Class ./^73.
Copight N"
COPntlGIIT DEPOSIT.
A Week on the Concord and
Merrimack Rivers
BY
HENRY D. THOREAU
WITH AN INTRODUCTION
BY
NATHAN H. DOLE
NEW YORK
THOMAS Y. CROWELL & CO.
PUBLISHERS
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Copyright, 1900,
By THOMAS Y. CROWELL & CO.
Where'er thou saiPst who sailed with me
Though now thou dimbest loftier mounts,
And fairer rivers dost ascend,
Be thou my Muse, my Brother—.
I am bound, I am bound, for a distant shore,
By a lonely isle, by a far Azore,
There it is, there it is, the treasure I seek.
On the barren sands of a desolate creek.
I sailed up a river with a pleasant wind,
New lands, new people, and new thoughts to find ;
Many fair reaches and headlands appeared,
And many dangers were there to be feared ;
But when I remember where I have been,
And the fair landscapes that I have seen.
Thou seemest the only permanent shore.
The cape never rounded, nor wandered o'er.
INTRODUCTION.
Most of us live as unconscious of the animated
world about us as we are of the cloud of unseen wit-
nesses by which we are said to be surrounded. We
turn a deaf ear to all but the most obvious songs ;
our eyes gaze into the haunts of the birds and we
see only sparrows and robins. We go our way and
let our humble brothers go theirs. What we know
of " animated Nature " we take on faith from Gold-
smith and those of his school. As Browning says : —
" A fiower is just a flower :
Man, bird, beast are but beast, bird, many
We have learned in the last hundred years to ap-
preciate the picturesque. Search through the litera-
ture of Greece and Rome and we shall find few
references to the beauties of mountain and sea. The
ancients had only a limited spectrum and even the
nightingale did not inspire their flights of song. Chau-
cer and Milton and Goldsmith went to Italy, but the
sight of the Alps did not rouse one of them to break
forth into such a hymn as Coleridge, with a little help
from a German master, sung to the Dawn in the
Valley of Chamounix.
Brunetto Latini personifies Nature as a gracious
woman of colossal stature gathering into her arms
viii INTR OD UC TION.
all the creatures that live, but in all his long poem
there is not another gleam of picturesqueness. His
greater pupil, Dante, introduced passages of radiant
beauty into the Divine Co7nedy, but the test of their
picturesqueness in our modern sense of the word
would be to try to paint them. The Nature of Mil-
ton was as formal as the closely trimmed hedges or
the cropped trees which he must have seen on the
Continent. Pope's famous grotto was a type of the
Nature which he loved. This larger aspect of Nature
is, as I have said, modern ; but the microscopic study
of every phase of life in field, forest, and stream has
its roots in classic literature. It is well worth one's
while to take Theokritos or Vergil and see how the
homely details of country life there depicted antici-
pate the school of writers of which Thoreau is such
a conspicuous example. Hear Theokritos : —
" T^ere we reclined on deep beds of fragrant len-
tisk, lowly strown, and rejoicing we lay in new-stript
leaves of the vine. And high above our heads waved
many a poplar, many an elm tree, while close at hand
the sacred water from the nymphs' own cave welled
forth with murmur musical. On shadowy boughs
the burnt cicalas kept their chattering toil ; far off
the little owls cried in the thick corn brake, the
larks and finches were singing, the ringdove moaned,
the yellow bees were flitting about the springs. All
breathed the scent of the opulent summer, of the
season of fruits ; pears at our feet and apples by our
sides were rolling plentiful ; the tender branches with
wild plums laden were earthward bowed, and the
INTR OD UC TION. ix
four-year-old pitch seal was loosened from the mouth
of the wine-jars."
And Vergil : —
" Here among familiar rivers
And these sacred founts, shalt thou take the shadowy coolness.
On this side, a hedge along the neighbori7ig cross-road.
Where Hyblcean bees ever feed on the flower of the willow.
Often with gentle susurrus to fall asleep shall persuade thee.
Yonder betieath the high rock, the pruner shall sing to the
breezes ;
Nor meanwhile shall thy heart's delight, the hoarse wood pig-
eons.
Nor the turtledove, cease to mourn from aerial elm trees."
There are dozens of passages in Thoreau which sound
as if they were a prose paraphrase of classic idyls
— at least six such in the first twenty pages of the
present book.
The roots of a thing are not the flower ; and the
modern development, and particularly the develop-
ment of Nature-literature in prose in this century, is
very interesting. Perhaps we may regard White of
Selborne as the first who in modern times brought to
the study of Nature carefully adjusted powers of obser-
vation. But during the past half-century Nature has
been most persistently wooed and won. There comes
into literature something more than a mere detailed
description and infinitesimal analysis: it is a deep,
sympathetic appreciation of beauty. Says Emerson : —
' ' Nature beats in perfect tune
And romtds with rime her every rune.
Whether she work in land or sea
Or hide underground her alchemy.
X INTR OD UCTION.
" Thou canst not wave thy staff in air
Or dip thy paddle in the lake.
But it carves the bow of beauty there.
And the ripples in rimes the oar for sake y
Without a touch of Pantheism such cult of Nature
would be impossible. The finding of something
beyond Nature makes it worth while to study so
minutely the infinite variety of leaf and flower and
bird-note. It is better than the worship of " the great
God Pan " which one finds in the poems of so many of
the poets of the present day. If that filthy and dis-
reputable old character should really come at their
call, they, especially the woman poets, would find
his hoofs and horns as unpleasant as they seemed to
the Hamadryads of old. Bnt the affectation after all
stands for something and covers a certain genuine
feeling. It is sometimes a little morbid in young
poets, but the young poets have a passionate delight in
recondite phenomena whether they understand them
or not, and there is a hearty welcome for the interpret-
ers who have gone straight to Nature herself, have
lived her life, and practised in her language.
These interpreters have nearly all of them a strong
flavor of wildness ; they are, if not barbarians, charac-
terized by some of the better qualities of barbarism.
Thoreau says, ^' There is in my nature, methinks, a
singular yearning toward all wildness '' ; and fiirther
on in the same Sunday on the Concord which you
will shortly read, he boasts of his paganism : *• I am
not sure but I should betake myself in extremities to
the liberal divinities of Greece, rather than to my
INTRODUCTION. xi
country's God. ... In my Pantheon, Pan still
reigns in his pristine glory, with his ruddy face, his
flowing beard, and his shaggy body, his pipe and
his crook, his nymph Echo, and his chosen daughter
lambe ; the Great Pan is not dead, as was rumored.
Perhaps of all the gods of New England and of an-
cient Greece, I am most constant at his shrine."
Of Thoreau, it has been said that he lived and
died to transfuse external Nature into human words.
His personality was acutely developed. Now indi-
viduality is well worth cultivating, but not at the
expense of symmetry. In this respect, Apollo is a
god more worthy of worship than the horn-hoofed
Pan with his rural pipes. A lopsided genius may
do great things ; we forgive him for his lopsided-
ness and put up with his idiosyncrasies. Socrates was
not even picturesque, and did not clean his fingernails ;
he would have done just as much good and had a far
wider personal influence, and probably lived several
years longer unmolested, and possibly made Xantippe
a very diff"erent wife and woman, if he had not allowed
his eccentricities to get such a hold upon him.
In Thoreau also we have to distinguish between the
man and the writer. His critics found it hard to do
so. Many of them have been unduly severe upon
him because they did not really understand him and
never knew him. Robert Louis Stevenson says of
him: —
" Thoreau's thin, penetrating, big-nosed face, even
in a bad woodcut, conveys some hint of the limitations
of his mind and character. With his almost acid
XU INTR OD UC TION.
sharpness of insight, with his almost animal dexterity
in act, there went none of that large unconscious ge-
niality of the world's heroes. He was not easy, not
ample, not urbane, not even kind ; his enjoyment was
hardly smiling, or the smile was not broad enough to
be convincing ; he had no waste lands nor kitchen-
midden in his nature, but was all improved and sharp-
ened to a point." So he goes on till he comes to the
conclusion — "Thoreau was a skulker! "
Emerson, who was his townsman, and house-mate,
judged him just as unfairly. James Russell Lowell
ridiculed him, declaring — " The tub of Diogenes had a
sounder bottom! " John Burroughs says of him, " He
was a man devoid of compassion, devoid of sympathy,
devoid of patriotism, as these words are usually under-
stood — he was also destitute of pity and love (in
the human sense) and of many other traits that are
thought to be both human and divine." A recent
history of American literature says of him, "Not-
withstanding his life among large things and the
breadth of his writing, his personal character was not
large." The late Francis H. Underwood declared
that his experiment as a recluse " was the experiment
of a selfish misanthrope, the freak of a literary bar-
barian." Almost all accounts of Thoreau assert that
he was so full of love for the universe that he had no
room for love for his fellow-men.
And yet there is very good reason to believe that
this disagreeable notion of Thoreau is quite unjust.
In reading the works of those that lived long ago, we
have a decided advantage over their contemporaries.
INTRODUCTION. xiii
We can dissociate their works from their lives.
We forget the dissoluteness of Burns and Byron ; we
care not if Shakespeare was a poacher. This fact is
a strong proof that as a general thing too much atten-
tion is paid to the personal element in the study of
literature. Perhaps it is a little harder in the case
of Thoreau because he boasts of being an egotist.
He says in Walden : " In most books the / or first
person is omitted ; in this it will be retained ; that in
respect to egotism is the main difference. We do not
remember that it is, after all, always the first person
that is speaking. I should not talk so much about
myself if there were anybody else whom I knew as
well.""
Thus he paints himself in his books, and out of these
various pictures we can make a composite which will
approximate to the truth. And yet we are far enough
away from him to study his work on its own merits,
and to apply our knowledge of his life only as far as
it instructs or elucidates.
He was of mixed lineage — French and Scotch. His
great-grandparents were well-to-do citizens of St.
Helier in the island of Jersey. A younger son came
to New England in 1773, and married a Scotswoman,
Jane Burns. Their son, John Thoreau, Jr., having
failed in mercantile business and lost the property in-
herited from his father, became a pencil-maker and
acquired a competence and distinction. He lived in
Concord, Massachusetts. His wife was Cynthia Dun-
bar, daughter of a Keene (New Hampshire) gentle-
man — a witty, intellectual woman, " fond of dress and
XIV INTR OD UC TION.
fond of gossip, a great talker.'' Once, when some one
remarked a resemblance between Thoreau's style and
Emerson's, she replied, " Yes, Mr. Emerson's style is
like my son's."
Henry David was the third child of these parents,
and was born July 12, 181 7, in a house on the so-
called Virginia Road near the Bedford Levels. As a
child he was afraid of thunder-showers : yet when
told, at the age of three, that, like the godly men of
whom he read in his religious exercise books, he too
would have to die, was not alarmed, but declared
that he did not want to go to heaven because he could
not carry his sled to heaven with him. He was a
sturdily honest lad ; when charged with taking a knife
he contented himself with saying, " I did not take
it " ; and when the real culprit was found and he was
asked why he did not sooner explain, he still repeated
laconically, " I did not take it." The boys called
him " The Judge."
At sixteen he was sent to Harvard, having been
prepared at the Concord Academy. During his vaca-
tions he taught school. Through Emerson's kindly
offices he received assistance from the college funds,
but his dislike of routine kept him from winning dis-
tinction. He refused to take his degree, on the ground
that five dollars was too high a price to pay for it.
The Rev. John Weiss, who was his room-mate, thus
pictured him : —
" He was cold and unimpressionable. The touch
of his hand was moist and indifferent. . . . Revery
hung always about him, and not so loosely as the odd
INTRODUCTION. xv
garments which the pious household care furnished.
Thought had not yet awakened his countenance ; it
was serene and ratlier dull, rather plodding. The
lips were not yet firm, there was almost a look of
smug satisfaction lurking round their corners. It is
plain now that he was preparing to hold his future
views with great setness and personal appreciation
of their importance. The nose was prominent, but
its curve fell forward without firmness on the upper
lip, and we remember him as looking very much like
some Egyptian sculptures of faces — large-featured,
but brooding, immobile, fixed in a mystic egoism."
One of his friends remarked of him : " I love
Henry, but I cannot like him. ... As for taking
his arm, I should as soon think of taking the arm of
an elm tree." He made few friends. Neither his
classmates nor his teachers regarded him as likely to
attain distinction. In a letter written a few years
after graduation he says that what he learned in col-
lege was chiefly to express himself. Speaking of his
college course in navigation, he exclaimed, " Why, if
I had taken one turn down the harbor, I should have
known more about it."
Even then he had resolved to " read no book, take
no walk, undertake no enterprise, but such as he
could endure to give an account of to himself and
live thus deliberately for the most part." This giv-
ing an account to himself of his life gave rise to his
diaries, which with Walden and the present book are
his literary legacy to posterity. After graduation he
taught school for a year or two ; he was engaged with
XVI INTR OD UC riON.
his brother in keeping the Concord Academy. Like
Alcott he determined not to flog his pupils, but such
leniency did not suit the committee, — they insisted
that Mr. Thoreau should use the ferule. He put this
stringency into immediate practice, and feruled six
pupils after school one day, — one of them was the
maid-servant in his own house. What the effect on
their domestic affairs was is not on record, but he
shortly afterwards resigned his position. He also
withdrew from Dr. Ripley's congregation ; in this
respect he was the true type of the anarchist. He
refused to pay the church tax on the ground that he
did not see why the schoolmaster should support the
priest any more than the priest should support the
schoolmaster; he avoided the penalty by signing a
statement that he was not a member of the church.
He resolved to reduce his necessities to the lowest
terms ; his wants were few, his means were slender.
He had a natural aptitude for all kinds of mechanical
work. For a time he devoted himself to the ancestral
work of making lead-pencils, and succeeded in pro-
ducing a better kind than was in the market. He
obtained certificates from dealers and artists that his
work was equal to that of the best London makers.
There he stopped : " I shall never make another
pencil," said he; "why should I? I would not do
again what I have done once." Yet the exigencies
of life compelled him to break that rash vow; he
had to do something to earn his daily bread. He
preferred the outdoor occupation of surveying; he
delighted in reckoning measures and distances, the
INTR on UC TION. xvii
size of trees, the depths and surfaces of ponds and
rivers ; so it was natural for him to take up the art of
mensuration for his neighbors : his accuracy and skill
became proverbial, he had all the work he needed.
He himself put it in his quaint characteristic way,
" To tell the truth, I saw an advertisement for able-
bodied seamen, when I was a boy sauntering in my
native port, and as soon as I came of age I embarked."
He recapitulates his favorite enterprises: "To
anticipate not the sunrise and the dawn merely, but
if possible Nature herself. How many mornings.
Summer and Winter, before yet any neighbor was
stirring about his business, have I been about mine.
No doubt many of my townspeople have met me
returning from this enterprise — farmers starting for
Boston in the twilight, or wood-choppers going to
their work. It is true I never assisted the sun mate-
rially in his rising, but doubt not it was of the last
importance only to be present at it. . . . So many
Autumn and Winter days spent outside the town,
trying to hear what was in the wind, to hear and
carry it express. I well-nigh sunk all my capital in
it, and lost my own breath into the bargain, running
in the face of it. If it had concerned either of the
political parties, depend upon it, it would have ap-
peared in the gazette with the earliest intelligence.
At other times watching from the observatory of some
cliff or tree, to telegraph any new arrival, or waiting
at evening on the hill-top for the sky to fall, that I
might catch something, though I never caught much,
and that, manna-wise, would resolve again in the
X Vlli INTR OD UC TION.
sun. For a long time I was a reporter to a journal
of no great circulation, whose editor has never yet
seen fit to print the bulk of my communications, and
as is too common with writers I got only my labors
for my pains. However, in this case my pains were
their own reward."
This "journal," for which he was the reporter, was
his diary, which he kept after the manner of Emer-
son, jotting down in it briefly or voluminously his
observations and comments, and from which he drew
as from a reservoir when he wished to write an essay
or a book. His journals comprised thirty large vol-
umes, and extend from 1837 till 1862. His literary
executor, the late H. G. O. Blake, made up from
these journals a perfect calendar of the year, giving
minute observations on the changing seasons and
all the graces thereof.
" Nothing," says Thoreau, " can shock a brave man
but dulness." He was never dull to himself. He had
his duties to perform, and this minute chronicling
of his observations was no small part of them. " For
many years," he says, " I was self-appointed inspector
of snowstorms and rainstorms, and did my duty faith-
fully ; surveyor, if not of highways, then of forest
paths, and all across-lot routes, keeping them open
and ravines bridged and passable at all seasons,
where the public heel had testified to their utility.
... I have watered the red huckleberry, the sand
cherry, and the nettle tree, the red pine and the black
ash, the white grape, and the yellow violet, which
might have else perished in dry seasons. . . , In
INTR OD UC TION. xix
short," he concludes, " I went on thus for a long time,
I may say it without boasting, faithfully minding my
business, till it became more and more evident that
my townsmen would not after all admit me into the
list of town officers, nor make my place a sinecure
with a moderate allowance."
He expressed the same idea in his rugged, in-
artistic rhymes: —
"Great God, I ask Thee for no meaner pelf
Than that 1 7?iay not disappoint myself,
That in my action I may soar as high
As I cannot discertt with this clear eye.
"And next in value, which Thy kindness lends.
That I may greatly disappoint my friends :
Howe'er they think or hope that it may be
They may not dream how Thou 'st disfinguisht rne."
They did not dream it until long after he was dead,
when to their surprise this man, whom some of them
at least thought to be an idler, was found to be more
and more the glory of the town.
Thoreau was rewarded by Nature as few men have
been rewarded in their fealty. He had amazingly
quick senses and almost miraculous power of insight ;
he could make his way through the darkest * woods
at darkest night, where other men would have been
lost at high noon. His keenness of scent was like
a dog's. He needed no watch or almanac: the time
of day he could tell by his eye ; the time of the year
he could tell to a day by the curious clock of the
changing flowers. He could measure distances and
XX INTR OD UCTION.
gauge depths without Gunter's line or plummet. He
could infallibly grasp a dozen lead-pencils out of a
mixed heap. He could measure bulk by silent com-
putation.
Moreover, Mother Nature taught her other children
— the birds and animals — to have no fear of their
human brother. He was trained in the school of
Hiawatha. Squirrels would leap down from forest
trees to his shoulder, and nestle in his pocket. He
would visit the festive woodchuck in her holes ;
she regarded it as no insult if he reached in his
arm and pulled her out by the tail. More than once,
when he was out on the Concord River, he was seen
to put his hand down among the lily-pads and lift
out a glittering fish ; he knew where they nested,
and they loved to take their little foretaste of im-
mortality from his gentle hand. He knew the haunts
of all the wild creatures of the woods and fields.
Everything came ready to his wish. Once, when out
walking, a friend asked him where Indian arrow-
heads could be found.
" Everywhere," was his reply, and, stooping down,
picked one up.
When he sprained his ankle in Tuckerman's
Ravine he found, all ready for application, the leaves
of the Arnica 7nollis. " It was a pleasure to walk with
him," said Emerson. " He knew the country like
a bird, and passed through it as freely by paths of
his own. He knew every track in the snow or on
the ground, and what creature had taken this path
before him. . . . Under his arm he carried an old
INTR OD UC TION, XXI
music-book in which to press plants ; in his pocket,
his diary and pencil, a spy-glass for birds, micro-
scopes, jack-knife, and twine. He wore a straw hat,
stout shoes, strong gray trowsers to brave scrub
oaks and smilax and to climb a tree for a hawk or
squirrel's nest. He waded into a pool for the water
plants, and his strong legs were no insignificant part
of his equipment."
He was sometimes as brusque as a hedgehog. He
would not throw away his walks on uncongenial per-
sons, and he did not hesitate to express himself frankly,
like the weather. Some one sent him an invitation :
" Such are my engagements to myself that I dare not
promise," was his reply.
In the autumn of 1839 ^^ ^^^ ^^-^ brother made an
excursion down the sluggish Concord, to the Merri-
mac, and up the Merrimac to its source in the White
Mountains — two days on the one and four days on
the other. Almost every incident, almost every phe-
nomenon, was chronicled and made to form the intro-
duction to an essay. Now he tells scientifically of the
habits of the genera of the finny tribes inhabiting the
stream ; the sight of a church leads him to a soliloquy
on rituals ; transcendental reveries are interrupted by
rugged and unrhythmical and carelessly constructed
jingles of verse. Such a style can be only superficially
compared to Emerson's. Listen to Emerson : —
" Whenever snow falls, or water flows, or birds fly,
whenever day and night meet in twilight, whenever
the blue heaven is hung by clouds, or sown with stars,
wherever are forms with transparent boundaries.
XXU INTR OD UC TION.
wherever are outlets into celestial space, wherever is
danger and awe and love, there is beauty, plenteous
as rain, shed for thee, and though thou shouldst walk
the world over, thou shalt not be able to find a condi-
tion inopportune or ignoble."
There will be found in Thoreau thoughts not unlike
that, but where in Emerson a bird is a bird, and a
beast a beast, Thoreau tickets the bird with its scien-
tific name and relates its habits and distinguishes it
from all other birds. Emerson is vaguely general ;
Thoreau accurate and particular. In that respect they
are a world apart, and the resemblance between them
is only accidental and superficial : only alike are they
in their attempts at poetic efflatus, and in those Emer-
son, in spite of his faulty rhythms, is vastly superior
to Thoreau, just as Thoreau, in all that concerns Na-
ture, is far more entertaining than Emerson because he
is the reporter for her. Both of them quote Hafiz and
the Bagvhat Gita and all poets with transcendental bias .
The boat in which the Thoreau brothers made their
famous inland voyage afterwards became Hawthorne's,
and is mentioned in The Mosses from an Old
Majise, and the fruit of the excursion was Thoreau's
first volume. He got it ready for the press while liv-
ing in his hut by Walden Pond. Parts of it had
already appeared in The Dial, but when he was asked
to offer a memoir of his observations to the Natural
History Society, he exclaimed : " Why should I ?
To detach the description from its connection in my
mind would make it no longer true or valuable to me,
and they do not wish what belongs with it."
INTRODUCTION. XXlll
The manuscript went from publisher to publisher,
and he finally borrowed the money necessary to bring
it out. It was issued in the summer of 1849, by James
Munroe and Company. Though it received some
complimentary notices, it did not pay its expenses, and
Thoreau had to earn money by surveying in order to
make good the loss. Four years after it was published
Thoreau was asked to remove the unsold copies from
the cellar of the publishing house. Seventy-five had
been given away ; 215 had been sold, and the rest were
sent to Thoreau by express. He confided to his diary,
October 28, 1853, that "he had a library of nearly
900 volumes, over 700 of which he had written
himself."
It did not affect his spirits ; he took the public in-
difference philosophically ; he himself saw the good that
was in it — its outdoor, or, as he calls it, " hypaethral,"
character.
The world, which stones its living prophets and
lets its poets beg their bread, has grown aware
of its charm. Now everything from his pen is treas-
ured, as the legacy of a prophet and a poet. He did
not live to see his growing popularity. In 1841 he
went to live with Emerson — Apollo serving Admetus.
In 1844 he borrowed an axe of Alcott and built his
famous little hut by Walden pond, and underwent
the experiences detailed in the book that bears that
name — the only other that was published during his
lifetime. That same year he refused to pay his poll-
tax, and was lodged in jail.
"Henry, why are you here?" asked Emerson,
XXIV INTRODUCTION.
" Why are you not here ? " was the Yankee answer
of the young anarchist.
In 1846 he made his excursion to the Maine woods
and explored the region around Mt. Ktaadn. He
also made an excursion to Cape Cod, and the account
of that has become classic. He was interested in the
abolition movement, and it was whispered that the
Walden hut was a station of the Underground Rail-
way. When John Brown was tried and executed,
Thoreau called his townspeople together and gave
them a ringing address. His cry for liberty placed
him in the vanguard of the liberals. At the outbreak
of the War of the Rebellion his health had begun to
fail. In 1 861 he went to Minnesota, but the climate
there did not work the hoped-for benefit. After a
long illness, borne with patience, he died on May 6,
1862.
No one can read the Concord and Merrimack
Rivers without becoming fond of Thoreau ; the
mixture of humor, of sound common sense, of wide
information, of broad reading, of deep thought, of
liberal theology, and above all of genuine love of
Nature, all couched in a singularly clear and pellucid
style — not faultless, but simple and definite — makes
it a perpetual delight, not necessarily for consecutive
reading, but for literary browsing. One may pick it
up anywhere and find it full of suggestion and charm.
It has become one of the classics of out-of-door
literature.
NATHAN HASKELL DOLE.
CONCORD RIVER.
' Beneath low hills, in the broad interval
Through which at will our Indian rivulet
Winds mindful still of sannup and of squaw,
Whose pipe and arrow oft the plough unburies,
Here, in pine houses, built of new-fallen trees,
Supplanters of the tribe, the farmers dwell."
Emerson.
The Musketaquid, or Grass-ground River, though
probably as old as the Nile or Euphrates, did not begin
to have a place in civilized history, until the fame of
its grassy meadows and its fish attracted settlers out
of England in 1635, when it received the other but
kindred name of Concord from the first plantation
on its banks, which appears to have been commenced
in a spirit of peace and harmony. It will be Grass-
ground River as long as grass grows and water runs
here ; it will be Concord River only while men lead
peaceable lives on its banks. To an extinct race it
was grass-ground, where they hunted and fished, and
it is still perennial grass-ground to Concord farmers,
who own the Great Meadows, and get the hay from
year to year. " One branch of it," according to the
Historian of Concord, for I love to quote so good
authority, "rises in the south part of Hopkinton, and
another from a pond and a large cedar swamp in West-
borough," and flowing between Hopkinton and South-
borough, through Framingham, and between Sudbury
2 A WEEK ON THE CONCORD RIVER.
and Wayland, where it is sometimes called Sudbury
river, it enters Concord at the south part of the town,
and after receiving the North or Assabeth river, which
has its source a little further to the north and west,
goes out at the north-east angle, and flowing between
Bedford and Carlisle, and through Billerica, empties
into the Merrimack at Lowell. In Concord it is, in
summer, from four to fifteen feet deep, and from one
hundred to three hundred feet wide, but in the spring
freshets, when it overflows its banks, it is in some
places nearly a mile wide. Between Sudbury and
Wayland the meadows acquire their greatest breadth,
and when covered with water, they form a handsome
chain of shallow vernal lakes, resorted to by numer-
ous gulls and ducks. Just above Sherman's Bridge,
between these towns, is the largest expanse, and when
the wind blows freshly in a raw March day, heaving
up the surface into dark and sober billows or regular
swells, skirted as it is in the distance with alder swamps
and smoke-like maples, it looks like a smaller Lake
Huron, and is very pleasant and exciting for a lands-
man to row or sail over. The farm-houses along the
Sudbury shore, which rises gently to a considerable
height, command fine water prospects at this season.
The shore is more flat on the Wayland side, and this
town is the greatest loser by the flood. Its farmers
tell me that thousands of acres are flooded now, since
the dams have been erected, where they remember to
have seen the white honeysuckle or clover growing
once, and they could go dry with shoes only in sum-
mer. Now there is nothing but blue-joint and sedge
and cut-grass there, standing in water all the year
round. For a long time, they made the most of the
driest season to get their hay, working sometimes
CONCORD RIVER. 3
till nine o'clock at night, sedulously paring with their
scythes in the twilight round the hummocks left by
the ice ; but now it is not worth the getting, when
they can come at it, and they look sadly round to
their wood-lots and upland as a last resource.
It is worth the while to make a voyage up this
stream, if you go no farther than Sudbury, only to
see how much country there is in the rear of us ;
great hills, and a hundred brooks, and farm-houses,
and barns, and hay-stacks, you never saw before, and
men everywhere, Sudbury, that is Soiithboroiigh men,
and Wayland, and Nine-Acre-Corner men, and Bound
Rock, where four towns bound on a rock in the river,
Lincoln, Wayland, Sudbury, Concord. Many waves
are there agitated by the wind, keeping nature fresh,
the spray blowing in your face, reeds and rushes
waving; ducks by the hundred, all uneasy in the
surf, in the raw wind, just ready to rise, and now
going off with a clatter and a whistling, like riggers
straight for Labrador, flying against the stiff gale
with reefed wings, or else circling round first, with
all their paddles briskly moving, just over the surf,
to reconnoitre you before they leave these parts ;
gulls wheeling overhead, muskrats swimming for dear
life, wet and cold, with no fire to warm them by that
you know of; their labored homes rising here and
there like hay-stacks ; and countless mice and moles
and winged titmice along the sunny, windy shore ;
cranberries tossed on the waves and heaving up on
the beach, their little red skiffs beating about among the
alders ; — such healthy natural tumult as proves the
last day is not yet at hand. And there stand all
around the alders, and birches, and oaks, and maples
full of glee and sap, holding in their buds until the
4 A WEEK ON THE CONCORD RIVER.
waters subside. You shall perhaps run aground on.
Cranberry Island, only some spires of last year's
pipegrass above water, to show where the danger is,
and get as good a freezing there as anywhere on the
North-west Coast. I never voyaged so far in all my
life. You shall see men you never heard of before,
whose names you don't know, going away down through
the meadows with long ducking guns, with water-tight
boots, wading through the fowl-meadow grass, on bleak,
wintry, distant shores, with guns at half cock, and they
shall see teal, blue-winged, green-winged, shelldrakes,
whistlers, black ducks, ospreys, and many other wild
and noble sights before night, such as they who sit
in parlors never dream of. You shall see rude and
sturdy, experienced and wise men, keeping their
castles, or teaming up their summer's wood, or chop-
ping alone in the woods, men fuller of talk and rare
adventure in the sun and wind and rain, than a chest-
nut is of meat ; who were out not only in '75 and 1812,
but have been out every day of their lives ; greater
men than Homer, or Chaucer, or Shakspeare, only
they never got time to say so ; they never took to
the way of writing. Look at their fields, and imag-
ine what they might write, if ever they should put
pen to paper. Or what have they not written on the
face of the earth already, clearing, and burning, and
scratching, and harrowing, and plowing, and subsoil-
ing, in and in, and out and out, and over and over,
again and again, erasing what they had already writ-
ten for want of parchment.
As yesterday and the historical ages are past, as the
work of to-day is present, so some flitting perspectives,
and demi-experiences of the life that is in nature are
in time veritably future, or rather outside to time,
CONCORD RIVER. 5
perennial, young, divine, in the wind and rain which
never die.
The respectable folks, —
Where dwell they ?
They whisper in the oaks,
And they sigh in the hay ;
Summer and winter, night and day,
Out on the meadow, there dwell they.
They never die,
Nor snivel, nor cry,
Nor ask our pity
With a wet eye.
A sound estate they ever mend,
To every asker readily lend ;
To the ocean wealth.
To the meadow health,
To Time his length.
To the rocks strength,
To the stars light,
To the weary night,
To the busy day,
To the idle play ;
And so their good cheer never ends,
For all are their debtors, and all their friends.
Concord River is remarkable for the gentleness of
its current, which is scarcely perceptible, and some
have referred to its influence the proverbial modera-
tion of the inhabitants of Concord, as exhibited in the
Revolution, and on later occasions. It has been pro-
posed, that the town should adopt for its coat of arms
a field verdant, with the Concord circhng nine times
round. I have read that a descent of an eighth of an
inch in a mile is sufficient to produce a flow. Our
river has, probably, very near the smallest allowance.
The story is current, at any rate, though I believe that
strict history will not bear it out, that the only bridge
6 A WEEK ON THE CONCORD RIVER.
ever carried away on the main branch, within the limits
of the town, was driven up stream by the wind. But
wherever it makes a sudden bend it is shallower and
swifter, and asserts its title to be called a river. Com-
pared with the other tributaries of the Merrimack, it
appears to have been properly named Musketaquid,
or Meadow River, by the Indians. For the most part,
it creeps through broad meadows, adorned with scat-
tered oaks,- where the cranberry is found in abundance,
covering the ground like a moss-bed. A row of
sunken dwarf willows borders the stream on one or
both sides, while at a greater distance the meadow is
skirted with maples, alders, and other fluviatile trees,
overrun with the grape vine, which bears fruit in its
season, purple, red, white, and other grapes. Still
further from the stream, on the edge of the firm land,
are seen the gray and white dwellings of the inhabit-
ants. According to the valuation of 1831, there were
in Concord two thousand one hundred and eleven
acres, or about one-seventh of the whole territory, in
meadow ; this standing next in the list after pasturage
and unimproved lands, and, judging from the returns
of previous years, the meadow is not reclaimed so fast
as the woods are cleared.
The sluggish artery of the Concord meadows steals
thus unobserved through the town, without a murmur
or a pulse-beat, its general course from south-west to
north-east, and its length about fifty miles; a huge
volume of matter, ceaselessly rolling through the
plains and valleys of the substantial earth, with the
moccasined tread of an Indian warrior, making haste
from the high places of the earth to its ancient reser-
voir. The murmurs of many a famous river on the
other side of the globe reach even to us here, as to
CONCORD RIVER. 7
more distant dwellers on its banks ; many a poet's
stream floating the helms and shields of heroes on its
bosom. The Xanthus or Scamander is not a mere
dry channel and bed of a mountain torrent, but fed by
the ever-flowing springs of fame ; —
" And thou Simois, that as an arrowe, clere
Through Troy rennest, aie downward to the sea ;" —
and I trust that I may be allowed to associate our
muddy but much abused Concord River with the most
famous in history.
" Sure there are poets which did never dream
Upon Parnassus, nor did taste the stream
Of Helicon ; we therefore may suppose
Those made not poets, but the poets those."
The Mississippi, the Ganges, and the Nile, those
journeying atoms from the Rocky Mountains, the
Himmaleh, and Mountains of the Moon, have a kind
of personal importance in the annals of the world.
The heavens are not yet drained over their sources,
but the Mountains of the Moon still send their annual
tribute to the Pasha without fail, as they did to the
Pharaohs, though he must collect the rest of his reve-
nue at the point of the sword. Rivers must have been
the guides which conducted the footsteps of the first
travellers. They are the constant lure, when they
flow by our doors, to distant enterprise and adventure,
and, by a natural impulse, the dwellers on their banks
will at length accompany their currents to the low-
lands of the globe, or explore at their invitation the
interior of continents. They are the natural high-
ways of all nations, not only levelling the ground, and
removing obstacles from the path of the traveller,
quenching his thirst, and bearing him on their bos-
8 A WEEK ON THE CONCORD RIVER.
oms, but conducting him through the most interesting
scenery, the most populous portions of the globe,
and where the animal and vegetable kingdoms attain
their greatest perfection.
I had often stood on the banks of the Concord,
watching the lapse of the current, an emblem of all
progress, following the same law with the system, with
time, and all that is made ; the weeds at the bottom
gently bending down the stream, shaken by the watery
wind, still planted where their seeds had sunk, but ere
long to die and go down likewise ; the shining peb-
bles, not yet anxious to better their condition, the
chips and weeds, and occasional logs and stems of
trees, that floated past, fulfilling their fate, were ob-
jects of singular interest to me, and at last I resolved
to launch myself on its bosom, and float whither it
would bear me.
SATURDAY.
" Come, come, my lovely fair, and let us try
These rural delicates."
Invitation to the Soul. Quarles,
At length, on Saturday, the last day of August,
1839, we two, brothers, and natives of Concord,
weighed anchor in this river port ; for Concord, too,
lies under the sun, a port of entry and departure for
the bodies as well as the souls of men ; one shore at
least exempted from all duties but such as an honest
man will gladly discharge. A warm drizzling rain
had obscured the morning, and threatened to delay
our voyage, but at length the leaves and grass were
dried, and it came out a mild afternoon, as serene and
fresh as if nature were maturing some greater scheme
of her own. After this long dripping and oozing from
every pore, she began to respire again more healthily
than ever. So with a vigorous shove we launched
our boat from the bank, while the flags and bulrushes
curtseyed a God-speed, and dropped silently down
the stream.
Our boat, which had cost us a week's labor in the
spring, was in form like a fisherman's dory, fifteen
feet long by three and a half in breadth at the widest
part, painted green below, with a border of blue, with
reference to the two elements in which it was to spend
its existence. It had been loaded the evening before
9
10 A WEEK ON THE CONCORD RIVER.
at our door, half a mile from the river, with potatoes
and melons from a patch which we had cultivated,
and a few utensils, and was provided with wheels in
order to be rolled around falls, as well as with two
sets of oars, and several slender poles for shoving in
shallow places, and also two masts, one of which
served for a tent-pole at night ; for a buffalo skin was
to be our bed, and a tent of cotton cloth our roof.
It was strongly built but heavy, and hardly of better
model than usual. If rightly made, a boat would be a
sort of amphibious animal, a creature of two elements,
related by one half its structure to some swift and
shapely fish, and by the other to some strong-winged
and graceful bird. The fish shows where there should
be the greatest breadth of beam and depth in the hold ;
its fins direct where to set the oars, and the tail gives
some hint for the form and position of the rudder.
The bird shows how to rig and trim the sails, and
what form to give to the prow that it may balance the
boat, and divide the air and water best. These hints
we had but partially obeyed. But the eyes, though
they are no sailors, will never be satisfied with any
model, however fashionable, which does not answer
all the requisitions of art. However, as art is all of a
ship but the wood, and yet the wood alone will rudely
serve the purpose of a ship, so our boat being of wood
gladly availed itself of the old law that the heavier
shall float the lighter, and though a dull water fowl,
proved a sufficient buoy for our purpose.
" Were it the will of Heaven, an osier bough
Were vessel safe enough the seas to plow."
Some village friends stood upon a promontory lower
down the stream to wave us a last farewell ; but we,
SA TURD A Y. 1 1
having already performed these shore rites with ex-
cusable reserve, as befits those who are embarked
on unusual enterprises, who behold but speak not,
silently glided past the firm lands of Concord, both
peopled cape and lonely summer meadow, with steady
sweeps. And yet we did unbend so far as to let
our guns speak for us, when at length we had swept
out of sight, and thus left the woods to ring again
with their echoes ; and it may be many russet-clad
children lurking in those broad meadows, with the
bittern and the woodcock and the rail, though wholly
concealed by brakes and hardback and meadow-sweet,
heard our salute that afternoon.
We were soon floating past the first regular battle
ground of the Revolution, resting on our oars between
the still visible abutments of that " North Bridge,"
over which in April, 1775, rolled the first faint tide
of that war, which ceased not, till, as we read on the
stone on our right, it "gave peace to these United
States." As a Concord poet has sung, —
" By the rude bridge that arched the flood,
Their flag to April's breeze unfurled,
Here once the embattled farmers stood.
And fired the shot heard round the world.
" The foe long since in silence slept ;
Alike the conqueror silent sleeps ;
And Time the ruined bridge has swept
Down the dark stream which seaward creeps."
Our reflections had already acquired a historical
remoteness from the scenes we had left, and we our-
selves essayed to sing.
Ah, 't is in vain the peaceful din
That wakes the ignoble town,
12 A WEEK ON THE CONCORD RIVER.
Not thus did braver spirits win
A patriot's renown.
There is one field beside this stream,
Wherein no foot does fall,
But yet it beareth in my dream
A richer crop than all.
Let me believe a dream so dear,
Some heart beat high that day,
Above the petty Province here,
And Britain far away ;
Some hero of the ancient mould,
Some arm of knightly worth,
Of strength unbought, and faith unsold.
Honored this spot of earth ;
Who sought the prize his heart described,
And did not ask release.
Whose free born valor was not bribed
By prospect of a peace.
The men who stood on yonder height
That day are long since gone ;
Not the same hand directs the fight
And monumental stone.
Ye were the Grecian cities then,
The Romes of modern birth,
Where the New England husbandmen
Have shown a Roman worth.
In vain I search a foreign land,
To find our Bunker Hill,
And Lexington and Concord stand
By no Laconian rill.
With such thoughts we swept gently by this now
peaceful pasture ground, on waves of Concord, in
which was long since drowned the din of war.
SATURDAY. 1 3
But since we sailed
Some things have failed,
And many a dream
Gone down the stream.
Here then an aged shepherd dwelt,
Who to his flock his substance dealt,
And ruled them with a vigorous crook.
By precept of the sacred Book ;
But he the pierless bridge passed o'er,
And solitary left the shore.
Anon a youthful pastor came,
Whose crook was not unknown to fame,
His lambs he viewed with gentle glance.
Spread o'er the country's wide expanse,
And fed with " Mosses from the Manse."
Here was our Hawthorne in the dale,
And here the shepherd told his tale.
That slight shaft had now sunk behind the hills,
and we had floated round the neighboring bend, and
under the new North Bridge between Ponkawtasset
and the Poplar Hill, into the Great Meadows, which,
like a broad moccasin print, have levelled a fertile and
juicy place in nature.
On Ponkawtasset, since, with such delay,
Down this still stream we took our meadowy way,
A poet wise has settled, whose fine ray
Doth faintly shine on Concord's twilight day.
Like those first stars, whose silver beams on high,
Shining more brightly as the day goes by,
Most travellers cannot at first descry,
But eyes that wont to range the evening sky.
And know celestial lights, do plainly see.
And gladly hail them, numbering two or three;
For lore that 's deep must deeply studied be,
As from deep wells men read star-poetry.
14 A WEEK ON THE CONCORD RIVER.
These stars are never pal'd, though out of sight,
But hke the sun they shine forever bright ;
Aye, they are suns, though earth must in its flight
Put out its eyes that it may see their hght.
Who would neglect the least celestial sound.
Or faintest light that falls on earthly ground,
If he could know it one day would be found
That star in Cygnus whither we are bound.
And pale our sun with heavenly radiance round?
Gradually the village murmur subsided, and we
seemed to be embarked on the placid current of our
dreams, floating from past to future as silently as one
awakes to fresh morning or evening thoughts. We
glided noiselessly down the stream, occasionally driv-
ing a pickerel from the covert of the pads, or a bream
from her nest, and the smaller bittern now and then
sailed away on sluggish wings from some recess in
the shore, or the larger lifted itself out of the long
grass at our approach, and carried its precious legs
away to deposit them in a place of safety. The
tortoises also rapidly dropped into the water, as our
boat ruffled the surface amid the willows, breaking
the reflections of the trees. The banks had passed
the height of their beauty, and some of the brighter
flowers showed by their faded tints that the season
was verging towards the afternoon of the year ; but
this sombre tinge enhanced their sincerity, and in
the still unabated heats they seemed like a mossy
brink of some cool well. The narrow-leaved willow
lay along the surface of the water in masses of light
green foliage, interspersed with the large white balls
of the button-bush. The rose-colored polygonum
raised its head proudly above the water on either
hand, and, flowering at this season and in these locali-
SATURDAY. 1 5
ties, in the midst of dense fields of the white species,
which skirted the sides of the stream, its little streak
of red looked very rare and precious. The pure white
blossoms of the arrow-head stood in the shallower
parts, and a few cardinals on the margin still proudly
surveyed themselves reflected in the water, though
the latter, as well as the pickerel-weed, was now nearly
out of blossom. The snake-head, ckelone glabra, grew
close to the shore, while a kind of coreopsis, turning
its brazen face to the sun, full and rank, and a tall dull
red flower, eiipatorhun purpiirejun, or trumpet weed,
formed the rear rank of the fluvial array. The bright
blue flowers of the soap-wort gentian were sprinkled
here and there in the adjacent meadows, like flowers
which Proserpine had dropped, and still further in
the fields, or higher on the bank, were seen the Vir-
ginian rhexia, and drooping neottia or ladies'-tresses ;
while from the more distant waysides, which we occa-
sionally passed, and banks where the sun had lodged,
was reflected a dull yellow beam from the ranks of
tansy, now in its prime. In short, nature seemed to
have adorned herself for our departure with a pro-
fusion of fringes and curls, mingled with the bright
tints of flowers, reflected in the water. But we missed
the white water-lily, which is the queen of river flowers,
its reign being over for this season. He makes his
voyage too late, perhaps, by a true water clock who
delays so long. Many of this species inhabit our
Concord water. I have passed down the river before
sunrise on a summer morning between fields of lilies
still shut in sleep ; and when at length the flakes of
sunlight from over the bank fell on the surface of the
water, whole fields of white blossoms seemed to flash
open before me, as I floated along, like the unfolding
1 6 A WEEK ON THE CONCORD RIVER.
of a banner, so sensible is this flower to the influence
of the sun's rays.
As we were floating through the last of these famil-
iar meadows, we observed the large and conspicuous
flowers of the hibiscus, covering the dwarf willows,
and mingled with the leaves of the grape, and wished
that we could inform one of our friends behind of the
locality of this somewhat rare and inaccessible flower
before it was too late to pluck it ; but we were just
gliding out of sight of the village spire before it oc-
curred to us that the farmer in the adjacent meadow
would go to church on the morrow, and would carry
this news for us ; and so by the Monday, while we
should be floating on the Merrimack, our friend would
be reaching to pluck this blossom on the bank of the
Concord.
After a pause at Ball's Hill, the St. Ann's of Con-
cord voyageurs, not to say any prayer for the success
of our voyage, but to gather the few berries which
were still left on the hills, hanging by very slender
threads, we weighed anchor again, and were soon out
of sight of our native village. The land seemed to
grow fairer as we withdrew from it. Far away to the
south-west lay the quiet village, left alone under its
elms and button-woods in mid afternoon ; and the
hills, notwithstanding their blue, ethereal faces, seemed
to cast a saddened eye on their old playfellows ; but,
turning short to the north, we bade adieu to their
familiar outlines, and addressed ourselves to new
scenes and adventures. Nought was familiar but the
heavens, from under whose roof the voyageur never
passes ; but with their countenance, and the acquaint-
ance we had with river and wood, we trusted to fare
well under any circumstances.
SATURDAY, 1 7
From this point, the river runs perfectly straight
for a mile or more to Carlisle Bridge, which consfsts
of twenty wooden piers, and when we looked back
over it, its surface was reduced to a line's breadth,
and appeared like a cobweb gleaming in the sun!
Here and there might be seen a pole sticking up, to
mark the place where some fisherman had enjoyed
unusual luck, and in return had consecrated his rod
to the deities who preside over these shallows. It
was full twice as broad as before, deep and tranquil,
with a muddy bottom, and bordered with willows'
beyond which spread broad lagoons covered with
pads, bulrushes, and flags.
Late in the afternoon we passed a man on the shore
fishing with a long birch pole, its silvery bark left on,
and a dog at his side, rowing so near as to agitate his
cork with our oars, and drive away luck for a sea-
son ; and when we had rowed a mile as straight as
an arrow, with our faces turned towards him, and the
bubbles in our wake still visible on the tranquil sur-
face, there stood the fisher still with his dog, like
statues under the other side of the heavens, the only
objects to relieve the eye in the extended meadow ;
and there would he stand abiding his luck, till he
took his way home through the fields at evening with
his fish. Thus, by one bait or another. Nature allures
inhabitants into all her recesses. This man was the
last of our townsmen whom we saw, and we silently
through him bade adieu to our friends.
The characteristics and pursuits of various ages and
races of men are always existing in epitome in every
neighborhood. The pleasures of my earliest youth
have become the inheritance of other men. This
1 8 A WEEK ON THE CONCORD RIVER.
man is still a fisher, and belongs to an era in which I
myself have lived. Perchance he is not confounded
by many knowledges, and has not sought out many
inventions, but how to take many fishes before the
sun sets, with his slender birchen pole and flaxen line,
that is invention enough for him. It is good even to
be a fisherman in summer and in winter. Some men
are judges these August days, sitting on benches, even
till the court rises ; they sit judging there honorably,
between the seasons and between meals, leading a
civil politic life, arbitrating in the case of Spaulding
versus Cummings, it may be, from highest noon till
the red vesper sinks into the west. The fisherman,
meanwhile, stands in three feet of water, under the
same summer's sun, arbitrating in other cases between
muckworm and shiner, amid the fragrance of water-
lilies, mint, and pontederia, leading his life many rods
from the dry land, within a pole's length of where the
larger fishes swim. Human life is to him very much
like a river,
— " renning aie downward to the sea."
This was his observation. His honor made a great
discovery in bailments.
I can just remember an old brown-coated man who
was the Walton of this stream, who had come over
from Newcastle, England, with his son, the latter a
stout and hearty man who had lifted an anchor in his
day. A straight old man he was who took his way
in silence through the meadows, having passed the
period of communication with his fellows ; his old
experienced coat hanging long and straight and brown
as the yellow pine bark, glittering with so much smoth-
ered sunlight, if you stood near enough, no work of
SATURDAY, 1 9
art but naturalized at length. I often discovered him
unexpectedly amid the pads and the gray willows
when he moved, fishing in some old country method,
— for youth and age then went a-fishing together, —
full of incommunicable thoughts, perchance about his
own Tyne and Northumberland. He was always to
be seen in serene afternoons haunting the river, and
almost rustling with the sedge ; so many sunny hours
in an old man's life, entrapping silly fish, almost grown
to be the sun's familiar ; what need had he of hat or
raiment any, having served out his time, and seen
through such thin disguises? I have seen how his
coeval fates rewarded him with the yellow perch, and
yet I thought his luck was not in proportion to his
years ; and I have seen when, with slow steps and
weighed down with aged thoughts, he disappeared
with his fish under his low-roofed house on the skirts
of the village. I think nobody else saw him; nobody
else remembers him now, for he soon after died, and
migrated to new Tyne streams. His fishing was not
a sport, nor solely a means of subsistence, but a sort
of solemn sacrament and withdrawal from the world,
just as the aged read their bibles.
Whether we live by the sea-side, or by the lakes
and rivers, or on the prairie, it concerns us to attend
to the nature of fishes, since they are not phenomena
confined to certain localities only, but forms and
phases of the life in nature universally dispersed. The
countless shoals which annually coast the shores of
Europe and America, are not so interesting to the
student of nature, as the more fertile law itself, which
deposits their spawn on the tops of mountains, and
on the interior plains ; the fish principle in nature,
from which it results that they may be found in water
20 A WEEK ON THE CONCORD RIVER.
in so many places, in greater or less numbers. The
natural historian is not a fisherman, who prays for
cloudy days and good luck merely, but as fishing
has been styled, " a contemplative man's recreation,"
introducing him profitably to woods and water, so the
fruit of the naturalist's observations is not in new gen-
era or species, but in new contemplations still, and
science is only a more contemplative man's recreation.
The seeds of the life of fishes are everywhere dissem-
inated, whether the winds waft them, or the waters
float them, or the deep earth holds them ; wherever a
pond is dug, straightway it is stocked with this viva-
cious race. They have a lease of nature, and it is not
yet out. The Chinese are bribed to carry their ova
from province to province in jars or in hollow reeds,
or the water-birds to transport them to the mountain
tarns and interior lakes. There are fishes wherever
there is a fluid medium, and even in clouds and in
melted metals we detect their semblance. Think
how in winter you can sink a line down straight in a
pasture through snow and through ice, and pull up a
bright, slippery, dumb, subterranean silver or golden
fish ! It is curious, also, to reflect how they make one
family, from the largest to the smallest. The least
minnow, that lies on the ice as bait for pickerel, looks
like a huge sea-fish cast up on the shore. In the
waters of this town there are about a dozen distinct
species, though the inexperienced would expect many
It enhances our sense of the grand security and
serenity of nature, to observe the still undisturbed
economy and content of the fishes of this century,
their happiness a regular fruit of the summer. The
SATURDAY. 21
fresh-water Sun Fish, Bream, or RufF, Pomoiis vtd-
garis, as it were, without ancestry, without posterity,
still represents the Fresh Water Sun Fish in nature.
It is the most common of all, and seen on every ur-
chin's string ; a simple and inoffensive fish, whose nests
are visible all along the shore, hollowed in the sand,
over which it is steadily poised through the summer
hours on waving fin. Sometimes there are twenty or
thirty nests in the space of a few rods, two feet wide by
half a foot in depth, and made with no little labor, the
weeds being removed, and the sand shoved up on the
sides, like a bowl. Here it may be seen early in sum-
mer assiduously brooding, and driving away minnows
and larger fishes, even its own species, which would
disturb its ova, pursuing them a few feet, and circling
round swiftly to its nest again : the minnows, like
young sharks, instantly entering the empty nests,
meanwhile, and swallowing the spawn, which is at-
tached to the weeds and to the bottom, on the sunny
side. The spawn is exposed to so many dangers,
that a very small proportion can ever become fishes,
for beside being the constant prey of birds and fishes,
a great many nests are made so near the shore, in
shallow water, that they are left dry in a few days, as
the river goes down. These and the lamprey's are
the only fishes' nests that I have observed, though the
ova of some species may be seen floating on the sur-
face. The breams are so careful of their charge that
you may stand close by in the water and examine them
at your leisure. I have thus stood over them half an
hour at a time, and stroked them familiarly without
frightening them, suffering them to nibble my fingers
harmlessly, and seen them erect their dorsal fins in
anger when my hand approached their ova, and have
22 A WEEK ON THE CONCORD RIVER.
even taken them gently out of the water with my
hand; though this cannot be accomphshed by a sud-
den movement, however dexterous, for instant warn-
ing is conveyed to them through their denser element,
but only by letting the fingers gradually close about
them as they are poised over the palm, and with the
utmost gentleness raising them slowly to the surface.
Though stationary, they keep up a constant sculling
or waving motion with their fins, which is exceedingly
graceful, and expressive of their humble happiness ;
for unlike ours, the element in which they live is a
stream which must be constantly resisted. From
time to time they nibble the weeds at the bottom or
overhanging their nests, or dart after a fly or a worm.
The dorsal fin, besides answering the purpose of a
keel, with the anal, serves to keep the fish upright, for
in shallow water, where this is not covered, they fall
on their sides. As you stand thus stooping over the
bream in its nest, the edges of the dorsal and caudal
fins have a singular dusty golden reflection, and its
eyes, which stand out from the head, are transparent
and colorless. Seen in its native element, it is a very
beautiful and compact fish, perfect in all its parts, and
looks like a brilliant coin fresh from the mint. It is a
perfect jewel of the river, the green, red, coppery, and
golden reflections of its mottled sides being the con-
centration of such rays as struggle through the float-
ing pads and flowers to the sandy bottom, and in
harmony with the sunlit brown and yellow pebbles.
