George H. Ellwanger

“ My book remains unopened; it is pleasanter to read the earth and air. The bees hum, a wood-dove calls, the soothing roar of the rapids rises and falls. So sweet is summer air, so caressing are summer sounds.
How the sails have multiplied on the river! Is it the haze or the sudden sunlight that has transformed their canvas into unaccustomed color? Yonder a larger vessel, of different mold from the pleasure-craft, is rounding the river’s curve in her cruise up-stream. Her clean-cut prow rises high in air, her painted canvas is spread, and the sunlight strikes the gold of her sides. ”

“ Sweetness of dew and rifts of sunshine, the dark hawthorn touched with breadths of open bud, the odor of the air, the color of the daffodil—all that is delicious and beloved of spring-time are expressed in his song. Genius is nature, and his lay, like the sap in the bough from which he sings, rises without thought. Nor is it necessary that it should be a song; a few short notes in the sharp spring morning are sufficient to stir the heart. But yesterday the least of them all came to a bough by my window, and in his call I heard the sweet-brier wind rushing over the young grass.” [10] ”

“ A CERTAIN selfish satisfaction I enjoy in reading a fine limited edition of a classic, or a choice work that is difficult to procure. It is like possessing a gem of an uncommon color, a piece of old Chinese glaze, or any rare art object. If the work itself possess intrinsic value I am sure of my investment, while I rejoice in its attractive guise. Reading thus becomes more than a pleasure; it is an exquisite luxury. I marvel who secures all the “number 1’s” of the large-paper editions. Some bibliotaphe must have a monumental collection, for nobody ever sees one. ”

“ Little flutings and grace notes rise from sheltered thickets and sunny hollows—assemblages of snow-birds, Canada sparrows, and red-polls practicing their Fruehlingslied. The white-throated sparrow’s silver strain I hear on every side, the very beat of the spring-tide and song of the sunshine. Even the voice of the crow has a softer tone. From my study windows I watch the sable hosts returning to their roost in the distant wood. I see them slowly filing by during the winter, at the appointed hour, but less numerously, and seldom audibly. Now they voice their passage; their shadows cast a sound. ”

“ If one can not openly anathematize his neighbor, he may damn the weather; faint, indeed, is its praise. With a bright sun shining, a purple haze on the hills, the thermometer at 4850°, and the atmosphere exhilarating as champagne, still the lament will arise that we are not enveloped with a blanket of snow. Just the day for a walk, when one may start out dry-shod to inhale the stimulating air and bask in voluptuous sunlight! But the fickle weather-vane suddenly veers, and north wind and snow are exchanged for south wind and balm ”

“ There is much that is beautiful in the mythopœic representation of the seasons. All winter, says the legend, the sweet sunshine is chased by the relentless storm, now hiding beneath the clouds, now below the hills, showing herself for a moment merely to flee again. But, finally becoming bolder, the Sunshine advances to meet the Storm, who, captivated by her beauty, woos her as he pursues her, and wins her for his bride. Then is there great rejoicing upon the earth, and from their union are born plants which spring from its surface and spangle it with flowers. ”

“ Later, the first swallow races by, with the first moth in his bill, urged on the wider wings of the south wind—the first swallows, rather; for there is not only one but a score coursing through the ether, exultant in the freedom of existence. Do they, indeed, drop from the sky some bland spring morning—spirits of dead children revisiting their homes—as the fanciful Roman legend has it? How swiftly they cleave the air with their forked tail and sickle-shaped wings! We marvel at the soaring of the hawk, balancing himself in an ever-widening and ascending circle, ever tracing the curve of beauty. ”

“ From the frost-smitten meadows and waste places rise fresh pennants of green. Unfurled is the flag of spring. And the hues and odors that are still in embryo and the sunshine is preparing—all the sweets of June and the infinite beauties of midsummer, the wealth of the roses, the clover bloom, the labyrinthine tangle of wild flowers, even to the asters and colored leaf of autumn. The foam and surge of the apple bloom are but a wave of the color and fragrance that is to be. Æons ago the March sunlight fell upon the flowers and primeval nature. Vegetation welcomed it then as it welcomes it now. ”

