ; while every
breeze shook down the vitreous tubes, and all the
avenue sparkled. Crystalization ! what awondrous
work ! At last the sun, whose earliest beams im-
bued with rosy light the powdered heights and col-
umns of the wafted snows, rose paramount, to ab-
sorb all lesser glories in his own. 'Fret-work and
nonsense !' he appeared to say, ' what's all this tin-
sel ?' O the sun ! the sun ! centre of centres ! light
of lights ! illumining the rounded shafts and col-
umns which uphold the universe ! Whether he
hangs above the spinning sphere and goes not down
upon an artic summer, gives up the temperate zones
to ice and snow, or in his zodiac course, dividing
day and night, stands vertical above the blazing
belt which girts the earth, he is too great to tamper
with illusion ! Visions of the night, the unreal, the
110 UPTHERIVER:
spectral, and the unsubstantial, are dissolved like
charms ; while he alone, emblem of Truth, stands
fixed and firm, feeding his urn from the Eternal
source.
Ye denizens of the city, who think, no luxury like
that of your well-walled abodes, and only rusticate
awhile in June, to see the breakers beat, or to hear
the streams murmur, have you no winter-palace on
the rivers, and no homestead among the hills ? Come
out ! come out ! There's warmth between the am-
ple jambs. There is beauty in the landscape, even
now ; and when you go to face the nipping air, you
shall behold a spectacle well worth the winter-jaunt.
Crows' Nest, it is true, looks hoar and bleak ; gigan-
tic icicles are pendent from the rocks ; and as you
walk through hemlock groves, you may chance to
come upon a cascade frozen, a water-fall arrested
on the foaming brink, a mill-flume clogged, great
rocks and boulders crusted in the stream. There is
an animated play upon the pond : Godenski, or the
Skaters of Wilna. I for one would not be absent
from the fields to greet the early spring, to hear the
blue-bird carol, or the buds crack in June ; and stiil
I love among the snow-clad hills and wintry vales
to see the cloudy banks and the drifts circling about
the peaks ; just as in sweltering heats to watch the
UP THE RIVER. HI
impending gusts, to hear the thunders roll among
the mountains, to mark the lightnings as they play,
and the effect of light and shadow. Here are no little
theatres with tawdry show, pasteboard pictures ; but
most magnificent, the sceneries stretch far and wide
in a new phase. Here are no strings tight-strained
to concert pitch : but oh ! the opera of the winter
winds, soon as great Boreas has seized the baton,
and taken his seat in the high North, commanding
them to blow high, to blow low, now here, now there;
now screaming through scrannel-pipes, now hooting
as if the fiends kept concord, now rolling through
the wide gaps, big mountain-gulches with full, com-
manding swell, then retreating to some Sistine cell
like a dying Miserere.
My friend, it is my way to walk upon the porch
when first I rise, to see the tintings of the rosy dawn
and hail the day. This morning, on the sill of my
own door, I looked upon a sad sight. Two flying-
squirrels lay side by side, with wings expanded, frozen
stark and stiff. The storm had wrenched the branch
that overlapped their cozy nest, scattered the con-
tents of the full granary and nutty treasures of the
hollow tree, and they fell upon the threshold of the
inhospitable house, to be pinched by a wind much
sharper than their little teeth. How often had I
112 UP THE RIVLR.
seen them in the apple-orchard glide from the sum-
mit of the blossoming bough, taking the benefit of
some chance zephyr, down to the distant trunk nick-
ed into round holes by the iterating strokes of red-
headed wood-pecker ! How often had I watched
them slant their downy sails in air, admired
their sloping descent, and swift, yet gradual alight-
ment, enough to breed a rumpling jealousy among
the feathers ! But when they picked a nut with
delicate skill, and chiselled out the oily shavings,
making a carriage for Queen Mab, ' Give the prize,'
I said, ' to the fairies' coach-makers.' Creatures of
grace i how different from the church-haunting bats !
In school-boy days, with a slight silver chain about
their necks, I have seen them nestle in the bosom
of amorous boys. Petted into assurance, I have
known them build their nest in a lady's work-box.
The change from life to death, methinks, presents
no stronger contrast than among the gracefuller and
more agile animals. The fawn just glancing in your
path, and the aerial picture of the deer just vanished
like a shadow, the gliding of the glossy swallow, the
spiritual beauty of the little squirrel, how different
from the dull and lumpish forms when the electri-
city of life has fled !
UPTHERIVER. 113
January, Ist, 18-53
It is the opinion of some author, whose name and
whose exact words I am unable to recall, that fixed
holidays and festivals are not salutary. ' Let the
young,' says he, * be taught to draw their happiness
from the present, Let them make the most of that
which now is. To be looking forward or backward
to some day christened ' happy' or ' merry,' is enough
to breed disaffection to vulgar time, and bring a por-
tion of the calendar into disrespect.' A worse ar-
gument, or a colder, icier tit-bit of philosophy, was
never set forth. On what pinnacle of Reason does
this Plato dwell, feeding on ether, and overlooking
the wants of common men? Is he wiser than Solo-
mon ? Imagine all the little boys in round-abouts
throughout the world trained up by ar])itrary injunc-
tion to be happy the whole time ! Christmas is com-
ing. What of that, my dear little fellows ? Every
day is alike. There is no such being as Santa
Claus, and never has been since chimneys were
built. As to his clattering on the tiles with prancers,
it is untrue. He is nowhere seen but in pictures,
nor extolled except in the world-renowned poem of
Clement C. Moore, who has thus turned his imag-
ination to bad account. Attend to your books !
114 UP THE RIVER.
Stop drawing the devil on your slates ! Imagine, I
say, all the solemn little urchins in a row, hemmed
in by the dead walls of the school-room, and with
nothing before them but an opaque black-board,
would they not become saffron and cadaverous as
the money-getting men whose year is not even
bright-speckled by Sundays, and is like a monoto-
nous dream of dollars broken in two by the explosion
of Fourth-of-July cannon and snapping-crackers ?
What if anticipation were abolished, and the memory
of past joys were no longer sweet ? I hate such
heresies as much as I can hate anything w^hen the
year is span new. Blessed be the illuminated peaks
of time, sun-gilt and temple-crowned, precious Ne-
boes ! Plodding through the dull hours, over the
dead flats of a weary life, over the sharp rocks of
arduous duty and responsibility, from the deep gulfs
of dejection, we see the bright hill-tops ahead. Then
does the drooping wing become like the golden fea-
thers of a dove. Sweet be the vales which lie beyond,
from which w'e look back upon the rosy hours of
the eve, the sumptuous light of the setting sun I
Instead of having no festivals, we have need of
more in a poverty-stricken calendar. The days will
not be jealous of each other. Whoever heard of a
fight between Monday and Tuesday ? For current
UP THE RIVER. 115
time will divide itself into eras — days marked by a
while stone, anniversaries of joy or sorrow — which
we will at least secretly cherish as they pass by.
Human nature knows its own wants, and the recog-
nition of birth-days is founded in its holiest and best
laws ; and if a wicked Utilitarianism should erase
the Golden Letters, abrogate feasts, and untwine
the festive garlands from the happiest of them all,
the very act would constitute a bad anniversary.
These remembrances are the very sentiment of life,
and encroach upon the inroads of an essential
worldliness. I think that joy is not less sacred than
sorrow ; the one with its coronals, the other with
its sable weeds, its cypress and its rosemary ; and
each has its times and seasons and outward tokens.
There is nothing good in the world without its
tokens. No man liveth to himself, and no man dieth
to himself. Who likes to be glad in a corner, let-
ting his stomach dimple with a stingy, chuckling,
gurgling giggle ? It is perfectly amazing to me,
that so-called good people have taken up such a
horrid antipathy to all kinds of festive customs and
recreations which have sprung up in the ordinary
progress of society ; and they will snap the knitted
hands of rosy children in an innocent dance to the
sound of a viol, while they cannot shake a material
116 UP THE RIVER.
lash over the subtle, sordid, immaterial spirit of
greed and lust of gain. They will say, ' Can you
go from these things to your bended knees V
And wherefore not ? let us ask. For even the
wildest hilarity, which is to be condemned, excludes
for the time being the gnawing worm of envy, ma-
lignities, and carking cares, unchristian discontent,
and cursed feuds. And I once told a wrangling
religious neighbourhood, that it w^ould give me
pleasure to see them get up a furious horse-race,
which I had never yet had the curiosity to witness,
and bet as heavily as they liked ; for I thought that
the improvement of the breed of horses was perhaps
a false argument for that kind of sport, but it might
be an improvement to the breed of men. Do not
imagine that I am retained as counsel for the Union
Course, or that I am a candidate for a jockey-club.
I live quietly in a little house in the country, one
story and a half high, from which I do not even
sally upon a fox-chase ; but look out of the win-
dow, and 'scrutinize' what is going on in the
world, sometimes gaily, and sometimes with a more
prevailing sadness, but always with good will to
men. A notion like the above I cannot help asso-
ciating with the sleekness of hypocrisy, and think
that the abettors of it are essentially worldly-mind-
UP THE RIVE R. 117
ed. Bui out of whatever system it may spring, it
is wrong and false and bad, throwing a doubt and a
suspicion over things which ouglit to be as free
from these as the rose just wetted with the dews.
It gives false viewis of life, spreads a colour of jaun-
dice over a blonde Innocence, skims off the rich
cream from our daily cup, leaving a blue, sickly
pool beneath. And to be fed from the rocking-
cradle with this kind of mother's milk, is enough to
sour the hopefullest infant, the sweetest suckling —
animosus infans non sine Dis — to an adult devil in
time to come. From innate feeling, and from asso-
ciation, and from observation, and from reason, and
from reflection, and from cultivation, I have learned
to hate such notions, and I do now most heartily,
as much as I can hate any thing when the yea?' is
span neiv. I do not believe that those who hold
them are capable of enjoying existence as God in-
tended it to be enjoyed. ' Because they are pious,
do they think there shall be no more cakes and
ale V
1 wish you could have been with me on Christ-
mas eve. It was a misty, dank, ungenial time with-
out : there were no layers of snow upon the hem-
locks ; there were no piping winds and snapping
cold, such as we consider not unpleasant or unsea-
118 UP THE HIVER.
sonable for the time. There is an ancient home-
stead on the river's brink, large, hereditary, full of
comfort, rich in reminiscence. TAere was the order
of the Cincinnati formed. Over against those
jambs, novr blazing with cheerful light, they sat and
mused, those venerable men, in days which tried
men's souls, and on the walls the choice and mellow-
pictures of Copley may be seen, and portraits of
those who belonged to past generations. Oh !
what a beautiful, full-length likeness of a boy is
there. Largely enclosed with fertile acres, the
house stands yet with uncorrupted timbers, and
with snug, warm roof to overlook the classical do-
minion. Here for an hundred years the Christmas
day has not gone by without a merry meeting, and
urchinal laughter enough to make the walls crack.
Now as I sat at the festal board, and in due course
of time saw the Boar's head brought in, a host of
pleasant fancies came over me. Merry Old Eng-
land ! I thought of thee, thou green isle of the
ocean, but my mind reverted not to feudal halls,
but holy homes. Picture of pictures ! could we
peep within, what groupings of youth and beauty
on this day in that favored land ! The rich red
blood of chivalric times still courses as if it had
just gushed from the original fount. Olden usage
is not yet dead. Keep up the time-honoured cus-
UP THE mVER. 119
toms. "Reflect, like true philosophers, how much of
our happiness we owe to little things. Chase not
away those bright smiles from the faces of the
young, because the cheeks now radiant with anima
tion have in days gone by, as, alas ! they will be
yet again, trickled over by tears.
Of all festivals in the year, Christmas is most
looked for with eager joy. Short as the days of
December are, the approach of the season brings
with it a contagious joy. All classes feel it, and it
appears to me when the day comes, that there are
no such men as Turks, Jews, Heretics and Infidels.
Again in the air we hear the sweet echoes of the
angels' chorus, ' Peace on earth, good-will to all
mankind.'
A merry Christmas ! Who will be so sour as to
think the epithet is ill-applied ? For now we take
back the wandering prodigals once more to our
hearts; the erring or the ungrateful who have
strayed far from our genuine love. It is meet that
we should make merry and be glad. But how much
more when we are commanded by the voice of God,
since now His only Son, who was no prodigal, but
who was recovered from the ' far country ' of the
grave, appears to visit again the bereaved earth !
' It is meet that we should make merry and be glad,
for this my Son was dead, and is alive again , was
120 UP THE RIVER.
lost, and is found.' Now is the season of gifts
And what more precious, what more fairy-like in
the tenure of its boon, than a heart-given gift ? Dig
out a lump of gold from the rich earth ; get it by-
hard toil betwixt the day-light and the dark ; and
it is dull, lack-lustre lead, in comparison. You can
lock it ; you can grasp it ; you can gloat over it ; but
can you smile-weep over it, as if it came from an
angel in the skies ? What if it be a booklet, stamp-
ed upon its pure leaves with the delicate creations
of art and with the lovely fancies of a poet ? A
Spencer, a Donne, a Herbert, a Waller, a Shakspeare,
a Rogers, a Bryant ! What if it be rather a holy
book of prayer ? Lay it up among the archives,
among the arcana, in the treasure-house of pleasant
things, where the thief shall never steal it from your
possession, and the dust of forgetfulness shall never
cover it !
But behold, the Christmas-tree has up-sprung with
a magic growth. It is no twig, no bushlet, no
crooked, gnarled, ugly branch, wrenched off in
haste or tossed aside by the Boreal winds, but a
veritable, ample, bright-leaved tree, culled with the
choicest care from the heart of the woods ; and no
sooner is it implanted in the ample drawing-room,
laden with its treasures and blazing with innumer-
able waxen tapers, than a juvenile band bursts through
UP THE RIVER. 121
the hitherto enclosed barriers, and dances round it
with uproarous merriment :
' Come, knit hands and beat the ground
In a light fantastic t ound.'
Never with more earnest zest could the golden fruit
be picked in the gardens of the Hesperides. The
rosy-footed Jenny abounds in presents, and baskets
filled with sugar-plums are pendent from her plump
arms ; Crom and Bob and Annie and Mary are so
endowed and decorated that Crcesus was not more
rich. The fruitage-bearing boughs shake down their
treasures for the old and young.
There is a bright stretch of days between merry
Christmas and New Year's, like a gulf between two
hills filled with sun. On New Year's eve it was
a pleasant spectacle to see once more assembled
the same happy troop, the rosy-footed Jenny beam-
ing with smiles as in a halo of light. At midnight,
when the watches were compared, and they were
seeing the old year out, the young people got hold
of all the bells in the house, down to one composed
of the metal of ancient Trinity. Well, it is only
once a year. Bonum est desipere in loco. But
when the sounds had ceased, and sleep came down
on juvenile lids, and midnight shed her essential
stillness on the scene, we stood before the blazing
122 UP THE HI YE 11.
hearth, W. and I, and spoke of Charles. Could
any one like he embalm such memories ? Oh !
when I think of him as one writing with a dove's
(j[uill dipped in the very humours of his dear
heart, picturing those tender fancies, those match-
less portraits, those indefinable graces which only
yielded to the transfer of his power, I am ready
to snap the ink-drops from this pen of mine, and go
and drop a tear upon his tomb. Never did the rills
of thought wear themselves through so sweetly a
romantic channel. Here there is a bower to rest in ;
there I see the blue sky, or bank-side flowers,
mirrored in the pool ; then again the agitation of
the sweet water. But oh ! that Essay on the New
Year ! ' We will read it,' said W. Then com-
menced a long search upon the well-filled shelves.
In vain the candle was held now low among the
ponderous tomes of rich divinity and classic lore ;
in vain high up to the aerial realms of metaphysics
and the Aldine bards. I saw a record to the fame
of stately Johnson ; I glanced upon the polished
wit of Addison ; I read the names of Wycherly
and CoNGREVE, golden-lettered ; but Lamb, with
all his subtle charms, lay hid. Nay, do not flare
the candle to the right. Beaumont and Fletcher !
My word for it now, that Charles cannot be far.
UP THE RIVER,
123
And sure enough. In meek, seclusion, deferring in
his modest merits to more sounding names, he stood
apart. With a sort of triumph we bore him to the
cheerful hearth, and with his charming page beguil-
ed ourselves until the peep of dawn, to hear him
moralize in his own way, and to listen to his own
words flowina: like a silver stream.
IX.
January, 1S53.
just
how
LIKE to look out of
the window over the
corn-fields, and see
the black phalanx
of crows wheeling
through the misty air,
and laboriously, with
a slow regularity of
movement, flapping
their ebon plumes.
They go in discordant
- companies, helter-
1^ skelter ; some high,
some low ; some hov-
ering over the near
corn-stack, others
appearing in sight over the mountain crests :
different from the graceful wavelet, the orderly
UP THE RIVER. 125
procession of geese, or long-necked swans, which
are seen like a line of Professor Anthon's manu-
script in the sky ! There is no order about them :
every crow for himself, and let those who come last
feed at the side-table. 'Caw! caw! caw!' This
sound so discordant, seems to me like the cry of
famine in mid-air in a desolate land.
The forage must be poor enough. The fat earth-
worm lies low down beneath the frozen clod, turned
up no longer by the garden spade, and unattainable
by the pickaxe ; the grubs have vanished from the
waving corn ; the winged insects of summer no
more find their sepulchre in the red throats of birds;
while every vestige of food is buried deep under the
winter snows and slabs of solid ice. The base of
the pyramidal corn-stacks may yield a few grains
and some carrion by the way-side some choice pick-
ing ; otherwise it fares ill wdth the old crow. Al-
though he wears a respectable suit of black, yet how
he lives God knows, 'Who feedeth the young ra-
vens when they cry." 1 am acquainted with a rook-
ery on Long-Island, where myriads of crows come
home to roost every night. By break of day, with
immense cawing and preliminary flappings, they
move off to the sea-shore to pay a visit to the gulls,
the cranes, the old-wives, ihe loons, the coots, the
1 20 U P T H E R I \' E R
devil-divers, the wild duck, liie lelering sjiipe, arid
to gorge their stomachs ^vith the sol't-shelled clams.
Toward sun-down, they go back to J^loyd's Neck
in black clouds, which darken the air; and as they
bungle about, and jostle each other in the grove,
the dead limbs crackle as if shaken by a north-east
storm ; while the noise which they make in settling
down, their vociferous barter in the exchange of
roostings, the shower of dry sticks and rubbish, and
the almost articulate talk of the airy l)ed-fe]lows
before they sleep, saying,
' Caw — caw — cawn — aw' — cawn— awn — awn'n.
Aw -jaw — gaw'n — awrt'r — corn — awn'e — mawn'n ?'
' Are — you — going — after — corn — in the —morning r'
are really — 'wunnerful.'
At last they put their heads under their wings,
while the still blacker bed-quilt of the night tucks
them in and is drawn over them. Great is the con-
sternation of the birds if startled in their sleep by
the explosion of mischievous artillery. For if the
fifuests at Lloyd's Manor, or a boat's crew from the
yacht in Huntington Harbor, choose to make a noc-
turnal visit to blow off their fowling pieces in the
grove, ' my sakes a-massy !' how the black down
does fly ! Roused out of their carrion-pictured
UP THE RlVEHr. 127
dreams, they wheel in contracted circles ; they tot-
tle about in the dark, fly plump against each other,
and crack their bills together, and get their plumes
interlocked at the thighs, while the whole phalanx
is staggered and becomes confused. This is unfair
play, ye guests of the Manor, and O ye sailors
from the yacht ! To come within gun-shot of Jaco-
bus Crow by day-light, requires a sneaking erudi-
tion, not easily attained. After you have crept along
the hedge in the most humbly crouching-position,
say for a quarter of a mile, and are within a hun-
dred yards of the spot from which you think it would
be judicious to take a crack, you will see the senti-
nel-bird, who stands ready to sound the alarm in
good time, slowly set his wings in motion, as when
the wheels of a steam-boat take their preliminary
turns, and off he flops, with a ' caw ! caw !' repeated
on all hands by the black guards Such is the na-
ture of these feathered negroes, these Africans of
the air, who, as regards colonizing, have a constitu-
tion and by-laws of their own, lest the breed of crows
should run out, and jet black should become an un-
known color in a tawdry world. In vain, then, are
those cast-off" breeches stuff'ed with straw, and those
old coats, out at the elbows, stuck up in the middle
of the fields, to be a bug-a-boo to the younglings.
128 UP THE III \ ER.
and rob the craws of the hungry of a few germinat-
ing grains. It is, beside, a moot-point whether the
exterminating policy be not bad for the corn, because
the question lies in the kernel, and concerns the re-
spective destructiveness of carrion-crow, green worm,
and old grub. So many woodpeckers have been
shot off since the invention of percussion-caps, and
so many indeed of all the flighty tribe who delve in
the wormy barks, that fruit-trees languish, and all
the crops are affected with blight. I take it for
granted that a man is seized of the fee-simple of his
birds as well as his land, and I should bring an ac-
tion for trespass against any one who took the life
of my M-Qod-peckers or my crows. For myself I
would not aim a gun at a crow, for fear that I should
miss the mark in more senses than one, and that he
should ' wheel about' upon me, enveloped in smoke
and stunned with noise, with the somewhat harsh
sarcasm of ' caw^ ! caw !'
The other clay, after visiting a maimed man, I fell
in with a poor young crow, wounded in one wing,
and skipping in a lop-sided manner on the skirts of
a hedge. I caught him after a hard chase over the
stubble-fields, intending to take him home and in-
struct him in the first rudiments of the Saxon tonsfue.
1 thought that he could make the green parrot blush
UP THE RIVER. 129
for his elocution ; and in case his progress were re-
spectable, I would christen him McCaw ; after
which I would be a Roland for an Oliver, should
any one shoot my McCaw. But he had imbibed no-
lions of abolition in his own free element, or perhaps
from hovering around the confines of Uncle Tom's
Cabin. He clutched my breast and picked my
hands with the ferocity of a young vulture ; and
when I set him down, such an overturning did he
make among the tin-kettles and cullenders of the
kitchen, that I opened the door and turned him loose
upon the ' wide, wide world.' O thou recuperative
Nature, bind up his wounds !
Exceedingly picturesque in the winter landscape,
is the crow sitting on a leafless bougli of the hoarv
oak, (itself a striking object of the scene,) when the
ground is covered with a mantle of the chastest
snow. He is at present almost the only bird we
have ; nor is his voice, though harsh, untimely, now
that the mellower songsters of the grove are hushed.
For when welcome Blue-Bird comes no more to
greet the early spring, nor skimming Swallow flits
before the door ; when Robin Red-Breast has ceas-
ed to chant his roundelay, and Cui'pin'-Bird to
gather crumbs upon the walk ; when the small Wren
has flitted from his accustomed nest, leaving the
130 UPT HE RIVER.
dry straw within the roofed and windowed house in
which two rival architectures have been combined ;
when Thrush departs, and Bobolink has trilled his
parting strain, and when the summer sky no lon-
ger blossoms with the wings of butterflies, and
all the pictured fleet of little rovers have sailed
away to cruise in warmer gulf-streams of the aerial
altitudes, cutting the thin wave of the navigable air,
welcome ye black unmitigated plumes, combed into
smoothness by the sharp-toothed winds, glossy in the
light of the slant December sun ! O thou most suitable
adjunct of bleakness, statuesque Crow ! carved as
from a chunk of that material Egyptian darkness
which could be felt ! I sometimes think of one who
inscribed a poem with a quill plucked from the Ra-
ven's wing, writing with supra-mortal eloquence, his
spirit veloped m majestic, solemn gloom, as of the
spirit-land. Edgar ' thou art the world of shades.
U P THE RIVER 131
Jacobus Crow likes to stray away from his flock
by twilight, and be alone. I have seen him at that
hour on the top of a corn-stack, (with perhaps a
group of his fellows on an adjacent tree, dotting a
limb as with black blossoms,) or on the off-shoots of
a decaying stump, on a twig of which a little round
screech-owl has just hopped, while the barn-yard
fowls have perched for the night upon its lateral
branches, looking about on the cold scene, as if
reflecting on the immortality of a crow's soul. Un-
disturbed by the tinkling sleigh-bells, he stands mo-
tionless in his reverie. It is the time to be filled
with solemn thought. Darkness is creeping on, and
shadow is overlapped with thickening shadow.
Hard by, in the farm-yard, the ruminating cow is
chewing I know not what cud of reflection. Owl
and Crow appear to commune together.
' Can you see ?' says Africanus.
* My eyes ! yes : that is my vocation.'
* Can you tell ?nc, by-and-by, from the brocade
of the night V
No answer,
' Speak, Ulul, and join me in a bit of psalmody
for the benefit of yon farmhouse, before the curtain
of the night comes down.'
'Tu-whit! to-whoo ! Tu-whit-tu-whoo!'
' Caw! caw ! caw ! caw !' Exeunt omnes.
132 UP THE IIIVER.
Come, friends, this is ' Bleak House' to-night, so
far as the outward aspect is concerned. The winds
how] — the roof is covered with snow. Gather round
the stove-pipe, and while you sip a little of this hot-
spiced cider, and partake of this popped corn, these
nuts, and pippins of an approved juice, I will tell
you a story, called
VANDERDONK:
A LEGEND OF CROW HILL.
Far back in the misty period of an heroic age,
there lived upon the summit of the Crow-Hiil an
honest Dutchman, entitled Vanderdonk. He bought
the spot, with all its rugged acres and stubborn
glebe, with guilders earned by hard tugging in the
Father-land. But the Dutch guilders were by no
means buried without interest in the vaults of this
rocky bank. The golden grain waved year after
year upon the sloping hill-sides, and by the time
that his belly became portly, Vanderdonk had be-
come rich. He minded his own business, and sel-
dom spoke except when spoken to, and then in
grunting affirmative, ' Yaw, yaw.' He was the pic-
UP THE RIVER. 133
ture of dogged resolution, as he was seen in relief
over against the sky on Crow Hill ; whacking with
a long goad the frontal bones of the thick-kneed
oxen — always slowly plodding, but surely gaining.
The shadow of his capacious barns swallowed up
his snug little house, which was all kitchen. For
he had a fancy to eke out barns WMth hovels, and
hovels with long sheds, making a sunny court, or
hollow square, wherein a multitude of chickens
ransacked the chaff at the heels of the thoughtful
kine. It was astonishing by what slow, and just,
and imperceptible degrees, his riches grew. For it
was scarcely noticed when he drove in an additional
nail, or extended an enclosure, till all at once the
neighbours, looking upon the circumvallation about
Crow Hill, opened their eyes, as if awakened from
a dream, and exclaimed, ' He's rich !'
Behold him, then, at the height of prosperity,
while all around his harvests waved ; his cabbages
were marshalled in rows and compact regiments ;
his cattle lowed ; his hens cackled ; his ducks
clucked ; his pigeons cooed. Poor Vanderdonk !
'HoNNES had an only son named Derrick, a half-
crazy, half-idiotic, queer boy, who could not be
trained up to follow the ploughshare, and did exact-
ly as he pleased. As he verged toward his majori-
134 UP THE RIVER.
ty, and showed no signs of advance in intellect, but
rather received reinforcements of the queer devils
by which he was occasionally possessed, his future
prospects occupied no small portion of the reflect-
ing moments of Vanderdonk, as he smolced his
evening pipe on the porch. He and his wife were
beginning to be well stricken in years. What
should he do Avith Crow Hill, and to whom devise
his estate in trust for his son, who was totally unfit
to manage his affairs ? When this thought had given
Hans sufficient perplexity for the time being, he
filled up another pipe, and got rid of the subject by
thinking — of nothing ! Now this boy brought him
into sad trouble at this period, by an unfortunate
adventure, which I shall relate.
Among the flocks of crows which wheeled inces-
santly, in summer and winter, above his dominion,
and from which Crow Hill derived its name, Hans
waged a continual war. A hundred bits of tin,
wood, and looking-glass fluttered at the ends of
long strings, attached to poles, in the corn-fields
Numerous scare-crows were set up, as horrible as
could be invented by the imagination of Hans.
Moreover, as occasion offered, he made a successful
shot with a long gun with a big-flinted, queer lock,
which had belonged to his grand-father in Holland,
UP THE RIVER. 135
and had descended to him as an heir-loom. Some-
times he made the crows drunk on corn soaked in
whiskey, and as they reeled about the hillocks,
knocked them on the head.
But there w-as one crow, almost white, and said
to be a century old, held sacred by the neighbours
as an Egyptian Ibis. He walked almost undistin-
guished among the pigeons, by which association
his nature had become tamed, and his harsh caw
was at last modified into a melting coo. The neigh-
bours had frequently said, ' Vanderdonk, don't
shoot that bird,' and Honnes religiously obeyed the
mandate, and regarded his guest wuth a partial eye ;
for he had been told that ill-luck would be sure to
attend him the moment that he meditated the des-
truction of the crow. The sentiment of superstition
is not the offspring of stolidity, but he resolved to
be on the safe side, while his wife treated the bird
with a religious respect. This ancient visiter, whom
the very king-birds forbore to pick at, out of vener-
ation, was known by the familiar name of Jimmy,
and happy was he who in a cold winter, would
put in his way a few liberal handfuls of corn.
One day, Derrick, in one of his wild moods took
the long gun from the corner of the kitchen, and
strayed away. He did not return at high noon to
136 UP THE RIVE 11.
get his dinner, but toward sun-down, just as the old
woman had come from milking the cows, he burst
into the house with a loud laugh, violently struck
the butt-end of the gun on the floor, rammed his
hand into his pockets, filled with mottled feathers,
and threw^ the dead Jimmy into his mother's lap.
The good wife lifted up her skinny hands, while the
very borders of her cap stood out with horror. Pet-
rified for a moment, she sat still in the high-backed
chair ; then spilling the bleeding bird out of her lap,
and rising in a rage, she pointed with her finger
alternately at the victim and the guilty Derrick, as
HoNNEs, returnins: from his evening- work and seeing
what had been done, crooked his right arm, partial-
ly closed his fist, 'and aimed a violent blow at his
son's ear.
When the people had been informed of the mas-
sacre accomplished by Derrick, they exclaimed,
' Bub ! what have you done ? You have shot
Jimmy ! We would not stand in your shoes for all
the coin that your mother has in her stocking ; no,
not for Crow Hill !' But Dirk only grinned and
giggled, and appeared pleased with his exploit.
As for Vanderdonk, on the occasion aforesaid,
so soon as he had somewhat recovered from his ex-
citement, he took up Jimmy by the legs, dug a deep
UP THE RIVER. I37
hole, and buried him in the garden, exclaiming, as
he resumed his seat and re-loaded his pipe, ' Bad
lug ! bad lug !' In fact, that very night the worthy
couple had scarce retired, when a loud cawing was
heard through the house, and soon after, to their in-
expressible horror, they observed by the light of the
moon the old crow perched upon the bed-post.
