Pastoral Days Part 5

[Ill.u.s.tration: THE CIDER MILL.]

The carding-machine is gone, and has given place to a rustic cider-press. A temporary undershot-wheel has been rigged beneath the floor, and a rude trough, patched up with sods, conducts the water from the stream.

It is the same old cider-press we all remember, and with the same accessories. Here are casks of all sizes waiting to be filled, and the piles of party-colored apples spilled upon the floor from the farmers'

wagons that every now and then back up to the open door. There is the same rustic harangue on leading agricultural topics, among which we hear a variety of opinions about that imaginary "line storm."

"Seems to gi'n the slip this year," remarks one old long-limbed settler with a slope-roofed straw hat, "'n' I don't know zactly what to _make_ on't; but I ain't so sartin nuther"--he now takes a wise observation of a small patch of blue sky through the trees overhead. "I cal'late we'll git a leetle tetch on't yit."

"Likenuff, likenuff," responds another, with a squeaky voice; "the ar's gittin' ruther dampish, 'n' my woman hez got the rheumatiz ag'in. She kin alluz tell when we're goin' to git a spell o' weather; it's sure to fetch her all along her spine. But I lay _most_ store on them ar pesky tree-tuds. I heern um singin' like all possessed ez I wuz comin' through the woods yender; 'n' it's a sartin sign o' rain when them ar critters gits agoin', you kin depend on't."

And now we hear all about the pumpkin and the corn crop, the potato yield, and the regular list of other subjects so dear to the rural heart.

In a corner by themselves we see the pile of "vinegar nubbins"--a tanned and soft variety of apple--in all stages of variegation. The "hopper"

receives the shovelfuls of fruit for the crushing "smasher," which again supplies the straw-laid press. We hear the creaking turn of the lever screw, the yielding of the timbers, and a fresh burst of the trickling beverage flowing from the surrounding trough into the great wooden tub below. Here, too, is the swarm of eager urchins, with heads together, like a troop of flies around a grain of sugar. Ah! what unalloyed bliss is reflected from their countenances as they absorb the amber nectar through the intermediate straw--that golden link that I have missed for many a year!

Outside upon the logs the refuse "pumice-cheese" has brought together all the yellow-jackets and late b.u.t.terflies of the neighborhood--b.u.t.terflies so tipsy that you can pick them up between your fingers. I never went so far with the yellow-jackets, for they have a hotter temper, and don't like to be fooled with. Black hornets, too, are here, and they find a feast spread at their very door; for overhead, upon the beech, they have hung their paper house, like a gray balloon caught among the branches.

[Ill.u.s.tration: "THE LINE STORM."]

Now we hear a chatter and a scratching on the roof, where a pair of lively squirrels hold a game of tag; and ascending the rickety stairs into the loft above, we find the floor strewn with hickory-nuts, with neat round holes cut through on either side, and numberless s.h.a.ggy b.u.t.ternuts, too, with daylight let into their recesses also. The boards and beams are covered with cobweb tr.i.m.m.i.n.gs, laden with wool-dust; and as we approach a pile of rusty iron near the murky window, we hear a sc.r.a.ping of sharp claws, the dropping of a nut between the rafters, and now a wild scampering on the roof overhead. Before we have fairly recovered from our surprise, we notice a sudden darkening of a hole in the shingles close by, where, still and motionless, two inquisitive black eyes look down at us. We have intruded upon private property, for this is the home of the squirrels. No one can dispute their t.i.tle, for these little squatters have occupied the premises and held the fort for nearly twenty years.

They, too, have found forage close at hand, from the nut-grove upon the hill-side yonder--a yellow bank of foliage of cl.u.s.tered hickories and beeches, and rounded domes of chestnuts--a grove whose every rock and bush is my old-time friend; where there are "sermons in stones," and every tree speaks volumes.