Behind its watery shield it dwells far from many acci-
dents inevitable to human life.
There is also another species of bream found in our
river, without the red spot on the operculum, which,
according to M. Agassiz, is undescribed.
SATURDAY. 23
The Common Perch, Perca fiavescens, which name
describes well the gleaming, golden reflections of its
scales as it is drawn out of the water, its red o-iUs
standing out in vain in the thin element, is one of^'the
handsomest and most regularl}' formed of our fishes,
and at such a moment as this reminds us of the fish
in the picture, which wished to be restored to its
native element until it had grown larger ; and indeed
most of this species that are caught are not half grown.
In the ponds there is a light-colored and slender kind,
which swim in shoals of many hundreds in the sunny
water, in company with the shiner, averaging not
more than six or seven inches in length, while only a
fevv larger specimens are found in the deepest water,
which prey upon their weaker brethren. I have often
attracted these small perch to the shore at evening,
by rippling the water with my fingers, and they may
sometimes be caught while attempting to pass inside
your hands. It is a tough and heedless fish, biting
from impulse, without nibbling, and from impulse
refraining to bite, and sculling indifferently past. It
rather prefers the clear water and sandy bottoms,
though here it has not much choice. It is a true fish,'
such as the angler loves to put into his basket or hang
at the top of his willow twig, in shady afternoons
along the banks of the stream. So many unques-
tionable fishes he counts, and so many shiners, which
he counts and then throws away.
The Chivin, Dace, Roach, Cousin Trout, or what-
ever else it is called, Leitciscus pulchellus, white and
red, always an unexpected prize, which, however, any
angler is glad to hook for its rarity. A name that
reminds us of many an unsuccessful ramble by swift
streams, when the wind rose to disappoint the fisher.
24 A WEEK ON THE CONCORD RIVER.
It is commonly a silvery soft-scaled fish, of graceful,
scholarlike, and classical look, like many a picture in
an English book. It loves a swift current and a sandy
bottom, and bites inadvertently, yet not without appe-
tite for the bait. The minnows are used as bait for
pickerel in the winter. The red chivin, according to
some, is still the same fish, only older, or with its tints
deepened as they think by the darker water it inhab-
its, as the red clouds swim in the twilight atmosphere.
He who has not hooked the red chivin is not yet a
complete angler. Other fishes, methinks, are slightly
amphibious, but this is a denizen of the water wholly.
The cork goes dancing down the swift rushing stream,
amid the weeds and sands, when suddenly, by a coin-
cidence never to be remembered, emerges this fabulous
inhabitant of another element, a thing heard of but
not seen, as if it were the instant creation of an
eddy, a true product of the running stream. And this
bright cupreous dolphin was spawned and has passed
its life beneath the level of your feet in your native
fields. Fishes, too, as well as birds and clouds, derive
their armor from the mine. I have heard of mack-
erel visiting the copper banks at a particular season ;
this fish, perchance, has its habitat in the Coppermine
river. I have caught white chivin of great size in the
Aboljacknagesic, where it empties into the Penobscot,
at the base of Mount Ktaadn, but no red ones there.
The latter variety seems not to have been sufficiently
observed.
The Dace, Leiiciscics aj-gejiteiis, is a slight silvery
minnow, found generally in the middle of the stream,
where the current is most rapid, and frequently con-
founded with the last named.
The Shiner, Lencisacs crysoleucas^ is a soft-scaled
SATURDAY. 25
and tender fish, the victim of its stronger neighbors,
found in all places, deep and shallow, clear and tur-
bid ; generally the first nibbler at the bait, but, with
its small mouth and nibbling propensities, not easily
caught. It is a gold or silver bit that passes current
in the river, its limber tail dimpling the surface in
sport or flight. I have seen the fry when frightened
by something thrown into the water, leap out by doz-
ens, together with the dace, and wreck themselves
upon a floating plank. It is the little light-infant
of the river, with body armor of gold or silver span-
gles, slipping, gliding its life through with a quirk of
the tail, half in the water, half in the air, upward and
ever upward with flitting fin to more crystalline tides,
yet still abreast of us dwellers on the bank. It is
almost dissolved by the summer heats. A slighter and
lighter colored shiner is found in one of our ponds.
The Pickerel, Esox retiadatiis, the swiftest, wariest,
and most ravenous of fishes, is very common in the
shaflow and weedy lagoons along the sides of the
stream. It is a solemn, stately, ruminant fish, lurking
under the shadow of a pad at noon, with still, circum-
spect, voracious eye, motionless as a jewel set in
water, or moving slowly along to take up its position,
darting from time to time at such unlucky fish or frog
or insect as comes within its range, and swallowing
it at a gulp. I have caught one which had swallowed
a brother pickerel half as large as itself, with the tail
still visible in its mouth, while the head was already
digested in its stomach. Sometimes a striped snake,
bound to greener meadows across the stream, ends its
undulatory progress in the same receptacle. They
are so greedy and impetuous that they are frequently
caught by being entangled in the line the moment it
26 A WEEK ON THE CONCORD RIVER.
is cast. Fishermen also distinguish the brook pick-
erel, a shorter and thicker fish than the former.
The Horned Pout, Pimelodus iiebiilosus, sometimes
called Minister, from the peculiar squeaking noise it
makes when drawn out of the water, is a dull and
blundering fellow, and like the eel vespertinal in his
habits, and fond of the mud. It bites deliberately as
if about its business. They are taken at night with a
mass of worms strung on a thread, which catches in
their teeth, sometimes three or four, with an eel, at
one pull. They are extremely tenacious of life, open-
ing and shutting their mouths for half an hour after
their heads have been cut off. A bloodthirsty and
bullying race of rangers, inhabiting the fertile river
bottoms, with ever a lance in rest, and ready to do
battle with their nearest neighbor. I have observed
them in summer, when every other one had a long
and bloody scar upon his back, where the skin was
gone, the mark, perhaps, of some fierce encounter.
Sometimes the fry, not an inch long, are seen darken-
ing the shore with their myriads.
The Suckers, Catostomi Bostonienses and Uiberai-
lati, Common and Horned, perhaps on an average
the largest of our fishes, may be seen in shoals of a
hundred or more, stemming the current in the sun, on
their mysterious migrations, and sometimes sucking
in the bait which the fisherman suffers to float toward
them. The former, which sometimes grow to a large
size, are frequently caught by the hand in the brooks,
or, like the red chivin, are jerked out by a hook fas-
tened firmly to the end of a stick, and placed under
their jaws. They are hardly known to the mere
angler, however, not often biting at his baits, though
the spearer carries home many a mess in the .spring.
SATURDAY. 2 J
To our village eyes, these shoals have a foreign and
imposing aspect, realizing the fertility of the seas.
The Common Eel, too, MitrcEiia Bostome?isis, the
only species known in the State, a slimy, squirming
creature, informed of mud, still squirming in the pan,
is speared and hooked up with various success.
Methinks it too occurs in picture, left after the deluge,
in many a meadow high and dry.
In the shallow parts of the river, where the current
is rapid, and the bottom pebbly, you may sometimes
see the curious circular nests of the Lamprey Eel,
Pctrojnyson Americanus, the American Stone-Sucker,
as large as a cart wheel, a foot or two in height, and
sometimes rising half a foot above the surface of the
water. They collect these stones, of the size of a
hen's egg, with their mouths, as their name implies,
and are said to fashion them into circles with their
tails. They ascend falls by clinging to the stones,
which may sometimes be raised, by lifting the fish
by the tail. As they are not seen on their way down
the streams, it is thought by fishermen that they never
return, but waste away and die, clinging to rocks and
stumps of trees for an indefinite period; a tragic
feature in the scenery of the river bottoms, worthy
to be remembered with Shakspeare's description of
the sea-floor. They are rarely seen in our waters at
present, on account of the dams, though they are
taken in great quantities at the mouth of the river
in Lowell. Their nests, which are very conspicuous,
look more like art than anything in the river.
If we had leisure this afternoon, we might turn our
prow up the brooks in quest of the classical trout
and the minnows. Of the last alone, according to
M. Agassiz, several of the species found in this town,
28 A WEEK ON THE CONCORD RIVER.
are yet undescribed. These would, perhaps, com-
plete the list of our finny contemporaries in the
Concord waters.
Salmon, Shad, and Alewives, were formerly abundant
here, and taken in weirs by the Indians, who taught
this method to the whites, by whom they were used
as food and as manure, until the dam, and afterward
the canal at Billerica, and the factories at Lowell, put
an end to their migrations hitherward ; though it is
thought that a few more enterprising shad may still
occasionally be seen in this part of the river. It is
said, to account for the destruction of the fishery, that
those who at that time represented the interests of
the fishermen and the fishes, remembering between
what dates they were accustomed to take the grown
shad, stipulated, that the dams should be left open
for that season only, and the fry, which go down a
month later, were consequently stopped and destroyed
by myriads. Others say that the fish-ways were not
properly constructed. Perchance, after a few thou-
sands of years, if the fishes will be patient, and pass
their summers elsewhere, meanwhile, nature will have
levelled the Billerica dam, and the Lowell factories,
and the Grass-ground River run clear again, to be
explored by new migratory shoals, even as far as the
Hopkinton pond and Westborough swamp.
One would like to know more of that race, now
extinct, whose seines lie rotting in the garrets of their
children, who openly professed the trade of fishermen,
and even fed their townsmen creditably, not skulking
through the meadows to a rainy afternoon sport. Dim
visions we still get of miraculous draughts of fishes,
and heaps uncountable by the river-side, from the
tales of our seniors sent on horse-back in their
SA TURD A V. 29
childhood from the neighboring towns, perched on
saddle-bags, with instructions to get the one bag
filled with shad, the other with ale wives. At least
one memento of those days may still exist in the
memory of this generation, in the familiar appellation
of a celebrated train-band of this town, whose untrained
ancestors stood creditably at Concord North Bridge.
Their captain, a man of piscatory tastes, having duly
warned his company to turn out on a certain day,
they, like obedient soldiers, appeared promptly on
parade at the appointed time, but, unfortunately, they
went undrilled, except in the manoeuvres of a soldier's
wit and unlicensed jesting, that May day ; for their
captain, forgetting his own appointment, and warned
only by the favorable aspect of the heavens, as he had
often done before, went a fishing that afternoon, and
his company thenceforth was known to old and young,
grave and gay, as " The Shad," and by the youths of
this vicinity, this was long regarded as the proper
name of all the irregular militia in Christendom.
But, alas, no record of these fishers' lives remains,
that we know of, unless it be one brief page of hard
but unquestionable history, which occurs in Day Book
No. 4, of an old trader of this town, long since dead,
which shows pretty plainly what constituted a fisher-
man's stock in trade in those days. It purports to be
a Fisherman's Account Current, probably for the fish-
ing season of the year 1805, during which months he
purchased daily rum and sugar, sugar and rum, N. E.
and W. I., " one cod line," " one brown mug," and " a
line for the seine ; " rum and sugar, sugar and rum,
"good loaf sugar," and "good brown," W. I. and
N. E., in short and uniform entries to the bottom of
the page, all carried out in pounds, shillings, and pence,
30 A WEEK ON THE CONCORD RIVER.
from March 25th to June 5th, and promptly settled by
receiving '' cash in full " at the last date. But perhaps
not so settled altogether. These were the necessaries
of life in those days ; with salmon, shad, and alewives,
fresh and pickled, he was thereafter independent on
the groceries. Rather a preponderance of the fluid
elements; but such was this fisherman's nature. I
can faintly remember to have seen the same fisher
in my earliest youth, still as near the river as he
could get, with uncertain undulatory step, after so
many things had gone down stream, swinging a
scythe in the meadow, his bottle like a serpent hid
in the grass ; himself as yet not cut down by the
Great Mower.
Surely the fates are forever kind, though Nature's
laws are more immutable than any despot's, yet to
man's daily life they rarely seem rigid, but permit
him to relax with license in sunimer weather. He
is not harshly reminded of the things he may not
do. She is very kind and liberal to all men of vicious
habits, and certainly does not deny them quarter;
they do not die without priest. Still they maintain
life along the way, keeping this side the Styx, still
hearty, still resolute, " never better in their lives ; "
and again, after a dozen years have elapsed, they
start up from behind a hedge, asking for work and
wages for able-bodied men. Who has not met such
" a beggar on the way,
Who sturdily could gang ? " * * *
" Who cared neither for wind nor wet,
In lands where'er he past ? "
" That bold adopts each house he views, his own ;
Makes every pulse his checquer, and, at pleasure,
Walks forth, and taxes all the world, like Ceesar; " —
SATURDAY. 3 1
As if consistency were the secret of health, while the
poor inconsistent aspirant man, seeking to live a pure
life, feeding on air, divided against himself, cannot
stand, but pines and dies after a life of sickness, on
beds of down.
The unwise are accustomed to speak as if some
were not sick; but methinks the difference between
men in respect to health is not great enough to lay
much stress upon. Some are reputed sick and some
are not. It often happens that the sicker man is the
nurse to the sounder.
Shad are still taken in the basin of Concord River
at Lowell, where they are said to be a month earlier
than the Merrimack shad, on account of the warmth
of the water. Still patiently, almost pathetically, with
instinct not to be discouraged, not to be reasoned
with, revisiting their old haunts, as if their stern fates
would relent, and still met by the Corporation with
its dam. Poor shad ! where is thy redress? When
Nature gave thee instinct, gave she thee the heart to
bear thy fate? Still wandering the sea in thy scaly
armor to inquire humbly at the mouths of rivers if
man has perchance left them free for thee to enter.
By countless shoals loitering uncertain meanwhile,
merely stemming the tide there, in danger from sea
foes in spite of thy bright armor, awaiting new instruc-
tions, until the sands, until the water itself, tell thee
if it be so or not. Thus by whole migrating nations,
full of instinct, which is thy faith, in this backward
spring, turned adrift, and perchance knowest not
where men do 7wt dwell, where there are ?iot factories,
in these days. Armed with no sword, no electric
shock, but mere Shad, armed only with innocence and
a just cause, with tender dumb mouth only forward,
32 A WEEK ON THE CONCORD RIVER.
and scales easy to be detached. I for one am with
thee, and who knows what may avail a crow-bar
against that Billerica dam ? — Not despairing when
whole myriads have gone to feed those sea monsters
during thy suspense, but still brave, indifferent, on
easy fin there, like shad reserved for higher destinies.
Willing to be decimated for man's behoof after the
spawning season. Away with the superficial and
selfish •ph.\\-a7ithropy of men, — who knows what ad-
mirable virtue of fishes may be below low-water mark,
bearing up against a hard destiny, not admired by that
fellow creature who alone can appreciate it ! Who
hears the fishes when they cry? It will not be for-
gotten by some memory that we were contemporaries.
Thou shalt ere long have thy way up the rivers, up
all the rivers of the globe, if I am not mistaken.
Yea, even thy dull watery dream shall be more than
realized. If it were not so, but thou wert to be over-
looked at first and at last, then would not I take their
heaven. Yes, I say so, who think I know better than
thou canst. Keep a stiff fin then, and stem all the
tides thou mayest meet.
At length it would seem that the interests, not of
the fishes only, but of the men of Wayland, of Sud-
bury, of Concord, demand the levelling of that dam.
Innumerable acres of meadow are waiting to be made
dry land, wild native grass to give place to English.
The farmers stand with scythes whet, waiting the sub-
siding of the waters, by gravitation, by evaporation
or otherwise, but sometimes their eyes do not rest,
their wheels do not roll, on the quaking meadow
ground during the haying season at all. So many
sources of wealth inaccessible. They rate the loss
hereby incurred in the single town of Wayland alone
SATURDAY, 33
as equal to the expense of keeping a hundred yoke
of oxen the year round. One year, as I learn, not
long ago, the farmers standing ready to drive their
teams afield as usual, the water gave no signs of fall-
ing; without new attraction in the heavens, without
freshet or visible cause, still standing stagnant at an
unprecedented height. All hydrometers were at fault ;
some trembled for their English even. But speedy
emissaries revealed the unnatural secret, in the new
float-board, wholly a foot in width, added to their
already too high privileges by the dam proprietors.
The hundred yoke of oxen, meanwhile, standing
patient, gazing wishfully meadowward, at that inac-
cessible waving native grass, uncut but by the great
mower Time, who cuts so broad a swathe, without so
much as a wisp to wind about their horns.
That was a long pull from Ball's Hill to CarHsle
Bridge, sitting with our faces to the south, a slight
breeze rising from the north, but nevertheless water
still runs and grass grows, for now, having passed the
bridge between Carlisle and Bedford, we see men hay-
ing far off in the meadow, their heads waving like the
grass which they cut. In the distance the wind seemed
to bend all alike. As the night stole over, such a fresh-
ness was wafted across the meadow that every blade
of cut-grass seemed to teem with life. Faint purple
clouds began to be reflected in the water, and the
cow-bells tinkled louder along the banks, while, like
sly water rats, we stole along nearer the shore, look-
ing for a place to pitch our camp.
At length, when we had made about seven miles,
as far as Billerica, we moored our boat on the west
side of a httle rising ground which in the spring forms
34 A WEEK ON THE CONCORD RIVER.
an island in the river. Here we found huckleberries still
hanging upon the bushes, where they seemed to have
slowly ripened for our especial use. Bread and sugar,
and cocoa boiled in river water, made our repast, and
as we had drank in the fluvial prospect all day, so
now we took a draught of the water with our evening
meal to propitiate the river gods, and whet our vision
for the sights it was to behold. The sun was setting
on the one hand, while our eminence was contributing
its shadow to the night, on the other. It seemed in-
sensibly to grow lighter as the night shut in, and a
distant and solitary farm-house was revealed, which
before lurked in the shadows of the noon. There
was no other house in sight, nor any cultivated field.
To the right and left, as far as the horizon, were
straggling pine woods with their plumes against the
sky, and across the river were rugged hills, covered
with shrub oaks, tangled with grape vines and ivy,
with here and there a gray rock jutting out from the
maze. The sides of these cliffs, though a quarter of
a mile distant, were almost heard to rustle while we
looked at them, it was such a leafy wilderness ; a place
for fauns and satyrs, and where bats hung all day to
the rocks, and at evening flitted over the water, and
fireflies husbanded their light under the grass and
leaves against the night. When we had pitched our
tents on the hill-side, a few rods from the shore, we
sat looking through its triangular door in the twilight
at our lonely mast on the shore, just seen above the
alders, and hardly yet come to a stand-still from the
swaying of the stream ; the first encroachment of com-
merce on this land. There was our port, our Ostia.
That straight geometrical line against the water and
the sky stood for the last refinements of civilized life,
SATURDAY. 35
and what of sublimity there is in history was there
symbolized.
For the most part, there was no recognition of
human life in the night, no human breathing was
heard, only the breathing of the wdnd. As we sat
up, kept awake by the novelty of our situation, we
heard at intervals foxes stepping about over the dead
leaves, and brushing the dewy grass close to our tent,
and once a musquash fumbling among the potatoes
and melons in our boat, but when we hastened to the
shore we could detect only a ripple in the water ruffling
the disk of a star. At intervals we were serenaded by
the song of a dreaming sparrow or the throttled cry
of an owl, but after each sound which near at hand
broke the stillness of the night, each crackling of the
twigs, or rustling among the leaves, there was a sudden
pause, and deeper and more conscious silence, as if
the intruder were aware that no life was rightfully
abroad at that hour. There was a fire in Lowell, as
we judged, this night, and we saw the horizon blaz-
ing, and heard the distant alarm bells, as it were a
faint tinkling music borne to these woods. But the
most constant and memorable sound of a summer's
night, which we did not fail to hear every night after-
ward, though at no time so incessantly and so favora-
bly as now, was the barking of the house dogs, from
the loudest and hoarsest bark to the faintest aerial
palpitation under the eaves of heaven, from the patient
but anxious mastiff to the timid and wakeful terrier,
at first loud and rapid, then faint and slow, to be
imitated only in a whisper ; wow-wow-wow-wow —
wo — wo — w — w. Even in a retired and uninhabited
district like this, it was a sufficiency of sound for the
ear of night, and more impressive than any music.
36 A WEEK ON THE CONCORD RIVER.
I have heard the voice of a hound, just before day-
light, while the stars were shining, from over the
woods and river, far in the horizon, when it sounded
as sweet and melodious as an instrument. The
hounding of a dog pursuing a fox or other animal
in the horizon, may have first suggested the notes
of the hunting horn to alternate with and relieve the
lungs of the dog. This natural bugle long resounded
in the woods of the ancient world before the horn
was invented. The very dogs that sullenly bay the
moon from farm-yards in these nights, excite more
heroism in our breasts than all the civil exhortations
or war sermons of the age. "I had rather be a dog,
and bay the moon," than many a Roman that I know.
The night is equally indebted to the clarion of the
cock, with wakeful hope, from the very setting of the
sun, prematurely ushering in the dawn. All these
sounds, the crowing of cocks, the baying of dogs,
and the hum of insects at noon, are the evidence of
nature's health or sound state. Such is the never
failing beauty and accuracy of language, the most
perfect art in the world ; the chisel of a thousand
years retouches it.
At length the antepenultimate and drowsy hours
drew on, and all sounds were denied entrance to our
ears.
Who sleeps by day and walks by night,
Will meet no spirit but some sprite.
SUNDAY.
" The river calmly flows,
Through shining banks, through lonely glen.
Where the owl shrieks, though ne'er the cheer of men
Has stirred its mute repose.
Still if you should walk there, you would go there again."
— Chatining.
" The Indians tell us of a beautiful River lying far to the
south, which they call Merrimac."
Sieur de Monts. Relations of the Jesuits, 1604.
In the morning the river and adjacent country were
covered with a dense fog, through which the smoke
of our fire curled up like a still subtiler mist ; but
before we had rowed many rods, the sun arose and
the fog rapidly dispersed, leaving a slight steam only
to curl along the surface of the water. It was a quiet
Sunday morning, with more of the auroral rosy and
white than of the yellow light in it, as if it dated from
earlier than the fall of man, and still preserved a
heathenish integrity ; —
An early unconverted Saint,
Free from noontide or evening taint,
Heathen without reproach,
That did upon the civil day encroach,
And ever since its birth
Had trod the outskirts of the earth.
But the impressions which the morning makes
vanish with its dews, and not even the most "per-
37
38 A WEEK ON THE CONCORD RIVER.
severing mortal" can preserve the memory of its
freshness to mid-day. As we passed the various
islands, or what were islands in the spring, rowing
with our backs down stream, we gave names to them.
The one on which we had camped we called Fox
Island, and one fine densely wooded island sur-
rounded by deep water and overrun by grape vines,
which looked like a mass of verdure and of flowers
cast upon the waves, we named Grape Island. From
Ball's Hill to Billerica meeting-house, the river was
still twice as broad as in Concord, a deep, dark, and
dead stream, flowing between gentle hills and some-
times cliffs, and well wooded all the way. It was a
long woodland lake bordered with willows. For long
reaches we could see neither house nor cultivated field,
nor any sign of the vicinity of man. Now we coasted
along some shallow shore by the edge of a dense pali-
sade of bulrushes, which straightly bounded the water
as if dipt by art, reminding us of the reed forts of tlie
East Indians, of which we had read ; and now the
bank slightly raised was overhung with graceful
grasses and various species of brake, whose downy
stems stood closely grouped and naked as in a vase,
while their heads spread several feet on either side.
The dead limbs of the willow were rounded and
adorned by the climbing mikania, mikania scandens,
which filled every crevice in the leafy bank, contrast-
ing agreeably with the gray bark of its supporter and
the balls of the button-bush. The water willow, salix
Pitrshiana^ when it is of large size and entire, is the
most gracefiil and ethereal of our trees. Its masses
of light green foliage, piled one upon another to the
height of twenty or thirty feet, seemed to float on
the surface of the water, while the slight gray stems
SUNDA Y. 39
and the shore were hardly visible between them. No
tree is so wedded to the water, and harmonizes so well
with still streams. It is even more graceful than the
weeping willow, or any pendulous trees, which dip
their branches in the stream instead of being buoyed
up by it. Its limbs curved outward over the surface
as if attracted by it. It had not a New England but
an oriental character, reminding us of trim Persian
gardens, of Haroun Alraschid, and the artificial lakes
of the east.
As we thus dipped our way along between fresh
masses of foliage overrun with the grape and smaller
flowering vines, the surface was so calm, and both air
and water so transparent, that the flight of a king-
fisher or robin over the river was as distinctly seen
reflected in the water below as in the air above. The
birds seemed to flit through submerged groves, alight-
ing on the yielding sprays, and their clear notes to
come up from below. We were uncertain whether
the water floated the land, or the land held the water
in its bosom. It was such a season, in short, as that
in which one of our Concord poets sailed on its stream^
and sung its quiet glories.
" There is an inward voice, that in the stream
Sends forth its spirit to the listening ear,
And in a calm content it floweth on,
Like wisdom, welcome with its own respect.
Clear in its breast lie all these beauteous thoughts,
It doth receive the green and graceful trees,
And the gray rocks smile in its peaceful arms, — "
And more he sung, but too serious for our page. For
every oak and birch too growing on the hill-top, as
well as for these elms and willows, we knew that there
40 A WEEK ON THE CONCORD RIVER.
was a graceful ethereal and ideal tree making down
from the roots, and sometimes nature in high tides
brings her mirror to its foot and makes it visible.
The stillness was intense and almost conscious, as
if it were a natural Sabbath. The air was so elastic
and crystalline that it had the same effect on the land-
scape that a glass has on a picture, to give it an ideal
remoteness and perfection. The landscape was clothed
in a mild and quiet light, in which the woods and fences
checkered and partitioned it with new regularity, and
rough and uneven fields stretched away with lawn-like
smoothness to the horizon, and the clouds, finely dis-
tinct and picturesque, seemed a fit drapery to hang
over fairy-land. The world seemed decked for some
holyday or prouder pageantry, with silken streamers
flying, and the course of our lives to wind on before
us like a green lane into a country maze, at the season
when fruit trees are in blossom.
Why should not our whole life and its scenery be
actually thus fair and distinct ? All our lives want a
suitable background. They should at least, like the
life of the anchorite, be as impressive to behold as
objects in the desert, a broken shaft or crumbling
mound against a limitless horizon. Character always
secures for itself this advantage, and is thus distinct
and unrelated to near or trivial objects, whether things
or persons. On this same stream a maiden once sailed
in my boat, thus unattended but by invisible guardians,
and as she sat in the prow there was nothing but her-
self between the steersman and the sky. I could then
say with the poet ; —
" Sweet falls the summer air
Over her frame who sails with me ;
SUNDAY. 41
Her way like that is beautifully free,
Her nature far more rare,
And is her constant heart of virgin purity."
At evening still the very stars seem but this maiden^s
emissaries and reporters of her progress.
Low in the eastern sky
Is set thy glancing eye ;
And though its gracious light
Ne'er riseth to my sight,
Yet every star that climbs
Above the gnarled limbs
Of yonder hill,
Conveys thy gentle will.
Believe I knew thy thought,
And that the zephyrs brought
Thy kindest wishes through,
As mine they bear to you,
That some attentive cloud
Did pause amid the crowd
Over my head.
While gentle things were said.
Believe the thrushes sung,
And that the flower bells rung,
That herbs exhaled their scent,
And beasts knew what was meant,
The trees a welcome waved.
And lakes their margins laved,
When thy free mind
To my retreat did wind.
It was a summer eve.
The air did gently heave,
While yet a low hung cloud
Thy eastern skies did shroud ;
The lightning's silent gleam,
Startling my drowsy dream,
Seemed like the flash
Under thy dark eyelash.
42 A WEEK ON THE CONCORD RIVER.
Still will I strive to be
As if thou wert with me;
Whatever path I take,
It shall be for thy sake,
Of gentle slope and wide,
As thou wert by my side.
Without a root
To trip thy gentle foot.
I '11 walk with gentle pace,
And choose the smoothest place,
And careful dip the oar,
And shun the winding shore,
And gently steer my boat
Where water lilies float.
And cardinal flowers
Stand in their sylvan bowers.
It required some rudeness to disturb with our boat
the mirror-like surface of the water, in which every
twig and blade of grass was so faithfully reflected ;
too faithfully indeed for art to imitate, for only nature
may exaggerate herself. The shallowest still water
is unfathomable. Wherever the trees and skies are
reflected there is more than Atlantic depth, and no
danger of fancy running aground. We noticed that
it required a separate intention of the eye, a more free
and abstracted vision, to see the reflected trees and
the sky, than to see the river bottom merely ; and so
are there manifold visions in the direction of every
object, and even the most opaque reflect the heavens
from their surface. Some men have their eyes natu-
rally intended to the one, and some to the other object.
" A man that looks on glass,
On it may stay his eye.
Or, if he pleaseth, through it pass.
And the heavens espy."
SUNDA Y. 43
Two men in a skiff, whom we passed hereabouts,
floating buoyantly amid the reflections of the trees,
like a feather in mid air, or a leaf which is wafted
gently from its twig to the water without turning over,
seemed still in their element, and to have very deli-
cately availed themselves of the natural laws. Their
floating there was a beautiful and successful experi-
ment in natural philosophy, and it served to ennoble in
our eyes the art of navigation, for as birds fly and
fishes swim, so these men sailed. It reminded us
how much fairer and nobler all the actions of man
might be, and that our life in its whole economy
might be as beautiful as the fairest works of art or
nature.
The sun lodged on the old gray cliffs, and glanced
from every pad ; the bulrushes and flags seemed to
rejoice in the delicious light and air; the meadows
were a drinking at their leisure ; the frogs sat medi-
tating, all Sabbath thoughts, summing up their week,
with one eye out on the golden sun, and one toe
upon a reed, eyeing the wondrous universe in which
they act their part ; the fishes swam more staid and
soberly, as maidens go to church ; shoals of golden
and silver minnows rose to the surface to behold the
heavens, and then sheered off" into more sombre
aisles ; they swept by as if moved by one mind, con-
tinually gliding past each other, and yet preserving
the form of their battalion unchanged, as if they were
still embraced by the transparent membrane which
held the spawn ; a young band of brethren and
sisters, trying their new fins ; now they wheeled,
now shot ahead, and when we drove them to the
shore and cut them off", they dexterously tacked
and passed underneath the boat. Over the old
44 A WEEK ON THE CONCORD RIVER.
wooden bridges no traveller crossed, and neither
the river nor the fishes avoided to glide between
the abutments.
Here was a village not far off behind the woods,
Billerica, settled not long ago, and the children still
bear the names of the first settlers in this late " howl-
ing wilderness ; " yet to all intents and purposes it is
as old as Fernay or as Mantua, an old gray town,
where men grow old and sleep already under moss-
grown monuments,— outgrow their usefulness. This
is ancient Billerica (Villarica?), now in its dotage. I
never heard that it was young. See, is not nature
here gone to decay, farms all run out, meeting-house
grown gray and racked with age? If you would
know of its early youth, ask those old gray rocks in
the pasture. It has a bell that sounds sometimes as
far as Concord woods ; I have heard that, aye, —
hear it now. No wonder that such a sound startled
the dreaming Indian, and frightened his game, when
the first bells were swung on trees, and sounded
through the forest beyond the plantations of the white
man. But to-day I like best the echo amid these cliffs
and woods. It is no feeble imitation, but rather its
original, or as if some rural Orpheus played over the
strain again to show how it should sound.
Dong, sounds the brass in the east,
As if to a funeral feast,
But I like that sound the best
Out of the fluttering west.
The steeple ringeth a knell,
But the fairies' silvery bell
Is the voice of that gentle folk.
Or else the horizon that spoke.
SUNDA Y. 45
Its metal is not of brass,
But air, and water, and glass,
And under a cloud it is swung,
And by the wind it is rung.
When the steeple tolleth the noon,
It soundeth not so soon.
Yet it rings a far earlier hour,
And the sun has not reached its tower.
On the other hand, the road runs up to Carlisle, city
of the woods, which, if it is less civil, is the more
natural. It does well hold the earth together. It
gets laughed at because it is a small town, I know, but
nevertheless it is a place where great men may be
born any day, for fair winds and foul blow right on
over it without distinction. It has a meeting-house
and horse-sheds, a tavern and a blacksmith's shop for
centre, and a good deal of wood to cut and cord yet.
And
" Bedford, most noble Bedford,
I shall not thee forget."
History has remembered thee ; especially that meek
and humble petition of thy old planters, like the wail-
ing of the Lord's own people, " To the gentlemen, the
selectmen " of Concord, praying to be erected into a
separate parish. We can hardly credit that so plain-
tive a psalm resounded but little more than a century
ago along these Babylonish waters. " In the extreme
difficult seasons of heat and cold," said they, '•' we were
ready to say of the Sabbath, Behold what a weariness
is it." — "Gentlemen, if our seeking to draw off proceed
from any disaffection to our present reverend pastor,
or the Christian society with whom we have taken
such sweet counsel together, and walked unto the
46 A WEEK ON THE CONCORD RIVER.
house of God in company, then hear us not this day,
but we greatly desire, if God please, to be eased of
our burden on the Sabbath, the travel and fatigue
thereof, that the word of God may be nigh to us, near
to our houses, and in our hearts, that we and our little
ones may serve the Lord. We hope that God, who
stirred up the spirit of Cyrus to set forward temple
work, has stirred us up to ask, and will stir you up
to grant, the prayer of our petition ; so shall your
humble petitioners ever pray, as in duty bound, — ."
And so the temple work went forward here to a
happy conclusion. Yonder in Carlisle the building
of the temple was many wearisome years delayed, not
that there was wanting of Shittim wood, or the gold
of Ophir, but a site therefor convenient to all the
worshippers ; whether on " Buttrick's Plain," or
rather on " Poplar Hill : " it was a tedious question.
In this Billerica solid men must have lived, select
from year to year, a series of town clerks, at least, and
there are old records that you may search. Some
spring the white man came, built him a house, and
made a clearing here, letting in the sun, dried up a
farm, piled up the old gray stones in fences, cut down
the pines around his dwelling, planted orchard seeds
brought from the old country, and persuaded the
civil apple tree to blossom next to the wild pine and
the juniper, shedding its perfume in the wilderness.
Their old stocks still remain. He culled the graceful
elm from out the woods and from the river-side, and
so refined and smoothed his village plot. And thus
he plants a town. He rudely bridged the stream, and
drove his team afield into the river meadows, cut the
wild grass, and laid bare the homes of beaver, otter,
muskrat, and with the whetting of his scythe scared off
SUNDA y. 47
the deer and bear. He set up a mill, and fields of
English grain sprang in the virgin soil. And with
his grain he scattered the seeds of the dandelion and
the wild trefoil over the meadows, mingling his Eng-
lish flowers with the wild native ones. The bristling
burdock, the sweet scented catnip, and the humble
yarrow, planted themselves along his woodland road,
they too seeking " freedom to worship God " in their
way. The white man's mullein soon reigned in
Indian corn-fields, and sweet scented EngHsh grasses
clothed the new soil. Where, then, could the red
man set his foot? The honey bee hummed through
the Massachusetts' woods, and sipped the wild flowers
round the Indian's wigwam, perchance unnoticed,
when, with prophetic warning, it stung the red child's
hand, forerunner of that industrious tribe that was to
come and pluck the wild flower of his race up by the
root.
The white man comes, pale as the dawn, with a
load of thought, with a slumbering intelligence as a
fire raked up, knowing well what he knows, not
guessing but calculating ; strong in community, yield-
ing obedience to authority ; of experienced race ; of
wonderful, wonderful common sense ; dull but capa-
ble, slow but persevering, severe but just, of little
humor but genuine ; a laboring man, despising game
and sport ; building a house that endures, a framed
house. He buys the Indian's moccasins and baskets,
then buys his hunting grounds, and at length forgets
where he is buried, and plows up his bones. And
here town records, old, tattered, time-worn, weather-
stained chronicles, contain the Indian sachem's mark,
perchance an arrow or a beaver, and the few fatal
words by which he deeded his hunting grounds away.
48 A WEEK ON THE CONCORD RIVER.
He comes with a list of ancient Saxon, Norman, and
Celtic names, and strews them up and down this
river, — Framingham, Sudbury, Bedford, Carlisle, Bil-
lerica, Chelmsford, — and this is New Angle-land,
and these are the new West Saxons, whom the red
men call, not Angle-ish or English, but Yengeese,
and so at last they are known for Yankees.
When we were opposite to the middle of Billerica,
the fields on either hand had a soft and cultivated
English aspect, the village spire being seen over the
copses which skirt the river, and sometimes an orchard
straggled down to the water side, though, generally,
our course this forenoon was the wildest part of our
voyage. It seemed that men led a quiet and very
civil life there. The inhabitants were plainly culti-
vators of the earth, and lived under an organized po-
litical government. The school-house stood with a
meek aspect, entreating a long truce to war and sav-
age life. Every one finds by his own experience, as
well as in history, that the era in which men cultivate
the apple, and the amenities of the garden, is essen-
tially different from that of the hunter and forest life,
and neither can displace the other without loss. We
have all had our day dreams, as well as more pro-
phetic nocturnal visions, but as for farming, I am
convinced that my genius dates from an older era
than the agricultural. I would at least strike my
spade into the earth with such careless freedom but
accuracy as the woodpecker his bill into a tree.
There is in my nature, methinks, a singular yearning
toward all wildness. I know of no redeeming quali-
ties in myself but a sincere love for some things, and
when I am reproved I fall back on to this ground.
What have I to do with plows? I cut another furrow
SUNDA Y. 49
than you see. Where the off ox treads, there is it
not, it is further off; where the nigh ox walks, it
will not be, it is nigher still. If corn fails, my crop
fails not, and what are drought and rain to me? The
rude Saxon pioneer will sometimes pine for that re-
finement and artificial beauty which are English, and
love to hear the sound of such sweet and classical
names as the Pentland and Malvern Hills, the Cliffs
of Dover and the Trossacks, Richmond, Derwent, and
Winandermere, which are to him now instead of the
Acropolis and Parthenon, of Baiae, and Athens with
its sea walls, and Arcadia and Tempe.
Greece, who am I that should remember thee,
Thy Marathon and thy Thermopylae?
Is my life vulgar, my fate mean,
Which on these golden memories can lean?
We are apt enough to be pleased with such books
as Evelyn's Sylva, Acetarium, and Kalendarium Hor-
tense, but they imply a relaxed nerve in the reader.
Gardening is civil and social, but it wants the vigor
and freedom of the forest and the outlaw. There may
be an excess of cultivation as well as of anything else,
until civilization becomes pathetic. A highly culti-
vated man. — all whose bones can be bent! whose
heaven-born virtues are but good manners! The
young pines springing up in the corn-fields from year
to year are to me a refreshing fact. We talk of civil-
izing the Indian, but that is not the name for his im-
provement. By the wary independence and aloofness
of his dim forest life he preserves his intercourse with
his native gods, and is admitted from time to time to
a rare and peculiar society with nature. He has
glances of starry recognition to which our saloons are
50 A WEEK ON THE CONCORD RIVER.
strangers. The steady illumination of his genius,
dim only because distant, is like the faint but satisfy-
ing light of the stars compared with the dazzling but
ineffectual and short-lived blaze of candles. The
Society Islanders had their day-born gods, but they
were not supposed to be " of equal antiquity with the
atua fauaii po, or night-born gods." It is true, there
are the innocent pleasures of country life, and it is
sometimes pleasant to make the earth yield her in-
crease, and gather the fruits in their season, but the
heroic spirit will not fail to dream of remoter retire-
ments and more rugged paths. It will have its gar-
den plots and its parterres elsewhere than on the
earth, and gather nuts and berries by the way for its
subsistence, or orchard fruits with such heedlessness
as berries. We would not always be soothing and
taming nature, breaking the horse and the ox, but
sometimes ride the horse wild and chase the buffalo.
The Indiana's intercourse with Nature is at least such
as admits of the greatest independence of each. If
he is somewhat of a stranger in her midst, the gar-
dener is too much of a familiar. There is something
vulgar and foul in the latter's closeness to his mistress,
something noble and cleanly in the former''s distance.
In civilization, as in a southern latitude, man degener-
ates at length, and yields to the incursion of more
northern tribes,
" Some nation yet shut in
With hills of ice."
There are other, savager. and more primeval aspects
of nature than our poets have sung. It is only white
man's poetry. Honier and Ossian even can never
revive in London or Boston. And yet behold how
SUNDAY. 51
these cities are refreshed by the mere tradition, or
the imperfectly transmitted fragrance and flavor of
these wild fruits. If we could listen but for an instant
to the chaunt of the Indian muse, we should under-
stand why he will not exchange his savage ness for
civilization. Nations are not whimsical. Steel and
blankets are strong temptations ; but the Indian does
well to continue Indian.
After sitting in my chamber many days, reading the
poets, I have been out early on a foggy morning, and
heard the cry of an owl in a neighboring wood as from
a nature behind the common, unexplored by science
or by literature. None of the feathered race has yet
realized my youthful conceptions of the woodland
depths. I had seen the red Election-bird brought
from their recesses on my comrades' string, and fan-
cied that their plumage would assume stranger and
more dazzling colors, like the tints of evening, in pro-
portion as I advanced further into the darkness and
solitude of the forest. Still less have I seen such
strong and wild tints on any poet's string.
These modern ingenious sciences and arts do not
affect me as those more venerable arts of hunting and
fishing, and even of husbandry in its primitive and
simple form ; as ancient and honorable trades as the
sun and moon and winds pursue, coeval with the
faculties of man, and invented when these were in-
vented. We do not know their John Gutenberg, or
Richard Arkwright, though the poets would fain make
them to have been gradually learned and taught. Ac-
cording to Gower,
"And ladahel, as saith the boke,
Firste made nette, and fishes toke.
52 A WEEK ON THE CONCORD RIVER.
Of huntyng eke he fond the chace,
Whiche nowe is knowe in many place;
A tent of clothe, with corde and stake,
He sette up first, and did it make."
Also, Lydgate says :
Jason first sayled, in story it is tolde,
• Toward Colchos, to wynne the flees of golde.
Ceres the Goddess fond first the tilthe of londe ;
*****
Also, Aristeus fonde first the usage
Of mylke, and cruddis, and of honey swote ;
Peryodes, for grete avauntage,
From flyntes smote fuyre, daryng in the roote."
We read that Aristeus "obtained of Jupiter and
Neptune, tliat the pestilential heat of the dog days,
wherein was great mortality, should be mitigated with
wind." This is one of those dateless benefits con-
ferred on man, which have no record in our vulgar
day, though we still find some similitude to them in
our dreams, in which we have a more liberal and
juster apprehension of things, unconstrained by habit,
which is then in some measure put off, and divested
of memory, which we call history.
According to fable, when the island of ^gina was
depopulated by sickness, at the instance of ^acus,
Jupiter turned the ants into men, that is, as some
think, he made men of the inhabitants who lived
meanly like ants. This is perhaps the fullest history
of those early days extant.
The fable which is naturally and truly composed,
so as to satisfy the imagination, ere it addresses the
understanding, beautiful though strange as a wild
flower, is to the wise man an apothegm, and admits
SUNDAY. 53
of his most generous interpretation. When we read
that Bacchus made the Tyrrhenian mariners mad, so
that they leapt into the sea, mistaking it for a meadow
full of flowers, and so became dolphins, we are not
concerned about the historical truth of this, but rather
a higher poetical truth. We seem to hear the music
of a thought, and care not if the understanding be not
gratified. For their beauty, consider the fables of
Narcissus, of Endymion, of Memnon son of Morning,
the representative of all promising youths who have
died a premature death, and whose memory is melo-
diously prolonged to the latest morning ; the beautiful
stories of Phaeton, and of the Sirens whose isle shone
afar off white with the bones of unburied men ; and
the pregnant ones of Pan, Prometheus, and the
Sphynx; and that long list of names which have
already become part of the universal language of
civilized men, and from proper are becoming common
names or nouns, — the Sibyls, the Eumenides, the
Parcae, the Graces, the Muses, Nemesis, &c.
It is interesting to observe with what singular
unanimity the furthest sundered nations and genera-
tions consent to give completeness and roundness to
an ancient fable, of which they indistinctly appreciate
the beauty or the truth. By a faint and dream-like
effort, though it be only by the vote of a scientific
body, the dullest posterity slowly add some trait to
the mythus. As when astronomers call the lately
discovered planet Neptune ; or the asteroid Astraea,
that the Virgin who was driven from earth to heaven
at the end of the golden age, may have her local
habitation in the heavens more distinctly assigned
her, — for the slightest recognition of poetic worth is
significant. By such slow aggregation has mythol-
54 A WEEK ON THE CONCORD RIVER.
ogy grown from the first. The very nursery tales
of this generation, were the nursery tales of primeval
races. They migrate from east to west, and again
from west to east; now expanded into the 'tale
divine' of bards, now shrunk into a popular rhyme.
This is an approach to that universal language which
men have sought in vain. This fond reiteration of
the oldest expressions of truth by the latest poster-
ity, content with slightly and religiously re-touching
the old material, is the most impressive proof of a
common humanity.
All nations love the same jests and tales, Jews,
Christians, and Mahometans, and the same translated
suffice for all. All men are children, and of one
family. The same tale sends them all to bed, and
wakes them in the morning. Joseph Wolff, the mis-
sionary, distributed copies of Robinson Crusoe, trans-
lated into Arabic, among the Arabs, and they made
a great sensation. " Robinson Crusoe's adventures
and wisdom," says he, " were read by Mahometans in
the market-places of Sanaa, Hodyeda, and Loheya,
and admired and believed ! " On reading the book,
the Arabians exclaimed, " Oh, that Robinson Crusoe
must have been a great prophet ! "
To some extent, mythology is only the most ancient
history and biography. So far from being false or
fabulous in the common sense, it contains only endur-
ing and essential truth, the I and you, the here and
there, the now and then, being omitted. Either time
or rare wisdom writes it. Before printing was dis-
covered, a century was equal to a thousand years.
The poet is he who can write some pure mythology
to-day without the aid of posterity. In how few
words, for instance, the Greeks would have told the
SUNDA V.
55
story of Abelard and Heloise, making but a sentence
for our classical dictionary, — and then, perchance
have stuck up their names to shine in some corner
of the firmament. We moderns, on the other hand,
collect only the raw materials of biography and his-
tory, " memoirs to serve for a history,'' which itself is
but materials to serve for a mythology. How many
volumes folio would the Life and Labors of Prome-
theus have filled, if perchance it had fallen, as per-
chance it did first, in days of cheap printing! Who
knows what shape the fable of Columbus will at
length assume, to be confounded with that of Jason
and the expedition of the Argonauts. And Frank-
lin, — there may be a line for him in the future classi-
cal dictionary, recording what that demigod did, and
referring him to some new genealogy. " Son of
and . He aided the Americans to gain their
independence, instructed mankind in economy, and
drew down lightning from the clouds."
The hidden significance of these fables which is
sometimes thought to have been detected, the ethics
running parallel to the poetry and history, are not so
remarkable as the readiness with which they may be
made] to express a variety of truths. As if they were
the skeletons of still older and more universal truths
than any whose flesh and blood they are for the time
made to wear. It is like striving to rhake the sun, or
the wind, or the sea, symbols to signify exclusively
the particular thoughts of our day. But what signi-
fies it? In the mythus a superhuman intelligence
uses the unconscious thoughts and dreams of men as
its hieroglyphics to address men unborn. In the
history of the human mind, these glowing and ruddy
fables precede the noon-day thoughts of men, as
56 A WEEK ON THE CONCORD RIVER.
Aurora the sun's rays. The matutine intellect of the
poet, keeping in advance of the glare of philosophy,
always dwells in this auroral atmosphere.
As we said before, the Concord is a dead stream,
but its scenery is the more suggestive to the contem-
plative voyager, and this day its water was fuller
of reflections than our pages even. Just before it
reaches the falls in Billerica it is contracted, and be-
comes swifter and shallower, with a yellow pebbly
bottom, hardly passable for a canal boat, leaving the
broader and more stagnant portion above like a lake
among the hills. All through the Concord, Bedford,
and Billerica meadows, we had heard no murmur
from its stream, except where some tributary runnel
tumbled in, —
Some tumultuous little rill,
Purling round its storied pebble,
Tinkling to the self-same tune,
From September until June,
Which no drought doth e'er enfeeble.
Silent flows the parent stream.
And if rocks do lie below.
Smothers with her waves the din,
As it were a youthful sin,
Just as still, and just as slow.
But now at length we heard this staid and primitive
river rushing to her fall, like any rill. We here left
its channel, just above the Billerica Falls, and entered
the canal, which runs, or rather is conducted, six
miles through the woods to the Merrimack at Mid-
dlesex, and as we did not care to loiter in this part
of our voyage, while one ran along the tow-path
drawing the boat by a cord, the other kept it off the
SUNDAY. 57
shore with a pole, so that we accomplished the whole
distance in little more than an hour. This canal,
which is the oldest in the country, and has even an
antique look beside the more modern railroads, is fed
by the Concord, so that we were still floating on its
familiar waters. It is so much water which the river
lets for the advantage of commerce. There ajDpeared
some want of harmony in its scenery, since it was not
of equal date with the woods and meadows through
which it is led, and we missed the conciliatory influ-
ence of time on land and water; but in the lapse
of ages. Nature will recover and indemnify herself,
and gradually plant fit shrubs and flowers along its
borders. Already the kingfisher sat upon a pine
over the water, and the bream and pickerel swam
below. Thus all works pass directly out of the
hands of the architect into the hands of Nature, to
be perfected.
It was a retired and pleasant route, without houses
or travellers, except some young men who were loung-
ing upon a bridge in Chelmsford, who leaned impu-
dently over the rails to pry into our concerns, but we
caught the eye of the most forward, and looked at
him till he was visibly discomfited. Not that there
was any peculiar efficacy in our look, but rather a
sense of shame left in him which disarmed him.
It is a very true and expressive phrase, " He looked
daggers at me," for the first pattern and prototype
of all daggers must have been a glance of the eye.
First, there was the glance of Jove's eye, then his
fiery bolt, then, the material gradually hardening,
tridents, spears, javelins, and finally, for the con-
venience of private men, daggers, krisses, and so
It is wonderful how we get
58 A WEEK ON THE CONCORD RIVER.
about the streets without being wounded by these
delicate and glancing weapons, a man can so nimbly
whip out his rapier, or without being noticed carry it
unsheathed. Yet after all, it is rare that one gets
seriously looked at.
As we passed under the last bridge over the canal,
just before reaching the Merrimack, the people com-
ing out of church paused to look at us from above,
and apparently, so strong is custom, indulged in
some heathenish comparisons ; but we were the truest
observers of this sunny day. According to Hesiod,
" The seventh is a holy day,
For then Latona brought forth golden-rayed Apollo,"
and by our reckoning this was the seventh day of the
week, and not the first. I find among the papers of
an old Justice of the Peace and Deacon of the town of
Concord, this singular memorandum, which is worth
preserving as a relic of an ancient custom. After
reforming the spelling and grammar, it runs as fol-
lows : — "Men that travelled with teams on the Sab-
bath, Dec. 1 8th, 1803, were Jeremiah Richardson and
Jonas Parker, both of Shirley. They nad teams with
rigging such as is used to carry barrels, and they were
travelling westward. Richardson was questioned by
the Hon. Ephraim Wood, Esq., and he said that
Jonas Parker was his fellow traveller, and he further
said that a Mr. Longley was his employer, who prom-
ised to bear him out." We were the men that were
gliding northward, this Sept. ist, 1839, with still
team, and rigging not the most convenient to carry
barrels, unquestioned by any Squire or Church Dea-
con, and ready to bear ourselves out, if need were.
In the latter part of the seventeenth century, accord-
SUNDA V. 59
ing to the historian of Dunstable, "Towns were
directed to erect ^a cage'' near the meeting-house, and
in this all offenders against the sanctity of the Sabbath
were confined." Society has relaxed a little from its
strictness, one would say, but I presume that there is
not less religion than formerly. If the ligature is
found to be loosened in one part, it is only drawn the
tighter in another.
You can hardly convince a man of an error in a
life-time, but must content yourself with the reflection
that the progress of science is slow. If he is not
convinced, his grand-children may be. The geolo-
gists tell us that it took one hundred years to prove
that fossils are organic, and one hundred and fifty
more, to prove that they are not to be referred to the
Noachian deluge. I am not sure but I should betake
myself in extremities to the Hberal divinities of
Greece, rather than to my country's God. Jehovah,
though with us he has acquired new attributes, is
more absolute and unapproachable, but hardly more
divine, than Jove. He is not so much of a gentleman,
among gods, not so gracious and catholic, he does not
exert so intimate and genial an influence on nature,
as many a god of the Greeks. I should fear the
infinite power and inflexible justice of the almighty
mortal, hardly as yet apotheosized, so wholly mascu-
line, with no sister Juno, no Apollo, no Venus, nor
Minerva, to intercede for me, ^u/xo) cfivXiovad re,
KrjSo/jiivY) re. The Grecian are youthful and erring
and fallen gods, with the vices of men, but in many
important respects essentially of the divine race. In
my Pantheon, Pan still reigns in his pristine glory,
with his ruddy face, his flowing beard, and his shaggy
body, his pipe and his crook, his nymph Echo, and
6o A WEEK ON THE CONCORD RIVER.
his chosen daughter lambe ; for the great God Pan is
not dead, as was rumored. Perhaps of all the gods of
New England and of ancient Greece, I am most con-
stant at his shrine.
It seems to me that the god that is commonly wor-
shipped in civilized countries is not at all divine,
though he bears a divine name, but is the overwhelm-
ing authority and respectability of mankind combined.
