Complete Prose Works
thighs covered with the yellow forage. A solitary robin sings near. I
sit in my shirt sleeves and gaze from an open bay-window on the indolent
scene--the thin haze, the Fishkill hills in the distance--off on
the river, a sloop with slanting mainsail, and two or three little
shad-boats. Over on the railroad opposite, long freight trains,
sometimes weighted by cylinder-tanks of petroleum, thirty, forty, fifty
cars in a string, panting and rumbling along in full view, but the sound
soften'd by distance.
DAYS AT J. B.'S TURF-FIRES--SPRING SONGS
_April 26_.--At sunrise, the pure clear sound of the meadow lark. An
hour later, some notes, few and simple, yet delicious and perfect, from
the bush-sparrow-towards noon the reedy trill of the robin. To-day is
the fairest, sweetest yet--penetrating warmth--a lovely veil in the air,
partly heat-vapor and partly from the turf-fires everywhere in patches
on the farms. A group of soft maples near by silently bursts out in
crimson tips, buzzing all day with busy bees. The white sails of sloops
and schooners glide up and down the river; and long trains of cars, with
ponderous roll, or faint bell notes, almost constantly on the opposite
shore. The earliest wild flowers in the woods and fields, spicy arbutus,
blue liverwort, frail anemone, and the pretty white blossoms of the
bloodroot. I launch out in slow rambles, discovering them. As I go along
the roads I like to see the farmers' fires in patches, burning the dry
brush, turf, debris. How the smoke crawls along, flat to the ground,
slanting, slowly rising, reaching away, and at last dissipating. I like
its acrid smell--whiffs just reaching me--welcomer than French perfume.
The birds are plenty; of any sort, or of two or three sorts, curiously,
not a sign, till suddenly some warm, gushing, sunny April (or even
March) day--lo! there they are, from twig to twig, or fence to fence,
flirting, singing, some mating, preparing to build. But most of them _en
passant_--a fortnight, a month in these parts, and then away. As in all
phases, Nature keeps up her vital, copious, eternal procession. Still,
plenty of the birds hang around all or most of the season--now their
love-time, and era of nest-building. I find flying over the river,
crows, gulls and hawks. I hear the afternoon shriek of the latter,
darting about, preparing to nest. The oriole will soon be heard here,
and the twanging _meoeow_ of the cat-bird; also the king-bird, cuckoo
and the warblers. All along, there are three peculiarly characteristic
spring songs--the meadow-lark's, so sweet, so alert and remonstrating
(as if he said, "don't you see?" or, "can't you understand?")--the
cheery, mellow, human tones of the robin--(I have been trying for years
to get a brief term, or phrase, that would identify and describe that
robin call)--and the amorous whistle of the high-hole. Insects are out
plentifully at midday.
_April 29_.--As we drove lingering along the road we heard, just after
sundown, the song of the wood-thrush. We stopp'd without a word, and
listen'd long. The delicious notes--a sweet, artless, voluntary, simple
anthem, as from the flute-stops of some organ, wafted through the
twilight--echoing well to us from the perpendicular high rock, where, in
some thick young trees' recesses at the base, sat the bird--fill'd our
senses, our souls.
MEETING A HERMIT
I found in one of my rambles up the hills a real hermit, living in a
lonesome spot, hard to get at, rocky, the view fine, with a little patch
of land two rods square. A man of youngish middle age, city born and
raised, had been to school, had travel'd in Europe and California. I
first met him once or twice on the road, and pass'd the time of day,
with some small talk; then, the third time, he ask'd me to go along a
bit and rest in his hut (an almost unprecedented compliment, as I heard
from others afterwards.) He was of Quaker stock, I think; talk'd with
ease and moderate freedom, but did not unbosom his life, or story, or
tragedy, or whatever it was.
AN ULSTER COUNTY WATERFALL
I jot this mem, in a wild scene of woods and hills, where we have come
to visit a waterfall. I never saw finer or more copious hemlocks, many
of them large, some old and hoary. Such a sentiment to them, secretive,
shaggy--what I call weather-beaten and let-alone--a rich underlay of
ferns, yew sprouts and mosses, beginning to be spotted with the early
summer wild-flowers. Enveloping all, the monotone and liquid gurgle
from the hoarse impetuous copious fall--the greenish-tawny, darkly
transparent waters, plunging with velocity down the rocks, with patches
of milk-white foam--a stream of hurrying amber, thirty feet wide, risen
far back in the hills and woods, now rushing with volume--every hundred
rods a fall, and sometimes three or four in that distance. A primitive
forest, druidical, solitary and savage--not ten visitors a year--broken
rocks everywhere--shade overhead, thick underfoot with leaves--a just
palpable wild and delicate aroma.
WALTER DUMONT AND HIS MEDAL
As I saunter'd along the high road yesterday, I stopp'd to watch a man
near by, ploughing a rough stony field with a yoke of oxen. Usually
there is much geeing and hawing, excitement, and continual noise and
expletives, about a job of this kind. But I noticed how different,
how easy and wordless, yet firm and sufficient, the work of this young
ploughman. His name was Walter Dumont, a farmer, and son of a farmer,
working for their living. Three years ago, when the steamer "Sunnyside"
was wreck'd of a bitter icy night on the west bank here, Walter went
out in his boat--was the first man on hand with assistance--made a
way through the ice to shore, connected a line, perform'd work of
first-class readiness, daring, danger, and saved numerous lives. Some
weeks after, one evening when he was up at Esopus, among the usual
loafing crowd at the country store and post-office, there arrived
the gift of an unexpected official gold medal for the quiet hero. The
impromptu presentation was made to him on the spot, but he blush'd,
hesitated as he took it, and had nothing to say.
