Meadows

“ When you think you have reached the end of such a winding meadow, you pass between two alders where the copses meet, and emerge into another meadow beyond. I suppose that these meadows are as nearly in their primitive state as any that we see. So this country looked, in one of its aspects, a thousand years ago. What difference to the meadow-sweet, or the swamp white oak, or to the silver flashing maple leaves a thousand years ago or to-day! ”

“ In that rare half-hour just before sunrise, when the cool breeze blowing across the meadows seemed saturated with sweetness and the vivifying essence of all life, as if here for a moment one might inhale the very breath which God breathed into his image made of clay and awakened it to the consciousness that it was a man, seven riders mounted at the Meadowlark corrals and went galloping down the trail, bound for the Frying Pan ranch, a long ride of forty miles through rough country. ”

“ We go out without overcoats, saunter along the street, look at the aments of the willow beginning to appear, and the swelling buds of the maple and the elm. The Great Meadows are water instead of ice. I see the ice on the bottom in white sheets.
Most men find farming unprofitable. But there are some who can get their living anywhere. If you set them down on a bare rock, they will thrive there. ”

“ At Mountain Meadows, the highest point on the Dalles road, we seem to be just at the foot of it, where, disengaging itself from the company of lesser peaks, it springs up clear and free, a pyramid of rock and ice, thousands of feet higher than its neighbors—bold in outline, clear-cut, symmetrical, inexpressibly grand. ”

“ I had a home, but the man Meadows has driven me out of it.”
“Mr. Meadows! La, sir, as how?”
“He bought the house I live in, and next Lady-day, as the woman-worshiper calls it, he turns me to the door.”
“But he won't if you ask him. He is a very good-natured man. You go and ask him to be so good as let you stay; he won't gainsay you, you take my word.”
“Susannah!” replied Isaac, “you are good and innocent; you cannot fathom the hearts of the wicked. This Meadows is a man of Belial. ”

“ On each side of the stream the meadows stretch away flat, clean, magnificent, lozenged across with rows of lateral foliage, under which a cow-maiden sits on the grass, hooting now and then, nasally, to the large-uddered browsers in front of her. There are no hedges nor palings nor walls; it is all a single estate. Occasionally in the meadows there rises a cluster of red-roofed hovels—each a diminutive village. ”

“ From Maine to Florida they range, and less frequently are met along the shores of the Gulf of Mexico so far as Louisiana. How bright and dainty they are! Whole meadows are radiant with their blushing loveliness. Probably if they consented to live far away from the sea, they would lose some of the deep, clear pink from out their lovely petals, since all flowers show a tendency to brighten their colors as they approach the coast. ”

“ Meadows. “Why does your shadow in a looking-glass make every motion that you make? Because it’s obliged to—that’s all. That’s just the reason the other black girl would follow you.”
“Don’t mind Drusilla,” said Buster John. “She just talks to hear herself talk. Her mouth flies open before she knows it.”
“Well, the poor things won’t trouble you long,” said Mrs. Meadows. “They’ll want to go back home presently.”
“Do they have to stay in the looking-glass?” inquired Buster John, repeating a question he had already asked. ”

“ The meadow-land spreads at the foot of some high-lying ground until it meets the pastures of Bray on the other side; on the east the gently rising ground loses itself in the distance in fields of golden wheat. The water running through the grass-land divides the colours of the meadows and of the furrows by a white streak, and so the landscape looks like a great unfolded cloak, with a green velvet collar bordered with silver. ”

“ When Miss Meadows said that Jack Rabbit looked at her with his head tipped a little to one side, as if he were trying to decide whether Mr. Man's little girl had been right or not. Then he looked at the Hollow Tree people and said:
"H'm! H'm! Very nice little girl" (meaning Mr. Man's, of course) , "and very smart, too."
"I got used to being without my own folks," Miss Meadows went on, "but I did not forget the nice green grass of the country, and always wanted to go back to it. ”