“ The purple bloom upon my hills is never half so exquisite as when a thaw has freed them temporarily from their coverlet of snow, 91disclosing their russet slopes and leafless trees. A new palette of color is presented in these subtle gradations of umber and ochre, of drab and of bronze, that drape the withered stubbles. Sere and faded in the latter year, the lonely marsh is yet glorious with subdued hues when touched by the afternoon splendor. The hush which broods upon the landscape, too, has a charm of its own, in harmony with the quiet tones of the slumbering woods. ”

“ An aroma of mint, mingled with the fragrance of wild flowers and ferns, follows me along the banks; and there, in the swamp where the partridge drums, my pink lady’s-slipper gleams. The twisting roots of the hemlock plunge deep into the 278pool; and with a slap of his red tail the big trout rises just beyond them in the foam-flecks of the eddy, precisely where he rose the previous year. How the water growls round the bank it has mined, and chafes and scolds at the obtruding prongs! And how picturesquely, too, the old hemlock leans over the stream, shading the trout for the last time! ”

“ Yet with all these and other acquisitions, now that the bloom of first possession is brushed off, may I declare without prevarication that I am fully satisfied? Increase of appetite but grows on what it feeds. Collecting begets collecting, the desire for possession constantly increasing, ever goading one on to unrest in the quest of the unprocurable. How much one misses with a little knowledge, and how much one gains! The love for beauty too often proves a bane. Even a love for books is as dangerous as a love for bric-à-brac or art objects—the book in the end becoming an art object. ”

“ The crow announces the change before the snowdrop comes, and the wild geese proclaim it from the sky before the sallows invite the precocious bee. No doubt the bee is already waiting for the flower, and winnows it into bloom; for no sooner is the corolla ready to expand than I hear his murmurous wings. High in the willow catkins; low down in the horn of the skunk-cabbage; bending the yellow bloom of the first dog-tooth violet, his hum of industry is heard. The bee is perhaps the first constant spring musician, though his is not the earliest vernal voice. ”

“ If it is pleasant to dream in the well-furnished library, if it is a delight to muse and study amid harmonious surroundings, how much more important it is that the great nursery of a pleasing frame of mind, the dining-room, should by its inviting surroundings and the care and intelligence bestowed upon its adjuncts, the kitchen and the wine-cellar, contribute equally to the felicity of the house and home! ”

“ Game is the essence of the woods and free, uncivilized Nature—the division line that separates the wild from the tame—and he whose nerves have never tingled at the electric whir of a game-bird’s wing and the responsive boom of the double-barrel, has remained insensible to one of the most inspiring exhilarations of the senses. Just as the library refreshes and stimulates the mind, so do the woods, the streams, and the stubbles become a field of health for the body, and by the invigorating and elevating recreation they yield do field sports serve to strengthen both mind and body. ”

“ IF my rugs and porcelains are a study and delight in color, what shall I say of my books, these manifold colors and hues of the mind that rejoice the inward eye? When what François de Sales terms a “dryness of soul” comes over me, are not the genii of the library alway ready to instruct and charm? Not a myth, but a reality is the fabled lamp of Aladdin, luminous still on many an immortal author’s page. ”

“ Under the inspiration of an architect who is yet to be born, the house of the millennium will be able to avoid all unpleasant intrusions upon a privacy that is its inherent right, but which, alas! exists not in the home of the present.
It is apparent at once that the ideal haven can not hide itself amid the turmoil of the first floor. To fulfill its mission it must betake itself to surroundings more retired, and soar to a serener sphere. The true place for the study, therefore, is on an upper floor, and in the ideal house I would have it a spacious oriel approached by a hidden staircase. ”