HUDSON RIVER SIGHTS
It was a happy thought to build the Hudson river railroad right
along the shore. The grade is already made by nature; you are sure of
ventilation one side--and you are in nobody's way. I see, hear, the
locomotives and cars, rumbling, roaring, flaming, smoking, constantly,
away off there, night and day--less than a mile distant, and in full
view by day. I like both sight and sound. Express trains thunder and
lighten along; of freight trains, most of them very long, there cannot
be less than a hundred a day. At night far down you see the headlight
approaching, coming steadily on like a meteor. The river at night has
its special character-beauties. The shad fishermen go forth in their
boats and pay out their nets--one sitting forward, rowing, and one
standing up aft dropping it properly-marking the line with little
floats bearing candles, conveying, as they glide over the water, an
indescribable sentiment and doubled brightness. I like to watch the tows
at night, too, with their twinkling lamps, and hear the husky panting
of the steamers; or catch the sloops' and schooners' shadowy forms, like
phantoms, white, silent, indefinite, out there. Then the Hudson of a
clear moonlight night.
But there is one sight the very grandest. Sometimes in the fiercest
driving storm of wind, rain, hail or snow, a great eagle will appear
over the river, now soaring with steady and now overbended wings--always
confronting the gale, or perhaps cleaving into, or at times literally
_sitting_ upon it. It is like reading some first-class natural tragedy
or epic, or hearing martial trumpets. The splendid bird enjoys the
hubbub--is adjusted and equal to it--finishes it so artistically.
His pinions just oscillating--the position of his head and neck--his
resistless, occasionally varied flight--now a swirl, now an upward
movement--the black clouds driving--the angry wash below--the hiss
of rain, the wind's piping (perhaps the ice colliding, grunting)--he
tacking or jibing--now, as it were, for a change, abandoning himself to
the gale, moving with it with such velocity--and now, resuming control,
he comes up against it, lord of the situation and the storm--lord, amid
it, of power and savage joy.
Sometimes (as at present writing,) middle of sunny afternoon, the
old "Vanderbilt" steamer stalking ahead--I plainly hear her rhythmic,
slushing paddles--drawing by long hawsers an immense and varied
following string, ("an old sow and pigs," the river folks call it.)
First comes a big barge, with a house built on it, and spars towering
over the roof; then canal boats, a lengthen'd, clustering train,
fasten'd and link'd together--the one in the middle, with high staff,
flaunting a broad and gaudy flag--others with the almost invariable
lines of new-wash'd clothes, drying; two sloops and a schooner aside the
tow--little wind, and that adverse--with three long, dark, empty barges
bringing up the rear. People are on the boats: men lounging, women in
sun-bonnets, children, stovepipes with streaming smoke.
TWO CITY AREAS, CERTAIN HOURS
NEW YORK, _May 24, '79_.--Perhaps no quarters of this city (I have
return'd again for awhile,) make more brilliant, animated, crowded,
spectacular human presentations these fine May afternoons than the two
I am now going to describe from personal observation. First: that
area comprising Fourteenth street (especially the short range between
Broadway and Fifth avenue) with Union square, its adjacencies, and so
retrostretching down Broadway for half a mile. All the walks here are
wide, and the spaces ample and free--now flooded with liquid gold from
the last two hours of powerful sunshine. The whole area at 5 o'clock,
the days of my observations, must have contain'd from thirty to
forty thousand finely-dress'd people, all in motion, plenty of them
good-looking, many beautiful women, often youths and children,
the latter in groups with their nurses--the trottoirs everywhere
close-spread, thick-tangled, (yet no collision, no trouble,) with masses
of bright color, action, and tasty toilets; (surely the women dress
better than ever before, and the men do too.) As if New York would show
these afternoons what it can do in its humanity, its choicest physique
and physiognomy, and its countless prodigality of locomotion, dry goods,
glitter, magnetism, and happiness.
Second: also from 5 to 7 P.M. the stretch of Fifth avenue, all the way
from the Central Park exits at Fifty-ninth street, down to Fourteenth,
especially along the high grade by Fortieth street, and down the hill.
A Mississippi of horses and rich vehicles, not by dozens and scores, but
hundreds and thousands--the broad avenue filled and cramm'd with them--a
moving, sparkling, hurrying crush, for more than two miles. (I wonder
they don't get block'd, but I believe they never do.) Altogether it is
to me the marvel sight of New York. I like to get in one of the Fifth
avenue stages and ride up, stemming the swift-moving procession. I doubt
if London or Paris or any city in the world can show such a carriage
carnival as I have seen here five or six times these beautiful May
afternoons.
CENTRAL PARK WALKS AND TALKS
_May 16 to 22_.--I visit Central Park now almost every day, sitting,
or slowly rambling, or riding around. The whole place presents its very
best appearance this current month--the full flush of the trees, the
plentiful white and pink of the flowering shrubs, the emerald green of
the grass spreading everywhere, yellow dotted still with dandelions--the
specialty of the plentiful gray rocks, peculiar to these grounds,
cropping out, miles and miles--and over all the beauty and purity,