Vanderdonk rose from his bed, and attempted to
reach him with the handle of a broom-stick — but
only struck the unresisting air. The image still
remained, and it repeatedly opened its mouth, cry-
ing pathetically, ' Caw ! caw I' while the ring-doves
and pigeons under the eaves uttered all night an
ululating lamentation. ' Bad lug ! bad luo^ !' re-
peated Hans, covering up his head with the clothes.
And assuredly bad luck presently overtook him.
The next spring, soon after he had planted his
crops, it was announced to him one day that all the
crows in the neighbourhood were pulling up his
corn, without any regard to his signals. He went
out, and with one discharge of his long gun drove
them all away. Soon after. Derrick was missing,
and he went out with a stout stick to thrash him on
his way home. In vain he sought him at the road-
side ale-house, and at all his accustomed haunts.
Then he wandered over his own domains, and just
138 ^'1' 'i'HE RIVER
as he had ascended a peak of Crow Hill, a singular
omen met his eye. He saw Derrick running out of
the woods, his hat off, his hair streaming in the
winds, hotly pursued by a whole flock of crows.
They hovered about the boy's head, and picked at
him in the rear. Vanderdonk flew to the rescue ;
he laid about him furiously with the stick which he
had taken to whip Derrick, but was obliged to give
up the attack, and join the boy in his flight. They
hurried over the fields ; they leaped the fences and
emerged into the highway, taking the nearest path
to their home. There all the little boys, rushing
out of school, flung their caps in the air, and joined
in a hue-and-cry : ' There they go ! See 'em ! see
'em ! Caw ! caw ! Vanderdonk ! Vanderdonk !'
and all the windows were thrown up, and the old
women lifted their hands and exclaimed, * My sakes
alive !' Arrived within doors, the fugitives sat
down breathless, well nigh frightened out of their
wits, Vvliile all the noisy flock continued to pick at
the windows and invest the house. From this time
Honnes hardly held up his head, but became dogged
and morose to the end of his life, still grunting at
intervals as he shook his head, ' Bad lug ! bad lug !'
In the garden where he had buried the bird, stramo-
nium, and burdock, and villanous weeds grew up,
UP THE RIVER.
130
with inconceivable luxuriance and rancour. Wher-
ever he planted any thing, white Jimmy led on the
hungry harpies, and neither scare-crows nor his
long gun availed him any thing. As to Derrick, he
screamed habitually in his dreams, and the spectre
of the murdered bird continued to re-appear. Whe-
ther the house was ever exorcised by the visits of
the Dominie, has not been handed down ; but a rev-
erence for old age is to this day inculcated in the
school-houses of Crow Hill by the Legend of Van-
DERDONK.
February, 1853.
.■<V'
HE weather has of-
ten (not always in
our climate) a fixed
character in the first
winter months which
can be depended on.
At times, in January,
you may sit before
the open window to
enjoy the balmy air,
as if it were an ar-
rearage of summer, a
draft of July on Janu-
ary, (to make up for
a cold north-east shi-
vering storm out of
place,) looking down in the court upon the blue flow-
er of the myrtle, the blossoming stock-jelly, and the
UP THE RIVER. 141
opening bosom of the damask-rose. Outside, against
the wall, hangs the yellow canary, in the continual
sun-shine of the morning, breaking forth in
an ecstacy of song. The haze of Indian sum-
mer still lingers, and the weak-lunged patient
stands placidly in the door-way and exchanges agree-
able greetings with those who pass by, compliment-
ing the weather. 'Fine day ' fine day !' Oh ! the
delusive and bewildering interregnum ! Bees creep-
ing from their cells ! birds chirping on the eaves !
lilac-buds bursting ! scent of flowers and balm of
the garden stealing on the sense in many a reviving
pufF ! in short, a mock summer. All this is for a
day ; but such a day ! It makes you think of Italy.
It is suggestive of a zephyr in a valley fanning an
Aeolian harp-string ; wild Boreas from his fastness
in the mountain, frowning down with grim scorn,
and a shepherd-boy on a rock, with palette on his
arm, his head tilted a-one side, his tongue moder-
ately out, a smile on his face, painting the picture.
Behind the genius stands, in threatening attitude,
the master of the farm, the lash uplifted above the
urchin's flaunting plume, and with one arm stretched
toward the sheep on the mountam-side, fleeing be-
fore the ravenous dogs like cloud-shadows over the
plains. Then imagine all other accessories in a
142 Up THE RIVER.
charming scene: brook winding through the mea-
dows, farm-house, bridge, mill-flume, rocks, water-
falls. Mix up the colors, give me the brush, and let
me fling it against the canvas in despair. But this
will lead me into namby-pambies.
I have received a handful of rose-buds on a Christ-
mas-day from a ' faire ladye,' who i:)lucked them out
of her ow^n pleasant garden. They had been once
hooded with snow, but not rifled of their sweetness,
only the edges of the leaves a little crisped,
and you could see into their crimson hearts.
This is an unanticipated favor ; but when Januarius
begins to reign, expect steady weather. His temper
is even, his look almost uniformly acrimonious. This
cold Jupiter sits among the Arctics, and blows flour
out of his mouth, like the miller in the pantomine,
making every thing white within reach. It is well
to go forth to meet him armed cap-a-pie, clambering
the hill-side fortress and breasting all its volleys ;
but for the most part, consider your house your cas-
tle, and your castle in a state of siege. Blaze away
from within as he pelts from without ; roar up the
chimney in answer to his storming appeal and rat-
tling hail ; lock the doors, plaster the chinks, stop
up the crannies, put the women and children in a
U P T H E 11 I V E II . 143
safe place, feast away, and make the port-holes glare
with livid flash .
* Large reponens lignum super foco?
Fehruary is more fickle, and discontented with his
span of days and with the tardy compromise of leap-
year vents his ill-humour in all kinds of moods. Now
he exceeds his predecessor in coldness of reception.
Have on an extra coat, to be shielded from his in-
clemency, and he will compel you to pull off your
flannel-jacket. Adapt yourself to this freak, and on
the next day your animation flags, you retire to bed
before dark, mixing up ' bolasses ad'n videgar' for a
'bad code id'n der ed.' And oh! how disagreeable
is a 'code id de ed !' Cheeks hot, pulse leaping at
the wrist, eyes as full of tears, which occasion no
sympathy, as a crocodile's in the river Nile. 'Anne,
bring a crash-towl and a pail of hot water, and put
some ashes in it. Aigh ! I'm scalded ! Make some
catnip-tea, or rather a whid'n'sky punch ; I'm
wretched. Good-night !'
But if the snow abounds, the plentiful peppering
pellets do not so unpitifully pelt you as before, nor
are its fine particles so often driven over the surface,
forming drifts to skirt the edges of the high way,
and leave the middle of the road bare. Neither does
144 UP THE RI V ER.
it squeak under the runner, nor crackle and crunch
under the foot ; but wherever you have planted the
ferale of your cane, the little cistern is filled up
with a reflection of the cerulean sky. Now it is fit
to be formed into monuments, or to be hurled from
the hand of sportive sehool-boys over the play-ground
palisades. Now it is becoming to look out for your
crown, or for your smarting ears, whether you are
accompanied by the merry ' bells, bells, bells,' as
Edgar has it, or walk thoughtlessly beneath the
eaves, from which descends the sliding avalanche.
It is unpleasant to be dodging snow-balls. Unpleas-
ant is the choral laugh which greets you from the
sunny door-way. Keep your temper. The month
has attained its majority ; the sweet blue-bird has
more than once ventured to carol on the leafless
apple-tree in the orchard ; the snows are of a melt-
ing character, albeit they fall with still profuser lar-
gess, as if the heavens were coming down upon the
plains of Muscovy. A week ago I remember seeing
the snow-banks in the sky, and toward night the
courier-flakes began to fall. Presently the earth
was flecked with those white spangles, star-like
spatches, delicately marked and softly falling, as if
they had been the foot-prints of pure angels, till, as
the sun went down, the clouds discharged theii
UP THE RIVER. I45
fleecy cargo, with scarce an interval between the
flakes ; and in an instant, from the river's margin to
the summit of the distant hills, there was drawn
noiselessly over the earth a sheet, a shroud so white
'as no fuller on earth could whiten it.'
Oh ! splendid spectacle of the falling snow, look-
ing at it through the crusted panes, beyond the mi-
mic arts to represent it ! I was fifteen miles from
home, and with only the light of the young moon aloft,
started, in the teeth of the storm, on my return jour-
ney through the Highland defiles. A cold wind drove
it into our faces, and kept the eye-lashes in continual
motion to wink off the great flakes, which flitted con-
tinually, ' like doves to the windows.' My compe-
tent and careful guide, his hands wrapped in mittens,
his head crouching upon his shoulder, with difficulty
glancing from under the rim of his hat, and striving
to see through the blinding mist, as safely guided
me over the trackless road as the faithful Mameluke
once guided the Emperor over the plains of Russia.
Such a journey has its recreation. Tucked in with
the skins of buflfaloes and of the spotted leopard, and
with head enveloped like an Egyptian mummy's,
from a loop-hole in the moth-eaten woollen tippet I
caught satisfying glimpses of snow-pictures, peeping
from behind the veil, and falling back to revel in the
146 UP THE RIVER.
luxury of their suggestive fancies. All the land-
marks were disappearing, the trees put on again
their feathery costume, and the aromatic haystacks,
which had been heaped up in the sweltering hotness
of summer, were dimly visible, like chaste pyramids
under the misty moon. Cold confines the body to
a place of snug comfort, but Imagination flies, like
a Lapland lover with his rein-deer, over the glassy
plains. I would not change my meditations in that
cold sleigh-ride — no, not for those which I have had
upon a summer porch all overrun with sweet vines
and clematis ; or in a swinging hammock, where,
through the leaves of June, I saw the waves of the
sea twinkle. The storm became aggravated as w^e
passed through the mountain-gaps ; cold, cold, cold
the wind blew, for there it came over ' the river ;'
the large flakes combined, and fell into our laps on
the skins of the buff'alo and spotted leopard. Lulled
by the jingling bells, I withdrew my eye from the
loop-hole, threw the responsibility upon him who
held the reins, and, without exchanging a single
word, relapsed into reverie. Then, as ever on like
occasions, did all my bookish, boyish voyaging by
winter fire-side to northern climes come back to
memory, but over-arched with a richer glow than of
the aurora-borealis. I saw the white-bear leaping
UP th:e river. 147
on the polar ices ; sly, universal Reynard at his
tricks ; and all the waltzing animals in that dim
twilight, and the eider-duck brooding on its nest
among the inaccessible, Icelandic rocks. I was a
witness of the spouting Geiser ; and from the top of
Hecla, over fields of lava and chaotic masses, and
glaciers where a human foot had never trod, and all
the amphitheatre of snow-covered hill-tops to the
sea, looked down upon a prospect wild, torpid, pas-
sionless, but sublime. Back again, with the swift-
ness of lightning, to the other hemisphere, with
McKenzie, I saw the Esquimaux, wrapped up in
furs, standing alone upon a bleak rock ; then sail-
ing with Parry on the coasts of Melville Island,
through Lancaster Sound, in Baffin's Bay, along the
shores of Greenland, even to the dreary town of
Julianshaab. Thence I voyaged in a ship, to see
the Knisteneaux, and to be drawn in sledges to the
trading-stations where the factors dwell, by the
docile dogs of Labrador ; over the sea again, just
touching at the Hebrides, the Orkneys, the Shet-
land, the Faroes, and at the LufFoden Islands, to
winter in Archangel. Archangel, on the White Sea,
used to be a place after my own heart. Spitzber-
gen and Nova Zembla, Siberia and the steppes of
Russia, the golden domes of Moscow, ' that great
148 ^P THE RIVER.
city, Napoleon on the Kremlin ramparts wrapped in
conflagration — these passed along like pictures of
an hyperborean panorama.
There is some charm in barrenness. Madame
Pfeiffer caught two honey-bees in Iceland, and from
the chinks of Hecla the queer adventurous woman
derived a jar of sweets more rare and surfeiting
than those compacted by the winged confectioners
of Hybla or Hymettus. I wish to travel and see
the world. Oh ! for one short month in those shiv-
ering regions where Madame went, though one
short year or one short life would not suffice to tell
the wonders of the land ! Thus it doth appear why
the Unknown involves an essential element of the
true Sublime, because it has a vasty proportion, of
which Discovery can afford no unit of measure ; and
as fast as we stretch into it, we perceive that its
objects are colossal, and beyond our grasp. All
the Seven Wonders hide their diminished heads.
Well may we tremble in awe upon its verge — for
there the spirit of its greatness broods upon us, and
' Darkness which makes all our bones to quake.'
When will the veil be uplifted from our ignorance,
and Knowledge, in despite of Roman guards, like a
white-robed angel, roll away the stone from the
door of the sepulchre ?
U P THE RIVER. I49
But the difficult spots of earth are the very birth-
spots of nobility, even as Africa is the arid nursing
place of lions. In the romantic regions of the polar
seas, where Gothic matter piles its obstacles against
the advance of mind, methought I saw the mariners
searching for Sir John Franklin. Through over-
arching bridges of sea-green ice, splitting with re-
verberations into fragments soon after the ships
passed underneath ; through grinding bergs illumin-
ated by occasional flashes from the distant jokul or
the northern aurora ; through ' cerulean,' but not
fictitious Symphlegades, where the rocks kept
coming together every instant, and only a keen-
eyed helmsman could shoot the ship ; the American
Pine still nodding to the steadfast hearts cased up
in English Oak ; the bows all turned with fixed de-
termination where an ' open sea ' has been laid out
in charts, I fancied that they voyaged on — the mar-
iners searching for Sir John Franklin ! Nor will
that task be unaccomplished. A prophet's voice
forewarns us that it cannot be that God will disre-
gard the prayers accompanied with such sublime
endeavour. The time is not far distant when the
ices will relax their grasp, and brave companions be
clasped in each other's arms, and the triumphant
ships shall sail away with their most precious
150 UPTHEKIVER.
freight, and ' all the bells in England, from Land's
End to John o' Groat, ring forth a merry peal on
the return of Belcher's Expedition.' * *
Presently I was recalled from reveries such as
these by crossing a bridge which spanned a moun-
tain-gap. Underneath, at the distance of a hundred
feet, a stream, swollen by the winter floods, rolled on
with a loud noise from water-fall to water-fall on its
winding way ; and the illuminated windows of the
factories, which, built of stone, rose to the height of
six or seven stories, and whose foundations were like
solid rocks upon its marge, cast a glare of light upon
the foaming water, the rocks, the icicles, and all the
features of the Titanic glen.
Removing the tippet, I looked down for a moment
on this place, whose grandeur had impressed me
strongly when seen by the light of day. The mill-
flumes were in motion, and the operatives were still
at work, and I heard the hum of labor above the
roaring of the storm, going steadily on in those high
lofts on the edge of the precipice. The Utilitarian
spirit has no regard for the Beautiful or the Pictur-
esque. It sweeps away the solemn forests, and dis-
turbs with everlasting din the places dear to Con-
templation, ' pensive maid.' Here, however, it had
not succeeded in destroying the features of the place ;
UP THE RIVER. 151
for the buildings seem to be a part of the very rocks
through the fissures of which the water gashes its
way, and their perpendicular walls make the gorge
look more deep. At some distance farther on,
the same stream takes a considerable leap, and I
heard its voice, although I saw it not, for its cata-
ract was not illumined by artificial light. The day
before I had noticed the white slabs of ice through
the transparent sheet upon its edge, on the smooth
surface of which the sun was reflected as on a pol-
ished mirror. Here is a vast ruin. A high chimney
stands apart, like a shot-tower on the cliff, and near
by are the dismantled walls of a factory, where the
fire has done its work. The labourers had ceased,
and the watchman had sounded his midnight cry,
' All's well !' upon the walls, when a suffocating
smoke pervaded all the place. Clambering to the
belfry, he tolled the alarm, and as its solemn ap-
peal awoke the sleeping inhabitants of the glen,
the flames burst forth and illumined all the mountain
tops. The watchman sank and perished on the por-
tals, as he attempted to make his exit, with the iron-
keys in his hand. As we passed the spot, I thought
of the perils of the guardians of the night, and that
I would not — no, for lumps of gold — be one of those
who walk their lonely rounds in the small hours
152 UP THE RIVER.
perhaps to see a robber skulk beneath the walls,
or the sly flame licking the roof with its tongue.
I should be afraid — afraid ! Oh ! the fire is a
great enemy to cope with ; and wherever the
seed-sparks are wafted on the winds, they bloom
out marvellously, but their harvest is destruc-
tion and waste. I have risen up and pressed my
face against the glaring panes in the city, behold-
ing with admiration the hot billows, above which
I have seen the pigeons, frightened from their
eaves, flying on wings of fire, and the jets shoot
up from the saltpetre heaps, waiting for the crash
of some great dome, beneath which was a white
statue rocking on its pedestal ; while perhaps
the sculptor among the crowd beheld his work en-
circled in a halo of beauty.
The storm of which I have spoken, was accom-
panied at the farther north by the unusual phenome-
non of thunder and sharp lightning, which produced
a wild, unearthly brilliance as it imbued the mass
of falling snow. The atmosphere was surcharged,
red balls of fire rolled about as if some demons fro-
licked, trees were torn up by the roots, and all things
bristled with the electric fluid like a cat's back. No
such doings occurred in these quarters. But soon
after a galloping thaw came on, accompanied by
UP THE RIVER. 153
smoky weather, and the atmosphere actually smelled
of charred wood. There was a perpetual sound of
dripping ; the stream which rolls at the mountain-
base so placidly in summer, scarce plentiful enough
to wet the stones, and turning aside for the dry logs
and trunks of trees, where turtles sun themselves,
swelled gradually above its banks, reached to the
over-arching limbs, where ring-doves built their
nests, and wafted about their light cradles. Then
the meadow became changed to a navigable lake,
where scare-crows were above their heads, and one
might cling for salvation to a hay-cock ; while here
and there, floating about on the deep, lo ! some milk-
pail, taken by surprise, or some hen-coop launched
upon a distant voyage. The water began to creep
in narrow pools across the high-way ; and as the
melted snows continued to roll down the mountains,
filling all the gullies and wiping out the sheep-
tracks, and copious rains succeeded, Deucalion's
Deluge appeared to be renewed. At night the dark-
ness was impenetrable, and it was as still as death,
until about midnight I heard a steady roar among the
mountains, quite as loud as the fall of a heavy cat-
aract or the beating of breakers on the sea-coast.
It was the wind afar off in the forests advancing by
slow degrees, and in due time it arrived, and less
154
UP THE RIVER.
sullenly and monotonously howled about the house
until the cock-crowing, when it suddenly ceased,
and became so quiet, that I can compare it with no-
thins" but a lamb lulled on the breast of its mother.
I
XI,
March, 1853.
NCE more the trees are
all covered, and the Ice-
King comes bedecked
with gems. Through the
day a cold sun shone,
and did not dissolve the
frost-work ; and at night
I walked through an en-
- chanted grove, with the
full round moon aloft. A
profound stillness reign-
r ed abroad, for I heard
^ -^',~ — ^- — - not a billow beat, and not
a sound murmur, only the
crackle of the icy tubes and crusted leaves beneath
the feet. The eye danced confusedly among the
156 UP THE 11 TVER.
spangles and clusters of glassy fruitage, -where all
the softened glory of the night appeared to wreak
itself, and the pure bosom of every pearl-drop was
made the residence of a star. I picked up a hand-
ful of fallen globules, and saw the satellite's image.
How tranquilly and how beautifully do the hea-
vens come down to rest on every object save the
blurred heart of man ! The earth violates no law,
and God mirrors Himself upon its surface, and there
is no dew-drop so small that it could not show a
picture of all the worlds which He has made. And
here methought that the dissolution of light into
its original prismatic colours is like the dissolving
of all things pure and good ; ever waxing more
saintly beautiful as they lapse into more ethereal
forms, when their vital intensity and strength ap-
pear to die away. These beams, which were the
descendants of the sun, transferred to the spiritual
brightness of the moon, flickered away in the bosom
of the ice-drops like the colours which grace the
plumes of a departing angel in its flight. And how
marvellous the transformation of created things !
Here in this grove had I rambled like a spirit to
some well-loved hauntmg-place in summer, when
the trees were plumply budding, and the blossoms
of the wild grape gave a good smell ; here tracked
UP THE RIVER. ^57
the by-path through opposing brambles to some
choice bower, or sat beside the dripping stones
where the waters of the brook murmured ; here,
lulled to quietude, stood still beneath the branching
elm to hear the dashing of the airy surf, and thread
the delicious notes of every wild bird through the
mazes of concerted song ; here in the suggestive
hurry of the moment, how vainly drew the ivory
tablets to receive the pictures which I had no hand
to pencil, and the poem which I had no power to
write ! And now, how changed the scene since the
prompting-whistle of the winter gave its piercing
summons for the green curtain to be withdrawn ; —
and as I saw the shafts and over-arching limbs of
elms and veteran oaks encased in icy armour,
through which the mottled moonbeams shone upon
the path, I felt like one who trod among the abodes
of Genii, and the illusions of a Fairy-land. Oh, ye
ice and snow, bless ye the Lord ! praise Him and
magnify Him for ever ! On the morrow a new
scene awaited me.
Have you ever gazed upon the noble river when
it has been congealed down to the very caves and
pores of the earth, out of which its living streams
bubble ? It is a spectacle not less worthy of admi-
ration than when it flashes unimpeded in the sum-
158 UP THE RIVER
mer's sun. I went down to its yet frozen marge,
and desired to cross over. The great slabs of ice
which had first floated on the current from its source
in the high north, forced one above another where
tliey had been intercepted by the projecting shore,
lay as far as the eye could reach in wild and chaotic
confusion. I had myself seen them when loose,
grinding and jostling and leaping over each other,
pushing in advance of them with a shovelling sound
a mass of pounded ice, they became banked up on
the shores ; and it now looked as if these w^ide-
strewn and gigantic blocks had been hewn from
some Arctic quarry, or as if here a crystal city had
been laid waste,
" With all its towers, and domes, and cathedrals,
In undistingmshable overthrow "
Then came the thought that all these rocky ruins
were but a portion of the liquid waves which lately
kissed the shore with scarce a murmur, and again
the transformation should be brought about. They
should be changed into an element so light as to be
wafted in company with the feather, or to buoy up
the stem of a lily in its cove. Nature is the great
magician, after all ; and from ' cold Obstruction's
apathy,' unto the loving warmth and light of life,
UP THE RIVER. I59
her processes are all miracles as much as when a
dead man is raised from the sepulchre ; not more.
One is more astounding than the other, but God
works both in the development of his glorious and
immutable laws.
The frozen surface of the river, at the point
where I stood, was inconceivably jagged and wild,
like its ice-bound coasts, (save here and there a
smooth, slippery plane,) as if it had been frozen
when a crisp breeze was blowing ; consisting of
slabs of snow-ice cemented roughly, intercepted
snow-banks, rude, unsightly masses jutting up,
sharp splinters and candescent pinnacles as far as
the eye could reach, all glittering in the sun ; but
in the centre, the powerful current, struggling to
throw off its manacles, had forced a way, and rolled
on freely to the sea. Thus was the bridge broken ;
and the gigantic effort was going on, for 1 heard the
great mass split with a sound like thunder, followed
by a track of rainbow-colours and feathery pencil-
lings of light throughout the passage of the entire
cleft. I stood uncertain upon the brink, when two
ferry-men approached, and without the offer of ' a
silver crown,' engaged to carry me to the opposite
bank in safety. Their boat was fixed on temporary
runners. When I had embarked and sat down in
160 UP THE RIVER.
the middle seal, they threw off their coats, although
the air was sharp, and fastened on their feet thongs
pierced with sharp nails. Seizing the boat at each
end, they dragged it with difficulty over the rough
parts, glibly and on the full run over the smooth
ice, among the skating boys ; and presently we ap-
proached the lip of thin ice on the borders of the
stream. Here the advancement became ticklish —
and it required no small dexterity to effect the
launch. 'Try it a little farther up the stream,'
said the boatman, and accordingly they pushed
along to seek for an eligible spot for getting out in-
to clear water. The way in which the boatmen
effected it was this : one sat on the bow as he
would on a horse, trying the strength of the thin
glass before him with his feet, the other pushed on
the outside from the stern. This caused no small
rocking, and I began to protest earnestly against
this polar-navigation, and to dread the fate of Sir
John Franklin. Once or twice the adventurous
ferryman had his foot in, and at last, when the ice
gave way under the pressure of the boat, and he
drew in his legs, the other continued to push until
he also jumped suddenly in and nearly upset the
boat. I informed the captain and the mate that had
T known their tactics, I should not have put my life
UP THE RIVER. 161
in jeopardy. They replied that ' any business was
safe arter you had got accustomed to it ;' and taking
each a chew of tobacco, they pushed the loose ice
aside, the larger cakes with the heels of their boots,
and at last took to their oars in the open sea. The
landing on the ice was again effected in a like man-
ner, only that the helms-man embarked first. Very
glad was I to reach the opposite coast, and I made
a vow on the deck of a canal-boat — on which I had
the good luck to scramble — by all the spires of
Newburgh, to invoke the aid of steam when I
should, be ready to re-cross the river.
Fifteenth. — Still the winter lingers, although it
relaxes its hold, and the ploughshare has become
burnished in the furrow, and ' the ploughman home-
ward plods his weary way.' The sap runs up in
the maple, and the stems of the brook-willows look
as yellow as gold. The purple shadows lie beauti-
ful on the mountains, where the forests are just
budding, while on a sunny day the blue-birds come
out in multitudes from the holes in the apple trees,
and make the orchards vocal with their rich, velvet
notes. Blue-bird is the precursor of spring-tide,
the emblem of hope, and the violet of the air. I
162 UP THE HI VEIL
love to see him shake his indigo wings on a chilly
Sunday morning on my way to church ; and al-
though his song is reduced to a single plaintive note
in autumn, there is, as I may say, but a narrow
strip of icy w^eather between the pauses of hie
roundelay. He is with us when the crisp and yel-
low leaves are falling, and he returns to warble
before the trees begin to bud. He is seldom shot
at, and enjoys deservedly a perfect freedom of the
air.
« To see a fellow on a summer's morning '
aim his gun at such a bird as this, would be enough
to rouse the heirs of Audubon, or the shade of
Wilson, at the sound of his detested volley. For
this bird, Wilson, is thy Sialia Wilsonii, and not
unworthy to be described in scientific language,
down to his very toes: "Feet rather stout; his
toes of moderate length ; the outer toe united at the
base ; the inner free ; hind toe the strongest.' But
now, while Blue-bird sings, the sun has vanished,
the clouds fly hurry-scurry, the snows fall criss-
cross, and the small white pellets bounce upon the
sod, and show a disposition to gather in angles and
at the house-corners ; for March goes out w^ith the
UP THE RIVER. 163
weeping, whining-, whimpering, whimsical moods
which belong to April and early May.
At this season of the year, when the recurrence
of every pleasant day makes you to feel as if you had
the fee-simple of the summer ; and when, with an
ill-temper, you again meet the exacerbating winds
which blow from ice-bergs or mountains sprinkled
with the snows, there is no place of resort more
pleasant than on the threshing-floor, within the open
folding-doors of a big barn. It is a nook which
draws the sun ; and in the yard, covered knee-deep
with .chaff, stands the mullowing cow, with her little
white-speckled offspring at her side, licking its soft
fur with motherly affection ; while the lordly cock
scratches for hid treasures ; and the hens, whose
combs have freshly sprouted and have a sanguine
colcur, utter the well-known sounds indicative of
fresh eggs in the spring : ' Cutarcut ! — cut — cut —
cut — cut — cut — cut — c'tafcut ! Cutarcut ! — cut —
cut — cut — cut — cut — cut — cut — cutarcut !'
This reminds me that an effort has been lately
made, upon a pitch-dark night, by some persons des-
titute of moral principle, to steal my fowls. But
the great muscular energy of the Shanghais was suf-
ficient to break the bandages with which they had
been secured, and I found them with the strings dang-
164 UP THE RIVER.
ling about their legs in the morning. I have re-
ceived a present of a pair of Cochin-Chinas, a superb
cock and a dun-colored hen. I put them with my
other fowls in the cellar, to protect them for a short
time from the severity of the weather. My Shang-
hai rooster had for several nights been housed up ;
for on one occasion, when the cold was snapping,^
he was discovered under the lee of a stone-wall,
standing on one leg, taking no notice of the approach
of any one, and nearly gone. When brought in, he
backed up against the red-hot kitchen-stove, and
burnt his tail off. Before this he had no feathers in
the rear to speak of, and n®w he is bob-tailed indeed.
Anne sewed upon him a jacket of carpet, and put
him in a tea-box for the night ; and it was ludicrous
on the next morning to see him lifting up his head
above the square prison-box, and crowing lustily to
greet the day But before breakfast-time he had a
dreadful fit. He retreated against the wall, he fell
upon his side, he kicked and he ' carried on ;' but
when the carpet was taken off, he came to himself,
and ate corn with a voracious appetite. His indis-
position was no doubt occasioned by a rush of blood
to the head from the tightness of the bandages.
When Shanghai and Cochin met together in the cel-
lar, they enacted in that dusky hole all the barba
UP THE RIVER. 165
rities of a profane cock-pit. I heard a sound as if
from the tumbling of barrels, followed by a dull,
thumping noise, like spirit-rappings, and went below,
where the first object which met my eye was a mouse
creeping along the beam out of an excavation in my
pine-apple cheese. As for the fowls, instead of
salutation after the respectful manner of their coun-
try — which is expressed thus : Shang knocks knees
to Cochin, bows three times, touches the ground,
and makes obeisance — they were engaged in a bloody
fight, unworthy of celestial poultry. With theii
heads down, eyes flashing and red as vipers, and
with a feathery frill or ruflle about their necks, they
were leaping at each other, to see who should hold
dominion of the ash-heap. It put me exactly in
mind of two Scythians or two Greeks in America,
where each wished to be considered the only Scy-
thian or only Greek in the country. A contest or
emulation is at all times highly animating and full
of zest, whether two scholars write, two athletes
strive, two boilers strain, or two cocks fight. Every
lazy dog in the vicinity is immediately at hand. I
looked on until I saw the Shanghai's peepers dark-
ened, and his comb streaming witli blood. These
birds contended for some days after for pre-eminence,
on the lawn, and no flinching could be observed on
166 UP THE RIVER.
either part, although the Shanghai was by one-third
the smaller of the two. At last the latter was tho-
roughly mortified ; his eyes wavered and wandered
vaguely, as he stood opposite the foe ; he turned tail
and ran. From that moment he became the veriest
coward, and submitted to every indignity without
attempting to resist. He suffered himself to be
chased about the lawn, fled from the Indian meal,
and was almost starved. Such submission on his
part at last resulted in peace, and the two rivals
walked side by side without fighting, and ate together
with a mutual concession of the corn. This, in turn
engendered a degree of presumption on the part of
the Shanghai cock ; and one day, when the dew
sparkled and the sun shone peculiarly bright, he so
far forgot himself as to ascend a hillock, and ven-
ture on a tolerably triumphant crow. It showed a
lack of judgment : his cock-a-doodle-doo proved fatal.