Here is the low thicket of weeds and hazel-bushes where we always flushed that flock of quail, or started up some lively white-tailed hare that jumped away among the quivering brakes and golden-rod. Here are soft beds of rich green moss, studded with scarlet berries of winter-green and partridge-vine. Now we come upon a creeping mat of princess-pine, and here among the leaves we had almost stepped upon a spreading chestnut-burr--that same burr I have so often seen before, that same fuzzy, open palm holding out its tempting bait to lure the eagerness of youth; an eagerness which always invested a neighbor's chestnuts with a peculiar charm too tempting to resist; "take one," it seems to say, as it did in years ago; and its hedge of th.o.r.n.y p.r.i.c.kles truly typifies the dangers which surrounded such an undertaking, for these trees belong to Deacon Turney, and he prizes them as though their yellow autumn leaves were so much gold. He guards them with an eagle's eye, and he gathers all their harvest; no single nut is ever known to sprout in Turney's woods if _he_ knows it.

This pointed reminder among the leaves fairly p.r.i.c.ks my conscience as I recall the many October escapades in which it formed the chief attraction. I remember one occasion in particular, for it is indelibly impressed on my memory, and it was on this very spot. A party of adventurous lads, myself among the number, were out for a glorious holiday. Each had his canvas bag across his shoulder, and we stole along the stone wall yonder, and entered the woods beneath that group of chestnuts. Two of us acted as outposts on picket guard; and another, young Teddy Shoopegg by name, the best climber in the village, did the shaking. He prided himself on being able to "shin up any tree in the caounty," and after he had once got up among those chestnut-trees we stood from under, and in a very short s.p.a.ce of time no single burr was left among their branches. There were five busy pairs of hands beneath those trees, I can tell you, for each one of us fully realized the necessity of making the most of his time, not knowing how soon the warning cry from our outposts might put us all to headlong flight; for the alarm, "Turney's coming!" was enough to lift the hair of any boy in town.

[Ill.u.s.tration: A POINTED REMINDER.]

But luck seemed to favor us on that day; we "cleaned out" six big chestnut-trees, and then turned our attention to the hickories. There was a splendid tall s.h.a.gbark close by, with branches fairly loaded with the white nuts in their open shucks. They were all ready to drop, and when the shaking once commenced, the nuts came down like a shower of hail, bounding from the rocks, rattling among the dry leaves, and keeping up a clatter all around. We scrambled on all fours, and gathered them by quarts and quarts. There was no need of poking over the leaves for them, the ground was covered with them in plain sight. While busily engaged, we noticed an ominous lull among the branches overhead.

"'Sst! 'sst!" whispered Shoopegg up above; "I see old Turney on his white horse daown the road yender."

"Coming this way?" also in a whisper, from below.

"I dunno yit, but I jest guess you'd better be gittin' reddy to leg it, fer he's. .h.i.tchin' his old nag 't the side o' the road. _Yis_, sir, I bleeve he's a-c.u.mmin'. Shoopegg, you'd better be gittin' aout o' this,"

and he commenced to drop hap-hazard from his lofty perch. In a moment, however, he seemed to change his mind, and paused, once more upon the watch. "Say, fellers," he again broke in, as we were preparing for a retreat, "he's gone off to'rd the cedars; he ain't c.u.mmin' this way at _all_." So he again ascended into the tree-top, and finished his shaking in peace, and we our picking also. There was still another tree, with elegant large nuts, that we had all concluded to "finish up on." It would not do to leave it. They were the largest and thinnest-sh.e.l.led nuts in town, and there were over a bushel in sight on the branch tips.

Shoopegg was up among them in two minutes, and they were showered down in torrents as before. And what splendid, perfect nuts they were! We bagged them with eager hands, picked the ground all clean, and, with jolly chuckles at our luck, were just about thinking of starting for home with our well-rounded sacks, when a change came over the spirit of our dreams. There was a suspicious noise in the shrubbery near by, and in a moment more we heard our doom.

"Jest yeu look _ee_ah, yeu boys!" exclaimed a high-pitched voice from the neighboring shrubbery, accompanied by the form of Deacon Turney, approaching at a brisk pace, hardly thirty feet away. "Don't yeu think yeu've got jest abaout _enuff_ o' them nuts?"

Of course a wild panic ensued, in which we made for the bags and dear life; but Turney was prepared and ready for the emergency, and, raising a huge old shot-gun, he levelled it, and yelled, "Don't any on ye stir ner move, or by Christopher I'll blow the heels clean off'n the hull _pile_ on ye. I'd _shoot_ ye quicker'n _lightni'_."

