William J. Long

“ A hundred lakes by which I have tented are greater or more splendid; but the first charm of any wilderness scene is its solitude, and on these greater lakes the impression of solitude may be broken by the flash of a paddle-blade in the sun, or the chuck of an ax under the twilight, or the gleam of a camp-fire through the darkness. But here on my pond you may know how Adam felt when he looked abroad: no raft has ever ruffled its surface; no ax-stroke or moan of smitten tree has ever disturbed its quiet; no camp-fire has ever gleamed on its waters. ”

“ He is one of the most democratic of poets, he takes for his subject a simple experience—a family gathering at eventide, a fair, a merrymaking, a joy, a grief, the finding of a flower, the love of a lad for a lass—and with rare simplicity reflects the emotion that such an experience awakens. Seen through the poet's eyes, this simple emotion becomes radiant and lovely, a thing not of earth but of heaven. That is the genius of Burns, to ennoble human feeling, to reveal some hidden beauty in a commonplace experience. ”

“ All the while, as you fish, the great dark woods stand close about you, silent, listening. The air is full of scents and odors that steal abroad only by night, while the air is dew-laden. Strange cries, calls, squeaks, rustlings run along the hillside, or float in from the water, or drop down from the air overhead, to make you guess and wonder what wood folk are abroad at such unseemly hours, and what they are about. So that it is good to fish by night, as well as by day, and go home with heart and head full, even though your creel be empty. ”

“ And the marvelous thing, in this masquerade of all sorts and conditions of men, is that Shakespeare lifts the mask from every face, lets us see the man as he is in his own soul, and shows us in each one some germ of good, some "soul of goodness" even in things evil. For Shakespeare strikes no uncertain note, and raises no doubts to add to the burden of your own. Good always overcomes evil in the long run; and love, faith, work, and duty are the four elements that in all ages make the world right. ”

“ Up and down goes the trail, now over hardwood ridges where great sugar maples stand wide apart, now through dim evergreen valleys or cedar swamps where one must feel his way; and at last, from the summit of a ridge, comes a gleam of blue ahead. It is the lake, eureka, I have found it, asleep amid its eternal hills! Over it bend the trees, as if they loved it. On every point stands a giant pine, like the king-man of old, lifting head and shoulders above his fellows. From the water’s edge the forest sweeps away grandly to the sky line. ”

“ An appalling silence rested on plains and mountains. Not a chirp, not a rustle broke the intense, unnatural stillness. One might travel all day long without a sight or sound of life; and when the early twilight came and life stirred shyly from its coverts and snow caves, the Wood Folk stole out into the bare white world on noiseless, hesitating feet, as if in presence of the dead. ”

“ Halfway to the lake, he stopped; a thrilling song from a dead spruce top bubbled out over the darkening woods. When a hermit thrush sings like that, his nest is somewhere just below. Kagax began twisting in and out like a snake among the bushes, till a stir in a tangle of raspberry vines, which no ears but his or an owl's would ever notice, made him shrink close to the ground and look up. ”

“ In the late twilight when woodcock first stir abroad you see only a shadow passing swiftly across a bit of clear sky as Whitooweek goes off to the meadow brook to feed, or hear a rustle in the alders as he turns the dead leaves over, and a faint peeunk, like the voice of a distant night-hawk, and then you catch a glimpse of a shadow that flits along the ground, or a weaving, batlike flutter of wings as you draw near to investigate. ”

“ As if to confirm the message, the trail runs into a well-worn deer-path, which looks as if the animals that used it knew well where they were going. Clumps of delicate young larches spring up ahead; between them open filmy vistas, like windows draped in lace, and across one vista stretches a ribbon of silver. A few more steps and—there! my little pond is smiling at you, reflecting the blue deeps of heaven or the white of passing clouds from its setting of pale-green larch-trees and crimson mosses. ”

“ In a week his flesh is so strong that a crow would hardly eat it. Altogether, it is small wonder that as soon as his instinct tells him the streams of the North are open and the trout running up, he is off to a land of happier memories.
In summer he forgets his hardships. His life is peaceful as a meadow brook. His home is the wilderness—on a lonely lake, it may be, shimmering under the summer sun, or kissed into a thousand smiling ripples by the south wind. Or perhaps it is a forest river, winding on by wooded hills and grassy points and lonely cedar swamps. ”