Men reverence one another, not yet God. If I thought
that I could speak with discrimination and impartial-
ity of the nations of Christendom, I should praise
them, but it tasks me too much. They seem to be
the most civil and humane, but I may be mistaken.
Every people have gods to suit their circumstances ;
the Society Islanders had a god called Toahitu, " in
shape like a dog ; he saved such as were in danger of
falling from rocks and trees." I think that we can do
without him, as we have not much climbing to do.
Among them a man could make himself a god out of
a piece of wood in a few minutes, which would frighten
him out of his wits.
I fancy that some indefatigable spinster of the old
school, who had the supreme felicity to be born in
" days that tried men's souls," hearing this, may say
with Nestor, another of the old school, "But you
are younger than I. For time was when I conversed
with greater men than you. For not at any time have
I seen such men nor shall see them, as Perithous,
and Dryas, and Trocfxeva Aawv," that is probably
Washington, sole " Shepherd of the People." And
when Apollo has now six times rolled westward, or
seemed to roll, and now for the sixth time shows his
face in the east, eyes well nigh glazed, long glassed,
which have fluctuated only between lamb's wool and
SUNDAY. 6 1
worsted, explore ceaselessly some good sermon book.
For six days shalt thou labor and do all thy knitting,
but on the seventh, forsooth thy reading. Happy we
who can bask in this warm September sun, which illu-
mines all creatures, as well when they rest as when
they toil, not without a feeling of gratitude ; whose
life is as blameless, how blameworthy soever it may be,
on the Lord's Mona-day as on his Suna-day.
There are various, nay incredible faiths ; why should
we be alarmed at any of them ? What man believes,
God believes. Long as I have lived, and many blas-
phemers as I have heard and seen, I have never yet
heard or witnessed any direct and conscious blas-
phemy or irreverence ; but of indirect and habitual
enough. Where is the man who is guilty of direct
and personal insolence to Him that made him ? — Yet
there are certain current expressions of blasphemous
modes of viewing things, — as, frequently, when we
say, " He is doing a good business," — more profane
than cursing and swearing. There is sin and death
in such words. Let not the children hear them. —
My neighbor says that his hill farm is "poor stuff,"
"only fit to hold the world together," — and much
more to that effect. He deserves that God should
give him a better for so free a treating of his gifts,
more than if he patiently put up therewith. But
perhaps my farmer forgets that his lean soil has
sharpened his wits. This is a crop it was good
for.
One memorable addition to the old mythology is
due to this era, — the Christian fable. With what
pains, and tears, and blood, these centuries have
woven this and added it to the mythology of man-
kind. The new Prometheus. With what miraculous
62 A WEEK ON THE CONCORD RIVER.
consent, and patience, and persistency, has this
mythus been stamped upon the memory of the race?
It would seem as if it were in the progress of our
mythology to dethrone Jehovah, and crown Christ in
his stead.
If it is not a tragical life we live, then I know not
what to call it. Such a story as that of Jesus Christ,
— the history of Jerusalem, say, being a part of the
Universal History. The naked, the embalmed, un-
buried death of Jerusalem amid its desolate hills, —
think of it. In Tasso's poem I tnist some things are
sweetly buried. Consider the snappish tenacity with
which they preach Christianity still. What are time
and space to Christianity, eighteen hundred years, and
a new world? — that the humble life of a Jewish peas-
ant should have force to make a New York bishop so
bigoted. Forty-four lamps, the gift of kings, now
burning in a place called the Holy Sepulchre ; — a
church bell ringing ; — some unaffected tears shed by
a pilgrim on Mount Calvary within the week. —
" Jerusalem, Jerusalem, when I forget thee, may my
right hand forget her cunning."
" By the waters of Babylon there we sat down, and
we wept when we remembered Zion."
I trust that some may be as near and dear to Buddha
or Christ, or Swedenborg, who are without the pale
of their churches. It is necessary not to be Christian,
to appreciate the beauty and significance of the life of
Christ. I know that some will have hard thoughts of
me, when they hear their Christ named beside my
Buddha, yet I am sure that I am willing they should
love their Christ more than my Buddha, for the love
is the main thing, and I like him too. Why need
Christians be still intolerant and superstitious ? The
SUNDA Y. 63
simple minded sailors were unwilling to cast over-
board Jonah at his own request. —
" Where is this love become in later age?
Alas ! 't is gone in endless pilgrimage
From hence, and never to return, I doubt,
Till revolution wheel those times about."
One man says, —
" The world 's a popular disease, that reigns
Within the froward heart and frantic brains
Of poor distempered mortals."
Another that
— ' all the world 's a stage,
And all the men and women merely players."
The world is a strange place for a play-house to stand
within it. Old Drayton thought that a man that hved
here, and would be a poet, for instance, should have
in him certain ^' brave translunary things," and a
''fine madness" should possess his brain. Certainly
it were as well, that he might be up to the occasion.
That is a superfluous wonder, which Dr. Johnson
expresses at the assertion of Sir Thomas Browne,
that "his life has been a miracle of thirty years,
which to relate, were not history, but a piece of
poetry, and would sound like a fable." The wonder
is rather that all men do not assert as much.
Think what a mean and wretched place this world
is ; that half the time we have to light a lamp that we
may see to live in it. This is half our life. Who
would undertake the enterprise if it were all? And,
pra}', what more has day to offer? A lamp that burns
more clear, a purer oil, say winter-strained, that so
we may pursue our idleness with less obstruction.
64 A WEEK ON THE CONCORD RIVER.
Bribed with a little sunlight and a few prismatic tints,
we bless our Maker, and stave off his wrath with
hymns.
I make ye an offer,
Ye gods, hear the scoffer,
The scheme will not hurt you,
If ye will find goodness, I will find virtue.
Though I am your creature,
And child of your nature,
I have pride still unbended,
And blood undescended.
Some free independence,
And my own descendants.
I cannot toil blindly,
Though ye behave kindly,
And I swear by the rood,
I '11 be slave to no God.
If ye will deal plainly,
I will strive mainly,
If ye will discover.
Great plans to your lover,
And give him a sphere
Somewhat larger than here.
" Verily, my angels ! I was abashed on account of
my servant, who had no Providence but me; there-
fore did I pardon him." — The Gulistan of Sadi.
Most people with whom I talk, men and women
even of some originality and genius, have their scheme
of the universe all cut and dried, — very dry, I assure
you, to hear, dry enough to burn, dry-rotted and pow-
der-post, methinks, — which they set up between you
and them in the shortest intercourse ; an ancient and
tottering frame with all its boards blown off. They do
not walk without their bed. Some to me seemingly
very unimportant and unsubstantial things and rela-
SUNDA Y. 65
tions, are for them everlastingly settled, — as Father,
Son, and Holy Ghost, and the like. These are like
the everlasting hills to them. But in all my wander-
ings, I never came across the least vestige of author-
ity for these things. They have not left so distinct
a trace as the delicate flower of a remote geological
period on the coal in my grate. The wisest man
preaches no doctrines ; he has no scheme ; he sees
no rafter, not even a cobweb, against the heavens.
It is clear sky. If I ever see more clearly at one time
than at another, the medium through which I see is
clearer. To see from earth to heaven, and see there
standing, still a fixture, that old Jewish scheme!
What right have you to hold up this obstacle to my
understanding you, to your understanding me! You
did not invent it ; it was imposed on you. Examine
your authority. Even Christ, we fear, had his scheme,
his conformity to tradition, which slightly vitiates his
teaching. He had not swallowed all formulas. He
preached some mere doctrines. As for me, Abraham,
Isaac, and Jacob, are now only the subtilest imagi-
nable essences, which would not stain the morning sky.
Your scheme must be the framework of the universe ;
all other schemes will soon be ruins. The perfect
God in his revelations of himself has never got to the
length of one such proposition as you, his prophets,
state. Have you learned the alphabet of heaven, and
can count three ? Do you know the number of God's
family ? Can you put mysteries into words ? Do you
presume to fable of the ineifable? Pray, what geog-
rapher are you, that speak of heaven's topography?
Whose friend are you that speak of God's personality ?
Do you, Miles Howard, think that he has made you
his confidant? Tell me of the height of the moun-
66 A WEEK ON THE CONCORD RIVER.
tains of the moon, or of the diameter of space, and I
may believe you, but of the secret history of the Al-
mighty, and I shall pronounce thee mad. Yet we
have a sort of family history of our God, — so have
the Tahitians of theirs, — and some old poet's grand
imagination is imposed on us as adamantine everlast-
ing truth, and God's own word !
The New Testament is an invaluable book, though
I confess to having been slightly prejudiced against it
in my very early days by the church and the Sabbath
school, so that it seemed, before I read it, to be the
yellowest book in the catalogue. Yet I early escaped
from their meshes. It was hard to get the commen-
taries out of one's head, and taste its true flavor. —
I think that Pilgrim's Progress is the best sermon
which has been preached from this text ; almost all
other sermons that I have heard or heard of, have
been but poor imitations of this. — It would be a poor
story to be prejudiced against the Life of Christ,
because the book has been edited by Christians. In
fact, I love this book rarely, though it is a sort of
castle in the air to me, which I am permitted to dream.
Having come to it so recently and freshly, it has the
greater charm, so that I cannot find any to talk with
about it. I never read a novel, they have so little
real life and thought in them. The reading which I
love best is the scriptures of the several nations, though
it happens that I am better acquainted with those of
the Hindoos, the Chinese, and the Persians, than of
the Hebrews, which I have come to last. Give me
one of these Bibles, and you have silenced me for a
while. When I recover the use of my tongue, I am
wont to worry my neighbors with the new sentences,
SUNDA V. 67
but commonly they cannot see that there is any wit in
them. Such has been my experience with the New
Testament. I have not yet got to the crucifixion, I
have read it over so many times. I should love
dearly to read it aloud to my friends, some of whom
are seriously inclined ; it is so good, and I am sure that
they have never heard it, it fits their case exactly, and
we should enjoy it so much together, — but I instinct-
ively despair of getting their ears. They soon show,
by signs not to be mistaken, that it is inexpressibly
wearisome to them. I do not mean to imply that I
am any better than my neighbors ; for, alas ! I know
that I am only as good, though I love better books than
they. It is remarkable, that notwithstanding the uni-
versal favor with which the New Testament is out-
wardly received, and even the bigotry with which it
is defended, there is no hospitality shown to, there is
no appreciation of, the order of truth with which it
deals. I know of no book that has so few readers.
There is none so truly strange, and heretical, and
unpopular. To Christians, no less than Greeks and
Jews, it is foolishness and a stumbling block. There
are, indeed, severe things in it which no man should
read aloud but once. — "Seek first the kingdom of
heaven." — "Lay not up for yourselves treasures on
earth." — "If thou wilt be perfect, go and sell that
thou hast, and give to the poor, and thou shalt have
treasure in heaven." — "For what is a man profited,
if he shall gain the whole world, and lose his own
soul ? or what shall a man give in exchange for his
soul? " — Think of this, Yankees! — "Verily I say unto
you, if ye have faith as a grain of mustard seed, ye shall
say unto this mountain. Remove hence to yonder place ;
and it shall remove ; and nothing shall be impossible
68 A WEEK ON THE CONCORD RIVER.
unto you." — Think of repeating these things to a
New England audience! thirdly, fourthly, fifteenthly^
till there are three barrels of sermons ! Who, without
cant, can read them aloud? Who, without cant, can
hear them, and not go out of the meeting-house?
They never were read, they never were heard. Let
but one of these sentences be rightly read from any
pulpit in the land, and there would not be left one
stone of that meeting-house upon another.
Yet the New Testament treats of man and man's
so-called spiritual affairs too exclusively, and is too
constantly moral and personal, to alone content me,
who am not interested solely in man's religious or
moral nature, or in man even. I have not the most
definite designs on the future. Absolutely speaking,
Do unto others as you would that they should do unto
you, is by no means a golden rule, but the best of cur-
rent silver. An honest man would have but little
occasion for it. It is golden not to have any mle at
all in such a case. The book has never been written
which is to be accepted without any allowance. Christ
was a sublime actor on the stage of the world. He
knew what he was thinking of when he said, " Heaven
and earth shall pass away, but my words shall not pass
away." I draw near to him at such a time. Yet he
taught mankind but imperfectly how to live ; his
thoughts were all directed toward another world.
There is another kind of success than his. Even
here we have a sort of living to get, and must buffet
it somewhat longer. There are various tough prob-
lems yet to solve, and we must make shift to live,
betwixt spirit and matter, such a human life as we
can.
SUNDA y. 69
A healthy man, with steady employment, as wood
chopping at fifty cents a cord, and a camp in the
woods, will not be a good subject for Christianity.
The New Testament may be a choice book to him
on some, but not on all or most of his days. He will
rather go a-fishing in his leisure hours. The apostles,
though they were fishers too, were of the solemn race
of sea-fishers, and never trolled for pickerel on inland
streams.
Men have a singular desire to be good without
being good for anything, because, perchance, they
think vaguely that so it will be good for them in
the end. The sort of morality which the priest
inculcates is a very subtle policy, far finer than the
politicians, and the world is very successfully ruled
by them as the policemen. It is not worth the while
to let our imperfections disturb us always. The con-
science really does not, and ought not to, monopolize
the whole of our lives, any more than the heart or the
head. It is as liable to disease as any other part. I
have seen some whose consciences, owing undoubtedly
to former indulgence, had grown to be as irritable as
spoilt children, and at length gave them no peace.
They did not know when to swallow their cud, and
their lives of course yielded no milk.
Conscience is instinct bred in the house,
Feeling and Thinking propagate the sin
By an unnatural breeding in and in.
I say, Turn it out doors,
Into the moors.
I love a life whose plot is simple,
And does not thicken with every pimple ;
A soul so sound no sickly conscience binds it,
That makes the universe no worse than 't finds it.
I love an earnest soul.
70 A WEEK ON THE CONCORD RIVER.
Whose mighty joy and sorrow
Are not drowned in a bowl,
And brought to life to-morrow ;
That lives one tragedy,
And not seventy ;
A conscience worth keeping,
Laughing not weeping ;
A conscience wise and steady,
And forever ready ;
Not changing with events.
Dealing in compliments ;
A conscience exercised about
Large things, where one 7nay doubt,
I love a soul not all of wood,
Predestinated to be good.
But true to the backbone
Unto itself alone,
And false to none ;
Born to its own affairs,
Its own joys and own cares ;
By whom the work which God begun
Is finished, and not undone ;
Taken up where he left off,
Whether to worship or to scoff;
If not good, why then evil,
If not good god, good devil.
Goodness ! — you hypocrite, come out of that,
Live your life, do your work, then take your hat.
I have no patience towards
Such conscientious cowards.
Give me simple laboring folk.
Who love their work.
Whose virtue is a song
To cheer God along.
I was once reproved by a minister who was driv-
ing a poor beast to some meeting-house horse-sheds
among the hills of New Hampshire, because I was
bending my steps to a mountain-top on the Sabbath,
instead of a church, when I would have gone further
SUNDA Y. 71
than he to hear a true word spoken on that or any
day. He declared that I was "breaking the Lord's
fourth commandment," and proceeded to enumerate,
in a sepulchral tone, the disasters which had befallen
him whenever he had done any ordinary work on the
Sabbath. He really thought that a god was at work
to trip up those men who followed any secular work
on this day, and did not see that it was the evil con-
science of the workers that did it. The country is
full of this superstition, so that when one enters a
village, the church, not only really but from associa-
tion, is the ugliest looking building in it, because it
is the one in which human nature stoops the lowest
and is most disgraced. Certainly, such temples as
these shall ere long cease to deform the landscape.
If I should ask the minister of Middlesex to let me
speak in his pulpit on a Sunday, he would object,
because I do not pray as he does, or because I am
not ordained. What under the sun are these things ?
Really, there is no infidelity, now-a-days, so great
as that which prays, and keeps the Sabbath, and
rebuilds the churches. The sealer of the South
Pacific preaches a truer doctrine. The church is a
sort of hospital for men's souls, and as full of quackery
as the hospital for their bodies. Those who are taken
into it live like pensioners in their Retreat or Sailor's
Snug Harbor, where you may see a row of religious
cripples sitting outside in sunny weather. Let not
the apprehension that he may one day have to occupy
a ward therein, discourage the cheerful labors of the
able-souled man. While he remembers the sick in
their extremities, let him not look thither as to his
goal. One is sick at heart of this pagoda worship.
It is like the beating of gongs in a Hindoo sub-
72 A WEEK ON THE CONCORD RIVER.
terranean temple. In dark places and dungeons
the preach er"'s words might perhaps strike root and
grow, but not in broad daylight in any part of the
world that I know. The sound of the Sabbath bell
far away, now breaking on these shores, does not
awaken pleasing associations, but melancholy and
sombre ones rather. One involuntarily rests on his
oar, to humor his unusually meditative mood. It
is as the sound of many catechisms and religious
books twanging a canting peal round the earth, seem-
ing to issue from some Egyptian temple and echo
along the shore of the Nile, right opposite to Pha-
raoh's palace and Moses in the bulrushes, startling a
multitude of storks and alligators basking in the sun.
Everywhere "good men '^ sound a retreat, and the
word has gone forth to fall back on innocence. Fall
forward rather on to whatever there is there. Chris-
tianity only hopes. It has hung its harp on the
willows, and cannot sing a song in a strange land.
It has dreamed a sad dream, and does not yet wel-
come the morning with joy. The mother tells her
falsehoods to her child, but thank Heaven, the child
does not grow up in its parent's shadow. Our mother's
faith has not grown with her experience. Her experi-
ence has been too much for her. The lesson of life
was too hard for her to learn.
It is remarkable, that almost all speakers and writers
feel it to be incumbent on them, sooner or later,
to prove or to acknowledge the personality of God.
Some Earl of Bridgewater, thinking it better late than
never, has provided for it in his will. It is a sad
mistake. In reading a work on agriculture, we have
to skip the author's moral reflections, and the words
" Providence " and " He " scattered along the page,
SUNDA V. 73
to come at the profitable level of what he has to say.
What he calls his religion is for the most part offen-
sive to the nostrils. He should know better than
expose himself, and keep his foul sores covered till
they are quite healed. There is more religion in
men's science than there is science in their religion.
Let us make haste to the report of the committee on
swine.
A man's real faith is never contained in his creed^
nor is his creed an article of his faith. The last is
never adopted. This it is tliat permits him to smile
ever, and to live even as bravely as he does. And
yet he chngs anxiously to his creed, as to a straw,
thinking that that does him good service because his
sheet anchor does not drag.
In most men's religion, the ligature, which should
be its umbilical cord connecting them with divinity,
is rather like that thread which the accompHces of
Cylon held in their hands when they went abroad
from the temple of Minerva, the other end being
attached to the statue of the goddess. But fre-
quently, as in their case, the thread breaks, being
stretched, and they are left without an asylum.
" A good and pious man reclined his head on the
bosom of contemplation, and was absorbed in the
ocean of a revery. At the instant when he awaked
from his vision, one of his friends, by way of pleas-
antry, said : What rare gift have you brought us from
that garden, where you have been recreating? He
replied ; I fancied to myself and said, when I can
reach the rose-bower, I will fill my lap with the flow-
ers, and bring them as a present to my friends ; but
74 A WEEK ON THE CONCORD RIVER.
cated me, that the skirt dropped from my hands. —
' O bird of dawn ! learn the warmth of aiTection from
the moth ; for that scorched creature gave up the
ghost, and uttered not a groan : These vain pretend-
ers are ignorant of him they seek after ; for of him
that knew him we never heard again : — O thou ! who
towerest above the fliglits of conjecture, opinion, and
comprehension ; whatever has been reported of thee
we have heard and read ; the congregation is dis-
missed, and life drawn to a close ; and we still rest at
our first encomium of thee ! ' " — Sadi.
By noon we were let down into the Merrimack
through the locks at Middlesex, just above Pawtucket
Falls, by a serene and liberal-minded man, who came
quietly from his book, though his duties, we supposed,
did not require him to open the locks on Sundays.
With him we had a just and equal encounter of the
eyes, as between two honest men.
The movements of the eyes express the perpetual
and unconscious courtesy of the parties. It is said,
that a rogue does not look you in the face, neither
does an honest man look at you as if he had his rep-
utation to establish. I have seen some who did not
know when to turn aside their eyes in meeting yours.
A truly confident and magnanimous spirit is wiser
than to contend for the mastery in such encounters.
Serpents alone conquer by the steadiness of their
gaze. My friend looks me in the face and sees me,
that is all.
The best relations were at once established between
us and this man, and though few words were spoken,
he could not conceal a visible interest in us and our
excursion. He was a lover of the higher mathemat-
SUNDAY. 75
ics, as we found, and in the midst of some vast sunny
problem, when we overtook him and whispered our
conjectures. By this man we were presented with
the freedom of the Merrimack. We now felt as if we
were fairly launched on the ocean-stream of our voy-
age, and were pleased to find that our boat would
float on Merrimack water. We began again busily
to put in practice those old arts of rowing, steering,
and paddling. It seemed a strange phenomenon to
us that the two rivers should mingle their waters so
readily, since we had never associated them in our
thoughts.
As we glided over the broad bosom of the Merri-
mack, between Chelmsford and Dracut, at noon, here
a quarter of a mile wide, the rattling of our oars was
echoed over the water to those villages, and their
slight sounds to us. Their harbors lay as smooth
and fairy-like as the Lido, or Syracuse, or Rhodes, in
our imagination, while, like some strange roving craft,
we flitted past what seemed the dwellings of noble
home-staying men, seemingly as conspicuous as if on
an eminence, or floating upon a tide which came up
to those villagers' breasts. At a third of a mile over
the water we heard distinctly some children repeat-
ing their catechism in a cottage near the shore, while
in the broad shallows between, a herd of cows stood
lashing their sides, and waging war with the flies.
Two hundred years ago other catechising than this
was going on here ; for here came the sachem Wan-
nalancet, and his people, and sometimes Tahatawan,
our Concord Sachem, who afterwards had a church
at home, to catch fish at the falls ; and here also
came John ElHot, with the Bible and Catechism, and
Baxter's Call to the Unconverted, and other tracts,
76 A WEEK ON THE CONCORD RIVER.
done into the Massachusetts tongue, and taught them
Christianity meanwhile. " This place," says Gookin,
referring to Wamesit,
" being an ancient and capital seat of Indians, they
come to fish ; and this good man takes this opportu-
nity to spread the net of the gospel, to fish for their
souls." — "May 5th, 1674," he continues, "according
to our usual custom, Mr. Eliot and myself took our
journey to Wamesit, or Pawtuckett ; and arriving there
that evening, Mr. Eliot preached to as many of them
as could be got together, out of Matt. xxii. 1-14, the
parable of the marriage of the king's son. We met
at the wigwam of one called Wannalancet, about
two miles from the town, near Pawtuckett falls, and
bordering upon Merrimak river. This person, Wan-
nalancet, is the eldest son of old Pasaconaway, the
chiefest sachem of Pawtuckett. He is a sober and
grave person, and of years, between fifty and sixty.
He hath been always loving and friendly to the Eng-
lish."" As yet, however, they had not prevailed on
him to embrace the Christian religion. " But at this
time," says Gookin, "May 6, 1674," — "after some
deliberation and serious pause, he stood up, and made
a speech to this effect : — 'I must acknowledge I have,
all my days, used to pass in an old canoe, (alluding
to his frequent custom to pass in a canoe upon the
river) and now you exhort me to change and leave
my old canoe, and embark in a new canoe, to which
I have hitherto been umvilling ; but now I yield up
myself to your advice, and enter into a new canoe,
and do engage to pray to God hereafter.' " One "Mr.
Richard Daniel, a gentleman that lived in Billerica,"
who with other "persons of quality" was present,
SUNDA V. yy
"desired brother Eliot to tell the sachem from him,
that it may be, while he went in his old canoe, he
passed in a quiet stream ; but the end thereof was
death and destruction to soul and body. But now he
went into a new canoe, perhaps he would meet with
storms and trials, but yet he should be encouraged to
persevere, for the end of his voyage would be ever-
lasting rest." — "Since that time, I hear this sachem
doth persevere, and is a constant and diligent hearer
of God's word, and sanctifieth the Sabbath, though
he doth travel to Wamesit meeting every Sabbath,
which is above two miles ; and though sundry of his
people have deserted him, since he subjected to the
gospel, yet he continues and persists." — Gookhi's
Hist. Coll. of the Indians iii New England, 1674.
Already, as appears from the records, "At a General
Court held at Boston in New England, the 7th of the
first month, 1643-4." — " Wassamequin, Nashoonon,
Kutchamaquin, Massaconomet, and Squaw Sachem,
did voluntarily submit themselves " to the English ;
and among other things did " promise to be willing
from time to time to be instructed in the knowledge
of God." Being asked " Not to do any unnecessary
work on the Sabbath day, especially within the gates
of Christian towns," they answered, " It is easy to
them ; they have not much to do on any day, and
they can well take their rest on that day." — " So,"
says Winthrop, in his Journal, " we causing them to
understand the articles, and all the ten commandments
of God, and they freely assenting to all, they were
solemnly received, and then presented the Court with
twenty-six fathom more of wampom ; and the Court
gave each of them a coat of two yards of cloth, and
their dinner; and to them and their men, every of
yd> A WEEK ON THE CONCORD RIVER.
them, a cup of sack at their departure ; and so they
took leave and went away."
What journeying on foot and on horseback through
the wilderness, to preach the gospel to these minks
and muskrats! who first, no dOubt, listened with their
red ears out of a natural hospitality and courtesy, and
afterward from curiosity or even interest, till at length
there were "praying Indians," and, as the General
Court wrote to Cromwell, the " work is brought to
this perfection, that some of the Indians themselves
can pray and prophesy in a comfortable manner."
It was in fact an old battle and hunting ground
through which we had been floating, the ancient
dwelling-place of a race of hunters and warriors.
Their weirs of stone, their arrowheads and hatchets,
their pestles, and the mortars in which they pounded
Indian corn before the white man had tasted it, lay
concealed in the mud of the river bottom. Tradition
still points out the spots where they took fish in the
greatest numbers, by such arts as they possessed.
It is a rapid story the historian will have to put to-
gether. Miantonimo, — Winthrop, — Webster. Soon
he comes from Mount Hope to Bunker Hill, from
bear-skins, parched corn, bows and arrows, to tiled
roofs, wheat fields, guns and swords. Pawtucket and
Wamesit, where the Indians resorted in the fishing
season, are now Lowell, the city of spindles and Man-
chester of America, which sends its cotton cloth
round the globe. Even we youthful voyagers had
spent a part of our lives in the village of Chelmsford,
when the present city, whose bells we heard, was its
obscure north district only, and the giant weaver was
not yet fairly born. So old are we ; so young is it.
SUNDA V. 79
We were thus entering the State of New Hamp-
shire on the bosom of the flood formed by the tribute
of its innumerable valleys. The river was the only
key which could unlock its maze, presenting its hills
and valleys, its lakes and streams, in their natural
order and position. The Merrimack, or Sturgeon
River, is formed by the confluence of the Pemigewasset,
which rises near the Notch of the White Mountains,
and the Winnepisiogee, which drains the lake of the
same name, signifying "The Smile of the Great
Spirit." From their junction it nms south seventy-
eight miles to Massachusetts, and thence east thirty-
five miles to the sea. I have traced its stream from
where it bubbles out of the rocks of the White Moun-
tains above the clouds, to where it is lost amid the
salt billows of the ocean on Plum Island beach. At
first it comes on murmuring to itself by the base of
stately and retired mountains, through moist primitive
woods whose juices it receives, where the bear still
drinks it, and the cabins of settlers are far between,
and there are few to cross its stream ; enjoying in
solitude its cascades still unknown to fame ; by long
ranges of mountains of Sandwich and of Squam,
slumbering like tumuli of Titans, with the peaks of
Moosehillock, the Haystack, and Kearsarge reflected
in its waters ; where the maple and the raspberry,
those lovers of the hills, flourish amid temperate
dews; — flowing long and full of meaning, but un-
translatable as its name Pemigewasset, by many a
pastured Pelion and Ossa, where unnamed muses
haunt, tended by Oreads, Dryads, Naiads, and receiv-
ing the tribute of many an untasted Hippocrene.
There are earth, air, fire, and water, — very well, this
is water, and down it comes.
8o A WEEK ON THE CONCORD RIVER.
Such water do the gods distil,
And pour down every hill
For their New England men ;
A draught of this wild nectar bring,
And I '11 not taste the spring
Of Helicon again.
Falling all the way, and yet not discouraged by the
lowest fall. By the law of its birth never to become
stagnant, for it has come out of the clouds, and down
the sides of precipices worn in the flood, through
beaver dams broke loose, not splitting but splicing
and mending itself, until it found a breathing place in
this low land. There is no danger now that the sun
will steal it back to heaven again before it reach the
sea, for it has a warrant even to recover its own dews
into its bosom again with interest at every eve.
It was already the water of Squam and Newfound
Lake and Winnepisiogee, and White Mountain snow
dissolved, on which we were floating, and Smith's
and Baker's and Mad rivers, and Nashua and Souhe-
gan and Piscataquoag, and Suncook and Soucook and
Contoocook, mingled in incalculable proportions, still
fluid, yellowish, restless all, with an ancient, ineradi-
cable inclination to the sea.
So it flows on down by Lowell and Haverhill, at
which last place it first suffers a sea change, and a few
masts betray the vicinity of the ocean. Between the
towns of Amesbury and Newbury it is a broad com-
mercial river, from a third to half a mile in width, no
longer skirted with yellow and crumbling banks, but
backed by high green hills and pastures, with frequent
white beaches on which the fishermen draw up their
nets. I have passed down this portion of the river in
a steam-boat, and it was a pleasant sight to watch
SUNDAY, 8 1
from its deck the fishermen dragging their seines on
the distant shore, as in pictures of a foreign strand.
At intervals you may meet with a schooner laden with
lumber, standing up to Haverhill, or else lying at
anchor or aground, waiting for wind or tide ; until, at
last, you glide under the famous Chain Bridge, and
are landed at Newburyport. Thus she who at first
was ^'poore of waters, naked of renowne," having
received so many fair tributaries, as was said of the
Forth,
" Doth grow the greater still, the further downe ;
Till that abounding both in power and fame,
She long doth strive to give the sea her name ; "
or if not her name, in this case, at least the impulse
of her stream. From the steeples of Newburyport,
you may review this river stretching far up into the
country, with many a white sail glancing over it like
an inland sea, and behold, as one wrote who was born
on its head-waters, " Down out at its mouth, the dark
inky main blending with the blue above. Plum
Island, its sand ridges scolloping along the horizon
like the sea serpent, and the distant outline broken
by many a tall ship, leaning, still, against the sky."
Rising at an equal height with the Connecticut, the
Merrimack reaches the sea by a course only half as
long, and hence has no leisure to form broad and
fertile meadows like the former, but is huriied along
rapids, and down numerous falls without long delay.
The banks are generally steep and high, with a narrow
interval reaching back to the hills, which is only oc-
casionally and partially overflown at present, and is
much valued by the farmers. Between Chelmsford
and Concord in New Hampshire, it varies from twenty
82 A WEEK ON THE CONCORD RIVER.
to seventy-five rods in width. It is probably wider
than it was formerly, in many places, owing to the
trees having been cut down, and the consequent wasting
away of its banks. The influence of the Pawtucket
dam is felt as far up as CromwelPs Falls, and many
think that the banks are being abraded and the river
filled up again by this cause. Like all our rivers, it is
liable to freshets, and the Pemigewasset has been
known to rise twenty-five feet in a few hours. It
is navigable for vessels of burden about twenty
miles, for canal boats by means of locks as far as
Concord in New Hampshire, about seventy-five miles
from its mouth, and for smaller boats to Plymouth,
one hundred and thirteen miles. A small steam-boat
once plied between Lowell and Nashua, before the
railroad was built, and one now runs from Newbury-
port to Haverhill.
Unfitted to some extent for the purposes of com-
merce by the sand-bar at its mouth, see how this river
was devoted from the first to the service of manu-
factures. Issuing from the iron region of Franconia,
and flowing through still uncut forests, by inexhausti-
ble ledges of granite, with Squam, and Winnepisiogee,
and Newfound, and Massabesic lakes for its mill-
ponds, it falls over a succession of natural dams, where
it has been offering its privileges in vain for ages,
until at last the Yankee race came to ifuprove them.
Standing here at its mouth, look up its sparkling
stream to its source, — a silver cascade which falls all
the way from the White Mountains to the sea, — and
behold a city on each successive plateau, a busy col-
ony of human beaver around every fall. Not to men-
tion Newburyport and Haverhill, see Lawrence, and
Lowell, and Nashua, and Manchester, and Concord,
SUNDA V. 83
gleaming one above the other. When at length it
has escaped from under the last of the factories it has
a level and unmolested passage to the sea, a mere
was/e ivater, as it were, bearing little with it but its
fame; its pleasant course revealed by the morning
fog which hangs over it, and the sails of the few small
vessels which transact the commerce of Haverhill and
Newburyport. But its real vessels are railroad cars,
and its true and main stream, flowing by an iron chan-
nel further south, may be traced by a long line of
vapor amid the hills, which no morning wind ever
disperses, to where it empties into the sea at Boston.
This side is the louder murmur now. Instead of the
scream of a fish-hawk scaring the fishes, is heard the
whistle of the steam-engine, arousing a country to its
progress.
This river too was at length discovered by the white
man, " trending up into the land," he knew not how
far, possibly an inlet to the South Sea. Its valley,
as far as the Winnepisiogee, was first surveyed in
1652. The first settlers of Massachusetts supposed
that the Connecticut, in one part of its course, ran
north-west, "so near the great lake as the Indians
do pass their canoes into it over land. " From which
lake and the " hideous swamps " about it, as they sup-
posed, came all the beaver that was traded between
Virginia and Canada, — and the Potomac was thought
to come out of or from very near it. Afterward the
Connecticut came so near the course of the Merri-
mack, that with a little pains they expected to divert
the current of the trade into the latter river, and its
profits from their Dutch neighbors into their own
pockets.
84 A WEEK ON THE CONCORD RIVER.
Unlike the Concord, the Merrimack is not a dead
but a living stream, though it has less life within its
waters and on its banks. It has a swift current, and,
in this part of its course, a clayey bottom, almost no
weeds, and, comparatively, few fishes. We looked
down into its yellow water with the more curiosity,
who were accustomed to the Nile-like blackness of
the former river. Shad and alewives are taken here
in their season, but salmon, though at one time more
numerous than shad, are now more rare. Bass, also^
are taken occasionally; but locks and dams have
proved more or less destructive to the fisheries. The
shad make their appearance early in May, at the same
time with the blossoms of the pyrus, one of the most
conspicuous early flowers, which is for this reason
called the shad-blossom. An insect, called the shad-
fly, also appears at the same time, covering the houses
and fences. We are told that "their greatest run is
when the apple trees are in full blossom. The old
shad return in August ; the young, three or four inches
long, in September. These are very fond of fl.ies."
A rather picturesque and luxurious mode of fishing
was formerly practised on the Connecticut, at Bellows
Falls, where a large rock divides the stream. '■'• On
the steep sides of the island rock," says Belknap,
" hang several arm chairs, fastened to ladders, and
secured by a counterpoise, in which fishermen sit to
catch salmon and shad with dipping nets." The
remains of Indian weirs, made of large stones, are
still to be seen in the Winnepisiogee, one of the
head-waters of this river.
It cannot but affect our philosophy favorably to
be reminded of these shoals of migratory fishes, of
salmon, shad, alewives, marsh-bankers, and others,
SUNDAY. 85
which penetrate up the innumerable rivers of our coast
in the spring, even to the interior lakes, their scales
gleaming in the sun; and again, of the fry, which
in still greater numbers wend their way downward
to the sea. <• And is it not pretty sport," wrote Capt.
John Smith, who was on this coast as eariy as 1614,
" to pull up twopence, sixpence, and twelvepence, as
fast as you can haul and veer a line ? " — " And what
sport doth yield a more pleasing content, and less
hurt or charge, than angling with a hook, and cross-
ing the sweet air from isle to isle, over the silent
streams of a calm sea."
On the sandy shore, opposite the Glass-house vil-
lage in Chelmsford, at the Great Bend, where we
landed to rest us and gather a few wild plums, we
discovered the ca7npanula rotwidifolia, a new flower
to us, the harebell of the poets, which is common to
both hemispheres, growing close to the water. Here,
in the shady branches of an apple tree on the sand^
we took our nooning, where there was not a zephyr
to disturb the repose of this glorious Sabbath day,
and we reflected serenely on the long past and suc-
cessful labors of Latona.
" So silent is the cessile air,
That every cry and call,
The hills and dales, and forest fair.
Again repeats them all.
"The herds beneath some leafy trees,
Amidst the flowers they lie,
The stable ships upon the seas
Tend up their sails to dry,"
As we thus rested in the shade, or rowed leisurely
along, we had recourse, from time to time, to the
86 A WEEK ON THE CONCORD RIVER.
Gazetteer, which was our Navigator, and from its
bald natural facts extracted the pleasure of poetry.
Beaver river comes in a little lower down, draining the
meadows ofPelham, Windham, and Londonderry. The
Scotch-Irish settlers of the latter town, according to
this authority, were the first to introduce the potato into
New England, as well as the manufacture of linen cloth.
Everything that is printed and bound in a book
contains softie echo at least of the best that is in
literature. Indeed, the best books have a use like
sticks and stones, which is above or beside their
design, not anticipated in the preface, nor concluded
in the appendix. Even Virgil's poetry serves a very
different use to me to-day from what it did to his
contemporaries. It has often an acquired and acci-
dental value merely, proving that man is still man
in the world. It is pleasant to meet with such still
lines as,
" Jam laeto turgent in palmite gemmae ; "
Now the buds swell on the joyful stem ;
or
" Strata jacent passim sua quaeque sub arbore poma."
The apples lie scattered everywhere, each under its tree.
In an ancient and dead language, any recognition
of living nature attracts us. These are such sentences
as were written while grass grew and water ran. It is
no small recommendation when a book will stand the
test of mere unobstructed sunshine and daylight.
What would we not give for some great poem to
read now, which would be in harmony with the
scenery, — for if men read aright, methinks they
would never read anything but poems. No history
nor philosophy can supply their place.
SUNDA Y. Sy
The wisest definition of poetry the poet will instantly
prove false by setting aside its requisitions. We can,
therefore, publish only our advertisement of it.
There is no doubt that the loftiest written wisdom
is either rhymed, or in some way musically measured,
— is, in form as well as substance, poetry ; and a
volume which should contain the condensed wisdom
of mankind, need not have one rhythmless line.
Yet poetry, though the last and finest result, is a
natural fruit. As naturally as the oak bears an acorn,
and the vine a gourd, man bears a poem, either spoken
or done. It is the chief and most memorable success,
for history is but a prose narrative of poetic deeds.
What else have the Hindoos, the Persians, the Baby-
lonians, the Egyptians done, that can be told ? It is
the simplest relation of phenomena, and describes the
commonest sensations with more truth than science
does, and the latter at a distance slowly mimics its
style and methods. The poet sings how the blood
flows in his veins. He performs his functions, and is
so well that he needs such stimulus to sing only as
plants to put forth leaves and blossoms. He would
strive in vain to modulate the remote and transient
music which he sometimes hears, since his song is
a vital function like breathing, and an integral result
like weight. It is not the overflowing of life but of
its subsidence rather, and is drawn from under the
feet of the poet. It is enough if Homer but say the
sun sets. He is as serene as nature, and we can
hardly detect the enthusiasm of the bard. It is as
if nature spoke. He presents to us the simplest
pictures of human life, so that childhood itself can
understand them, and the man must not think twice
to appreciate his naturalness. Each reader discovers
SS A WEEK ON THE CONCORD RIVER.
for himself, that, with respect to the simpler features
of nature, succeeding poets have done little else than
copy his similes. His more memorable passages are
as naturally bright, as gleams of sunshine in misty
weather. Nature furnishes him not only with words,
but with stereotyped lines and sentences from her
mint.
"As from the clouds appears the full moon,
All shining, and then again it goes behind the shadowy clouds,
So Hector, at one time appeared among the foremost,
And at another in the rear, commanding ; and all with brass
He shone, Hke to the lightning of aegis-bearing Zeus."
He conveys the least information, even the hour of
the day, with such magnificence and vast expense of
natural imagery, as if it were a message from the gods.
" While it was dawn, and sacred day was advancing.
For that space the weapons of both flew fast, and the people
fell;
But when now the woodcutter was preparing his morning meal,
In the recesses of the mountain, and had wearied his hands
With cutting lofty trees, and satiety came to his mind.
And the desire of sweet food took possession of his thoughts ;
Then the Danaans, by their valor, broke the phalanxes.
Shouting to their companions from rank to rank."
When the army of the Trojans passed the night
under arms, keeping watch lest the enemy should
re-embark under cover of the dark,
" They, thinking great things, upon the neutral ground of war
Sat all the night ; and many fires burned for them.
As when in the heavens the stars round the bright moon
Appear beautiful, and the air is without wind ;
And all the heights, and the extreme summits.
And the wooded sides of the mountains appear ; and from the
heavens an infinite ether is diffused,
SUNDA Y. 89
And all the stars are seen ; and the shepherd rejoices in his
heart ;
So between the ships and the streams of Xanthus
Appeared the fires of the Trojans before Ilium,
A thousand fires burned on the plain ; and by each
Sat fifty, in the light of the blazing fire ;
And horses eating white barley and corn,
Standing by the chariots, awaited fair-throned Aurora."
The "white-armed goddess Juno," sent by the
Father of gods and men for Iris and Apollo,
" Went down the Idsean mountains to far Olympus,
As when the mind of a man, who has come over much earth,
Sallies forth, and he reflects with rapid thoughts,
There was I, and there, and remembers many things;
So swiftly the august Juno hastening flew through the air,
And came to high Olympus."
His scenery is always true, and not invented. He
does not leap in imagination from Asia to Greece,
through mid air,
irreLT] /xd\a ttoWo, fxera^v
Ovped re crKLO^vra, daXdacra re rjxve<T(7a.
for there are very many
Shady mountains and resounding seas between.
If his messengers repair but to the tent of Achilles,
we do not wonder how they got there, but accompany
them step by step along the shore of the resounding
sea. Nestor's account of the march of the Pylians
against the Epeians is extremely lifelike. —
" Then rose up to them sweet-worded Nestor, the shrill orator
of the Pylians,
And words sweeter than honey flowed from his tongue."
This time, however, he addresses Patroclus alone.
— "A certain river, Minyas by name, leaps seaward
90 A WEEK ON THE CONCORD RIVER.
near to Arene, where we Pylians wait the dawn, both
horse and foot. Thence with all haste we sped as on
the morrow ere 't was noon-day, accoutred for the fight,
even to Alpheus' sacred source, &c." We fancy that
we hear the subdued murmuring of the Minyas dis-
charging its waters into the main the live-long night,
and the hollow sound of the waves breaking on the
shore, — until at length we are cheered at the close
of a toilsome march by the gurgling fountains of
Alpheus.
There are few books which are fit to be remembered
in our wisest hours, but the Iliad is brightest in the
serenest days, and embodies still all the sunlight that
fell on Asia Minor. No modern joy or ecstasy of ours
can lower its height, or dim its lustre, but there it lies
in the east of literature, as it were the earliest and
latest production of the mind. The ruins of Egypt
oppress and stifle us with their dust, foulness pre-
served in cassia and pitch, and swathed in linen ;
the death of that which never lived. But the rays
of Greek poetry struggle down to us, and mingle
with the sunbeams of the recent day. The statue
of Memnon is cast down, but the shaft of the Iliad
still meets the sun in his rising. —
" Homer is gone ; and where is Jove ? and where
The rival cities seven ? His song outlives
Time, tower, and god, — all that then was save Heaven."
So too, no doubt. Homer had his Homer, and
Orpheus his Orpheus, in the dim antiquity which
preceded them. The mythological system of the
ancients, and it is still the mythology of the moderns,
the poem of mankind, interwoven so wonderfully with
their astronomy, and matching in grandeur and har-
SUNDAY. 91
mony the architecture of the heavens themselves,
seems to point to a time when a mightier genius in-
habited the earth. But after all, man is the great
poet, and not Homer or Shakspeare ; and our lan-
guage itself, and the common arts of life are his
work. Poetry is so universally tme and independent
of experience, that it does not need any particular
biography to illustrate it, but we refer it sooner or
later to some Orpheus or Linus, and after ages to the
genius of humanity, and the gods themselves.
It would be worth the while to select our reading,
for books are the society we keep ; to read only the
serenely true ; never statistics, nor fiction, nor news,
nor reports, nor periodicals, but only great poems,
and when they failed, read them again, or perchance
write more. Instead of other sacrifice, we might offer
up our perfect (reA-eta) thoughts to the gods daily, in
hymns or psalms. For we should be at the helm at
least once a day. The whole of the day should not
be day-time ; there should be one hour, if no more,
which the day did not bring forth. Scholars are wont
to sell their birthright for a mess of learning. But is
it necessary to know what the speculator prints, or the
thoughtless study, or the idle read, the literature of
the Russians and the Chinese, or even French phi-
losophy and much of German criticism. Read the
best books first, or you may not have a chance to read
them at all. "There are the worshippers with offer-
ings, and the worshippers with mortifications ; and
again the worshippers with enthusiastic devotion ; so
there are those, the wisdom of whose reading is their
worship, men of subdued passions, and severe man-
ners : — This world is not for him who doth not
92 A WEEK ON THE CONCORD RIVER.
worship ; and where, O Arjoon, is there another ? "
Certainly, we do not need to be soothed and enter-
tained always like children. He who resorts to the
easy novel, because he is languid, does no better than
if he took a nap. The front aspect of great thoughts
can only be enjoyed by those who stand on the side
whence they arrive. Books, not which afford us a
cowering enjoyment, but in which each thought is
of unusual daring ; such as an idle man cannot read,
and a timid one would not be entertained by, which
even make us dangerous to existing institutions, —
such call I good books.
All that are printed and bound are not books ; they
do not necessarily belong to letters, but are oftener to
be ranked with the other luxuries and appendages of
civilized life. Base wares are palmed off under a thou-
sand disguises. " The way to trade," as a pedler once
told me, " is to put it right t/iroiigh,'''' no matter what
it is, anything that is agreed on. —
" You grov'ling worldlings, you whose wisdom trades
Where light ne'er shot his golden ray."
By dint of able writing and pen-craft, books are cun-
ningly compiled, and have their run and success even
among the learned, as if they were the result of a new
man's thinking, and their birth were attended with
some natural throes. But in a little while their covers
fall off, for no binding will avail, and it appears that
they are not Books or Bibles at all. There are new
and patented inventions in this shape, purporting to
be for the elevation of the race, which many a pure
scholar and genius who has learned to read is for a
moment deceived by, and finds himself reading a
horse-rake, or spinning jenny, or wooden nutmeg,
SUNDA Y. 93
or oak-leaf cigar, or steam-power press, or kitchen
range, perchance, when he was seeking serene and
biblical truths. —
" Merchants, arise,
And mingle conscience with your merchandise."
Paper is cheap, and authors need not now erase one
book before they write another. Instead of cultivat-
ing the earth for wheat and potatoes, they cultivate
literature, and fill a place in the Republic of Letters.
Or they would fain write for fame merely, as others
actually raise crops of grain to be distilled into brandy.
Books are for the most part wilfully and hastily written,
as parts of a system, to supply a want real or imagined!
Books of natural history aim commonly to be hasty
schedules, or inventories of God's property, by some
clerk. They do not in the least teach the divine view
of nature, but the popular view, or rather the popular
method of studying nature, and make haste to con-
duct the persevering pupil only into that dilemma
where the professors always dwell.—
" To Athens gown'd he goes, and from that school
Returns unsped, a more instructed fool."
They teach the elements really of ignorance, not of
knowledge, for to speak deliberately and in view
of the highest truths, it is not easy to distinguish
elementary knowledge. There is a chasm between
knowledge and ignorance which the arches of science
can never span. A book should contain pure dis-
coveries, glimpses of terra firma, though by ship-
wrecked mariners, and not the art of navigation by
those who have never been out of sight of land.
They must not yield wheat and potatoes, but must
94 A WEEK ON THE CO AT CORD RIVER.
themselves be the unconstrained and natural harvest
of their author's lives. —
" What I have learned is mine ; I 've had my thought,
And me the Muses noble truths have taught."
We do not learn much from learned books, but
from true, sincere, human books, from frank and
honest biographies. The life of a good man will
hardly improve us more than the life of a freebooter,
for the inevitable laws appear as plainly in the infringe-
ment as in the observance, and our lives are sustained
by a nearly equal expense of virtue of some kind.
The decaying tree, while yet it lives, demands sun,
wind, and rain no less than the green one. It secretes
sap and performs the functions of health. If we
choose, we may study the alburnum only. The
gnarled stump has as tender a bud as the sapling.
At least let us have healthy books, a stout horse-
rake or a kitchen range which is not cracked. Let
not the poet shed tears only for the public weal.
He should be as vigorous as a sugar maple, with sap
enough to maintain his own verdure, beside what runs
into the troughs, and not like a vine, which being cut
in the spring bears no fruit, but bleeds to death in the
endeavor to heal its wounds. The poet is he that
hath fat enough, like bears and marmots, to suck his
claws all winter. He hibernates in this world, and
feeds on his own marrow. It is pleasant to think in
winter, as we walk over the snowy pastures, of those
happy dreamers that lie under the sod, of dormice and
all that race of dormant creatures, which have such
a superfluity of life enveloped in thick folds of fur,
impervious to cold. Alas, the poet too is, in one
sense, a sort of dormouse gone into winter quarters
SUNDA Y. 95
of deep and serene thoughts, insensible to surround-
ing circumstances ; his words are the relation of his
oldest and finest memory, a wisdom drawn from the
remotest experience. Other men lead. a starved ex-
istence, meanwhile, like hawks, that would fain keep
on the wing, and trust to pick up a sparrow now and
then.
There are already essays and poems, the growth
of this land, which are not in vain, all which, how-
ever, we could conveniently have stowed in the till
of our chest. If the gods permitted their own in-
spiration to be breathed in vain, these might be over-
looked in the crowd, but the accents of truth are
as sure to be heard at last on earth as in heaven.
They already seem ancient, and in some measure have
lost the traces of their modern birth. Here are they
who
" ask for that which is our whole life's light,
For the perpetual, true, and clear insight."
I remember a few sentences which spring like the
sward in its native pasture, where its roots were never
disturbed, and not as if spread over a sandy embank-
ment ; answering to the poet's prayer,
" Let us set so just
A rate on knowledge, that the world may trust
The poet's sentence, and not still aver
Each art is to itself a flatterer."
But, above all, in our native port, did we not frequent
the peaceful games of the Lyceum, from which a new
era will be dated to New England, as from the games
of Greece. For if Herodotus carried his history to
96 A WEEK ON THE CONCORD RIVER.
Olympia to read, after the cestus and the race, have
we not heard such histories recited there, which since
our countrymen have read, as made Greece sometimes
to be forgotten? — Philosophy, too, has there her grove
and portico, not wholly unfrequented in these days.
Lately the victor, whom all Pindars praised, has
won another palm, contending with
" Olympian bards who sung
Divine ideas below,
Which always find us young,
And always keep us so. " —
What earth or sea, mountain or stream, or Muses'
spring or grove, is safe from his all-searching ardent
eye, who drives off Phoebus' beaten track, visits un-
wonted zones, makes the gelid Hyperboreans glow,
and the old polar serpent writhe, and many a Nile
flow back and hide his head ! —
That Phaeton of our day,
Who 'd make another milky way,
And burn the world up with his ray ;
By us an undisputed seer, —
Who 'd drive his flaming car so near
Unto our shuddering mortal sphere,
Disgracing all our slender worth,
And scorching up the living earth,
To prove his heavenly birth.
The silver spokes, the golden tire,
Are glowing with imwonted fire.
And ever nigher roll and nigher ;
The pins and axle melted are.
The silver radii fly afar.
Ah, he will spoil his Father's car!
SUNDA V. 97
Who let him have the steeds he cannot steer?
Henceforth the sun will not shine for a year.
And we shall Ethiops all appear.
From /lis
" lips of cunning fell
The thrilling Delphic oracle."
And yet, sometimes,
We should not mind if on our ear there fell
Some less of cunning, more of oracle.
It is Apollo shining in your face. O rare Contempo-
rary, let us have far off heats. Give us the subtler,
the heavenlier though fleeting beauty, which passes
through and through, and dwells not in the verse ;
even pure water, which but reflects those tints which
wine wears in its grain. Let epic trade-winds blow,
and cease this waltz of inspirations. Let us oftener
feel even the gentle south-west wind upon our cheeks
blowing from the Indian's heaven. What though
we lose a thousand meteors from the sky, if skyey
depths, if star-dust and undissolvable nebulse remain ?
What though we lose a thousand wise responses of the
oracle, if we may have instead some natural acres
of Ionian earth?
Though we know well,
" That 't is not in the power of kings [or presidents] to raise
A spirit for verse that is not born thereto,
Nor are they born in every prince's days ; "
yet spite of all they sang in praise of their " Eliza's
reign," we have evidence that poets may be born and
sing in 02^r day, in the presidency of James K. Polk,
"And that the utmost powers of English rhyme,"
Were not " within /ler peaceful reign confined."
98 A WEEK ON THE CONCORD RIVER.
The prophecy of Samuel Daniel is already how much
more than fulfilled !
"And who in time knows whither we may vent
The treasure of our tongue ? To what strange shores
This gain of our best glory shall be sent,
T' enrich unknowing nations with our stores ?
What worlds in th' yet unformed Occident,
May come refined with the accents that are ours."