Scarcely had he done so, when Cochin-China rushed
upon him, tore out his feathers, and flogged him so
severely, that it was doubtful whether he would 're-
main with us.' Now, alas ! he presents a sad spec-
tacle ; his comb frozen off, his tail burnt off, and his
head knocked to a jelly. While ihe corn jingles in
the throats of his compeers, when they eagerly snap
it, as if they were eating from a pile of shilling-
UP THE RIVER. 167
pieces or fi'penny-bits, he stands aloof, and grubs in
the barren ground. How changed !
Last summer I had bad luck in raising chickens.
A carriage ran over and crushed five or ten young
innocents, and the shrill cries of the hen were like
lamentations in Rama. Sitting in my study, I heard
the voice of Fel-o-ra, saying * Ah ! dear little sweet
creatures ! One killed — two killed — three killed.
Ah ! poor, run-over, dear, dead little creatures ! Ah !
here's another ! — ah ! ah ! ah ! ah !' And with a
succession of ah's, did Flora lift up her hands over
the dead chickens, while the tears ran down her
red English cheeks. Could I be protected from
the abandoned chicken-stealer and roost-thief who
carries a bag on his shoulder on a misty night, to
depopulate the coops, and take from you all which
is left from casualty, from the pip and the gapes,
then would I be encouraged to establish a model
Cennery, to be visited by all the neighbours round.
But there is little virtue extant in the country,
which is the very spot where her pure model ought
to be. One would think, that where the grass
grows, the streams run, the trees blossom, the
birds warble, and the bees hum, there would be no
stealing, except the innocent delights which the
senses steal from the song of the birdlings, from
168 UPTHEIIIVER.
the fragrance of the honey- suckle or the rose. But
in the very place where there ought to be a cottage
over-run v^^ith sweet vines, there you see the deep-
laid foundations of a fortress inhabited by eight
hundred rogues. In it the incipient coop-robber is
hinfiself cooped up, having been by degrees devel-
oped into the full-blown wretch. He who will pull
down a fowl by the legs from his neighbour's corn-
crib, v^ill at last be guilty of any depravity of which
the human heart is capable. It is not too much to
say, that half the zest of living in the country is
impaired by the annoyance of the detested thieves
and poachers, who find you out even in the most
sacred and retired spots. For whensoever your
grapes blush to one another, and your fruits wear
the ruddy hue of ripeness, and your melons are at
the picking-point, you pay your morning visit to
the garden and find them gone. Last year I had a
solitary peach upon a solitary tree, for the early
frost frustrated the delicious crop. This only one,
which from its golden colour, might be entitled El
Dorado, I watched with fear and trembling from
day to day, patiently waiting for the identical time
when I should buoy it up carefully in my hand, that
its pulp should not be bruised, tear off its thin peel,
admonished that the time had come by a gradual
UP THE RIVER. 169
releasing of the fruit from its adhesion to the stem,
and I appointed the next day for the ceremonial of
plucking. The morrow dawned, as bright a day as
ever dawned upon the earth, and on a near approach
[ found it still there, and said, with chuckling grati-
fication, ' There is some delicacy in thieves.' Alas !
on reaching it, somebody had taken a large bite out
of the ripest cheek, but with a sacrilegious witticism
had left it sticking to the stem. The detestible
prints of the teeth which bit it were still in it, and a
wasp was gloating at its core. Had he taken the
whole peach, I should have vented my feelings in
a violence of indignation unsuited to a balmy
garden. But as he was joker enough to bite only its
sunny side, I must forgive him, as one who has
some element of salvation in his character, because
he is disposed to look at the bright side of things.
What is a peach ? A mere globe of succulent and
delicious pulp, which I would rather be deprived of
than cultivate bad feejings, even towards thieves.
Wherever you find rogues whose deeds involve a sa-
line element of wit, make up your mind that they
are no rogues. That is the moral. From what I
have said some lessons may be learned by your mere
fantastic novices, who pop down suddenly in some
box in the country, expecting verily to find an ely-
170 UPTHERIVER.
slum on earth. They have the most extravagant
dreams about pure milk, choice air, fresh vegetables,
plenty of poultry, fine fruit : but when they come,
they will find out that even there, all milk will not
gather cream ; all the winds are not impregnated
with health ; all peas are not Prince Albert's ; all
the market is not at their command ; all the fruits
of the earth may disappoint their promise ; and that
there is as much need of good humour in the coun-
try as in any place under heaven. Oh, how 'weary,
flat, stale, and unprofitable' life is without an allow-
ing heart, to smile on apparent wrongs, and to have
a grateful sense of God's goodness ! Bad is a most
precious element, and enhances the good.
Eighteenth. — Saw a dove.
Nineteenth. — To-day Anne brought in, with an
air of triumph, two Pn(EBE-BiRDs, sometimes called
pe-wees, caught in the loft of the barn. She held
one in each hand, while their black heads and twink-
ling eyes appeared out of the port hole made by her
thumb and fore-finger. They were extremely fright-
ened, and it is enough to touch a heart of stone to
see a little bird tremble. Phcebe always builds un-
der cover; the wings are dusky, bosom brown, and
tail slightly emarginate. It is a modest little bird,
of a plain, Quaker aspect, and with nothing particu-
UPTHERIVER. ]71
lar to distinguish it ; but on that very account I
have always admired the pe-wce. For although he
is very simple in his manners, and has no voice, and
his plumage is extremely dusky, he is one of the
earliest visitants in our latitudes in the spring-time
of the year. Beside this, he throws himself on your
hospitality and protection ; and if you have a spare
shed, or loft, or barn, in w^hich there is room for a
nest, there the PncEBE-bird is sure to come, because
he must be under cover. I was lying upon the sofa
reading Sir Philip Sidney's Arcadia, when Anne
came in, and I told her to let the two birds go. She
opened her hands, and they flew about the room,
dashing against the window-panes, the looking-
glass, and the astral-lamp. At last they flew out of
the open door, and returned to the loft, where they
are now building a nest. Their eggs are white,
slightly spotted with red.
Twentieth. — The day being balmy, I started on
a pedestrian excursion through the woods and fields,
and along the river's marge, to dine with . I
was within half a mile of the place, walking in a
narrow road which lay up a steep hill, and on the
left was a water-brook, bordered with willows and a
thick wood. The wood was separated from the
road by a picket-fence. Just before reaching this
172 UP THE III VEIL
spot, I met at short intervals tno snakes. The first
I let go. He was a garter-snake, squirming about
in the dusty path But the other I killed, and tossed
him to a distance on the ferule of my cane. The
first I yielded to the quality of mercy, the second
sacrificed to the sterner attribute of justice. Scarce-
ly had I dispatched him, when my ear caught the
sound of a heavy tramp or movement in the grove —
and looking in the direction of the sound, lo ! an
enormous snapping-turtle, with outstretched neck
about the thickness of a man's wrist. I was over
the pickets in the twinkling of an eye, and got be-
tween him and the brook, lest he should scramble
in. He did not budge. I stood beside him, and he
was my prize. Had I fished for hin:i ten years, I
never should have got him, and now, as I looked
down upon him, was astonished at his magnitude.
He took it in very bad part that he was captured,
and snapped the cane, which I held with so tight a
hold, that I was enabled to drag him into the mid-
dle of the road. He was no turtle-dove in temper.
His tail was of enormous thickness at the base, and
about two-thirds of a foot in length ; his paws of
similar proportions, and exceeding fat ; and from
the tip of his nose to the tip of his tail, he measured
about two feet. After getting him on his back, it
UP THE Kl \^Ell. 173
was a subject of some moments' serious reflection
how to carry with immunity this great monster,
who could bite off a man's fino-er in the twinkling-
of an eye. I made experiments as to the circum-
ference in which his claws and his neck could
stretch and circumbend. Then I seized him boldly
by the tip-scales of his tail, and lifting him from
the ground, all the joints and articulations of that
member relaxing one after another, and cracking
under his great weight, I carried him at arm's-
length, now in the right hand, now in the left, hav-
ing much precaution for the calves of my legs.
Thus I got him to the house, and laid him on the
lawn in front of the house, on his back. Here a
jury was summoned to decide upon his merits ; and
it was a matter of argument whether to bring him
at once to the block, or to set him cruising among
the tit-bits of the slop-pail, to get his musk out, and
qualify him for the future tureen. The latter
course was deemed judicious. He weighed eight
pounds. So much for catching a turtle.
TwEXTY-FiRST. — Notwithstanding the eddying
clouds of dust, and the damp, raw winds, which al-
most cut you to the bone, this is a hopeful, pleasant
season of the year. The natural world by many a
sign and symptom gives notice that it is waking up.
1 74 UPTHERIVER.
The lively and loquacious cackling of the barn-yard
fowls, cutarcut ! responding to the asseveration of
distant cutarcut ! the clarified crow of the roosters,
the perpetual blaa-ing of calves, the familiar scold-
ing appeals to oxen in the fields : ' Gee ! haw !
buck ! You know^ better 'n that ! I tell you to
haw ! come areound !' — all these announce that the
summer is nigh at hand. About the twentieth of
March the bull-frogs will be sometimes out in full
chorus ; at least, some of the peepers, but the eel-
frogs hang back until it is time to bob for eels.
These make a trilling sound, very different from the
peepers or big blood-an-oons. It is like the contin-
ued springing of a watchman's rattle. The bull-
frogs, it is said, come out several times and go back
again. They must see their way clear through the
bogs before venturing permanently out of the pro-
found mud. It is an adage that they must three
times look through their spectacles, or glass win-
dows, (that is, through the ice,) before they sing in
full concert. Then the peepers begin in a high key,
with a singularly sweet and lucid voice, somewhere
betwixt a silver-w^histle and a glass-bell, smackino
little of the mud : " Eep-eep-eep ! ee ee-ee ! eepee !
eepee-peepeep ! peep-eep ! eepepee ! eepepee ! ee
pepee !' accompanied by a few- trills long continued,
UP THE III VEIL 175
and a whole rabble of gluckers ; but the big bas-
soon accompaniment comes afterward, and then you
hear all the several kinds at once, an entertainment
not unpleasing to musical ears :
' Gluckluck ! gluckluck ! gluckluck! Luckluck ! luckluck ! luckkluck ! Uck-
luck ! uckluck ! uckluck ! Goluck ! goluck! goluck ! goluck ! Goluckle ! goluckle!
goluckle! Gluckle ! gluckle! Locklock glock glock glock glock ! Ukukukuk!
Ukker, ukker ! gluck luck ! Eep ! eep ! eep ! eep ! eep ! eep ! eep ! cep ! Ur
r-r-r-r-r-r-r-r-r! Doubloon! Doubloon — oonloon! oon ! gluckluck ! gluckluck
eep I eep ! weep ! peep-peep ! peep-peep ! Kax-kax ! kax-kax-kekek, kckek
Ek-ek ! ek-ek ! Brek-kek ! brek-kek ! Kwax-kwax ! kuax-kuas ! uk-uk ! uk-uk-
uk ! kuax-kuax ! ek-ek ! ek-ek, uk-uk, gluckluck, gluckluck, goluckle, goluckle,
goluckle, quockle-quockle, quocKle-quockle ! Ockle, ockle, ockleockle ! Ocka-
ooka ! ocka, ocka, lockle, lockle, ockalockle, ockalockle ! Ockwog, eepeep, eep
eep !— BOLOONK ! Boloonx Bloonk! Enck! blockblock, blockblock, block-
block, ockalocle, bluckbluck golucklegoluckle gluckgluk ukukuk kuax kuax kuax !'
And so they go on, not to do them injustice, all
night long, to the best of their ability, singing their
Maker's praises in their marshy paradise. When I
have sometimes looked at The unsightly swamp,
the quaking bogs, the stagnant muck, and all the
green and grassy scum, the nursing-place of chills,
quatern agues, typhus, typhoid, intermittent, remit-
tent, and bilious fever, it is a wonder that music
should proceed from such a dismal theatre. Do the
epicures know that they are eating poison with the
hind-legs of bull-frogs ? Then let this insinuation
cause them to desist ; or if not, at least a feeling of
176 UPTHE RIVER.
shame when they discover the slender bones on
which the small amount of delicate flesh gathers
Is it worth while for a gluttonous stomach to send
out deputies to hunt the marshes for the mere hind-
legs of these creatures, butchering off whole orches-
tras in a single day? Were I the owner of a pond
of bull-frogs, I would sue a poacher for killing my
bull-frogs as quickly as for killing my bobolinks. It
is a sickly and depraved appetite w^hich must feed
on nightingales. The winding and transparent cells
of the ingeniously-constructed ear require food for
their dig-estion as much as the bisr dark cavern of
the stomach, where the bull-dog gastric-juices of a
hale man will tear to pieces the stoutest inte'gu-
ments, or even nails, as quick as vinegar will dis-
solve pearls. In all probability the ear will be
starved, if the hunting-grounds are limited to the
edge of marshes, and if the game-laws have no re-
ference to bull-dogs. It is pardonable to knock
dogs in the head W'ith bludgeons during the dog-
days : for
• Dogs delight to bark and bite ;
It is their nature, too.'
But buU-irugs do no harm, except when eaten —
and then they're poison : the wind under their
UP THE mVER. 177
cheeks is full of fever and ague. It is much more
pleasant to hear their paludinal hi'ek-kek, hrek-kek!
kuaxkuax ! upon a summer evening-, than to see
their legs served up at the tables of the effeminate.
It it amusing to walk upon the water's edge, and
mark their big probulgent green eyes sticking out
from where they sun themselves, on a stone or a
peninsular-bog, or leap off severally, with a shrill
and startling koax ! when footsteps shake the sod.
There is one experiment worth trying. Select a big
full-grown bull-frog, approach softly in the rear —
no, first go into the house, and ask if there is such
a thing in it as a feather-bed, for feather-beds are
so disagreeable and unhealthy, that they are some-
what out of fashion. But in many places in the
country they still use them, especially in the guest-
chamber, in July and August — feather beds and cot-
ton sheets. Tell the landlady that you want a fea-
ther, if she can spare one, to try an experiment with
a bull-frog. She will of course ask you what you
want to do with a bull-frog, and try to laugh you
out of it. It is no matter ; if there is no feather
bed, then you go into the barn-yard, and look about
until you have found a piece of down. If you can-
not find any, return home and obtain a quill, unless
you make use of steel-pens. In that case, call at
178 UPTHERIVER
any farmer's, and buy a small quill. Let no proud
utilitarian sneer at the very idea of making an ex-
periment with bull-frogs. They illustrate galvan-
ism, but this experiment has no reference whatever
to galvanism. It is, however, curious. It has been
tried, and if dexterously performed, it will succeed.
You take the quill in your hand, approach the frog
softly in the rear — perhaps he is one of those gor-
geous and ornamental ones, tricked out in gold ear-
rings ; all the better. Don't let him steal a march
on you, and hop so suddenly as to frighten you out
of your wits, and get your foot wet. Go behind
him, and gently tickle him with the feather on the
back of his head. He will not budge ; on the con-
trary, he will whine and cry most piteously, just
like a little child : ' Aigli ! yaigh ! yaigh ! yaigh .''
If you go too fast, he will click his jaws two or
three times, crying, ' Inwi ! imm ! ivimur /' and
then souse down with a hlockhluck ! splash !
The largest bull-frogs which I have ever known
are on the coasts of Connecticut in the town of
Norwalk. Sitting on the piazza of the hotel a sum-
mer or two ago, I heard them toward sun-down
from their head-quarters in the neighbouring mill-
pond ; ' Doub-le-oon ! double-oon I doubleoon !'
The noise which they make is astounding, full as
UP T il E RIVER.
179
Joud as an ordinary Bashan bull ; and if it could be
controlled, might be made use of for practical pur-
poses, to call men from factories. They are about
as large as a grown rabbit, and the nativity of the
oldest must date back as far as to the days of Cot-
ton Mather, or the Rev. Jonathan Edwards. The
supply of wind in their cheeks is almost equal to
that of a small organ in a country church. The
compass of their voice is about three miles, and all
their dimensions exaggerated in the extreme.
XII
April 2C
WAS much amus-
ed to-day by the
antics of a herd
of young heifers
■who held posses-
sion of a wheat-
fiekl, led on by
the pertinacity of
a little bull. His
forehead was just
turgescent with
the coming horns,
but he roared
with the lusty
^^^i--vr^<M-voice of a young lion, and
-^ii^^ '-galloped furiously from pur-
suit, throwing up the clods and waving his tail in
""^Hn.'v.
UP THE RIVER. 181
the air. I was walking in the garden, looking with
a hopeful eye upon the sprouting dock-leaves and
the peeping buds of the gooseberry-bushes, when
awakened from my meditations by loud bellowing,
accompanied by the cry of ' Coof ! coof !' and the
angry protestations of the farmer and his boys. The
field of wheat was green and tempting, presenting
a solitary patch of verdure, for the hardy blade
flourishes in the cold soil. It had already solicited
the appetite of a street-hog, who would make his
daily inroad, nudging up the bars with his strong
snout, or squeezing his body underneath them through
a narrow space, enough to break his bones, or tear
out all the bristles on his back. Day by day the
porker was driven from the field, but to tlie young
heifers the green blade was so appetizing that they
were loth to give it up. The Farmer had taken down
the bars, and several times, with great industry, got
the cattle in a corner, when the little bull impatiently
threw up his heels, rushed past the guards with ir-
resistible violence, and immediately the whole herd
broke. This process was repeated half a dozen
times, until the success of the rebellion and resolute
conduct of the heifers invested the affair with a de-
gree of excitement. Sitting on a rail, I laughed
at the angry farmers, and wished well to the efforts
182 UP THE RIVER
of the ring-leader bull. With what appetite the
flock grazed in the field corners when the pursuers
were afar off! — and on the approach of the latter,
the irruption was like that of bufl^aloeson the plains.
It was not without great uproar, and the calling in
of additional help, and repeated cries of * Coof !
coof !' and the exhaustion of the bucolic vocabulary,
that they were got out of the enclosures, the rex
gregis leaving them with a flying vault and angry
toss of the head. No doubt they preferred the suc-
culent pasture to solitary cud-chewing in the stall.
Poor little bull ! In a week after, a rope was fast-
ened about his neck, passed through an iron ring in
the barn-floor, and I heard his smothered bellowings
as his hornless head was drawn down, and the clat-
tering noise which his hoofs made in his heavy fall.
Procumhit humi bos.
I once witnessed the breaking of an immense
herd of cattle coming from Weehawken down the
hills to Hoboken. They tore through the streets of
Jersey City with terrific violence, tossing up on
their horns any stray child or old woman who could
not get out of the way. Pedestrians hammered at tiie
locked-up gates for admission, and nimbleness took
possession of the knees which had bidden farewell
to the springing elasticity of youth. It was a Sun-
UP THE IIIVER 183
day eve, when the population was all in motion, and
women wore the most variegated colours on their
way to church. Until mid-night I heard the hoofs
of the horsemen clattering through the streets, and
the echo of the herdsmen's voices among the hills,
collecting the cattle with those well-known coaxing
cries and objurgations known to them. In all other
respects, the evening was invested with a sacred
stillness.
It has become a moot point whether we ought to
feast upon the flesh of beasts. And never are we
more inclined to take the negative of the question
than when appetite begins to flag on the approach
of summer, and the green and crisp things of the
earth abound in gardens, and, one by one, the fruits
for whose prosperity we have been so long praying,
'that in due time we may enjoy them,' appeal to
the eye in the ruddy flush of their ripeness, to the
smell by their pervading fragrance, and to the taste
by their luscious flavor. Then do we turn away
from the steaming kitchen with disgust, and abhor
the greasy feast as we would the lapping of train-
oil. Where the whole country is a vast ice-house,
vegetation does not exist, and the body craves un-
guents ; and even if roots and tender vegetables
could be obtained, they would not suffice for its
184 UP THE RIVER.
protection. While the summer lasts, we think it
may possibly be sinful to consume flesh, but to feed
upon it the year round is enough to turn men into
brutes. Show us a tender-hearted butcher, and he
shall have a gold cup, or ought to have one. Will
he let the calves' heads hang out of the wagon, and
their soft black eyes be extirpated by the grazing
wheel ? Will he not bear the lambs to slaughter in
comfortable positions, and ' gently lead those which
are with young V Then may he ask for the hand
of the shepherd's daughter, and not till then.
But 1 say that when the weather becomes hot,
' much meat I not desire.' It is the favorite
roosting-place of flies, which make the very oint-
ment of the apothecary to smell bad. Bread and
butter is a theme, however homely, on which a
volume might be written. Although the appetite
may tire of other things, on this substantial ground
it makes a stand. It must be trained to the lil^ng
of far-fetched cookery, while the taste acquired at
so much pains, departs suddenly. Civilized men
enjoy one kind of food, and cannibals another. Some
are very simple in their habits, and like the boy,
Cyrus, at the courtly table of his grand-father,
wonder at the multitude of dishes. But no man.
Christian or heathen, ever quarrels with his bread
UP THE KIVEli. 185
and butler. It is acceptable the year round, and
the taste for it is universal, and never palls. You
cannot eat it to a surfeit, or ever return 1o it with dis-
gust, [f it is of a bad quality, that does not destroy
your affection. You blame the baker, but stick to
the bread. Good bread and butter in the summer
time are peculiarly delicious, — the very staff of life.
When the flour is of the finest wheat, the yeast of
a buoyant nature, and the loaf, with its crust properly
baked, has the whiteness of snow and lightness of a
sponge; when the butter has the flavour of the fresh
grass and the colour of new-minted gold, eat to your
heart's content, and desire nothing else. When you
have come in at the noon-tide hour, wearied with your
expedition to the mountain-top, your walk in the
woods, your sail on the lake, or your botanizing in
the meadows ; when you have laboured faithfully in
the garden, rooting out the weeds from the cucum-
bers and green peas, the sweet-corn and cauliflowers,
which are to grace your table, contracting a sharp
appetite from the smell of the mould ; when you
have returned with wood-cock from the swamp, or
have been ' a fishynge ;' and then the golden butter
and fresh bread are set before you, garnished per-
haps with a well-dressed lettuce, or a few short-top
scarlet radishes, each crackling and brittle as glass,
186 UP THE RIVE 11.
well may you diadain the aid of cooks, for it is a
feast which an anchorite might not refuse, and which
an epicure might envy !
May 20. — At the close of a sultry day it had rain-
ed copiously, and just as the violence of the storm
abated into a soft and melting shower, the setting
sun burst forth with brilliance, edging the dark
clouds with a superb phylactery, and presently there
sprang across the sky a rain-bow of surpassing
beauty. Each time that it is newly bent, we wel-
come it anew — most precious emblem ! — and almost
fancy that we see the plumes of climbing angels on
this Jacob's ladder. For it shines undimmed, un
faded in its primal light, as when it over-arched
the lessening flood, and the weary dove first nestled
among the green olive-branches.
I have stood by the mountain stream, and day by
day heard the sound of the chisel and ringing of the
workman's hammer, and after a long time have see.n
the solid arch, a miracle of human art, thrown over
the fearful gulf or over the very brows of the misty
cataract. But now, while you cast down your eyes
and lift them up again, the vacant chasm of the air
is over-bridged with slabs of radiant colours, with
UP THE HIVE R. 187
not more sound than of the falling feather ; for lo !
you say, ' There is a rainbow in the sky !' All
great things are clone without noise, and the processes
of Nature are all silent. Sitting at the gate of ' the
Temple which is called Beautiful,' you see the great
halls of the Creation festooned with glory, and yet
you could not tell when the blade shot up, or when
the plant bloomed, or when the tree budded. It is
like the breaking out of the morning light, beam
upon beam ; it is like the declension of evening,
shadow upon shadow. And so I thought while look-
ing out upon the bursting vegetation. The wet
grass sparkled ; the cups of the flowers were brim-
ming full ; the streams fell with a tinkling sound
into the cisterns at the house corners ; the trees
dripped down the dews, all sweetened with the blos-
soms of the lilac and the apple ; the birds trimmed
their gay plumage, and the stems were lifted up,
and all things wore a refreshed look, when suddenly
out of the ink-black clouds, over against the golden
sun, I beheld the broad sweep of that celestial arc
— its beautiful beams laid deep down in the blue
wateKS, and its splendid key-stone at the very zenith
of the heavens !
At such times, we think of the marvellous and
exact analogy which there is between the moral and
188 UP THE III VER
the] hysical, and that both without and within there is
a succession of the like changes, contrasts, relations,
movements. In either province, lights and sha-
dows make up all the pictures which we know. For
there is a dark and lonesome winter of the soul, but
soon we come again upon a belted space of more
than vernal loveliness, when pleasant influences,
graces of life, and all-abounding charities lie in our
path, just like the sweet procession of the flowers ;
spring-times of youth and beauty, when all goes
merry as a mairiage-bell ; and if at times we glide
into the eclipse of sorrow, or struggle in the chok-
ing flood, once more the sun-shine breaks upon the
scene and paints the sign of heavenly promise. Oh !
when we think of what the rain-bow is the pledge,
does it not seem appropriate that it should be the
ideal of beauty ?
« The airy child of vapoiir and the sun,
Brought forth in purple, cradled in vermillion ;
Baptized in molten gold, and swathed in dun '
It is because the Word of God can never fail, that
those colours are never faded ; and still they glow,
and burn, and flicker from our sight, only to return
again when the sky looks dark, with brighter pro-
mise. Thus, CnAMPOLLioN-like, we sit down to in
UP THE RIVER 189
terpret the most beautiful hieroglyphics, because
we must look upon every outward phenomenon as a
transfer into symbol of some deep and spiritual
truth. For the whole world is a myth, and every
thing which it contains is an emblem. Oh ! that
picture-language of the sky, the air, the sea, the
earth, the flowers ! Oh ! that matter-full page, so
inscribed with eloquence and with inspired poem !
From the high mountain-top I read onward to the
horizon's edge, and the rocks stand like antiquated
characters ; and every water-fall is a silver dash ;
and every stream is like the transcription of a flow-
ing pencil. In the enamelled mead I walk along as
one who holds a volume in his hand, all thickly
pencilled with mysterious characters, passing from
leaf to leaf, from flower to painted flower, transfer-
ring each to some celestial grace, meeting at every
step a benediction. It is the one language which
all may read, and to the dumb with astonishment
holds up fingers. The soul of the rose flits in fra-
grance from its falling petals. All that is bright
must fade ; but, as the poet has it, the very
' ashes of tlie just
Smell sweet, and blossom in the dust.'
The vine clambers to the liighrst point, but its
190 UP THE RIVE 11.
supplicating tendrils still stretch upward. So the
affections wind themselves about the strongest ob-
jects of the earth, while their tenderest fibres seek
support from heaven. As in the unruffled stream
I see the skies mirrored, tint for tint, and shadow
for shadow, so there is no transcript of a better
world, save in a tranquil bosom. Walk in the quiet
woods at noon-tide, guided in your path by the faint
hint of former footsteps, brushing from before you
the briers which almost at every step encrown your
head with thorns, as well as the silver thread of
spider swaying in the breeze ; and there too, you
will find
• Books in the running brooks, sermons in stones,
And good in every thing.'
Viewed in this light, the volume before us has
multitudinous pages, and there is no end of our
studies ; but when I look upon a rain-bow in the sky,
it appears the most speaking and exquisite of all
emblems : the gem-poem of the mythology of nature.
Walking beneath that superb bridge, you may pick
up pebbles, dip your feet in the running water-brook,
and muse to your heart's content. Above you are
all the several beams which, blent together, make
up limpid light, all being severally the correspond-
UP THE RIVER. 191
ences of something which is divine. I have often
thought, when the waters of the flood had well sub-
sided, and the rivers rolled in their own channels,
and the command had been given to the ocean waves,
' Hither shalt thou come, and no farther,' what must
have been the feelings of the sons of men when, for
the first time, they contemplated that ' bow in the
cloud;' and, as it appeared time after time, how fa
thers took their children by the hand to gaze at it.
Yet it could not have been because the spectacle
was new, but because it was known to be an em-
blem. Adam looked upon it before Noah, for the
principle of its formation existed already. Great
facts, which are intended for the soul of man, are
all represented in nature by signs of the utmost ten-
derness. Thus w'e have the resurrection of all na-
ture from its icy tumulus, the superabundant bloom
and beauty of the spring. If there were not any
refined state, then none of these outer forms could
exist, as every type must have its antitype. The
sun, the clouds, the dews, the vapour, are but the
ministers of truth, and the rainbow is an arch-
angel.
' To him •who in the lovn of Nature holds
Communion with her visible forms, she speaks
A various language.'
We may perceive the coloration of rays in the
192 VV THE RIVER.
small dew-drop which fills up the cup of a lily ;
nay, in the very tears which have fallen from the
eyes of some poor creature, as if a smile lit them
before they were dashed away by kindness.
I once saw Niagara. Once ! — I ever see it ; for
the image of its greatness and majesty cannot pass
away or cheat the memory for ever. If pastoral
scenes are shifted from the view, and Alps may be
forgotten, that picture, once impressed, remains in-
delible. Gazing upon the awful brink, w^here the
late agitated waters become as placid as the unruf-
fled lake, before they take the plunge, and where
the very spirit of the cataract appears to dwell, I
was impressed with the destructive force and fury
of the element : for, except at that momentous
pause, it has no phase of gentleness, but is envelop-
ed in vapour, and accompanied by the unresembled
noise of the fall. The waves of the sea may be
appeased and calm, but the thunder of Niagara is
unintermitted ; and ever above the gulf, where the
mists rise like incense, while the earth shakes, and
the face of nature speaks only of great convulsion,
we gaze upon the perpetual halo of the bow ; and
lest the setting sun should take the spectacle away,
by the moon's quiet beams it is seen arching an en-
chanted island. And tell me, have you never walked
UP THE RIVER. 193
upon the margin of the sea itself when the storm
lowered, and fled away from the breakers as they
rolled shoreward, and afterward, when the dazzling
sun came out, beheld the same arc in its complete
formation, with one of its abutments on the solid
land, and one upon the deep waters ? I have some-
times seen a fragment of it, and the same luminous
colours, on the hot breath of the engines, as they
rolled onward like a driven thunder-bolt : and as if
to banish unbelief, wherever the power of the ele-
ment is most manifest, and wherever Nature is en-
throned in majesty, though clouds and darkness
may hover near her, ' there is a rainbow round
about her throne.'