“ It is a curious and prevalent opinion that literature, like all art, is a mere play of imagination, pleasing enough, like a new novel, but without any serious or practical importance. Nothing could be farther from the truth. Literature preserves the ideals of a people; and ideals--love, faith, duty, friendship, freedom, reverence--are the part of human life most worthy of preservation. The Greeks were a marvelous people; yet of all their mighty works we cherish only a few ideals,--ideals of beauty in perishable stone, and ideals of truth in imperishable prose and poetry. ”

“ The great woods were covered deep with their pure white mantle; not a fleck, not a track soiled its even whiteness; for the last soft flakes were lingering in the air, and fox and grouse and hare and lucivee were still keeping the storm truce, hidden deep in their coverts. Every fir and spruce and hemlock had gone to building fairy grottoes as the snow packed their lower branches, under which all sorts of wonders and beauties might be hidden, to say nothing of the wild things for whom Nature had been building innumerable tents of white and green as they slept. ”

“ Then we crawl forth to rub our faces with snow, a tribute to civilization which has the effect of shocking sleep out of us, and take a look at the woods, the sky, the lake all white and still under its soft mantle.
Oh, but it is good to be alive in such an hour; good to be awakened by birds that brave the northern winter cheerfully; good to breathe deep of this keen air that blows over miles of spruce and balsam, uncontaminated by any smell of man, sniffed only by the wild things! So our day begins naturally with joy, as a day should begin which promises good hunting. ”

“ No wonder wolves are intelligent in avoiding every trap and in hunting together to outwit some fleet-footed quarry with unbelievable cunning. Here on the edge of the vast, untrodden barren, far from human eyes, in an ordinary family of wolf cubs playing wild and free, eager, headstrong, hungry, yet always under control and instantly subject to a wiser head and a stronger will than their own, was the explanation of it all. ”

“ First, when they are traveling—and Mooween is the most restless tramp in all the woods—you will see that the cubs follow the mother closely and imitate her every action with ludicrous exactness, sniffing where she sniffs, jumping where she jumps, rising on their hind legs, with forearms hanging loosely and pointed noses thrust sharp up into the wind, on the instant that she rises, and then drawing silently away from the shore into the shelter of the friendly alders when some subtle warning tells the mother’s nose that the coast ahead is not perfectly clear. ”

“ There was a pounce, a screech, a ripping of cloth, a wild yell for help; then the answering shout and rush of two woodsmen with their axes. And that night Pekompf's skin was nailed to the barn-door to dry in the sun before being tanned and made up into a muff for the woodsman's little girl to warm her fingers withal in the bitter winter weather.
Where civilization has driven most of his fellows away, Pekompf is a shy, silent creature; but where the farms are scattered and the hillsides wild and wooded, he is bolder and more noisy than in the unpeopled wilderness. ”

“ It was early twilight when Kagax came out of his den in the rocks, under the old pine that lightning had blasted. Day and night were meeting swiftly but warily, as they always meet in the woods. The life of the sunshine came stealing nestwards and denwards in the peace of a long day and a full stomach; the night life began to stir in its coverts, eager, hungry, whining. Deep in the wild raspberry thickets a wood thrush rang his vesper bell softly; from the mountain top a night hawk screamed back an answer, and came booming down to earth, where the insects were rising in myriads. ”

“ Or again, when you enter the wilderness remote from men, here is a deer slipping shadow-like through the shadowy twilight, daintily tasting twenty varieties of food in as many minutes, and keeping tabs on every living or moving or growing thing while she eats; or a fox, which seems to float along like thistle-down in the wind, halting, listening, testing the air-smells as one would appreciate a varied landscape, playing Columbus to every nook or brush-pile and finding in it something that no explorer ever found before. ”

“ The whish of a duck's wings can be heard two or three hundred yards on a still night. The wings of an eagle rustle like silk in the wind as he mounts upward. A sparrow's wings flutter or whir as he changes his flight. Every one knows the startled rush of a quail or grouse. But no ear ever heard the passing of a great owl, spreading his five-foot wings in rapid flight.
He knows well, however, when to vary his program. Once I saw him hovering at dusk over some wild land covered with bushes and dead grass, a favorite winter haunt of meadow-larks. ”

