Mosses from an old manse
to the present generation of flowers and weeds.
Among the delights of spring, how is it possible to forget the birds?
Even the crows were welcome as the sable harbingers of a brighter and
livelier race. They visited us before the snow was off, but seem mostly
to have betaken themselves to remote depths of the woods, which they
haunt all summer long. Many a time shall I disturb them there, and feel
as if I had intruded among a company of silent worshippers, as they sit
in Sabbath stillness among the tree-tops. Their voices, when they
speak, are in admirable accordance with the tranquil solitude of a
summer afternoon; and resounding so far above the head, their loud
clamor increases the religious quiet of the scene instead of breaking
it. A crow, however, has no real pretensions to religion, in spite of
his gravity of mien and black attire; he is certainly a thief, and
probably an infidel. The gulls are far more respectable, in a moral
point of view. These denizens of seabeaten rocks and haunters of the
lonely beach come up our inland river at this season, and soar high
overhead, flapping their broad wings in the upper sunshine. They are
among the most picturesque of birds, because they so float and rest
upon the air as to become almost stationary parts of the landscape. The
imagination has time to grow acquainted with them; they have not
flitted away in a moment. You go up among the clouds and greet these
lofty-flighted gulls, and repose confidently with them upon the
sustaining atmosphere. Duck’s have their haunts along the solitary
places of the river, and alight in flocks upon the broad bosom of the
overflowed meadows. Their flight is too rapid and determined for the
eye to catch enjoyment from it, although it never fails to stir up the
heart with the sportsman’s ineradicable instinct. They have now gone
farther northward, but will visit us again in autumn.
The smaller birds,—the little songsters of the woods, and those that
haunt man’s dwellings and claim human friendship by building their
nests under the sheltering eaves or among the orchard trees,—these
require a touch more delicate and a gentler heart than mine to do them
justice. Their outburst of melody is like a brook let loose from wintry
chains. We need not deem it a too high and solemn word to call it a
hymn of praise to the Creator; since Nature, who pictures the reviving
year in so many sights of beauty, has expressed the sentiment of
renewed life in no other sound save the notes of these blessed birds.
Their music, however, just now, seems to be incidental, and not the
result of a set purpose. They are discussing the economy of life and
love and the site and architecture of their summer residences, and have
no time to sit on a twig and pour forth solemn hymns, or overtures,
operas, symphonies, and waltzes. Anxious questions are asked; grave
subjects are settled in quick and animated debate; and only by
occasional accident, as from pure ecstasy, does a rich warble roll its
tiny waves of golden sound through the atmosphere. Their little bodies
are as busy as their voices; they are all a constant flutter and
restlessness. Even when two or three retreat to a tree-top to hold
council, they wag their tails and heads all the time with the
irrepressible activity of their nature, which perhaps renders their
brief span of life in reality as long as the patriarchal age of
sluggish man. The blackbirds, three species of which consort together,
are the noisiest of all our feathered citizens. Great companies of
them—more than the famous “four-and-twenty” whom Mother Goose has
immortalized—congregate in contiguous treetops and vociferate with all
the clamor and confusion of a turbulent political meeting. Politics,
certainly, must be the occasion of such tumultuous debates; but still,
unlike all other politicians, they instil melody into their individual
utterances and produce harmony as a general effect. Of all bird voices,
none are more sweet and cheerful to my ear than those of swallows, in
the dim, sunstreaked interior of a lofty barn; they address the heart
with even a closer sympathy than robin-redbreast. But, indeed, all
these winged people, that dwell in the vicinity of homesteads, seem to
partake of human nature, and possess the germ, if not the development,
of immortal souls. We hear them saying their melodious prayers at
morning’s blush and eventide. A little while ago, in the deep of night,
there came the lively thrill of a bird’s note from a neighboring
tree,—a real song, such as greets the purple dawn or mingles with the
yellow sunshine. What could the little bird mean by pouring it forth at
midnight? Probably the music gushed out of the midst of a dream in
which he fancied himself in paradise with his mate, but suddenly awoke
on a cold leafless bough, with a New England mist penetrating through
his feathers. That was a sad exchange of imagination for reality.
Insects are among the earliest births of sprung. Multitudes of I know
not what species appeared long ago on the surface of the snow. Clouds
of them, almost too minute for sight, hover in a beam of sunshine, and
vanish, as if annihilated, when they pass into the shade. A mosquito
has already been heard to sound the small horror of his bugle-horn.
Wasps infest the sunny windows of the house. A bee entered one of the
chambers with a prophecy of flowers. Rare butterflies came before the
snow was off, flaunting in the chill breeze, and looking forlorn and
all astray, in spite of the magnificence of their dark velvet cloaks,
with golden borders.