June 10. — No blight, no drought, no sweltering
heats, no potato-bugs, no grasshopper to be a bur-
den. This is the gem of the century, the pearl of
years. It runneth faster in its delightful progres-
sion, and wins the crown of flowers. How its car
is decked ! The twice-blooming roses are in its
path. Every garden is a reservoir, every secret
path-way a conduit of sweets. They gush into the
open casement ; they come upon the general air.
All the waves clap their hands, and the little hills
194 UP TUB RIVER.
rejoice on every side. The other day we wandered
up, up, up, where could be obtained an extensive
* eye-possession,' and encircled by the blue Kaats-
kills and kindred mountains, whose outlines were
discerned at the distance of fifty miles, took in at
a glance the whole gorgeous picture which lay be-
tween. We stood, for better observation, upon the
top of a stone fence overrun with three-fingered ivy,
while the pony, whose halter was tied to a branch
of the oak above, pulled the leaves into his mouth,
and champed the herbage with a relish. What vast
estates lay between the sloping bases of those
mountains ! and yet on a space no larger than
would be included by the circumference of a signet
ring, even upon the eye itself, was transcribed a
most perfect representation of all the boasted acres
which made a multitude of men rich. How the
properties of the earth do dwindle when you look at
them from a high point ! for the boundaries of a
nabob appeared to us like a railed-in space for liie
pasturage of a few cattle, and the cloud-shadows
trooped over the area of a kingdom in the twinkling
of an eye. And how variegated the subdivisions of
the landscape ! — the meadow and the mellow soil,
the woods, the waving grain, the silver stream, and
distant river.
U P THE 111 VEIL 195
Sometimes the 'moneth' of May is chill and
cheerless, and June opens, without monition, with
wilting heat. The buds open and are full-blown,
and fall to pieces ; the herbage loses its vivid
freshness, and the admirer of nature relapses into
languor while the year is at its prime. Not so with
this choice season, this most unexceptionable festive
season. The pet month did not disappoint its pro-
mise, dearly associated as it is with youth and beau-
ty, with memories of the May-pole, and the tender
loves of ' Barbara Allen.' The apple-orchards
came out in due time, and the spectacle is most
charming when the trees are in full bloom. Ar-
ranged at equal distances on the sloping, undulating
ground, and in the hollows, with their low and
spreading crowns all covered with pink and snow-
white blossoms, they appear to me like big bushes
in a garden, or like the nosegays of a giant. For
I like to snuff their fragrance while sauntering l>y
the road side, or from an upper window to look
down upon a long and gradual slope, on which an
old orchard is freshly blooming, while the sweet
leaves are wafted by the puff of every breeze, and
the green germs of the fruit are forming underneath
no larger than pins' heads. Also, the welcome lilac
is the ornament of every court-yard, and you may
196 UPTHERIVER.
snap off a branch without compunction, and stick
it in a pitcher, if the fragrance be not too powerful
for feeble nerves.
It is now the tenth of June, and up to this date
we have had neither untimely frost nor memorable
days of heat ; but it has been, without exception,
the most balmy season within my recollection.
There has not been a single drawback. Copious
showers have fallen on the earth ; the air is choice
and healthful ; even in the heart of the city you
have been able to find a refreshing coolness, and
every where the vegetation is so rich, the crops are
so far advanced, and the prospect is so promising,
that we might with justice call this a mirahilis
annus.
It is almost intoxicating to walk ' in the cool of
the day ' over the pleasant roads which intersect
the country in all directions, and especially where
they wind over the high ground in full view of the
river ; or to recline in an easy carriage, not your
own, and to be borne along by a pair of well
groomed horses, whose coats are sleek and well
protected by the clean netting, and who are as
gentle as doves in harness ; and so, without a word
spoken, with your head bare, and with a soul com-
posed and tranquil, to travel through avenues and
UP THE RIVER. 197
green lanes, where the giant elms lift their arms
above you. Nature is so suggestive, and so many
pleasant influences steal upon you, that it is most
perplexing to transfer your impressions of beauty,
and you feel only fitted for silent enjoyment.
If there is any pleasant feature in the country, it
is a winding narrow lane carpeted with a green sod,
skirted on either hand with mulberry trees, and the
wild cherry, over which the brier bushes, the wild
grape, and the ivy and honeysuckle are interlocked
in many an impenetrable thicket ; places which the
cat-bird loves to frequent, and from which he pours
forth his mellow and melting cavatina. Here is the
spot where the young man, with the furze just
blackening upon the lip of manhood, passing his
arm about the waist of the pretty maid, whispers
into her ear the most tender sentiments ; for the
very birds on the branches teach them how to woo
and coo most lovingly. Almost every village has
its Love Lane, as well as its Gallows Hill and But-
termilk Hollow.
In the course of your wanderings, you will ol)-
serve that the tulip tree is now covered all over
with yellow flowers, and the locusts are in full
bloom, emitting from their ' high old ' crowns a
delicious fraarance. In the fields the clover is knee
198 Ur THE HI V ER.
deep, and the cattle dispose themselves in easy
attitudes, and, as they remain dreamy and almost
motionless on the top of some shady knoll, in relief
against the blue sky, afford a picture of grace to the
eye of the CLAUDE-like painter. But the anniversary
of the blooming roses is also at this time, and you
must by all means shut up your workshops and
hurry out to this feast. For the time is short. In
a few days the brief and beautiful existence of the
rose is terminated, and. Flora gives the field to
Ceres ! The one is intended to administer to the
sense of Beauty, and to be twined in a triumphant
chaplet around the brows of Innocence ; the other
comes upon a sterner and a grander mission, to fill
the granaries with bread and nerve the arm with
vigour.
In the winter-time a few rose-buds cut from a
green-house where they had been fostered under
glass, and given to you by a generous friend, stand
perha])S in a wine-glass on your table, and represent
the summer. You tend them from day to day, and
furnish them with clean water, until the opening
bud feeds no longer on the juice of the stem, and
you throw them out of your window. But they may
have sufficed while on their brief errand to have
soothed your soul ; and, oh ! to a man of guilt, if ho
UP THE mVEK. 199
has any particle of human feeling-, a rose in his
lonely cell would preach to him more eloquently
than words, and he could wash its crest with his
tears like a shower : —
* Bring flowers to the captive's lonely cell :
They have tales of the joyous woods to tell ;
Of the free blue streams, and the sunny sky,
And the bright world shut from his languid eye.
But when, in the gradual advancement of the
year, the time draws nigh which is monopolized by
this choicest and most exquisite specimen of floral
beauty ; when the wild, untutored, modest May-
rose, with its multiplicity of pink leaves, has given
place to the vaunted varieties whose names are at
the tongue's end of every gardener ; when the un-
cared-for one which grows like a brier by the way-
side, soon drops its scanty petals, and on comes
precipitately the glorious, universal bloom of the
rich and double flowers which have received culture
and they crown the well-trimmed stalk, and burst
out in a dissipation of beauty over the porch, the
net-work trellis, and the garden bower, casting forth
their very souls on all the currents of the summer
air, and floating into your olfactories, climbing up
and insinuating themselves into the windows where
you converse, sweetly intruding themselves in every
covert path, wherever you wander through the de-
200 ^'r THE KIVER.
licious garden ; seen at the tops of the trees, as ye
are, O Kentucky roses ! budding and bursting out
under the eaves of the mansion, where the little
downy bosom of the just-hatched chirping birds
heave in their nests, and the parents drop the worm
into their red mouths, unfrightened by the play of
romping children ; and the bumble-bee, and the
honey-bee, and the humming-bird drink together out
of the same cup of intermingling eglantine ; then I
say that you must let your soulexpand with a calm en-
joyment, and be convinced that God in His benevo-
lence fashions in every phase of existence a heaven
for us.
There is now a very prevalent smell of mint from
the meadows, as its tender stalks are bruised by the
feet of cattle, or its odours are dislodged by the some-
what rough handling of the freebooting winds.
Thirsty people like to bruise it against little ice-
bergs, in a tumbler with wine of a choice quality,
and if I remember rightly, a slight paring of lemon
and a straw-berry or two, to produce a curious
composite flavour, and so imbibe it slow^ly through
a wheaten-straw, or sometimes a glass tube. Whal
the advantage of this mode is, does not appear
clearly ; but perhaps the volatile aroma of the herb
following in the wake of the drops which clamber
UP THE HIVE R. 201
up the tube, more gradually and pleasantly insinu-
ates itself into the brain than when it sweeps over
the sense in a powerful puff. To have it poured
from a silver pitcher, on whose outer surface the at-
mosphere is collected in cool drops, in the heat of a
sultry day, and offered in moderate quantity by the
fair hands which have concocted it with skill and
with a scrupulous mildness, is not unacceptable to
those who make use of such fluids ; and of the julep
it can with truth be said that it contains some good
ingredients — the fragrant mint and crystal ice-drops.
That the mint has medicinal quality, is well known.
With the valetudinarian cat it disputes the palm
with cat-nip ; and when covered with the dews, the
sick chicken takes a little nip of it.
I have spoken of the feast of roses, but the feast
of straw-berries must be remembered. How plenti-
ful is the crop ! In tliis happy land the poor taste
of delicacies, and the horn of plenty is literally
poured out with its profusion of fruits and flowers.
Here the cows come home at night with their hoofs
actually dripping with the red blood of this berry, and
the odours of it float over the snowy foam of the milk-
pail. It grows wild in all the woods and all the
meadows, and many think the wilder the sweeter;
for as it is smaller in size than the seedlings of ihe
202 UP THE RIVER.
garden, it stands a better chance to become dead-
ripe and lose its acid. It requires no addition, and
is rendered fit to eat by the sugar of its own nature.
In flavour, the straw-berry is admitted to be the acme
of perfection, and it has probably not degenerated
since it was originated in Eden. But it is so keen
and pungent that in a little while it destroys the
tone of the tongue, whereas the rasp-berry has an
exceedingly delicate aroma, as much so as the wild
grape blossom. Its merits are more slowly perceived,
but it less fatigues the taste, and is longer appre-
ciated. There is a pretty notion held by the Indians
called the " Six Nations," that the other fruits of
the earth form a part of the Great Spirit's ordinary
bounty, but that the strawberry is a special gift.
Hence they hold a feast in its honour, when it is
offered up with especial ceremony and thanks-
giving. The succession of fruits as the year ad-
vances, exhibits an adaptation most pleasing and
wonderful. The straws-berry is first with us, and its
precedence in time is a fair presumption in favor of
its ripe merits. Then comes the rasp-berry. These
occupy a certain space mostly to themselves, but
when they are gone, a rabble of fruits jostle one
another in the garden, and every one may take his
UP THE RIVER. 203
pick and choice. The English ox-heart cherry
charms the eye and satisfies the taste, esjDccially
when you pluck it from the branch as it hides its
blushing cheek beneath the leaves. The goose-
berry and tart currant arrive in the very nick of
time, but the berries taper off in excellence at the
close of the year. The plain and healthful black-
berry is succeeded by the whortleberry, the poorest
of fruits — God forgive me ! But, in the meantime,
the larger kinds come in to adapt themselves to
every variety of taste, and to every necessity of
constitution — peach, plum, and grape.
June 20. — While walking to-day out of the silent
woods into a sequestered glen, I encountered a very
distinct and truthful echo. Every foot-fall was re-
peated, and if you called Hylas, Hylas was re-
sponded. There was a well-built wall of rocks in
front, and happening to soliloquize aloud, it was
from the hard and flinty surface of them that my
own words were thrown back with an almost impu-
dent celerity : —
204
UP THE RIVER.
' Ye woods and
« Woods and-
WUds-
Wilds-
•Echo!'-
Ehol
<IIa! ha!
{pathetically')
• Charley !
' Ah ! ah !-
* Chakley-
' Clahk-
« Clark-
Echo is a playful sprite, sitting high up, laugh-
ing, weeping, shrieking, talking, just according to
the mood of those she mocks ; feeding on the sugar
plums and saccharine fragments of the poets thrown
out to her by the romantic Delia Cruscan youth.
Ent^offxtt' ao/Saj, Alas ! that Echo is not every
where, to let us know that our words come back
upon us ; but her sportive didactics are given in the
amphitheatre of rocks. Oh that liars would wander
near her sylvan nestling-places, and slanderers tra-
vel down the lonely dell where their utterances
might be heard by their own ears aloner, and re-
turn upon them to knock their teeth out ! Every
UP THE RIVER. 205
thing appears to be reproduced, and each transfor-
mation to be more spiritual and refined. Is there
an echo of the ' voiceless thought V There is, but
more impalpable, so that spirits only may appre-
hend it. The burnished glass throws back the face,
and the streams reflect the weeping willows, and
most delicately has the Latin poet styled sweet
Echo the image of the voice — Vocis imago. Oh !
how^ perfect is the representation, when she responds
to the groans of the Hamadryad mourning over the
fall of her own dear tree, for whose life she has im-
plored the woodman in many a susurring sigh and
whisper among its branches! 'Woodman, spare
that tree !' And in the general forest she returns
answers to the Dryad's cries, when every stroke of
the flashing axe is heard again, and at last with a
crash the oak falls with its crown of glory, and the
sacred gloom of the grove is violated, and the most
majestic pillar of its cathedral is overthrown. There
was a stately tree upon the hill-top at Tulipton,
and it was a beacon to the sailsman, as his little
boat was wafted into the safe cove, but in an evil
day the hand of expediency cut it down. Great in-
deed was the fall thereof ; and as it reached the
earth, and smothered the shrubs and wild flowers
which had been sheltered by its shade, a universal
206 UPTHERIYER.
wail and lamentation was heard around, and the
very echoes were re-echoed from the distant hills
In fact, the curses upon those Vandals have not yet
ceased. There is an echo of the bee in clover, and
of the precious music of the bobolink ; but when
the voice of flutes in concord floats on the air of eve
with melodies which touch the heart ; the same
' which once in Tara's halls the soul of music
shed ;' the cadence and tlie dying fall come back
with swiftest repetition, as if too sweet to die away ;
and as the stars glimmer and the moon sheds down
her softened light, I think of friends departed and
of days gone by. So have I heard the reverberations
of the water-fall, and the echoings of the huntsman's
horn,
• As if another chase ■were in the sky,'
and have listened to two farmers conversing in short
interrogations over the hedge, or separated from
each other by the length of a field, saying, as they
placed the hollow of their hands at the corners of
their mouths, on a high key : •
' When are you going to mow those oats r'
Echo. Mow those oata.
' To-morrow.'
Echo. To-morrow.
' Want you to send that rake by the boy.'
Echo. By the boy.
UP THE IIIVER. 207
• Tell him to bring my whip-lash.'
Echo. Plash.
' "What'll you take for that yearlinf;^ heifer ?
Echo. Lingafer.
Two Pounds.'
Echo. Two pounds.
Then do I wander away from this shirt-sleeved
couple, whose faces are bedewed with perspiration
from w^orking in the fields and mowing the new hay,
with Milton's beautiful apostrophe echoing on my
ears from the hard and rocky surface of the times
in which he lived,
' Sweet Echo, sweetest nymph, that livest unseen
"Within thy airy shell,
By slow Meander's margent green,
And in the violet-embroidered vale,
AVhere the love-lorn nightingale
Nightly to thee her sad song mourneth well ;
Canst thou not tell me of a gentle pair
That likest thj' Narcissus are ?
Tell me but where,
Sweet queen of parley, daughter of the sphere !
So mayest thou be translated to the skies,
And give resounding grace to all heaven's harmonies.'
June 23. — In a secluded cove or indentation of
the shore, where the trees were imaged downward
from the bank upon the smooth water, I observed
a pair of swans, accompanied by four beautiful
cygnets, lifting their snow-white plumes to catch
208 UP THE RIVER.
the breeze, and gliding about with a queen-like
motion. While I gazed at this unsullied group,
which seemed to be native to the spirit-land rather
than something earthly, the thumping sound pro-
duced by the paddle-wheels of a steamboat began to
be heard ; and as she rounded the point, the water
became agitated and swelled upon the shore. At
this apparent danger, the parent bird received all
the four cygnets upon her back, and erecting her
trembling wings into a fan-like shape, sailed away
toward the green sward — a spectacle of ineffable
grace and beauty. I have noticed these birds for
two years, sometimes near the shore, but oftener
afar-off, like specks of white, where the blue wave
seemed to mingle with the horizon ; but until the
present season, they were unattended by the
cygnets. They now form a pure and aristocratic
society, intermingling their snowy necks in the
most affectionate communion. At first they were
placed in a small pond for safe keeping; but when
the winter broke up, catching a glimpse of the
broad waters of the bay, they enterprised in that
direction, and could by no means be prevailed upon
to return to the little pond. They left it in the pos-
session of the ducks, the geese, the perch, the
pickerel, and the mud-turtles, and went to share the
UP THE RIVER.
209
company of the sleek and gracefuller wild-fowl
who plumped into the bay. Generally, however,
they prefer to keep by themselves, and show in all
their buoyant air and gliding grace the influence of
the pure and upper realms in which they have been
bred. Oh, how superior are they to the common-
people geese ! Gazing at them as they sail about
their own beautiful cove, whose shores are like a
paradise, I am reminded of the honeyed, almost
celestial poetry of the spirit-rappers :
• Angel with the diadem of light,
Wherefore dost thou tread this vale of sorroAv ?
All our life afflicts thy holy sight ;
Cheerless is the life from earth we borrow.
• Straight as he spoke appeared a snow-white swan,
Floating on a dark, tumultuous river ; ,
And as its spotless image glided on.
It trembled like a star, yet shone for ever !
XIII.
ITHIN the past
month an ex-
citement has
prevailed among
the quiet inhab-
itants of these
parts unparallel-
t ed since the great
oyster - war. —
ui. ^ J / Every one has
^"-^^ ' heard of the in-
roads once made
by the bucca-
neering fisher-
men of Amboy
on our rich oys-
^■wM^^r- — ^-j^^r^^cis.-^j-' ter-beds, when
the adverse fleets had hke to have come to a srreat
UPTHEmVER. 211
nautical encounter. But although some guns were
pointed, no triggers were pulled, and no shells were
thrown of the kind used in naval warfare. That
chapter in history has never been written out fairly ;
but let by-gones be by-gones. I am going to nab
some circumstances while they are yet fresh, and
the materials attainable, that hereafter they may
not come up in dim memory like the records of the
oyster-war. The most flagrant depredations ever
known in the history of man have lately been made
on the hen-roosts of Dutchess County. Twelve
hundred dollars' worth of chickens stolen in one
winter, and the greatest panic among all holders of
the stock ! The deed was done.
' Deeply and darkly at dead of night,'
and the evil was waxing worse and worse, so that
out of the multitude of populous hen-roosts in the
above county there was not one w^hich had not suf-
fered extremely. Eggs were scarce in sufficient
abundance for cakes and pies : one farmer was re-
duced to his last little chick, while the cheerful
cackle of farm yards was scarce heard. The cock-
crowing which used to be answered at dead of night
from hill to hill and hamlet to hamlet, until it cir-
cled the whole neighborhood, as the British drum-
212 UPTHERIVER.
beat circles the world, was succeeded by a dead
silence, and no clarion was heard in the morning
except the baker's horn. Little as the farmers were
acquainted with natural history, they knew that the
chicken is not a bird of passage, and always comes
home to roost. Their hens had not been picking
and stealing, but they had been stolen and picked.
Who had done the fowl deed ? That was what the
irritated owners were burning to know ; for if they
could catch the scoundrel as he was taking wung,
they threatened that they would tar and feather
him, without waiting for the slow process of the law
to coop him up. He would not crow over his bar-
gain, nor cackle over his gains. There is some-
thing inconceivably mean and sneaking in the steal-
ing of chickens ; and none but the most hardened
rogue, if caught with one under his jacket, could
exclaim with the abandoned Twitcher, * Vel, vot
of it V ' Vot" of it V A great deal of it ! To take a
horse or a young colt is a bold and magnanimous
piece of rascality, and if the equestrian spark can
be overtaken by the telegraph in the midst of his
horse-back exercise, his neck may be put in requi-
sition. That's paying a high price for a horse, as
any jocky will tell you. But to go and bag a fowl
UPTHERIVEll. 213
when he is asleep with his head under his wing, is
the part of a chicken-hearted fellow.
Although no clue had been obtained to these de-
predations, the linger of suspicion had been for some
time pointed at one Joseph Antony. Mr. Antony,
a resident of the city of New York, who had the
appearance of a sporting character, was in the habit
of visiting this County about twice a week in a small
wagon, to see his friends and indulge his social
qualities. On his way out, he stopped at all the
taverns to take some beverage, although in return-
ing he was abstemious in his habits, being perhaps
in haste to return to an anxious wife. But it was
noticed as a remarkable coincidence that when he
came and went, the chickens were always gone.
Numbers of the more prying to confirm their suspicions
had sometimes peeped into his wagon, where they
discovered creatures of the feathered creation. Once
or twice he had his horse taken by the halter, but
on promptly presenting a revolver, (we think of
Colt's patent,) he obtained liberty to pass. The
knowledge of the fact that he carried arms about
his person had the effect of making many diffident
who had otherwise not been slow in their advances.
They did not wish to take this St. Antony's fire,
or risk their bodies and souls for the sake of a few
214 UP THE RIVER.
spring-chicken, no matter how many shillings they
were worth a pair. Mr. Antony therefore had the
plank-road to himself. On another occasion, when
he was returning, well provided as it was thought
with live stock for the market, some young men got
up a plan to waylay him by throwing a rope over
the road. This endeavour proved abortive : for
when they heard the sound of his wheels approach-
ing ; when they caught a glance of his little colt
who knew the ground ; and when they thought of
the little Colt which he carried in his pocket, their
courage caved in, and they fled to the neighbouring
woods inhabited by owls.
Thus did villainy triumph, and the henneries con-
tinued to be impoverished by a consumption unknown
to Thanksgiving or the pip. The final despair of
the farmers led to a mutual compact, which we will
call the He?is-eatic League. At a full and unani-
mous meeting of the chicken-owners of Dutchess
County, it was resolved to keep a very strict watch
over the motions of Mr. Antony on his next visit.
Something must be done, and that immediately, as
the boys said who sat under a tree in a thunder-
storm, when one asked the other if he could pray,
otherwise there would not be a cock to crow, nor a
hen to lay an egg in all the neighbourhood. Ac-
UP THE RIVER. 215
cordingly, on the afternoon of Friday (unlucky day !)
Mr. Antony was observed to pass through the gate
at which he stopped, for the tollman observed that
he ' always acted very gentlemanly, and always was
particular to pay his toll, and was a good-looking
man, only his eyes was too big.' The following in-
tricate plan was then hatched : Three courageous
men, armed with muskets, were to keep the gate
that night and receive the toll of Mr. Antony when
he came back, and, if possible, ' prevail on him to
stop.' They took their stand at sun-down. The
remaining chicken-owners watched all night. Mr.
RussEL Smith sat up in his wagon-house ; but what
is very queer, Mr. Antony pulled his chickens off
the perch almost under his nose, without his know-
ing it. Six expected eggs were missing at his
breakfast-table next morning. But Mr. Suyd — m,
who lives on the salt-meadows, arranged his plan
better. To the door of his hennery he attached a
string, which he conducted to his sleeping-chamber ;
and to the string he fastened a little bell. Then he
lay down to keep aw'ake. He heard nothing for some
hours, until what ought to have been the cock-
crowing, he was startled suddenly
' By the tintinnabulation
Of the bell, bell, beU,
Which did musically well.'
216 UP THE RIVER.
Springing- from his couch, he placed his face against
the window, and the night not being very dark, the
following tableaux was presented : A little wagon
and a little horse, held at the head by a little boy,
and in the wagon a woman with a hood. He rushed
to the hen-house just in time to find the perches
vacant and his man retreating, who forthwith
seized the reins and drove like Jehu toward the
long bridge. It is thought that a part of the
distance was accomplished at the rate of a mile in
three minutes. But Mr. Suyd — m was not to be so
baffled. He harnessed his mare, and, taking Mr.
Laurence with him, followed in pursuit at full
speed. They overtook Mr. Antony at the bridge,
where he was engaged in killing chickens, and
throwing their heads over the balustrades into Mud
Creek. Finding some one at his heels, he ceased
killing chickens, applied the lash, and was again
out of sight. But although out of sight he was not
out of mind. On approaching the toll-gate, he be-
gan to fumble for change to pay honorably, when,
to his astonishment, he found the gates shut, and
before he could place his hand on his revolver, the
muzzles of three muskets were within an inch of
his head.
As a rat who has left his hole by night to get a
UP THE RIVER. 217
drink of water, or to suck a few eggs, on returning
finds it stopped up with a brick, and himself as-
sailed, pauses on his hind legs and squeals, so did
the astonished Antony cry out. On examining the
contents of his wagon, it was found well replenished
with fowls ; and Mr. Antony frankly confessed that
he regretted the circumstance of his capture, as he
had already served out several terms at the State's-
prison, and was loth to go there again, where
Thanksgiving fare was so scarce.
When this remarkable capture became known on
the next morning, and the prisoner and his plunder
were brought to the Justice's Court, great interest
was excited in the country round. They came
pouring into the village by hundreds, to get a sight
of the greatest chicken-stealer ever known since
the creation of fowls. Nothing like it was remem-
bered since St. George's church, in the same place,
was broken open, and the justices, and the wardens,
and the vestrymen, and the tavern-keeper, were
convened in the bar-room of the village inn, to see
a pile of Bibles and prayer-books on the sanded
floor, where the head warden remarked to the re-
pentant thief that he was sorry he had not used the
Bible and orayer-book better. On the examination
218 ^'P THE RIVER.
of Mr. Antony, it was apprehended that there might
be some difficulty about the identification of the
fowl. You can tell your horse, your ass, your cow,
your pig ; they are speckled, they are streaked,
they have a patch on the eye, or something of the
kind. But as to your chickens, though you feed
them out of your own hand, the task is more diffi-
cult. You contemplate them not by units, but by
broods, and single them out one by one only when
the time comes to wring their necks, and you think
that a roast chicken for dinner would not be amiss.
On this occasion no such difficulty occurred. The
roosts had become so thinned that the farmers were
enabled to recognize and swear to iJieir fowl, one
to his Bantam, another to his Shanghai, a third to
his Top-knot, a fourth to his Cochin-China, and a
fifth to his Poland hen. Although their heads were
twisted off, that mattered not so much, since fea-
thered creatures are not recognized by their coun-
tenances like men. They are all beak, little head,
and have no particular diversity of expression to be
identified except by themselves.
Mr. Antony has engaged counsel to rebut the
prosecution by the State, and it will depend upon
the ability w^ith which this great Hen-Roost case
UP THE RIVER. 219
shall be managed, whether he shall be finally
knocked from his perch in society, whether the
plank-road dividends shall be diminished by the
amount of his toll, and whether chickens, like
peach-trees, shall take anew start. When we con-
sider the expensiveness of feeding them, and the
many casualties which they are exposed to from
the time they are fledged — snatched into the air by
hawks, fed on by cats, afflicted by the pip, and by
the gapes, it is to be ardently hoped that some-
thing may be done to protect them on their roosts.
Otherwise we know of many who will give np rais-
ing fowls ; and then, we ask, what is to become of
our markets if 'hen-sauce' is abolished; and what
will housewives do if eggs are a shilling a-piece ?
The most delightful puddings known to the present
state of cookery would have no richness without the
yolks of eggs. Where would be the yellowness
of 'spring' (usually denominated ' grass ') butter ?
Would not pound-cake be erased from the cata-
logue of Miss Leslie's famous book ? And what
would become of the icing and incrustation of orna-
mental confectionery ? On these questions the
result of Mr. Antony's trial will have a bearing.
In the mean time he throws himself entirely upon
220
UP THE RIVER.
his counsel. When asked by the Justice of the
Peace at the preliminary examination what had
been his occupation and means of living, he replied
' Speculating /'
XIV
July.
<nce>j
fyi.'}/
OWARD the close
of day, I was just
sitting under a pi
azza, marking the
effect of light and
shade upon the
mountains, and the
transformations of
the golden - tinted
clouds, which, in
the transparent at-
mosphere of our
clime, almost rival
the glories of an
Italian sun-set. —
The day had been
warm and sultry, producing a nerveless lassitude,
an inattention of duty, and neglect of dress ; and
222 UP THE RIVER.
from the mere exertion to pump up some kind of feel
ing, without coat, without collar, with a head drip
ping- wet from having just plunged it to the bottom
of a bucket of cold water, desiring to see no body,
I was reading over the engrossing pages of Lewis's
novel, or rather melo-drama, called ' The Monk,' a
production spoiled by indecency, diablerie, and blue-
fire, and only fit for adult people. From the monk,
as depicted in the romance, I kept turning my eye
perpetually toward a cowled mountain (no pun is
intended) which I have called The Monk ; and from
the nun Agnes to a pinnacle which, in winter- time,
when it was enwrapped in a garment of chaste
snows, I took a fancy to christen The Niai. Pre-
sently, as the shades thickened, the bad print of the
book became no longer discernible ; and looking
up, the star of eve, w'ith its soft and unblemished
light, appeared alone in the heavens. I heard the
faint hu-m which marks the close of day proceeding
from the distant barn-yards, and the farmers driving
the cattle home, and the whip-poor-wills in the
meadows began their evening-song. If we have no
nightingales in our climate, this bird is no bad sub-
stitute ; and if we have no larks in the morning, the
bobolink sings sweetly and perpetually upon the
wing. As to Bull-frog, his croakings are abated ;
UP THE RIVER. 223
and as to Katy-did, his lamentations about the
broken bottle have not yet begun. The night was
very still ; only now and then was heard by the
lovers of melody the infinitely fine music produced
by the tiny wings of the mosquito beating the air,
and which really seemed to be a Bellini melody,
blown through the fragile trumpet of his proboscis.
To those whose ears and tempers are attuned rightly,
this music, pursued from high to low, or low to
high, through the marvellously-ascending or descend-
ing scale of the gamut, would almost appear suited
to dilettanti spirits, and as if produced by a detach-
ment from Queen Mab's orchestra. It would be to-
tally lost in the midst of vulgar noises ; but its at-
tenuated notes are wafted, in all their delicate sub-
tleness, to those who recline in arm-chairs, repose
on couches, and who are lulling themselves to re-
pose. I have often and often admired them when
just on the verge of sleep, and been recalled by
them, from the land of shadows. How beautiful is
their ' Hum-Waltz,' and their ' Teaze Polka,' and
their ' Sing-sing Requiem ;' enough to make you
clap your hands until the blood flows ! And when
I have seen them after death, mashed flat in their
embalment upon a white-washed wall, I think of
224 UP THE KIVER.
that sentiment of Kirke White, if I remember
rightly :
' Music past is obsolete.'