And we believed him, for his aim was true, and his whole expression was not that of a man who was trifling. I never shall forget the uncomfortable sensation that I experienced as I looked into the muzzle of that double-barrelled shot-gun, and saw both hammers fully raised too. And I can clearly see now the squint and the glaring eye that glanced along those barrels. There was a wonderfully persuasive power lurking in those horizontal tubes; so I at once hastened to inform the deacon that we were "not going to run."

"Wa'al," he drawled, "it looked a leetle thet _way_, I thort, a spell _ago_;" and he still kept us in the field of his weapon, till at length I exclaimed, in desperation.

"For gracious sake! point that gun in some other _way_, will you?"

"Wa'al, _no_! I'm not fer pintin' it ennywhar else jest _yit_--not until you've sot them ar _bags_ daown agin, jist whar ye _got_ 'em, every _one_ on ye." The bags were speedily replaced, and he slowly lowered his gun.

[Ill.u.s.tration: AFTER THE Sh.e.l.l-BARKS]

"Wa'al, naow," he continued, as he came up in our midst, "this is putty bizniss, _ain't_ it? Bin havin' a putty likely sort o' time teu, I sh'd jedge from the looks o' these 'ere _bags_. One--two--_six_ on 'em; an' I vaow they must be nigh on teu a half bushel in every pleggy _one_ on 'em. Wa'al, naow"--with his peculiar drawl--"look eeah: you're a putty ondustrious lot o' _thieves_, I'm _blest_ if ye ain't." But the deacon did all the talking, for his manuvres were such as to render us speechless. "Putty likely place teu c.u.m a-nuttin', ain't it?" Pause.

"Putty nice mess o' sh.e.l.l-barks ye got thar, I tell ye naow.--Quite a sight o' _chestnuts_ in _yourn_, ain't they?"

There was only one spoken side to this dialogue, but the pauses were eloquent on both sides, and we boys kept up a deal of tall thinking as we watched the deacon alternate his glib remarks by the gradual removal of the bags to the foot of a neighboring tree. This done, he seated himself upon a rock beside them.

"_Thar!_" he exclaimed, removing his tall hat and wiping his white-fringed forehead with a red bandanna handkerchief. "I'm much _obleeged_. I've been a-watchin' on ye gittin' these 'ere nuts the hull arternoon. I thort ez haow yeu might like to know on't." And then, as though a happy thought had struck him, what should he do but deliberately spit on his hands and grasp his gun. "Look _ee_ah"--a pause, in which he c.o.c.ked both barrels--"yeu boys wuz paowerful anxyis teu git _away_ from _ee_ah a spell ago. Naow yeu kin _git_ ez lively ez yeu pleze; your ch.o.r.es is done fer to-day." And bang! went one of the gun-barrels directly over our heads.

We _got_, and when once out of gun-range we paid the deacon a wealth of those rare compliments for both eye and ear that always swell the boys'

vocabulary.

"All right," he yelled back in answer, as he transported the bags across the field. "c.u.m agin next year--c.u.m agin. Alluz welcome! alluz welcome!"

As I have already said, the deacon gathered all his nut harvest--sometimes by a very novel method.

Who does not remember some such episode of the old jolly days? If it was not a Deacon Turney, it was some one else. I am sure his counterpart exists in every country town, and in the memory of every boyhood experience.

We remember, perhaps, the sweet hazel-nuts which we gathered in their brown husks and spread to dry upon the garret floor, and how those mischievous mice avenged the deacon's wrongs as they invaded our treasured store, and transported it to the nooks and kinks among the rafters and beneath the floor. Then there were those rambles after "fox-grapes," and the "gunning" tramps, when we stole with cautious step upon the unseen "Bob White" whistling for us among the brush near by, when the startling _whirr_ of the ruffed grouse from almost under our feet sent an electric thrill up our backs and along our arms, even touching off the powder in our barrels unawares. There were box-traps in the woods, and snares among the copses, and lots of other mischief of which we would not care to tell.

[Ill.u.s.tration: A CORNER OF THE FARM.]