Enough has been said in these days of the charm
of fluent writing. We hear it complained of some
works of genius, that they have fine thoughts, but are
irregular and have no flow. But even the mountain
peaks in the horizon are, to the eye of science, parts
of one range. We should consider that the flow of
thought is more like a tidal wave than a prone river,
and is the result of a celestial influence, not of any
declivity in its channel. The river flows because it
runs down hill, and descends the faster as it flows
more rapidly. The reader who expects to float down
stream for the whole voyage, may well complain of
nauseating swells and choppings of the sea when his
frail shore-craft gets amidst the billows of the ocean
stream, which flows as much to sun and moon as
lesser streams to it. But if we would appreciate the
flow that is in these books, we must expect to feel it
rise from the page like an exhalation, and wash away
our critical brains like burr millstones, flowing to
higher levels above and behind ourselves. There is
many a book which ripples on like a freshet, and flows
as glibly as a mill stream sucking under a causeway ;
and when their authors are in the full tide of their
discourse, Pythagoras, and Plato, and Jamblichus,
halt beside them. Their long stringy slimy sentences
are of that consistency that they naturally flow and
SUNDA V. 99
run together. They read as if written for military
men, for men of business, there is such a despatch in
them. Compared with these, the grave thinkers and
philosophers seem not to have got their swaddling
clothes off; they are slower than a Roman army in
its march, the rear camping to-night where the van
camped last night. The wise Jamblichus eddies and
gleams like a watery slough.
" How many thousand, never heard the name
Of Sidney, or of Spenser, or their books?
And yet brave fellows, and presume of fame.
And seem to bear down all the world with looks."
The ready writer seizes the pen, and shouts, Fonvard !
Alamo and Fanning! and after rolls the tide of war.
The very walls and fences seem to travel. But the
most rapid trot is no flow after all, — and thither you
and I, at least, reader, will not follow.
A perfectly healthy sentence, it is true, is extremely
rare. For the most part we miss the hue and fra-
grance of the thought ; as if we could be satisfied with
the dews of the morning or evening without their
colors, or the heavens without their azure. The most
attractive sentences are, perhaps, not the wisest, but
the surest and roundest. They are spoken firmly and
conclusively, as if the speaker had a right to know
what he says, and if not wise, they have at least been
well learned. Sir Walter Raleigh might well be
studied if only for the excellence of his style, for he
is remarkable in the midst of so many masters.
There is a natural emphasis in his style, like a man's
tread, and a breathing space between the sentences,
which the best of modern writing does not furnish.
His chapters are like English parks, or say rather like
LofC.
100 A WEEK ON THE CONCORD RIVER.
a western forest, where the larger growth keeps
down the underwood, and one may ride on horseback
through the openings. All the distinguished writers
of that period, possess a greater vigor and natural-
ness than the more modern, — for it is allowed to
slander our own time, — and when we read a quo-
tation from one of them in the midst of a modern
author, we seem to have come suddenly upon a
greener ground, a greater depth and strength of soil.
It is as if a green bough were laid across the page,
and we are refreshed as by the sight of fresh grass in
mid-winter or early spring. You have constantly the
warrant of life and experience in what you read.
The little that is said is eked out by implication of
the much that was done. The sentences are verdur-
ous and blooming as evergreen and flowers, because
they are rooted in fact and experience, but our false
and florid sentences have only the tints of flowers
without their sap or roots. All men are really most
attracted by the beauty of plain speech, and they even
write in a florid style in imitation of this. They pre-
fer to be misunderstood rather than to come short of
its exuberance. Hussein Effendi praised the episto-
lary style of Ibrahim Pasha to the French traveller
Botta, because of '• the difficulty of understanding it ;
there was," he saidj "but one person at Jidda, who
was capable of understanding and explaining the
Pasha's correspondence." A man's whole life is
taxed for the least thing well done. It is its net result.
Every sentence is the result of a long probation.
Where shall we look for standard English, but to the
words of a standard man ? The word which is best
said came nearest to not being spoken at all, for it is
cousin to a deed which the speaker could have better
SUNDA V. lOI
done. Nay, almost it must have taken the place of a
deed by some urgent necessity, even by some misfor-
tune, so that the truest writer will be some captive
knight, after all. And perhaps the fates had such a
design, when, having stored Raleigh so richly with the
substance of life and experience, they made him a fast
prisoner, and compelled him to make his words his
deeds, and transfer to his expression the emphasis
and sincerity of his action.
Men have a respect for scholarship and learning
greatly out of proportion to the use they commonly
serve. We are amused to read how Ben Jonson en-
gaged, that the dull masks with which the royal fam-
ily and nobility were to be entertained, should be
" grounded upon antiquity and solid learning.'' Can
there be any greater reproach than an idle learning?
Learn to split wood, at least. The necessity of labor
and conversation with many men and things, to the
scholar is rarely well remembered ; steady labor with
the hands, which engrosses the attention also, is un-
questionably the best method of removing palaver
and sentimentality out of one's style, both of speak-
ing and writing. If he has worked hard from morn-
ing till night, though he may have grieved that he
could not be watching the train of his thoughts during
that time, yet the few hasty lines which at evening
record his day's experience will be more musical and
true than his freest but idle fancy could have furnished.
Surely the writer is to address a world of laborers,
and such therefore must be his own discipline. He
will not idly dance at his work who has wood to cut
and cord before night-fall in the short days of winter ;
but every stroke will be husbanded, and ring soberly
through the wood ; and so will the strokes of that
102 A WEEK ON THE CONCORD RIVER.
scholar's pen, which at evening record the story of
the day, ring soberly, yet cheerily, on the ear of the
reader, long after the echoes of his axe have died
away. The scholar may be sure that he writes the
tougher truth for the calluses on his palms. They
give firmness to the sentence. Indeed, the mind
never makes a great and successful effort without a
corresponding energy of the body. We are often
struck by the force and precision of style to which
hard-working men, unpractised in writing, easily at-
tain, when required to make the effort. As if plain-
ness, and vigor, and sincerity, the ornaments of style,
were better learned on the farm and in the workshop
than in the schools. The sentences written by such
rude hands are nervous and tough, like hardened
thongs, the sinews of the deer, or the roots of the
pine. As for the graces of expression, a great thought
is never found in a mean dress ; but though it proceed
from the lips of the Woloffs, the nine Muses and the
three Graces will have conspired to clothe it in fit
phrase. Its education has always been liberal, and
its implied wit can endow a college. The scholar
might frequently emulate the propriety and emphasis
of the farmer's call to his team, and confess that
if that were written it would surpass his labored
sentences. Whose are the truly labored sentences?
From the weak and flimsy periods of the politician
and literary man, we are glad to turn even to the de-
scription of work, the simple record of the month's
labor in the farmer's almanac, to restore our tone and
spirits. A sentence should read as if its author, had
he held a plow instead of a pen, could have drawn a
furrow deep and straight to the end. The scholar
requires hard and serious labor to give an impetus to
SUNDAY. 103
his thought. He will learn to grasp the pen firmly
so, and wield it gracefully and effectively, as an axe
or a sword. When we consider the weak and nerve-
less periods of some literary men, who perchance in
feet and inches come up to the standard of their race,
and are not deficient in girth also, we are amazed at
the immense sacrifice of thews and sinews. What!
these proportions, — these bones, — and this their
work! Hands which could have felled an ox have
hewed this fragile matter which would not have tasked
a lady's fingers! Can this be a stalwart man's work,
who has a marrow in his back and a tendon Achilles
in his heel.? They who set up the blocks of Stone-
henge did somewhat, if they only laid out their strength
for once, and stretched themselves.
Yet, after all, the truly efficient laborer will not
crowd his day with work, but will saunter to his task
surrounded by a wide halo of ease and leisure, and
then do but what he loves best. He is anxious only
about the fruitful kernels of time. Though the hen
should sit all day, she could lay only one ^gg, and,
besides, would not have picked up materials for an-
other. Let a man take time enough for the most
trivial deed, though it be but the paring of his nails.
The buds swell imperceptibly, without hurry or con-
fusion, as if the short spring days were an eternity. —
Then spend an age in whetting thy desire,
Thou need'st not hasten if thou dost stand fast.
Some hours seem not to be occasion for any deed,
but for resolves to draw breath in. We do not
directly go about the execution of the purpose that
thrills us, but shut our doors behind us, and ramble
with prepared mind, as if the half were already done.
104 A WEEK ON THE CONCORD RIVER.
Our resolution is taking root or hold on the earth
then, as seeds first send a shoot downward which is
fed by their own albumen, ere they send one upward
to the light.
There is a sort of homely truth and naturalness in
some books which is very rare to find, and yet looks
cheap enough. There may be nothing lofty in the
sentiment, or fine in the expression, but it is careless
country talk. Homeliness is almost as great a merit
in a book as in a house, if the reader would abide
there. It is next to beauty, and a very high art.
Some have this merit only. The scholar is not apt
to make his most familiar experience come gracefully
to the aid of his expression. Very few men can
speak of Nature, for instance, with any truth. They
overstep her modesty, somehow or other, and confer
no favor. They do not speak a good word for her.
Most cry better than they speak, and you can get more
nature out of them by pinching than by address-
ing them. The surliness with which the wood-
chopper speaks of his woods, handling them as indif-
ferently as his axe, is better than the mealy-mouthed
enthusiasm of the lover of nature. Better that the
primrose by the river's brim be a yellow primrose, and
nothing more, than that it be something less. Aubrey
relates of Thomas Fuller that his was " a very work-
ing head, insomuch that, walking and meditating
before dinner, he would eat up a penny loaf, not
knowing that he did it. His natural memory was
very great, to which he added the art of memory.
He would repeat to you forwards and backwards all
the signs from Ludgate to Charing-cross." He says
of Mr. John Hales, that ^' He loved Canarie," and
SUNDA Y. 105
was buried " under an altar monument of black mar-
ble with a too long epitaph ; " of Edmund
Halley, that he, "■ at sixteen could make a dial, and
then, he said, he thought himself a brave fellow ; " of
William Holder, who wrote a book upon his curing
one Popham who was deaf and dumb, '' he was be-
holding to no author; did only consult with nature."
For the most part, an author consults only with all
who have written before him upon a subject, and his
book is but the advice of so many. But a good book
will never have been forestalled, but the topic itself
will in one sense be new, and its author, by consult-
ing with nature, will consult not only with those who
have gone before, but with those who may come after.
There is always room and occasion enough for a true
book on any subject ; as there is room for more light
the brightest day and more rays will not interfere
with the first.
We thus worked our way up this river, gradually
adjusting our thoughts to novelties, beholding from
its placid bosom a new nature and new works of men,
and as it were with increasing confidence, finding
nature still habitable, genial, and propitious to us ;
not following any beaten path, but the windings of the
river, as ever the nearest way for us. Fortunately we
had no business in this country. The Concord had
rarely been a river or riviis, but barely ^//t^/z/j-, or be-
t\vQQ.nfl2ivi7is and lac2is. This Merrimack was neither
rhnis nor fluviiis nor laais, but rather aimiis here, a
gently swelling and stately rolling flood approaching
the sea. We could even sympathize with its buoy-
ant tide, going to seek its fortune in the ocean, and
anticipating the time when "being received within
I06 A WEEK ON THE CONCORD RIVER.
the plain of its freer water," it should " beat the shores
for banks/' —
" campoque recepta
Liberioris aquae, pro ripis litora pulsant."
At length we doubled a low shrubby islet, called Rab-
bit Island, subjected alternately to the sun and to the
waves, as desolate as if it lay some leagues within the
icy sea, and found ourselves in a narrower part of
the river, near the sheds and yards for picking the
stone known as the Chelmsford granite, which is
quarried in Chelmsford and the neighboring towns.
We passed Wicasuck Island, which contains seventy
acres or more, on our right between Chelmsford and
Tyngsboro\ This was a favorite residence of the
Indians. According to the History of Dunstable,
"About 1663, the eldest son of Passaconaway [Chief
of the Penacooks] was thrown into jail for a debt of
£/^c„ due to John Tinker, by one of his tribe, and
which he had promised verbally should be paid. To
relieve him from his imprisonment, his brother Wan-
nalancet and others, who owned Wicasuck Island,
sold it and paid the debt." It was, however, restored
to the Indians by the General Court in 1665. After
the departure of the Indians in 1683, it was granted
to Jonathan Tyng in payment for his services to the
colony, in maintaining a garrison at his house. Tyng's
house stood not far from Wicasuck Falls. Gookin,
who, in his Epistle Dedicatory to Robert Boyle,
apologizes for presenting his " matter clothed in a
wilderness dress," says that on the breaking out of
Philip's war in 1675, there were taken up by the
Christian Indians and the English in Marlborough,
and sent to Cambridge, seven "Indians belonging to
Narragansett, Long Island, and Pequod, who had all
SUNDA Y. 107
been at work about seven weeks with one Mr. Jona-
than Tyng, of Dunstable, upon Merrimack River ; and
hearing of the war, they reckoned with their master,
and getting their wages, conveyed themselves away
without his privity, and being afraid, marched secretly
through the woods, designing to go to their own
country." However, they were released soon after.
Such were the hired men in those days. Tyng was
the first permanent settler of Dunstable, which then
embraced what is now Tyngsboro^ and many other
towns. In the winter of 1675, in Philip's war, every
other settler left the town, but " he," says the historian
of Dunstable, " fortified his house ; and although
' obliged to send to Boston for his food,' sat himself
down in the midst of his savage enemies, alone, in the
wilderness, to defend his home. Deeming his position
an important one for the defence of the frontiers, in
Feb. 1676, he petitioned the Colony for aid," humbly
showing, as his petition runs, that as he lived " in the
uppermost house on Merrimac River, lying open to ye
enemy, yet being so seated that it is, as it were, a
watchhouse to the neighboring towns," he could
render important service to his country if only he had
some assistance, " there being," he said, " never an
inhabitant left in the town but myself." Wherefore he
requests that their " Honors would be pleased to order
him three or fotir men to help garrison his said
house," which they did. But methinks that such a
garrison would be weakened by the addition of a
" Make bandog thy scout watch to bark at a thief,
Make courage for Ufe, to be capitain chief;
Make trap-door thy bulwark, make bell to begin,
Make gunstone and arrow shew who is within."
I08 A WEEK ON THE CONCORD RIVER.
Thus he earned the title of first permanent settler. In
1694 a law was passed " that every settler who deserted
a town for fear of the Indians, should forfeit all his
rights therein.'' But now, at any rate, as I have fre-
quently observed, a man may desert the fertile frontier
territories of truth and justice, which are the State's
best lands, for fear of far more insignificant foes, with-
out forfeiting any of his civil rights therein. Nay,
townships are granted to deserters, and the General
Court, as I am sometimes inclined to regard it, is but
a deserters' camp itself.
As we rowed along near the shore of Wicasuck
Island, which was then covered with wood, in order to
avoid the current, two men, who looked as if they had
just run out of Lowell, where they had been waylaid
by the Sabbath, meaning to go to Nashua, and who
now found themselves in the strange, natural, unculti-
vated and unsettled part of the globe which intervenes,
full of walls and barriers, a rough and uncivil place to
them, seeing our boat moving so smoothly up the
stream, called out from the high bank above our
heads to know if we would take them as passengers,
as if this were the street they had missed ; that they
might sit and chat and drive away the time, and so at
last find themselves in Nashua. This smooth way
they much preferred. But our boat was crowded with
necessary furniture, and sunk low in the water,
and moreover required to be worked, for even
// did not progress against the stream without
effort ; so we were obliged to deny them passage.
As we glided away with even sweeps, while the fates
scattered oil in our course, the sun now sinking
behind the alders on the distant shore, we could still
see them far off over the water, running along the
SUNDAY. 109
shore and climbing over the rocks and fallen trees like
insects, — for they did not know any better than we
that they were on an island, — the unsympathizing
river ever flowing in an opposite direction ; until, hav-
ing reached the entrance of the Island Brook, which
they had probably crossed upon the locks below, they
found a more effectual barrier to their progress.
They seemed to be learning much in a little time.
They ran about like ants on a burning brand, and
once more they tried the river here, and once more
there, to see if water still indeed was not to be walked
on, as if a new thought inspired them, and by some
peculiar disposition of the limbs they could accomplish
it. At length sober common sense seemed to have
resumed its sway, and they concluded that what they
had so long heard must be true, and resolved to ford
the shallower stream. When nearly a mile distant
we could see them stripping off their clothes and pre-
paring for this experiment ; yet it seemed likely that
a new dilemma would arise, they were so thoughtlessly
throwing away their clothes on the wrong side of the
stream, as in the case of the countryman with his
corn, his fox, and his goose, which had to be trans-
ported one at a time. Whether they got safely
through, or v/ent round by the locks we never learned.
We could not help being struck by the seeming,
though innocent indifference of Nature to these men's
necessities, vv'hile elsewhere she was equally serving
others. Like a true benefactress, the secret of her
service is unchangeableness. Thus is the busiest
merchant, though within sight of his Lowell, put to
pilgrim's shifts and soon comes to staff and scrip and
scallop shell.
We, too, who held the middle of the stream, came
no A WEEK ON THE CONCORD RIVER.
near experiencing a pilgrim's fate, being tempted to
pursue what seemed a sturgeon or larger fish, for we
remembered that this was the Sturgeon river, its dark
and monstrous back alternately rising and sinking in
mid-stream. We kept falling behind, but the fish kept
his back well out, and did not dive, and seemed to
prefer to swim against the stream, so, at any rate, he
would not escape us by going out to sea. At length,
having got as near as was convenient, and looking out
not to get a blow from his tail, now the bow-gunner
delivered his charge, while the stern-man held his
ground. But the halibut-skinned monster, in one of
these swift-gliding pregnant moments, without ever
ceasing his bobbing up and down, saw fit, without a
chuckle or other prelude, to proclaim himself a huge
imprisoned spar, placed there as a buoy, to warn sailors
of sunken rocks. So, each casting some blame upon
the other, we withdrew quickly to safer waters.
The Scene-shifter saw fit here to close the drama
of this day, without regard to any unities which we
mortals prize. Whether it might have proved tragedy,
or comedy, or tragi-comedy or pastoral, we cannot tell.
This Sunday ended by the going down of the sun,
leaving us still on the waves. But they who are on the
water enjoy a longer and brighter twilight than they
who are on the land, for here the water, as well as the
atmosphere, absorbs and reflects the light, and some
of the day seems to have sunk down into the waves.
The light gradually forsook the deep water, as well
as the deeper air, and the gloaming came to the fishes
as well as to us, and more dim and gloomy to them,
whose day is a perpetual twilight, though sufficiently
bright for their weak and watery eyes. Vespers had
already rung in many a dim and watery chapel down
SUNDA Y. Ill
below, where the shadows of the weeds were extended
in length over the sandy floor. The vespertinal pout
had already begun to flit on leathern fin, and the finny
gossips withdrew from the fluvial street to creeks and
coves, and other private haunts, excepting a few of
stronger fin, which anchored in the stream, stemming
the tide even in their dreams. Meanwhile, like a
dark evening cloud, we were wafted over the cope of
their sky, deepening the shadows on their deluged
fields.
Having reached a retired part of the river where it
spread out to sixty rods in width, we pitched our tent
on the east side, in Tyngsboro', just above some
patches of the beach plum, which was now nearly
ripe, where the sloping bank was a sufficient pillow,
and with the bustle of sailors making the land, we
transferred such stores as were required from boat
to tent, and hung a lantern to the tent-pole, and so
our house was ready. With a buffalo spread on the
grass, and a blanket for our covering, our bed was
soon made. A fire crackled merrily before the
entrance, so near that we could tend it without step-
ping abroad, and when we had supped, we put out the
blaze, and closed the door, and with the semblance of
domestic comfort, sat up to read the gazetteer, to learn
our latitude and longitude, and write the journal of the
voyage, or listened to the wind and the rippling of the
river till sleep overtook us. There we lay under an
oak on the bank of the stream, near to some farmer's
cornfield, getting sleep, and forgetting where we were ;
a great blessing, that we are obliged to forget our
enterprises every twelve hours. Minks, muskrats,
meadow-mice, woodchucks, squirrels, skunks, rabbits,
foxes and weasels, all inhabit near, but keep very close
112 A WEEK ON THE CONCORD RIVER.
while you are there. The river sucking and eddying
away all night down toward the marts and the sea-
board; a great work and freshet, and no small enter-
prise to reflect on. Instead of the Scythian vastness
of the Billerica night, and its wild musical sounds, we
were kept awake by the boisterous sport of some Irish
laborers on the railroad, wafted to us over the water,
still unwearied and unresting on this seventh day, who
would not have done with whirling up and down the
track with ever increasing velocity and still reviving
shouts, till late in the night.
One sailor was visited in his dreams this night by
the Evil Destinies, and all those powers that are hostile
to human life, which constrain and oppress the minds
of men, and make their path seem difficult and narrow,
and beset with dangers, so that the most innocent and
worthy enterprises appear insolent and a tempting of
fate, and the gods go not with us. But the other
happily passed serene and even ambrosial or immortal
night, and his sleep was dreamless, or only the atmos-
phere of pleasant dreams remained, a happy natural
sleep until the morning, and his cheerful spirit soothed
and reassured his brother, for whenever they meet, the
Good Genius is sure to prevail.
MONDAY.
" I thynke for to touche also
The worlde whiche neweth everie dale,
So as I can, so as I male." Gower.
" Gazed on the Heavens for what he missed on Earth."
Britannia' s Pastorals.
When the first light dawned on the earth, and the
birds awoke, and the brave river was heard rippHng
confidently seaward, and the nimble early rising wind
rustled the oak leaves about our tent, all men, having
reinforced their bodies and their souls with sleep, and
cast aside doubt and fear, were invited to unattempted
adventures.
One of us took the boat over to the opposite shore,
which was flat and accessible, a quarter of a mile dis-
tant, to empty it of water and wash out the clay, while
the other kindled a fire and got breakfast ready. At
an early hour we were again on our way, rowing
through the fog as before, the river already awake,
and a million crisped waves come forth to meet the
sun when he should show himself. The countrymen,
recruited by their day of rest, were already stirring,
and had begun to cross the ferry on the business of
the week. This ferry was as busy as a beaver dam,
and all the world seemed anxious to get across the
Merrimack River at this particular point, waiting to
get set over, — children with their two cents done
up in paper, jail-birds broke loose and constable with
"3
114 ^ WEEK ON THE CONCORD RIVER.
warrant, travellers from distant lands to distant lands,
men and women to whom the Merrimack River was a
bar. There stands a gig in the gray morning, in the
mist, the impatient traveller pacing the wet shore with
whip in hand, and shouting through the fog after the
regardless Charon and his retreating ark, as if he might
throw that passenger overboard and return forthwith
for himself; he will compensate him. He is to break
his fast at some unseen place on the opposite side, k
may be Ledyard or the Wandering Jew. Whence,
pray did he come out of the foggy night ? and whither
through the sunny day will he go ? We observe only
his transit ; important to us, forgotten by him, transit-
ing all day. There are two of them. May be, they are
Virgil and Dante. But when they crossed the Styx,
none were seen bound up or down the stream, that I
remember. It is only a transjecttis, a transitory voy-
age, like life itself, none but the long-lived gods bound
up or down the stream. Many of these Monday men
are ministers, no doubt, reseeking their parishes with
hired horses, with sermons in their valises all read and
gutted, the day after never with them. They cross
each other's routes all the country over like woof and
warp, making a garment of loose texture; vacation
now for six days. They stop to pick nuts and
berries, and gather apples by the wayside at their
leisure. Good religious men, with the love of men
in their hearts, and the means to pay their toll in
their pockets. We got over this ferry chain without
scraping, rowing athwart the tide of travel, — no toll
from us that day.
The fog dispersed and we rowed leisurely along
through Tyngsboro', with a clear sky and a mild
atmosphere, leaving the habitations of men behind
MONDAY. 115
and penetrating yet further into the territory of
ancient Dunstable. It was from Dunstable, then a
frontier town, that the famous Capt. Lovewell, with
his company, marched in quest of the Indians on the
i8th of April, 1725. He was the son of "an ensign
in the army of Oliver Cromwell, who came to this
country, and settled at Dunstable, where he died at
the great age of one hundred and twenty years."
In the words of the old nursery tale, sung about a
hundred years ago, —
" He and his valiant soldiers did range the woods full wide,
And hardships they endured to quell the Indian's pride."
In the shaggy pine forest of Pequawket they met the
"rebel Indians,"' and prevailed, after a bloody fight,
and a remnant returned home to enjoy the fame of
their victory. A township called LovewelPs Town,
but now, for some reason, or perhaps without reason,
Pembroke, was granted them by the State.
" Of all our valiant English, there were but thirty-four,
And of the rebel Indians, there were about four score;
And sixteen of our English did safely home return,
The rest were killed and wounded, for which we all must
mourn.
" Our worthy Capt. Lovewell among them there did die,
They killed Lieut. Robbins, and wounded good young Frye,
Who was our English Chaplin; he many Indians slew,
And some of them he scalped while bullets round him flew."
Our brave forefathers have exterminated all the
Indians, and their degenerate children no longer
dwell in garrisoned houses, nor hear any war-whoop
in their path. It would be well, perchance, if many
an " English Chaplin " in these days could exhibit as
Il6 A WEEK ON THE CONCORD RIVER.
unquestionable trophies of his valor as did " good
young Frye." We have need to be as sturdy pioneers
still as Miles Standish, or Church, or Lovewell. We
are to follow on another trail, it is true, but one as
convenient for ambushes. What if the Indians are
exterminated, are not savages as grim prowling about
the clearings to-day ? —
" And braving many dangers and hardships in the way,
They safe arrived at Dunstable the thirteenth (?) day of
May."
But they did not all " safe arrive in Dunstable the
thirteenth," or the fifteenth, or the thirtieth " day of
May." Eleazer Davis and Josiah Jones, both of Con-
cord, for our native town had seven men in this fight,
Lieutenant Farwell, of Dunstable, and Jonathan Frye,
of Andover, who were all wounded, were left behind,
creeping toward the settlements. " After travelling
several miles, Frye was left and lost," though a more
recent poet has assigned him company in his last
hours. —
" A man he was of comely form,
Polished and brave, well learned and kind ;
Old Harvard's learned halls he left
Far in the wilds a grave to find.
" Ah ! now his blood-red arm he lifts ;
His closing lids he tries to raise ;
And speak once more before he dies,
In supplication and in praise.
" He prays kind Heaven to grant success,
Brave Lovewell's men to guide and bless,
And when they 've shed their heart-blood true,
To raise them all to happiness." * *
MONDAY, 117
" Lieutenant Farwell took his hand,
His arm around his neck he threw,
And said, ' brave Chaplain I could wish,
That Heaven had made me die for you.' "
Farwell held out eleven days. "A tradition says,"
as we learn from the history of Concord, " that arriv-
ing at a pond with Lieut. Farwell, Davis pulled off one
of his moccasins, cut it in strings, on which he fast-
ened a hook, caught some fish, fried and ate them.
They refreshed him, but were injurious to Farwell,
who died soon after." Davis had a ball lodged in
his body, and his right hand shot off; but on the
whole, he seems to have been less damaged than his
companion. He came into Berwick after being out
fourteen days. Jones also had a ball lodged in his
body, but he likewise got into Saco after fourteen
days, though not in the best condition imaginable.
"He had subsisted," says an old journal, "on the
spontaneous vegetables of the forest ; and cranberries,
which he had eaten, came out of wounds he had re-
ceived in his body." This was also the case with
Davis. The last two reached home at length, safe
if not sound, and lived many years in a crippled state
to enjoy their pension.
But alas! of the crippled Indians, and their adven-
tures in the woods, —
" For as we are informed, so thick and fast they fell.
Scarce twenty of their number at night did get home well," —
how many balls lodged with them, how it fared with
their cranberries, what Berwick or Saco they got into,
and finally what pension or township was granted
them, there is no journal to tell.
It is stated in the History of Dunstable, that just
Il8 A WEEK ON THE CONCORD RIVER.
before his last march, Lovewell was warned to beware
of the ambuscades of the enemy, but " he replied,
' that he did not care for them,' and bending down
a small elm beside which he was standing into a bow,
declared ' that he would treat the Indians in the same
way.' This elm is still standing [in Nashua], a vener-
able and magnificent tree."
Meanwhile, having passed the Horseshoe Interval in
Tyngsboro', where the river makes a sudden bend to
the northwest, — for our reflections have anticipated
our progress somewhat, — we were advancing further
into the country and into the day, which last proved
almost as golden as the preceding, though the slight
bustle and activity of the Monday seemed to penetrate
even to this scenery. Now and then we had to muster
all our energy to get round a point, where the river
broke rippling over rocks, and the maples trailed their
branches in the stream, but there was generally a back-
water or eddy on the side, of which we took advan-
tage. The river was here about forty rods wide and
fifteen feet deep. Occasionally one ran along the
shore, examining the country, and visiting the nearest
farm-houses, while the other followed the windings
of the stream alone, to meet his companion at some
distant point, and hear the report of his adventures ;
how the farmer praised the coolness of his well, and
his wife offered the stranger a draught of milk, or the
children quarrelled for the only transparency in the
window that they might get sight of the man at
the well. For though the country seemed so new,
and no house was observed by us, shut in between
the high banks that sunny day, we did not have to
travel far to find where men inhabited, like wild bees,
MONDAY. 119
and had sunk wells in the loose sand and loam of the
Merrimack. There dwelt the subject of the Hebrew
scriptures, and the Esprit des Lois, where a thin vapor-
ous smoke curled up through the noon. All that is
told of mankind, of the inhabitants of the Upper
Nile, and the Sunderbunds, and Timbuctoo, and the
Orinoko, was experience here. Every race and class
of men was represented. According to Belknap, the
historian of Nev/ Hampshire, who wrote sixty years
ago, here too, perchance, dwelt " new lights," and free
thinking men even then. "The people in general
throughout the State," it is written, " are professors
of the Christian religion in some form or other.
There is, however, a sort of wise men, who pretend
to reject it ; but they have not yet been able to sub-
stitute a better in its place."
The other voyageur, perhaps, would in the mean-
while have seen a brown hawk, or a woodchuck, or
a musquash, creeping under the alders.
We occasionally rested in the shade of a maple or
a willow, and drew forth a melon for our refreshment,
while we contemplated at our leisure the lapse of the
river and of human life ; and as that current, with its
floating twigs and leaves, so did all things pass in
review before us, while far away in cities and marts
on this very stream, the old routine was proceeding
still. There is, indeed, a tide in the affairs of men,
as the poet says, and yet as things flow they circulate,
and the ebb always balances the flow. All streams
are but tributary to the ocean, which itself does not
stream, and the shores are unchanged but in longer
periods than man can measure. Go where we will,
we discover infinite change in particulars only, not in
generals. When I go into a museum, and see the
I20 A WEEK ON THE CONCORD RIVER.
mummies wrapped in their linen bandages,. I see that
the times began to need reform as long ago as when
they walked the earth. I come out into the streets,
and meet men who declare that the time is near at
hand for the redemption of the race. But as men
lived in Thebes, so do they live in Dunstable to-day.
"Time drinketh up the essence of every great and
noble action, which ought to be performed, and is
delayed in the execution," so says Veeshnoo Sarma ;
and we perceive that the schemers return again and
again to common sense and labor. Such is the evi-
dence of history. —
" Yet I doubt not thro' the ages one increasing purpose runs,
And the thoughts of men are widen'd with the process of the
Suns."
There are secret articles in our treaties with the gods,
of more importance than all the rest, which the his-
torian can never know.
There are many skilful apprentices, but few master
workmen. On every hand we observe a truly wise
practice, in education, in morals, and in the arts of
life, the embodied wisdom of many an ancient phi-
losopher. Who does not see that heresies have some
time prevailed, that reforms have already taken place?
All this worldly wisdom might be regarded as the
once unamiable heresy of some wise man. Some
interests have got a footing on the earth which we
have not made sufficient allowance for. Even they
who first built these barns, and cleared the land thus,
had some valor. The abrupt epochs and chasms are
smoothed down in history as the inequalities of the
plain are concealed by distance. But unless we do
more than simply learn the trade of our time, we are
MONDAY. 121
but apprentices, and not yet masters of the art of
life.
Now that we are casting away these melon seeds,
how can we help feeling reproach ? He who eats the
fruit, should at least plant the seed ; aye, if possible,
a better seed than that whose fruit he has enjoyed.
Seeds! there are seeds enough which need only to be
stirred in with the soil where they lie, by an inspired
voice or pen, to bear fruit of a divine flavor. O thou
spendthrift ! Defray thy debt to the world ; eat not
the seed of institutions, as the luxurious do, but plant
it rather, while thou devourest the pulp and tuber for
thy subsistence ; that so, perchance, one variety may
at last be found worthy of preservation.
There are moments when all anxiety and stated
toil are becalmed in the infinite leisure and repose
of nature. All laborers must have their nooning, and
at this season of the day, we are all, more or less,
Asiatics, and give over all work and reform. While
lying thus on our oars by the side of the stream, in
the heat of the day, our boat held by an osier put
through the staple in its prow, and slicing the melons,
which are a fruit of the east, our thoughts reverted to
Arabia, Persia, and Hindostan, the lands of contem-
plation and dwelling places of the ruminant nations.
In the experience of this noontide we could find some
apology even for the instinct of the opium, betel, and
tobacco chewers. Mount Saber, according to the
French traveller and naturalist, Botta, is celebrated
for producing the Kdt tree, of which '' the soft tops
of the twigs and tender leaves are eaten," says his
reviewer, " and produce an agreeable soothing excite-
ment, restoring from fatigue, banishing sleep, and
disposing to the enjoyment of conversation." We
122 A WEEK ON THE CONCORD RIVER.
thought that we might lead a dignified oriental life
along this stream as well, and the maple and alders
would be our Kdt trees.
It is a great pleasure to escape sometimes from the
restless class of Reformers. What if these grievances
exist? So do you and I. Think you that sitting
hens are troubled with ennui these long summer days,
sitting on and on in the crevice of a hay-loft, without
active employment.^ By the faint cackling in distant
barns, I judge that dame Nature is interested to know
how many eggs her hens lay. The Universal Soul,
as it is called, has an interest in the stacking of hay,
the foddering of cattle, and the draining of peat
meadows. Away in Scythia, away in India, it makes
butter and cheese. Suppose that all farms are run
out, and we youths must buy old land and bring it to,
still everywhere the relentless opponents of reform
bear a strange resemblance to ourselves ; or per-
chance, they are a few old maids and bachelors, who
sit round the kitchen hearth, and listen to the sing-
ing of the kettle. "The oracles often give victory
to our choice, and not to the order alone of the mun-
dane periods. As, for instance, when they say, that
our voluntary sorrows germinate in us as the growth
of the particular life we lead." The reform which
you talk about can be undertaken any morning before
unbarring our doors. We need not call any conven-
tion. When two neighbors begin to eat corn bread,
who before ate wheat, then the gods smile from ear
to ear, for it is very pleasant to them. Why do you
not try it ? Don't let me hinder you.
There are theoretical reformers at all times, and all
the world over, living on anticipation. Wolff, travel-
ling in the deserts of Bokhara, says : " Another party
MONDAY. 123
of derveeshes came to me and observed, ^The time
will come when there shall be no difference between
rich and poor, between high and low, when property
will be in common, even wives and children.' " But
forever I ask of such. What then ? The derveeshes
in the deserts of Bokhara and the reformers in Marl-
boro' Chapel sing the same song. " There 's a good
time coming, boys," but, asked one of the audience in
good faith, " Can you fix the date? " Said I, " Will
you help it along? "
The nonchalance and dolcc-far-niente air of nature
and society hint at infinite periods in the progress of
mankind. The States have leisure to laugh from
Maine to Texas at some newspaper joke, and New
England shakes at the double-entendres of Australian
circles, while the poor reformer cannot get a hear-
ing.
Men do not fail commonly for want of knowledge,
but for want of prudence to give wisdom the prefer-
ence. What we need to know in any case is very
simple. It is but too easy to establish another
durable and harmonious routine. Immediately all
parts of nature consent to it. Only make something
to take the place of something, and men will behave
as if it were the very thing they wanted. They must
behave, at any rate, and will work up any material.
There is always a present and extant life, be it better
or worse, which all combine to uphold. We should
be slow to mend, my friends, as slow to require mend-
ing, " Not hurling, according to the oracle, a transcend-
ent foot towards piety." The language of excitement
is at best picturesque merely. You must be calm before
you can utter oracles. What was the excitement of
the Delphic priestess compared with the calm wisdom
124 A WEEK ON THE CONCORD RIVER.
of Socrates? — or whoever it was that was wise. —
Enthusiasm is a supernatural serenity.
" Men find that action is another thing
Than what they in discoursing papers read ;
The world's affairs require in managing
More arts than those wherein you clerks proceed."
As in geology, so in social institutions, we may dis-
cover the causes of all past change in the present
invariable order of society. The greatest appreciable
physical revolutions are the work of the light-footed
air, the stealthy-paced water, and the subterranean
fire. Aristotle said, "As time never fails, and the
universe is eternal, neither the Tanais nor the Nile,
can have flowed forever." We are independent of
the change we detect. The longer the lever the less
perceptible its motion. It is the slowest pulsation
which is the most vital. The hero then will know
how to wait, as well as to make haste. All good
abides with him who waiteth wisely ; we shall sooner
overtake the dawn by remaining here than by hurry-
ing over the hills of the west. Be assured that every
man's success is in proportion to his average ability.
The meadow flowers spring and bloom where the
waters annually deposit their slime, not where they
reach in some freshet only. A man is not his hope,
nor his despair, nor yet his past deed. We know not
yet what we have done, still less what we are doing.
Wait till evening, and other parts of our day's work
will shine than we had thought at noon, and we shall
discover the real purport of our toil. As when the
farmer has reached the end of the furrow and looks
back, he can best tell where the pressed earth shines
most.
MONDAY. 125
To one who habitually endeavors to contemplate
the true state of things, the political state can hardly
be said to have any existence whatever. It is unreal,
incredible and insignificant to him, and for him to
endeavor to extract the truth from such lean material
is like making sugar from linen rags, when sugar cane
may be had. Generally speaking, the political news,
whether domestic or foreign, might be written to-day
for the next ten years, with sufficient accuracy. Most
revolutions in society have not power to interest, still
less alarm us ; but tell me that our rivers are drying
up, or the genus pine dying out in the country, and I
might attend. Most events recorded in history are
more remarkable than important, like eclipses of the
sun and moon, by Avhich all are attracted, but whose
effects no one takes the trouble to calculate. But will
the government never be so w^ell administered, inquired
one, that we private men shall hear nothing about it ?
" The king answered : At all events, I require a pru-
dent and able man, who is capable of managing the
state affairs of my kingdom. The ex-minister said,
The criterion, O Sire! of a wise and competent man,
is, that he will not meddle with such like matters."
Alas, that the ex-minister should have been so nearly
right.
In my short experience of human life, the outward
obstacles, if there were any such, have not been living
men, but the institutions of the dead. It is grateful
to make one's way through this latest generation as
through dewy grass. Men are as innocent as the
morning to the unsuspicious. —
" And round about good-morrows fly,
As if day taught humanity."
126 A WEEK ON THE CONCORD RIVER,
Not being Reve of this Shire,
*' The early pilgrim blithe he hailed,
That o'er the hills did stray,
And many an early husbandman,
That he met on his way ; " —
thieves and robbers all nevertheless. I have not so
surely foreseen that any Cossack or Chippeway would
come to disturb the honest and simple commonwealth,
as that some monster institution would at length
embrace and crush its free members in its scaly
folds ; for it is not to be forgotten, that while the
law holds fast the thief and murderer, it lets itself
go loose. When I have not paid the tax which the
State demanded for that protection which I did not
want, itself has robbed me ; when I have asserted
the liberty it presumed to declare, itself has impris-
oned me. Poor creature! if it knows no better I
will not blame it. If it cannot live but by these
means, I can. I do not wish, it happens, to be
associated with Massachusetts, either in holding
slaves or in conquering Mexico. I am a little better
than herself in these respects. — As for Massachusetts,
that huge she Briareus, Argus, and Colchian Dragon
conjoined, set to watch the Heifer of the Constitution
and the Golden Fleece, we would not warrant our
respect for her, like some compositions, to preserve
its qualities through all weathers. — Thus it has
happened, that not the Arch Fiend himself has been
m my way, but these toils which tradition says were
originally spun to obstruct him. They are cobwebs
and trifling obstacles in an earnest man's path, it is
true, and at length one even becomes attached to his
unswept and undusted garret. I love man — kind, but
MONDAY. 127
I hate the institutions of the dead unkind. Men
execute nothing so faithfully as the wills of the dead,
to the last codicil and letter. They rule this world,
and the living are but their executors. Such founda-
tion too have our lectures and our sermons commonly.
They are all Diidleian ; and piety derives its origin
still from that exploit of prus ALiieas^ who bore his
father, Anchises, on his shoulders from the ruins of
Troy. Or rather, like some Indian tribes, we bear
about with us the mouldering relics of our ancestors
on our shoulders. If, for instance, a man asserts the
value of individual liberty over the merely political
commonweal, his neighbor still tolerates him, that
is he who is living near him, sometimes even sustains
him, but never the State. Its officer, as a living man,
may have human virtues and a thought in his brain,
but as the tool of an institution, a jailor or constable
it may be, he is not a whit superior to his prison key
or his staff. Herein is the tragedy ; that men doing
outrage to their proper natures, even those called wise
and good, lend themselves to perform the office of
inferior and brutal ones. Hence come war and
slavery in ; and what else may not come in by this
opening? But certainly there are modes by which a
man may put bread into his mouth which will not
prejudice him as a companion and neighbor.
" Now turn again, turn again, said the pinder,
For a wrong way you have gone.
For you have forsaken the king's highway,
And made a path over the corn."
Undoubtedly, countless reforms are called for, be-
cause society is not animated, or instinct enough with
life, but in the condition of some snakes which I have
seen in early spring, with alternate portions of their
128 A WEEK ON THE CONCORD RIVER,
bodies torpid and flexible, so that they could wriggle
neither way. All men are partially buried in the
grave of custom, and of some we see only the crown
of the head above ground. Better are the physically
dead, for they more lively rot. Even virtue is no
longer such if it be stagnant. A man's life should
be constantly as fresh as this river. It should be the
same channel, but a new water every instant. —
"Virtues as rivers pass,
But still remains that virtuous man there was."
Most men have no inclination, no rapids, no cascades,
but marshes, and alligators, and miasma instead. We
read that when in the expedition of Alexander, One-
sicritus was sent forward to meet certain of the Indian
sect of Gymnosophists, and he had told them of those
new philosophers of the west, Pythagoras, Socrates,
and Diogenes, and their doctrines, one of them named
Dandamis answered, that " They appeared to him to
have been men of genius, but to have lived with too
passive a regard for the laws." The philosophers of
the west are liable to this rebuke still. "They say
that Lieou-hia-hoei, and Chao-lien did not sustain to
the end their resolutions, and that they dishonored
their character. Their language was in harmony with
reason and justice ; while their acts were in harmony
with the sentiments of men."
Chateaubriand said, " There are two things which
grow stronger in the breast of man, in proportion as
he advances in years ; the love of country and reli-
gion. Let them be never so much forgotten in youth,
they sooner or later present themselves to us arrayed
in all their charms, and excite in the recesses of our
hearts, an attachment justly due to their beauty." It
MONDAY. 129
may be so. But even this infirmity of noble minds
marks the gradual decay of youthful hope and faith.
It is the allowed infidelity of age. There is a saying
of the Yoloflfs, " He who was born first has the greatest
number of old clothes/' consequently M. Chateaubri-
and has more old clothes than I have. It is com-
paratively a faint and reflected beauty that is admired,
not an essential and intrinsic one. It is because the
old are weak, feel their mortality, and think that they
have measured the strength of man. They will not
boast ; they will be frank and humble. Well, let them
have the few poor comforts they can keep. Humility
is still a very human virtue. They look back on life,
and so see not into the future. The prospect of the
young is forward and unbounded, mingling the future
with the present. In the declining day the thoughts
make haste to rest in darkness, and hardly look for-
ward to the ensuing morning. The thoughts of the
old prepare for night and slumber. The same hopes
and prospects are not for him who stands upon the
rosy mountain-tops of life, and him who expects the
setting of his earthly day.
I must conclude that Conscience, if that be the
name of it, was not given us for no purpose, or for a
hindrance. However flattering order and experience
may look, it is but the repose of a lethargy, and we
will choose rather to be awake, though it be stormy,
and maintain ourselves on this earth and in this life,
as we may, without signing our death-warrant. Let
us see if we cannot stay here where He has put us, on
his own conditions. Does not his law reach as far as
his light? The expedients of the nations clash with
one another, only the absolutely right is expedient for
all.
130 A WEEK ON THE CONCORD RIVER.
There are some passages in the Antigone of Sopho-
cles, well known to scholars, of which I am reminded
in this connection. Antigone has resolved to sprinkle
sand on the dead body of her brother, Polynices. not-
withstanding the edict of King Creon condemning to
death that one who should perform this service, which
the Greeks deemed so important, for the enemy of his
country ; but Ismene, who is of a less resolute and
noble spirit, declines taking part with her sister in
this work, and says, —
" I, therefore, asking those under the earth to con-
sider me, that I am compelled to do thus, will obey
those who are placed in office ; for to do extreme
things is not wise."
ANTIGONE.
" I would not ask you, nor would you, if you still
wished, do it joyfully with me. Be such as seems
good to you. But I will bury him. It is glorious for
me doing this to die. I beloved will lie with him
beloved, having, like a criminal, done what is holy ;
since the time is longer which it is necessary for me
to please those below, than those here, for there I
shall always lie. But if it seems good to you, hold in
dishonor things which are honored by the gods."
ISMENE.
^'I indeed do not hold them in dishonor ; but to act
in opposition to the citizens I am by nature unable."
Antigone being at length brought before King
Creon, he asks,
'* Did you then dare to transgress these laws ? "
MONDAY. 131
ANTIGONE.
" For it was not Zeus who proclaimed these to me,
nor Justice who dwells with the gods below ; it was
not they who established these laws among men.
Nor did I think that your proclamations were so
strong, as, being a mortal, to be able to transcend the
unwritten and immovable laws of the gods. For not
something now and yesterday, but forever these live,
and no one knows from what time they appeared. I
was not about to pay the penalty of violating these to
the gods, fearing the presumption of any man. For
I well knew that I should die, and why not? even if
you had not proclaimed it."
This was concerning the burial of a dead body.
The wisest conservatism is that of the Hindoos.
" Immemorial custom is transcendent law," says Menu.
That is, it was the custom of the gods before men
used it. The fault of our New England custom is
that it is memorial. What is morality but immemo-
rial custom? Conscience is the chief of conserva-
tives. " Perform the settled functions," says Kreeshna
in the Bhagvat-Geeta, "action is preferable to inac-
tion. The journey of thy mortal frame may not suc-
ceed from inaction." — "A man's own calling, with all
its faults, ought not to be forsaken. Every undertak-
ing is involved in its faults as the fire in its smoke." —
" The man who is acquainted with the whole, should
not drive those from their works who are slow of
comprehension, and less experienced than himself." —
"Wherefore, O Arjoon, resolve to fight," — is the
advice of the God to the irresolute soldier who fears
to slay his best friends. It is a subUme conservatism ;
132 A WEEK ON THE CONCORD RIVER.
as wide as the world, and as unwearied as time ; pre-
serving the universe with Asiatic anxiety, in that state
in which it appeared to their minds. These philoso-
phers dwell on the inevitability and unchangeableness
of laws, on the power of temperament and constitu-
tion, the ihrQQ goo)i or qualities, and the circumstances
of birth and affinity. The end is an immense conso-
lation ; eternal absorption in Brahma. Their specu-
lations never venture beyond their own table lands,
though they are high and vast as they. Buoyancy,
freedom, flexibility, variety, possibility, which also are
qualities of the Unnamed, they deal not with . The
undeserved reward is to be earned by an everlasting
moral drudgery ; the incalculable promise of the mor-
row is, as it were, weighed. And who will say that their
conservatism has not been effectual. "Assuredly,"
says a French translator, speaking of the antiquity
and durability of the Chinese and Indian nations, and
of the wisdom of their legislators, "there are there
some vestiges of the eternal laws which govern the
world."
Christianity, on the other hand, is humane, practi-
cal, and, in a large sense, radical. So many years
and ages of the gods those eastern sages sat contem-
plating Brahm, uttering in silence the mystic " Om,"
being absorbed into the essence of the Supreme Being,
never going out of themselves, but subsiding further
and deeper within ; so infinitely wise, yet infinitely
stagnant ; until, at last, in that same Asia, but in the
western part of it, appeared a youth, wholly unforetold
by them, — not being absorbed into Brahm, but bring-
ing Brahm down to earth and to mankind ; in whom
Brahm had awaked from his long sleep, and exerted
himself, and the day began, — a new avatar. The
MONDA Y.
133
Brahman had never thought to be a brother of man-
kind as well as a child of God. Christ is the prince
of Reformers and Radicals. Many expressions in
the New Testament come naturally to the lips of all
protestants, and it furnishes the most pregnant and
practical texts. There is no harmless dreaming, no
wise speculation in it, but everywhere a substratum
of good sense. It never reflects^ but it repents. There
is no poetry in it, we may say, nothing regarded in the
light of pure beauty, but moral truth is its object.
All mortals are convicted by its conscience.
The New Testament is remarkable for its pure
morality; the best of the Hindoo Scripture, for its
pure intellectuality. The reader is nowhere raised
into and sustained in a higher, purer, or rarer region
of thought than in the Bhagvat-Geeta. Warren Has-
tings, in his sensible letter recommending the trans-
lation of this book to the Chairman of the East India
Company, declares the original to be " of a sublimity
of conception, reasoning, and diction, almost une-
qualled," and that the writings of the Indian philoso-
phers "will survive when the British dominion in
India shall have long ceased to exist, and when the
sources which it once yielded of wealth and power
are lost to remembrance." It is unquestionably one
of the noblest and most sacred scriptures that have
come down to us. Books are to be distinguished by
the grandeur of their topics, even more than by the
manner in which they are treated. The oriental phi-
losophy approaches, easily, loftier themes than the
modern aspires to; and no wonder if it sometimes
prattle about them. It only assigns their due rank
respectively to Action and Contemplation, or rather
does full justice to the latter. Western philosophers
134 ^ WEEK ON THE CONCORD RIVER.
have not conceived of the significance of Contempla-
tion in their sense. Speaking of the spiritual disci-
pline to which the Brahmans subjected themselves,
and the wonderful power of abstraction to which they
attained, instances of which had come under his
notice, Hastings says : —
" To those who have never been accustomed to the
separation of the mind from the notices of the senses,
it may not be easy to conceive by what means such a
power is to be attained ; since even the most studious
men of our hemisphere will find it difficult so to re-
strain their attention, but that it will wander to some
object of present sense or recollection ; and even the
buzzing of a fly will sometimes have the power to dis-
turb it. But if we are told that there have been men
who were successively, for ages past, in the daily
habit of abstracted contemplation, begun in the earli-
est period of youth, and continued in many to the
maturity of age, each adding some portion of knowl-
edge to the store accumulated by his predecessors ;
it is not assuming too much to conclude, that as the
mind ever gathers strength, like the body, by exercise,
so in such an exercise it may in each have acquired
the faculty to which they aspired, and that their col-
lective studies may have led them to the discovery of
new tracks and combinations of sentiment, totally dif-
ferent from the doctrines with which the learned of
other nations are acquainted ; doctrines which, how-
ever speculative and subtle, still, as they possess the
advantage of being derived from a source so free from
every adventitious mixture, may be equally founded
in truth with the most simple of our own."
MONDAY. 135
" The forsaking of works " was taught by Kreeshna
to the most ancient of men, and handed down from
one to another, '^ until at length, in the course of time,
the mighty art was lost.
" In wisdom is to be found every work without ex-
ception," says Kreeshna.
" Although thou wert the greatest of all offenders,
thou shalt be able to cross the gulf of sin with the
bark of wisdom.*"
" There is not anything in this world to be com-
pared with wisdom for purity."
''The action stands at a distance inferior to the
application of wisdom."
The wisdom of a Moonee " is confirmed, when, like
the tortoise, he can draw in all his members, and re-
strain them from their wonted purposes."
" Children only, and not the learned, speak of the
speculative and the practical doctrines as two. They
are but one. For both obtain the self-same end, and
the place which is gained by the followers of the one,
is gained by the followers of the other."
" The man enjoyeth not freedom from action, from
the non-commencement of that which he hath to do ;
nor doth he obtain happiness from a total inactivity.
No one ever resteth a moment inactive. Every man
is involuntarily urged to act by those principles which
are inherent in his nature. The man who restraineth
his active faculties, and sitteth down with his mind at-
tentive to the objects of his senses, is called one of an
astrayed soul, and the practiser of deceit. So the
man is praised, who, having subdued all his passions,
performeth with his active faculties all the functions
of life, unconcerned about the event."
" Let the motive be in the deed and not in the
136 A WEEK ON THE CONCORD RIVER.
event. Be not one whose motive for action is the hope
of reward. Let not thy life be spent in inaction."
" For the man who doeth that which he hath to do,
without affection, obtaineth the Supreme."
" He who may behold, as it were inaction in action,
and action in inaction, is wise amongst mankind.
He is a perfect performer of all duty."
" Wise men call him a Pajideet, whose every under-
taking is free from the idea of desire, and whose
actions are consumed by the fire of wisdom. He
abandoneth the desire of a reward of his actions ; he
is always contented and independent; and although
he may be engaged in a work, he, as it were, doeth
nothing."
" He is both a Yogee and a Sannyasee who per-
formeth that which he hath to do independent of the
fruit thereof; not he who liveth without the sacrificial
fire and without action."
" He who enjoyeth but the Amreeta which is left of
his offerings, obtaineth the eternal spirit of Brahm,
the Supreme."