The fields and wood-paths have as yet few charms to entice the
wanderer. In a walk, the other day, I found no violets, nor anemones,
nor anything in the likeness of a flower. It was worth while, however,
to ascend our opposite hill for the sake of gaining a general idea of
the advance of spring, which I had hitherto been studying in its minute
developments. The river lay around me in a semicircle, overflowing all
the meadows which give it its Indian name, and offering a noble breadth
to sparkle in the sunbeams. Along the hither shore a row of trees stood
up to their knees in water; and afar off, on the surface of the stream,
tufts of bushes thrust up their heads, as it were, to breathe. The most
striking objects were great solitary trees here and there, with a
mile-wide waste of water all around them. The curtailment of the trunk,
by its immersion in the river, quite destroys the fair proportions of
the tree, and thus makes us sensible of a regularity and propriety in
the usual forms of nature. The flood of the present season—though it
never amounts to a freshet on our quiet stream—has encroached farther
upon the land than any previous one for at least a score of years. It
has overflowed stone fences, and even rendered a portion of the highway
navigable for boats.
The waters, however, are now gradually subsiding; islands become
annexed to the mainland; and other islands emerge, like new creations,
from the watery waste. The scene supplies an admirable image of the
receding of the Nile, except that there is no deposit of black slime;
or of Noah’s flood, only that there is a freshness and novelty in these
recovered portions of the continent which give the impression of a
world just made rather than of one so polluted that a deluge had been
requisite to purify it. These upspringing islands are the greenest
spots in the landscape; the first gleam of sunlight suffices to cover
them with verdure.
Thank Providence for spring! The earth—and man himself, by sympathy
with his birthplace would be far other than we find them if life toiled
wearily onward without this periodical infusion of the primal spirit.
Will the world ever be so decayed that spring may not renew its
greenness? Can man be so dismally age stricken that no faintest
sunshine of his youth may revisit him once a year? It is impossible.
The moss on our time-worn mansion brightens into beauty; the good old
pastor who once dwelt here renewed his prime, regained his boyhood, in
the genial breezes of his ninetieth spring. Alas for the worn and heavy
soul if, whether in youth or age, it have outlived its privilege of
springtime sprightliness! From such a soul the world must hope no
reformation of its evil, no sympathy with the lofty faith and gallant
struggles of those who contend in its behalf. Summer works in the
present, and thinks not of the future; autumn is a rich conservative;
winter has utterly lost its faith, and clings tremulously to the
remembrance of what has been; but spring, with its outgushing life, is
the true type of the movement.
MONSIEUR DU MIROIR
Than the gentleman above named, there is nobody, in the whole circle of
my acquaintance, whom I have more attentively studied, yet of whom I
have less real knowledge, beneath the surface which it pleases him to
present. Being anxious to discover who and what he really is, and how
connected with me, and what are to be the results to him and to myself
of the joint interest which, without any choice on my part, seems to be
permanently established between us, and incited, furthermore, by the
propensities of a student of human nature, though doubtful whether
Monsieur du Miroir have aught of humanity but the figure,—I have
determined to place a few of his remarkable points before the public,
hoping to be favored with some clew to the explanation of his
character. Nor let the reader condemn any part of the narrative as
frivolous, since a subject of such grave reflection diffuses its
importance through the minutest particulars; and there is no judging
beforehand what odd little circumstance may do the office of a blind
man’s dog among the perplexities of this dark investigation; and
however extraordinary, marvellous, preternatural, and utterly
incredible some of the meditated disclosures may appear, I pledge my
honor to maintain as sacred a regard to fact as if my testimony were
given on oath and involved the dearest interests of the personage in
question. Not that there is matter for a criminal accusation against
Monsieur du Miroir, nor am I the man to bring it forward if there were.
The chief that I complain of is his impenetrable mystery, which is no
better than nonsense if it conceal anything good, and much worse in the
contrary case.
But, if undue partialities could be supposed to influence me, Monsieur
du Miroir might hope to profit rather than to suffer by them, for in
the whole of our long intercourse we have seldom had the slightest
disagreement; and, moreover, there are reasons for supposing him a near
relative of mine, and consequently entitled to the best word that I can
give him. He bears indisputably a strong personal resemblance to
myself, and generally puts on mourning at the funerals of the family.
On the other hand, his name would indicate a French descent; in which
case, infinitely preferring that my blood should flow from a bold
British and pure Puritan source, I beg leave to disclaim all kindred
with Monsieur du Miroir. Some genealogists trace his origin to Spain,
and dub him a knight of the order of the CABALLEROS DE LOS ESPEJOZ, one
of whom was overthrown by Don Quixote. But what says Monsieur du Miroir
himself of his paternity and his fatherland? Not a word did he ever say
about the matter; and herein, perhaps, lies one of his most especial
reasons for maintaining such a vexatious mystery, that he lacks the
faculty of speech to expound it. His lips are sometimes seen to move;
his eyes and countenance are alive with shifting expression, as if
corresponding by visible hieroglyphics to his modulated breath; and
anon he will seem to pause with as satisfied an air as if he had been
talking excellent sense. Good sense or bad, Monsieur du Miroir is the