In a short time the shades of evening fast prevailed ;
and the lone star, so serene in lustre, was succeeded
by the whole splendid galaxy ; and I marked the
course of the Milky-way ; and the big, round moon,
which always seemed to me very skull-like, rose
slowly, almost sluggishly, over the mountains ; and
before I thought that the night was far advanced,
the clock struck ten. Which do you like best, the
long days or the long nights ? I am equally balanced
in my own mind between the love of summer and
winter ; but I think that our clime is the most happy,
where there are four seasons of the year, and they
roll round in just succession. I can make no choice,
but enjoy them all equally, because they relieve
each other, and afford a pleasing variety. There is
no monotony so dreary as that of perpetual sun-
shine and summer ; but if I ever feel a sadness, it
is when the days begin to get long in March, and
the delightful early blazing fire-side has become
cold. If you live according, to nature and to the
clime in which you are born, when the days are
long, you will go to bed early, and when they are
UP THE RIVER. 225
short, you will sit up late. But artificial habits turn
the laws of nature topsy-turvy. I cannot prevail
upon myself to go to sleep during these heavenly
nights ; and during winter the charms of social con-
verse keep one up unnaturally late. It is hard to
tell which to like best, the long days or the long
nights. But I was enamoured of this night very
much ; for when the clock struck twelve, I was still
sitting on the piazza looking at the stars, enjoying
the hum of the mosquitoes, smoking a segar, and
observing the multitude of lightning-bugs, who ap-
peared like stars in a lower firmament, and as they
flapped their wings, threatened to set the hay-cocks
on fire. Last evening, I observed a young girl,
dressed in white, walking on the edge of the mea-
dows, carrying two pails of white maple filled with
still whiter milk, for she had just performed her
evening task of milking the cows in my neighbour's
barn-yard; and as the lightning bugs flitted around
her, she seemed to have on a splendid ball-room at-
tire, spangled with stars.
While drawing the last puff's from the aforesaid
cigar, thinking that it was high time to go to bed
and to sleep, for the clock tolled one, (the Yankee
clock in my kitchen,) and presently the factory-bell
at Matteawan, three miles off", sounded the same
226 UP THE RIVER.
hour of night through the mountain-defiles, I observed
an animal half white, half black, first pressing it-
self under the large gate, then stealing about along
the edges of the fence among my enclosures very
stealthily; then hopping and skipping at the base of
the hay-cocks. I could not exactly make out what
it was. Its motions w'ere exceedingly agile, and as
the moon's quiet beams were shining down upon the
grass, it looked as if it might be a leopard, a sly fox,
a fawn, a small gray-hound, a stray lamb, a rabbit,
a dear little deer — I knew not what. I retreated
hastily, set the end of another segar on fire, sat
down and watched the motions of this strange ani-
mal. In the first place, I could not make out how
large it was, as the light was so deceptive ; I could
only detect that it was variegated with white and
black spots. I knew not whether it was a harmless
creature or a ferocious wild-cat from the neighbour-
ing woods ; but its motions were exceedingly grace-
ful, hopping, and skipping, and playing in the moon-
beams, and I conjectured that, however savage
might be its real nature, it was but a cub, and that
there would be no real danger in running out upon
the lawn and seizing it by the neck. Thinks I to
myself, ' I will do it.' But just at that moment, the
black-and-white spotted animal leaped upon the
UP THE RIVER. 227
Stone fence, and with the swiftness of lightning ran
for about twenty yards along it, among the poison-
vines and briers which grew over it, and appearing
as it did in strong relief, it seemed to be of the size
of a half-grown fox ; and I decided to let it alone,
and to remain stationary. For half an hour I
w-atched it with much curiosity in a state of sus-
pense, not knowing what to make of it. Presently,
crawling along on the grass to the foot of an apple-
tree, it ran half way up the trunk, turned its head
around, looked down, and so remained clutching
the bark. ' Can this be,' thought I, 'a racoon ?' I
had scarcely conceived the idea, when, going at
once into the house, 1 opened the drawer of a bu-
reau, drew out an old pistol, put into the barrel a
pinch of powder and a few shot, and returned to
search for the 'coon. He was gone. In vain did
I look for him along the stone fence, and round the
house-corners, in the garden among the gooseberry
bushes and the currants ; but going under the shed,
I saw something white. I pulled back the trigger,
put a little powder in the pan, for 1 had not any
patent pistol, saw something move, took aim, when
suddenly my heart quite failed me. * Dear me !'
said I to myself, ' can this be a pole-cat V The
thought seemed feasible, for several times I had
228 ^P THE RIVER.
been in most dangerous propinquity to these un
pleasant animals. I knew that ihe prevalent co-
lours which they hung out were hlack and white —
and, moreover, that they much abounded in these
regions. Tt was enough. I retreated in excellent
order, uncocked the pistol, and again sat down on
the piazza, watching the moon as she waded
through the sombre clouds, brushing off an occa-
sional mosquito, and thinking of the just-published
poems of Alexander Smith. Was Alexander a real
poet ? From reading many extracts of his verses I
inclined to favor the opinion that he was, although
he has not yet written a perfect poem. But he is a
very young man, and if he does not write one, he
will very much disappoint the richness of his early
promise. The mere fact that his name is Smith
affords no reason why he should not be a distin-
guished author, for several persons with that cogno-
men have become renowned in the ranks of litera-
ture. The works of Sidney Smith are well known,
spiced as they are with wit, although he makes no
pretension to poetry, and perhaps one of the most
noted poems of the language on the pleasant theme
of May-Day
But I must return to the animal.
It again appeared in sight, emerging from some
UP THE RIVER. 229
loop-hole in the fence or the hedge, coming out
from the high grass or the concealment of the stone
wall upon the open lawn, and from hillock to hil-
lock lightly leaping with the fleeting movement of a
shadow. It teased me so by the distance at which
it kept from the door in the performance of its fan-
ciful gyrations, that I resolved that it would be safe
to take a pistol-shot or two at it from a distance,
and with the thought again seized the pistol, re-
primed, took aim, when off went the little skulker
into a bush. When it appeared again, my intention
was changed, for it came jumping in a direct line to
the place where I sat, waving its tail, which was
barred with chocolate-coloured rings, rubbing its
sides against the boards, putting out its front paws,
and drawing them back again with fantastic play-
fulness ; and then I saw that it was not a wild-cat
or a pole-cat, but a young kitten. It slipped by me,
and, faintly mewing, ran into the house, and al-
though several times put out, returned again, as if
desiring to seek a home. Since the loss of my ca-
nary, I have a sworn antipathy to cats. Though
interesting at the period of mewing kittenhood, when
fully grown they are skulking and unafFectionate— •
domesticated, yet not domestic ; in old age mO"
rose, vagabond, and cruel. The other day I met
230 UP THE II I V E R
my friend Lemon in the city, and the first question
which he asked me was about the canary which he
had given me. When he learned the fate thereof,
he was displeased, saying that it was a gift ; that
there was no excuse ; that I ought to have taken
better care of it ; and that it was one of the most
promising birds in the United States.
July 4. — I passed the fourth of July again this
year in the meekest seclusion, and except the boom-
ing of the distant guns, when the glorious day was
ushered in, heard no sound but the whispering
breeze among the tree-branches, and suffered no in-
convenience from the smell of gunpowder. I detest
the use of Chinese crackers, and for one, would
neither instruct nor indulge children in celebrating
the anniversary by an unmeaning racket. The un-
ceasing waste of ammunition from sun-rise to sun-
set is simply annoying to all people who have come
to years of discretion, and is unworthy of young
American citizens. To say nothing of blown-off
thumbs and fingers, and of eradicated eye-balls, if
the Republic should endure for a few hundred years
— and who can doubt that it will ? — ^ esto jyerjjetua '
— more waste of life will ensue from fourth-of-July
celebrations than was incurred in the whole course
UP THE IIIVER. 231
of the Revolution. However rash it may be to run
counter to popular custom or prejudice, the indis
criminate firing of guns, crackers, pistols, muskets,
and arquebuses, in all streets, places, lanes and
alleys, in the ears of pedestrians, and before the
houses of sick people, is opposed to common sense,
good feeling, and good breeding. It iS also in di-
rect violation of municipal laws and regulatjphs,
which are duly posted up in all towns and cities,
and which ought to be enforced, if officers have a
sense of their own dignity. Do they affix the laws
to the pillars, that the populace may sneer at those
who made them, and laugh in their sleeve at
those who never intend to enforce them? Gun-
powder will lose all respect if it is in the hands of
every body. It ought to be confined strictly in
magazines, and let out by safety-valves through the
muskets of true sportsmen, or of authorized artille-
ry-men, only as need may require, and according to
strict license. This is using gunpowder as not
abusing it. Far be it from me to desire any cold
and heartless recognition of this inspiriting anniver
sary ; to have it ushered m or to let it go out in
such a way as would suit tb.e ideas of a few formal
philosophers ; to devote it only to prayers and
preaching, to the sleepiness of an England Sunday
232 UP THE RIVER.
or to the eating of a New England thanksgiving.
Let it be announced regularly with the discharge of
cannon, with the pomp of war, and with the move-
ment of the ' peoples ;' let the folds of the star-
spangled banner be every where let loose over the
masses who are collected to celebrate it ; and while
all men are 4reed from labour, let the young and the
old jrejoice together until the set of sun, in a uni-
versal holiday.
July 10.
My old Shanghai rooster is dead. From the time
he was brought to my house in a basket, about a
year ago, until now, his career has been varied, but
the latter part of it miserable indeed. He has not
ventured upon a hearty crow for the last six months.
All things went smoothly with him at first, and there
was a degree of eclat attaching to his family. The
neighbours came to see him, and remarked that he
was an uncommonly large fowl ; but he was perhaps
magnified in their eyes because he was di foreigner ;
and they turned upon their heel with a sovereign
contempt of the common barn-yard fowl. He had
the enclosures all to himself, and, standing erect on
the hillock, out crowed the neis^hbourin"- roosters.
UP THE RIVER 233
When the hen began to lay, every body wished
to get eggs of me. My friends asked it as a par-
ticular favour that I would grant them a few, when
I had them to spare ; and the butcher and baker
stopped at the gate to inquire if I would not sell
them a few Shanghai eggs. Thus the stock rose
in the market, and feathers were buoyant. When
the Cochin-China cock arrived, he was at least one-
third larger, and so much superior to the other in
all points, and had such a lordly strut and royal
comb, as completely to cast him in the shade. They
at once fought valiantly for the mastery, and the
contest was continued in various skirmishes and
pitched battles for several days. At last, when
Shanghai became convinced that he was no match,
his eyes wavered and refused to meet the adversary,
and on every occasion he pusillanimously fled. He
eould not be secure even of a bit of bread; he was
bullied at every turn ; and he lost the haughty bear-
ing which he once had when he was cock of the
walk. What appeared to mortify him more, was,
that the hen deserted him, and preferred the Cochin
guest, so that he strayed solitary on the corners of
the field, and picked up what living he could. He
also roosted alone. Every now and then, when he
234 UP THE RIVER.
was minding his own business, and no attack was
suspected, I noticed that his adversary would rush
on him from a distance, and give him a sound drub-
binsr. On these occasions, he would run under the
steps or the bushes : and at last he got to be so
timid that he would fly away and poke his head in
a corner at the least alarm. As he sneaked about
under the fences, or stood upon one leg with his
head crouched between his thighs, and his eyes half
closed, and his tail, already sparse enough, soaked
in the rain, he presented a melancholy ensample of
the loss of self-respect. To get him out of his pain-
ful position, I offered to give him away, in hopes
that when he had the field to himself, his spirits
would revive, and that he would act worthily of his
race. But the proper occasion not having arrived
to carry him ofT, he remained in disgrace, and walked
moodily apart, not venturing to salute the rising sun.
Alas ! that the chicken-stealer had not been success-
ful in his attempt, or that he had not been metamor-
phosed, before it was too late, into a delectable fri-
cassee ! For a month past, I have noticed that he
has waxed uncommonly lean, and I have taken care
that he should not be bullied out of his corn and In-
dian meal. He fed readily out of my hand, and ap-
peared to relish the attention well. But his lean-
UP THE mVER. 235
ness increased, and I began to perceive that he was
losing his feathers faster than his flesh. I at first
thought that the poor bird was shedding them ; that
he was inouJting, and, in consequence, in feeble
health, until I caught the Cochin-China cock in the
cruel trick of picking out a feather, from time to
time. His plumage was thus decimated, and at last
his tail totally gone, and he began to look as if he
had been in the hands of the cook, and was nearly
dressed. Dressed! according to the vocabulary of
the kitchen. Perceiving that removal was his only
chance, I sat down and indited the following note
to a friend :
" I offered you my Shanghai cock. When you
come this way again, bring a basket in your car
riage, and a bit of canvas, I don't want him, as the
other cock is fast killing him, and he is of no use.
He is losing all his feathers. Yours, &c."
I had scarcely penned the above, when a circum-
stance occurred, which, for aught I know, was
fatal to my Shanghai. I had noticed that, at the
height of supremacy, he was a truculent old fellow,
and ate up his own offspring ; and that Eng, the
hen, although good at sitting, so that she would sit,
and sit, and would for ever sit, was not a good mo-
236 UP THE RIVER.
iher in rearing her brood, whereas the Cochin
China hen is an unmatched mother. There is a
nest of wrens in the apple-tree at the kitchen door;
and when the young were hatched, I noticed them
from time to time with their heads poking out, until
the straw-house became too small for them. They
were ready to be fledged, and fell out into the deep
grass. At this moment, Shanghai, being alone,
snapped them up and killed them all. I saw one
of them danjrlino;- from his beak stone-dead, while
he strutted about, appearing to have regained his
lost estate. At this moment, in a fit of indignation
I pursued him, and snatching him from the lilac-
bush, at the roots of which he had poked his head,
dragged him forcibly out, and threw him into the
air. He came down on his legs, and ran under the
shed. This last insult was too much for him. In
the morning he was found upon the coal-heap, dead.
Well, he is gone ! he is gone ! and I am sorry for
it, because he was a gift, and all gifts from kind-
hearted people ought to be duly prized. But I am
happy to inform the donor that I have a brood of
fourteen Cochin-China chickens, now out of harm's
way, and one-third grown. Palmer, my neighbour,
the other day said to me : ' Those are superior
chickens of yours ; I assure you that I do like them.
UP THE RIVER. 237
wery much indeed.' In a retired country-place,
where there is a lack of incident, and excitement is
rare, there is an eminent source of pleasure in the
rearing" of fowls. You are gratified with the antics
of your dog, but nine puppies out of ten are of no
value. You respect your horse, and have him com-
fortably stabled, but for the most part he is only a
patient drudge. You may even look down into your
pig-pen w4th a degree of satisfaction.
But the hen and chickens, by their nature, habits,
and instincts, are an unfailing source of instruction
and delight. There is something beautiful in their
domesticity and close attachment to home, always
feeding about your doors, crowding about you as
you go forth, running and flying toward you to re-
ceive the scattered grains. The sounds which
they make belong to the most cheering associations
of the homestead: the motherly clucking, that fre-
quent reiterated cittarcut ! and the healthy, whole-
souled crowing of the chanticleer. At night, when
the stillness becomes insupportable to the waker,
he celebrates the watches, and re-assures you with
his voice. Starting at those unaccountable noises
which are heard at night, there is a familiarity in
the cock-crowing which puts you in a fearless
mood, and seems to say : ' All's well.' The fresh
238 ^'P THE RIVER.
egg daily brought in and deposited in a basket, the
incubation, the hatching, the matronly conduct of
the hen, walking with careful steps among the
brood, now exchanging her tenderness for ferocity
at the approach of a mousing cat, or the shadow
of a swooping hawk, or, when the storm lowers,
gathering her chickens under her wings ; the gra-
dual relinquishing of her charge, as they increase to
the plumpness of a full-grown quail or a young par-
tridge, when the young roosters, in the spirit of
imitation, venture upon their first ragged crow,
(mixed bass and treble, like the changing voice of
a hobbledehoy ;) the occasional cock-fight and sham
battle ; the feelings which you experience when you
drag down a brace of young pullets for your dinner,
and perhaps see their heads cut off at the wood-pile,
while they flop and flounce about on their sides
among the chips — these things arrest your attention
from day to day, and mitigate seclusion. Although
it is amusing to see ducks waddling down to the
pond at sun-rise in Indian file, and at the cry of
their owner returning to be locked up at night-fall
in the same order, gluttonizing on little fish till the
fins and tails stick out of their mouths, they have
not half the interest of hens and chickens. As in-
habitants of te7-ra f/yna, they are not worth notice ;
UP THE RIVER. 239
in the water they are inanimate, and have neither
the agility of fishes nor the grace of wild fowl. It
is a beautiful sight to see a large brood of half-
grown, full-blooded chickens, sitting down as close
together as they can be on the grass, occupying a
space no larger than could be covered by the broad
brim of a Panama hat, or could be commanded by
the sweeping charge of a double-barrel. At night
they huddle together in the same manner in an
angle of the shed ; but when a little older, seek the
perch, there to remain until the break of day, un-
less pulled down by the abandoned chicken-stealer.
A cock is the proudest and most majestic bird
which was ever feathered. Let the gay flamingo
flap his wings, and the peacock flirt his gaudy fan,
and all the songless flock which make the tropic
groves so brilliant. The Bird of Paradise may be
esteemed a marvel, and a paragon of the most
ecstatic beauty, with all its train of soft and melting
heavenly colours, the blending of that holy Hand
which, whether shown on the aerial bow or in the
sun-set skies, or on the cheeks of fruits, or in the
bloom of flowers, is far beyond all imitative pencil;
Die of those forms of love divine which never yet
have ceased to grace our natural Eden. Even as a
dove just parted from the leash, the carrier of some
240 UP THE RIVER.
hopeful message, it seems to have been flung down
already fashioned from the very groves which hang
over the flashing waves that roll hard by the Gol-
den City. But for these birds of gorgeous plumage
it may be said that they live too near the sun.
They are where the tendency of all dust is to take
on also the more disjfustino: forms of life : where
the lizard lurks among the choicest perfume, and
where the basilisk lies along the branch. They are
symbols of a perfection of beauty which is not of
earth. Now the cock is the representative of the
erect, inherent dignity of nature. His race is found
every where. He loses not caste among the tropic-
birds. He walks along the equatorial belt ; he has
his coop in Terra del Fuego as well as in the icy
north. He flies wild through the primitive forests,
over the great moors and prairies of the western
continent. He peoples all the islands of the sea,
from New-Holland to Pitcairn's Island, occupied by
the descendants of the mutineers of the ' Bounty ;'
he is in Europe and Asia, and Africa, and perhaps
in the suburbs of Jerusalem at this very day may
be found the lineage of the cock which crowed the
third lime before ' Peter went out and wept bit-
terly.'
I will mention another superior advantage which
UP THE RIVER. 241
is possessed by these home-bred birds. Things
which are exceeding- bright soon weary, and pall
upon the sense of sight ; and when the eye becomes
dissipated among gorgeous objects, it soon rests upon
vacancy, having reached the limit of enjoyment in
the present sphere. The fiery plumes leave no im-
pression on the seared brains of those who live in
the tropics, any more than they do a track in the
cloven air. The nature of these birds must be ex-
plored by the far-searching naturalist, who with an
enthusiasm of his pure studies which blends itself
into the very religion of his heart, like Wilson, and
Bartram, and Audubon, is willing to pursue them
through every danger, and wing them in their timorous
retreats. Through the labours of such men we learn
at second hand the endless variety of the creation,
and from the wonderful adaptation of all things to
their end, enrich the argument for the existence of
a glorious and merciful God. But in the hen and
chickens we have every where before us a perpetual
lesson of affection, high instinct, and domestic vir-
tues, of which the mind never tires. Pride and na-
tive dignity attend the foot-steps of the male, and
in his mate we see the inherent strength of true
love, assuming the fierceness of a vulture when it
stands in need of better protection than the shadow
11
242 UP THE RIVER.
of its wings. The pugnacious disposition of the
cock shows that the government of the flock is pa-
triarchal, and that there cannot rightfully be but one
lord within the same enclosures. There can be no
mixed government to be consistent with the dignity
of the bird. Hence, my Shanghai, after a fair contest,
was compelled to knock under, and finally fell off
the perch from sheer mortification and neglect, hav-
ing lost nearly all his feathers. Had he shown
more spirit, although the smaller bird, he might have
kept possession of the ground which was his by
legal tenure. His unhappy fate reminds me of a
tilting-match which actually occurred between a
cock and a peacock, which goes to show the strength
of weakness when enlisted in a right cause, and
what will sometimes ensue from picking your neigh-
bours gradually to pieces : and as the narrative in-
volves so good a moral, I shall endeavour to put it
into the form of a fable, without intending to en-
croach upon the department of that unique and ex-
ceedingly original delineator and learned Professor,
Gilbert Sphinx. Here it is :
IN an extensive barn-yard, where the harvests of
a rich farmer were collected, and the scattering of
corn, hay, oats, and Timothy seed, was exceedingly
UP THE RIVER. 243
profuse, there existed the most flourishing establish-
ment of fowls in that whole neighbourhood. In the
midst of this harem of hens, ruled an extremely
handsome and vain-glorious chanticleer. He would
have been singled out for his gay plumes, blood-red
comb, expanding chest, swelling throat, uplifted
head, eminent aspect. In case of any intrusion
upon his premises, the result was a bloody fight,
which usually left the adversary on his back stone-
dead.
Early one morning before the cock-crowing, the
whole family in the barn yard were awakened by a
shrill, wild, unearthly scream. Sir Chanticleer
jumped from his perch, and as the day just began
to dawn, he discovered an unusual visitor, a pea-
cock, who had strayed from a great distance.
' What do you want here ?' said Chanty, bristling
up.
' To ask about your Majesty's health,' replied the
other, causing his tail to droop, and trembling all
over, for he was a great coward ; ' only to ask about
your Majesty's health, and permission to spend a
day or two in youi dominion, until I am rested from
the fatigues of my journey.'
* Certainly,' said Cockspur, appeased by his
guest's submissive air. ' What is your name ?'
244 UP THE RIVER.
'They call me Splendid Peacock,' replied he.
'Very well, Splendid, I am glad to see you. It
is not very often that one of your set does us the
honour to call. It is time for breakfast. Here are
oats, there is corn. Help yourself : be entirely at
home.'
* I will,' said Splendid, recovering his assurance,
and scratching up a few grains.
During the whole of the first day, nothing oc-
curred to mar the pleasure of the visit, although
Peacock was so embarrassed and bashful that he
did not do himself justice. He lurked about in cor-
ners, with his head down and his plumage folded up,
and his voice was not even heard. His timidity
showed itself in all his movements. On the second
day, not having worn out his welcome, and his re-
ception being good, he walked with much more free-
dom ; and about noon, when the sun was shining in
its utmost splendour, ascending a hillock which was
the very throne of Chanticleer, he opened all his
gorgeous plumage to the light. The sensation was
prodigious; a crowd gathered around him, and a
chuckle of admiration went through the whole yard.
From that moment Sir Chanty was filled with
deadly animosity, and could hardly refrain from
picking his eyes out on the spot. He, however,
UP THE RIVER. 245
smothered his rage for the present, but he determined
to be the death of him. He therefore souffht a cause
of quarrel, and was content to remark, when he heard
his guest praised, that he had a scrawny neck, ugly-
feet, and a miserable, discordant voice. On the
third day, being unable any longer to hold his spite,
he came slyly up to Peacock and plucked out one
of the handsomest feathers in his tail. Of this the
other took no notice, as he had still ample plumes.
Every day, however. Chanticleer continued this
process of picking till there was not another feather
left in the poor bird's tail, and he was an object of
ridicule to the whole harem. Chanty, however
perceived that his work was not done while his ad-
versary had still some very handsome feathers on
the top of his head ; he therefore approached with
the intention of plucking them out by the roots.
When Splendid Peacock found that he was going
lose his top-knot also, his cowardice gave place to
an ungovernable rage, and he flew at his opponent
in so unexpected a manner, and without observing
any of the rules of fighting, that the latter was on
his back before he knew it. Peacock then, encour-
aged by success, and growing all the time more vin-
dictive, followed up the attack until he had driven
Cockspur entirely out of the enclosure, who was
246 UP THE RIVER.
SO mortified and chagrined that he never came back,
but left his guest in undisputed possession.
While on the subject, it may not be amiss to say
something about the rearing of fowls mostly for the
banefit of your ignoramus who is smitten with a
sudden love of the country, and purchases a box
and few acres, and dreams of his exploits in hus-
bandry and the happiness which he has in store.
From the extensive henneries and large spaces
which you see enclosed with light picket-fences,
and the extravagant prices which are given now-a-
days for certain breeds of fowls, one would suppose
that they laid golden eggs, like the goose in ^Esop's
fable, and would make their owners rich. Such in
fact, is the futile hope which is cherished. Now
there is nothing which is more certain to remunerate
you than the few chickens for which there is room
upon your place, and which may pick up their own
living from the chaff, or be supplied from the pro-
vender which you have. The fresh eggs alone will
recompense your care, and your expense will be no-
thing. The cock will roam abroad at will, and the
hens will deposit their eggs where they please, in
the loft or in the garden. %ut when it comes to
making artificial nests, and providing the birds with
UP THE RIVER. 247
bits of lime instead of permitting them to seek out
the broken clam-shells, and having their roosts made
by a carpenter, instead of letting them find their own
roosts on a beam or on a tree ; when you attempt
to raise them by the fifties or by the thousands, in
nine cases out of ten you will find yourself out of
pocket. These thick populations do not thrive ;
and as they are domestic in their habits, they are
fond of a quiet home, and do not, like the turkeys,
who are wild in nature, love to go in large flocks.
If you live in the country, you need never be with-
out a pair of broiled chickens on your table if you
have a friend to dine with you, but you will be wo-
fully disappointed if you expect to grow rich out of
your fowls. I am very much struck with the con-
stant rejection by the country-farmers of all fan-
ciful schemes, and their perseverance in the old ways
of husbandry and the succession of crops. No mat-
ter how tempting may be the prospect, their atten-
tion is never distracted for a single season from the
common routine, and their ultimate success proves
iheir judgment to have been correct. You will
scarcely find a farmer supporting an inordinate
family of hens, or providing for them any better
shelter than his barn-yard or his sheds. It is the
amateur-husbandman, the philosopher, the poet, the
248 UPTHERIVER.
man of letters, who ventures on these experiments.
The person who made me a present of my Shanghai
and Cochin-China fowls has a large number of them
in his enclosures, the descendants of those which he
has imported directly from far countries ; but his
object is not to make money out of them, and he
dispenses them with a free will among his friends,
in order that the stock may be improved.
While speaking of high-breeds, it may be well to
mention that I lately met a man who was going all
over the country trying to procure a pair of the
original, common, barn-yard fowl, and he complained
that they were difficult to be found, the race is so
mixed. The foreigners may have their peculiar
points, it is true. Their flesh may be more tender,
but they do not stand the winters as well. If they
lay eggs profusely, they do not always make good
mothers. If their reputation is great, they are more
likely to be taken from the perch by the abandoned
chicken-stealer. This, however, is along talk upon
a subject on which I have conversed before ; but 1
must inform you before concluding that I buried my
old Shanghai at the roots of a Diana grape-vine, in
hopes that the effect would be seen on the future
grapes, and on the same night had a singular dream,
in which was blended a remembrance of juvenile,
1
UP THE RIVER- 249
romantic story, and on a larger scale the obsequies
of the late lamented Cock-robin. For I imagined
that I saw again the grave dug, and the pall borne,
and the mourners walking, and the bell pulled, while
overhead, upon a willow-branch which drooped upon
the place of sepulture, I heard the voice of the same
ghostly raven which tormented the life of Vander-
DONK.
July 20. — I am not very fond of fishing, lacking the
essential patience of a true fisherman. I never re-
member to have caught many fish, or to have been
on many excursions where a great many were taken.
To sit all day on a rock, or to be continually bait-
ing a hook for the benefit of small nibblers, to get
your line out of a snarl and untie knots, is not to
me an amusing occupation. Several times in the
season, however, it is pleasant to go out for this os-
tensible purpose ; and though you take nothing, you
come home with a sharp appetite, and sleep the bet-
ter at night. The books on angling are very pleas-
ant reading, especially the ' Complete Angler,' and
' Salmonia,' and one called ' Spring-Tide, or The
Angler and his Friends,' by John Yonge Akerman ;
250 UP THE RIVER
a publication whose dialogue is intended to illustrate
and defend from the charge of utter vulgarity, the
language of the rustic population of the southern
and western parts of England. But the trout are
becoming more and more scarce every year, and even
the mountain-streams will soon need to be replenish-
ed with this choice fish, while it requires more skill
and patience to decoy the large ones at the bottom
of their cold and crystal pools. To land a good big
trout, whose nose you have been tickling for a long
time, as he remains almost motionless, slightly os-
cillating as if on a pivot, and tremulously pointing,
like a magnetic needle, to some dark hole beneath
the shelving rock, excites a feeling of triumph as
you place him in the bottom of your basket. Per-
haps, however, you will have to wait all day before
you get another bite.
I like to go a-crahhing, an occupation w^hich has
never, according to my knowledge, been dignified by
description, although these shell-fish are in much
request. To pick them to pieces, and nicely to ex-
tract the meat from the several compartments, is in
itself an art, and enhances the pleasure of eating
and now and then, in the fall-of the year, if you are
fond of suppers, it is agreeable to sit down before a
large plate of boiled or roasted crabs, with your
\
I
UP THE RIVER. 251
crash-towel at your side, and draw out the white
moisels from the sockets, or scoop out from its re
cesses the richer fat. But the soft-crab is especially-
desiderated by epicures; for no part is rejected, and
when done nicely brown, they eat the whole, claws
and all. Says the old poet:
• I HAVE no roast
But a nut-brown toast,
And a crab laid in the fire :
Much meat I not desire.'