“ A taste of the bitter he also mixes with the sweet, as when flushed for the third or fourth time, weary of pursuit, he leads to an almost impenetrable thicket of bramble, perchance to skim off unseen on hearing your approach, or to dive deep down into a precipitous glen, only to mislead by suddenly wheeling up the hillside in a long deceptive flight. Most noticeably in the spring, and frequently in the autumn, and on tempered winter days do I hear the music of his wings, far away in some sequestered glade, beating a sylvan tattoo—most picturesque of all woodland sounds ”

“ Valuable as a well-chosen collection of porcelains is a well-chosen collection of rugs. While neither may be dispensed with as art objects, and both afford a constant delight to the eye and the sense of the beautiful, it may be said that textiles have the advantage over porcelains in that they can not break, and that they combine utility with equal charm and more extended color. It is, withal, a satisfaction to know that every footfall upon their luxurious pile and every beam of sunlight that streams upon them only serve to increase their value and heighten their beauty. ”

“ THERE is expressed from the grapes that ripen on the sunny slopes of Aÿ a wine called Fine Fleur d’Aÿ blanc—Fine Flower of white Aÿ—a sparkling, golden, perfumed nectar, to sip of which is an exhilaration.
In every ideal home there exists an essence that likewise diffuses its fragrance—the fine flower of noble womanhood, without which the house is a habitation, not a home.
Alone under the ministering care of woman may the routine of daily life be relieved and varied, and the course of the household made to flow free from friction and asperity. ”

“ A windy moonlight night, with clouds chasing each other like crests of advancing waves. The moon rides high in the west; the strong wind sweeps from the west. Æolus and all his retinue are abroad. The hillside trees toss and boom like the sea—it is high tide in the air. The air becomes a sea, the clouds its surge, the trees the shingle upon which it beats. It fascinates like the sea! When the moon appears between the rifts it seems stationary; when partly concealed under a white cloud, it appears coursing rapidly westward, while the clouds seem traveling slowly eastward. ”

“ Yet, I like to think, and cherish the thought, when the cloud reveals no silver lining, that however disappointing some phases of life may be, some experiences of human character, there are bright days and pleasant places ahead in the future, somewhere and sometime. Happiness is coy at the best, fickle in bestowing her favors; and we find her the more delightful, possibly, in that, like the sunshine, she comes and goes. ”

“ Associated with Nature by ties the most endearing, by the golden sunshine, the murmuring breeze, and the songs of birds, the dial becomes, as it were, a reflective facet of external Nature in her gracious moods, its very shadow representing sunlight, the sunlight absent where the shadow is not. The sun-dial has molded itself to grace, and with rare exceptions its mottoes are happily chosen, attesting hours of meditation in forming an epigram or shaping a poetic fancy to blend with the shifting shadow. ”

“ They transport you into gardens where old-fashioned flowers and historic yew-trees grow, they conduct you through old churchyards among neglected graves, they deliver their homilies from weather-beaten walls, and their pathos appeals from many an ancient sanctuary and moss-grown lintel. How noiselessly, how serenely they mark the flight of time! It is Time itself inaudibly counting the hours; the day suavely balancing its silent periods. They mirror primitive time, removed from the present turmoil, when the sun was the pendulum and the shadow the index-hand. ”

“ I watch the flames creep stealthily along the hills, smoldering, perchance, in a distant hollow, anon riding the higher crests, illuming sumac-sentineled ravines, invading the brier patches, and lighting sproutland and swamp with living fire. High on the uplands the splendor hangs, low in the valleys the glory falls. Steeped and flooded with its color, the landscape gleams like an opal beneath the autumn sun. What poet, what prose painter, what cunning artificer of phrase can depict the tidal wave of beauty of the latter year? ”

“ The warm perfumed breath of the new year floats upon the air—the breath of flower and grass and expanding bud. Nature’s color-box opens anew; her brush is laid upon each petal with what consummate address and variety!—pink upon the petals of the peach, a flush on the cheek of the 192apple bloom, a gloss of gold upon the buttercup. The Trillium thrusts up its snowy triangles, the gold-thread its white stars, and banks become purple with violets. Tiny polypody and oak-fern replume the stumps and bowlders. ”