What after all does the practicalness of life amount
to? The things immediate to be done are very trivial.
I could postpone them all to hear this locust sing.
The most glorious fact in our experience is not any-
thing that we have done or may hope to do, but a
transient thought, or vision, or dream, which we have
had. I would give all the wealth of the world, and all
the deeds of all the heroes, for one true vision. But
how can I communicate with the gods who am a
pencil-maker on the earth, and not be insane ?
'^I am the same to all mankind," says Kreeshna;
" there is not one who is worthy of my love or hatred."
MONDAY. 137
This teaching is not practical in the sense in which
the New Testament is. It is not always sound sense
in practice. The Brahman never proposes courage-
ously to assault evil, but patiently to starve it out.
His active faculties are paralyzed by the idea of caste,
of impassable limits, of destiny, and the tyranny of
time. Kreeshna's argument, it must be allowed, is
defective. No sufficient reason is given why Arjoon
should fight. Arjoon may be convinced, but the
reader is not, for his judgment is not "formed upon
speculative doctrines of the Sankhya Sastra.''"' " Seek
an asylum in wisdom alone," — but what is wisdom
to a western mind ? He speaks of duty, but the duty
of which he speaks, is it not an arbitrary one? When
was it established? The Brahman's virtue consists
not in doing right, but arbitrary things. What is that
which a man "hath to do"? What is "action"?
What are the " settled functions " ? What is " a man's
own religion," which is so much better than another's?
What is " a man's own particular calling " ? What are
the duties which are appointed by one's birth? It
is in fact a defence of the institution of caste, of what
is called the " natural duty " of the Kshetree. or
soldier, " to attach himself to the discipline," " not to
flee from the field," and the like. But they who are
unconcerned about the consequences of their actions,
are not therefore unconcerned about their actions. —
Yet we know not where we should look for a loftier
speculative faith.
Behold the difference between the oriental and the
occidental. The former has nothing to do in this world ;
the latter is full of activity. The one looks in the sun
till his eyes are put out ; the other follows him prone
in his westward course. There is such a thing as
138 A WEEK ON THE CONCORD RIVER,
caste, even in the West ; but it is comparatively faint.
It is conservatism liere. It says forsake not your
calling, outrage no institution, use no violence, rend no
bonds. The State is thy parent. Its virtue or man-
hood is wholly filial. There is a struggle between
the oriental and occidental in every nation ; some who
would be forever contemplating the sun, and some
who are hastening toward the sunset. The former
class says to the latter, When you have reached the
sunset, you will be no nearer to the sun. To which
the latter replies, But we so prolong the day. The
former " walketh but in that night, when all things go
to rest, the night of twie. The contemplative Moonee
sleepeth but in the day of time when all things wake."
To conclude these extracts, I can say, in the words
of Sanjay, " As, O mighty Prince ! I recollect again
and again this holy and wonderful dialogue of
Kreeshna and Arjoon, I continue more and more to
rejoice ; and as I recall to my memory the more than
miraculous form of Haree, my astonishment is great,
and I marvel and rejoice again and again ! Wherever
Kreeshna the God of devotion may be, wherever
Arjoon the mighty bowman may be, there too, without
doubt, are fortune, riches, victory, and good conduct.
This is my firm belief."
I would say to the readers of Scriptures, if they
wish for a good book to read. Read the Bhagvat-
Geeta, an episode to the Mahabharat, said to have
been written by Kreeshna Dwypayen Veias, — known
to have been written by , more than four thousand
years ago, — it matters not whether three or four, or
when, — translated by Charles Wilkins. It deserves
to be read Avith reverence even by Yankees, as a part
of the sacred writings of a devout people ; and the
MONDAY. 139
intelligent Hebrew will rejoice to find in it a moral
grandeur and sublimity akin to those of his own
Scriptures.
To an American reader, who, by the advantage
of his position, can see over that strip of Atlantic
coast to Asia and the Pacific, who, as it were, sees the
shore slope upward over the Alps to the Himmaleh
mountains, the comparatively recent literature of
Europe often appears partial and clannish, and, not-
withstanding the limited range of his own sympathies
and studies, the European writer who presumes that
he is speaking for the world, is perceived by him to
speak only for that corner of it which he inhabits.
One of the rarest of England's scholars and critics, in
his classification of the worthies of the world, betrays
the narrowness of his European culture and the
exclusiveness of his reading. None of her children
has done justice to the poets and philosophers of
Persia or of India. They have been better known to
her merchant scholars than to her poets and thinkers
by profession. You may look in vain through English
poetry for a single memorable verse inspired by these
themes. Nor is Germany to be excepted, though her
philological industry is indirectly serving the cause of
philosophy and poetry. Even Goethe, one would
say, wanted that universality of genius which could
have appreciated the philosophy of India, if he had more
nearly approached it. His genius was more practical,
dwelling much more in the regions of the understand-
ing, and less native to contemplation, than the genius
of those sages. It is remarkable that Homer and a
few Hebrews are the most oriental names which
modern Europe, whose literature has taken its rise
since the decline of the Persian, has admitted into her
I40 A WEEK ON THE CONCORD RIVER.
list of Worthies, and perhaps the worthiest of man-
kind, and the fathers of modern thinking, — for the con-
templations of those Indian sages have influenced the
intellectual development of mankind, — whose works
even yet survive in wonderful completeness, are, for
the most part, not recognized as ever having existed.
If the lions had been the painters it would have been
otherwise. In every one's youthful dreams phi-
losophy is still vaguely but inseparably, and with
singular truth, associated with the East, nor do after
years discover its local habitation in the Western
world. In comparison with the philosophers of the
East, we may say that modern Europe has yet given
birth to none. Beside the vast and cosmogonal phi-
losophy of the Bhagvat-Geeta, even our Shakspeare
seems sometimes youthfully green and practical
merely. Some of these sublime sentences, as the
Chaldaean oracles of Zoroaster, for instance, still sur-
viving after a thousand revolutions and translations,
make us doubt if the poetic form and dress are not
transitory, and not essential to the most effective and
enduring expression of thought. Ex or lent c /?^xmay
still be the motto of scholars, for the Western world
has not yet derived from the East all the light which
it is destined to receive thence.
It would be worthy of the age to print together the
collected Scriptures or Sacred Writings of the several
nations, the Chinese, the Hindoos, the Persians, the
Hebrews, and others, as the Scripture of mankind.
The New Testament is still, perhaps, too much on
the lips and in the hearts of men to be called a Scrip-
ture in this sense. Such a juxtaposition and compari-
son might help to liberalize the faith of men. This
is a work which Time will surely edit, reserved to
MONDAY. 141
crown the labors of the printing press. This would
be the Bible, or Book of Books, which let the mission-
aries carry to the uttermost parts of the earth.
While engaged in these reflections, thinking our-
selves the only navigators of these waters, suddenly
a canal boat, with its sail set, glided round a point
before us, like some huge river beast, and changed
the scene in an instant ; and then another and an-
other glided into sight, and we found ourselves in the
current of commerce once more. So we threw our
rinds into the water for the fishes to nibble, and added
our breath to the life of living men. Little did we
think in the distant garden in which we had planted
the seed and reared this fruit, where it would be eaten.
Our melons lay at home on the sandy bottom of the
Merrimack, and our potatoes in the sun and water at
the bottom of the boat looked like a fruit of the coun-
try. Soon, however, we were delivered from this fleet
of junks, and possessed the river in solitude, rowing
steadily upward through the noon, between the ter-
ritories of Nashua on the one hand, and Hudson,
once Nottingham, on the other; from time to time
scaring up a king-fisher or a summer duck, the former
flying rather by vigorous impulses, than by steady and
patient steering with that short rudder of his, sound-
ing his rattle along the fluvial street.
Ere long another scow hove in sight, creeping down
the river, and hailing it, we attached ourselves to its
side, and floated back in company, chatting with the
boatmen, and obtaining a draught of cooler water
from their jug. They appeared to be green hands
from far among the hills, who had taken this means
to get to the seaboard, and see the world ; and would
142 A WEEK ON THE CONCORD RIVER.
possibly visit the Falkland Isles, and the China seas,
before they again saw the waters of the Merrimack,
or perchance, not return this way forever. They had
already embarked the private interests of the lands-
man in the larger venture of the race, and were ready
to mess with mankind, reserving only the till of a
chest to themselves. But they too were soon lost
behind a point, and we went croaking on our way
alone. What grievance has its root among the New
Hampshire hills ? we asked ; what is wanting to human
life here, that these men should make such haste to
the antipodes ? We prayed that their bright anticipa-
tions might not be rudely disappointed.
Though all the fates should prove unkind,
Leave not your native land behind.
The ship, becalmed, at length stands still;
The steed must rest beneath the hill ;
But swiftly still our fortunes pace,
To find us out in every place.
The vessel, though her masts be firm,
Beneath her copper bears a worm ;
Around the cape, across the line,
Till fields of ice her course confine ;
It matters not how smooth the breeze,
How shallow or how deep the seas.
Whether she bears Manilla twine,
Or in her hold Madeira wine.
Or China teas, or Spanish hides.
In port or quarantine she rides ;
Far from New England's blustering shore.
New England's worm her hulk shall bore,
And sink her in the Indian seas,
Twine, wine, and hides, and China teas.
We passed a small desert here on the east bank,
between Tyngsboro' and Hudson, which was interest-
MONDA Y.
143
ing and even refreshing to our eyes in the midst of
the almost universal greenness. This sand was in-
deed somewhat impressive and beautiful to us. A
very old inhabitant, who was at work in a field on
the Nashua side, told us that he remembered when
corn and grain grew there, and it was a cultivated
field. But at length the fishermen, for this was a
fishing place, pulled up the bushes on the shore, for
greater convenience in hauling their seines, and when
the bank was thus broken, the wind began to blow up
the sand from the shore, until at length it had covered
about fifteen acres several feet deep. We saw near
the river, where the sand was blown off down to some
ancient surface, the foundation of an Indian wigwam
exposed, a perfect circle of burnt stones four or five
feet in diameter, mingled with fine charcoal and the
bones of small animals, which had been preserved in
the sand. The surrounding sand was sprinkled with
other burnt stones on which their fires had been built,
as well as with flakes of arrow-head stone, and we found
one perfect arrow-head. In one place we noticed
where an Indian had sat to manufacture arrow-heads
out of quartz, and the sand was sprinkled with a quart
of small glass-like chips about as big as a fourpence,
which he had broken off in his work. Here, then,
the Indians must have fished before the whites arrived.
There was another similar sandy tract about half a
mile above this.
Still the noon prevailed, and we turned the prow
aside to bathe, and recline ourselves under some
buttonwoods by a ledge of rocks, in a retired pasture,
sloping to the water's edge, and skirted with pines
and hazels, in the town of Hudson. Still had India,
144 A WEEK ON THE CONCORD RIVER.
and that old noontide philosophy, the better part of
our thoughts.
It is always singular, but encouraging, to meet with
common sense in very old books, as the Heetopades
of Veeshnoo Sarma ; a playful wisdom which has
eyes behind as well as before, and oversees itself.
It asserts their health and independence of the expe-
rience of later times. This pledge of sanity cannot
be spared in a book, that it sometimes pleasantly
reflect upon itself. The story and fabulous portion
of this book winds loosely from sentence to sentence
as so many oases in a desert, and is as indistinct as a
camel's track between Mourzouk and Darfour. It is
a comment on the flow and freshet of modern books.
The reader leaps from sentence to sentence, as from
one stepping-stone to another, while the stream of the
story rushes past unregarded. The Bhagvat-Geeta is
less sententious and poetic, perhaps, but still more
wonderfully sustained and developed. Its sanity and
sublimity have impressed the minds even of soldiers
and merchants. It is the characteristic of great poems
that they will yield of their sense in due proportion to
the hasty and the deliberate reader. To the practical
they will be common sense, and to the wise wisdom ;
as either the traveller may wet his lips, or an army
may fill its water casks at a full stream.
One of the most attractive of those ancient books
that I have met with is the Laws of Menu. Accord-
ing to Sir William Jones, '' Vyasa, the son of Parasara,
has decided that the Veda, with its Angas, or the six
compositions deduced from it, the revealed system of
medicine, the Puranas, or sacred histories, and the
code of Menu, were four works of supreme authority,
which ought never to be shaken by arguments merely
MONDA Y. 145
human." The last is beHeved by the Hindoos "to
have been promulgated in the beginning of time, by
Menu, son or grandson of Brahma," and "first of
created beings " ; and Brahma is said to have " taught
his laws to Menu in a hundred thousand verses, which
Menu explained to the primitive world in the very
words of the book now translated." Others affirm
that they have undergone successive abridgments for
the convenience of mortals, " while the gods of the
lower heaven, and the band of celestial musicians, are
engaged in studying the primary code." — "A num-
ber of glosses or comments on Menu were composed
by the Munis, or old philosophers, whose treatises,
together with that before us, constitute the Dherma
Sastra, in a collective sense, or Body of Law." Cul-
luca Bhatta was one of the more modern of these.
Every sacred book, successively, seems to have
been accepted in the faith that it was to be the final
resting-place of the sojourning soul ; but after all, it
is but a caravansary which supplies refreshment to
the traveller, and directs him farther on his way to
Isphahan or Bagdat. Thank God, no Hindoo tyr-
anny prevailed at the framing of the world, but we
are freemen of the universe, and not sentenced to
any caste.
I know of no book which has come dowm to us with
grander pretensions than this, and it is so impersonal
and sincere that it is never offensive nor ridiculous.
Compare the modes in which modern literature is
advertised with the prospectus of this book, and think
what a reading public it addresses, what criticism it
expects. It seems to have been uttered from some
eastern summit, with a sober morning prescience in
the dawn of time, and you cannot read a sentence
146 A WEEK ON THE CONCORD RIVER.
without being elevated as upon the table-land of the
Ghauts. It has such a rhythm as the winds of the
desert, such a tide as the Ganges, and is as supe-
rior to criticism as the Himmaleh mountains. Its
tone is of such unrelaxed fibre, that even at this late
day, unworn by time, it wears the English and the
Sanscrit dress indifferently, and its fixed sentences
keep up their distant fires still like the stars, by whose
dissipated rays this lower world is illumined. The
whole book by noble gestures and inclinations seems
to render many words unnecessary. English sense
has toiled, but Hindoo wisdom never perspired. The
sentences open, as we read them, unexpensively, and,
at first, almost unmeaningly, as the petals of a flower,
yet they sometimes startle us with that rare kind of
wisdom which could only have been learned from the
most trivial experience ; but it comes to us as refined
as the porcelain earth which subsides to the bottom of
the ocean. They are clean and dry as fossil truths,
which have been exposed to the elements for thou-
sands of years, so impersonally and scientifically true
that they are the ornament of the parlor and the cabi-
net. Any moral philosophy is exceedingly rare.
This of Menu addresses our privacy more than most.
It is a more private and familiar, and, at the same
time, a more public and universal word than is spoken
in parlor or pulpit now-a-days. As our domestic
fowls are said to have their original in the wild pheas-
ant of India, so our domestic thoughts have their pro-
totypes in the thoughts of her philosophers. We
seem to be dabbling in the very elements of our pres-
ent conventional and actual life ; as if it were the pri-
meval conventicle where how to eat and to drink and
to sleep, and maintain life with adequate dignity and
MONDA Y. 147
sincerity, were the questions to be decided. It is
later and more intimate even than the advice of our
nearest friends. And yet it is true for the widest
horizon, and read out of doors has relation to the dim
mountain line, and is native and aboriginal there.
Most books belong to the house and street only, and
in the fields their leaves feel very thin. They are
bare and obvious, and have no halo nor haze about
them. Nature lies far and fair behind them all. But
this, as it proceeds from, so does it address what is
deepest and most abiding in man. It belongs to the
noontide of the day, the midsummer of the year, and
after the snows have melted, and the waters evapo-
rated in the spring, still its truth speaks freshly to our
experience. It helps the sun to shine, and his rays
fall on its page to illustrate it. It spends the morn-
ings and the evenings, and makes such an impression
on us over night as to awaken us before dawn, and its
influence lingers around us like a fragrance late into
the day. It conveys a new gloss to the meadows and
the depths of the wood. Its spirit, like a more sub-
tile ether, sweeps along with the prevailing winds of
a country, and the very locusts and crickets of a sum-
mer day are but later or earlier glosses on the Dherma
Sastra of the Hindoos, a continuation of the sacred
code. As we have said, there is an orientalism in
the most restless pioneer, and the farthest west is but
the farthest east. This fair modern world is only a
reprint of the Laws of Menu with the gloss of Cul-
luca. Tried by a New England eye, or the mere
practical wisdom of modern times, they are the ora-
cles of a race already in its dotage, but held up to the
sky, which is the only impartial and incormptible
ordeal, they are of a piece with its depth and serenity,
148 A WEEK ON THE CONCORD RIVER.
and I am assured that they will have a place and sig-
nificance as long as there is a sky to test them by.
Give me a sentence which no intelligence can under-
stand. There must be a kind of hfe and palpitation
to it, and under its words a kind of blood must circu-
late forever. It is wonderful that this sound should
have come down to us from so far, when the voice of
man can be heard so little way, and we are not now
within ear-shot of any contemporary. The wood-
cutters have here felled an ancient pine forest, and
brought to light to these distant hills a fair lake in
the south-west ; and now in an instant it is distinctly
shown to these woods as if its image had travelled
hither from eternity. Perhaps these old stumps upon
the knoll remember when anciently this lake gleamed
in the horizon. One wonders if the bare earth itself
did not experience emotion at beholding again so fair
a prospect. That fair water lies there in the sun thus
revealed, so much the prouder and fairer because its
beauty needed not to be seen. It seems yet lonely,
sufficient to itself, and superior to observation. — So
are these old sentences like serene lakes in the south-
west, at length revealed to us, which have so long
been reflecting our own sky in their bosom.
The great plain of India lies as in a cup between
the Himmaleh and the ocean on the north and south,
and the Brahmapootra and Indus, on the east and
west, wherein the primeval race was received. We
will not dispute the story. We are pleased to read in
the natural history of the country, of the '^pine, larch,
spruce, and silver fir," which cover the southern face
of the Himmaleh range ; of the " gooseberry, rasp-
berry, strawberry," which from an imminent temperate
zone overlook the torrid plains. So did this active
MONDAY. 149
modern life have even then a foothold and lurking
place in the midst of the stateliness and contempla-
tiveness of those eastern plains. In another era the
" lily-of-the-valley, cowslip, dandelion," were to work
their way down into the plain, and bloom in a level
zone of their own reaching round the earth. Already
has the era of the temperate zone arrived, the era of
the pine and the oak, for the palm and the banian do
not supply the wants of this age. The lichens on
the summits of the rocks will perchance find their
level ere long.
As for the tenets of the Brahmans, we are not so
much concerned to know what doctrines they held, as
that they were held by any. We can tolerate all
philosophies, Atomists, Pneumatologists, Atheists,
Theists, — Plato, Aristotle, Leucippus, Democritus,
Pythagorus, Zoroaster, and Confucius. It is the atti-
tude of these men, more than any communication
which they make, that attracts us. Between these
and their commentators, it is true, there is an endless
dispute. But if it comes to this that you compare
notes, then you are all wrong. As it is, each takes us
up into the serene heavens, whither the smallest
bubble rises as surely as the largest, and paints earth
and sky for us. Any sincere thought is irresistible.
The very austerity of the Brahmans is tempting to
the devotional soul, as a more refined and nobler
luxury. Wants so easily and gracefully satisfied
seem like a more refined pleasure. Their conception
of creation is peaceful as a dream. "When that
power awakes, then has this world its full expansion ;
but when he slumbers with a tranquil spirit, then the
whole system fades away." In the very indistinct-
ness of their theogony a sublime truth is implied. It
150 A WEEK ON THE CONCORD RIVER.
hardly allows the reader to rest in any supreme first
cause, but directly it hints at a supremer still which
created the last, and the Creator is still behind
increate.
Nor will we disturb the antiquity of this Scripture ;
"From fire, from air, and from the sun," it was
"• milked out." One might as well investigate the
chronology of light and heat. Let the sun shine.
Menu understood this matter best, when he said,
" Those best know the divisions of days and nights
who understand that the day of Brahma, which
endures to the end of a thousand such ages, [infinite
ages, nevertheless, according to mortal reckoning,]
gives rise to virtuous exertions ; and that his night
endures as long as his day."" Indeed, the Mussulman
and Tartar dynasties are beyond all dating. Methinks
I have lived under them myself. In every man's
brain is the Sanscrit. The Vedas and their Angas
are not so ancient as serene contemplation. Why
will we be imposed on by antiquity ? Is the babe
young? When I behold it, it seems more vener-
able than the oldest man ; it is more ancient
than Nestor or the Sibyls, and bears the wrinkles
of father Saturn himself. And do we live but in
the present ? How broad a line is that .'' I sit
now on a stump whose rings number centuries of
growth. If I look around I see that the soil is
composed of the remains of just such stumps, ances-
tors to this. The earth is covered with mould. I
thrust this stick many aeons deep into its surface,
and with my heel make a deeper furrow than the
elements have ploughed here for a thousand years.
If I listen, I hear the peep of frogs which is older
than the slime of Egypt, and the distant drumming of
MO NBA Y. 151
a partridge on a log, as if it were the pulse-beat of the
summer air. I raise my fairest and freshest flowers
in the old mould. Why, what we would fain call
new is not skin deep ; the earth is not yet stained by it.
It is not the fertile ground which we walk on, but the
leaves that flutter over our heads. The newest is
but the oldest made visible to our senses. When
we dig up the soil from a thousand feet below the
surface, we call it new, and the plants which spring
from it ; and when our vision pierces deeper into
space, and detects a remoter star, we call that new
also. The place where we sit is called Hudson, —
once it was Nottingham, — once —
We should read history as little critically as we
consider the landscape, and be more interested by
the atmospheric tints and various lights and shades
which the intervening spaces create, than by its
groundwork and composition. It is the morning
now turned evening and seen in the west, — the same
sun, but a new light and atmosphere. Its beauty is
like the sunset ; not a fresco painting on a wall, flat
and bounded, but atmospheric and roving or free.
In reality, history fluctuates as the face of the land-
scape from morning to evening. What is of moment
is its hue and color. Time hides no treasures ; we
want not its iheii^ but its now. We do not complain
that the mountains in the horizon are blue and indis-
tinct ; they are the more like the heavens.
Of what moment are facts that can be lost, —
which need to be commemorated? The monument
of death will outlast the memory of the dead. The
pyramids do not tell us the tale that was confided to
them ; the living fact commemorates itself. Why
152 A WEEK ON THE CONCORD RIVER.
look in the dark for light? Strictly speaking, the
historical societies have not recovered one fact from
oblivion, but are themselves, instead of the fact, that
is lost. The researcher is more memorable than the
researched. The crowd stood admiring the mist and
the dim outlines of the trees seen through it, when
one of their number advanced to explore the phenome-
non, and with fresh admiration all eyes were turned
on his dimly retreating figure. It is astonishing with
how little cooperation of the societies, the past is
remembered. Its story has indeed had another
muse than has been assigned it. There is a good
instance of the manner in which all history began, in
Alwakidis' Arabian Chronicle, "I was informed by
Alwied Ahnatin Aljorhami, who had it from Rephcia
Ebn Kais Aldmiri, who had it from Saiph Ebn
Fabalah Alchdtquarjm, who had it from Thabet Ebfi
Alkamah, who said he was present at the action."
These fathers of history were not anxious to preserve,
but to learn the fact ; and hence it was not forgotten.
Critical acumen is exerted in vain to uncover the
past; \hQ. past cannot ht prese?ited ; we cannot know
what we are not. But one veil hangs over past, present,
and future, and it is the province of the historian to
find out, not what was, but what is. Where a battle has
been fought, you will find nothing but the bones of men
and beasts ; where a battle is being fought, there are
hearts beating. We will sit on a mound and muse,
and not try to make these skeletons stand on their legs
again. Does Nature remember, think you, that they
were men, or not rather that they are bones?
Ancient history has an air of antiquity. It should
be more modern. It is written as if the spectator
should be thinking of the backside of the picture on
MONDAY. 153
the wall, or as if the author expected that the dead
would be his readers, and wished to detail to them
their own experience. Men seem anxious to accom-
plish an orderly retreat through the centuries, ear-
nestly rebuilding the works behind, as they are battered
down by the encroachments of time ; but while they
loiter, they and their works both fall a prey to the
arch enemy. History has neither the venerableness
of antiquity, nor the freshness of the modern. It
does as if it would go to the beginning of things,
which natural history might with reason assume to
do ; but consider the Universal History, and then tell
us — when did burdock and plantain sprout first ? It
has been so written for the most part, that the times
it describes are with remarkable propriety called dai'k
ages. They are dark, as one has observed, because
we are so in the dark about them. The sun rarely
shines in history, what with the dust and confusion ;
and when we meet with any cheering fact which
implies the presence of this luminary, we excerpt and
modernize it. As when we read in the history of the
Saxons that Edwin of Northumbria "caused stakes to
be fixed in the highways where he had seen a clear
spring," and "brazen dishes were chained to them, to
refresh the weary sojourner, whose fatigues Edwin
had himself experienced." This is worth all Arthur's
twelve battles.
" Through the shadow of the world we sweep into the younger
day :
Better fifty years of Europe than a cycle of Cathay."
Than fifty years of Europe better one New England ray !
Biography, too, is liable to the same objection ; it
should be autobiography. Let us not, as the Ger-
154 A WEEK ON THE CONCORD RIVER.
mans advise, endeavor to go abroad and vex our
bovi^els that we may be somebody else to explain
him. If I am not I, w^ho will be ?
But it is fit that the Past should be dark ; though
the darkness is not so much a quality of the past as
of tradition. It is not a distance of time, but a dis-
tance of relation, which makes thus dusky its me-
morials. What is near to the heart of this generation
is fair and bright still. Greece lies outspread fair
and sunshiny in floods of light, for there is the sun
and daylight in her literature and art. Homer does
not allow us to forget that the sun shone, — nor
Phidias, nor the Parthenon. Yet no era has been
wholly dark, nor will we too hastily submit to the
historian, and congratulate ourselves on a blaze of
light. If we could pierce the obscurity of those re-
mote years, we should find it light enough ; only thej'e
is not our day. Some creatures are made to see in
the dark. There has always been the same amount
of light in the world. The new and missing stars,
the comets and eclipses, do not affect the general
illumination, for only our glasses appreciate them.
The eyes of the oldest fossil remains, they tell us,
indicate that the same laws of light prevailed then as
now. Always the laws of light are the same, but the
modes and degrees of seeing vary. The gods are
partial to no era, but steadily shines their light in the
heavens, while the eye of the beholder is turned to
stone. There was but the sun and the eye from the
first. The ages have not added a new ray to the one,
nor altered a fibre of the other.
If we will admit time into our thoughts at all, the
mythologies, those vestiges of ancient poems, wrecks
of poems, so to speak, the world's inheritance, still
MONDAY. 155
reflecting some of their original splendor, like the
fragments of clouds tinted by the rays of the departed
sun ; reaching into the latest summer day, and allying
this hour to the morning of creation; as the poet
sings : —
" Fragments of the lofty strain
Float down the tide of years,
As buoyant on the stormy main
A parted wreck appears ; " —
these are the materials and hints for a history of the
rise and progress of the race ; how, from the condi-
tion of ants, it arrived at the condition of men, and
arts were gradually invented. Let a thousand sur-
mises shed some light on this story. We will not be
confined by historical, even geological periods, which
would allow us to doubt of a progress in human
affairs. If we rise above this wisdom for the day, we
shall expect that this morning of the race, in which
it has been supplied with the simplest necessaries,
with corn, and wine, and honey, and oil, and fire, and
articulate speech, and agricultural and other arts,
reared up, by degrees, from the condition of ants, to
men, will be succeeded by a day of equally progres-
sive splendor ; that, in the lapse of the divine periods,
other divine agents and godlike men will assist to
elevate the race as much above its present condition.
But we do not know much about it.
Thus did one voyageur waking dream, while his
companion slumbered on the bank. Suddenly, a
boatman's horn was heard, echoing from shore to
shore, to give notice of his approach to the farmer's
wife, with whom he was to take his dinner, though in
156 A WEEK ON THE CONCORD RIVER.
that place only muskrats and king-fishers seemed to
hear. The current of our reflections and our slum-
bers being thus disturbed, we weighed anchor once
more.
As we proceeded on our way in the afternoon, the
western bank became lower, or receded further from
the channel in some places, leaving a few trees only
to fringe the water's edge ; while the eastern rose ab-
ruptly here and there into wooded hOls fifty or sixty
feet high. The bass, tilia Americana, also called
the lime or linden, which was a new tree to us, over-
hung the water with its broad and rounded leaf, inter-
spersed with clusters of small hard berries, now nearly
ripe, and made an agreeable shade for us sailors.
The inner bark of this genus is the bast, the material
of the fisherman's matting, and the ropes, and peas-
ant's shoes, of which the Russians make so much use,
and also of nets and a coarse cloth in some places.
According to poets, this was once Philyra, one of the
Oceanides. The ancients are said to have used its
bark for the roofs of cottages, for baskets, and for a
kind of paper called Philyra. They also made buck-
lers of its wood, '' on account of its flexibility, light-
ness, and resiliency." It was once much used for
carving, and is still in demand for panels of carriages,
and for various uses for which toughness and flexibil-
ity are required. Its sap affords sugar, and the honey
made from its flowers is said to be preferred to any
other. Its leaves are in some countries given to
cattle, a kind of chocolate has been made of its fruit,
a medicine has been prepared from an infusion of its
flowers, and finally, the charcoal made of its wood is
greatly valued for gunpowder.
The sight of this tree reminded us that we had
MONDAY. 157
reached a strange land to us. As we sailed under
this canopy of leaves we saw the sky through its
chinks, and, as it were, the meaning and idea of the
tree stamped in a thousand hieroglyphics on the
heavens. The universe is so aptly fitted to our organ-
ization, that the eye wanders and reposes at the same
time. On every side there is something to soothe
and refresh this sense. Look up at the tree-tops and
see how finely Nature finishes off her work there. See
how the pines spire without end higher and higher,
and make a graceful fringe to the earth. And who
shall count the finer cobwebs that soar and float away
from their utmost tops, and the myriad insects that
dodge between them. Leaves are of more various
forms than the alphabets of all languages put together ;
of the oaks alone there are hardly two alike, and each
expresses its own character.
In all her products Nature only develops her sim-
plest germs. One would say that it was no great
stretch of invention to create birds. The hawk, which
now takes his flight over the top of the wood, was at
first perchance only a leaf which fluttered in its
aisles. From rustling leaves she came in the course
of ages to the loftier flight and clear carol of the
bird.
Salmon Brook comes in from the west under the
railroad, a mile and a half below the village of Nashua.
We rode up far enough into the meadows which bor-
der it, to learn its piscatorial history from a hay-maker
on its banks. He told us that the silver eel was
formerly abundant here, and pointed to some sunken
creels at'its mouth. This man's memory and imagin-
ation were fertile in fishermen's tales of floating isles
in bottomless ponds, and of lakes mysteriously stocked
158 A WEEK ON THE CONCORD RIVER.
with fishes, and would have kept us till night-fall to
listen, but we could not afford to loiter in this road-
stead, and so stood out to our sea again. Though we
never trod in these meadows, but only touched their
margin with our hands, we still retain a pleasant
memory of them.
Salmon Brook, whose name is said to be a transla-
tion from the Indian, was a favorite haunt of the
aborigines. Here too the first white settlers of Nashua
planted, and some dents in the earth, where their
houses stood, and the wrecks of ancient apple trees,
are still visible. About one mile up this stream stood
the house of old John Lovewell, who was an ensign
in the army of Oliver Cromwell, and the father of
"famous Captain Lovewell. '' He settled here before
1690, and died about 1754, at the age of one hundred
and twenty years. He is thought to have been
engaged in the famous Narragansett swamp fight,
which took place in 1675, before he came here. The
Indians are said to have spared him in succeeding wars
on account of his kindness to them. Even in 1700 he
was so old and gray-headed that his scalp was worth
nothing, since the French Governor offered no bounty
for such. I have stood in the dent of his cellar on
the bank of the brook, and talked there with one
whose grandfather had, whose father might have,
talked with Lovewell. Here also he had a mill in his
old age, and kept a small store. He was remembered
by some who were recently living, as a hale old man
who drove the boys out of his orchard with his cane.
— Consider the triumphs of the mortal man, and what
poor trophies it would have to show, to wit, He cob-
bled shoes without glasses at a hundred, and cut a
handsome swathe at a hundred and five! — LovewelPs
MONDAY. i^Q
house is said to have been the first which Mrs. Dus-
tin reached on her escape from the Indians. Here
probably the hero of Pequawket was born and bred.
Close by may be seen the cellar and the gravestone
of Joseph Hassell, who, as was elsewhere recorded,
with his wife Anna and son Benjamin, and Mary
Marks, " were slain by our Indian enemies on Sept.
2d [1691] in the evening." As Gookin observed on
a previous occasion, "The Indian rod upon the Eng-
lish backs had not yet done God's errand." Salmoli
Brook near its mouth is still a solitary stream, mean-
denng through woods and meadows, while the then
unmhabited mouth of the Nashua now resounds with
the din of a manufacturing town.
A stream from Otternic pond in Hudson comes in just
above Salmon Brook, on the opposite side. There
was a good view of Uncannunuc, the most conspicu-
ous mountain in these parts, from the bank here,
seen rising over the west end of the bridge above. We
soon after passed the village of Nashua, on the river of
the same name, where there is a covered bridge over the
Merrimack. The Nashua, which is one of the largest
tributaries, flows from Wachusett mountain, through
Lancaster, Groton, and other towns, where it has
formed well-known elm-shaded meadows, but near its
mouth it is obstructed by falls and factories, and did
not tempt us to explore it.
Far away from here, in Lancaster, with another
companion, I have crossed the broad valley of the
Nashua, over which we had so long looked westward
from the Concord hills without seeing it to the blue
mountains in the horizon. So many streams, so many
meadows and woods and quiet dwellings of men had
Iain concealed between us and those Delectable
l60 A WEEK ON THE CONCORD RIVER.
Mountains ; — from yonder hill on the road to Tyngs-
boro' you may get a good view of them. — There
where it seemed uninterrupted forest to our youthful
eyes, between two neighboring pines in the horizon,
lay the valley of the Nashua, and this very stream was
even then winding at its bottom, and then, as now,
it was here silently mingling its waters with the Merri-
mack. The clouds which floated over its meadows
and were born there, seen far in the west, gilded by
the rays of the setting sun, had adorned a thousand
evening skies for us. But as it were by a turf wall
this valley was concealed, and in our journey to those
hills it was first gradually revealed to us. Summer
and winter our eyes had rested on the dim outline of
the mountains, to which distance and indistinctness
lent a grandeur not their own, so that they served to
interpret all the allusions of poets and travellers.
Standing on the Concord Cliffs we thus spoke our
mind to them : —
With frontier strength ye stand your ground,
With grand content ye circle round,
Tumultous silence for all sound,
Ye distant nursery of rills,
Monadnock and the Peterboro' hills ; —
Firm argument that never stirs,
Outcircling the philosophers, —
Like some vast fleet.
Sailing through rain and sleet.
Through winter's cold and summer's heat ;
Still holding on upon your high emprise.
Until ye find a shore amid the skies ;
Not skulking close to land,
With cargo contraband,
For they who sent a venture out by ye
Have set the Sun to see
Their honesty.
MONDAY, l6]
Ships of the line, each one,
Ye westward run,
Convoying clouds, i
Which cluster in your shrouds,
Always before the gale,
Under a press of sail,
With weight of metal all untold, —
I seem to feel ye in my firm seat here,
Immeasurable depth of hold,
And breadth of beam, and length of running gear.
Methinks ye take luxurious pleasure
In your novel western leisure ;
So cool your brows and freshly blue,
As Time had naught for ye to do ;
For ye lie at your length,
An unappropriated strength.
Unhewn primeval timber,
For knees so stiff, for masts so limber ;
The stock of which new earths are made,
One day to be our western trade.
Fit for the stanchions of a world
Which through the seas of space is hurled.
While we enjoy a lingering ray,
Ye still o'ertop the western day,
Reposing yonder on God's croft
Like solid stacks of hay ;
So bold a line as ne'er was writ
On any page by human wit ;
The forest glows as if
An enemy's camp-fires shone
Along the horizon.
Or the day's funeral pyre
Were lighted there ;
Edged with silver and with gold,
The clouds hang o'er in damask fold,
And with such depth of amber light
The west is dight,
Where still a few rays slant.
1 62 A WEEK ON THE CONCORD RIVER.
That even Heaven seems extravagant.
Watatic Hill
Lies on the horizon's sill
Like a child's toy left over night,
And other duds to left and right,
On the earth's edge, mountains and trees,
Stand as they were on air graven.
Or as the vessels in a haven
Await the morning breeze.
I fancy even
Through your defiles windeth the way to heaven ;
And yonder still, in spite of history's page,
Linger the golden and the silver age ;
Upon the laboring gale
The news of future centuries is brought.
And of new dynasties of thought.
From your remotest vale.
But special I remember thee,
Wachusett, who hke me
Standest alone without society.
Thy far blue eye,
A remnant of the sky,
Seen through the clearing or the gorge,
Or from the windows of the forge.
Doth leaven all it passes by.
Nothing is true
But stands 'tween me and you.
Thou western pioneer.
Who know'st not shame nor fear,
By venturous spirit driven
Under the eaves of heaven ;
And can'st expand thee there.
And breathe enough of air ?
Even beyond the West
Thou migratest,
Into unclouded tracts.
Without a pilgrim's axe.
Cleaving thy road on high
With thy well-tempered brow,
MONDA V. 163
And mak'st thyself a clearing in the sky.
Upholding heaven, holding down earth,
Thy pastime from thy birth ;
Not steadied by the one, nor leaning on the other,
May I approve myself thy worthy brother !
At length, like Rasselas and other inhabitants of
happy valleys, we had resolved to scale the blue wall
which bounded the western horizon, though not with-
out misgivings that thereafter no visible fairy land
would exist for us. But it would be long to tell of our
adventures, and we have no time this afternoon, trans-
porting ourselves in imagination up this hazy Nashua
valley, to go over again that pilgrimage. We have
since made many similar excursions to the principal
mountains of New England and New York, and even
far in the wilderness, and have passed a night on the
summit of many of them. And now when we look
again westward from our native hills, Wachusett and
Monadnock have retreated once more among the blue
and fabulous mountains in the horizon, though our
eyes rest on the very rocks on both of them, where
we have pitched our tent for a night, and boiled our
hasty-pudding amid the clouds.
As late as 1724 there was no house on the north
side of the Nashua, but only scattered wigwams and
gristly forests between this frontier and Canada. In
September of that year, two men who were engaged
in making turpentine on that side, for such were the
first enterprises in the wilderness, were taken captive
and carried to Canada by a party of thirty Indians.
Ten of the inhabitants of Dunstable going to look for
them, found the hoops of their barrel cut, and the tur-
pentine spread on the ground. I have been told by
1 64 A WEEK ON THE CONCORD RIVER.
an inhabitant of Tyngsboro', who had the story from
his ancestors, that one of these captives, when the
Indians were about to upset his barrel of turpentine,
seized a pine knot and, flourishing it, swore so reso-
lutely that he would kill the first who touched it, that
they refrained, and when at length he returned from
Canada he found it still standing. Perhaps there was
more than one barrel. — However this may have been,
the scouts knew by marks on the trees, made with
coal mixed with grease, that the men were not killed,
but taken prisoners. One of the company, named
Farwell, perceiving that the turpentine had not done
spreading, concluded that the Indians had been gone
but a short time, and they accordingly went in instant
pursuit. Contrary to the advice of Farwell, follow-
ing directly on their trail up the Merrimack, they fell
into an ambuscade near Thornton's Ferry, in the pres-
ent town of Merrimack, and nine were killed, only one,
Farwell, escaping after a vigorous pursuit. The men
of Dunstable went out and picked up their bodies,
and carried them all down to Dunstable and buried
them. It is almost word for word as in the Robin
Hood ballad : —
" They carried these foresters into fair Nottingham,
As many there did know,
They digg'd them graves in their churchyard,
And they buried them all a row."
Nottingham is only the other side of the river, and
they were not exactly all a-row. You may read in
the churchyard at Dunstable, under the " Memento
Mori," and the name of one of them, how they " de-
parted this life," and
MONDAY. 165
" This man with seven more that lies in
this grave was slew all in a day by
the Indians."
The stones of some others of the company stand
around the common grave with their separate inscrip-
tions. Eight were buried here, but nine were killed,
according to the best authorities.
" Gentle river, gentle river,
Lo, thy streams are stained with gore.
Many a brave and noble captain
Floats along thy willowed shore.
All beside thy limpid waters.
All beside thy sands so bright,
Indian Chiefs and Christian warriors
Joined in fierce and mortal fight,"
It is related in the history of Dunstable, that on
the return of Farwell the Indians were engaged by a
fresh party, which they compelled to retreat, and pur-
sued as far as the Nashua, where they fought across
the stream at its mouth. After the departure of the
Indians, the figure of an Indian's head was found
carved by them on a large tree by the shore, which
circumstance has given its name to this part of the
village of Nashville, — the " Indian Head." " It was
observed by some judicious," says Gookin, referring
to Philip's war, " that at the beginning of the war, the
English soldiers made a nothing of the Indians, and
many spake words to this effect ; that one Englishman
was sufficient to chase ten Indians ; many reckoned it
was no other but Veni^ vidi, vict^ But we may
conclude that the judicious would by this time have
made a different observation.
1 66 A WEEK ON THE CONCORD RIVER.
Farwell appears to have been the only one who had
studied his profession, and understood the business
of liunting Indians. He lived to fight another day,
for the next year he was Lovewell's Lieutenant at
Pequawket, but that time, as we have related, left his
bones in the wilderness. His name still reminds us
of twilight days and forest scouts on Indian trails,
with an uneasy scalp ; — an indispensable hero to
New England. As the more recent poet of Love-
well's fight has sung, halting a little but bravely
still; —
" Then did the crimson streams that flowed,
Seem like the waters of the brook,
That brightly shine, that loudly dash.
Far down the cliffs of Agiochook."
These battles sound incredible to us. I think pos-
terity will doubt if such things ever were ; if our bold
ancestors who settled this land were not struggling
rather with the forest shadows, and not with a copper
colored race of men. They were vapors, fever and
ague of the unsettled woods. Now, only a few arrow-
heads are turned up by the plow. In the Pelasgic,
the Etruscan, or the British story, there is nothing so
shadowy and unreal.
It is a wild and antiquated looking grave-yard,
overgrown with bushes, on the high road, about a
quarter of a mile from and overlooking the Merri-
mack, with a deserted mill stream bounding it on one
side, where lie the earthly remains of the ancient in-
habitants of Dunstable. We passed it three or four
miles below here. You may read there the names of
Lovewell, Farwell, and many others whose families
MONDAY. 167
were distinguished in Indian warfare. We noticed
there two large masses of granite more than a foot
thick and rudely squared, lying flat on the ground
over the remains of the first pastor and his wife.
It is remarkable that the dead lie everywhere under
stones, —
" Strata jacent passim suo quaeque sub " lapide —
corpora, we might say, if the measure allowed. When
the stone is a slight one, and stands upright, pointing
to the skies, it does not oppress the spirits of the trav-
eller to meditate by it ; but these did seem a little
heathenish to us ; and so are all large monuments
over men's bodies, from the pyramids down. A monu-
ment should at least be " star-y-pointing," to indi-
cate whither the spirit is gone, and not prostrate, like
the body it has deserted. There have been some
nations who could do nothing but construct tombs,
and these are the only traces which they have left.
They are the heathen. But why these stones, so up-
right and emphatic, like exclamation points! What
was there so remarkable that lived ? Why should the
monument be so much more enduring than the fame
which it is designed to commemorate, — a stone to a
bone? "Here lies," — "Here hes"; — why do they
not sometimes write, There rises? Is it a monument
to the body only that is intended? " Having reached
the term of his natural life ; " — would it not be
truer to say. Having reached the term of his unnatu-
ral life? The rarest quality in an epitaph is truth.
If any character is given it should be as severely
true as the decision of the three judges below, and
not the partial testimony of friends. Friends and
1 68 A WEEK ON THE CONCORD RIVER.
contemporaries should supply only the name and
date, and leave it to posterity to write the epitaph.
Here lies an honest man,
Rear-Admiral Van.
Faith, then ye have
Two in one grave,
For in his favor,
Here too lies the Engraver.
Fame itself is but an epitaph ; as late, as false, as
true. But they only are the true epitaphs which Old
Mortality retouches.
A man might well pray that he may not taboo or
curse any portion of nature by being buried in it.
For the most part, the best man's spirit makes a
fearful sprite to haunt his grave, and it is therefore
much to the credit of Little John, the famous follower
of Robin Hood, that his grave was " long celebrous
for the yielding of excellent whetstones." I confess
that I have but little love for such collections as they
have at the Catacombs, Pere la Chaise, Mount Au-
burn, and even this Dunstable grave-yard. At any
rate, nothing but great antiquity can make grave-yards
interesting to me. I have no friends there. It may
be that I am not competent to write the poetry of the
grave. The farmer who has skimmed his farm might
perchance leave his body to Nature to be plowed in,
and in some measure restore its fertility. We should
not retard but forward her economies.
Soon the village of Nashua was out of sight, and
the woods were gained again, and we rowed slowly
on before sunset, looking for a solitary place in which
MONDAY. 169
to spend the night. A few evening clouds began to
be reflected in the water, and the surface was dimpled
only here and there by a muskrat crossing the stream.
We camped at length near Penichook Brook, on the
confines of Nashville, by a deep ravine, under the
skirts of a pine wood, where the dead pine leaves
were our carpet, and their tawny boughs stretched
over head. But fire and smoke soon tamed the
scene ; the rocks consented to be our walls, and
the pines our roof. A woodside was already the
fittest locality for us.
The wilderness is near, as well as dear, to every
man. Even the oldest villages are indebted to the
border of wild wood which surrounds them, more
than to the gardens of men. There is something
indescribably inspiriting and beautiful in the aspect
of the forest skirting and occasionally jutting into
the midst of new towns, which, like the sand-heaps
of fresh fox burrows, have sprung up in their midst.
The very uprightness of the pines and maples asserts
the ancient rectitude and vigor of nature. Our lives
need the relief of such a background, where the pine
flourishes and the jay still screams.
We had found a safe harbor for our boat, and as
the sun was setting carried up our furniture, and soon
arranged our house upon the bank, and while the
kettle steamed at the tent door, we chatted of dis-
tant friends, and of the sights we were to behold,
and wondered which way the towns lay from us. Our
cocoa was soon boiled, and supper set upon our chest,
and we lengthened out this meal, like old voyageurs,
with our talk. Meanwhile we spread the map on the
ground, and read in the gazetteer when the first settlers
came here and got a township granted. Then, when
I/O A WEEK ON THE CONCORD RIVER.
supper was done, and we had written the journal of
our voyage, we wrapped our buffaloes about us, and
lay down with our heads pillowed on our arms, listen-
ing awhile to the distant baying of a dog, or the mur-
murs of the river, or to the wind, which had not gone
to rest, —
The western wind came lumbering in,
Bearing a faint Pacific din,
Our evening mail, swift at the call
Of its Post-Master General ;
Laden with news fiom Californ',
Whate'er transpired hath since morn,
How wags the world by brier and brake
From hence to Athabasca lake ; —
or half awake and half asleep, dreaming of a star which
glimmered through our cotton roof. Perhaps at mid-
night one was awakened by a cricket shrilly singing
on his shoulder, or by a hunting spider in his eye, and
was lulled asleep again by some streamlet purling its
way along at the bottom of a wooded and rocky ravine
in our neighborhood. It was pleasant to lie with our
heads so low in the grass, and hear what a tinkling
ever-busy laboratory it was. A thousand little arti-
sans beat on their anvils all night long.
Far in the night, as we were falling asleep on the
bank of the Merrimack, we heard some tyro beating a
drum incessantly, in preparation for a country muster,
as we learned, and we thought of the line,
" When the drum beat at dead of night."
We could have assured him that his beat would be
answered, and the forces be mustered. Fear not, thou
drummer of the night, we too will be there. And still
he drummed on in the silence and the dark. This
MONDAY. 171
stray sound from a far-off sphere came to our ears
from time to time, far, sweet, and significant, and
we listened with such an unprejudiced sense as if
for the first time we heard at all. No doubt he was
an insignificant drummer enough, but his music
afforded us a prime and leisure hour, and we felt
that we were in season wholly. These simple sounds
related us to the stars. Aye, there was a logic in them
so convincing that the combined sense of mankind
could never make me doubt their conclusions. I
stop my habitual thinking, as if the plow had suddenly
run deeper in its furrow through the crust of the world.
How can I go on, who have just stepped over such a
bottomless skylight in the bog of my life. Suddenly
old Time winked at me, — Ah you know me, you rogue,
— and news had come that it was well. That ancient
universe is in such capital health, I think undoubtedly
it will never die. Heal yourselves, doctors ; by God
I live. —
Then idle Time ran gadding by
And left me with Eternity alone ;
I hear beyond the range of sound,
I see beyond the verge of sight, —
I see, smell, taste, hear, feel, that everlasting Some-
thing to which we are allied, at once our maker, our
abode, our destiny, our very Selves ; the one historic
truth, the most remarkable fact which can become
the distinct and uninvited subject of our thought, the
actual glory of the universe ; the only fact which a
human being cannot avoid recognizing, or in some way
forget or dispense with. —
It doth expand my privacies
To all, and leave me single in the crowd.
172 A WEEK ON THE CONCORD RIVER.
I have seen how the foundations of the world are laid,
and I have not the least doubt that it will stand a
good while.
Now chiefly is my natal hour,
And only now my prime of life.
I will not doubt the love untold,
Which not my worth nor want hath bought,
Which wooed me young and wooes me old,
And to this evening hath me brought.
What are ears ? what is Time ? that this particular
series of sounds called a strain of music, an invisible
and fairy troop which never brushed the dew from
any mead, can be wafted down through the centuries
from Homer to me, and he have been conversant with
that same aerial and mysterious charm which now so
tingles my ears? What a fine communication from
age to age, of the fairest and noblest thoughts, the
aspirations of ancient men, even such as w-ere never
communicated by speech ! It is the flower of language,
thought colored and curved, fluent and flexible, its
crystal fountain tinged with the sun's rays, and its
purling ripples reflecting the grass and the clouds.
A strain of music reminds me of a passage of the
Vedas, and I associate with it the idea of infinite
remoteness, as well as of beauty and serenity, for to
the senses that is furthest from us which addresses the
greatest depth within us. It teaches us again and
again to trust the remotest and finest as the divinest
instinct, and makes a dream our only real experience.
As polishing expresses the vein in marble and grain
in wood, so music brings out what of heroic lurks any-
where. The hero is the sole patron of music. That
harmony which exists naturally between the hero's
MONDAY. 173
moods and the universe the soldier would fain imitate
with drum and trumpet. When we are in health all
sounds fife and drum for us ; we hear the notes of
music in the air, or catch its echoes dying away when
we awake in the dawn. Marching is when the pulse
of the hero beats in unison with the pulse of Nature,
and he steps to the measure of the universe ; then
there is true courage and invincible strength.
Plutarch says that " Plato thinks the gods never gave
men music, the science of melody and harmony, for
mere delectation or to tickle the ear; but that the
discordant parts of the circulations and beauteous
fabric of the soul, and that of it that roves about the
body, and many times, for want of tune and air,
breaks forth into many extravagances and excesses,
might be sweetly recalled and artfully wound up to
their former consent and agreement."
Music is the sound of the universal laws promul-
gated. It is the only assured tone. There are in
it such strains as far surpass any man's faith in the
loftiness of his destiny. Things are to be learned
which it will be worth the while to learn. Formerly I
heard these
RUMORS FROM AN ^OLIAN HARP.
There is a vale which none hath seen,
Where foot of man has never been,
Such as here lives with toil and strife,
An anxious and a sinful life.
There every virtue has its birth,
Ere it descends upon the earth.
And thither every deed returns,
Which in the generous bosom burns.
There love is warm, and youth is young,
And poetry is yet unsung.
174 A WEEK ON THE CONCORD RIVER.
For Virtue still adventures there,
And freely breathes her native air.
And ever, if you hearken well,
You still may hear its vesper bell,
And tread of high-souled men go by.
Their thoughts conversing with the sky.
According to Jamblicluis, '' Pythagoras did not pro-
cure for himself a thing of this kind through instru-
ments or the voice, but employing a certain ineffable
divinity, and which it is difficult to apprehend, he ex-
tended his ears and fixed his intellect in the sublime
symphonies of the world, he alone hearing and under-
standing, as it appears, the universal harmony and
consonance of the spheres, and the stars that are
moved through them, and which produce a fuller and
more intense melody than anything effected by mortal
sounds.'"
Travelling on foot very early one morning due east
from here about twenty miles, from Caleb Harriman's
tavern in Hampstead toward Haverhill, when I reached
the railroad in Plaistow, I heard at some distance a
faint music in the air like an yEolian harp, which I
immediately suspected to proceed from the cord of
the telegraph vibrating in the just awakening morning
wind, and applying my ear to one of the posts I was
convinced that it was so. It was the telegraph harp
singing its message through the country, its message
sent not by men but by gods. Perchance, like the
statue of Memnon, it resounds only in the morning
when the first rays of the sun fall on it. It was like
the first lyre or shell heard on the sea-shore, — that
vibrating cord high in the air over the shores of earth.
So have all things their higher and their lower uses.
I heard a fairer news than the journals ever print. It
MONDA Y.
175
told of things worthy to hear, and worthy of the
electric fluid to carry the news of, not of the price of
cotton and flour, but it hinted at the price of the
world itself and of things which are priceless, of
absolute truth and beauty.