There was another little three-cornered nut that fell among the beech-trees where we held our October picnics, and the autumn beech forest I remember as a lovely woodland parlor. We sit upon a painted rock, in the shadow of a drooping hemlock, perhaps. Beyond, we look across among the smooth gray tree-trunks, where sidelong shadows softly stripe the matted leaves, with here and there a shining shaft of sunbeam lighting up the carpet, or a glinting spray of sun-tipped leaves that flicker above their shadows. The woods are filled with a luminous glow such as no summer forest ever knew--an all-pervading light which seems almost independent of the sunshine, as though living in the leaf itself.

It floods the mottled bark, and transforms its ashy tints to softened autumn grays. It searches out the shadows of the evergreens, and throws its mellow glow upon the rocks among their recesses. It permeates the whole interior as though it were transfigured through a golden-colored gla.s.s.

A quick, sharp whistle surprises you from the herbage near by, and a striped chickaree skips across the leaves and dives into his burrow at the foot of an old stump not far away. There are various other sounds that come to you if you sit quietly in a beech wood. Now it is a tiny footfall, a pat-pat upon the leaves, and a little brown bird is seen, hopping in and out among the undergrowth, scratching and pecking like a little hen among the leaf mould. Then comes a galloping sound, and you know there is a scampering hare somewhere about. And at last a peeping frog gains confidence, and starts up a trill somewhere behind you. He is soon joined by another, and still others, until a chorus of the shrill voices echoes among the trees, some from the around, some from the limbs overhead; and if you only sit perfectly still, you may hear a venturesome voice, perhaps, at your very elbow; for these little peepers are capricious songsters, and only sing before a quiet, attentive audience. Now a silly green katydid flits by, like an animated gauzy leaf; and quick as thought a kingbird darts out from the leaves overhead, hovers in mid-air for a second, and is away again; and luckless katydid wishes she _hadn't_.

See the variety of beeches, too! Here are slender, dappled stems, clean and trim; and others, great giants with fluted trunks and gnarled roots, and with eccentric limbs reaching out in most fantastic angles; but all spreading above in a graceful, airy screen of intermingled tracery and sunlight, where slender branches bend and sway beneath the agile squirrel as he leaps from tree to tree, and the leaves clatter with the falling nuts. Behind us a soft fluttering of many wings betrays a slender mountain-ash, with its drooping cl.u.s.ters of berries, growing in an open, rocky s.p.a.ce near by--where a flock of cedar birds a.s.semble among the fruit, or scatter away amid the evergreens at your slightest movement. Turning your head in another direction, you can follow the course of an old farm-road that leads out upon a bright clearing, thick-set with light-green, feathery ferns. A few rods beyond, it makes a sudden downward turn through a dense grove of lofty pines and hemlocks. Here are "dim aisles" where dwell perpetual twilight--where no ray of sun has entered for well-nigh a century--only, perhaps, as it is brought down in a glistening sunbeam within the crystal bead of balsam upon some dropping cone. There is a solemn stillness in these stately halls, in which your very footfall is proscribed and hushed in the depths of the brown and silent carpet. There are old, venerable gray-beards here, and fallen monarchs lying prostrate among the rugged rocks; and here and there among the brown debris a fungus lifts its head, to tell of other generations that lie crumbling beneath the mould.

Now among the lofty columns, like a magnificent illuminated window in some vast cathedral, comes a glimpse of the outer world with its autumn colors; and here the vaulted aisle soon leads us. We find a dazzling contrast; for in the sombre shadows of the pine-forest one readily forgets the month, or even the season. Here we approach a rippling trout-stream, and as we stop to rest upon its tottering bridge we look across a long brook meadow, where the asters screen the ground in mid-air in a purple sea--one of the rarest spectacles of autumn. But in this swamp lot there are presented a continual series of just such rich displays from spring-time till the winter.

I know of no other place in which the progress of the year is so readily traced as in these swampy fallow lands. They are a living calendar, not merely of the seasons alone, but of every month successively; and its record is almost unmistakably disclosed. It is whispered in the fragrant breath of flowers, and of the aromatic herbage you crush beneath your feet. It floats about on filmy wings of dragon-fly and b.u.t.terfly, or glistens in the air on silky seeds. It skips upon the surface of the water, or swims among the weeds beneath; and is noised about in myriads of tell-tale songs among the reeds and sedges. The swallows and the starlings proclaim it in their flight, and the very absence of these living features is as eloquent as life itself. Even in the simple story of the leaf, the bud, the blossom, and the downy seed, it is told as plainly as though written in prosaic words and strewn among the herbage.