“ Every day he grew more savage. Finally no one smaller than himself dared stir on the Green Meadows when he was around. The little birds no longer sang. The Fieldmice children no longer played among the meadow grasses. Those were sad days, very sad days indeed on the Green Meadows," said Grandfather Frog, with a sigh.
"At last old Mother Nature came to visit the Green Meadows and she soon saw what a terrible state things were in. No one came to meet her, for you see no one dared to show himself for fear of fierce old Mr. Owl. ”

“ The river meadows were the chief source of wealth to the dwellers on the banks of the Meuse. When the hay harvest was over, according to his share of the arable land, each villager in Domremy had the right to turn so many head of cattle into the meadows of [Pg i.9] the village. Each family took its turn at watching the flocks and herds in the meadows. Jacques d'Arc, who had a little grazing land of his own, turned out his oxen and his horses with the others. When his turn came to watch them, he delegated the task to his daughter Jeanne, who went off into the meadow, distaff in hand. ”

“ Meadows was racing in and out of the barn like a madman, leading out the huge work horses. Mrs. Meadows ran back and forth from the watering tank to the fire carrying water while anxiously trying to keep tabs on both her husband and son to see that neither was gone too long, perhaps lost and overcome by the smoke. Finally all the stock was safely out in the yard and the two, coughing and sputtering, turned to help Mrs. Meadows fight the still growing fire. ”

“ All the Tuolumne Meadow country is sheer delight, for mountaineer, fisherman, naturalist, and lover of the out-of-doors whose tastes are unspecific; well has John Muir called it "the grand central camp-ground of the Sierras." It is a vast meadow, hemmed in by a mountain region beyond compare for expeditioning, with legions of royal trout ready for the fly, and a vast flower garden maintained enticingly by Dame Nature during the summer sunshine season.
The trip we took from the Meadows, again without trail, was down the Tuolumne to Hetch-Hetchy Valley. ”

“ This was due partly to Mother Meadows's large-hearted and romantic theories of training, and partly to an accident of heredity. The woman who looks the squaw is the squaw, when it comes to the flowering time of her life. To Meta had succeeded the temperament of her mother expressed in the features of her father; whether Canadian trapper or Scotch grandee, he had owned an admirable profile. ”

“ Holiday after them on a visit of domestic instruction, Meadows publicly announced his approaching marriage with Miss Merton. The coast being clear, he clinched the last nail. From this day there were gusts of repugnance, but not a shadow of resistance on Susan's side. It was to be.
The weather was fine, and every evening this man and woman walked together. The woman envied by all the women; the man by all the men. ”

“ The abundance of light, as reflected from clouds and the snow, etc., etc., is more springlike than anything else of late. . . . . I had noticed for some time, far in the middle of the great meadows, something dazzling white, which I took, of course, to be a small cake of ice on its end; but now that I have climbed the pitch pine hill, and can overlook the whole meadow, I see it to be the white breast of a small sheldrake accompanied, perhaps, by its mate, a darker one. They have settled warily in the very midst of the meadow, where the wind has blown a space of clear water for an acre or two. ”

“ But you know and I know and all the little meadow people and forest folks know that it wasn't luck at all, but the quick work and hard work of Old Mother West Wind's big family of Merry Little Breezes, which saved the Green Meadows. And this, too, is one reason why Peter Rabbit and Johnny Chuck and Bobby Coon and all the other little meadow and forest people love the Merry Little Breezes who play every day on the Green Meadows. ”

“ The agility he displayed in the barn was further proof of his being semi-civilised, for you know that many of the coloured races can boast of agility that with us would seem nothing short of marvellous. Then we learn from Doctor Meadows that many years ago he knew my father—apparently intimately. One of the most noticeable features of Durley Dene is, you will agree, the Oriental fittings of the only room into which we have been shown. The conclusion one naturally draws is that Meadows has travelled, or more likely lived, in Oriental countries. ”

“ Meadows.
“But the story?” Sweetest Susan said.
THE STRONGEST—WHO? OR WHICH?
“Well,” replied Mrs. Meadows, “it was like this: One time in the country where we came from—the country where you live now—there chanced to be a big frost, and the mill-pond froze [Pg 41] over. Mr. Rabbit ran along that way and found that the pond had this bridge across it.”
“Was it this Mr. Rabbit here?” asked Buster John.
Mrs. Meadows folded her hands in her lap and looked at them. “Well,” she said, “I never talk about folks behind their backs. You must do your own guessing. Anyway, Mr. ”