Still the drum rolled on, and stirred our blood to
fresh extravagance that night. The clarion sound
and clang of corselet and buckler were heard from
many a hamlet of the soul, and many a knight was
arming for the fight behind the encamped stars. —
" Before each van
Prick forth the aery knights, and couch their spears
Till thickest legions close ; with feats of arms
From either end of Heaven the welkin burns."
Away! away! away! away!
Ye have not kept your secret well,
I will abide that other day,
Those other lands ye tell.
Has time no leisure left for these,
The acts that ye rehearse ?
Is not eternity a lease
For better deeds than verse ?
T is sweet to hear of heroes dead,
To know them still alive.
But sweeter if we earn their bread.
And in us they survive.
Our life should feed the springs of fame
With a perennial wave,
As ocean feeds the babbhng founts
Which find in it their grave.
Ye skies drop gently round my breast.
And be my corselet blue,
Ye earth receive my lance in rest.
My faithful charger you ;
176 A WEEK ON THE CONCORD RIVER.
Ye stars my spear-heads in the sky,
My arrow-tips ye are, —
I see the routed foemen fly,
My bright spears fixed are.
Give me an angel for a foe,
Fix now the place and time.
And straight to meet him I will go
Above the starry chime.
And with our clashing bucklers' clang
The heavenly spheres shall ring,
While bright the northern lights shall hang
Beside our tourneying.
And if she lose her champion true,
Tell Heaven not despair,
For I will be her champion new.
Her fame I will repair. ,
There was a high wind this night, which we after-
wards learned had been still more violent elsewhere,
and had done much injury to the cornfields far and
near ; but we only heard it sigh from time to time, as
if it had no license to shake the foundations of our
tent ; the pines murmured, the water rippled, and the
tent rocked a little, but we only laid our ears closer
to the ground, while the blast swept on to alarm other
men, and long before sunrise we were ready to pursue
our voyage as usual.
TUESDAY.
" On either side the river he
Long fields of barley and of rye,
That clothe the wold and meet the sky ;
And thro' the fields the road runs by
To many-towered Camelot."
Tennyson.
Long before daylight we ranged abroad with hatchet
in hand, in search of fuel, and made the yet slumber-
ing and dreaming wood resound with our blows.
Then with our fire we burned up a portion of the loi-
tering night, while the kettle sang its homely strain
to the morning star. We tramped about the shore,
waked all the muskrats, and scared up the bittern and
birds that were asleep upon their roosts ; we hauled
up and upset our boat, and washed it and rinsed out
the clay, talking aloud as if it were broad day, until at
length, by three o^clock, we had completed our prepa-
rations and were ready to pursue our voyage as usual ;
so, shaking the clay from our feet, we pushed into the
fog.
Though we were enveloped in mist as usual, we
trusted that there was a bright day behind it.
Ply the oars ! away ! away !
In each dew-drop of the morning
Lies the promise of a day.
Rivers from the sunrise flow,
Springing with the dewy morn ;
Voyageurs 'gainst time do row,
Idle noon nor sunset know,
Ever even with the dawn,
^77
178 A WEEK ON THE CONCORD RIVER.
Belknap, the historian of this State, says that "In the
neighborhood of fresh rivers and ponds, a whitish
fog in the morning, lying over the water, is a sure in-
dication of fair weather for that day ; and when no
fog is seen, rain is expected before night." That
which seemed to us to invest the world, was only a
narrow and shallow wreath of vapor stretched over
the channel of the Merrimack from the sea-board to
the mountains. More extensive fogs, however, have
their own limits. I once saw the day break from the
top of Saddle-back Mountain in Massachusetts, above
the clouds. As we cannot distinguish objects through
this dense fog, let me tell this story more at length.
I had come over the hills on foot and alone in se-
rene summer days, plucking the raspberries by the
wayside, and occasionally buying a loaf of bread at a
farmer's house, with a knapsack on my back, which
held a few traveller's books and a change of clothing,
and a staff in my hand. I had that morning looked
down from the Hoosack Mountain, where the road
crosses it, on the village of North Adams in the val-
ley, three miles away under my feet, showing how un-
even the earth may sometimes be, and making it seem
an accident that it should ever be level and conven-
ient for the feet of man. Putting a little rice and
sugar and a tin cup into my knapsack at this village,
I began in the afternoon to ascend the mountain,
whose summit is three thousand six hundred feet
above the level of the sea, and was seven or eight
miles distant by the path. My route lay up a long
and spacious valley called the Bellows, because the
winds rush up or down it with violence in storms,
sloping up to the very clouds betv/een the principal
TUESDAY. lyg
range and a lower mountain. There were a few farms
scattered along at different elevations, each command-
ing a fine prospect of the mountains to the north, and
a stream ran down the middle of the valley, on which
near the head there was a mill. It seemed a road for
the pilgrim to enter upon who would climb to the
gates of heaven. Now I crossed a hay-field, and now
over the brook on a slight bridge, still gradually as-
cending all the while, with a sort of awe, and filled
with indefinite expectations as to what kind of inhabi-
tants and what kind of nature I should come to at last.
It now seemed some advantage that the earth was un-
even, for one could not imagine a more noble position
for a farm-house than this vale aiTorded, further from
or nearer to its head, from a glen-like seclusion over-
looking the country at a great elevation between these
two mountain walls.
It reminded me of the homesteads of the Huguenots
on Staten Island, off the coast of New Jersey. The
hills in the interior of this island, though compara-
tively low, are penetrated in various directions by
similar sloping valleys on a humble scale, gradually
narrowing and rising to the centre, and at the head of
these the Huguenots, who were the first settlers, placed
their houses, quite within the land, in rural and shel-
tered places, in leafy recesses where the breeze played
with the poplar and the gum tree, from which, with equal
security in calm and storm, they looked out through a
widening vista, over miles of forest and stretching
salt marsh, to the Huguenots' Tree, an old elm on the
shore at whose root they had landed, and across the
spacious outer bay of New York to Sandy Hook and
the Highlands of Neversink, and thence over leagues
of the Atlantic, perchance to some faint vessel in the
l80 A WEEK ON THE CONCORD RIVER,
horizon, almost a day's sail on her voyage to that
Europe whence they had come. When walking in
the interior there, in the midst of rural scenery, where
there was as little to remind me of the ocean as amid
the New Hampshire hills, I have suddenly, through a
gap, a cleft or "clove road," as the Dutch settlers
called it, caught sight of a ship under full sail, over
a field of corn, twenty or thirty miles at sea. The
effect was similar, since I had no means of measuring
distances, to seeing a painted ship passed backwards
and forwards through a magic lantern.
But to return to the mountain. It seemed as if he
must be the most singular and heavenly-minded man
whose dwelling stood highest up the valley. The
thunder had rumbled at my heels all the way, but the
shower passed off in another direction, though if it
had not, I half believed that I should get above it.
I at length reached the last house but one, where the
path to the summit diverged to the right, while the
summit itself rose directly in front. But I determined
to follow up the valley to its head, and then find my
own route up the steep, as the shorter and more ad-
venturous way. I had thoughts of returning to this
house, which was well kept and so nobly placed,
the next day, and perhaps remaining a week there, if
I could have entertainment. Its mistress was a frank
and hospitable young woman, who stood before me in
a dishabille, busily and unconcernedly combing her
long black hair while she talked, giving her head the
necessary toss with each sweep of the comb, with
lively, sparkling eyes, and full of interest in that lower
world from which I had come, talking all the while as
familiarly as if she had known me for years, and re-
mindino; me of a cousin of mine. She at first had
TUESDAY. l8l
taken me for a student from Williamstown, for they
went by in parties, she said, either riding or walking,
almost every pleasant day, and were a pretty wild set
of fellows ; but they never went by the way I was
going. As I passed the last house, a man called out
to know what I had to sell, for seeing my knapsack,
he thought that I might be a pedler, who was taking
this unusual route over the ridge of the valley into
South Adams. He told me that it was still four or five
miles to the summit by the path which I had left,
though not more than two in a straight line from
where I was, but nobody ever went this way ; there
was no path, and I should find it as steep as the roof
of a house. But I knew that I was more used to
woods and mountains than he, and went along through
his cow-yard, while he, looking at the sun, shouted
after me that I should not get to the top that night.
I soon reached the head of the valley, but as I could
not see the summit from this point, I ascended a low
mountain on the opposite side, and took its bearing
with my compass. I at once entered the woods, and
began to climb the steep side of the mountain in a
diagonal direction, taking the bearing of a tree every
dozen rods. The ascent was by no means difficult or
unpleasant, and occupied much less time than it would
have taken to follow the path. Even country people,
I have observed, magnify the difficulty of travelling in
the forest, and especially among mountains. They
seem to lack their usual common sense in this. I
have climbed several higher mountains without guide
or path, and have found, as might be expected, that
it takes only more time and patience commonly than
to travel the smoothest highway. It is very rare that
you meet with obstacles in this world, which the
1 82 A WEEK ON THE CONCORD RIVER.
humblest man has not faculties to surmount. It is
true, we may come to a perpendicular precipice, but
we need not jump off, nor run our heads against it.
A man may jump down his own cellar stairs, or dash
his brains out against his chimney, if he is mad. So
far as my experience goes, travellers generally exag-
gerate the difficulties of the way. Like most evil, the
difficulty is imaginary; for what's the hurry? If a
person lost would conclude that after all he is not
lost, he is not beside himself, but standing in his own
old shoes on the very spot where he is, and that for
the time being he will live there ; but the places that
have known him, //;^/ are lost, — how much anxiety
and danger would vanish. I am not alone if I stand
by myself. Who knows where in space this globe is
rolling? Yet we will not give ourselves up for lost,
let it go where it will.
I made my way steadily upward in a straight line
through a dense undergrowth of mountain laurel, until
the trees began to have a scraggy and infernal look,
as if contending with frost goblins, and at length I
reached the summit, just as the sun was setting.
Several acres here had been cleared, and were covered
with rocks and stumps, and there was a rude observa-
tory in the middle which overlooked the woods. I
had one fair view of the country before the sun went
down, but I was too thirsty to waste any light in view-
ing the prospect, and set out directly to find water.
First, going down a well-beaten path for half a mile
through the low scrubby wood, till I came to where
the water stood in the tracks of the horses which had
carried travellers up, I lay down flat, and drank these
dry one after another, a pure, cold, spring-like water,
but yet I could not fill my dipper, though I contrived
TUESDAY. 183
little syphons of grass stems and ingenious aqueducts
on a small scale ; it was too slow a process. Then
remembering that I had passed a moist place near the
top on my w^ay up, I returned to find it again, and
here with sharp stones and my hands, in the twilight, I
made a well about two feet deep, which was soon filled
with pure cold water, and the birds too came and
drank at it. So I filled my dipper, and making my
way back to the observatory, collected some dry sticks
and made a fire on some flat stones, which had been
placed on the floor for that purpose, and so I soon
cooked my supper of rice, having already whittled a
wooden spoon to eat it with.
I sat up during the evening, reading by the light
of the fire the scraps of newspapers in which some
party had wrapped their luncheon ; the prices cur-
rent in New York and Boston, the advertisements,
and the singular editorials which some had seen fit
to publish, not foreseeing under what critical circum-
stances they would be read. I read these things at a
vast advantage there, and it seemed to me that the
advertisements, or what is called the business part of
a paper, were greatly the best, the most useful, natural,
and respectable. Almost all the opinions and senti-
ments expressed were so little considered, so shallow
and flimsy, that I thought the very texture of the
paper must be weaker in that part and tear the more
easily. The advertisements and the prices current
were more closely allied to nature, and were respect-
able in some measure as tide and meteorological
tables are ; but the reading matter, which I remem-
bered was most prized down below, unless it was
some humble record of science, or an extract from
some old classic, struck me as strangely whimsical,
1 84 A WEEK ON THE CONCORD RIVER.
and crude, and one-idea'd, like a school-boy's theme,
such as youths write and after burn. The opinions
were of that kind that are doomed to wear a different
aspect to-morrow, like last year's fashions ; as if
mankind were very green indeed, and would be
ashamed of themselves in a few years, when they had
outgrown this verdant period. There was, moreover,
a singular disposition to wit and humor, but rarely
the slightest real success ; and the apparent success
was a terrible satire on the attempt ; as if the Evil
Genius of man laughed the loudest at his best jokes.
The advertisements, as I have said, such as were
serious, and not of the modern quack kind, suggested
pleasing and poetic thoughts ; for commerce is really
as interesting as nature. The very names of the
commodities were poetic, and as suggestive as if they
had been inserted in a pleasing poem, — Lumber,
Cotton, Sugar, Hides, Guano, and Logwood. Some
sober, private, and original thought would have been
grateful to read there, and as much in harmony with
the circumstances as if it had been written on a
mountain top ; for it is of a fashion which never
changes, and as respectable as hides and logwood, or
any natural product. What an inestimable compan-
ion such a scrap of paper would have been, containing
some fruit of a mature life. What a rehc! What a
recipe! It seemed a divine invention, by which not
mere shining coin, but shining and current thoughts,
could be brought up and left there.
As it was cold, I collected quite a pile of wood and
lay down on a board against the side of the building,
not having any blanket to cover me, with my head to
the fire, that I might look after it, which is not the
Indian rule. But as it grew colder towards midnight,
TUESDAY. jgc
I at length encased myself completely in boards
managing even to put a board on top of me, with a
fortabiy. I was remmded, it is true, of the Irish
children who inquired what their neighbors did who
had no door to put over them in winter nights as they
had , but I am convmced that there was nothing
very strange in the inquiry. Those who have n vef
tried It can have no idea how far a door, which keeps
comfortable We are constituted a good dea? like
chickens which taken from the hen,°and put in a
basket of cotton in the chimney corner, will often
peep till they die nevertheless, but if you pi t in a book
and feel like the hen, they go to sleep directly. My
only companions were the mice, which came to pick
up the crumbs that had been left in those scraps of
paper; still as everywhere, pensioners on man, and
not unwisely improving this elevated tract for their
tu^T\ ^^^^ ""^''■'^d ~^hat ^vas for them • T
nibbled what was for me. Once or twice Z 'the
night, when I looked up, I saw a white cloud drift ng
through the windows, and filling the whole uppef
This observatory was a building of considerable
size, erected by the students of Willikmstor"e
whose buildings might be seen by daylight gleamint
far down in the valley. It would really be no small
advantage if every college were thus located aHhe
base of a mountain, as good at least as one well-
cated in th^'Tr""?- '' ^'"^ '' "^" *° be edu-
shade, <t -u °f ^""""t^'i" ^ in more classical
shades. Some will remember, no doubt, not only
1 86 A WEEK ON THE CONCORD RIVER.
that they went to the college, but that they went to
the mountain. Every visit to its summit would, as
it were, generalize the particular information gained
below, and subject it to more catholic tests.
I was up early and perched upon the top of this
tower to see the daybreak, for some time reading the
names that had been engraved there before I could
distinguish more distant objects. An "untamable
fly " buzzed at my elbow with the same nonchalance
as on a molasses hogshead at the end of Long Wharf.
Even there I must attend to his stale humdrum.
But now I come to the pith of this long digression. —
As the light increased I discovered around me an
ocean of mist, which reached up by chance exactly to
the base of the tower, and shut out every vestige of the
earth, while I was left floating on this fragment of the
wreck of a world, on my carved plank in cloudland ; a
situation which required no aid from the imagination
to render it impressive. As the light in the east
steadily increased, it revealed to me more clearly the
new world into which I had risen in the night, the
new terra-firma perchance of my future life. There
was not a crevice left through which the trivial places
we name Massachusetts, or Vermont, or New York,
could be seen, while I still inhaled the clear atmos-
phere of a July morning, — if it were July there. All
around beneath me was spread for a hundred miles
on every side, as far as the eye could reach, an undu-
lating country of clouds, answering in the varied
swell of its surface to the terrestrial world it veiled.
It was such a country as we might see in dreams,
with all the delights of paradise. There were immense
snowy pastures apparently smooth-shaven and firm,
and shady vales between the vaporous mountains,
TUESDAY. 187
and far in the horizon I could see where some luxuri-
ous misty timber jutted into the prairie, and trace the
windings of a water course, some unimagined Ama-
zon or Orinoko, by the misty trees on its brink. As
there was wanting the symbol, so there was not the
substance of impurity, no spot nor stain. It was a
favor for which to be forever silent to be shown this
vision. The earth beneath had become such a flitting
thing of lights and shadows as the clouds had been
before. It was not merely veiled to me, but it had
passed away like the phantom of a shadow, o-zctSs ovap,
and this new platform was gained. As I had climbed
above storm and cloud, so by successive days' journeys
I might reach the region of eternal day beyond the
tapering shadow of the earth ; aye,
" Heaven itself shall slide
And roll away, like melting stars that glide
Along their oily threads."
But when its own sun began to rise on this pure
world, I found myself a dweller in the dazzling halls
of Aurora, into which poets have had but a partial
glance over the eastern hills, — drifting amid the
safifron-colored clouds, and playing with the rosy
fingers of the Dawn, in the very path of the Sun\s
chariot, and sprinkled with its dewy dust, enjoying
the benignant smile, and near at hand the far-darting
glances of the god. The inhabitants of earth behold
commonly but the dark and shadowy under-side of
heaven's pavement ; it is only when seen at a favora-
ble angle in the horizon, morning or evening, that
some faint streaks of the rich lining of the clouds are
revealed. But my muse would fail to convey an im-
pression of the gorgeous tapestry by which I was sur-
1 88 A WEEK ON THE CONCORD RIVER.
rounded, such as men see faintly reflected afar oflf in
the chambers of the east. Here, as on earth, I saw
the gracious god
" Flatter the mountain tops with sovereign eye, . . .
Gilding pale streams with heavenly alchemy."
But never here did "Heaven's sun" stain himself.
But alas, owing as I think to some unworthiness in
myself, my private sun did stain himself, and
" Anon permit the basest clouds to ride
With ugly wrack on his celestial face," —
for before the god had reached the zenith the heavenly
pavement rose and embraced my wavering virtue, or
rather I sank down again into that " forlorn world,"
from which the celestial Sun had hid his visage. —
" How may a worm, that crawls along the dust,
Clamber the azure mountains, thrown so high,
And fetch from thence thy fair idea just.
That in those sunny courts doth hidden lie,
Cloth'd with such light, as blinds the angel's eye ?
How may weak mortal ever hope to file
His unsmooth tongue, and his deprostrate style ?
O, raise thou from his corse thy now entombed exile ! "
In the preceding evening I had seen the summits
of new and yet higher mountains, the Catskills, by
which I might hope to climb to heaven again, and
had set my compass for a fair lake in the south-west,
which lay in my way, for which I now steered, descend-
ing the mountain by my own route, on the side oppo-
site to that by which I had ascended, and soon found
myself in the region of cloud and drizzling rain, and
the inhabitants affirmed that it had been a cloudy and
drizzling day wholly.
TUESDA V. 1 89
But now we must make haste back before the fog
disperses to the blithe Merrimack water. —
Since that first " away ! away ! "
Many a lengthy reach we 've rowed,
Still the sparrow on the spray
Hastes to usher in the day
With her simple stanza'd ode.
We passed a canal boat before sunrise, groping its
way to the seaboard, and though we could not see it
on account of the fog, the few dull, thumping, sterto-
rous sounds which we heard, impressed us with a sense
of weight and irresistible motion. One little rill of
commerce already awake on this distant New Hamp-
shire river. The fog, as it required more skill in the
steering, enhanced the interest of our early voyage,
and made the river seem indefinitely broad. A slight
mist, through which objects are faintly visible, has
the effect of expanding even ordinary streams, by a
singular mirage, into arms of the sea or inland lakes.
In the present instance it was even fragrant and
invigorating, and we enjoyed it as a sort of earlier
sunshine, or dewy and embryo light.
Low-anchored cloud,
Newfoundland air,
Fountain-head and source of rivers,
Dew cloth, dream drapery.
And napkin spread by fays ;
Drifting meadow of the air,
Where bloom the daisied banks and violets,
And in whose fenny labyrinth
The bittern booms and heron wades ;
Spirit of lakes and seas and rivers.
Bear only perfumes and the scent
Of healing herbs to just men's fields.
1 90 A WEEK ON THE CONCORD RIVER.
The same pleasant and observant historian whom
we quoted above says, that "In the mountainous parts
of the country, the ascent of vapors, and their forma-
tion into clouds, is a curious and entertaining object.
The vapors are seen rising in small columns like
smoke from many chimneys. When risen to a cer-
tain height, they spread, meet, condense, and are
attracted to the mountains, where they either distil
in gentle dews, and replenish the springs, or descend
in showers, accompanied with thunder. After short
intermissions, the process is repeated many times in
the course of a summer day, afifording to travellers a
lively illustration of what is observed in the book
of Job, ' They are wet with the showers of the
mountains.' "
Fogs and clouds which conceal the overshadowing
mountains lend the breadth of the plains to mountain
vales. Even a small featured country acquires some
grandeur in stormy weather, when clouds are seen
drifting between the beholder and the neighboring
hills. When, in travelling toward Haverhill through
Hampstead in this State, on the height of land be-
tween the Merrimack and the Piscataqua or the sea,
you commence the descent eastward, the view toward
the coast is so distant and unexpected, though the
sea is invisible, that you at first suppose the unob-
structed atmosphere to be a fog in the lowlands con-
cealing hills of corresponding elevation to that you
are upon ; but it is the mist of prejudice alone, which
the winds will not disperse. The most stupendous
scenery ceases to be sublime when it becomes distinct,
or in other words limited, and the imagination is no
longer encouraged to exaggerate it. The actual height
and breadth of a mountain or a water-fall are always
TUESDAY. 191
ridiculously small ; they are the imagined only that
content us. Nature is not made after such a fashion
as we would have her. We piously exaggerate her
wonders as the scenery around our home.
Such was the heaviness of the dews along this
river, that we were generally obliged to leave our
tent spread over the bows of the boat till the sun
had dried it, to avoid mildew. We passed the mouth
of Penichook Brook, a wild salmon stream, in the
fog without seeing it. At length the sun's rays strug-
gled through the mist and showed us the pines on
shore dripping with dew, and springs trickling from
the moist banks, —
"And now the taller sons, whom Titan warms,
Of unshorn mountains blown with easy winds,
Dandle the morning's childhood in their arms,
And, if they chanced to slip the prouder pines,
The under corylets did catch their shines.
To gild their leaves."
We rowed for some hours between glistening banks
before the sun had dried the grass and leaves, or the
day had established its character. Its serenity at
last seemed the more profound and secure for the
denseness of the morning's fog. The river became
swifter, and the scenery more pleasing than before.
The banks were steep and clayey for the most part,
and trickling with water, and where a spring oozed
out a few feet above the river, the boatmen had cut
a trough out of a slab with their axes, and placed
it so as to receive the water and fill their jugs con-
veniently. Sometimes this purer and cooler water,
bursting out from under a pine or a rock, was col-
lected into a basin close to the edge of, and level
with the river, a fountain-head of the Merrimack.
192 A WEEK ON THE CONCORD RIVER.
So near along life's stream are the fountains of inno-
cence and youth making fertile its sandy margin ; and
the voyageur will do well to replenish his vessels often
at these uncontaminated sources. Some youthful
spring, perchance, still empties with tinkling music
into the oldest river, even when it is falling into
the sea, and we imagine that its music is distin-
guished by the river gods from the general lapse of
the stream, and falls sweeter on their ears in propor-
tion as it is nearer to the ocean. As the evapora-
tions of the river feed thus these unsuspected springs
which filter through its banks, so, perchance, our
aspirations fall back again in springs on the margin
of life's stream to refresh and purify it. The yellow
and tepid river may float his scow, and cheer his eye
with its reflections and its ripples, but the boat-
man quenches his thirst at this small rill alone. It
is this purer and cooler element that chiefly sustains
his life. The race will long survive that is thus
discreet.
Our course this morning lay between the territories
of Merrimack, on the west, and Litchfield, once called
Brenton's Farm, on the east, which townships were
anciently the Indian Naticook. Brenton was a fur
trader among the Indians, and these lands were
granted to him in 1656. The latter township con-
tains about five hundred inhabitants, of whom, how-
ever, we saw none, and but few of their dwellings.
Being on the river, whose banks are always high and
generally conceal the few houses, the country ap-
peared much more wild and primitive than to the
traveller on the neighboring roads. The river is by
far the most attractive highway, and those boatmen
who have spent twenty or twenty-five years on it,
TUESDAY. 193
must have had a much fairer, more wild and memo-
rable experience than the dusty and jarring one of the
teamster, who has driven, during the same time, on
the roads which run parallel with the stream. As
one ascends the Merrimack, he rarely sees a village,
but for the most part, alternate wood and pasture
lands, and sometimes a field of corn or potatoes, of
rye or oats or English grass, with a few straggling
apple trees, and, at still longer intervals, a farmer's
house. The soil, excepting the best of the interval,
is commonly as light and sandy as a patriot could
desire. Sometimes this forenoon the country ap-
peared in its primitive state, and as if the Indian still
inhabited it ; and again, as if many free new settlers
occupied it, their slight fences straggling down to the
water's edge, and the barking of dogs, and even the
prattle of children, were heard, and smoke was seen
to go up from some hearthstone, and the banks were
divided into patches of pasture, mowing, tillage, and
woodland. But when the river spread out broader,
with an uninhabited islet, or a long low sandy shore
which ran on single and devious, not answering to
its opposite, but far off as if it were seashore or single
coast, and the land no longer nursed the river in
its bosom, but they conversed as equals, the rustling
leaves with rippling waves, and few fences were
seen, but high oak woods on one side, and large
herds of cattle, and all tracks seemed a point to one
centre, behind some statelier grove, — we imagined
that the river flowed through an extensive manor, and
that the few inhabitants were retainers to a lord, and
a feudal state of things prevailed.
When there was a suitable reach, we caught sight
of the Goffstown Mountain, the Indian Uncannunuc,
194 A WEEK ON THE CONCORD RIVER.
rising before us on the west side. It was a calm and
beautiful day, with only a slight zephyr to ripple the
surface of the water, and rustle the woods on shore,
and just warmth enough to prove the kindly dispo-
sition of Nature to her children. With buoyant
spirits and vigorous impulses we tossed our boat
rapidly along into the very middle of this forenoon.
The fish-hawk sailed and screamed overhead. The
chipping, or striped squirrel, schirtis striattis, sat
upon the end of some Virginia fence or rider reach-
ing over the stream, twirling a green nut with one
paw, as in a lathe, while the other held it fast against
its incisors as chisels. Like an independent russet
leaf, with a will of its own, rustling whither it could ;
now under the fence, now over it, now peeping
at the voyageurs through a crack with only its tail
visible, now at its lunch deep in the toothsome kernel,
and now a rod off playing at hide-and-seek, with
the nut stowed away in its chops, where were half
a dozen more beside, extending its cheeks to a
ludicrous breadth. As if it were devising through
what safe valve of frisk or somerset to let its super-
fluous life escape ; the stream passing harmlessly off,
even while it sits, in constant electric flashes through
its tail ; and now with a chuckling squeak it dives
into the root of a hazel, and we see no more of it.
Or the larger red squirrel or chickaree, sometimes
called the Hudson Bay squirrel, striurus Hudso7tins,
gave warning of our approach by that peculiar alarum
of his, like the winding up of some strong clock,
in the top of a pine tree, and dodged behind its stem,
or leaped from tree to tree, with such caution and
adroitness as if much depended on the fidelity of his
scout, running along the white pine boughs some-
TUESDAY. 195
times twenty rods by our side, with such speed, and
hy such unerring routes as if it were some well-worn
familiar path to him ; and presently, when we have
passed, he returns to his work of cutting oif the pine
cones, and letting them fall to the ground.
We passed CromwelPs Falls, the first we met with
on this river, this forenoon, by means of locks, with-
out using our wheels. These falls are the Nesen-
keag of the Indians. Great Nesenkeag Stream comes
in on the right just above, and Little Nesenkeag
some distance below, both in Litchfield. We read
in the gazetteer, under the head of Merrimack, that
" The first house in this town was erected on the
margin of the river [soon after 1665] for a house of
traffic with the Indians. For some time one Crom-
well carried on a lucrative trade with them, weigh-
ing their furs with his foot, till, enraged at his
supposed or real deception, they formed the resolu-
tion to murder him. This intention being communi-
cated to Cromwell, he buried his wealth and made
his escape. Within a few hours after his flight, a
party of the Penacook tribe arrived, and not find-
ing the object of their resentment, burnt his habi-
tation." Upon the top of the high bank here, close
to the river, was still to be seen his cellar, now over-
grown with trees. It was a convenient spot for such
a traffic, at the foot of the first falls above the settle-
ments, and commanding a pleasant view up the river,
where he could see the Indians coming down with
their furs. The lock-man told us that his shovel and
tongs had been plowed up here, and also a stone
with his name on it. But we will not vouch for
the truth of this story. These were the traces of
the white trader. On the opposite bank, where it
196 A WEEK ON THE CONCORD RIVER.
jutted over the stream cape-wise, we picked up four
arrow-heads and a small Indian tool made of stone,
as soon as we had climbed it, where plainly there
had once stood a wigwam of the Indians with whom
Cromwell traded, and who fished and hunted here
before he came.
As usual the gossips have not been silent respect-
ing Cromwell's buried wealth, and it is said that
some years ago a farmer's plow, not far from here,
slid over a flat stone which emitted a hollow sound,
and on its being raised a sum of money was found.
The lock-man told us another similar story about a
farmer in a neighboring town, who had been a poor
man, but who suddenly bought a good farm, and w^as
well to do in the world ; and, when he was questioned,
did not give a satisfactory account of the matter ; —
how few alas, could! This caused his hired man to
remember, that one day as they were plowing together
the plow struck something, and his employer going
back to look, concluded not to go round again, say-
ing that the sky looked rather louring, and so put up
his team. The like urgency has caused many things
to be remembered which never transpired. The truth
is, there is money buried everywhere, and you have
only to go work to find it.
Not far from these falls stands an oak tree on the
interval, about a quarter of a mile from the river, on
the farm of a Mr. Lund, which was pointed out to
us as the spot where French, the leader of the party
which went in pursuit of the Indians from Dunstable,
was killed. Fai-well dodged them in the thick woods
near. It did not look as if men had ever had to run
for their lives on this now open and peaceful interval.
Here too was another extensive desert by the side
TUESDAY. 197
of the road in Litchfield, visible from the bank of the
river. The sand was blown off in some places to the
depth of ten or twelve feet, leaving small grotesque
hillocks of that height where there was a clump of
bushes firmly rooted. Thirty or forty years ago, as
we were told, it was a sheep pasture, but the sheep
being worried by the fleas, began to paw the ground,
till they broke the sod, and so the sand began to
blow, till now it had extended over forty or fifty
acres. This evil might easily have been remedied
at first, by spreading birches with their leaves on
over the sand, and fastening them down with stakes,
to break the wind. The flies bit the sheep, and the
sheep bit the ground, and the sore had spread to this
extent. It is astonishing what a great sore a little
scratch breedeth. Who knows but Sahara, where
caravans and cities are buried, began with the bite
of an African flea. This poor globe, how it must
itch in many places! Will no god be kind enough
to spread a salve of birches over its sores? — Here
too we noticed where the Indians had gathered a
heap of stones, perhaps for their council fire, which
by their weight having prevented the sand under
them from blowing away, were left on the summit of
a mound. They told us that arrow-heads, and also
bullets of lead and iron, had been found here. We
noticed seyeral other sandy tracts in our voyage ; and
the course of the Merrimack can be traced from the
nearest mountain by its yellow sandbanks, though the
river itself is for the most part invisible. Lawsuits,
as we hear, have in some cases grown out of these
causes. Railroads have been made through certain
irritable districts, breaking their sod, and so have set
the sand to blowing, till it has converted fertile farms
igS A WEEK ON THE CONCORD RIVER.
into deserts, and the Company has had to pay the
damages.
This sand seemed to us the connecting Hnk between
land and water. It was a kind of water on which you
could walk, and you could see the ripple marks on its
surface, produced by the winds, precisely like those
at the bottom of a brook or lake. We had read
that Mussulmans are permitted by the Koran to per-
form their ablutions in sand when they cannot get
water, a necessary indulgence in Arabia, and we now
understood the propriety of this provision.
Plum Island, at the mouth of this river, to whose
formation, perhaps, these very banks have sent their
contribution, is a similar desert of drifting sand, of
various colors, blown into graceful curves by the
wind. It is a mere sand-bar exposed, stretching
nine miles parallel to the coast, and, exclusive of the
marsh on the inside, rarely more than half a mile
wide. There are but half a dozen houses on it, and
it is almost without a tree, or a sod, or any green
thing with which a countryman is familiar. The
thin vegetation stands half buried in sand, as in drift-
ing snow. The only shrub, the beach plum, which
gives the island its name, grows but a few feet high ;
but this is so abundant that parties of a hundred at
once come from the main land and down the Merri-
mack in September, and pitch their tents, and gather
the plums, which are good to eat raw and to preserve.
The graceful and delicate beach pea too grows abun-
dantly amid the sand ; and several strange moss-like
and succulent plants. The island for its whole length
is scolloped into low hills, not more than twenty feet
high, by the v/ind, and excepting a faint trail on the
TUESDAY. 199
edge of the marsh, is as trackless as Sahara. There
are dreary bluffs of sand and valleys plowed by the
wind, where you might expect to discover the bones
of a caravan. Schooners come from Boston to load
with the sand for masons' uses, and in a few hours
the wind obliterates all traces of their work. Yet
you have only to dig a foot or two anywhere to come
to fresh water ; and you are surprised to learn that
woodchucks abound here, and foxes are found, though
you see not where they can burrow or hide themselves.
I have walked down the whole length of its broad
beach at low tide, at which time alone you can find
a firm ground to walk on, and probably Massachusetts
does not furnish a more grand and dreary walk. On
the sea side there are only a distant sail and a few
coots to break the grand monotony. A solitary stake
stuck up, or a sharper sand-hill than usual, is remarka-
ble as a land-mark for miles ; while for music you hear
only the ceaseless sound of the surf, and the dreary
peep of the beach birds.
There were several canal boats at Cromwell's Falls,
passing through the locks, for which we waited. In
the forward part of one stood a brawny New Hamp-
shire man, leaning on his pole, bareheaded and in
shirt and trousers only, a rude Apollo of a man,
coming down from that " vast uplandish country " to
the main ; of nameless age, with flaxen hair, and vig-
orous, weather-bleached countenance, in whose wrin-
kles the sun still lodged, as little touched by the heats
and frosts and withering cares of life, as a mountain
maple ; an undressed, unkempt, uncivil man, with
whom we parleyed a while, and parted not without a
sincere interest in one another. His humanity was
200 A WEEK ON THE CONCORD RIVER.
genuine and instinctive, and his mdeness only a man-
ner. He inquired, just as we were passing out of ear-
shot, if we had killed anything, and we shouted after
him that we had shot a buoy, and could see him for a
long while scratching his head in vain, to know if he
had heard aright.
There is reason in the distinction of civil and un-
civil. The manners are sometimes so rough a rind,
that we doubt whether they cover any core or sap-
wood at all. We sometimes meet uncivil men, chil-
dren of Amazons, who dwell by mountain paths, and
are said to be inhospitable to strangers ; whose salu-
tation is as rude as the grasp of their brawny hands,
and who deal with men as unceremoniously as they
are wont to deal with the elements. They need only
to extend their clearings, and let in more sunlight, to
seek out the southern slopes of the hills, from which
they may look down on the civil plain or ocean, and
temper their diet duly with the cereal fruits, consum-
ing less wild meat and acorns, to become like the
inhabitants of cities. A true politeness does not re-
sult from any hasty and artificial polishing, it is true,
but grows naturally in characters of the right grain
and quality, through a long fronting of men and
events, and rubbing on good and bad fortune. Per-
haps I can tell a tale to the purpose while the lock is
filling, — for our voyage this forenoon furnishes but
few incidents of importance.
Early one summer morning I had left the shores of
the Connecticut, and for the livelong day travelled up
the bank of a river, which came in from the west;
now looking down on the stream, foaming and rip-
pling through the forest a mile off, from the hills over
TUESDAY. 201
which the road led, and now sitting on its rocky brink
and dipping my feet in its rapids, or bathing adventur-
ously in mid-channel. The hills grew more and more
frequent, and gradually swelled into mountains as I
advanced, hemming in the course of the river, so that
at last I could not see where it came from, and was at
liberty to imagine the most wonderful meanderings
and descents. At noon I slept on the grass in the
shade of a maple, where the river had found a broader
channel than usual, and was spread out shallow, with
frequent sand-bars exposed. In the names of the
towns I recognized some which I had long ago read
on teamsters' wagons, that had come from far up
country, quiet, uplandish towns, of mountainous fame.
I walked along musing, and enchanted by rows of
sugar-maples, through the small and uninquisitive
villages, and sometimes was pleased with the sight
of a boat drawn up on a sand-bar, where there ap-
peared no inhabitants to use it. It seemed, however,
as essential to the river as a fish, and to lend a certain
dignity to it. It was like the trout of mountain streams
to the fishes of the sea, or like the young of the land
crab born far in the interior, who have never yet heard
the sound of the ocean's surf. The hills approached
nearer and nearer to the stream, until at last they
closed behind me, and I found myself, just before
night-fall, in a romantic and retired valley, about half
a mile in length, and barely wide enough for the
stream at its bottom. I thought that there could be
no finer site for a cottage among mountains. You
could anywhere run across the stream on the rocks,
and its constant murmuring would quiet the passions
of mankind forever. Suddenly the road, which seemed
aiming for the mountain side, turned short to the left,
202 A WEEK ON THE CONCORD RIVER.
and another valley opened, concealing the former, and
of the same character with it. It was the most re-
markable and pleasing scenery I had ever seen. I
found here a few mild and hospitable inhabitants,
who, as the day was not quite spent, and I was anx-
ious to improve the light, directed me four or five
miles further on my way to the dwelling of a man
whose name was Rice, who occupied the last and
highest of the valleys that lay in my path, and who,
they said, was a rather rude and uncivil man. But,
" What is a foreign country to those who have science ?
Who is a stranger to those who have the habit of
speaking kindly? "
At length, as the sun was setting behind the moun-
tains in a still darker and more solitary vale, I reached
the dwelling of this man. Except for the narrowness
of the plain, and that the stones were solid granite, it
was the counterpart of that retreat to which Belphoebe
bore the wounded Timias ; —
" in a pleasant glade,
With mountains round about environed,
And mighty woods, which did the valley shade,
And like a stately theatre it made,
Spreading itself into a spacious plain ;
And in the midst a little river played
Amongst the pumy stones, which seemed to plain,
With gentle murmur, that his course they did restrain."
I observed, as I drew near, that he was not so rude
as I had anticipated, for he kept many cattle, and dogs
to watch them, and I saw where he had made maple
sugar on the sides of the mountains, and above all
distinguished the voices of children mingling with
the murmur of the torrent before the door. As I
passed his stable I met one whom I supposed to be a
TUESDAY. 203
hired man, attending to his cattle, and inquired if
they entertained travellers at that house. "Some-
times we do," he answered, gruffly, and immediately
went to the farthest stall from me, and I perceived
that it was Rice himself whom I had addressed. But
pardoning this incivility to the wildness of the scenery,
I bent my steps to the house. There was no sign-post
before it, nor any of the usual invitations to the trav-
eller, though I saw by the road that many went and
came there, but the owner's name only was fastened
to the outside, a sort of implied and sullen invitation,
as I thought. I passed from room to room without
meeting any one, till I came to what seemed the
guests' apartment, which was neat, and even had an
air of refinement about it, and I was glad to find a
map against the wall which would direct me on my
journey on the morrow. At length I heard a step in
a distant apartment, which was the first I had entered,
and went to see if the landlord had come in ; but it
proved to be only a child, one of those whose voices
I had heard, probably his son, and between him and
me stood in the door-way a large watch-dog, which
growled at me, and looked as if he would presently
spring, but the boy did not speak to him ; and when
I asked for a glass of water, he briefly said, "It runs
in the corner." So I took a mug from the counter
and went out of doors, and searched round the corner
of the house, but could find neither well nor spring,
nor any water but the stream which ran all along the
front. I came back, therefore, and setting down the
mug, asked the child if the stream was good to drink ;
whereupon he seized the mug and going to the corner
of the room, where a cool spring which issued from
the mountain behind trickled through a pipe into the
204 A WEEK ON THE CONCORD RIVER.
apartment, filled it, and drank, and gave it to me
empty again, and calling to the dog, rushed out of
doors. Ere long some of the hired men made their
appearance, and drank at the spring, and lazily washed
themselves and combed their hair in silence, and some
sat down as if weary, and fell asleep in their seats.
But all the while I saw no women, though I some-
times heard a bustle in that part of the house from
which the spring came.
At length Rice himself came in, for it was now
dark, with an ox whip in his hand, breathing hard,
and he too soon settled down into his seat not far
from me, as if now that his day's work was done he
had no further to travel, but only to digest his supper
at his leisure. When I asked him if he could give
me a bed, he said there was one ready, in such a tone
as imphed that I ought to have known it, and the less
said about that the better. So far so good. And
yet he continued to look at me as if he would fain
have me say something further like a traveller. I
remarked, that it was a wild and rugged country he
inhabited, and worth coming many miles to see.
'^ Not so very rough neither," said he, and appealed
to his men to bear witness to the breadth and
smoothness of his fields, which consisted in all of
one small interval, and to the size of his crops ; " and
if we have some hills,'' added he, " there 's no better
pasturage anywhere." I then asked if this place was
the one I had heard of, calling it by a name I had
seen on the map, or if it was a certain other ; and he
answered, gruffly, that it was neither the one nor the
other; that he had settled it and cultivated it, and
made it what it was, and I could know nothing about
it. Observing some guns and other implements of
TUESDA Y. 205
hunting hanging on brackets around the room, and
his hounds now sleeping on the floor, I took occasion
to change the discourse, and inquired if there was
much game in that country, and he answered this
question more graciously, having some glimmering of
my drift ; but when I inquired if there were any bears,
he answered impatiently, that he was no more in
danger of losing his sheep than his neighbors, he had
tamed and civilized that region. After a pause, think-
ing of my journey on the morrow, and the few hours
of daylight in that hollow and mountainous country,
which would require me to be on my way betimes, I
remarked, that the day must be shorter by an hour
there than on the neighboring plains ; at which he
gruffly asked what I knew about it, and affirmed that
he had as much daylight as his neighbors ; he ventured
to say, the days were longer there than where I lived,
as I should find if I stayed ; that in some way, I could
not be expected to understand how, the sun came
over the mountains half an hour earlier, and stayed
half an hour later there than on the neighboring
plains. — And more of like sort he said. He was,
indeed, as rude as a fabled satyr. But I suffered him
to pass for what he was, for why should I quarrel
with nature? and was even pleased at the discovery
of such a singular natural phenomenon. I dealt with
him as if to me all manners were indifferent, and he
had a sweet wild way with him. I would not question
Nature, and I would rather have him as he was, than
as I would have him. For I had come up here not
for sympathy, or kindness, or society, but for novelty
and adventure, and to see what Nature had produced
here. I therefore did not repel his rudeness, but
quite innocently welcomed it all, and knew how to
206 A WEEK ON THE CONCORD RIVER.
appreciate it, as if I were reading in an old drama a
part well sustained. He was indeed a coarse and
sensual man, and, as I have said, uncivil, but he had
his just quarrel with nature and mankind, I have no
doubt, only he had no artificial covering to his ill
humors. He was earthy enough, but yet there was
good soil in him, and even a long-suffering Saxon
probity at bottom. If you could represent the case
to him, he would not let the race die out in him, like a
red Indian.
At length I told him that he was a fortunate man,
and I trusted that he was grateful for so much light,
and rising, said I would take a lamp, and that I would
pay him then for my lodging, for I expected to re-
commence my journey, even as early as the sun rose
in his country ; but he answered in haste, and this
time civilly, that I should not fail to find some of his
household stirring, however early, for they were no
sluggards, and I could take my breakfast with them
before I started if I chose ; and as he lighted the lamp
I detected a gleam of true hospitality and ancient
civility, a beam of pure and even gentle humanity
from his bleared and moist eyes. It was a look more
intimate with me, and more explanatory, than any
words of his could have been if he had tried to his
dying day. It was more significant than any Rice of
those parts could even comprehend, and long antici-
pated this man's culture, — a glance of his pure genius,
which did not much enlighten him, but did impress
and rule him for the moment, and faintly constrain
his voice and manner. He cheerfully led the way to
my apartment, stepping over the limbs of his men
who were asleep on the floor in an intervening cham-
ber, and showed me a clean and comfortable bed.
TUESDA Y. 207
For many pleasant hours, after the household was
asleep, I sat at the open window, for it was a sultry
night, and heard the little river
" Amongst the pumy stones, which seemed to plain,
With gentle murmur, that his course they did restrain."
But I arose as usual by starlight the next morning,
before my host, or his men, or even his dogs, were
awake ; and having left a ninepence on the counter,
was already half way over the mountain with the sun,
before they had broken their fast.
Before I had left the country of my host, while the
first rays of the sun slanted over the mountains, as I
stopped by the wayside to gather some raspberries, a
very old man, not far from a hundred, came along
with a milking pail in his hand, and turning aside
began to pluck the berries near me ; —
" his reverend locks
In comelye curies did wave ;
And on his aged temples grew
The blossoms of the grave." —
But when I inquired the way, he answered in a low,
rough voice, without looking up or seeming to regard
my presence, which I imputed to his years ; and pres-
ently, muttering to himself, he proceeded to collect
his cows in a neighboring pasture ; and when he had
again returned near to the vv^ayside, he suddenly
stopped, while his cows went on before, and, un-
covering his head, prayed aloud in the cool morning
air, as if he had forgotten this exercise before, for
his daily bread, and also that He who letteth his rain
fall on the just and on the unjust, and without whom
not a sparrow falleth to the ground, would not neglect
208 A WEEK ON THE CONCORD RIVER.
the stranger (meaning me), and with even more direct
and personal applications, though mainly according
to the long established formula common to lowlanders
and the inhabitants of mountains. When he had done
praying, I made bold to ask him if he had any cheese
in his hut which he would sell me, but he answered
without looking up, and in the same low and repul-
sive voice as before, that they did not make any, and
went to milking. It is written, "The stranger who
turneth away from a house with disappointed hopes,
leaveth there his own offences, and departeth, taking
with him all the good actions of the owner."
Being now fairly in the stream of this week's com-
merce, we began to meet with boats more frequently,
and hailed them from time to time with the freedom
of sailors. The boatmen appeared to lead an easy
and contented life, and we thought that we should pre-
fer their employment ourselves to many professions
which are much more sought after. They suggested
how few circumstances are necessary to the well-being
and serenity of man, how indifferent all employments
are, and that any may seem noble and poetic to the
eyes of men, if pursued with sufificient buoyancy and
freedom. With liberty and pleasant weather, the
simplest occupation, any unquestioned country mode
of life which detains us in the open air, is alluring.
The man who picks peas steadily for a living is more
than respectable, he is even envied by his shop-worn
neighbors. We are as happy as the birds when our
Good Genius permits us to pursue any outdoor work
without a sense of dissipation. Our pen-knife glitters
in the sun ; our voice is echoed by yonder wood ; if
an oar drops, we are fain to let it drop again.
TUESDA Y. 209
The canal boat is of very simple construction,
requiring but little ship timber, and, as we were told,
costs about two hundred dollars. They are managed
by two men. In ascending the stream they use poles
fourteen or fifteen feet long, shod with iron, walking
about one third the length of the boat from the for-
ward end. Going down, they commonly keep in the
middle of the stream, using an oar at each end ; or
if the wind is favorable they raise their broad sail,
and have only to steer. They commonly carry down
bricks or wood, — fifteen or sixteen thousand bricks,
and as many cords of wood, at a time, — and bring
back stores for the country, consuming two or three
days each way between Concord and Charlestown.
They sometimes pile the wood so as to leave a shelter
in one part where they may retire from the rain. One
can hardly imagine a more healthful employment, or
one more favorable to contem.plation and the observa-
tion of nature. Unlike the mariner, they have the
constantly varying panorama of the shore to relieve
the monotony of their labor, and it seemed to us that
as they thus glided noiselessly from town to town,
with all their furniture about them, for their very
homestead is a movable, they could comment on the
character of the inhabitants with greater advantage
and security to themselves than the traveller in a
coach, who would be unable to indulge in such
broadsides of wit and humor in so small a vessel, for
fear of the recoil. They are not subject to great
exposure, like the lumberers of Maine, in any weather,
but inhale the healthfullest breezes, being slightly
encumbered with clothing, frequently with the head
and feet bare. When we met them at noon as they
were leisurely descending the stream, their busy com-
2IO A WEEK ON THE CONCORD RIVER.
merce did not look like toil, but rather like some
ancient oriental game still played on a large scale, as
the game of chess, for instance, handed down to this
generation. From morning till night, unless the wind
is so fair that his single sail will suffice without other
labor than steering, the boatman walks backwards and
forwards on the side of his boat, nov/ stooping with
his shoulder to the pole, then drawing it back slowly
to set it again, meanwhile moving steadily forward
through an endless valley and an ever-changing scen-
ery, now distinguishing his course for a mile or two,
and now shut in by a sudden turn of the river in a
small woodland lake. All the phenomena which sur-
round him are simple and grand, and there is some-
thing impressive, even majestic, in the very motion
he causes, which will naturally be communicated to
his own character, and he feels the slow irresistible
movement under him with pride, as if it were his own
energy.
The news spread like wild fire among us youths,
when formerly, once in a year or two, one of these
boats came up the Concord River, and was seen steal-
ing mysteriously through the meadows and past the
village. It came and departed as silently as a cloud,
without noise or dust, and was witnessed by few.
One summer day this huge traveller might be seen
moored at some meadow's wharf, and another sum-
mer day it was not there. Where precisely it came
from, or who these men were who knew the rocks and
soundings better than we who bathed there, we could
never tell. We knew some river's bay only, but they
took rivers from end to end. They were a sort of
fabulous river-men to us. It was inconceivable by
what sort of mediation any mere landsman could
TUESDA V. 211
hold communication with them. Would they heave
to to gratify his wishes ? No, it was favor enough to
know faintly of their destination, or the time of their
possible return. I have seen them in the summer,
when the stream ran low, mowing the weeds in mid-
channel, and with hayers' jests cutting broad swathes
in three feet of water, that they might make a passage
for their scow, while the grass in long windrows was
carried down the stream, undried by the rarest hay
weather. We used to admire unweariedly how their
vessel would float, like a huge chip, sustaining so
many casks of lime, and thousands of bricks, and such
heaps of iron ore, with wheel-barrows aboard, — and
that when we stepped on it, it did not yield to the
pressure of our feet. It gave us confidence in the
prevalence of the law of buoyancy, and we imagined
to what infinite uses it might be put. The men
appeared to lead a kind of life on it, and it was whis-
pered that they slept aboard. Some affirmed that it
carried sail, and that such winds blew here as filled
the sails of vessels on the ocean ; which again others
much doubted. They had been seen to sail across
our Fair-Haven bay by lucky fishers who were out,
but unfortunately others were not there to see. We
might then say that our river was navigable, — why
not ? In after years I read in print, with no little
satisfaction, that it was thought by some that with a
little expense in removing rocks and deepening the
channel, " there might be a profitable inland naviga-
tion." /then lived somewhere to tell of.
Such is Commerce, which shakes the cocoa-nut and
bread-fruit tree in the remotest isle, and sooner or
later dawns on the duskiest and most simple-minded
savage. If we may be pardoned the digression, —
212 A WEEK ON THE CONCORD RIVER.
who can help being affected at the thought of the very
fine and slight, but positive relation, in which the
savage inhabitants of some remote isle stand to the
mysterious white mariner, the child of the sun? — As
if wc were to have dealings with an animal higher in
the scale of being than ourselves. It is a barely rec-
ognized fact to the natives that he exists, and has his
home far away somewhere, and is glad to buy their
fresh fruits with his superfluous commodities. Under
the same catholic sun glances his white ship over
Pacific waves into their smooth bays, and the poor
savage's paddle gleams in the air.
Man's little acts are grand,
Beheld from land to land,
There as they lie in time,
Within their native clime.
Ships with the noon-tide weigh,
And glide before its ray,
To some retired bay,
Their haunt,
Whence, under tropic sun,
Again they run,
Bearing gum Senegal and Tragicant.
For this was ocean meant.
For this the sun was sent,
And moon was lent.
And winds in distant caverns pent.
Since our voyage the railroad on the bank has been
extended, and there is now but little boating on the
Merrimack. All kinds of produce and stores were
formerly conveyed by water, but now nothing is car-
ried up the stream, and almost wood and bricks alone
are carried down, and these are also carried on the
railroad. The locks are fast wearing out, and will
soon be impassable, since the tolls will not pay the
TUESDA V. 213
expense of repairing them, and so in a few years
there will be an end of boating on this river. The
boating, at present, is principally between Merrimack
and Lowell, or Hooksett and Manchester. They
make two or three trips from Merrimack to Lowell
and back, about twenty-five miles each way, in a week,
according to wind and weather. The boatman comes
singing in to shore late at night, and moors his empty
boat, and gets his supper and lodging in some house
near at hand, and again early in the morning, by star-
light, perhaps, he pushes away up stream, and, by a
shout, or the fragment of a song, gives notice of his
approach to the lock-man, with whom he is to take
his breakfast. If he gets up to his wood-pile before
noon he proceeds to load his boat, with the help
of his single " hand '' and is on his way down again
before night. When he gets to Lowell he unloads
his boat, and gets his receipt for his cargo, and hav-
ing heard the news at the public house at Middlesex
or elsewhere, goes back with his empty boat and his
receipt in his pocket to the owner, and to get a new
load. We were frequently advertised of their ap-
proach by some faint sound behind us, and looking
round saw them a mile off, creeping stealthily up the
side of the stream like alligators. It was pleasant to
hail these sailors of the Merrimack from time to time,
and learn the news which circulated with them. We
imagined that the sun shining on their bare heads
had stamped a liberal and public character on their
most private thoughts.