“ Any photographer can in a few minutes reproduce a human face, but only an artist can by care and labor bring forth a beautiful portrait. So any historian can write the facts of the Battle of Gettysburg; but only a Lincoln can in noble words reveal the beauty and immortal meaning of that mighty conflict.
To all such written works, which quicken our sense of the beautiful, and which are as a Jacob's ladder on which we mount for higher views of nature or humanity, we confidently give the name "literature," meaning the art of literature in distinction from the mere craft of writing. ”

“ When you have listened to Meeko's scolding for a season, and have seen him going from nest to nest after innocent fledgelings; or creeping into the den of his big cousin, the beautiful gray squirrel, to kill the young; or driving away his little cousin, the chipmunk, to steal his hoarded nuts; or watching every fight that goes on in the woods, jeering and chuckling above it,—then you begin to understand the Indian legend.
Spite of his evil ways, however, he is interesting and always unexpected. ”

“ More carefully than ever I stalked a bear, I circled through the black growth, crept under the fringe of larches, and entered the alder run unobserved. Inch by inch I wormed along the secret passageway, flat to the ground, not once raising my head, hardly daring to pull a full breath, till, just as I emerged from the alder shade into the grass, a gamy scent in my nose and a low gabble in my ears told me that I was almost near enough, that the birds were all around me, and that for the rest of the way I must move as a shadow. ”

“ A man's life is more than his work; his dream is ever greater than his achievement; and literature reflects not so much man's deed as the spirit which animates him; not the poor thing that he does, but rather the splendid thing that he ever hopes to do. In no place is this more evident than in the age we are now studying. Those early sea kings were a marvelous mixture of savagery and sentiment, of rough living and of deep feeling, of splendid courage and the deep melancholy of men who know their limitations and have faced the unanswered problem of death. ”

“ For hours the uncanny comedy would drag itself on into the tense midnight silence, the wailing cry growing more demented and heartrending as the spell of ancient days fell again upon the degenerate huskies. Up on the lonely mountain tops the moon looked down, still and cold, and saw upon every pinnacle a dog or a wolf, each with his head turned up at the sky, howling his heart out. ”

“ Never a day now passed that one or both of the birds did not rest on my tent. When I put my head out, like a turtle out of his shell, in the early morning to look at the weather, Killooleet would look down from the projecting end of the ridgepole and sing good-morning. And when I had been out late on the lake, night-fishing, or following the inlet for beaver, or watching the grassy points for caribou, or just drifting along shore silently to catch the night sounds and smells of the woods, I would listen with childish anticipation for Killooleet's welcome as I approached the landing. ”

“ Sometimes, at night, as you drift along the shore in your canoe, sifting the night sounds and smells of the wilderness, when all harsher cries are hushed and the silence grows tense and musical, like a great stretched chord over which the wind is thrumming low suggestive melodies, a sudden rush and flapping in the grasses beside you breaks noisily into the gamut of half-heard primary tones and rising, vanishing harmonics. ”

“ All this beautiful world, breathless with the wonder of creation still upon it, this newborn world over which the Infinite broods silently, is wholly ours to enter, to possess, and to enjoy. Expectantly, as if something fair and good must come to-day, and on tiptoe, as if any noise must profane such a world of splendor and silence, we slip along between lake and woods, marveling once more at the magic of the winter wilderness. ”

“ About them gather a host of associations, of living-over-agains, that have made it a delight to write them; associations of the winter woods, of apple blossoms and nest-building, of New England uplands and wilderness rivers, of camps and canoes, of snowshoes and trout rods, of sunrise on the hills, when one climbed for the eagle's nest, and twilight on the yellow wind-swept beaches, where the surf sobbed far away, and wings twanged like reeds in the wind swooping down to decoys,—all thronging about one, eager to be remembered if not recorded. ”

“ From childhood Ruskin was extremely sensitive to both beauty and ugliness. The beauty of the world and of all noble things that ever were accomplished in the world affected him like music; but he shrank, as if from a blow, from all sordidness and evil, from the mammon-worship of trade, from the cloud of smoke that hung over a factory district as if trying to shield from the eye of heaven so much needless poverty and aimless toil below. ”