I always thought that the shell-fish was referred
to in these verses, but am informed by one well
versed in literary things that the allusion is to the
crab-apple, which was used to garnish a dish. There
will be no harm, however, in making the applica-
tion double. When I was a boy — since which many
years have elapsed, although it seems but yesterday
— I used to resort to an old mill on the salt meadows
of Long-Island, where a creek put up from a neigh-
bouring bay, to fish for crabs. All which was re-
quired was a good strong net, a piece of string, a
bit of lead for a sinker, a small chunk of meat, or a
lew clams for bait. The crab pulls strong and
steadily, and seldom lets go his hold unless you jerk
him, and then, if the water is clear, you will see him
slinking and sliding off, with a sidelong motion, and
with great rapidity toward the bottom. When you
252 UP THE RIVER.
are sure that he has well fastened on the bait, you
draw in very slowly and gradually, conjecturing his
size and fatness from the strength with which he
pulls ; and the excitement increases until his brown
shell and formidable claws begin to appear above the
surface, when you dexterously slip the net under him.
and he is yours. It requires some tact then, to turn
the net suddenly the wrong side out, before he be-
comes entangled in the meshes. When you have
got him on the ground, at a sufficient distance from
the wave, he will exhibit a remarkable rapidity of
locomotion, travelling forward, yet backward, to-
ward the element from which he came. Then is the
time to put your foot on his back, and to look out for
your fingers, for he is a spiteful customer. Nab him
effectually by the hind-claws, exerting an antago-
nistic strength against his powerful muscles, and put
him in the basket. The beauty of this sport is, that
your line is already baited ; and if you go at the
right time of tide, you do not have to wait long, for
abundance of these brown shells have come, to feast
on the 'fat of the land.' Sometimes the crab nips
so eagerly that you can jerk him out of the water
without net, but it is hardly worth while to make
the attempt if you are so provided. When your
basket is half-full, keep a sharp look-out, or they
UP THE KIVEll. 253
will scramble and scrabble out of it, for they are
bustling- about, biting and grabbing- one another, ex-
hibiting a temper far from amiable. Having reached
home with your prize, you tell the cook to put them
in boiling water with a little salt in it. ''JMiis,' says
the kind-hearted Mrs. Hale, 'may appear cruel, but
life cannot be taken without pain.' The only draw-
back to the pleasure of crabbing, is the chance of
taking- now and then a wriggling eel, which you do
not want, and which is hard to get rid of. Perhaps
IzAAK Walton, who has thrown the charm of a
scholastic elegance about the art of trout-fishing,
would have disdained to employ his net in this
fashion. And it is true that the crab is associated
with no poetic meditations, except of a good supper;
neither does this kind of sport afford such leisure
intervals to think upon the pleasant fields and (lowers
which skirt the meadows. Jt is devoid of science and
demands no nicety of skill with which to outwit the
'scaly people,' and which makes the capture of each
trout a triumph. But then there are no hooks bit
off; no disappointment of empty baskets; no
tantalizing sight of fish lla.shiug in mid-air, and
then falling back into the water; no tedious sit-
ting on a rock to fill up the waste time \\ilh medita-
tion. The tact of catching fish is a natural gift, and
254 UP THE RIVER.
is not to be learned from books or from the experi-
ence of others. It is accompanied by an inborn love
of the pursuit, and an instinctive knowledge. Bill
Mallory will throw his line into a mountain trout-
stream full of stumps, sticks, branches, and obstruc-
tions, in nine cases out of ten, so as to avoid them
all ; but if his hook gets fastened out of sight, or his
snell wound round and round the slender twig, by
some dexterous twitch, some easing process-, some
change of position, some compound tug, he will re-
lease it quickly ; while his fellow-fisherman stamp-
ing the bank is deprived of hook and line and tem-
per. He will manage, with a knowing look and
quiet smile, to cast his hook into the very choicest
pasturage of the brook, while I, less fortunate, toil
all day, and take no fish. On this account I prefer
to go a-crahhijig.
July 15. — Although living near the river at pre-
sent, I am not exactly in sight of it, (the more's the
pity,) and am not quite contented until I get upon
its banks. Two years ago I was within a few yards
of the wave in one of the most delicious coves of
Long Island Sound. When the tide rose high by
UP THE RIVER. 255
the joint influence of moon and wind, it sometimes
came up to the court-yard gates, salted the roots
of rose-bushes, set the bean poles of the garden
afloat,, and enabled me to cry ship ahoy ! to a
schooner from the window where I sat. One day
the pig was drowned, and the chickens cried ' save
me' to the ducks. At that time I had a boat pre-
sented to me by Lady H., called the ' Governor,'
provided properly with oars and sail. Intending to
take advantage of living on the water-side by be-
coming acquainted with naval tactics, I forthwith
tried the sail, and began to scud about the harbour,
until an untoward accident induced me to abandon
the attempt for ever. In the middle of the stream
lay anchored a Connecticut sloop called the ' Julius
Caesar,' and in attempting to pass before her, I ran
into her bows. Taking hold of the boom in attempt-
ing to push off, my boat passed from beneath me and
I was left dangling between wind and water for a
moment, but as she returned presently, I fell plump
into her like a stone with no damage but the loss of
a new hat. While taking down the sail, I was so
unfortunate as to unship the rudder, and while try-
ing to recover the rudder, lost one oar, and while
seeking to regain that, I lost the other. I however
pushed the boat ashore with the sprit, put the sail
256 UP THE RIVER.
in the hay-loft where it became the prey of mildew,
and never cauo^ht the breeze aofain. One nig-ht
when my boat had been drawn up high and dry, and
the caulking had been taken out preparatory to her
being recaulked, two fellows took a notion to steal
her, and had they not been good swimmers, would
probably have been drowned. For in the darkness
of the night, not suspecting her condition, and hav-
ing first searched for and found the oars, they launch-
ed her and pulled boldly for the middle of the stream.
Before long they took to bailing, and after that to
swimming, and with many oaths and imprecations
they trotted home on the sands and hung their
jackets up to dry. ' The Governor' was found the
next day bottom upward on the opposite coasts.
This whole Christian country from end to end is in-
fested with thieves, making it almost the bounden
duty of every honest man to resolve himself into a
missionary to preach up honesty. ]\Iy boat was also
shamefully banged about by those who took hei
without license, leaving the bottom covered with
sand and ill-smelling clams and decayed crabs. J
was, on two separate occasions, challenged to row
by two ladies for a slight wager, but I permitted
them both to beat me, out of politeness, of which
fact they may not be aware until this day, and I
UP THE RIVER. 257
hope that they will excuse me for mentioning it. I
have not, however, a natural taste for boating,
though extremely fond of aquatic excursions when
there is a good Palinurus at the helm, and of baiting
hooks for ladies who are tender of the worms. I
like amazingly to sail about in a good yacht, well
manned and properly provisioned, whether to a
neighbouring port or to the grounds where in cool
waters beneath the sheltering rocks, repose the
much-loved black fish. Has no one written pisca-
tory eclogues ? If not, perhaps I will do it.
July 25. — To-day, again, I was delighted with the
remarkable effects of fogs among the mountains, as
they rolled down from the summits, and, breaking
over the forest-tops, fell softly into the deep abyss
in many a snowy cataract. Before sun-rise there
was a drenching rain, and I rose and shut down the
sashes in my chamber, as it w^as sifting in and wet-
ting the carpet ; and, beside, the air w^as exceed-
ingly cool. The frequent rains have been amarkeil
feature in this most delightful summer. Scarcely
has the earth begun to thirst, or living things to pant
under the ardent sun, when the grateful clouds have
collected, and presently there has been vouchsafed
258 UPTHERIVER.
a refreshing shower. If the streams have befeii
scanty for a week or two, so that the rocks in their
beds have become bare and liot, and the water trick-
led among the stones, in a little while the tributary
drops have coalesced, and what with fogs, and mists,
and showers, have gushed down through every gully
into the impoverished stream, pouring over the mill-
dams in copious floods, and adding force and gran-
deur to the most insignificant cascade and cataract.
The corn-blades shine brightly, (I speak of the In-
dian maize,) and there has just been gathered in the
most glorious golden harvest that ever rewarded
the reaper. Magnificent as the sea is, with its
billows, white caps, and its breakers, its sweet
waves softly laving the delicious shores, have you
not sometimes been more refreshed by the sight of
acres upon acres of wheat all ready for the sickle ;
and as the wind, the west wind, moves along the
surface, at one time pouring down into the hol-
lows and the valleys, then glancing up the acclivi-
ties ; now causing the whiter and silvery stalks to
• bow down, and then the golden heads to stand
upright, have you not looked down from a high hill upon
the ripples of this waving ocean ? I, for one, can
never see the harvests of this glorious land, where
there is bread enough for all, and to spare, without
UP THE RIVER. 259
thinking of those lately-impoverished granaries
Vi^hich had no food for the starving people. It is
only when the heavens are brass, and the blight
comes, and the hand of labour is of no value, that
we feel that God feeds us. To starve to death is
hard and tantalizing, when almost within reach of
the most superabundant plenty. O ye people of
England ! methinks you should have stripped your-
selves of every grandeur, retrenched all your luxu-
ries, cast down your precious jewelry, and brought
yourselves to a mere morsel of bread, sooner than
have let that thing come to pass. Yet who can
doubt that such a price was thought too dear to buy
the luxury of doing good ? And there within the
halls which overlooked those scenes of desperate
sorrow might be heard the voice of revelry ; the
tables groaned, and still the dance was woven, and
the feast went on, while from the lordly roofs the
lights shone down upon the gold and silver plate,
emblazoned with the arms of your illustrious ances
tors, and made the wine flash brighter in the gob
lets, which maketh glad the heart of man. Here
are millions upon millions of acres, blooming almost
spontaneously, which only wait the hand of culture.
The soil is full of richness : the vegetation of a mul-
titude oi centuries has blended with its mellow loam,
260
UP THE RIVER
in places where the plough has never passed, and
where the sower has never scattered. Tend it with
a somewhat sedulous care, and from the bottom of
the valleys to the high mountain-tops, it would
burst out and blossom like the rose. Indeed, I see
not how a universal famine could prevail among us
We have a multitude of happy valleys, beside that
rolled over by the fruitful Mississippi ; not one ma-
jestic, melancholy Nile alone, like Egypt ; and the
land is too great for one ansrel of destruction to
overlap it with a black shadow. For if a drought
should fall upon the Empire State, and all its neigh-
bouring compeers, the doors of the great western
granaries would be flung wide open, the freighted
cars of burden would thunder on a thousand
miles toward the hungry spot, from many a bright
and green oasis, to equalize the gifts of God, bear-
ing the corn more precious far than yellow gold,
and the very standard of golden value.
XV.
August 8.
-:^-
,'7 r. ',■ •' V .
SAID something
about mosquitoes,
which, after all, is
too serious a mat-
ter to trifle with.
The frequent rains
have been produc-
|tive of great swarms
of these detestable
and annoying visi-
tors, who are rank-
ed in the same ca-
tegory with fleas
and a certain name-
less domestic bug.
It takes a strong
wind or a sharp frost to annihilate these blood-suck-
262 UP THE RIVER.
ers on wings. When ihey get into the upper rooms
there they stick, and the whole household must be
resolved into a vigilant police to detect them in
their secret hiding-places. Before retiring for the
night, you take a candle and trim the wick so as to
afford a clear light, shut down the windows, and
commence the search. This is pleasant work, and
is performed with all the alacrity which attends the
satisfaction of a deep grudge. To stop their music
for the night and ever more, is the object of your
candle-light campaign. And first, you take a gen-
eral survey of the walls to see the number and dis-
position of the troops, hearken with the acute ear
of an Indian to detect the hum of preparation in the
distance, and take notice of a few scouts who are
moving about. Then you set down the candle, pull
off your coat and shoes, turn up your wristbands, and
take a soiled towel to apply it again to practical
use, before it is tossed into the basket. Fold the
towel neatly, so that it may lie flat on the palm of
you hand, and go to work on the Johnsonian theory,
that ' killing is no murder.' Never mind the walls.
Looks are a minor consideration to true comfort, a
maxim which is little practised by some people now-
a-days. Now. my little Maretzeks, your opera will
not succeed to-night. It costs too much ; there are
UP THE RIVER. 263
too many tenors in the band. With satisfaction you
look upon the first victim. He is pendent on the
celling with hisheadtothe antipodes, stickingormov-
ing about with a secure foot-hold on the principle of ex-
haustion of the air and pressure of the external atmos-
phere. How marvellous the apparatus ! There is
at present a great man-fly who can walk upon walls,
but not so glibly. The mosquitoe is directly over
your bed, a fine, plump fellow, with blithe legs.
Slap ! — he has departed this Yiie, felix opportunitate
mortis. Twirl him up in your fingers, and be as-
tonished that from a speck of dust such an ingeni-
ous, vital piece of mechanism could have been form-
ed a proboscis wonderful as an elephant's ; an ap-
paratus for exhausting the air more perfect than
man can make ; a faculty for disturbing the temper
and exciting to action some of the strongest passions
of a philosophic man ! There's another. Ah ! he's
gone ; flown clean over to the most remote part of
the room. The rascals dodge if they do but catch
your eye, refusing to look you in the face ; and from
that time until the lights are out and all is still, they
skulk. Do not fight the battle by halves ; pursue
the fugitives; track them to their ambuscades;
shake the counterpanes and loose articles of dress ;
look high, look low on your hands and knees ; in-
264 UP THE mVER.
spect the carpet. Behold the little fellow on the
very angle of the mantle-piece. Slap ! — that's good!
he's out of harm's way, and that makes two. You
don't see any more, but you hear one, and by no
means think it a small matter if there is only one.
He will be sure to find you out ; he is there for the
express purpose of preying on flesh and blood. Fee-
fo-fum. Dead or alive he will have some. Hanging
above your head in some uncertain part of the fir-
mament he will sing for the half hour, alight mo-
mentarily upon your forehead, change his mind and
descend on your hand ; finding it not very plump,
he will go to your ancles ; convinced that he has
made a mistake, will return to head quarters and
bite your temples, while you box your ears and slap
your cheeks in vain. One mosquitoe is as good as
a swarm, for in the morning you wake up, if you
have been asleep at all, and find yourself vaccinated
in a hundred places with virulent poison, covered
with blotches, wishing that yon had a hundred hands,
and that they were all actively employed in scratch-
ing. Briareus alone would be in a state of toler-
able comfort. With regard to instinct, the mos-
quitoe is not a whit inferior to the more sizable nui-
sances of creation. He prefers the cheek of a young
maiden, but if she is Turkishly veiled, he can sip
UP THE RIVER. 265
from another source under the wing of a horse-fly.
As to nrian, the uses of this affliction are uncertain,
but perhaps these petty stings are intended to pre-
pare the way for his sublimer sorrows.
August 9. — There is a saying, ' the winter goes
out like a lion.' The same expression might be ap-
plied to summer if there is any fierceness in the sun.
Some days at the latter part of the season, those
which announce the advent of the locusts, and pre-
cede the arrival of the catydids, become notorious
for a raging heat, like that which comes from the
Desert of Sahara. Their character is duly chroni-
cled and remembered. The silvery tides steal up
in the long and glassy reservoirs. The temperature
of these days is productive of a languor and dead
sickness. In vain the plums are plentiful, and the
grapes become ripe, and the harvest-apples blush
with a red tinge ; no sight is agreeable but that of
the rippling waves, and no sound but that of the
tinkling ice. O, ye breakers of Rockaway ! you
apostrophize, would that I might dash into your
midst. 0, ye rivers which lave the shores, might I
but dip my feet in your waves ! O, thou cataract
266 UP THE EIVER.
of Niagara ! that I could at this moment behold you
plunge ! O, ices and snows of the Alpine moun-
tains, how agreeable your sight ! 0, avalanches !
— Anne ! Anne ! Anne ! where are you ! bring a
bucket of fresh water, and throw this lukewarm
fluid aw^ay ! How hot is this black collar ! There,
there ! This button pinches the throat ! I am go-
ing to pull my coat off, and my waist-coat ! That
feels better. Now I hope that no people will come.
If they do, I shall not see them. Preserve me from
intrusion on a very cold day, or on a very w'arm.
At these times you read the bills of mortality and
think of your fat friends, your sickly acquaintances,
the city babies who are toted about the parks. You
cannot eat your dinner. With a desperate malignity
you attack the faults of every body whom you know.
Then you take up the newspaper and complain that
it is dull, nothing stirring. A great many people
are sun-struck. Stupid hod-carriers ! perhaps they
were never struck with anything else in their lives.
Every body is out of humour, and this is plainly
shown in the daily papers. One man complains
that he cannot see at the Opera, at the Castle Gar-
den, because there is a pillar in the way right in
front of the stage ; another, that the boiler of a
steam-boat on which he travelled blew up ; another,
UP THE RIVE 11. 267
that the mails are irregularly carried, or that the
teleg-raph is not worth a rush ; a fourth, that as he
journeyed in the omnibus a bullet was shot into it
by a negro as black as soot ; all calling upon the
editor, by the virtue which is in him, to avenge these
injuries which have become intolerable and not to
be endured. As to the pistol-shot, for my own part,
I am perfectly convinced that you cannot pack four-
teen or sixteen people, promiscuously brought to-
gether in an omnibus, (which is the ordinary load,)
among whom there is not at least one deserving to
be shot. Let us hear no more on that score, since
nobody was hurt, and the negro is at large. This
last exploit was perfectly trivial compared with what
is done in the city every day. I remember a fat
virago who had beaten her husband, and entered a
pathetic plea in his behalf before the Judge. He
had invited a friend to smoke a pipe with him, and
all which he had done was to deposit a little gun-
powder in the bowl of the pipe, so that when it ex-
ploded, it carried away the end of his friend's nose.
'What of that?' she protested; 'was it worth
while for a thing of that kind to bring a poor man
into court for everybody to stare at V Certainly
not. But perhaps all this smacks of peevishness
268 UP THE RIVER.
and hot weather, As Saxe says, with much facility
of numbers : —
Heaven- help us all in these terrific daj-s ;
The burning sun ujion the earth is pelting
With his directest, fiercest, hottest rays,
And everv thing is melting.
While prudent mortals curb with strictest care
All vagrant curs, it seems the queerest puzzle
The dog-star rages rabid through the air,
Without the slightest muzzle.
But Jove is wise and equal in his sway,
Howe'er it seems to clash with human reason ;
His fiery dogs will soon have had their day.
And men shall have a season.'
August 10. — Smythe, who came here to spend
the summer, expected to-day his little Mexican
pony, which had been in the battle of Buena Vista.
I rode down to the boat in Smythe's carriage with
his man Alexander. On approaching, the little
black war-horse was descried in company of several
others on the bow. He was a well-rounded animal,
with a flowing mane, handsome tail, and mischievous
eye. No sooner had Alexander conducted him
upon the sands than he began to make amends for
his cramped position on the voyage, rearing up on his
hind-legs, and squealing prodigiously. Among
UP THE RIVER. 269
other feats, he stood almost upright, his head high
in air, and attempted to plant his hoofs on Alexan-
der'' s croion, which would have been the ruin of that
regal piece of furniture. After that, he curvetted
about, and finally succeeded in tearing the halter
out of Alexander's hand. Some one then assisted
in passing the rope between his teeth, and fastening
the noose tightly over his nose, after which he con-
sented to be led. This being slow work, Smythe
told Alexander to get into the carriage, wind the
rope round his hand, and so conduct him in the rear.
We had proceeded about two miles peaceably, and
the sun was down, when Mexico, perceiving some
excellent herbage by the way-side, gave the halter a
sudden jerk, and he was loose. To catch him ap-
peared easy, but it turned out to be difficult. For
no sooner had you approached within a few feet of
him than he gave a bound and retreated down the
road about a hundred yards, where he began again
quietly to graze. This he repeated many times,
until he had traveled back a half a mile, when he
was caught. ' Now,' says Smythe, ' this time do
you hold him tightly.' But scarcely had the car-
riage started than he pulled most violently, tore the
skin from Alexander's hand, and was off. All ef-
fort was now made to capture the mischievous little
270 UP THE RIVER.
beast, but becoming irritated, at last, by having his
will thwarted, he dashed off on the full gallop to the
water-side, where he soon came plump up to his
belly in a deep marsh, and we could see him in the
dim twilight floundering and flopping about with pro-
digious violence, and entirely beyond reach. Smythe
came back in a most vindictive passion, exhausting
a vocabulary of no choice epithets, saying that he
might go where he liked and get drowned; that he
should not trouble his head about him, and so drove
home in moody silence. ' Where's the horse V ex-
claimed all the ladies on the piazza. ' Where's
your horse?' exclaimed one and another, till the
question became vexatious in the extreme. Smythe
drank three cups of tea, lit a cigar, and stood in
silence on the bank marking the eff'ect of moon shine
on the flashing waves, and listening to the hoarse
suspiration of the porpoises who were disporting in
the full tide. At ten o'clock the pony was brought
home, covered with mud, in an ugly temper, and
disposed to bite.
August 1 1 . — Smythe intended his Buena Vistan for
a ladies' saddle-horse, but his war-horse attitudes
and rough-and-ready way of grabbing the bit made
I
(
U P T H E 11 1 V E R . 27 1
it necessary to put him in harness. He was accord-
ingly hitched to a carriage, the lash was smartly
laid on, and his master and I proceeded at a rapid
pace over some of the most romantic hill-tops
of the country. Here Mexico at first j-ustified his
reputation as a most gentle creature, only a little
lively from the effect of oats, and full of fun. He
came very near, however, getting us into trouble.
In passing over a mill-dam, where there was some
little commotion of the water, he shyed in the middle
of a bridge which had no balustrades, advancing so
near to the brink that another step would have
plunged us both into the stream. With great nim-
bleness we got out behind, and his master, going to
his head, led him on for a few yards, (his master
appearing exceedingly pale,) when he was driven
home without trouble. In the evening, a riding-
party was formed, and an adventurous Diana Vernon
volunteered to mount Mexico. He was brought 1o
the door properly saddled, but some person who did
not know how to assist a lady on horse-back by the
foot, imprudently placed a ciiair at his side, which
Mexico at once kicked over, and began to wheel
about in numerous gyrations. At last, the rider
being firmly seated, pony put himself in those ex-
travagant attitudes which are seen in battle-pictures,
272 UP THE RIVER.
to the great alarm of some of the lookers-on. But
a few vigorous lashes well applied caused him pre-
sently to fall into rank, and the whole party were
observed to proceed prosperously until concealed by
a bend in the road.
After advancing a mile or two, pony insisted upon
being a little in advance, and, as usual, would have
his own way, until from the effect of checking and
whipping he broke suddenly into an irresistible gal-
lop. The rest, alarmed, urged on the horses to
keep up, if possible, while Smythe gallantly tried
to head him off. But the sound of clattering hoofs
in the rear only put him on his mettle, and made
him go the faster ; seeing which, the others were
compelled to check up, straining their eyes after
Diana, who was carried along with the speed of the
wind. The utmost apprehension filled the minds of the
whole party ; and the cheeks, which were lately as red
as the rose, became blanched like ashes. They imagin
ed that they saw the rider j ust ready to fall, and riding
on a fast canter sometimes with exclamations of
alarm, and again in a dead silence followed for a
mile farther the course of that shady lane. At last,
a man, distinguishable by a white hat, was seen in
advance of the Vernon, and great hopes were placed
on his timely assistance, and not in vain. He per-
UP THE RIVER. 273
ceived the predicament, planted himself firmly in
the middle of the road, took off his white hat, and
swaying it violently before the eyes of the approach-
ing Mexico, caused him to sheer off up a gentle ac-
clivity, and brought him up all standing against the
fence. In a moment more, the party arrived breath-
less. There was an exchange of saddles, and the
gallant Smythe, striding the wicked beast, galled
his mouth well, and basted his sides, again ariving
at the goal in advance.
It is said that a Mexican officer was shot from
the back of the pony at Buena Vista, that famous
battle-field where five thousand volunteering Yan-
kees took possession of the field occupied by tw^enty
thousand of that degenerate race, now ruled over
by the illustrious Santa Anna. Perhaps in that
campaign he got a taste for tumbling people from
his back. His sides had been formerly branded
with a hot iron, which was the only blemish on his
sleek skin. From the date of the present adventure,
he was abandoned by his fair patrons, driven in
harness, and backed only by the rougher sex.
Horsemanship is an accomplishment that, if fearless
and skilful, is both delightful and safe. But rude
and untamed beasts should never be ridden by ladies
for the mere purpose of recreation, unless they hap
274 UP THE RIYEPv
pen to be Amazons, as their position on the saddle,
however brave they may be, does not give them a
full control. In cases of danger, the attendant ca-
valier can, for the most part, render no succour,
although I have once or twice seen the requisite aid
bestowed with an incomparable grace and efficiency.
To dash up to a refractory steed, seize the bit and
bridle, re-arrange the girth, pass the arm quietly
about the waist of the falling maiden, and re-assure
both the horse and the rider, is the part of the
most accomplished knight, who by virtue of his tact,
may be well deserving of his pleasant burden. But
under proper auspices no spectacle is more pleasing
or exhilarating, nor free from alarm, than a spirited
courser, who seems proud of the charge he bears; nor
can any position more serve to set off the charms of
a stately woman. For mark how every rustic drops
his hoe ; the plough stands still ; the golden grain
still takes a momentary lease, when, with quadrupe-
dante tramp, just like a vision, bursts upon the sight
the lovely cavalcade. With buoyant grace they
float upon the air, serenely gay ; eyes sparkling
with delight ; cheeks mantling with the rose, and
every feature speaking with the zest of exercise.
Sir William Jones, once looking from his case-
UP THE RIVER. 275
ment in the East, beheld a sight like this, and has
recorded his impressions :
' As swiftly sped she o'er the lawn
Her tresses wooed the gale,
And not more lightly glanced the fawn
On Sidon's palmy vale.'*
August 12. — Where now are all those delightful
anticipations of the country, balmy breezes, spring-
time excursions, plenty of fresh air and fresh milk,
flowery meadows, songs of birds, excursions up the
river? Fulfilled and past. The heats have been
excessive ; all things droop and lag ; a blue mist
hangs over the mountains, indicative of droaght ;
the mosquitoes sing all night ; the day opens with
a sickening heat and with the chaffering of locusts
in the grove ; the excessive vegetation begins to
have a rank smell ; elasticity departs ; and the ani-
mal man feels bad. What creatures of circum-
stance we are ! The utmost which you can do is
to do nothing and to keep a serene temper. Turn
the butcher from your door ; live upon rice and su-
* Quoted from memory.
276 UP THE RIVER.
gar ; shut the windows to keep out the flies and
hot air ; cultivate the grace of patience ; lounge all
day and make your oblutions frequent ; revise the
classic authors, and try to con over some moral
maxims, that the time may not be all lost. ' A mer
ciful man is merciful to his beast.' When I see a
poor horse lashed to the top of his speed and over-
come with his exertions, panting, and gasping, and
covered with foam, I could wish that a transmigra-
tion of souls were possible, and that his cruel task-
master, like the vixen in the Arabian Tale, might
be transformed into the ill-used beast, and lashed
and goaded without stint for his cruelty. Not long
ago, I met a negro going about the country with an
old horse and cart picking up the dried bones of
horses to be ground in a mill and converted into
manure. He had arranged the skulls in a row quite
regularly along the edges of his wagon, and as I
approached, saluted me with a very knowing look
and cunning grin, as if expecting some recognition of
his artistic ingenuity. ' What is the name of your
beast V said I. ' Lazarus,' quoth he, with a smile ;
and, in fact, I thought the name not inappropriate,
for there are many poor horses whose raw bones
and sunken eyes remind you of the sepulchre. Some
reflections occurred to me more pathetic than those
UP THE RIVER. 277
derived from the contemplation of Sterne's dead
ass. Those white bones were the frame-work and
timbers of once useful and docile beasts. That long
skull with molars well worn, indicates a beast which
has served his master well. For how many years
had he drawn heavy burdens, and for a modicum
of hay fulfilled his compact while he could. How
many times had he been ready to fall under the ar-
dent rays of the sun. How many lashes had he
received in the course of his life. At last, when
old and sick, he was denied shelter and turned out
to die. He fell by the way-side, covered with sores ;
and at last the crickets lodged in the sockets of his
eyes.
August 13. — To-day has been a desperate day
with me. The thermometer at ninety degrees in
the shade. Irritated by the mosquitoes, smarting
from head to foot, sweltering with the heat and gasp-
ing for breath, at twelve ajvte meridiem I held a
consultation in my own breast to know if any defen
sive policy could be adopted. It is a satisfaction,
however small, to wreak your vengeance on paper
278 UP THE RIVER
whicli is the most innocent exhibition of discontent.
I intermitted my usual walk to the post-ofRce to
begin with, and sacrificed the perusal of the morn-
ing's paper, thereby denying myself the fresh ac-
count of rail-road slaughtery and poor labourers
killed by the sun. Next, I ordered a handful of
rice and a few tomatoes to b'^ cooked for dinner, the
same to be eaten at any hour when appetite
should justify the attempt. I then carried a wash-
tub into a vacant room, poured into it a few buckets
of rain-water, and set a large piece of sponge
a-floating on the same. I have a cellar, a deep cel-
lar, a capacious cellar, which now, as always, proved
a most valuable part of my house. Dug ten feet be-
low the surface, with the light and air admitted
through a few apertures, it is at once cool, dry, and
salubrious — the very place for milk, butter, and
cheeses, with which my neighbours keep me well
supplied. Flies or mosquitoes do not find the air
sufliciently genial for their natures ; but rats, sly
rats abound. I carried into the cellar three chairs
and a cushion, and a small table, an ink-stand, pens,
and a few sheets of paper, a small stick for the rats,
and Macaulay's History of England. Then I took
a sponging, and retreating to my cell, remained for
three hours, alternately reading and writing, and at
UP THE RIVER. 279
intervals coming up stairs to indulge in afresh bath.
The air of the place was most salutary ; the hot
breeze from above occasionally came in puffs through
the slats, and once only I beheld a sly rat leering
from beneath the roots of a cabbage, and with his
bright eyes intent on a betty of oil. Attacked the
rat, and then back to Macauley ! Perhaps it may
be a weakness to reveal these small personal mat-
ters, but hot days like the above deserve to be com-
memorated ; and I would wish to show that for
every grievance we have an ample remedy in our
power. If we are too lazy or listless to apply it,
then we may take it out in sighing and complaining,
knitting the brows, and inflicting our ill-humour on
everybody within reach. If I were about to erect
a house, which, in my present state of prosperity,
does not seem probable, let me tell you what I
would do. I would sink a deep, capacious cellar,
fill in the subterranean walls with some substance
to exclude the damp, and build me rooms which
should have the luxurious coolness of an under-
ground palace. Then when the raging heats pre-
vailed, I should not be compelled to sigh for the
cool sea-shore or for the high mountain-top, but
would be contented in my own house, and thus re-
tiring to the 'deep-delved earth,' save some valu-
280 UP THE RIVEK.
able hours of study, and retrieve more from las-
situde, vexation, and ill-humour.
August 14. — Again the heats have been unmiti-
gated, and about noon the sultriness was so great
that existence seemed a burden. There was not a
cloud in the sky, and I gazed in vain to discover
some symptoms of a coming shower. At two
o'clock, retired to the cellar, and read Macaulay.