The open and sunny interval still stretched away
from the river, sometimes by two or more terraces, to
the distant hill country, and when we climbed the
214 A WEEK ON THE CONCORD RIVER.
bank we commonly found an irregular copse-wood
skirting the river, the primitive having floated down
stream long ago to the " King's navy.'' Some-
times we saw the river road a quarter or half a mile
distant, and the particolored Concord stage, with its
cloud of dust, its van of earnest travelling faces, and
its rear of dusty trunks, reminding us that the country
had its places of rendezvous for restless Yankee men.
There dwelt along at considerable distances on this
interval a quiet agricultural and pastoral people, with
every house its well, as we sometimes proved, and
every household, though never so still and remote it
appeared in the noontide, its dinner about these times.
There they lived on, those New England people,
farmer lives, father and grand-father and great-grand-
father, on and on without noise, keeping up tradition,
and expecting, beside fair weather and abundant
harvests, we did not learn what. They were con-
tented to live, since it was so contrived for them, and
where their lines had fallen. —
Our uninquiring corpses lie more low
Than our life's curiosity doth go.
Yet these men had no need to travel to be as wise as
Solomon in all his glory, so similar are the lives of
men in all countries, and fraught with the same
homely experiences. One half the world knows how
the other half lives.
About noon we passed a small village in Merrimack
at Thornton's Ferry, and tasted of the waters of
Naticook Brook on the same side, where French and
his companions, whose grave we saw in Dunstable,
were ambuscaded by the Indians. The humble vil-
lage of Litchfield, with its steepleless meeting-house,
TUESDA V. 215
stood on the opposite or east bank, near where a
dense grove of willows backed by maples skirted the
shore. There also we noticed some shagbark trees,
which, as they do not grow in Concord, were as
strange a sight to us as the palm would be, whose
fruit only we have seen. Our course now curved
gracefully to the north, leaving a low flat shore on the
Merrimack side, which forms a sort of harbor for
canal boats. We observed some fair elms and par-
ticularly large and handsome white-maples standing
conspicuously on this interval, and the opposite shore,
a quarter of a mile below, was covered with young
elms and maples six inches high, which had probably
sprung from the seeds which had been washed across.
Some carpenters were at work here mending a scow
on the green and sloping bank. The strokes of
their mallets echoed from shore to shore, and up and
down the river, and their tools gleamed in the sun a
quarter of a mile from us, and we realized that boat-
building was as ancient and honorable an art as agri-
culture, and that there might be a naval as well as a
pastoral life. The whole history of commerce was
made manifest in that scow turned bottom upward on
the shore. Thus did men begin to go down upon the
sea in ships. We thought that it would be well for
the traveller to build his boat on the bank of a stream,
instead of finding a ferry or a bridge. In the Adven-
tures of Henry the fur-trader, it is pleasant to read
that when with his Indians he reached the shore of
Ontario, they consumed two days in making two
canoes of the bark of the elm tree, in which to trans-
port themselves to Fort Niagara. It is a worthy
incident in a journey, a delay as good as much rapid
travelling. A good share of our interest in Xeno-
2l6 A WEEK ON THE CONCORD RIVER.
phon's story of his retreat is in the manoeuvres to get
the army safely over the rivers, whether on rafts
of logs or fagots, or on sheep-skins blown up. And
where could they better afford to tarry meanwhile
than on the banks of a river?
As we glided past at a distance, these outdoor
workmen appeared to have added some dignity to
their labor by its very publicness. It was a part of
the industry of nature, like the work of hornets and
mud- wasps. —
The waves slowly beat,
Just to keep the noon sweet,
And no sound is floated o'er,
Save the mallet on shore,
Which echoing on high
Seems a-caulking the sky.
The haze, the sun's dust of travel, had a lethean influ-
ence on the land and its inhabitants, and all creatures
resigned themselves to float upon the inappreciable
tides of nature.
Woof of the sun, ethereal gauze.
Woven of Nature's richest stuffs.
Visible heat, air-water, and dry sea.
Last conquest of the eye ;
Toil of the day displayed, sun-dust,
Aerial surf upon the shores of earth,
Ethereal estuary, frith of light.
Breakers of air, billows of heat,
Fine summer spray on inland seas ;
Bird of the sun, transparent-winged,
Owlet of noon, soft-pinioned,
From heath or stubble rising without song ;
Establish thy serenity o'er the fields.
The routine which is in the sunshine and the finest
days, as that which has conquered and prevailed,
TUESDA Y.
217
commends itself to us by its very antiquity and appar-
ent solidity and necessity. Our weakness needs it,
and our strength uses it. We cannot draw on our
boots without bracing ourselves against it. If there
were but one erect and solid standing tree in the
woods, all creatures would go to rub against it and
make sure of their footing. During the many hours
which we spend in this waking sleep, the hand stands
still on the face of the clock, and we grow like corn
in the night. Men are as busy as the brooks or bees,
and postpone everything to their busyness; as car-
penters discuss politics between the strokes of the
hammer while they are shingling a roof.
This noontide was a fit occasion to make some
pleasant harbor, and there read the journal of some
voyageur like ourselves, not too moral nor inquisitive,
and which would not disturb the noon ; or else some
old classic, the very flower of all reading, which we
had postponed to such a season
" Of Syrian peace, immortal leisure."
But, alas, our chest, like the cabin of a coaster, con-
tained only its well-thumbed Navigator for all litera-
ture, and we were obliged to draw on our memory for
these things. We naturally remembered Alexander
Henry's Adventures here, as a sort of classic among
books of American travel. It contains scenery and
rough sketching of men and incidents enough to
inspire poets for many years, and to my fancy is as
full of sounding names as any page of history, — Lake
Winnipeg, Hudson's Bay, Ottaway, and portages in-
numerable ; Chipeways, Gens de Terres, Les Pilleurs,
The Weepers ; with reminiscences of Hearne's jour-
2l8 A WEEK ON THE CONCORD RIVER.
ney, and the like ; an immense and shaggy but sincere
country summer and winter, adorned with chains of
lakes and rivers, covered with snows, with hemlocks
and fir trees. There is a naturalness, an unpretend-
ing and cold life in this traveller, as in a Canadian
winter, what life was preserved through low tempera-
tures and frontier dangers by furs within a stout heart.
He has truth and moderation worthy of the father of
history, which belong only to an intimate experience,
and he does not defer too much to literature. The
unlearned traveller may quote his single line from the
poets with as good right as the scholar. He too may
speak of the stars, for he sees them shoot perhaps
when the astronomer does not. The good sense of
this author is very conspicuous. He is a traveller
who does not exaggerate, but writes for the informa-
tion of his readers, for science and for history. His
story is told with as much good faith and directness
as if it were a report to his brother traders, or the
Directors of the Hudson Bay Company, and is fitly
dedicated to Sir Joseph Banks. It reads like the
argument to a great poem on the primitive state of
the country and its inhabitants, and the reader imag-
ines what in each case with the invocation of the
Muse might be sung, and leaves off with suspended
interest, as if the full account were to follow. In what
school was this fur-trader educated ? He seems to
travel the immense snowy country with such purpose
only as the reader who accompanies him, and to the
latter's imagination, it is, as it were, momentarily cre-
ated to be the scene of his adventures. What is most
interesting and valuable in it, however, is not the ma-
terials for the history of Pontiac, or Braddock, or the
North West, which it furnishes ; not the annals of the
TUESDAY. 219
country, but the natural facts, or peretmials, which are
ever without date. When out of history the truth
shall be extracted, it will have shed its dates like
withered leaves.
The Souhegan, or Crooked river, as some translate
it, comes in from the west about a mile and a half
above Thornton's Ferry. Babboosuck Brook empties
into it near its mouth. There are said to be some of
the finest water privileges in the country still unim-
proved on the former stream, at a short distance from
the Merrimack. One spring morning, March 22, in
the year 1677, an incident occurred on the banks
of the river here, which is interesting to us as a slight
memorial of an interview between two ancient tribes of
men, one of which is now extinct, while the other,
though it is still represented by a miserable remnant,
has long since disappeared from its ancient hunting
grounds. A Mr. James Parker at "Mr. Hinchmanne's
farme ner Meremack," wrote thus " to the Honred
Governer and Council at Bostown, Hast, Post Hast.''''
" Sagamore Wanalancet come this morning to in-
forme me, and then went to Mr. Tyng's to informe
him, that his son being on ye other sid of Meremack
river over against Souhegan upon the 22 day of this
instant, about tene of the clock in the morning, he
discovered 15 Indians on this sid the river, which he
soposed to be Mohokes by ther spech. He called
to them ; they answered, but he could not understand
ther spech ; and he having a conow ther in the river,
he went to breck his conow that they might not have
ani ues of it. In the mean time they shot about
thirty guns at him, and he being much frighted
220 A WEEK ON THE CONCORD RIVER.
fled, and come home forthwith to Nahamcock, [Paw-
tucket Falls or Lowell] wher ther wigowames now
stand."
Penacooks and Mohawks ! ubique gentium sunt ?
Where are they now ? — In the year 1670, a Mohawk
warrior scalped a Naamkeak or Wamesit Indian
maiden near where Lowell now stands. She, how-
ever, recovered. Even as late as 1685, John Hogkins,
a Penacook Indian, who describes his grand-father as
having lived " at place called Malamake rever, other
name chef Natukkog and Panukkog, that one rever
great many names," wrote thus to the governor : —
"May 15 th, 1685.
" Honor governor my friend, —
" You my friend I desire your worship and your
power, because I hope you can do som great matters
this one. I am poor and naked and I have no men
at my place because I afraid allwayes Mohogs he will
kill me every day and night. If your worship when
please pray help me you no let Mohogs kill me at
my place at Malamake river called Pannukkog and
Natukkog, I will submit your worship and your power.
— And now I want pouder and such alminishon shatt
and guns, because I have forth at my hom and I plant
theare.
" This all Indian hand, but pray you do consider
your humble servant, John Hogkins."
Signed also by Simon Detogkom, King Hary, Sam
Linis, Mr. Jorge Rodunnonukgus, John Owamosim-
min, and nine other Indians, with their marks against
their names.
TUESDAY. 221
But now, one hundred and fifty-four years having
elapsed since the date of this letter, we went unalarmed
on our way, without " breaking " our " conow/' reading
the New England Gazetteer, and seeing no traces of
" Mohogs " on the banks.
The Souhegan, though a rapid river, seemed to-
day to have borrowed its character from the noon.
Where gleaming fields of haze
Meet the voyageur's gaze,
And above, the heated air
Seems to make a river there,
The pines stand up with pride
By the Souhegan's side,
And the hemlock and the larch
With their triumphal arch
Are waving o'er its march
To the sea.
No wind stirs its waves.
But the spirits of the braves
Hov'ring o'er.
Whose antiquated graves
Its still water laves
On the shore.
With an Indian's stealthy tread
It goes sleeping in its bed,
Without joy or grief,
Or the rustle of a leaf,
Without a ripple or a billow,
Or the sigh of a willow,
From the Lyndeboro' hills
To the Merrimack mills.
With a louder din
Did its current begin,
When melted the snow
On the far mountain's brow,
And the drops came together
In that rainy weather.
Experienced river,
222 A WEEK ON THE CONCORD RIVER.
Hast thou flowed forever ?
Souhegan soundeth old,
But the half is not told,
What names hast thou borne
In the ages far gone,
When the Xanthus and Meander
Commenced to wander.
Ere the black bear haunted
Thy red forest-floor,
Or Nature had planted
The pines by thy shore.
During the heat of the day, we rested on a large
island a mile above the mouth of this river, pastured
by a herd of cattle, with steep banks and scattered
elms and oaks, and a sufficient channel for canal boats
on each side. When we made a fire to boil some rice
for our dinner, the flames spreading amid the dry
grass, and the smoke curling silently upward and cast-
ing grotesque shadows on the ground seemed phenom-
ena of the noon, and we fancied that we progressed up
the stream without eifort, and as naturally as the wind
and tide went down, not outraging the calm days by
unworthy bustle or impatience. The woods on the
neighboring shore were alive with pigeons, which
were moving south looking for mast, but now, like
ourselves, spending their noon in the shade. We
could hear the slight wiry winnowing sound of their
wings as they changed their roosts from time to time,
and their gentle and tremulous cooing. They so-
journed with us during the noontide, greater travellers
far than we. You may frequently discover a single
pair sitting upon the lower branches of the white pine
in the depths of the wood, at this hour of the day,
so silent and solitary, and with such a hermit-like
appearance, as if they had never strayed beyond its
TUESDAY. 223
skirts, while the acorn which was gathered in the
forests of Maine is still undigested in their crops.
We obtained one of these handsome birds, which
lingered too long upon its perch, and plucked and
broiled it here with some other game, to be carried
along for our supper ; for beside the provisions which
we carried with us, we depended mainly on the river
and forest for our supply. It is true, it did not seem
to be putting this bird to its right use, to pluck off its
feathers, and extract its entrails, and broil its carcass
on the coals ; but we heroically persevered, neverthe-
less, waiting for farther information. The same re-
gard for Nature which excited our sympathy for her
creatures, nerved our hands to carry through what we
had begun. For we would be honorable to the party
we deserted ; we would fulfil fate, and so at length,
perhaps, detect the secret innocence of these inces-
sant tragedies which Heaven allows. —
" Too quick resolves do resolution wrong,
What, part so soon to be divorced so long ?
Things to be done are long to be debated ;
Heaven is not day'd, Repentance is not dated."
We are double-edged blades, and every time we whet
our virtue the return stroke straps our vice. Where is
the skilful swordsman who can give clean wounds,
and not rip up his work with the other edge ?
Nature herself has not provided the most graceful
end for her creatures. What becomes of all these
birds that people the air and forest for our solace-
ment ? The sparrows seem always chipper, never
infirm. We do not see their bodies lie about ; yet
there is a tragedy at the end of each one of their
lives. They must perish miserably ; not one of them
224 ^ WEEK ON THE CONCORD RIVER.
is translated. True, " not a sparrow falleth to the
ground without our Heavenly Father's knowledge,"
but they do fall, nevertheless.
The carcasses of some poor squirrels, however, the
same that frisked so merrily in the morning, which
we had skinned and embowelled for our dinner, we
abandoned in disgust, with tardy humanity, as too
wretched a resource for any but starving men. It
was to perpetuate the practice of a barbarous era. If
they had been larger, our crime had been less. Their
small red bodies, little bundles of red tissue, mere
gobbets of venison, would not have "fattened fire."
With a sudden impulse we threw them away, and
washed our hands, and boiled some rice for our din-
ner. "Behold the difference between the one who
eateth flesh, and him to whom it belonged ! The
first hath a momentary enjoyment, whilst the latter is
deprived of existence ! " — " Who could commit so great
a crime against a poor animal, who is fed only by
the herbs which grow wild in the woods, and whose
belly is burnt up with hunger ? " We remembered a
picture of mankind in the hunter age, chasing hares
down the mountains, O me miserable! Yet sheep and
oxen are but larger squirrels, whose hides are saved
and meat is salted, whose souls perchance are not so
large in proportion to their bodies.
There should always be some flowering and matur-
ing of the fruits of nature in the cooking process.
Some simple dishes recommend themselves to our
imaginations as well as palates. In parched corn,
for instance, there is a manifest sympathy between the
bursting seed and the more perfect developments of
vegetable life. It is a perfect flower with its petals,
like the houstonia or anemone. On my warm hearth
TUESDAY. 225
these cerealian blossoms expanded ; here is the bank
whereon they grew. Perhaps some such visible bless-
ing would always attend the simple and wholesome
repast.
Here was that "pleasant harbor" which we had
sighed for, where the weary voyageur could read the
journal of some other sailor, whose bark had plowed,
perchance, more famous and classic seas. At the
tables of the gods, after feasting follow music and
song ; we will recline now under these island trees,
and for our minstrel call on
ANACREON.
" Nor has he ceased his charming song, but still that lyre,
Though he is dead, sleeps not in Hades."
Simonides Epigram on Anacreon.
I lately met with an old volume from a London book-
shop, containing the Greek Minor Poets, and it was a
pleasure to read once more only the words, — Orpheus,
— Linus, — Musaeus, — those faint poetic sounds and
echoes of a name, dying away on the ears of us mod-
ern men ; and those hardly more substantial sounds,
Mimnermus — Ibycus — Alcaeus — Stesichorus — Me-
nander. They lived not in vain. We can converse
with these bodiless fames without reserve or person-
ality.
I know of no studies so composing as those of the
classical scholar. When we have sat down to them,
life seems as still and serene as if it were very far off,
and I believe it is not habitually seen from any com-
mon platform so truly and unexaggerated as in the
light of literature. In serene hours we contemplate the
226 A WEEK ON THE CONCORD RIVER.
tour of the Greek and Latin authors with more
pleasure than the traveller does the fairest scenery
of Greece or Italy. Where shall we find a more re-
fined society ? That highway down from Homer and
Hesiod to Horace and Juvenal is more attractive than
the Appian. Reading the classics, or conversing
with those old Greeks and Latins in their surviving
works, is like walking amid the stars and constella-
tions, a high and by way serene to travel. Indeed,
the true scholar will be not a little of an astronomer
in his habits. Distracting cares will not be allowed
to obstruct the field of his vision, for the higher
regions of literature, like astronomy, are above storm
and darkness.
But passing by these rumors of bards, let us pause
for a moment at the Teian poet.
There is something strangely modern about him.
He is very easily turned into English. Is it that our
lyric poets have resounded only that lyre, which would
sound only light subjects, and which Simonides tells
us does not sleep in Hades? His odes are like gems
of pure ivory. They possess an ethereal and evanes-
cent beauty like summer evenings, o xp>; o"^ vouv voov
avOei, which you must perceive with the flower of the
mind, — and show how slight a beauty could be ex-
pressed. You have to consider them, as the stars of
lesser magnitude, with the side of the eye, and look
aside from them to behold them. They charm us by
their serenity and freedom from exaggeration and
passion, and by a certain flowerlike beauty, which
does not propose itself, but must be approached and
studied like a natural object. But perhaps their chief
merit consists in the lightness and yet security of their
tread ;
TUESDA Y. 227
" The young and tender stalk
Ne'er bends when they do walk."
True, our nerves are never strung by them; —it is
too constantly the sound of the lyre, and never the
note of the trumpet ; but they are not gross, as has
been presumed, but always elevated above the sensual.
Perhaps these are the best that have come down
to us.
ON HIS LYRE.
I wish to sing the Atridse,
And Cadmus I wish to sing;
But my lyre sounds
Only love with its chords.
Lately I changed the strings
And all the lyre ;
And I began to sing the labors
Of Hercules; but my lyre
Resounded loves.
Farewell, henceforth, for me.
Heroes! for my lyre
Sings only loves.
TO A SWALLOW.
Thou indeed, dear swallow,
Yearly going and coming,
In summer weavest thy nest.
And in winter go'st disappearing
Either to Nile or to Memphis.
But Love always weaveth
His nest in my heart. * * *
ON A SILVER CUP.
Turning the silver,
Vulcan, make for me,
Not indeed a panoply.
228 A WEEK ON THE CONCORD RIVER.
For what are battles to me ?
But a hollow cup,
As deep as thou canst.
And make for me in it
Neither stars, nor wagons,
Nor sad Orion ;
What are the Pleiades to me ?
What the shining Bootes ?
Make vines for me,
And clusters of grapes in it.
And of gold Love and Bathyllus
Treading the grapes
With the fair Lyaeus.
ON HIMSELF.
Thou sing'st the affairs of Thebes
And he the battles of Troy,
But I of my own defeats.
No horse have wasted me,
Nor foot, nor ships ;
But a new and different host,
From eyes smiting me.
TO A DOVE.
Lovely dove.
Whence, whence dost thou fly ?
Whence, running on air.
Dost thou waft and diffuse
So many sweet ointments ?
Who art ? What thy errand ? —
Anacreon sent me
To a boy, to Bathyllus,
Who lately is ruler and tyrant of all.
Cythere has sold me
For one little song,
And I 'm doing this service
For Anacreon.
And now, as you see,
TUB SB A Y. 229
I bear letters from him.
And he says that directly
He 'II make me free,
But though he release me,
His slave I will tarry with him.
For why should I fly
Over mountains and fields,
And perch upon trees.
Eating some wild thing ?
Now indeed I eat bread.
Plucking it from the hands
Of Anacreon himself;
And he gives me to drink
The wine which he tastes,
And drinking, I dance.
And shadow my master's
Face with my wings ;
And, going to rest,
On the lyre itself I sleep.
That is all ; get thee gone.
Thou hast made me more talkative,
Man, than a crow.
ON LOVE.
Love walking swiftly.
With hyacinthine staff,
Bade me to take a run with him ;
And hastening through swift torrents.
And woody places, and over precipices,
A water-snake stung me.
And my heart leaped up to
My mouth, and I should have fainted ;
But Love fanning my brows
With his soft wings, said,
Surely, thou art not able to love.
ON WOMEN.
Nature has given horns
To bulls, and hoofs to horses,
2^0 A WEEK ON THE CONCORD RIVER.
Swiftness to hares,
To lions yawning teeth,
To fishes swimming,
To birds flight,
To men wisdom.
For woman she had nothing beside ;
What then does she give ? Beauty, —
Instead of all shields,
Instead of all spears ;
And she conquers even iron
And fire, who is beautiful.
ON LOVERS.
Horses have the mark
Of fire on their sides.
And some have distinguished
The Parthian men by their crests ;
So I, seeing lovers,
Know them at once.
For they have a certain slight
Brand on their hearts.
TO A SWALLOW.
What dost thou wish me to do to thee —-
What, thou loquacious swallow ?
Dost thou wish me taking thee
Thy light pinions to clip ?
Or rather to pluck out
Thy tongue from within,
As that Tereus did ?
Why with thy notes in the dawn
Hast thou plundered Bathyllus
From my beautiful dreams ?
TO A COLT.
Thracian colt, why at me
Looking aslant with thy eyes,
TUESDAY. 231
Dost thou cruelly flee,
And think that I know nothing wise ?
Know I could well
Put the bridle on thee,
And holding the reins, turn
Round the bounds of the course.
But now thou browsest the meads,
And gambolling lightly dost play.
For thou hast no skillful horseman
Mounted upon thy back.
CUPID WOUNDED.
Love once among roses
Saw not
A sleeping bee, but was stung ;
• And being wounded in the finger
Of his hand, cried for pain.
Running as well as flying
To the beautiful Venus,
I am killed, mother, said he,
I am killed, and I die.
A little serpent has stung me,
Winged, which they call
A bee — the husbandmen.
And she said. If the sting
Of a bee afflicts you,
How, think you, are they afflicted,
Love, whom you smite ?
Late in the afternoon, for we had lingered long
on the island, we raised our sail for the first time,
and for a short hour the south-west wind was our
ally ; but it did not please Heaven to abet us long.
With one sail raised we swept slowly up the eastern
side of the stream, steering clear of the rocks, while
from the top of a hill which formed the opposite
bank, some lumberers were rolling down timber to
232 A WEEK ON THE CONCORD RIVER.
be rafted down the stream. We could see their axes
and levers gleaming in the sun, and the logs came
down with a dust and a rumbling sound, which was
reverberated through the woods beyond us on our
side, like the roar of artillery. But Zephyr soon took
us out of sight and hearing of this commerce. Hav-
ing passed Read's Ferry, and another island called
McGaw's Island, we reached some rapids called
Moore's Falls, and entered on " that section of the
river, nine miles in extent, converted, by law, into
the Union Canal, comprehending in that space six
distinct falls ; at each of which, and at several inter-
mediate places, work has been done." After pass-
ing Moore's Falls by means of locks, we again had
recourse to our oars, and went merrily on our way,
driving the small sand-piper from rock to rock before
us, and sometimes rowing near enough to a cottage
on the bank, though they were few and far between,
to see the sun-flowers, and the seed vessels of the
poppy, like small goblets filled with the water of
Lethe, before the door, but without disturbing the
sluggish household behind. Thus we held on, sail-
ing or dipping our way along with the paddle up this
broad river, — smooth and placid, flowing over con-
cealed rocks, where we could see the pickerel lying
low in the transparent water, — eager to double some
distant cape, to make some great bend as in the
life of man, and see what new perspective would
open; looking far into a new country, broad and
serene, the cottages of settlers seen afar for the
first time, yet with the moss of a century on their
roofs, and the third or fourth generation in their
shadow. Strange was it to consider how the sun
and the summer, the buds of spring and the seared
TUESDAY. 233
leaves of autumn, were related to these cabins along
the shore; how all the rays which paint the land-
scape radiate from them, and the flight of the crow
and the gyrations of the hawk have reference to
their roofs. Still the ever rich and fertile shores
accompanied us, fringed with vines and alive with
small birds and frisking squirrels, the edge of some
farmer's field or widow's wood-lot ; or wilder, per-
chance, where the muskrat, the little medicine of the
river, drags itself along stealthily over the alder
leaves and mussel shells, and man and the memory
of man are banished far.
At length the unwearied, never sinking shore, still
holding on without break, with its cool copses and
serene pasture grounds, tempted us to disembark ;
and we adventurously landed on this remote coast,
to survey it, unknown to any human inhabitant prob-
ably to this day. But we still remember the gnarled
and hospitable oaks which grew even there for our
entertainment, and were no strangers to us, the lonely
horse in his pasture, and the patient cows, whose
path to the river, so judiciously chosen to overcome
the difficulties of the way, we followed, and disturbed
their ruminations in the shade ; and, above all, the
cool free aspect of the wild apple trees, generously
proifering their fruit to us, though still green and
crude, the hard, round, glossy fruit, which, if not ripe,
still was not poison, but New English too, brought
hither its ancestors by ours once. These gentler
trees imparted a half-civilized and twilight aspect to
the otherwise barbarian land. Still further on we
scrambled up the rocky channel of a brook, which
had long served nature for a sluice there, leaping
like it from rock to rock through tangled woods, at
234 ^ WEEK ON THE CONCORD RIVER,
the bottom of a ravine, which grew darker and darker,
and more and more hoarse the murmurs of the stream,
until we reached the ruins of a mill, where now the
ivy grew, and the trout glanced through the
crumbling flume; and there we imagined what had
been the dreams and speculations of some early
settler. But the waning day compelled us to em-
bark once more, and redeem this wasted time with
long and vigorous sweeps over the rippling stream.
It was still wild and solitary, except that at intervals
of a mile or two the roof of a cottage might be seen
over the bank. This region, as we read, was once
famous for the manufacture of straw bonnets of the
Leghorn kind, of which it claims the invention in
these parts, and occasionally some industrious damsel
tripped down to the water's edge, as it appeared, to
put her straw a-soak, and stood awhile to watch the
retreating voyageurs, and catch the fragment of a boat
song which we had made, wafted over the water.
Thus, perchance, the Indian hunter,
Many a lagging year agone,
Gliding o'er thy rippling waters,
Lowly hummed a natural song.
Now the sun's behind the willows,
Now he gleams along the waves,
Faintly o'er the wearied billows
Come the spirits of the braves.
Just before sundown we reached some more falls
in the town of Bedford, where some stone-masons
were employed repairing the locks in a solitary part
of the river. They were interested in our adventures,
especially one young man of our own age, who in-
quired at first if we were bound up to '' 'Skeag," and
TUESDAY. 235
when he had heard our story, and examined our outfit,
asked us other questions, but temperately still, and
always turning to his work again, though as if it were
become his duty. It was plain that he would like to
go with us, and as he looked up the river, many a dis-
tant cape and wooded shore were reflected in his eye,
as well as in his thoughts. When we were ready he
left his work, and helped us through the locks with a
sort of quiet enthusiasm, telling us we were at Coos
Falls, and we could still distinguish the strokes of his
chisel for many sweeps after we had left him.
We wished to camp this night on a large rock in
the middle of the stream, just above these falls, but
the want of fuel, and the difficulty of fixing our tent
firmly, prevented us ; so we made our bed on the main
land opposite, on the west bank, in the town of Bed-
ford, in a retired place, as we supposed, there being
no house in sight.
WEDNESDAY.
" Man is man's foe and destiny."
Cotton.
Early this morning, as we were rolling up our
buffaloes and loading our boat amid the dew, while
our embers were still smoking, the masons who worked
at the locks, and whom we had seen crossing the river
in their boat the evening before while we were exam-
ining the rock, came upon us as they were going to
their work, and we found that we had pitched our
tent directly in their path to their boat. This was
the only time that we were observed on our camping
ground. Thus, far from the beaten highways and the
dust and din of travel, we beheld the country privately,
yet freely, and at our leisure. Other roads do some
violence to Nature, and bring the traveller to stare at
her, but the river steals into the scenery it traverses
without intrusion, silently creating and adorning it,
and is as free to come and go as the zephyr.
As we shoved away from this rocky coast, before
sunrise, the smaller bittern, the genius of the shore,
was moping along its edge, or stood probing the mud
for its food, with ever an eye on us, though so demurely
at work, or else he ran along over the wet stones like
a wrecker in his storm coat, looking out for wrecks of
snails and cockles. Now away he goes, with a limp-
ing flight, uncertain where he will alight, until a rod
of clear sand amid the alders invites his feet; and
now our steady approach compels him to seek a new
236
WEDNESDAY. 23/
retreat. It is a bird of the oldest Thalesian school,
and no doubt believes in the priority of water to the
other elements ; the relic of a twilight ante-diluvian
age which yet inhabits these bright American rivers
with us Yankees. There is something venerable in
this melancholy and contemplative race of birds,
which may have trodden the earth while it was yet
in a slimy and imperfect state. Perchance their tracks
too are still visible on the stones. It still lingers into
our glaring summers, bravely supporting its fate with-
out sympathy from man, as if it looked forward to
some second advent of which he has no assurance.
One wonders if, by its patient study by rocks and
sandy capes, it has wrested the whole of her secret
from Nature yet. What a rich experience it must
have gained, standing on one leg and looking out
from its dull eye so long on sunshine and rain, moon
and stars ! What could it tell of stagnant pools and
reeds and dank night-fogs? It would be worth the
while to look closely into the eye which has been
open and seeing at such hours, and in such solitudes,
its dull, yellowish, greenish eye. Methinks my own
soul must be a bright invisible green. I have seen
these birds stand by the half dozen together in the
shallower water along the shore, with their bills thrust
into the mud at the bottom, probing for food, the
whole head being concealed, while the neck and body
formed an arch above the water.
Cohass Brook, the outlet of Massabesic Pond, —
which last is five or six miles distant, and contains
fifteen hundred acres, being the largest body of fresh
water in Rockingham county, — comes in near here
from the east. Rowing between Manchester and Bed-
ford, we passed, at an early hour, a ferry and some
238 A WEEK ON THE CONCORD RIVER.
falls, called Goff's Falls, the Indian Cohasset, where
there is a small village, and a handsome green islet
in the middle of the stream. From Bedford and
Merrimac have been boated the bricks of which Lowell
is made. About twenty years before, as they told us,
one Moore, of Bedford, having clay on his farm, con-
tracted to furnish eight millions of bricks to the
founders of that city within two years. He fulfilled
his contract in one year, and since then bricks have
been the principal export from these towns. The
farmers found thus a market for their wood, and
when they had brought a load to the kilns, they
could cart a load of bricks to the shore, and so make
a profitable day's work of it. Thus all parties were
benefited. It was worth the while to see the place
where Lowell was "dug out." So likewise Man-
chester is being built of bricks made still higher up
the river at Hooksett.
There might be seen here on the bank of the
Merrimack, near Goff 's Falls, in what is now the town
of Bedford, famous " for hops and for its fine domestic
manufactures," some graves of the aborigines. The
land still bears this scar here, and time is slowly
crumbling the bones of a race. Yet without fail every
spring since they first fished and hunted here, the
brown thrasher has heralded the morning from a birch
or alder spray, and the undying race of reed-birds
still rustles through the withering grass. But these
bones rustle not. These mouldering elements are
slowly preparing for another metamorphosis, to serve
new masters, and what was the Indian's will ere long
be the white man's sinew.
We learned that Bedford was not so famous for
hops as formerly, since the price is fluctuating, and
WEDNESDAY. 239
poles are now scarce. Yet if the traveller goes back
a few miles from the river, the hop kilns will still
excite his curiosity.
There were few incidents in our voyage this fore-
noon, though the river was now more rocky and the
falls more frequent than before. It was a pleasant
change, after rowing incessantly for many hours, to
lock ourselves through in some retired place, — for
commonly there was no lock-man at hand, — one
sitting in the boat, while the other, sometimes with
no little labor and heave-yoing, opened and shut the
gates, waiting patiently to see the locks fill. We
did not once use the wheels which we had provided.
Taking advantage of the eddy, we were sometimes
floated up to the locks almost in the face of the falls ;
and, by the same cause, any floating timber was car-
ried round in a circle and repeatedly drawn into the
rapids before it finally went down the stream. These
old gray structures, with their quiet arms stretched
over the river in the sun, appeared like natural objects
in the scenery, and the king-fisher and sand-piper
alighted on them as readily as on stakes or rocks.
We rowed leisurely up the stream for several hours,
until the sun had got high in the sky, our thoughts
monotonously beating time to our oars. For out-
ward variety there was only the river and the receding
shores, a vista continually opening behind and closing
before us, as we sat with our backs up stream, and for
inward such thoughts as the muses grudgingly lent
us. We were always passing some low inviting shore
or some overhanging bank, on which, however, we
never landed. —
Such near aspects had we
Of our life's scenery.
240 A WEEK ON THE CONCORD RIVER.
It might be seen by what tenure men held the
earth. The smallest stream is mediterranean sea, a
smaller ocean creek within the land, where men niay
steer by their farm bounds and cottage lights. For
my own part, but for the geographers, I should hardly
have known how large a portion of our globe is water,
my life has chiefly passed within so deep a cove. Yet
I have sometimes ventured as far as to the mouth of
my Snug Harbor. From an old ruined fort on Staten
Island, I have loved to watch all day some vessel
whose name I had read in the morning through the
telegraph glass, when she first came upon the coast,
and her hull heaved up and glistened in the sun, from
the moment when the pilot and most adventurous
news-boats met her, past the Hook, and up the nar-
row channel of the wide outer bay, till she was
boarded by the health officer, and took her station at
Quarantine, or held on her unquestioned course to
the wharves of New York. It was interesting, too,
to watch the less adventurous news-man, who made
his assault as the vessel swept through the Narrows,
defying plague and quarantine law, and fastening his
little cock boat to her huge side, clambered up and
disappeared in the cabin. And then I could imagine
what momentous news was being imparted by the
captain, which no American ear had ever heard, that
Asia, Africa, Europe — were all sunk ; for which at
length he pays the price, and is seen descending the
ship's side with his bundle of newspapers, but not
where he first got up, for these arrivers do not stand
still to gossip, — and he hastes away with steady
sweeps to dispose of his wares to the highest bidder,
and we shall erelong read something startling, — " By
the latest arrival," — " by the good ship ." — On
WEDNESDA V. 24 1
Sunday I beheld from some interior hill the long
procession of vessels getting to sea, reaching from
the city wharves through the Narrows, and past the
Hook, quite to the ocean-stream, far as the eye could
reach, with stately march and silken sails, all counting
on lucky voyages, but each time some of the number,
no doubt, destined to go to Davy's locker, and never
come on this coast again. — And again, in the evening
of a pleasant day, it was my amusement to count the
sails in sight. But as the setting sun continually
brought more and more to light, still further in the
horizon, the last count always had the advantage, till
by the time the last rays streamed over the sea, I had
doubled and trebled my first number ; though I could
no longer class them all under the several heads of
ships, barques, brigs, schooners, and sloops, but most
were faint generic vessels only. And then the tem-
perate twilight light, perchance, revealed the floating
home of some sailor whose thoughts were already
alienated from this American coast, and directed to-
wards the Europe of our dream.s. — I have stood upon
the same hill-top when a thunder shower rolling down
from the Catskills and Highlands passed over the
island, deluging the land, and when it had suddenly
left us in sunshine, have seen it overtake successively
with its huge shadow and dark descending wall of
rain the vessels in the bay. Their bright sails were
suddenly drooping and dark like the sides of barns,
and they seemed to shrink before the storm ; while
still far beyond them on the sea, through this dark
veil, gleamed the sunny sails of those vessels which
the storm had not yet reached. — And at midnight,
when all around and overhead was darkness, I have
seen a field of trembling silvery light far out on the
242 A WEEK ON THE CONCORD RIVER.
sea, the reflection of the moonlight from the ocean, as
if beyond the precincts of our night, where the moon
traversed a cloudless heaven, — and sometimes a
dark speck in its midst, where some fortunate vessel
was pursuing its happy voyage by night.
But to us [river sailors the sun never rose out of
ocean waves, but from some green coppice, and went
down behind some dark mountain line. We, too, were
but dwellers on the shore, hke the bittern of the
morning, and our pursuit the wrecks of snails and
cockles. Nevertheless, we were contented to know
the better one fair particular shore.
My life is like a stroll upon the beach,
As near the ocean's edge as I can go,
My tardy steps its waves sometimes o'erreach,
Sometimes I stay to let them overflow.
My sole employment 't is, and scrupulous care,
To place my gains beyond the reach of tides.
Each smoother pebble, and each shell more rare,
Which ocean kindly to my hand confides.
I have but few companions on the shore,
They scorn the strand who sail upon the sea,
Yet oft I think the ocean they 've sailed o'er
Is deeper known upon the strand to me.
The middle sea contains no crimson dulse.
Its deeper waves cast up no pearls to view,
Along the shore my hand is on its pulse,
And I converse with many a shipwrecked crew.
The small houses which were scattered along the
river at intervals of a mile or more, were commonly
out of sight to us, but sometimes when we rowed near
the shore, we heard the peevish note of a hen, or
some slight domestic sound, which betrayed them.
WEDNESDA V. 243
The lock-men's houses were particularly well placed,
retired, and high, always at falls or rapids, and com-
manding the pleasantest reaches of the river, — for it
is generally wider and more lake-like just above a fall,
— and there they wait for boats. These humble
dwellings, homely and sincere, in which a hearth was
still the essential part, were more pleasing to our eyes
than palaces or castles would have been. In the noon
of these days, as we have said, we occasionally climbed
the banks and approached these houses, to get a glass
of water and make acquaintance with their inhabit-
ants. High in the leafy bank, surrounded commonly
by a small patch of corn and beans, squashes and
melons, with sometimes a graceful hop-yard on one
side, and some running vine over the windows, they
appeared like bee-hives set to gather honey for a
summer. I have not read of any Arcadian life which
surpasses the actual luxury and serenity of these New
England dwellings. For the outward gilding, at
least, the age is golden enough. As you approach
the sunny door-way, awakening the echoes by your
steps, still no sound from these barracks of repose,
and you fear that the gentlest knock may seem rude
to the oriental dreamers. The door is opened, per-
chance, by some Yankee-Hindoo woman, whose
small-voiced but sincere hospitality, out of the bot-
tomless depths of a quiet nature, has travelled quite
round to the opposite side, and fears only to obtrude
its kindness. You step over the white-scoured floor
to the bright " dresser," lightly, as if afraid to disturb
the devotions of the household, — for oriental dynas-
ties appear to have passed away since the dinner
table was last spread here, — and thence to the fre-
quented curb, where you see your long-forgotten,
244 ^ WEEK ON THE CONCORD RIVER.
unshaven face at the bottom, in juxtaposition with
new-made butter and the trout in the well. " Perhaps
you would like some molasses and ginger,^' suggests
the faint noon voice. Sometimes there sits the
brother who follows the sea, their representative man ;
who knows only how far it is to the nearest port, no
more distances, all the rest is sea and distant capes,
— patting the dog, or dandling the kitten in arms
that were stretched by the cable and the oar, pulling
against Boreas or the trade-winds. He looks up at
the stranger half pleased, half astonished, with a
mariner's eye, as if he were a dolphin within cast.
If men will believe it, sua si bona norint, there are no
more quiet Tempes, nor more poetic and Arcadian
lives, than may be lived in these New England dwell-
ings. We thought that the employment of their
inhabitants by day would be to tend the flowers and
herds, and at night, like the shepherds of old, to clus-
ter and give names to the stars from the river banks.
We passed a large and densely wooded island this
forenoon, between Short's and Griffith's Falls, the
fairest which we had met with, with a handsome grove
of elms at its head. If it had been evening we should
have been glad to camp there. Not long after one or
two more occurred. The boatmen told us that the
current had recently made important changes here.
An island always pleases my imagination, even the
smallest, as a small continent and integral portion of
the globe. I have a fancy for building my hut on one.
Even a bare grassy isle which I can see entirely over
at a glance, has some undefined and mysterious charm
for me. It is commonly the offspring of the junction
of two rivers, whose currents bring down and deposit
their respective sands in the eddy at their confluence,
WEDNESDAY. 245
as it were the womb of a continent. By what a deli-
cate and far-fetched contribution every island is made!
What an enterprise of Nature thus to lay the founda-
tions of and to build up the future continent, of golden
and silver sands and the ruins of forests, with ant-like
industry ! Pindar gives the following account of the
origin of Thera, whence, in after times, Libyan Cyrene
was settled by Battus. Triton, in the form of Eu-
rypylus, presents a clod to Euphemus, one of the
Argonauts, as they are about to return home. —
" He knew of our haste,
And immediately seizing a clod
With his right hand, strove to give it
As a chance stranger's gift.
Nor did the hero disregard him, but leaping on the shore,
Stretching hand to hand,
Received the mystic clod.
But I hear it sinking from the deck.
Go with the sea brine
At evening, accompanying the watery sea.
Often indeed I urged the careless
Menials to guard it, but their minds forgot.
And now in this island the imperishable seed of spacious Libya
Is spilled before its hour."
It is a beautiful fable, also related by Pindar, how
Helius, or the Sun, looked down into the sea one day,
— when perchance his rays were first reflected from
some increasing ghttering sand-bar, — and saw the
fair and fruitful island of Rhodes
" Springing up from the bottom,
Capable of feeding many men and suitable for flocks ; "
" The island sprang from the watery
Sea ; and the Genial Father of penetrating beams,
Ruler of fire-breathing horses, has it."
246 A WEEK ON THE CONCORD RIVER.
The shifting islands ! who would not be willing that
his house should be undermined by such a foe ! The
inhabitants of an island can tell what currents formed
the land which he cultivates ; and his earth is still
being created or destroyed. There before his door,
perchance, still empties the stream which brought
down the material of his farm ages before, and is still
bringing it down or washing it away, — the graceful,
gentle robber!
Not long after this we saw the Piscataquoag, or
Sparkling Water, emptying in on our left, and heard
the Falls of Amoskeag above. Large quantities of
lumber, as we read in the gazetteer, were still annu-
ally floated down the Piscataquoag to the Merrimack,
and there are many fine mill privileges on it. Just
above the mouth of this river we passed the artificial
falls where the canals of the Manchester Manufacturing
Company discharge themselves into the Merrimack.
They are striking enough to have a name, and, with
the scenery of a Bashpish, would be visited from far
and near. The water falls thirty or forty feet over
seven or eight steep and narrow terraces of stone,
probably to break its force, and is converted into
one mass of foam. This canal water did not seem to
be the worse for the wear, but foamed and fumed as
purely, and boomed as savagely and impressively, as
a mountain torrent, and though it came from under
a factory, we saw a rainbow here. These are now
the Amoskeag Falls, removed a mile down stream.
But we did not tarry to examine them minutely,
making haste to get past the village here collected,
and out of hearing of the hammer which was laying
the foundation of another Lowell on the banks.
At the time of our voyage Manchester was a village
WEDNESDA Y. 247
of about two thousand inhabitants, where we landed
for a moment to get some cool water, and where an
inhabitant told us that he was accustomed to go
across the river into Goffstown for his water. But
now, after nine years, as I have been told and in-
deed have witnessed, it contains sixteen thousand
inhabitants. From a hill on the road between Goffs-
town and Hooksett, four miles distant, I have since
seen a thunder shower pass over, and the sun break
out and shine on a city there, where I had landed nine
years before in the fields to get a draught of water ;
and there was waving the flag of its museum, —
where "the only perfect skeleton of a Greenland or
river whale in the United States " was to be seen,
and I also read in its directory of a " Manchester
Athenaeum and Gallery of the Fine Arts."
According to the gazetteer, the descent of Amos-
keag Falls, which are the most considerable in the
Merrimack, is fifty-four feet in half a mile. We
locked ourselves through here with much ado, sur-
mounting the successive watery steps of this river's
stair-case in the midst of a crowd of villagers,
jumping into the canal, to their amusement, to save
our boat from upsetting, and consuming much river
water in our service. Amoskeag, or Namaskeak, is
said to mean " great fishing place." It was here-
abouts that the Sachem Wannalancet resided. Tra-
dition says that his tribe, when at war with the
Mohawks, concealed their provisions in the cavities of
the rocks in the upper part of these falls. The Indians
who hid their provisions in these holes, and affirmed
"that God had cut them out for that purpose,"
understood their origin and use better than the
Royal Society, who in their Transactions, in the
248 A WEEK ON THE CONCORD RIVER.
last century, speaking of these very holes, declare
that "they seem plainly to be artificial." Similar
" pot-holes " may be seen at the Stone Flume on
this river, on the Ottaway, at Bellows' Falls on the
Connecticut, and in the limestone rock at Shelburne
Falls on Deerfield river in Massachusetts, and more
or less generally about all falls. Perhaps the most
remarkable curiosity of this kind in New England is
the well known Basin on the Pemigewasset, one of
the head-waters of this river, twenty by thirty feet
in extent and proportionably deep, with a smooth
and rounded brim, and filled with a cold, pellucid
and greenish water. At Amoskeag the river is
divided into many separate torrents and trickling
rills by the rocks, and its volume is so much re-
duced by the drain of the canals that it does not
fill its bed. There are many pot-holes here on a
rocky island which the river washes over in high
freshets. As at Shelburne Falls, where I first ob-
served them, they are from one foot to four or five
in diameter, and as many in depth, perfectly round and
regular, with smooth and gracefully curved brims,
like goblets. Their origin is apparent to the most
careless observer. A stone which the current has
washed down, meeting with obstacles, revolves as
on a pivot where it lies, gradually sinking in the
course of centuries deeper and deeper into the rock,
and in new freshets receiving the aid of fresh stones
which are drawn into this trap and doomed to re-
volve there for an indefinite period, doing Sisyphus-
like penance for stony sins, until they either wear
out, or wear through the bottom of their prison, or
else are released by some revolution of nature.
There lie the stones of various sizes, from a pebble
WEDNESDA Y. 249
rested from their labor only since the spring, and
some higher up which have lain still and dry for
ages, — we notice some here at least sixteen feet
above the present level of the water, — while others
are still revolving, and enjoy no respite at any sea-
son. In one instance, at Shelburne Falls, they have
worn quite through the rock, so that a portion of
the river leaks through in anticipation of the fall.
Some of these pot-holes at Amoskeag, in a very
hard brown stone, had an oblong cylindrical stone
of the same material loosely fitting them. One, as
much as fifteen feet deep and seven or eight in diam-
eter, which was worn quite through to the water,
had a huge rock of the same material, smooth but
of irregular form, lodged in it. Everywhere there
were the rudiments or the wrecks of a dimple in
the rock ; the rocky shells of whirlpools. As if, by
force of example and sympathy after so many lessons,
the rocks, the hardest material, had been endeavor-
ing to whirl or flow into the forms of the most fluid.
The finest workers in stone are not copper or steel
tools, but the gentle touches of air and water work-
ing at their leisure with a liberal allowance of time.
Not only have some of these basins been forming
for countless ages, but others exist which must have
been completed in a former geological period. There
are some, we are told, in the town of Canaan in this
State, with the stones still in them, on the height of
land between the Merrimack and Connecticut, and
nearly a thousand feet above these rivers, proving
that the mountains and the rivers have changed places.
There lie the stones which completed their revolutions
perhaps before thoughts began to revolve in the brain
2S0 A WEEK ON THE CONCORD RIVER.
of man. The periods of Hindoo and Chinese history,
though they reach back to the time when the race of
mortals is confounded with the race of gods, are as
nothing compared with the periods which these stones
have inscribed. That which commenced a rock when
time was young, shall conclude a pebble in the une-
qual contest. With such expense of time and natural
forces are our very paving stones produced. They
teach us lessons, these dumb workers ; verily there are
" sermons in stones and books in the running streams."
In these very holes the Indians hid their provisions ;
but now there is no bread, but only its old neighbor
stones at the bottom. Who knows how many races
they have served thus? By as simple a law, some
accidental by-law, perchance, our system itself was
made ready for its inhabitants.
These, and such as these, must be our antiquities,
for lack of human vestiges. The monuments of
heroes and the temples of the gods which may once
have stood on the banks of this river, are now, at any
rate, returned to dust and primitive soil. The mur-
mur of unchronicled nations has died away along
these shores, and once more Lowell and Manchester
are on the trail of the Indian.
The fact that Romans once inhabited her reflects
no little dignity on Nature herself; that from some
particular hill the Roman once looked out on the sea.
She need not be ashamed of the vestiges of her
children. How gladly the antiquary informs us that
their vessels penetrated into this frith, or up that river
of some remote isle ! Their military monuments still
remain on the hills and under the sod of the valleys.
The oft-repeated Roman story is written in still legi-
ble characters in every quarter of the old world, and
WEDNESDAY. 25 1
but to-day, perchance, a new coin is dug up whose in-
scription repeats and confirms their fame. Some
'''■JiidcBa Capta^^ with a woman mourning under a
palm tree, with silent argument and demonstration
confirms the pages of history.
" Rome living was the world's sole ornament ;
And dead is now the world's sole monument."
*****
" With her own weight down pressed now she lies,
And by her heaps her hugeness testifies."
If one doubts whether Grecian valor and patriotism
are not a fiction of the poets, he may go to Athens and
see still upon the walls of the temple of Minerva the
circular marks made by the shields taken from the
enemy in the Persian war, which were suspended
there. We have not far to seek for living and un-
questionable evidence. The very dust takes shape
and confirms some story which we had read. As
Fuller said, commenting on the zeal of Camden, " A
broken urn is a whole evidence ; or an old gate still
surviving out of which the city is run out." When
Solon endeavored to prove that Salamis had formerly
belonged to the Athenians, and not to the Mega-
reans, he caused the tombs to be opened, and showed
that the inhabitants of Salamis turned the faces of
their dead to the same side with the Athenians, but
the Megareans to the opposite side. There they
were to be interrogated.
Some minds are as little logical or argumentative
as nature ; they can offer no reason or " guess," but
they exhibit the solemn and incontrovertible fact. If
a historical question arises, they cause the tombs to
be opened. Their silent and practical logic convinces
252 A WEEK ON THE CONCORD RIVER,
the reason and the understanding at the same time.
Of such sort is always the only pertinent question and
the only unanswerable reply.
Our own country furnishes antiquities as ancient
and durable, and as useful, as any ; rocks at least as
well covered with moss, and a soil which, if it is virgin,
is but virgin mould, the very dust of nature. What
if we cannot read Rome, or Greece, Etruria, or
Carthage, or Egypt, or Babylon, on these; are our
cliffs bare? The lichen on the rocks is a rude and
simple shield which beginning and imperfect Nature
suspended there. Still hangs her wrinkled trophy.
And here too the poet's eye may still detect the brazen
nails which fastened Time's inscriptions, and if he has
the gift, decipher them by this clue. The walls that
fence our fields, as well as modern Rome, and not less
the Parthenon itself, are all built of ruins. Here
may be heard the din of rivers, and ancient winds
which have long since lost their names sough through
our woods ; — the first faint sounds of spring, older
than the summer of Athenian glory, the titmouse lisp-
ing in the wood, the jay's scream and blue-bird's
warble, and the hum of
" bees that fiy
About the laughing blossoms of sallowy."
Here is the gray dawn for antiquity, and our to-mor-
row's future should be at least paulo-post to theirs
which we have put behind us. There are the red-
maple and birchen leaves, old runes which are not yet
deciphered ; catkins, pine-cones, vines, oak-leaves,
and acorns ; the very things themselves, and not
their forms in stone, — so much the more ancient and
venerable. And even to the current summer there has
WEDNESDAY. 253
come down tradition of a hoary-headed master of all
art, who once filled every field and grove with statues
and god-like architecture, of every design which
Greece has lately copied ; whose ruins are now min-
gled with the dust, and not one block remains upon
another. The century sun and unwearied rain have
wasted them, till not one fragment from that quarry
now exists ; and poets perchance will feign that gods
sent down the material from heaven.
What though the traveller tell us of the ruins of
Egypt, are we so sick or idle, that we must sacrifice
our America and to-day to some man's ill-remembered
and indolent story ? Carnac and Luxor are but names,
or if their skeletons remain, still more desert sand,
and at length a wave of the Mediterranean sea, are
needed to wash away the filth that attaches to their
grandeur. Carnac ! Carnac ! here is Carnac for me.
I behold the columns of a larger and purer temple.
This is my Carnac, whose unmeasured dome
Shelters the measuring art and measurer's home.
Behold these flowers, let us be up with time,
Not dreaming of three thousand years ago,
Erect ourselves and let those columns he.
Not stoop to raise a foil against the sky.
Where is the spirit of that time but in
This present day, perchance this present line ?
Three thousand years ago are not agone,
They are still lingering in this summer morn,
And Memnon's Mother sprightly greets us now,
Wearing her youthful radiance on her brow.
If Carnac's columns still stand on the plain,
To enjoy our opportunities they remain.