In the early, bl.u.s.tering days of March, there is a stir beneath the thawing ground, and the swamp cabbage-root sends up a well protected scout to explore among the bogs; but so dismal are the tidings which he brings, that for weeks no other venturing sprout dares lift its head. He braves alone the stormy month--the solitary sign of spring, save, perhaps, the lengthening of the alder catkins that loosen in the wind.

April woos the yellow cowslips into bloom along the water's edge, and the golden willow twigs shake out their perfumed ta.s.sels. In May the p.r.i.c.kly carex blossoms among the tussocks, and the calamus buds burst forth among their flat, green blades. June is heralded on right and left by the unfurling of blue-flags, and the eyebright blue winks and blinks as it awakens in the dazzling July sun.

[Ill.u.s.tration: BEECH-NUTTING.]

Then follows brimful August, with the summer's consummation of luxuriance and bloom; with flowers in dense profusion in bouquets of iron-weed and thoroughworts, of cardinal flowers and fragrant clethra, with their host of blossoming companions. The milk-weed pods fray out their early floss upon September breezes, and the blue petals of the gentian first unfold their fringes. October overwhelms us with the friendly tokens of burr marigolds and bidens; while its thickets of black-alder lose their autumn verdure, and leave November with a "burning bush" of scarlet berries. .h.i.therto half-hidden in the leaf.a.ge.

Now, too, the copses of witch-hazel bedeck themselves, and are yellow with their tiny ribbons. December's name is written in wreaths of snow upon the withered stalks of slender weeds and rushes, which soon lie bent and broken in the lap of January, crushed beneath their winter weight. And in fulfilment of the cycle, February sees the swelling buds of willow, with their restless p.u.s.s.ies eager for the spring, half creeping from their winter cells.

The October day is a dream, bright and beautiful as the rainbow, and as brief and fugitive. The same clouds and the same sun may be with us on the morrow, but the rainbow will have gone. There is a destroyer that goes abroad by night; he fastens upon every leaf, and freezes out its last drop of life, and leaves it on the parent stem, pale, withered, and dying.

Then come those closing days of dissolution, the saddest of the year, when all nature is filled with phantoms, and the gaunt and naked trees moan in the wind--every leaf a mockery, every breeze a sigh. The air seems weighed with a premonition of the dreariness to come. The landscape is darkened in a melancholy monotone, and death is written everywhere. You may walk the woods and fields for hours without a gleam of comfort or a cheering sound. We hear, perhaps, the hollow roll of the woodp.e.c.k.e.r upon some neighboring tree; but even he is clad in mourning: it is a m.u.f.fled drum, and the resounding limb is dead. You sit beneath the old oak-tree, but it is a lifeless rustle that grates upon your ear, while you listen half beseechingly for some cheering note from the robins in the thicket near; but they are coy and silent now, and their flight is toward the southern hills. A villanous shrike must needs come upon the scene: he alights upon a limb near by, with blood upon his beak. Murder is in his eye, and his mission here is death. And now we hear a noisy crow o'erhead: he perches upon a neighboring tree in hungry scrutiny. And what is he but carrion's bird, that revels in decay and death, with raiment black as a funeral pall? In the cold gray sky we see their scattered flocks blowing in the wind with sidelong flight, and in the field below that mocking cadaver, the man of straw, shaking his flimsy arms at them in wild contortions.

[Ill.u.s.tration: THE NORTH WIND.]

There is a hopeless despondency abroad in all the air, in which the summer medleys of the birds taunt us with their memories. We yearn for one such joyful sound to break the gloomy reverie. But what bird could swell his throat in song amidst such cheerlessness? No, Nature does not thus defeat her purpose. The hopefulness of Spring, the joyful consummation of Summer, have fled; their mission is fulfilled, and these are days for meditation on the past and future. All nature speaks of death; and there are voices of despair, and others eloquent with hope and trust. There are dead leaves that crumble into dust beneath our feet; but, if we look higher, there are others that conceal the promise of eternal life, where the undeveloped being, that perfect symbol, weaves his silken shroud, and awaits the coming of his day of full perfection. In the ground beneath he seeks his sepulchre, and he knows that at the appointed time he will burst his cerements and fly away.