Compared with the insufferable heat which came
down into the rooms through the blistered shingles,
how equable was the climate. A sufficient light
stole in upon the well-printed page, and with a
cooled cranium I applied myself vigorously to the
great historian. He concentrates so much allusion
through the philosophy of his antithetic narrative as
to tax the remembrance of those not read up in the
sources of history, so that in a short time he becomes
painfully brilliant even in a cellar. Went up stairs
presently, and found the atmosphere dreadful, and
indulged in a copious ablution. All faces were ill-
humoured, and the strength of animal bodies gradu
ally oozed out at every pore, and I said to R ,
'Go upon the grass and tell if you observe any
UPTHERIVER. 281
clouds on the horizon ;' just as the wife of Blue-
beard, when the emergency was pressing, exclaimed :
' O, sister Annie, look out of the casement ! Do
you not see any thing V And she replied : ' I see
a cloud of dust rising in the distance.' And so
might be descried a few dark specks, while the mu-
sic of far-off thunder was heard at the same mo-
ment. At five o'clock, the clouds were evidently
working around from the south-west, but the pros-
pect was not favourable, and the heat of the sun
continued intense. Yesterday, we had the same
symptoms, but at evening the heavens were brass,
and the very rays of the moon seemed to reflect a
portion of the sun's heat. In another hour the
heavens were darkened, and a refreshing breeze
came up, and on the other side of the river the
clouds were evidently discharging rain, for I could
see it just like long pencilings of the rays of the
Aurora Borealis, sweeping around and gradually ad-
vancing over vast tracts which, at that very instant,
were experiencing relief. Occasional gusts rifled
the trees of dead leaves ; the cattle lowed and gal-
loped through the clover-fields in search of shelter ;
and carriages dashed along the road in great haste
for their destination. In a short time, there was a
coalition of clouds from all quarters, and the moun-
282 UP THE RIVER.
tains before us were entirely obscured from view
The drops descended ; the play of lightning was in-
cessant ; a tremendous hurricane came down the
mountain, prostrating every fragile thing in its path ;
hail-stones began to play plentifully against the
panes ; and in an instant all the collected moisture
which had been sucked up from the sea-gulfs for so
many days swept along in one sheet ; it rolled over
the stubble-fields in actual waves, and through the
gullies like rivers. Presently the earth was sated,
and the invigorated lungs swelled out with fresh air
like a sponge. The birds, who had been mute, be-
gan to sing on the branches ; the quail uttered his
sweet peculiar whistle ; and the night advanced with
reiterated showers. Where now were all the le-
gions of mosquitoes ravenous for blood ? Swept
along by the invincible wind to parts unknown,
those only excepted who have taken shelter within
doors, and it will go hard with them. When a little
bird, weared out with the frequent librations of his
wings, seeks refuge in your house all trembling
from the violence of the hurricane, you catch him,
and coop him kindly in your hands, smooth down
his rumpled feathers, calm his palpitating heart, and
when the storm subsides fling him back into his na-
tive air. But for those marauders who have winffs
UP THE RIVER. 283
without feathers, and carry poison in their bills, you
adopt a different course. You grasp at them in
their flight, mash them flat on their roosts, slap them
down on the walls, urge them into cob-webs and
cheer on the little spider as he comes down the in-
visible rigging to his prey. Of all the many who
ventured on your hospitality you spare not a single
one. But if you have a good microscope, you will
take a scientific look at the little tormentors, and not
be astonished that a poultice should sometimes be
necessary to alleviate their fangs.
Aug. 15. — In the above, you have my peevish
diary or journal for a week, and more intense suf-
fering from the heat of the sun, was perhaps never
experienced in the same space, by mortal man.
Whole regiments of horses gave up the ghost m the
midst of their labours, and a hundred people drop-
ped down dead, in a single day, in the neighbouring
city. The form of the Pestilence hovered near, like
a foul bird watching the prey ; like a dog or a jackal,
crouching beneath the wall ; when suddenly the
rains descended, and the floods came, and the elec-
tric fluias resolved themselves into red-hot balls,
284 UP THE HIVER.
darting flames, and passed away through the firma-
ment, burning up the noxious gases, and cleansing it
of impurities ; and at last, the sun, veiled of his ter-
ror, came forth to cheer and to animate : a light
blue haze, like a precursor of Indian summer, over-
spread the mountains, and attempered its brilliancy,
the breezes gushed forth, cool, as if wafted from
crystal reservoirs, while every living thing which
lately gasped and panted, drew a long breath, and
the whole realm, by a successful revolution of the
elements, was changed'at once from a burning de-
sert, to a bright and beautiful oasis.
Now, the languid arms are nerved anew, and the
monotonous song of the cicada is lost in the hum
of industry, and the little lambs skip in the fields,
and the pig no longer wallows in the mud, but walks
erect, with clean and shining bristles, in all the dig-
nity of his porcine nature. Now the sound of the
hammer is again heard, and the workman toils on
the scaffold, and the labourers return cheerily when
the horn blows at noon. Now you can look on the
limpid rolling stream without desiring to share with
the fishes, or to be amphibious, like the alligator, or
the seal. It is enough to walk upon the clean mar-
gin, to pick up pebbles, to see the sails glide by, to
listen to the plash of the waves, to mark the thin-
UP THE RIVER. 285
legged snipe, as they run before you on the beach,
or the sea-gulls, as they dart about, in their sharp,
angular wanderings on lithe wings, as they pause
motionless, then drop like a stone into the river, to
bring up the little fishes in their beaks. You are
not perpetually dreaming of icy draughts, or, like
the tired Caesar, crying, ' Give me some drink,
Titinius.' Those who knitted the brows and scowled
when the rays of the sun scourged them as with a
lash, now partake of the bland weather as a matter
of course, merely saying to the passer-by, with the
indifferent air of those not grateful for any benefit,
' Fine day — fine day.' These valleys between the
mountains are like great halls, and when you are
released, as it were, from a hot oven, the ventilation
is refreshing beyond expression ; and although I
miss your damask cheeks, oh roses, and you, sweet
breathed honeysuckles, from whose lips the hum-
ming-bird dartingly drinks, as you burst into the
open windows, and twine about the porch ; and
though all the sweeter and more delicate vegetables
of the garden, such as those saccharine and much-
prized peas, Prince Albert and Queen Victoria, have
given place to corpulent roots, to be laid up for
winter use, yet walk I with pleasure among the still
verdant fields, and mar , without a murmur, the
286 ^P THE RIVER.
approach of the season which is heralded by the
falling leaf.
Hast thou ever read ' The Farmer's Boy,' com-
posed by Robert Bloomfield in a garret, without the
aid of pen, ink, paper, or slate, while he in the mean-
time plied the awl, and pulled the waxed thread?
If not, procure a copy, (I have the first American
reprint,) and after you have perused it faithfully,
though you may not be arrested with dazzling beau-
ties, it will leave after it a remembrance like the
fragrance from a bed of daisies or violets. Although
formally divided into the four seasons, it is by no
means a repetition or an imitation of Thompson, nor
so minute in its particulars, but describing only the
more ordinary incidents of a country life. There
had been few good pastorals in English, most com-
positions of this kind being formed too frigidly after
classic models, smelling more of the oil-can than
the milk-pail ; a fact which gave good scope to the
satiric pen which indited mock eclogues. These
writers affected the clown with not more success
than the latter would ape the gentleman, and, al-
though they treated of swains, rustic lovers,
bleating lambs, hedges and stiles, and banks of vio-
lets, they lacked a true Doric innocence of expres-
sion, and the sincere spirit of the pastoral muse.
UP THE R I V E 11 . 287
Milton mourned, indeed, with a touching lyric, and
tender pathos, the death of his ' loved Lycidas,' but
for the rest, their artificial poems, however highly
polished, and filled up with rustic imagery, recalled
no truthful pictures of rural life. After Thompson
had written his charming work, came Bloomfield,
and there were scholars at the time who thought
that the composition of this untutored and unher-
alded bard were unequalled since the days of Theo-
critus. It is remarkable for ease, sweetness, and
simplicity, for the general purity of its style, and is
a standing protest against the old motto, 'ne sutor
ulti'a crepidam.'' There are true pictures in this
little poem, which remind one of Goldsmith's village
School-master. Look, for instance, at those passages
which describe the character and pursuits of Giles :
• This task had Giles, in fields remote from home,
Ott as he wished the rosy morn to come,
Yet never famed was he, nor foremost found
To break the seal of sleep ; his sleep was sound.
But when at day-break summoned from his bed,
Light as the lark that caroled o'er his head.
His sandy way, deep worn by hasty showers,
O'erarched with oalcs that formed fantastic bowers,
Waving aloft their towering branches proud
In borrowed tinges from the eastern cloud, —
His own shrill matin joined the various notes
Of Nature s music, from a thousand throats ;
Tlie blackbird strove, witJi emulation sweet,
And Echo answered irom her close retreat ;
The sporting white-throat, on some twig s end borne,
Poured hymns to freedom and the rising morn ;
288 UP THE RIVER-
Stopt in her song, perchance the starting thrush
Shook a -white shower from the blackthorn bush,
Where dew-drops thick as early blossoms hung,
And trembled as the minstrel sweetly sung.
Across his path, in either gro%-e to hide.
The timid rabbit scouted by his side ;
Or bold cock-pheasant stalked along the road,
AVhose gold and purple tints alternate glowed.'
Is not that genuine, and true to nature ? Bui
Giles is a man of all work :
• His simple errand done, he homeward hies ;
Another instantl 3' his place supplies.
The clatt' ring dairy-maid, immersed in steam,
Singing and scrubbing 'midst her milk and cream,
Bawls out, ' Go ffich ihi- cons ." he hears no more,
For pigs, and ducks, and turkies, throng the door,
And sitting hens, for constant war prepared ;
A concert strange to that which late he heard.
Forth comes the maid, and like the morning smiles —
The mistress, too, and followed close by Giles.
A friendly tripod forms their humble seat,
W'th poilx hrifrht sconred, and delicate) y sweet.
Where shadowing elms obstruct the morning ray,
Begins their work, begins the simple lay ;
The full-charged udder yields its willing strf^ams,
While Mary sings some lover s amorous dreams.
And crouching Giles, beneath a neighbouring tree,
Tugs o'er his pail, and chants with equal glee ;
Whose hat, with tattered brim of nap so bare.
From the cow's side purloins a coat of hair, —
A mottled ensign of his harmless trade —
An unambitious, peaceable cockade.
Brisk goes the work beneath each busy hand.
And Giles must trudge, whoever gives command :
A Gibeonite that serves them all by turns,
He drains the pump, from him tlie faggot burns :
UP THE RIVER. ggg
From him the noisy hogs demand their food,
While, at his heels, runs many a chirping brood.
Or down his path in expectation stand,
With equal strains upon his strowing hand :
Thus wastes the morn, till each with pleasure sees
The bustle o'er, and pressed the new-made cheese.'
Now mark this picture of lambs at play :
Now, challenged forth, see hither one by one,
From every side assembling play-mates run !
A thousand wily antics mark their stay,
A starting crowd impatient of delay.
Like the fond dove, from fearful prison freed.
Each seems to say, ' Come, let us try our speed !'
Away they scour, impetuous, ardent, strong.
The green turf trembling as they bound along :
Adown the slope, then up the hillock climb.
Where every mole-hill is a bed of thyme ;
There, panting, stop ; yet scarcely can refrain, —
A bird, a leaf, will set them off again ;
Or, if a gale with strength unusual blow,
Sca'i'-rins the wild-b-ier rotten into snow.
Their little limbs increasing efforts try ;
Like the torn llowr the fair assemblage fly.'
Here is one more, which will suffice :
• He comes, the pest and terror of the yard.
His full-fledged progeny's imperious guard.
The gand'-^ : spiteful, insolent and bold.
At the colt's footlock takes his daring hold;
There, serpent-like, escapes a dreadful blow.
And straight attacks a poor, defenceless cow ;
Each booby goose the unworthy strife enjoys,
And hails his prowess with redoubled noise.
Then back he stalks, of self-importance fuU,
Seizes the shaggy fore-top of the bull.
Till, whirled aloft, he falls a timely check,
Enough to dislocate his worthless neck ;
For lo ! of old he boasts an honoured wound, —
Behold that broken wing, that trails the ground 1'
13
290 "UP THE RIVER.
For myself, I admire Thompson much, and
Bloomfield more, although it would be no envi-
able praise to stand next on the shelf to that most
exquisite descriptive poet. The first is more ex-
haustive of topics, but the second has produced a
work not less rounded and complete. The one is
more read, but the other is not less remembered.
For the one depicts like a true artist, and simply,
too ; the other artlessly describes, but with the
same truth. They are like shepherds playing alter-
nate flutes on a green bank, among the flocks and
kine, and we listen beside the hedge to the air or me-
lody ; but in the attitude of Colin, when the tune
is done, exclaim, ' What a beautiful second /' Bloom-
field's poem does not seem to be written under a
sky-light, (as it was,) in the city, but beneath the
open sky itself; for it smacks of the soft, sweet, in-
fluences of nature, whence its inspiration was de-
rived ; and although its merit, like its author, is
modest, it will live and be admired among loftier
works, so long as the daisy is not put to shame by
the damask-rose. It is one of the most difficult
among literary feats to write a good pastoral. In
the last century, when passable poetry was not such
a drug as it is at present, and the bard, as in Ho-
mer's days, was considered sacred, it was customary
UP THE RIVER. 291
to regard a rhyming plough-boy, or a poetic dairy
maid, as a real curiosity, and to bring them out for
exhibition into the drawing-rooms of people of quality,
where the poor creatures were smitten with amaze
ment, and struck dumb, and afterwards rendered
good for nothing, when their rhyming faculty turned
out to be a mere ordinary gift. There were, how-
ever, two Robins, whose sweet and wholesome notes
have justified the praise of those who love Nature,
and have confirmed their reputation as genuine birds
of song — Robert Bloomfield, and a greater still,
Robert Burns.
Aug. 15 — The willow and the poplar are always
associated in my mind, because they have been the or-
nament of some old and well remembered spots. Nei-
ther of them have received justice, and they have
been rooted from the spots which they were born to
grace, to make room for the stifferand more stately
trees of the forest. The acorns drop where the wil-
lows should weep, and the elms' branches are in-
termingled in the narrow lanes where the long row
of poplars should stand like sentinels. All trees de-
rive a part of their beauty from the position in which
they are, and the common cedar which is permitted
to grow in wild patches, or by the way-side, Avould
become illustrious if transplanted to the lawn to
292 UP THE RIVER.
stand in contrast with a softer foliage and with other
styles. There is one tree for the knoll, another for
the nook, another for the avenue, another near the
stately mansion, and all may be intermingled every
where. Sometimes they should be planted like
flowers in masses, and sometimes singly where they
will be set off and relieved by their neighbours, so
as to please the eye, to gratify the taste, to afford
shelter, to enhance beauty, and to leave nothing to
desire. But they are cut down with the civilized
axe, and they are planted without judgment. If
they are near a house they are often removed be-
cause they occasionally obstruct the eaves or enter
the spring, or what is worse, because the limber
will bring money. As ladders are not expensive,
nor labour too dear, it would be better to remove
the leaves yearly, or even to dig a new well than to
cut down a tree because of its roots. The shade is
often as desirable as cool water, and a house stand-
ing in the hot sun is most uninviting. Many people
in the country never think of planting a tree, nor
hesitate to cut one down for a few dollars, nor have
one sentiment with respect to any thing except the
pork and beans which will feed them and the laying
up of money. If they had the first inkling of an
idea of the happiness which might be derived from
UP THE RIVER. 293
Other sources, they would set out trees as well as
corn, and aspire to other flowers than a chance holly
hock.
From the time when Pope planted the first willow
in England until now, no tree, whether native or
foreign, has competed with it in use or beauty. Its
tender foliage first sprouts in spring time and lin-
gers to the very verge of winter. Its crown is noble
and fai spreading, its shade ample, and its limbs are
graceful and beautiful, whether they droop upon the
roof of the old homestead or into clean waters.
Standing singly it is a welcome and refreshing sight,
but I have not seen what would be the effect of a
whole grove or forest of willows. No doubt it
would be delightful in the extreme. No smell
which is offensive exudes from the bark or sprouting
foliage, but the cattle love to nip it, and it contains
a principle which is a powerful antidote to the poi-
sonous miasma. To the sick or the consumptive a
twig of it is a grateful sight, and I would not cut
down a willow except for the most stringent neces-
sity, unless it undermined the very house I lived in.
It is indeed true that its branches are brittle, and
that its symmetry is often injured by the winds
which snap off the tender twigs or perhaps uproot
it ; but it has this advantage ; if the limbs have
294 UP THE RIVER.
strayed off wildly, or its form has }ost symmetry, you
can saw off the tops and immediately there springs
from the thick trunk, which is full of sap and tena-
cious of life, a green and tender vegetation. I am
surprised that the willow is not more used for orna-
ment, and that it is only tolerated as long as con-
venient, in the places where it has happened to
spring up ; for I considerno paradise complete with-
out it, and it ought to be planted and tended and
trimmed, with as much care as the best tree in the
forest.
The poplar seems to have gone entirely out of
date, and is rooted up now almost invariably wher-
ever found. Once it used to be greatly valued, and
pains were taken to plant it in avenues where its
unique appearance was highly becoming. It is no
longer pop'lar, but this is usually the effect of ex-
travagant admiration. The public is fickle in its
tastes, and where it has lavished too much praise,
at last refuses any. The poplar, it is true, has
many faults. It soon becomes paralyzed at its ex-
tremities, as tall people are apt to be sickly, and
abounds in dead limbs ; it has a tendency to overrun
the soil, and if not restricted, may make itself a
nuisance, but under proper discipline it ought to be
permitted to rank among the trees. It makes a
UP THE RIVER. 295
good landmark near the sea-shore, and although its
dry branches may rattle together in the winds, the
helmsman fixes his eye upon it, and it becomes the
life of the crew.
The locusts, w'hich for many years have been af-
flicted by the borers, are gradually recovering, and
this beautiful and most valuable tree, has never lost
favour.
But I would wish to say a good w^ord for the
Alanthus, which some few years ago was all the rage
and now is evil spoken of, and rooted out of enclos-
ures. It is possible to slander trees as well as men.
It is said that the smell of the blossoms is deleterious
and unhealthful. I say that it is no such thing, and
that if it were so, they bloom seldom, and are scarcely
ever a nuisance, but almost always afford a great
shade and comfort. Some people of peculiar or-
ganizations have defamed them lately in the news-
papers and periodicals, because their nerves have
been affected by them for the few days during w hich
they have been in bloom. There are those also who
are ready to faint at the smell of the lilach, which is
exceedingly sweet and powerful, but who ever
thought of banishing it frorn the court-yard? its
flowers continue for a short space, and if they offend
a few, they are very welcome to the many. Such
296 UP THE RIVER.
is the case with the Alanthus, and I challenge proof
that it has been hurtful to the health of any one.
It is of rapid growth, and affords a quick interest in
shade for the expense invested. This is certainly
a desirable end to be attained, because every man
would naturally wish to have some good of the tree
which he sets out, although J like to see an old man
sedulously planting acorns, who knows that even his
sons may not live to behold the glory of the oak.
The Alanthus, it is true, is not the best kind of tree
nor the most permanent, but its shade is desirable
until you can make other trees to grow. After that
when it becomes old and scrawny, cut it down if you
please ; but in the mean time you will find it of
great value.
But he who plants an elm, deserves well of pos-
terity. It is the tree of trees. Its roots grapple
the earth and make its hold secure against the ap-
proaching tempest. In grandeur of proportions, it
is only equalled by symmetry of form and the clean-
ness of its foliage. Its stately column rises to an
immense height before lowest limbs by degrees
parting from the main trunk, overarch the widest
highways and the highest roofs. It counts its age
by centuries, and acquires strength, not feebleness,
by old age, for the sap rolls in rivers from its great
Uf THE RIVER. 097
heart, and every part is vital. On the banks of the
Hudson, in front of an ancient homestead, where the
Order of the Cincinnati met, there is an elm which
is the crowning glory of the hill-top, and deserving
to be venerated by the near grove. It is a tree-
model which the eye of the painter might content-
plate with pleasure, and I have seen a picture of it
which is a dainty and delicate piece of pencilling,
which you shall see presently.
What can be more suggestive to one inclined to
poetry, than the noble tree which stands in solitary
grandeur. It is not as when you walk in the gothic
gloom of forests, or beneath the shade of interlocked
and intertwining limbs. It has a history of its own,
whispered into your ear by its waving branches,
and made emphatic by its nodding crown, and in
the winter time by its bare and outstretched arms.
When you commune with an old man, you are
linked by a living tie with the generations lately
passed from the stage, but in the presence of an old
tree to departed centuries, and you invoke the spirit
of its glory, to tell you what it knows and on what
scenes its shadows may have fallen. Tell me, thou
aged elm ! — offspring of classic soil, and nodding
toward yon roof where those old men sat in coun-
cil, what legend should be engraven on thy stately
298
UP THE HI V^
shaft which stands as the monument of that green
knoll which overlooks the river ? When thou wert
young, the Indian paddled his canoe through yonder
waves where now the princely steamboat ploughs
her way as graceful as a swan, or drew his barge
among the trees, the '* high trees," which the red
man venerated, " on which the eagles built their
nests." What plumed and painted chieftain hither
led his swarthy love, and what his name and hers ?
Grey Eagle and Morning Glory ? Big Thun-
der, and Curling Smoke, or Cataract and Leap
ing Fawn or Prairie Flower ? W^hat said the King
of Matteawan ? And tell me, old tree, in what battle
of the elements hast thou won those honourable scars
and at what time the skies grew lurid with the
bolt which pierced thy heart, thou vanguard of the
forest, and champion against the storm ! Thou hast
wrestled with the hurricane, and the lightning' has
thrust its red fingers through thy locks, and all the
winds have many a time come down the mountains
to fight thee, and snows have weighed thee down,
yet thou art glorious in old age, and can respond
as musically as ever to the summer winds, and the
weary wanderer courts the shelter of thy shade.
Cans't thou tell me of Hendrick Hudson, old tree ?
UP THE RIVER. 299
Aug. 15. — There is an old dog belonging to my neigh-
bor Palmer, who comes to see me once every day about
the hour of dinner, with the expectation of being in-
vited to accept of a choice mouthful. He comes
with the attitude of a suppliant for alms, his head
down, his tail streaming along the ground, his mouth
watering, his eyes cast down, and now and then
furtively lifted, and so crawling, almost creeping to-
ward me, as if waiting for a word of positive encour-
agement, when he leaps forward with alacrity, or
with the mere utterance of the words " go home,"
he turns his back and with a flea in his ear, to say
noting of those on the rest of his body, goes back to
the old farm-house. If the family are at dinner, he
sits down on the steps and thumps with his tail. To-
day he made his appearance out of the woods cov-
ered with cobwebs, and as the sun shone on them,
he looked like a lion tangled in the meshes of a sil-
ver net. During the dog-days, I have no meat to
give him except it be now and then a small piece
of lamb, for which it seems hardly judicious to culti-
vate his taste. Although he is very hard on hogs,
T am not aware that Boos is addicted to sheep-
stealing, and I never knew a dog who was, accord-
ing to his master's knowledge. No matter how
many innocents have been throttled over night,
the man who loves his dog would consider it a po-
300 UP THE RIVER.
sitive injustice and slander on his character to hint
at such a thing, and perhaps would even come to
high words with him whose fold had been invaded.
Sheep are a grand objection to keeping a dog, and
vice versa. Above all things it is the part of a
Christian man to be at peace and tranquility with
his neighbour. In vain the air is choice and the
daisies bloom, and the birds sing, and all things
without contribute to a tranquil bosom ; a little
strife will turn your pleasant garden into a place for
thorns and brambles, and the course of life so clear
and lucid, now frets along in a turbid and interrupted
current. Scratching chickens may be the destruc-
tion of a well riveted friendship, and a nudging pig
who opened a garden gate, once caused a mighty
faction and a revolution in the politics of a whole
country. A noble dog who would take a thief by
the throat, or save a child from drowning, is too apt
to have a weakness for mutton, and this neutralizes
all his virtues and makes him outlawed. There
are no shepherds proper in this country, but it is
hard for the farmer who has counted his white sheep
on the hill side, when with the peeping dawn he
takes down the bars and goes among the dewy grass,
to find a score of them dead under the apple trees,
giving their last bah ! in their white woollen wind-
UP THE HI VER. 301
ing-sheets. In vain then as he returns sorrowful to
his breakfast to tell his wife of this deficit in the
revenue, does he cast a scrutinizing look at Boos or
Neptune, who lies innocently wagging his tail, and
distilling lucid drops before his master's door, and
discovers on him no mark of blood. He states his
misgivings to the proprietor of the dog, who sympa-
thises with him most sincerely in his loss, but who
is sure that his suspicion is unfounded. And so the
matter ends until an explanation is heard which re-
sults in the death of the Newfoundland, and mutual
bickerings ensue which are only to be stopped by
the arrival of a new tenant. Were it not for this
contingency, I should be very happy to maintain a
pup.
When I lived on the sea-shore, there was an old
doff of low extraction, a member of the extensive
family of Rovers. He was worthless, though not in
the bad sense in which that epithet is applied to
men. He was of no value, although even that is
perhaps estimating him unfairly, for he was affec-
tionate to a degree w^hich provoked a smile, and so
ugly as to win upon your esteem. He would jump
up and put his clumsy paws all covered with mud
upon your knees, and the more you put him away,
so much the more would he leap upon yoii, till an-
302 UP THE RIVER.
grj, yet laughing, you succeeded in driving him off
and looked for the broom. When my breakfast was
brought up stairs, he was punctual to the moment,
and sat outside the door thumping the floor with his
tail, or whining with piteous inflections to be let in,
until dashing down the napkin in a rage, I admit-
ted him to a solitary mouthful, which he swallowed
with a gulp, and with a smart valedictory kick dis-
missed the leering suppliant, and used to hear him
bungling down the stair-case. When we went out
in the bay, this old dog could not bear to be left
behind, but resolutely swam for the boat, and in
spite of brandished oars would scramble in, and
standing on the poop shake himself as if he had
gone where the crew wished him. Sometimes he
would follow so far, that he was dragged in out of
pity ; at other times when we were too far off, he
would stand on the bank filling the air with lamen-
tations, and imploring us to come back and take him
* in. If his request were not complied with, he would
take a short cut, two miles, to head the boat, and
when we reached the narrow inlet, there he stood,
when some one of the party would usually insist that
he should be permitted to embark. Patting on the
head, or the common-place approval of " good dog !
— good dog !" used to fill him with the liveliest sen-
UP THE RIVER. 303
timents of satisfaction. But I cannot say after all
that he was of no value. One evening the person
to vi'hom he belonged, sent a little boy in his com-
pany to the village to buy a bottle of brandy for
external application. On his return, a coloured
gentleman who had a small current of Indian blood
in his veins, who was distinguished for his know-
ledge of roots, who took his medical degree in the
college of Nature, and was known by the title of
Doctor January, perceived the neck of the bottle
in the basket, and highly appreciating the medical
qualities of the fluid, attempted to possess himself
of the same, without regard to the outcries of the
little boy. The dog who was three or four hundred
yards ahead proceeding homeward on a jog trot,
forthwith returned and bit the leg of the doctor so
shockingly, that he was laid on his back for a month.
Lady R. possessed an Italian greyhound, the
weest of all wee things. He was what we would
imagine a dog to be after swimming across the Sty-
gian pool into the spirit-land of the canine species,
if dogs have souls, and they say that pet dogs have.
He was spirituel in the extreme, his height almost
the same as that of a young puppy, his legs no thicker
than a pipe-stem, his nose sharpened to the point
of a cambric needle, and oh ! his amblings, his an-
\
304 UP THE RIVER.
tics, his actions — they were like those of the shadow
of a Lilliputian deer. His name — but I forget — her
name was Jenny Lind. Every morning after break
fast, when the fowls came to the hard-rolled, peb-
bled walk before the door for crumbs of bread, she
would approach and retreat, crouch down and cur-
vet about in a circle, and make her laughable at-
tacks, till frightened back by the flapping wings
and fierce onset of a stout and motherly duck. One
night the little dog, in consequence of a too luxu-
rious diet, fell into convulsions, and surrounded by
a tearful household, expired in her master's arms
before the break of day. Poor Jenny Lind ! I was
acquainted with a man who owned a Scotch terrier
of exceeding intelligence. His master went to the
city every morning and returned at night. As soon
as the car-bell rang and announced the return of
the train, he started for the depot in a slow and or-
derly trot, where he took his place on the platform,
and as the cars severally passed by, he poked his
nose into one and another, glancing over the passen-
gers, until he perceived his master, whom he wel-
comed with an extravagant joy. This little dog
understood the use of language, although he had
never been trained to letters in an artificial way as
they bring up a learned pig' or a learned goat. His
UP THE RIVER
305
master shrewdly suspected that he knew every-
thing which was said, and he was confirmed in his
opinion in this manner. One day in winter, the fire
gomg out, he said to him jocosely, " Ponto, take
that basket and go into the yard and pick up a few
chips." Ponto took the basket, went to the wood-
pile, took up the chips in his mouth, and brought
them in. Ponto was death on rats, and would de-
spatch a score of them in an incredibly short time,
but he nearly lost his life in an unlucky, useless,
and inglorious tussle with a pole-cat. Not suspect-
ing its peculiar means of defence, he flew at it, and
received in his face and eyes the full out-squirt of
its pungent and pestilential indignation. I neve
saw an animal in such agony in my life. He groan-
ed, he squealed, he choked, he squirmed, he twisted,
he rolled on the grass, he bit the dust, he rubbed his
eyes, and at last plunged headlong into a pond where
he liked to have been drowned. This was his first
lesson in Natural History.
XVI.
TO RICHARD HAYWARDE.
Up the River, September.
N the banks of the
noble Hudson, be-
fore it becomes ab-
breviated in width,
high up, upon a
grassy slope, thou,
Haywarde, enam-
oured of the coun-
try, not about to
erect a modest man-
sion, not castella-
ted, although in one
sense a castle ; the
stronghold of hospi-
tality and domestic
virtues, andaccord-
mg to that rural taste which distinguishes the Hay-
UP THE RIVER. 397
wardes to be entitled Chestnut Cottage. Beneath
the spreading branches of that ancient and vigor-
ous tree which gives a name to your place, I imag-
ine the pleasure which is in store autumnally for
the youthful Richard and his co-mates, as soon as
the burrs have become large, and they have entered
in earnest on the collection of that fascinating nut.