“ Here and there the snow told stories; gay stories, tragic stories, sad, wandering, patient stories of the little woods-people, which the frost had hardened into crust, as if Nature would keep their memorials forever, like the records on the sunhardened bricks of Babylon. But would the deer live? Would the big buck's cunning provide a yard large enough for wide wandering, with plenty of browse along the paths to carry his flock safely through the winter's hunger? ”

“ It would have been the easiest matter in the world for an old wolf to hamstring one of the slow fawns, or the mother caribou herself as she hovered in the rear to defend her young; but there were other thoughts in the shaggy gray head that had seen so much hunting. So the mother wolf drove the deer slowly, puzzling them more and more, as a collie distracts the herd by his yapping, out into the open where her cubs might join in the hunting. ”

“ This was no lunatic baying of the moon, such as must bring response from many wolves, each sitting alone with his nose to the sky. It was not the trail-cry that a wolf utters when he jumps big game and wants the pack to close in. It had no resemblance to the thrilling food call, which brings every hungry wolf within hearing to a kill; nor was it like the howl of a she-wolf, leader of the pack, when she calls her cubs to the hunting, and they come with the clamor of hounds unleashed. ”

“ The earth beneath your feet, the restful earth which the lumbermen left torn by iron tools or rent by dynamite, has again put on her soft-colored garments. Feathery beds of fern push boldly into the road from shadowy places; wild grasses fill all its sunny openings with their bloom and fragrance; and winding down through shade or sunshine comes a trail made by the feet of deer and moose. Already these timid animals have adopted the forgotten road as a runway; you may meet them here when you return in the evening twilight.
Everywhere beside the trail are old marks of the destroyer. ”

“ To Kagax, who gloats over his killing except when he is afraid, it became an awful accusation. "Who has killed where he cannot eat? who strangled a brooding bird? who murdered his own kin?" came thundering through the woods. Kagax darted for his den. His hind feet struck a rotten twig that they should have cleared; it broke with a sharp snap. In an instant a huge shadow swept down from the stub and hovered over the sound. Two fierce yellow eyes looked in upon Kagax, crouching and trying to hide under a fir tip. ”

“ You didn't see the capers, the tail-chasing, the high jumps, the quick turns and plays; and then the straight, nervous gallop, which told more plainly than words his exultation that he had outwitted you and shown his superiority.
Reynard, wherever you meet him, whether on the old road at twilight, or on the runway before the hounds, impresses you as an animal of dignity and calculation. He never seems surprised, much less frightened; never loses his head; never does things hurriedly, or on the spur of the moment, as a scatter-brained rabbit or meddling squirrel might do. ”

“ Keen eyes saw every moving thing, from the bees in the bluebells to the slow fishing-boats far out at sea; sharp ears that were cocked like a collie's heard every chirp and trill and rustle, and a nose that understood everything was holding up every vagrant breeze and searching it for its message. For the cubs were coming out for the first time to play in the big world, and no wild mother ever lets that happen without first taking infinite precautions that her little ones be not molested nor made afraid. ”

“ The stillness was intense; every slightest sound,—the creak of a bough or the ripple of a passing musquash, the plunk of a water drop into the lake or the snap of a rotten twig, broken by the weight of clinging mist,—came to the strained ear with startling suddenness. Then, as I waited and sifted the night sounds, a dainty plop, plop, plop! sent the canoe gliding like a shadow toward the shore whence the sounds had come. ”

“ The glassy water reflected every form, color, motion of these untroubled ducks as in a glass, doubling the graceful effect. Around them stretched the gloriously colored bog; and beyond the bog were the nebulous-green larches, the somber black growth and the lifting hills, on which autumn had laid its golden touch. Truly a beautiful sight, a sight to make the heart of hunter or naturalist tremble with expectancy as he fingered his gun. I have known that trembling, that expectancy; but there was greater pleasure, perhaps greater freedom also, in leaving the happy comedy undisturbed. ”

“ An unusual noise is heard; and round the bend glides a bark canoe with sound of human voices. Away go the brood together, the river behind them foaming like the wake of a tiny steamer as the swift-moving feet lift them almost out of water. Visions of ocean, the guns, falling birds, and the hard winter distract the poor mother. She flutters wildly about the brood, now leading, now bravely facing the monster; now pushing along some weak little loiterer, now floundering near the canoe as if wounded, to attract attention from the young. ”