“ But Meadows had already seen Bob’s head fall forward against McCall’s knee, and the next minute Hamilton was back in bed.
“Just a slight relapse,” smiled Meadows. “They get that way when they’re not used to walking. Come in again when he’s a little stronger.” ”

“ The Fields are for the most part bare, and either black and arid with the remains of the Harvest that has been gathered from them, or at best but newly furrowed by the plough. The ever green Meadows are indeed still beautiful, and the more so for the Cattle that now stud them almost every where; the second crops of grass being long since off. The Hedge-rows, too, have lost much of their sweet tapestry of flowers, and even their late many-tinted greens are sobered down into one{204} dull monotonous hue. ”

“ There are hundreds, ay, and thousands of beaver meadows among the hills, and on the little streams that run into the big rivers, and nowhere is the grass so rich. You will often see an Indian village by one of these meadows. ”

“ Patience, Pierre, the population of this region is not so immense. No dense mobs of Nineveh confound all personal identities in Saddle Meadows. Patience; thou shalt see it soon again; catch it passing thee in some green lane, sacred to thy evening reveries. She that bears it cannot dwell remote. Patience, Pierre. Ever are such mysteries best and soonest unravelled by the eventual unravelling of themselves. ”

“ Arethusas are abundant in what I may call Arethusa Meadow. They are the more striking for growing in such green localities in meadows where the brilliant purple, more or less red, contrasts with the green grass. Found four perfect arrowheads, and one imperfect, in the potato field just plowed up for the first time that I remember, at the Hubbard bathing place . ”

“ FORT LAMERICK, Curry County. The locality of Big Meadows was important during the Rogue River War of 1855-56. It is in the extreme northeast part of Curry County, about two miles north of Rogue River and near the southeast corner of township 32 south, range 10 west. It is mentioned several times in Victor's Early Indian Wars of Oregon and also in Walling's History of Southern Oregon. On account of their strategic position, the Oregon volunteers decided to establish a post at the Big Meadows, and a site was selected May 1, 1856. ”

“ The route thence to the Great Meadows or Fort Necessity was well chosen, though over a mountainous tract, conforming very nearly to the ground now occupied by the National Road, and keeping on the dividing ridge between the waters flowing into the Youghiogheny on the one hand and the Cheat River on the other. ”

“ I have penetrated to those meadows on the morning of many a first spring day, jumping from hummock to hummock, from willow root to willow root, when the wild river valley and the woods were bathed in so pure and bright a light as would have waked the dead, if they had been slumbering in their graves, as some suppose. ”

“ The influence of the village community is especially apparent in respect of that portion of the soil which is used for the support of cattle. The management of meadows is very interesting because it presents a close analogy to the treatment of the arable, and at the same time the communal features are much more clearly brought out by it. We may take as an instance a description in the Eynsham Survey. The meadow in Shifford is divided into twelve strips, and these are distributed among the lord and the tenantry, but they are not apportioned to any one for constant ownership. ”

“ The clearing away of trees and underwood, by opening the ground and rendering it accessible, must be very attractive to birds, and rooks are particularly fond of following the plough. Now although the district is at present chiefly meadow land, numbers of these meadows were originally ploughed fields, of which there is evidence in the surface of the fields themselves, where the regular ‘lands’ and furrows are distinctly visible. ”

“ Jacob had cut the hay in his upper meadow early (he has to take his son’s or a neighbor’s help when he can get it) , and it was already piled in sweet-smelling haycocks as we drove by, but the water meadows, where the purple fringed orchids and loosestrife grow in among the grasses, were still uncut. It was dusk, and the fireflies were out. Thousands of them flashed their soft radiance low over the perfumed meadow, and the fragrance of sweet rush and of the open water came to us from the lake.
112 CHAPTER XI—IN THE TRESUMPSCOTT WOODS
The population of a district can never be classified. ”