To go a-chestnutting is associated in my own mind
with more pleasing juvenile reminiscences than to
go a-fishing. When the days began to grow cool in
autumn, and the first frost had whitened the earth,
and cracked open the prickly enclosures, and ripened
the nutty crops, we used to go forth with little bas-
kets, and having arrived at some " sweet hollow"
or amphitheatre in the woods, we stood upon the
green sward looking up at the rounded crowns of the
chestnut-trees and at the nuts ready to burst with
plumpness out of their fortifications, some while as
milk, others mottled, others of a chocolate colour,
and the rest like burnished mahogany, with a little
downy tuft at the point of the shell. To hunt among
the leaves for the fallen nuts, and to throw them
one by one with a rattling sound into the baskets,
counting their number as with a cry of delight they
were found, was the first labour. When this harvest
was pretty well gleaned, the more active and adven-
308 UP THE RIVER.
turous bo}'', throwing his coat away, taking off
his shoes and hat, and hugging and clasping
the mighty trunk, would begin gradually to as-
cend, assisted in the rear by juvenile arms, and
finally standing as if the platform were secure upon
a multitude of little palms overlapped, and taking
breath before making a resolute effort to reach the
branching limbs where the grey squirrel's nest was
situate. And " don't you remember" how others would
take out their jacknives (those four-bladed jacknives,
last year's Christmas presents from Grandpa or
Aunty,) and hack down the long, lithe saplings, with
which to thrash the superincumbent limbs, and
what a rattling, nutty shower would ensue ? But it
required a coy and dexterous handling to get the
meat from the well-protected and nutty porcupines.
The little girls wore gloves and the boys fingered
the burrs tightly with sharp spikes, and mashed
them between two stones, leaving at last an im-
mense pile on the ground and bearing away with
joy the well-filled baskets — recompense of a day's
hard work.
Is not a fruit basket filled with boiled chestnuts,
which have been flavoured with a little salt, a very
pleasant addition to the dessert ? But if a large
stock has been laid in, put them in bags and liang
UP THE RIVER. 309
them up to be smoked and cured in the chimney
corner, and in the middle of winter, you will find
the nuts, if properly dried and not too hard, exceed-
ingly sweet and toothsome ? Your children will
not be obliged to roam into the woods to which ex-
cursion a part of the pleasure of chestnutting is
due, but will experience some of the sport in days
to come at Chestnut Cottage.
Richard, on some accounts, I really regret that
you intend to camp among the fields. - I shall pre-
sently have no friends in town. On a winter even-
ing when the ground was covered with snows, and
the cold was bitter, I would sometimes wander up
Broadway a long distance, then turn to the right,
pass the Italian Opera House with its row of gas
lights in front, and when before a house whose
threshold is approachable by a single step, and just
opposite the dial of St. Mark's Church, pull a bell
heartily, and ask if Mr. Haywarde were at home ; —
a question which in nine cases out of ten was an-
swered in the affirmative by the cheerful maidser-
vant, except that now and then she would say that
Mr. Haywarde had gone to the club. When such
was the case, I would sorrowfully depart, being a
member of no club, but one o* an Eclectic Society
composed of men in every honest and honourable;
310 UP THE RIVER.
calling, who sometimes meet together to pass a few
literary hours snatched from the toils of life, depre-
dated and distinguished by their pleasantness from
common time. Oh, jocund seasons ! — bright salu-
brious hours, enjoyed among the poets, and the Al-
dine bards, refreshed with memories of Shakspere
and rare Ben Jonson, and all the wits of England
who have ever lived ; — sparkling with anecdote,
with apposite allusion, and with suggestive fancies ;
sometimes, it is true, extending toward the midnight,
but ever bedewed wdth a freshness and a sweetness
like that which is sprinkled on the flowers of a May
day morning, or early June.
But I shall regret the evacuation of that town
house, and especially of that choice library, although
the books may be readily transported to another
place. It was an exceedingly snug room, with its
oaken cases, and oak pannellings, shields, spears,
and war-like trophies disposed on the walls, but
above all, its selection of books was choice and cu-
rious, some of them very antique, whose dupli-
cates cannot be found. I can scarcely imagine how
with your pursuits, in this part of the world, you
managed to pick up such rare and costly treasures.
There is that first edition of Sterne's works in a
number of little volumes, clear type, bearing on the
UPTHERIVER. 311
blank page, in ink somewhat pale, the well-known
chirography and undoubted signature of Laurence
Sterne. There were scores of clearly printed folios
full of those pithy and quaint sayings for which you
may look in any book having the year 16 — on its
title-page, besides many nick nacks of literature
which I may no doubt see again at Chestnut Cottage.
But there was something in the length and breadth
of that little study which exactly pleased the eye by
its harmonious proportions, and with the com-
fortable arm-chair placed in one corner, when the
gas shed down a cheerful blaze, it was a welcome
spot for a literary man to pass an hour in, and it
seems a pity that it should be desecrated, or that
any of its fixtures should be removed. But a change
of residence is nothing uncommon in our part of the
world. The benefits which we derive from our civil
institutions sometimes, it must be confessed, make
a fearful inroad on things merely sentimental. An
hereditary possession, whether of blooming acres,
house and fixtures, silver goblets, or what not, which
remain unmoved and irremovable, has somehow a
refining influence on its owner, and brings a fine
aroma to the feelings inappreciable by the vulgar
sense. All places and things become religiously
consecrated by the occupation and use, and are soon
312 UP THE RIVER-
associated with the dearest memories. But this
deeply . planted sentiment of our natures, we arc
compelled to violate. We make a stand on hallow-
ed churches, but our homes are temporary, and our
household gods are destined to be removed. Oh,
that it might be otherwise, if it could be. for the com-
mon weal, and that we' might join in that aspiration
of Pope's fresh and early muse : —
' Happy the man whose wish and care
A few paternal acres bound,
Content to breathe his native air,
On his own ground.'
One of the most melancholy sights which I ever
beheld was what was called a Great Vendue. It
was the selling out of all the goods and chattels
which attached to an old homestead. A few
months before, the gray-haired sire walked stout
fresh and vigourous in his eightieth year, full of
pleasantry, with all the graces of the old school, de-
lighted as much as ever with crops and farming and
sleek cattle. Then came a funeral procession from
the hall of the mansion, winding about among the oaks,
and with many tears, and with much respect, this
old occupant of the soil was softly let down into the
sepulchre of his fathers.
' Linquenda tellus et domus et placens
Uxor neque harum quas colis arborum
Te praeter invisas cupressos
Ulla brevem dominum sequetur.
UP THE RIVER. 31;^
I can never tire of repeating this sentiment of the
poet Horace, an author which this old man had at
his fingers' ends, and while he lay on the hard sofa
in the hall, reading the odes on a summer's day,
quoting those sentiments which apply to common
life, expressed by a few compact words in majestic
Latin, he would say with a smile in allusion to his
latter end, that he was " only waiting for the car-
riage." Horace and Livy he used to read through
and through every year, and the Bucolics of Virgil,
and he would laughingly say that the perusal was
an ever fresh delight, because the decay of his me-
mory was so great that it was every time like anew
story. But the Bible was his Book of Books, of
which, although he forgot nothing, he always found
some new direction given to thought in the expan-
sion of its immutable and glorious principles.
But he died and was buried by his kindred, and
the place must needs be sold and pass into the pos-
session of strangers who would demolish the house
and set no value on a single tree, except for the sake
of its shadow. The law of change, however, arrest-
ed for a little by arbitrary enactment, must alas ! pre-
vail in the end, and with a sigh we acknowledge
that it is well that it should be so. One day I passed
by, (it was a sunshiny morning,) and observed an
314 UP THE RIVER.
unusual bustle. All kinds of carriages were on the
ground, and the horses who were tied to the posts
and trees at every available spot wiiere there was
any shade, were stamping with their hoofs round
holes in the grass, and there was a great crowd as-
sembled about the porch, and wandering with free
license through the chambers of the house, among
the grounds and through the garden, picking fruits,'
making themselves at home, and satisfying their cu-
riosity by a sight of mere ordinary things which had
heretofore been hidden from view. In the midst of
the confusion could be heard the hammer of the
auctioneer, and the gay hilarious laugh in answer
to his appeal to their risibilities, because the auc-
tioneer usually professes to be a wit. There he
stood in the most unfeeling manner, knocking down
to the highest bidder old pieces of furniture now
out of fashion, tables with lion-like claws, just like
so much lumber. There was a samp-mortar, used
by the Indians who pre-occupied the spot before
windmills and water-w^heels were heard of on this
continent. There was the substantial mahogany
cradle in which so many members of the family had
been rocked, as good as ever. I once saw a man
bowed down with age, look down upon the roofed
nestling place, where as it seemed but yesterday
UP THE RIVER. 315
his infantine face was pillowed, and he marked
where the rocker had been worn away by the touch-
ing foot of one whose tenderness was not yet forgot-
ten. There was the solid, sound, round, substantial
mahogany, which had so often groaned with dainties,
around which so many delightful family gatherings
had been held on many a Christmas holiday. " How
muchumoffer'd, how muchumoffer'd ? — going, going,
going — an half do I hear ? — anaf — naf — naf — naf —
naf — naf — naf — naf — naf — nafnaf — nafnaf — nafnaf
speak quick and be done — bang. — Cash takes it. —
And here, gentlemen, is a globe of the United States."
Ah, how discordant the choral laugh, and the con-
tinual tramping of the multitude, so different from
the pattering footsteps which used to be heard on
the stair cases and in the hall. By night-fall the
work was done, the accounts were cast up, the
house was dismantled of its furniture, and the com-
pany went home.
And much more varied and melancholy, Haywarde,
are the adventures and destiny of choice books.
The treasures of the Vatican and Bodleian libraries
remain, and will remain, it may be for ages on the
foundation which was intended to be eternal, until
the fires of Vandalism or Revolution sweep them
away like those of the Alexandrian. But what be-
316 UP THE RIVER.
comes of the private collections, small libraries like
yours, compacted with so much pains, and guarded
with so much affection ? In a few years the books
are scattered abroad, and one of them is picked up
at a night auction-sale under the gas lamps, and
others which whilome used to stand in most re-
spectable company among the Beaumonts and
Fletchers in some rosewood case, are wistfully gazed
at on a street-corner by the sauntering scrutiniz-
ing collector, or antiquary, mixed up with Dilworth's
spelling books, elegant extracts of prose and poetry,
and the stray odd volumes torn away from costly
sets, and the emptying of trunks in the garret. Long
may it be before the books in the Hayward collec-
tion be thus scattered, but although removed from
their snug delightful depository in the city, may they
find an equally pleasant, but longer and securer
resting place in Chestnut Cottage, there to be
taken down and delicately handled by the friends
who are seated in social converse, to be perused
with dulcet gusto, on the piazza of that rising house
which is to overlook the river.
The River ! — It is a great privilege, every year
more dearly purchased, to have a house not exactly
out of the world, upon some stream of flowing wa-
ter. From experience I speak, haA^ng for three
UPTHERIVER. 317
years lived within a stone's throw of the spot where
the tide rolled up on snow-white sands and pebbles,
and almost on any sultry night could I walk into
the phosphorescent wave and return all dripping to
a couch visited by sleep sweet and sound and re-
freshing until the birds began to sing at early day,
and there too, from time to time, enjoyed the charm-
ing prospects from the Piazzas of Rhineland, Eg-
lantina, Bella Vista, Ward's Promontory, Thursto-
nia, Kalmia abounding with laurels, and Hawthorn-
den. And oh, the rides about that rolling landscape,
winding about promontories whose base was laved
by the clear blue waters of the Long Island Sound,
those beautiful coves sweeping around in a circle
like the Bay of Naples ! — and the excursions into
the broad deep through that narrow inlet ! — the
black-fishing on the rocks, the feasting and jocosity
on the mainshore, or the embowered islets !
Some would prefer a house upon the broad ocean,
but there are few available places to be had along
the coast where in addition to a sight of the " Far
Sounding," you have the advantage of high banks,
green fields, and of a pleasant landscape. There is
indeed nothing more hilarious and inspiriting than
the sea itself, emblem of the Infinite ; to feel in hot
summer gushing over your brow the ever pure and
318 UP THE RIVER.
fresh breeze which comes up from its bosom, saying
with the Greek poet, avpo, ■roj'rtas avpu, and with
Plinius in his delight, O, mare et tellus ! verum
atque secretum, (xovattov — quam multa invenitis ! —
quam multa dictatis ; — to walk bare-footed on the
white beach, on the very edge of the retreating wave,
and feel the sands sucked away beneath your toes,
yea, to dash with a frantic joy into the midst of the
breakers, now floating like a surf-duck buoyant
above them, struggling for a moment with the un-
dertow, and dragged seaward, then cast like a piece
of wreck-wood on the shore ; — to walk there silent
and thoughtful, murmuring ' there go the ships,
there goes the leviathan,' and ever to hearken to
the beating of that oldest and mightiest pulse which
has throbbed since the world began. Oh, the
sea is beyond the apostrophe of any poet to picture
its sublimity. It has a life, and that the longest ; a
heart, and that the boldest ; a voice, and that the
most audible ; a calm which is indescribable, but a
fury which is beyond control. And when I look
upon the hoary mane which lies across its back like
the mane of an old lion, the froth which gathers on
it from lashing the rocks, and hearken to the sound
of its bowlings, or to the music of its murmurs in
the rosy ear of the conch shells which lie along the
U P THE RIVER. 3I9
shore, it appears like some masterful giant, the
greatest and most venerable in the physic world.
The sons of men, and the trees of the forest do not
retain their individuality, but are perpetuated by
successive generations. It is a great thing to recog-
nize in those who live, the name and traits of other
men who in days past were deemed heroic, or to sit
beneath the shadow of a tree whose roots were
stricken in centuries gone by. But the sea is the
same sea which began to roll at the prime creation
when God separated the elements, into which Xerxes
cast his shackles, which Canute rebuked, and upon
whose billows Jesus walked, and which now
throws its great Briarean arms to the ends of the
world, enwrapping continents and girdling the
sunny isles in its embrace ; — never changing,
never corrupting, because it contains within it the
very principle of preservation — the salt of the earth.
There is great food for reflection upon its brink
There the thoughtful may muse solitary, and the
religious lifts up his heart to God.
But to recur to what I was saying. When you
wish to have a house where you may live the year
round, you do well to build it by the river rather
than by the sea. The latter accords not so well
with social feelings, for there is a dreariness as well
320 UP THE mvER.
as majesty in a vast expanse of waters, where you
can see no land beyond, and where your thoughts
are outward, and onward, and far away. You must
have some natural barriers which will hem you in,
and make your mind return whence it set out, and
your home snug. The sea does not limit you ; —
because it appears to have no limits. The Switzer
loves his native cot so much, not because the moun-
tains tower beyond his sight and are lost in clouds,
but because their sloping bases so wind about it, as
to form pleasant vallies and sequestered nooks and
natural walls the most impregnable to guard his
little paradise on earth. Perhaps the peasant has not
that poetic feeling which tempts the traveller to
where the avalanche threatens and the chamois leaps
from cliffs to ice clad cliff, and Mont Blanc " mo-
narch of mountains," upheaves the skies. His af-
fection arises from a different principle. His little
cot is placed in a valley W'hich catches all the sun-
beams, where he is within sight of grandeur but sur-
rounded with beauty, where the avalanche cannot
hurt him, but he hears the sound of the cascade and
cataract, and with clear resilience the echoes of
the Ranz des Vachs. There can he walk securely
with those he loves, and on being removed thence,
UP THE RIVER. 321
he pines away and dies with a dreadful sinking and
sickness of the heart.
Therefore I think that the silver stream of a river
is a better boundary for your habitation, than the
illimitable sea, because although occasionally you
may wish to look upon the grandeur, you would not
always bear the fury of the storm. Having tender
Haywardes, you must be where the winter winds
will not visit you too bleakly ; you must woo the
amenities of the landscape, live on the edge of the
waves, not breakers, upon whose glassy surface you
may see the trees inverted, the image of the rose
repeated in the clear cold depths, the stars twink-
ling by night in a mock firmament, and where i1
may be a matter of marvel to your little boys how
Chestnut Cottage, far off as it is, should be turned
upside down, as if it stood on the very brink of the
water.
When your house, though not grand or towering,
not marked with wooden and ambitious colonnades
of Ionian or Corinthian columns ; not aping styles
of architecture which ill comport with its size or it«
location, but with a harmony which costs no money,
although it can only be had as the result of taste
improved by study and chastised by art ; in which
length shall correspond with breadth, and both with
322 UPTHERIVER.
heiffht, and all details with the material of which
the structure is builded, so that lightness or massive
strength may have reference and relation to sur-
rounding things, and colour itself may be made to
blend pleasantly with adjoining colours, but above
all, that the house may be consonant to the charac-
ter of the owner, to the design and purposes for
which it has been built, and be an example of domes-
tic architecture to the whole docile neighbourhood,
and not a mere challenge to the vulgar who happen
to be possessed of wealth : — when, I say, the whole
has been reared, and the carpenters have removed
their tools, and the painters have gone away, and
the smell of the paint has evaporated, it is expected
by your friends that you fling open the folding doors,
light up the wax candles, and give an old fashioned
" house warming," do you hear? J would sooner
be present than to have a ticket to the Inauguration
of the Crystal Palace. You will not live in a
glass house, which is w ell enough, as you some-
times write satires, but in a much more substantial
residence, let us hope, because the ground it stands
on is your own. There is no sentiment in dwelling
in a hired tenement, even if it blaze with a facti-
tious splendour. For though the roof protects you,
what protects the roof ? I wish to see what start
UP THE RIVER. 303
you will make, and with what kind of a grace you
are going to dispense hospitality on your own ground
when relieved from every vestige and disability of
the feudal system. Upon my word I would not
wish to own a decent, comfortable house, and live
in it after the fashion of some people, in the same
torpid security with which a snail inhabits its shell.
For they see nobody, or think that some annual,
heartless, vapid, showy supper, will be a set off for
the genial, easy, intercourse which should be a part
of every day, or hour. I go in heartily and devoutly
for the sedulous cultivation of the social element in
every man's character. By neglect or solitude, a
taste for that happiness which it confers will fast
decay, and general shyness and apathy ensue. It
is pleasant to see people with some little life in them,
and who are ready to welcome the occasion with an
alacrity and lighting up of the countenance, and
who have some pressure in the grasp, if it be not so
strong as to crush the knuckles. And although
there are individuals whom seclusion is befitting,
as the State prisoner in his cell, the sick man in his
chamber, the student in his closet, or the afflicted
in his retirement, it is essential to the proper en-
joyment of life while it lasts, and to the healthy
constitution of the general social body, that there
324 UP THE IIIVER.
should be a frequent congress of its members. There
is no such thing as solitude except by contrast ; — I
mean that there is no such thing as natural and
healthful privacy. What says the Great Zimmer-
man, whose name is indissolubly connected with a
theme of which he has treated so charmingly. *' The
pleasures of society, though they may be attended
with unhappy effect and pernicious consequences to
men of weak heads and corrupted hearts, who only
follow them for the purpose of indulging the follies
and gratifying the vices to which they have given
birth, are yet capable of affording to the wise and
virtuous, a high, rational, sublime and satisfactory
enjoyment. The world is the only theatre upon
which great and noble actions can be performed, or
the heights of moral and intellectual excellence use-
fully attained ;" and he says toward the conclusion
of his most excellent work that the chief design of
it is " to exhibit the necessity of combining the uses
of solitude w'ith those of society, to show in the
strongest light the advantages they may mutually
derive from each other, to convince mankind of
the danger of running into either extreme ; to teach
the advocate of uninterrupted society how highly
all the social virtues may be improved, and its vices
easily abandoned by habits of solitary abstraction ;
UP THE RIVER. 325
and the advocate for continual solitude how much
that indocility and arrogance of character, which is
contracted by a total absence from the world, may
be corrected by the urbanity of society." These
are the very ideas which I would advocate, and
which apply peculiarly to the case of every country
gentleman. It is pitiful to see so many delightful
rural neighbourhoods where people of equal, or
nearly equal quality, live near together, who have
abandoned themselves to petty feelings and the ad-
justment of their several shades of respectability
instead of forgetting all in a constant and whole-
souled hospitality. A partial blending even with
imperfect sympathies, would be better than nothing,
while in seclusion and aversion and a dull apathy,
are hatched as in some secret favourable spot, the
eggs of envy, malice, detraction and uncharitable-
ness.
Because, therefore, one lives in the country, that
is not to say that thereafter he must live alone. One
great duty of the cultivated man, is to try by his
example to help the progress of ideas like the above
among the rural population who give up too much
time to work, live too much in the kitchen, and who
have little of that vivacity wiiich distinguishes even
the oppressed people of the Continent of Europe.
326 UP THE RIVER.
Their very speech is lazy, the current of their con-
versation as languid as the waters of a duck-pond,
accompanied not with sparkling eyes, or even with
a see-saw, sawney gesture, not spoken tripplingly
or trillingly with inflection, cadence, and a sharp
emphasis. You never see them collected under the
trees of a summer evening, young and old, with an
apparent freedom in all their motions, partaking of
nick-nacks, listening to the sound of a flute or a viol.
It is true that on a fourth of July, when the heat is
sweltering, they will start off early in the morning,
and make a day's work of it in dragging after them
heavy baskets loaded with root beer and such trash
miles into the country, coming back at evening tired
out and satiated with amusement for a year. Or
perhaps others will go in the winter to a ball at a
country tavern, where, as recreation has been such
a scarce commodity, they are apt to proceed to
great excess. As to a constant habit of sociality, it
is not known. A tea table with its loads of unhealthy
cake and sweetmeats, and solemn silence is the ulti-
matum, A large proportion do not partake at home
in all their fulness of the refinements of life and com-
forts which they have richly earned, and which they
are able to enjoy. The very process of acquisition
seems to have raised an insurmountable barrier to
UP THE RIVER. 327
the use. A man who will not be generous to him-
self, will never be ready to make sacrifices for others.
Always treat yourself politely, kindly and genially,
(but never extravagantly,) if you can do so with jus-
tice, and your neighbour as yourself. Charity does
not even begin at home with some, and of course, in
a perverted sense, there is no end of their good deeds,
because that can have no end which has no begin-
ning.
I perceived, while strolling over your ground, that
you have already laid out the walks of a pleasant
garden, where you may obtain your fresh vegetables,
from the early radish to the late celery and snowy-
headed cauliflower, and as to flowers, it will be em-
bellished like a painting in the Crystal Palace drawn
by some fair hand, in which is all the floral train
described by Shakspere in his plays, with the " sweet
musk-rose" in the centre, A garden, however small,
if it only contain a few beds, a little sage and thyme
and parsly, has about it a smack of the old Eden,
before the fall. There you will notice the gradual
growth of plants in the early spring, and get a smell
of the mould as you stoop down to root out a weed
or to pluck a violet.
The great Lord Chancellor Bacon, in writing
pleasantly on this subject, to which he imparts a
328 UP THE RIVER.
portion of his universal learning, says that "the con-
tents are not to be under thirty acres, divided into
three parts, a green in the entrance, a heath or de-
sert in the going forth, and the main garden in the
midst with allies on both sides." But this applies
only to the " royal ordering of gardens," and is ac-
cording to that scale of princely living, a taste for
which reduced that paragon of letters to the dust
of humility, brought a slur on the new philosophy
in the very person of its illustrious founder, and
caused him at last to bequeath his " name and me-
mory to foreign nations, and to his own countrymen
after some time he passed over^ " There ought,"
says he, " to be gardens for every month in the
year, in which severally things of beauty may be
then in season. For November, December, January
and February, you must take such things as be green
all winter, holly, ivy, bays, juniper, cypress trees,
yew, fir trees, rosemary, periwinkle, the white, the
purple and the blue germander, flags, orange trees,
lemon trees and myrtle, if tliey he stoved, and sweet
marjeram, ivar7n set.
For the latter part of January and February, you
have also the merzereon tree, which then blossoms,
crocus vernus, both the yellow and the grey prim-
UP THE RIVER. 329
rose, anemonies, the early tulip, hyacintbus orient-
alis, chamairis, fritellaria.
For March, here come the violets, especially the
single blue, which are then earliest, the yellow daf-
fodil, the daisy, the almond tree in blossom, the
peach tree in blossom, sweet brier.
In April follow the double white violet, the wall-
flower, the stock gillies, the cowslip, flower-de-luce,
and lillies of all natures, the tulip, the double piony,
the pale daff"odil, the honeysuckle, the cherry tree
in full bloom, the damascene and plum tree, the
white thorn in leaf, the lelach tree."
Then he goes on to mention buglos, columbine,
ribes, rasps, sweet satyrian, liliuni convallium, melo-
cotones, wardens, services, medlars, bullaces, &c.
" And because," saith he, " the breath of flowers
is far sweeter in the air, where it comes and goes,
like the warbling of music, than in the hand, there-
fore nothing is more fit for that delight than to know
what be the flowers and plants that best perfume
the air. Roses damask and red are fast flowers of
their smells, so that you may walk by a whole row
of them and find nothing of their sweetness ; yea
though they be wet with a morning's dew. Those
which yield the sweetest smell are the strawberry
leaves when dying, the flower of vines, a little dust
330 UP THE RIVER.
which grows on the cluster in the first coming forth,
wall flowers very delightful to be set under a parlour
and lower window, and honeysuckles, so that they
be somewhat afar off."
Here you have from one, and him as wise as Solo-
mon in things of natural science, the catalogue of
all the trees, shrubs, fruits and flowers which are
pleasant to the eye, agreeable to the taste, and
which give forth a " most excellent, cordial odour."
There are other matters alluded to by the Lord
Chancellor in his essay, such as hedges, arbours,
aviaries, fish pools, fountains, reservoirs, which were
no doubt practised upon by him in his palmy days,
and for which I refer you to his works, which are,
I believe, to be found on the shelves of the Hay-
warde library. I have often thought that it was a
redeeming circumstance in the great man's lot, that
when the incense of adulation was no longer given,
the incense of flowers was not withdrawn, for these
are often the most sweet allayment for a wounded
spirit, and for slights, cuts, indignities and the aver-
sions of men.
But I shall also suggest something which is not
found in the above treatise, and that is, that you are
to have a sun-dial in the middle of your garden, and
under the embowering trees in some alley, a couple
UP THE RIVER. 331
of bee houses made semi-globular, of twisted straw
after the old fashion, forasmuch as they have a
more rustic look, and are a better ornament than
Yankee bee hives. Thence you shall see the little
rovers sally forth upon a bright spring morning to
commit their petit larcenies, sipping- from the cups
in which the humming bird has plunged his beak,
and which the winds have rifled, supplying all the
cells with virgin honey, yet without a damage done
to any rose. There you shall watch them on their
swift return from apple orchards and from banks
" whereon the wild thyme grows" with gilded thighs,
like little ingots hunof about their waists, and all
that marvellous economy in which we see their in-
stinct excelling art. There you shall behold a model
of good government, patterns of loyalty and industry,
as well as the sweet rewards of toil.
Bees bring- good luck as well as birds. It was a
summer morning, as I sat in my own chamber, and
the windows were all wide open to admit the breeze,
and I was listening to the song of birds, to the plash
of the waves, and tinkling of kine in the neighbour-
ing meadows, when suddenly down the hills of
Rhineland there came a tumultuous company of
boys and girls, accompanied by the cymbals and
music of the Corobantes, while over the heads of
332 UP THE RIVER-
all the youthful revellers as they beat the flashing
pails and wares of Cornwall, I beheld a moving
cloud, and above the din I heard a hum, a buzz, a
murmur of the bees in agitation, still moving on but
with their phalanxes steadily wheeling about the
queen. The queen was in the centre of the flying
group, protected by her thick body-guard, while I
could observe the scattered scouts, and many outer
sentinels fall victims to the birds. Onward they
came, and still the humming and the din became
more aggravated until the swarming bees began to
flit and buzz around the very porch and windows of
the house. The combatants came within where
they were reinforced in the hall of the old farm house
by all manner of brazen implements and tin tinabu-
lations ; the cook, the chambermaid, the little boy,
the fat woman, and the rosy-cheeked girls, all helped
along the Callathumpian band, and ever and anon
the latter rushed with screams into some upper room
chased by a solitary, wanton bee. Under the
pear tree on the green there stood a table spread
with a clean white cloth on which was placed the
medicated hive or box besmeared with sweets.
But this house of refuge was rejected : it did not so
please the mind of the queen bee. The whole
swarm entered the windows of my chamber and
UP THE RIVER. 333
hung like a bunch of grapes on the low post of my
bed. This I accounted a good omen, and I patiently
wait until this day for something which deserves the
name of luck to overtake me. Alas ! there is al-
ways a lion in the way, but when he is slain, 1 hope
that some honey may be found in his carcase.
Haywarde, as you have a numerous family, I sin-
cerely hope that Chestnut Cottage may not for a
long period or never share the fate of that old man's
heritage of which I just spoke, but may be of the
nature of an entailed estate. Thus you will not be
planning walks, training briers and making terraces
for some Bathyllus who is to come after you. Sic
vos non vobis will not apply ; nor will you be like
the birds, the sheep, the bees, the oxen which Vir-
gilius speaks of. But admit that it is so. Hold an
acorn in your hand, and imagine the fairy trunk and
roots and limbs and foliage which are even now
enshrined invisible within its polished walls. Are
you one of those who would not cover it with a lit-
tle dust for fear a stranger should enjoy the future
shadow ? What avenue of trees should we now
walk under, and how would every public road be
like a passage through a stately forest, if former
men had dropped in a row of acorns for the benefit
of us strangers. But selfishness is deeper rooted
334 UP THE RIVER.
than the trees would now be, or rather in charity let
us suppose that men do not think of a future which
is not circumscribed by their own interests.
But I must not go on to a tedious prolixity, and
I now conclude by assuring you of my wishes for
your future prosperity, and can imagine the
pleasure which you will hereafter experience
when leaving the hot and crowded city at the close
of a summer's day, you shall arrive at the door of
Chestnut Cottage, and having brushed off the dust,
put on a clean shirt, and washed your hands and face,
you walk forth upon your terrace which directly
faces the grand gigantic, natural wall of the Pali-
sades, and the expansive river. There you will have
embowered seats, and it will be the very place in which
to meditate aright, to read a book, or to compose a
poem, and as the hour of twilight creeps along, and
the crests of the waves flash in the moonbeams, and
the hum of the departing day has ceased, your friends
and family shall gather round to hear the tum-tum
of the light guitar, and the rippling of the river. In
a few years you will have your trees rooted, your
vines blooming, your grass in order, your walks laid
out, and the whole place so arranged that it would
meet the approbation of Blenerhasset ; and although
it is no Chats worth with its Paradisal lawns and ut-
UP THE ItlVER.
335
most luxury of landscape, nor is your garden order
ed with that right royal breath and scope advised
by England's learned Chancellor ; — nay, though you
are rather straitened to the quatuor jugera of the
poet, in which to plant the shrubs of every season,
and raise the plants productive of a most excellent,
cordial odour, your sylvan theatre is large enough
for the exhibition of a correct taste, a contented
mind and all the graces of hospitality. Let others
own the acres ; as far as eye can reach, the prospect
is your own ; below, the wide expansive basin of the
Tappaan Sea ; above, the towering Highlands ; be-
yond, the blue line of the Kaatskills, classic ground.
Here then, let our aspirations be, for many a pleas-
ant morning, attempered noonday, serene and star-
lit evening of our days among the sylvan sceneries,
Up the River.
/^7
I
i i