In these parts dwelt the famous Sachem Passacona-
way, who was seen by Gookin " at Pawtucket, when
254 ^ ^EEK ON THE CONCORD RIVER.
he was about one hundred and twenty years old." He
was reputed a wise man and a powwow, and restrained
his people from going to war with the English. They
believed " that he could make water burn, rocks move,
and trees dance, and metamorphose himself into a
flaming man ; that in winter he could raise a green
leaf out of the ashes of a dry one, and produce a living
snake from the skin of a dead one." In 1660, accord-
ing to Gookin, at a great feast and dance, he made
his farewell speech to his people, in which he said,
that as he was not likely to see them met together
again, he would leave them this word of advice, to
take heed how they quarrelled with their English
neighbors, for though they might do them much mis-
chief at first, it would prove the means of their own
destruction. He himself, he said, had been as much
an enemy to the English at their first coming as any,
and had used all his arts to destroy them, or at least to
prevent their settlement, but could by no means effect
it. Gookin thought that he "possibly might have
such a kind of spirit upon him as was upon Balaam,
who in xxiii. Numbers, 23, said ' Surely there is no
enchantment against Jacob, neither is there any divi-
nation against Israel.' " His son Wannalancet care-
fully followed his advice, and when Philip's War
broke out, he withdrew his followers to Penacook,
now Concord in New Hampshire, from the scene of
the war. On his return afterwards he visited the
minister of Chelmsford, and, as is stated in the his-
tory of that town, " wished to know whether Chelms-
ford had suffered much during the war; and being
informed that it had not, and that God should be
thanked for it, Wannalancet replied, 'Me next.'"
Manchester was the residence of John Stark, a hero
WEDNESDAY. 255
of two wars, and survivor of a third, and at his death
the last but one of the American generals of the
Revolution. He was bom in the adjoining town of
Londonderry, then Nutfield, in 1728. As early as
1752, he was taken prisoner by the Indians while
hunting in the wilderness near Baker's river; he
performed notable service as a captain of rangers in
the French war ; commanded a regiment of the New
Hampshire militia at the battle of Bunker Hill ; and
fought and won the battle of Bennington in 1777.
He was past service in the last war, and died here in
1822, at the age of 94. His monument stands upon
the second bank of the river, about a mile and a half
above the falls, and commands a prospect several
miles up and down the Merrimack. It suggested
how much more impressive in the landscape is the
tomb of a hero than the dwellings of the inglorious
living. Who is most dead, — a hero by whose mon-
ument you stand, or his descendants of whom you
have never heard?
The graves of Passaconaway and Wannalancet are
marked by no monument on the bank of their native
river.
Every town which we passed, if we may believe the
gazetteer, had been the residence of some great man.
But though we knocked at many doors, and even
made particular inquiries, we could not find that there
were any now living. Under the head of Litchfield
we read, — |
"The Hon. Wyseman Clagett closed his life in this
town." According to another, "He was a classi-
cal scholar, a good lawyer, a wit, and a poet." We
saw his old gray house just below Great Nesenkeag
2S6 A WEEK ON THE CONCORD RIVER.
Brook. — Under the head of Merrimac, — "Hon. Mat-
thew Thornton, one of the signers of the Declaration
of American Independence, resided many years in
this town." His house too we saw from the river. —
"Dr. Jonathan Gove, a man distinguished for his
urbanity, his talents and professional skill, resided
in this town [Goifstown.] He was one of the old-
est practitioners of medicine in the county. He was
many years an active member of the legislature." —
" Hon. Robert Means, who died Jan. 24, 1823, at
the age of 80, was for a long period a resident in
Amherst. He was a native of Ireland. In 1764 he
came to this country, where by his industry and ap-
plication to business, he acquired a large property, and
great respect." — "William Stinson, [one of the first
settlers of Dunbarton,] born in Ireland, came to Lon-
donderry with his father. He was much respected
and was a useful man. James Rogers was from Ire-
land, and father to Major Robert Rogers. He was
shot in the woods, being mistaken for a bear." —
"Rev. Matthew Clark, second minister of London-
derry, was a native of Ireland, who had in early life
been an officer in the army, and distinguished himself
in the defence of the city of Londonderry, when be-
sieged by the army of King James II., a.d. 1688-9.
He afterwards relinquished a military life for the
clerical profession. He possessed a strong mind,
marked by a considerable degree of eccentricity. He
died Jan. 25, 1735, and was borne to the grave, at his
particular request, by his former companions in arms,
of whom there were a considerable number among
the early settlers of this town ; several of whom had
been made free from taxes throughout the British
dominions by King William, for their bravery in that
WEDNESDAY. 257
memorable siege." — Col. George Reid and Capt.
David M'Clary, 'also citizens of Londonderry, were
" distinguished and brave " officers. — " Major Andrew
M'Clary, a native of this town [Epsom] , fell at the
battle of Breed's Hill." — Many of these heroes, like
the illustrious Roman, were plowing when the news
of the massacre at Lexington arrived, and straight-
way left their plows in the furrow, and repaired to the
scene of action. Some miles from where we now
were, there once stood a guide-board which said, " 3
miles to Squire MacGaw's." —
But generally speaking, the land is now, at any rate,
very barren of men, and we doubt if there are as
many hundreds as we read of. It may be that we
stood too near.
Uncannunuc Mountain in Goffstown was visible
from Amoskeag, five or six miles westward. Its name
is said to mean "The Two Breasts," there being
two eminences some distance apart. The highest,
which is about fourteen hundred feet above the sea,
probably affords a more extensive view of the Merri-
mack valley and the adjacent country than any other
hill, though it is somewhat obstructed by woods.
Only a few short reaches of the river are visible, but
you can trace its course far down stream by the sandy
tracts on its banks.
A little south of Uncannunuc, about sixty years
ago, as the story goes, an old woman who went out
to gather pennyroyal, tript her foot in the bail of a
small brass kettle in the dead grass and bushes.
Some say that flints and charcoal and some traces of
a camp were also found. This kettle, holding about
four quarts, is still preserved and used to dye thread
258 A WEEK ON THE CONCORD RIVER.
in. It is supposed to have belonged to some old
French or Indian hunter, who was killed in one of
his hunting or scouting excursions, and so never re-
turned to look after his kettle.
But we were most interested to hear of the penny-
royal, it is so soothing to be reminded that wild
nature produces anything ready for the use of man.
Men know that soDiethmg is good. One says that it
is yellow-dock, another that it is bitter-sweet, another
that it is slippery-elm bark, burdock, catnip, calamint,
elicampane, thoroughwort, or pennyroyal. A man
may esteem himself happy when that which is his food
i.s also his medicine. There is no kind of herb that
grows, but somebody or other says that it is good.
I am very glad to hear it. I reminds me of the first
chapter of Genesis. But how should they know that
it is good ? That is the mystery to me. I am always
agreeably disappointed ; it is incredible that they
should have found it out. Since all things are good,
men fail at last to distinguish which is the bane, and
which the antidote. There are sure to be two pre-
scriptions diametrically opposite. Stuff" a cold and
starve a cold are but two ways. They are the two
practices both always in full blast. Yet you must
take advice of the one school as if there was no other.
In respect to religion and the healing art, all nations
are still in a state of barbarism. In the most civil-
ized countries the priest is still but a Powwow, and
the physician a Great Medicine. Consider the def-
erence which is everywhere paid to a doctor's opinion.
Nothing more strikingly betrays the credulity of man-
kind than medicine. Quackery is a thing universal,
and universally successful. In this case it becomes
literally true that no imposition is too great for the
WEDNESDA V.
259
credulity of men. Priests and physicians should never
look one another in the face. They have no common
ground, nor is their any to mediate between them.
When the one comes, the other goes. They could
not come together without laughter, or a significant
silence, for the one's profession is a satire on the
other's, and cither's success would be the other's
failure. It is wonderful that the physician should
ever die, and that the priest should ever live. Why
is it that the priest is never called to consult with the
physician ? It is because men believe practically that
matter is independent of spirit. But what is quack-
ery ? It is commonly an attempt to cure the diseases
of a man by addressing his body alone. There is
need of a physician who shall minister to both soul
and body at once, that is, to man. Now he falls
between two stools.
After passing through the locks, we had poled our-
selves through the canal here, about half a mile in
length, to the boatable part of the river. Above
Amoskeag the river spreads out into a lake reach-
ing a mile or two without a bend. There were many
canal boats here bound up to Hooksett, about eight
miles, and as they were going up empty with a fair
wmd, one boatman offered to take us in tow if we
would wait. But when we came alongside, we found
that they meant to take us on board, since other-
wise we should clog their motions too much ; but
as our boat was too heavy to be lifted aboard, we
pursued our way up the stream, as before, while the
boatmen were at their dinner, and came to anchor
at length under some alders on the opposite shore,
where we could take our lunch. Though far on one
side, every sound was wafted over to us from the
260 A WEEK ON THE CONCORD RIVER.
opposite bank, and from the harbor of the canal, and
we could see everything that passed. By and by
came several canal boats, at intervals of a quarter
of a mile, standing up to Hooksett with a light breeze,
and one by one disappeared round a point above.
With their broad sails set, they moved slowly up the
stream in the sluggish and fitful breeze, like one-
winged antediluvian birds, and as if impelled by some
mysterious counter current. It was a grand motion,
so slow and stately, this "standing out," as the
phrase is, expressing the gradual and steady progress
of a vessel, as if it were by mere rectitude and dis-
position, without shuffling. Their sails, which stood
so still, were like chips cast into the current of the air
to show which way it set. At length the boat which
we had spoken came along, keeping the middle of
the stream, and when within speaking distance the
steersman called out ironically to say, that if we
would come alongside now he would take us in tow ;
but not heeding his taunt, we still loitered in the
shade till we had finished our lunch, and when the
last boat had disappeared round the point with flap-
ping sail, for the breeze had now sunk to a zephyr,
with our own sails set, and plying our oars, we shot
rapidly up the stream in pursuit, and as we glided
close alongside, while they were vainly invoking
^olus to their aid, we returned their compliment
by proposing, if they would throw us a rope, to " take
them in tow," to which these Merrimack sailors had
no suitable answer ready. Thus we gradually over-
took each boat in succession until we had the river
to ourselves again.
Our course this afternoon was between Manchester
and Gofifstown.
WEDNESDAY. 26 1
While we float here, far from that tributary stream
on whose banks our friends and kindred dwell, our
thoughts, like the stars, come out of their horizon
still ; for there circulates a finer blood than Lavoisier
has discovered the laws of, — the blood, not of kindred
merely, but of kindness, whose pulse still beats at any
distance and forever. After years of vain familiarity,
some distant gesture or unconscious behavior, which
we remember, speaks to us with more emphasis than
the wisest or kindest words. We are sometimes made
aware of a kindness long passed, and realize that there
have been times when our friends' thoughts of us were
of so pure and lofty a character that they passed over
us like the winds of heaven unnoticed; when they
treated us not as what we were, but as what we aspired
to be. There has just reached us, it may be, the
nobleness of some such silent behavior, not to be for-
gotten, not to be remembered, and we shudder to
think how it fell on us cold, though in some true but
tardy hour we endeavor to wipe off these scores.
In my experience, persons, when they are made the
subject of conversation, though with a friend, are
commonly the most prosaic and trivial of facts. The
universe seems bankrupt as soon as we begin to dis-
cuss the character of individuals. Our discourse all
runs to slander, and our limits grow narrower as we
advance. How is it that we are impelled to treat our
old friends so ill when we obtain new ones ? The
housekeeper says, I never had any new crockery in
my Hfe but I began to break the old. I say, let us
speak of mushrooms and forest trees rather. Yet we
can sometimes afford to remember them in private. —
Lately, alas, I knew a gentle boy,
Whose features all were cast in Virtues' mould,
262 A WEEK ON THE CONCORD RIVER.
As one she had designed for Beauty's toy,
But after manned him for her own stronghold.
On every side he open was as day,
That you might see no lack of strength within,
For walls and ports do only serve alway
For a pretence to feebleness and sin.
Say not that Caesar was victorious,
With toil and strife who stormed the House of Fame,
In other sense this youth was glorious,
Himself a kingdom wheresoe'er he came.
No strength went out to get him victory.
When all was income of its own accord ;
For where he went none other was to see,
But all were parcel of their noble lord.
He forayed like the subtil haze of summer,
That stilly shows fresh landscapes to our eyes,
And revolutions works without a murmur,
Or rustling of a leaf beneath the skies.
So was I taken unawares by this,
I quite forgot my homage to confess ;
Yet now am forced to know, though hard it is,
I might have loved him had I loved him less.
Each moment as we nearer drew to each,
A stern respect withheld us further yet,
So that we seemed beyond each other's reach,
And less acquainted than when first we met.
We two were one while we did sympathize.
So could we not the simplest bargain drive ;
And what avails it now that we are wise.
If absence doth this doubleness contrive?
Eternity may not the chance repeat,
But I must tread my single way alone,
In sad remembrance that we once did meet.
And know that bliss irrevocably gone.
WEDNESDA V. 263
The spheres henceforth my elegy shall sing,
For elegy has other subject none ;
Each strain of music in my ears shall ring
Knell of departure from that other one.
Make haste and celebrate my tragedy ;
With fitting strain resound ye woods and fields ;
Sorrow is dearer in such case to me
Than all the joys other occasion yields.
Is 't then too late the damage to repair?
Distance, forsooth, from my weak grasp hath reft
The empty husk, and clutched the useless tare,
But in my hands the wheat and kernel left.
If I but love that virtue which he is.
Though it be scented in the morning air,
Still shall we be truest acquaintances.
Nor mortals know a sympathy more rare.
Friendship is evanescent in every man's experience,
and remembered like heat lightning in past summers.
Fair and flitting like a summer cloud ; — there is always
some vapor in the air, no matter how long the drought ;
there are even April showers. Surely from time to
time, for its vestiges never depart, it floats through
our atmosphere. It takes place, like vegetation in
so many materials, because there is such a law, but
always without permanent form, though ancient and
familiar as the sun and moon, and as sure to come
again. The heart is forever inexperienced. They
silently gather as by magic, these never failing, never
quite deceiving visions, like the bright and fleecy
clouds in the calmest and clearest days. The Friend
is some fair floating isle of palms eluding the mariner
in Pacific seas. Many are the dangers to be encoun-
tered, equinoctial gales and coral reefs, ere he may
264 A WEEK ON THE CONCORD RIVER.
sail before the constant trades. But who would not
sail through mutiny and storm even over Atlantic
waves, to reach the fabulous retreating shores of some
continent man? The imagination still clings to the
faintest tradition of
THE ATLANTIDES.
The smothered streams of love, which flow
More bright than Phlegethon, more low,
Island us ever, like the sea,
In an Atlantic mystery.
Our fabled shores none ever reach,
No mariner has found our beach,
Only our mirage now is seen.
And neighboring waves with floating green,
Yet still the oldest charts contain
Some dotted outline of our main;
In ancient times midsummer days
Unto the western islands' gaze.
To Teneriffe and the Azores,
Have shown our faint and cloud-like shores.
But sink not yet, ye desolate isles.
Anon your coast with commerce smiles,
And richer freights ye '11 furnish far
Than Africa or Malabar,
Be fair, be fertile evermore.
Ye rumored but untrodden shore.
Princes and monarchs will contend
Who first unto your land shall send,
And pawn the jewels of the crown
To call your distant soil their own.
Columbus has sailed westward of these isles by the
mariner's compass, but neither he nor his successors
have found them. We are no nearer than Plato was.
The earnest seeker and hopeful discoverer of this
New World always haunts the outskirts of his time,
WEDNESDAY. 265
and walks through the densest crowd uninterrupted^
and as it were in a straight line. —
Sea and land are but his neighbors,
And companions in his labors,
Who on the ocean's verge and firm land's end
Doth long and truly seek his Friend.
Many men dwell far inland,
But he alone sits on the strand.
Whether he ponders men or books,
Always still he seaward looks.
Marine news he ever reads,
And the slightest glances heeds,
Feels the sea breeze on his cheek
At each word the landsmen speak,
In every companion's eye
A sailing vessel doth descry ;
In the ocean's sullen roar
From some distant port he hears,
Of wrecks upon a distant shore.
And the ventures of past years.
Who does not walk on the plain as amid the col-
umns of Tadmore of the desert? There is on the
earth no institution which Friendship has established ;
it is not taught by any religion ; no scripture contains
its maxims. It has no temple, nor even a solitary col-
umn. There goes a rumor that the earth is inhabited,
but the shipwrecked mariner has not seen a footprint
on the shore. The hunter has found only fragments
of pottery and the monuments of inhabitants.
However, our fates at least are social. Our courses
do not diverge ; but as the web of destiny is woven it
is fulled, and we are cast more and more into the centre.
Men naturally, though feebly, seek this alliance, and
their actions faintly foretell it. We are inclined to lay
the chief stress on likeness and not on difference, and
266 A WEEK ON THE CONCORD RIVER.
in foreign bodies we admit that there are many degrees
of warmth below blood heat, but none of cold above it.
One or two persons come to my house from time to
time, there being proposed to them the faint possibility
of intercourse. They are as full as they are silent, and
wait for my plectrum to stir the strings of their lyre.
If they could ever come to the length of a sentence,
or hear one, on that ground they are dreaming of!
They speak faintly, and do not obtrude themselves.
They have heard some news, which none, not even
they themselves, can impart. It is a wealth they bear
about them which can be expended in various ways.
What came they out to seek ?
No word is oftener on the lips of men than Friend-
ship, and indeed no thought is more familiar to their
aspirations. All men are dreaming of it, and its
drama, which is always a tragedy, is enacted daily. It
is the secret of the universe. You may thread the
town, you may wander the country, and none shall
ever speak of it, yet thought is everywhere busy about
it, and the idea of what is possible in this respect
affects our behavior toward all new men and women,
and a great many old ones. Nevertheless, I can
remember only two or three essays on this subject in
all literature. No wonder that the Mythology, and
Arabian Nights, and Shakspeare, and Scott's novels
entertain us, — we are poets and fablers and dramatists
and novelists ourselves. We are continually acting a
part in a more interesting drama than any written. We
are dreaming that our Friends are onr Friends, and that
we are our Friends' Friends. Our actual Friends are
but distant relations of those to whom we are pledged.
We never exchange more than three words with a
WEDNESDA Y. 267
Friend in our lives on that level to which our thoughts
and feelings almost habitually rise. One goes forth
prepared to say " Sweet Friends ! " and the salutation
is " Damn your eyes ! " But never mind ; faint heart
never won true Friend. O my Friend, may it come
to pass, once, that when you are my Friend I may be
yours.
Of what use the friendliest disposition even, if there
are no hours given to Friendship, if it is forever
postponed to unimportant duties and relations?
Friendship is first. Friendship last. But it is equally
impossible to forget our Friends, and to make them
answer to our ideal. When they say farewell, then
indeed we begin to keep them company. How often
we find ourselves turning our backs on our actual
Friends, that we may go and meet their ideal cousins.
I would that I were worthy to be any man's Friend.
What is commonly honored with the name of
Friendship is no very profound or powerful instinct.
Men do not, after all, love their Friends greatly. I do
not often see the farmers made seers and wise to the
verge of insanity by their Friendship for one another.
They are not often transfigured and translated by
love in each other's presence. I do not observe them
purified, refined, and elevated by the love of a man.
If one abates a little the price of his wood, or gives
a neighbor his vote at town-meeeting, or a barrel of
apples, or lends him his wagon frequently, it is es-
teemed a rare instance of Friendship. Nor do the
farmers' wives lead lives consecrated to Friendship. I
do not see the pair of farmer friends of either sex pre-
pared to stand against the world. There are only two
or three couples in history. To say that a man is your
Friend, means commonly no more than this, that he
268 A WEEK ON THE CONCORD RIVER.
is not your enemy. Most contemplate only what
would be the accidental and trifling advantages of
Friendship, as that the Friend can assist in time of
need, by his substance, or his influence, or his coun-
sel ; but he who foresees such advantages in this rela-
tion proves himself blind to its real advantage, or
indeed wholly inexperienced in the relation itself.
Such services are particular and menial, compared
with the perpetual and all-embracing service which it
is. Even the utmost good-will and harmony and
practical kindness are not sufficient for Friendship,
for Friends do not live in harmony merely, as some
say, but in melody. We do not wish for Friends to
feed and clothe our bodies, — neighbors are kind
enough for that, — but to do the like office to our
spirits. For this few are rich enough, however well
disposed they may be.
Think of the importance of Friendship in the edu-
cation of men. It will make a man honest ; it will
make him a hero ; it will make him a saint. It is the
state of the just dealing with the just, the magnani-
mous with the magnanimous, the sincere with the
sincere, man with man. —
" Why love among the virtues is not known,
Is that love is them all contract in one."
All the abuses which are the object of reform with
the philanthropist, the statesman, and the house-
keeper, are unconsciously amended in the intercourse
of Friends. A Friend is one who incessantly pays
us the compliment of expecting from us all the virtues,
and who can appreciate them in us. It takes two to
speak the truth, — one to speak, and another to hear.
How can one treat with magnanimity mere wood and
WEDNESDA Y. 269
stone? If we dealt only with the false and dishonest,
we should at last forget how to speak truth. In
our daily intercourse with men, our nobler faculties
are dormant and suffered to rust. None will pay us
the compliment to expect nobleness from us. We
ask our neighbor to suffer himself to be dealt with
truly, sincerely, nobly ; but he answers no by his
deafness. He does not even hear this prayer. He
says practically, — I will be content if you treat
me as no better than I should be, as deceitful, mean,
dishonest, and selfish. For the most part, we are
contented so to deal and to be dealt with, and
we do not think that for the mass of men there
is any truer and nobler relation possible. A man
may have good neighbors, so called, and acquaint-
ances, and even companions, wife, parents, brothers,
sisters, children, who meet himself and one another
on this ground only. The State does not demand
justice of its members, but thinks that it succeeds
very well with the least degree of it, hardly more than
rogues practise ; and so do the family and the neigh-
borhood. What is commonly called Friendship even
is only a little more honor among rogues.
But sometimes we are said to love another, that is
to stand in a true relation to him, so that we give the
best to, and receive the best from, him. Between
whom there is hearty truth there is love ; and in pro-
portion to our truthfulness and confidence in one
another, our lives are divine and miraculous, and
answer to our ideal. There are passages of affection
in our intercourse with mortal men and women, such
as no prophecy had taught us to expect, which tran-
scend our earthly life, and anticipate heaven for us.
What is this Love that may come right into the middle
2yO A WEEK ON THE CONCORD RIVER.
of a prosaic Goflfstown day, equal to any of the gods ?
that discovers a new world, fair and fresh and eternal,
occupying the place of this old one, when to the com-
mon eye a dust has settled on the universe? which
world cannot else be reached, and does not exist.
What other words, we may almost ask, are memorable
and worthy to be repeated than those which love has
inspired? It is wonderful that they were ever uttered.
They are few and rare, indeed, but, like a strain of
music, they are incessantly repeated and modulated
by the memory. All other words crumble off with
the stucco which overlies the heart. We should not
dare to repeat them now aloud. We are not compe-
tent to hear them at all times.
The books for young people say a great deal about
the selection of Friends ; it is because they really
have nothing to say about Friends. They mean
associates and confidants merely. "Know that the
contrariety of foe and Friend proceeds from God."
Friendship takes place between those who have an
affinity for one another, and is a perfectly natural and
inevitable result. No professions nor advances will
avail. Even speech, at first, necessarily has nothing
to do with it ; but it follows after silence, as the buds
in the graft do not put forth into leaves till long
after the graft has taken. It is a drama in which the
parties have no part to act. We are all Mussul-
mans and fatalists in this respect. Impatient and
uncertain lovers think that they must say or do some-
thing kind whenever they meet ; they must never be
cold. But they who are Friends do not do what
they think they must, but what they 7mist. Even their
Friendship is in one sense but a sublime phenome-
non to them.
WEDNESDAY, 27 1
The true and not despairing Friend will address his
Friend in some such terms as these.
^' I never asked thy leave to let me love thee, — I
have a right. I love thee not as something private
and personal, which is your own, but as something
universal and worthy of love, which I have found.
O how I think of you! You are purely good, — you
are infinitely good. I can trust you forever. I did
not think that humanity was so rich. Give me an
opportunity to live."
" You are the fact in a fiction, — you are the truth
more strange and admirable than fiction. Consent
only to be what you are. I alone will never stand in
your way."
" This is what I would like, — to be as intimate
with you as our spirits are intimate, — respecting you
as I respect my ideal. Never to profane one another
by word or action, even by a thought. Between us,
if necessary, let there be no acquaintance."
" I have discovered you ; how can you be concealed
from me ? "
The Friend asks no return but that his Friend will
religiously accept and wear and not disgrace his
apotheosis of him. They cherish each other's hopes.
They are kind to each other's dreams.
Though the poet says, " 'T is the preeminence of
Friendship to impute excellence," yet we can never
praise our Friend, nor esteem him praiseworthy, nor
let him think that he can please us by any behavior,
or ever treat us well enough. That kindness which
has so good a reputation elsewhere can least of all
consist with this relation, and no such affront can be
2^2 A WEEK ON THE CONCORD RIVER.
offered to a Friend, as a conscious good-will, a friend-
liness which is not a necessity of the Friend's nature.
The sexes are naturally most strongly attracted to
one another, by constant constitutional differences,
and are most commonly and surely the complements
of one another. How natural and easy it is for man
to secure the attention of woman to what interests
himself Men and women of equal culture, thrown
together, are sure to be of a certain value to one
another, more than men to men. There exists already
a natural disinterestedness and liberality in such
society, and I think that any man will more confi-
dently carry his favorite books to read to some circle
of intelligent women, than to one of his own sex.
The visit of man to man is wont to be an interruption,
but the sexes naturally expect one another. Yet
Friendship is no respecter of sex ; and perhaps it is
more rare between the sexes, than between two of the
same sex.
Friendship is, at any rate, a relation of perfect
equality. It cannot well spare any outward sign of
equal obligation and advantage. The nobleman can
never have a Friend among his retainers, nor the king
among his subjects. Not that the parties to it are in
all respects equal, but they are equal in all that respects
or affects their Friendship. The one's love is exactly
balanced and represented by the other's. Persons are
only the vessels which contain the nectar, and the hy-
drostatic paradox is the symbol of love's law. It finds
its level and rises to its fountain-head in all breasts,
and its slenderest column balances the ocean. —
Love equals swift and slow,
And high and low,
WEDNESDAY. 2/3
Racer and lame,
The hunter and his game.
The one sex is not, in this respect, more tender than
the other. A hero's love is as delicate as a maiden's.
Confucius said, " Never contract Friendship with a
man that is not better than thyself." It is the merit
and preservation of Friendship, that it takes place on
a level higher than the actual characters of the parties
would seem to warrant. The ra3^s of light come to
us in such a curve that every man whom we meet
appears to be taller than he actually is. Such founda-
tion has civility. My Friend is that one whom I can
associate with my choicest thought. I always assign
to him a nobler employment in my absence than I
ever find him engaged in ; and I imagine that the
hours which he devotes to me were snatched from a
higher society. The sorest insult which I ever re-
ceived from a Friend was, when he behaved with the
license which only long and cheap acquaintance allows
to one's faults, in my presence, without shame, and
still addressed me in friendly accents. Beware, lest
thy Friend learn at last to tolerate one frailty of thine,
and so an obstacle be raised to the progress of thy
love.
Friendship is never established as an understood
relation. Do you demand that I be less your Friend
that you may know it? Yet what right have I to
think that another cherishes so rare a sentiment for
me? It is a miracle which requires constant proofs.
It is an exercise of the purest imagination and the
rarest faith. It says by a silent but eloquent be-
havior, — "I will be so related to thee as thou canst
imagine; even so thou mayest believe. I will spend
truth, — all my wealth on thee," — and the Friend
2/4 ^ Vi^EEK ON THE CONCORD RIVER.
responds silently through his nature and life, and
treats his Friend with the same divine courtesy. He
knows us literally through thick and thin. He never
asks for a sign of love, but can distinguish it by the
features which it naturally wears. We never need to
stand upon ceremony with him with regard to his
visits. Wait not till I invite thee, but observe that
I am glad to see thee when thou comest. It would
be paying too dear for thy visit to ask for it. Where
my Friend lives there are all riches and every attrac-
tion, and no slight obstacle can keep me from him.
Let me never have to tell thee what I have not to tell.
Let our intercourse be wholly above ourselves, and draw
us up to it. The language of Friendship is not words
but meanings. It is an intelligence above language.
One imagines endless conversations with his Friend,
in which the tongue shall be loosed, and thoughts
be spoken without hesitancy, or end ; but the experi-
ence is commonly far otherwise. Acquaintances may
come and go, and have a word ready for every occa-
sion ; but what puny word shall he utter whose very
breath is thought and meaning ? Suppose you go to
bid farewell to your Friend who is setting out on a
journey ; what other outward sign do you know of
than to shake his hand ? Have you any palaver ready
for him then ? any box of salve to commit to his pocket ?
any particular message to send by him .'* any state-
ment which you had forgotten to make ? — as if you
could forget anything. — No, it is much that you take
his hand and say Farewell ; that you could easily
omit ; so far custom has prevailed. It is even pain-
ful, if he is to go, that he should linger so long. If he
must go, let him go quickly. Have you any last words ?
Alas, it is only the word of words, which you have so
WEDNESDAY. 2/5
long sought and found not ; you have not 2. first word
yet. There are few even whom I should venture to call
earnestly by their most proper names. A name pro-
nounced is the recognition of the individual to whom
it belongs. He who can pronounce my name aright,
he can call me, and is entitled to my love and service.
The violence of love is as much to be dreaded as
that of hate. When it is durable it is serene and
equable. Even its famous pains begin only with the
ebb of love, for few are indeed lovers, though all would
fain be. It is one proof of a man's fitness for Friend-
ship that he is able to do without that which is cheap
and passionate. A true Friendship is as wise as it
is tender. The parties to it yield implicitly to the
guidance of their love, and know no other law nor
kindness. It is not extravagant and insane, but what
it says is something established henceforth, and will
bear to be stereotyped. It is a truer truth, it is better
and fairer news, and no time will ever shame it, or
prove it false. This is a plant which thrives best in
a temperate zone, where summer and winter alternate
with one another. The Friend is a necessarhcs, and
meets his Friend on homely ground ; not on carpets
and cushions, but on the ground and on rocks they
will sit, obeying the natural and primitive laws. They
will meet without any outcry, and part without loud
sorrow. Their relation implies such qualities as the
warrior prizes ; for it takes a valor to open the hearts
of men as well as the gates of cities.
The Friendship which Wawatam testified for Henry
the fur-trader, as described in the latter's "Adven-
tures," so almost bare and leafless, yet not blossom-
less nor fruitless, is remembered with satisfaction and
security. The stern imperturbable warrior, after fast-
276 A WEEK ON THE CONCORD RIVER.
ing, solitude, and mortification of body, comes to the
white man's lodge, and affirms that he is the white
brother whom he saw in his dream, and adopts him
henceforth. He buries the hatchet as it regards his
friend, and they hunt and feast and make maple-sugar
together. " Metals unite from fluxility ; birds and
beasts from motives of convenience ; fools from fear
and stupidity; and just men at sight.''. If Wawatam
would taste the " white man's milk " with his tribe, or
take his bowl of human broth made of the trader's
fellow-countrymen, he first finds a place of safety for
his Friend, whom he has rescued from a similar fate.
At length, after a long winter of undisturbed and happy
intercourse in the family of the chieftain in the wilder-
ness, hunting and fishing, they return in the spring to
Michilimackinac to dispose of their furs ; and it be-
comes necessary for Wawatam to take leave of his
Friend at the Isle aux Outardes, when the latter, to
avoid his enemies, proceeded to the Sault de Sainte
Marie, supposing that they were to be separated for
a short time only. "We now exchanged farewells,"
says Henry, "with an emotion entirely reciprocal. I
did not quit the lodge without the most grateful sense
of the many acts of goodness which I had experienced
in it, nor without the sincerest respect for the virtues
which I had witnessed among its members. All the
family accompanied me to the beach ; and the canoe
had no sooner put off than Wawatam commenced an
address to the Kichi Manito, beseeching him to take
care of me, his brother, till we should next meet. —
We had proceeded to too great a distance to allow of
our hearing his voice, before Wawatam had ceased
to offer up his prayers." We never hear of him
again.
WEDNESDA Y.
277
Friendship is not so kind as is imagined ; it has
not much human blood in it, but consists with a cer-
tain disregard for men and their erections, the Chris-
tian duties and humanities, while it purifies the air
like electricity. There may be the sternest tragedy
in the relation of two more than usually innocent and
true to their highest instincts. We may call it an
essentially heathenish intercourse, free and irrespon-
sible in its nature, and practising all the virtues gra-
tuitously. It is not the highest sympathy merely, but
a pure and lofty society, a fragmentary and godlike
intercourse of ancient date, still kept up at intervals,
which, remembering itself, does not hesitate to dis-
regard the humbler rights and duties of humanity.
It requires immaculate and godlike qualities full-
grown, and exists at all only by condescension and
anticipation of the remotest future. We love noth-
ing which is merely good and not fair, if such a thing
is possible. Nature puts some kind of blossom before
every fruit, not simply a calyx behind it. When the
Friend comes out of his heathenism and superstition,
and breaks his idols, being converted by the precepts
of a newer testament ; when he forgets his mythology,
and treats his Friend like a Christian, or as he can
afford ; then Friendship ceases to be Friendship, and
becomes charity ; that principle which established the
almshouse is now beginning with its charity at home,
and establishing an almshouse and pauper relations
there.
As for the number which this society admits, it is
at any rate to be begun with one, the noblest and
greatest that we know, and whether the world will
ever carry it further, whether, as Chaucer affirms,
27^ A WEEK ON THE CONCORD RIVER.
" There be mo sterres in the skie than a pair,"
remains to be proved ; —
" And certaine he is well begone
Among a thousand that findeth one."
We shall not surrender ourselves heartily to any while
we are conscious that another is more deserving of
our love. Yet Friendship does not stand for num-
bers ; the Friend does not count his Friends on his
fingers; they are not numerable. The more there
are included by this bond, if they are indeed included,
the rarer and diviner the quality of the love that binds
them. I am ready to believe that as private and inti-
mate a relation may exist by which three are embraced,
as between two. Indeed we cannot have too many
friends ; the virtue which we appreciate we to some
extent appropriate, so that thus we are made at last
more fit for every relation of life. A base Friendship
is of a narrowing and exclusive tendency, but a noble
one is not exclusive ; its very superfluity and dispersed
love is the humanity which sweetens society, and sym-
pathizes with foreign nations ; for though its founda-
tions are private, it is in effect, a public affair and a
public advantage, and the Friend, more than the
father of a family, deserves well of the state.
The only danger in Friendship is that it will end.
It is a delicate plant though a native. The least un-
worthiness, even if it be unknown to one's self, vitiates
it. Let the Friend know that those faults which he
observes in his Friend his own faults attract. There
is no rule more invariable than that we are paid for
our suspicions by finding what we suspected. By
WEDNESDAY. 279
our narrowness and prejudices we say, I will have
so much and such of you, my Friend, no more.
Perhaps there are none charitable, none disinterested,
none wise, noble, and heroic enough, for a true and
lasting Friendship.
I sometimes hear my Friends complain finely that I
do not appreciate their fineness. I shall not tell them
whether I do or not. As if they expected a vote of
thanks for every fine thing which they uttered or did.
Who knows but it was finely appreciated. It may be
that your silence was the finest thing of the two.
There are some things which a man never speaks of,
which are much finer kept silent about. To the high-
est communications we only lend a silent ear. Our
finest relations are not simply kept silent about, but
buried under a positive depth of silence, never to be
revealed. It may be that we are not even yet ac-
quainted. In human intercourse the tragedy begins,
not when there is misunderstanding about words, but
when silence is not understood. Then there can
never be an explanation. What avails it that another
loves you, if he does not understand you ? Such love
is a curse. What sort of companions are they who
are presuming always that their silence is more expres-
sive than yours ? How foolish, and inconsiderate, and
unjust, to conduct as if you were the only party ag-
grieved! Has not your Friend always equal ground
of complaint ? No doubt my Friends sometimes speak
to me in vain, but they do not know what things I
hear which they are not aware that they have spoken.
I know that I have frequently disappointed them by
not giving them words when they expected them, or
such as they expected. Whenever I see my Friend I
speak to him, but the expector, the man with the ears,
2S0 A WEEK ON THE CONCORD RIVER.
is not he. They will complain too that you are hard.
O ye that would have the cocoa-nut wrong side out-
wards, when next I weep I will let you know. They
ask for words and deeds, when a true relation is word
and deed. If they know not of these things, how can
they be informed? We often forbear to confess our
feelings, not from pride, but for fear that we could not
continue to love the one who required us to give such
proof of our affection.
I know a woman who possesses a restless and intelli-
gent mind, interested in her own culture, and earnest
to enjoy the highest possible advantages, and I meet
her with pleasure as a natural person who not a little
provokes me, and I suppose is stimulated in turn
by myself. Yet our acquaintance plainly does not
attain to that degree of confidence and sentiment
which women, which all, in fact, covet. I am glad to
help her, as I am helped by her ; I like very well to
know her with a sort of stranger's privilege, and hesi-
tate to visit her often, like her other Friends. My
nature pauses here, I do not well know why. Per-
haps she does not make the highest demand on me,
a religious demand. Some, with whose prejudices or
peculiar bias I have no sympathy, yet inspire me with
confidence, and I trust that they confide in me also as
a religious heathen at least, — a good Greek. I too
have principles as well founded as their own. If this
person could conceive that, without wilfulness, I asso-
ciate with her as far as our destinies are coincident, as
far as our Good Geniuses permit, and still value such
intercourse, it would be a grateful assurance to me. I
feel as if I appeared careless, indifferent, and without
principle to her, not expecting more, and yet not con-
tent with less. If she could know that I make an
WEDNESDA Y. 28 1
infinite demand on myself, as well as on all others, she
would see that this true though incomplete intercourse,
is infinitely better than a more unreserved but falsely
grounded one, without the principle of growth in it.
For a companion, I require one who will make an
equal demand on me with my own genius. Such a
one will always be rightly tolerant. It is suicide and
corrupts good manners to welcome any less than this.
I value and trust those who love and praise my aspira-
tion rather than my performance. If you would not
stop to look at me, but look whither I am looking and
further, then my education could not dispense with
your company.
My love must be as free
As is the eagle's wing,
Hovering o'er land and sea
And everything.
I must not dim my eye
In thy saloon,
I must not leave my sky
And nightly moon.
Be not the fowler's net
Which stays my flight,
And craftily is set
T' allure the sight.
But be the favoring gale
That bears me on.
And still doth fill my sail
When thou art gone.
I cannot leave my sky
For thy caprice,
True love would soar as high
As heaven is.
282 A WEEK ON THE CONCORD RIVER.
The eagle would not brook
Her mate thus won,
Who trained his eye to look
Beneath the sun.
Nothing is so difficult as to help a Friend in matters
which do not require the aid of Friendship, but only
a cheap and trivial service, if your Friendship wants
the basis of a thorough practical acquaintance. I
stand in the friendliest relation, on social and spiritual
grounds, to one who does not perceive what practical
skill I have, but when he seeks my assistance in such
matters, is wholly ignorant of that one whom he deals
with ; does not use my skill, which in such matters is
much greater than his, but only my hands. I know
another, who, on the contrary, is remarkable for his
discrimination in this respect ; who knows how to
make use of the talents of others when he does not
possess the same ; knows when not to look after or
oversee, and stops short at his man. It is a rare
pleasure to serve him, which all laborers know. I am
not a little pained by the other kind of treatment. It
is as if, after the friendliest and most ennobling inter-
course, your Friend should use you as a hammer and
drive a nail with your head, all in good faith ; not-
withstanding that you are a tolerable carpenter, as
well as his good Friend, and would use a hammer
cheerfully in his service. This want of perception is
a defect which all the virtues of the heart cannot
supply. —
The Good how can we trust ?
Only the Wise are just.
The Good we use,
The Wise we cannot choose.
These there are none above :
WEDNESDAY. 283
The Good they know and love,
But are not known again
By those of lesser ken.
They do not charm us with their eyes,
But they transfix with their advice ;
No partial sympathy they feel
With private woe or private weal.
But with the universe joy and sigh,
Whose knowledge is their sympathy.
Confucius said, " To contract ties of Friendship
with any one, is to contract Friendship with his
virtue. There ought not to be any other motive in
Friendship." But men wish us to contract Friend-
ship with their vice also. I have a Friend who wishes
me to see that to be right which I know to be wrong.
But if Friendship is to rob me of my eyes, if it is to
darken the day, I will have none of it. It should be
expansive and inconceivably liberalizing in its effects.
True Friendship can afford true knowledge. It does
not depend on darkness and ignorance. A want of
discernment cannot be an ingredient in it. If I can
see my Friend's virtues more distinctly than another's,
his faults too are made more conspicuous by contrast.
We have not so good a right to hate any as our
Friend. Faults are not the less faults because they
are invariably balanced by corresponding virtues, and
for a fault there is no excuse, though it may appear
greater than it is in many ways. I have never known
one who could bear criticism, who could not be flat-
tered, who would not bribe his judge, or was content
that the truth should be loved always better than him-
self.
If two travellers would go their way harmoniously
together, the one must take as true and just a view of
things as the other, else their path will not be strewn
284 A WEEK ON THE CONCORD RIVER.
with roses. Yet you can travel profitably and pleas-
antly even with a blind man, if he practises common
courtesy, and when you converse about the scenery
will remember that he is blind but that you can see ;
and you will not forget that his sense of hearing is
probably quickened by his want of sight. Otherwise
you will not long keep company. A blind man, and
a man in whose eyes there was no defect, were walk-
ing together, when they came to the edge of a preci-
pice, — " Take care ! my friend," said the latter, '' here
is a steep precipice ; go no further this way." — "I
know better," said the other, and stepped off.
It is impossible to say all that we think, even to
our truest Friend. We may bid him farewell forever
sooner than complain, for our complaint is too well
grounded to be uttered. There is not so good an
understanding between any two, but the exposure by
the one of a serious fault in the other will produce a
misunderstanding in proportion to its heinousness.
The constitutional differences which always exist, and
are obstacles to a perfect Friendship, are forever a
forbidden theme to the lips of Friends. They advise
by their whole behavior. Nothing can reconcile them
but love. They are fatally late when they undertake
to explain and treat with one another like foes. Who
will take an apology for a Friend? They must apol-
ogize like dew and frost, which are off again with the
sun, and which all men know in their hearts to be
beneficent. The necessity itself for explanation, —
what explanation will atone for that ? True love does
not quarrel for slight reasons, such mistakes as mu-
tual acquaintances can explain away, but alas, how-
ever slight the apparent cause, only for adequate and
fatal and everlasting reasons, which can never be set
WEDNESDAY. 285
aside. Its quarrel, if there is any, is ever recurring,
notwithstanding the beams of affection which invari-
ably come to gild its tears ; as the rainbow, however
beautiful and unerring a sign, does not promise fair
weather forever, but only for a season. I have known
two or three persons pretty well, and yet I have never
known advice to be of use but in trivial and transient
matters. One may know what another does not, but
the utmost kindness cannot impart what is requisite
to make the advice useful. We must accept or re-
fuse one another as we are. I could tame a hyena
more easily than my Friend. He is a material which
no tool of mine will work. A naked savage will fell
an oak with a fire-brand, and wear a hatchet out of
the rock by friction, but I cannot hew the smallest
chip out of the character of my Friend, either to
beautify or deform it.
The lover learns at last that there is no person
quite transparent and trustworthy, but every one has
a devil in him that is capable of any crime in the long
run. Yet, as an oriental philosopher has said, "Al-
though Friendship between good men is interrupted,
their principles remain unaltered. The stalk of
the lotus may be broken, and the fibres remain
connected."
Ignorance and bungling with love are better than
wisdom and skill without. There may be courtesy,
there may be even temper, and wit, and talent, and
sparkling conversation, there may be good-will even,
— and yet the humanest and divinest faculties pine
for exercise. Our life without love is like coke and
ashes. Men may be pure as alabaster and Parian
marble, elegant as a Tuscan villa, sublime as Niagara,
286 A WEEK ON THE CONCORD RIVER.
and yet if there is no milk mingled with the wine at
their entertainments, better is the hospitality of Goths
and Vandals. My Friend is not of some other race
or family of men, but flesh of my flesh, bone of my
bone. He is my real brother. I see his nature grop-
ing yonder so like mine. We do not live far apart.
Have not the fates associated us in many ways? Is
it of no significance that we have so long partaken of
the same loaf, drank at the same fountain, breathed
the same air, summer and winter, felt the same heat
and cold ; that the same fruits have been pleased to
refresh us both, and we have never had a thought of
different fibre the one from the other!
Nature doth have her dawn each day,
But mine are far between ;
Content, I cry, for sooth to say>
Mine brightest are I ween.
For when my sun doth deign to rise,
Though it be her noontide,
Her fairest field in shadow Ues,
Nor can my light abide.
Sometimes I bask me in her day,
Conversing with my mate,
But if we interchange one ray.
Forthwith her heats abate.
Through his discourse I climb and see,
As from some eastern hill,
A brighter morrow rise to me
Than lieth in her skill.
As 'twere two summer days in one.
Two Sundays come together,
Our rays united make one sun.
With fairest summer weather.
WEDNESDA Y. 287
As surely as the sunset in my latest November
shall translate me to the ethereal world, and remind me
of the ruddy morning of youth ; as surely as the last
strain of music which falls on my decaying ear shall
make age to be forgotten, or, in short, the manifold
influences of nature survive during the term of our
natural life, so surely my Friend shall forever be my
Friend, and reflect a ray of God to me, and time
shall foster and adorn and consecrate our Friend-
ship, no less than the ruins of temples. As I love
nature, as I love singing birds, and gleaming stubble,
and flowing rivers, and morning and evening, and
summer and winter, I love thee, my Friend.
But all that can be said of Friendship, is like bot-
any to flowers. How can the understanding take
account of its friendliness 'i
Even the death of Friends will inspire us as much
as their lives. They will leave consolation to the
mourners, as the rich leave money to defray the ex-
penses of their funerals, and their memories will be
incrusted over with sublime and pleasing thoughts, as
their monuments are overgrown with moss.
This to our cis-Alpine and cis-Atlantic Friends.
Also this other word of entreaty and advice to the
large and respectable nation of Acquaintances, beyond
the mountains ; — Greeting,
My most serene and irresponsible neighbors, let us
see that we have the whole advantage of each other ;
we will be useful, at least, if not admirable, to one
another. I know that the mountains which separate
us are high, and covered with perpetual snow, but
despair not. Improve the serene winter weather to
288 A WEEK ON THE CONCORD RIVER.
scale them. If need be, soften the rocks with vine-
gar. For here lie the verdant plains of Italy ready to
receive you. Nor shall I be slow on my side to pene-
trate to your Provence. Strike then boldly at head
or heart or any vital part. Depend upon it the
timber is well seasoned and tough, and will bear
rough usage ; and if it should crack, there is plenty
more where it came from. I am no piece of crockery
that cannot be jostled against my neighbor without
danger of being broken by the collision, and must
needs ring false and jarringly to the end of my days,
when once I am cracked ; but rather one of the old
fashioned wooden trenchers, which one while stands
at the head of the table, and at another is a milking-
stool, and at another a seat for children, and finally
goes down to its grave not unadorned with honorable
scars, and does not die till it is worn out. Nothing
can shock a brave man but dulness. Think how
many rebuffs every man has experienced in his day ;
perhaps has fallen into a horse-pond, eaten fresh-
water clams, or worn one shirt for a week without
washing. Indeed, you cannot receive a shock unless
you have an electric affinity for that which shocks
you. Use me, then, for I am useful in my way, and
stand as one of many petitioners, from toadstool and
henbane up to dahlia and violet, supplicating to be put
to my use, if by any means ye may find me service-
able ; whether for a medicated drink or bath, as balm
and lavender ; or for fragrance, as verbena and gera-
nium ; or for sight, as cactus ; or for thoughts, as
pansy. — These humbler, at least, if not those higher
uses.
Ah my dear Strangers and Enemies, I would not
forget you. I can well afford to welcome you. Let
WEDNESDA Y. 289
me subscribe myself Yours ever and truly — your
much obliged servant. We have nothing to fear from
our foes ; God keeps a standing army for that service ;
but we have no ally against our Friends, those ruth-
less Vandals.
Once more to one and all,
" Friends, Romans, Countrymen, and Lovers.
Let such pure hate still underprop
Our love, that we may be
Each other's conscience,
And have our sympathy
Mainly from thence.
We '11 one another treat like gods,
And all the faith we have
In virtue and in truth, bestow
On either, and suspicion leave
To gods below.
Two solitary stars —
Unmeasured systems far
Between us roll,
But by our conscious light we are
Determined to one pole.
What need confound the sphere — ■
Love can afford to wait.
For it no hour 's too late
That witnesseth one duty's end.
Or to another doth beginning lend.
It will subserve no use.
More than the tints of flowers,
Only the independent guest
Frequents its bowers,
Inherits its bequest.
290 A WEEK ON THE CONCORD RIVER.
No speech though kind has it,
But kinder silence doles
Unto its mates,
By night consoles,
By day congratulates.
What saith the tongue to tongue ?
What heareth ear of ear ?
By the decrees of fate
From year to year.
Does it communicate.
Pathless the gulf of feeling yawns —
No trivial bridge of words,
Or arch of boldest span,
Can leap the moat that girds
The sincere man.
No show of bolts and bars
Can keep the foeman out,
Or 'scape his secret mine
Who entered with the doubt
That drew the line.
No warder at the gate
Can let the friendly in,
But, like the sun, o'er all
He will the castle win.
And shine along the wall.
There "s nothing in the world I know
That can escape from love.
For every depth it goes below.
And every height above.
It waits as waits the sky,
Until the clouds go by.
Yet shines serenely on
With an eternal day,
WEDNESDAY. 29 1
Alike when they are gone,
And when they stay.
Implacable is Love, —
Foes may be bought or teazed
From their hostile intent.
But he goes unappeased
Who is on kindness bent.
Having rowed five or six miles above Amoskeag
before sunset, and reached a pleasant part of the river,
one of us landed to look for a farm-house, where we
might replenish our stores, while the other remained
cruising about the stream, and exploring the opposite
shores to find a suitable harbor for the night. In the
mean while the canal boats began to come round a
point in our rear, poling their way along close to the
shore, the breeze having quite died away. This time
there was no offer of assistance, but one of the boat-
men only called out to say, as the truest revenge for
having been the losers in the race, that he had seen
a wood-duck, which we had scared up, sitting on a
tall white-pine, half a mile down stream ; and he re-
peated the assertion several times, and seemed really
chagrined at the apparent suspicion with which this
information was received. But there sat the summer
duck still undisturbed by us.
By and by the other voyageur returned from his
inland expedition, bringing one of the natives with
him, a little flaxen-headed boy, with some tradition,
or small edition, of Robinson Crusoe in his head, who
had been charmed by the account of our adventures,
and asked his father's leave to join us. He exam-
ined, at first from the top of the bank, our boat and
furniture, with sparkling eyes, and wished himself
already his own man. He was a lively and interest-
292 A WEEK ON THE CONCORD RIVER.
ing boy, and we should have been glad to ship him ;
but Nathan was still his father's boy, and had not
come to years of discretion.
We had got a loaf of home-made bread, and musk
and water-melons for dessert. For this farmer, a
clever and well-disposed man, cultivated a large patch
of melons for the Hooksett and Concord markets.
He hospitably entertained us the next day, exhibiting
his hop-fields and kiln and melon patch, warning us
to step over the tight rope which surrounded the lat-
ter at a foot from the ground, while he pointed to a
little bower at the corner, where it connected with the
lock of a gun ranging with the line, and where, as he
informed us, he sometimes sat in pleasant nights to
defend his premises against thieves. We stepped
high over the line, and sympathized with our host's
on the whole quite human, if not humane, interest
in the success of his experiment. That night espe-
cially thieves were to be expected, from rumors in the
atmosphere, and the priming was not wet. He was
a Methodist man, who had his dwelling between the
river and Uncannunuc Mountain ; who there belonged,
and stayed at home there, and by the encouragement
of distant political organizations, and by his own
tenacity, held a property in his melons, and contin-
ued to plant. We suggested melon seeds of new
varieties and fruit of foreign flavor to be added to
his stock. We had come away up here among the
hills to learn the impartial and unbribable beneficence
of Nature. Strawberries and melons grow as well in
one man's garden as another's, and the sun lodges
as kindly under his hill-side, — when we had imag-
ined that she inclined rather to some few earnest and
faithful souls whom we know.
WEDNESDA Y. 293
We found a convenient harbor for our boat on the
opposite or east shore, still in Hooksett, at the mouth
of a small brook which emptied into the Merrimack,
where it would be out of the way of any passing boat
in the night, — for they commonly hug the shore if
bound up stream, either to avoid the current, or touch
the bottom with their poles, — and where it would be
accessible without stepping on the clayey shore. We
set one of our largest melons to cool in the still water
among the alders at the mouth of this creek, but when
our tent was pitched and ready, and we went to get
it, it had floated out into the stream and was nowhere
to be seen. So taking the boat in the twilight, we
went in pursuit of this property, and at length, after
long straining of the eyes, its green disk was discov-
ered far down the river, gently floating seaward with
many twigs and leaves from the mountains that even-
ing, and so perfectly balanced that it had not keeled
at all, and no water had run in at the tap which had
been taken out to hasten its cooling.
As we sat on the bank eating our supper, the clear
light of the western sky fell on the eastern trees and
was reflected in the water, and we enjoyed so serene
an evening as left nothing to describe. For the
most part we think that there are few degrees of sub-
limity, and that the highest is but little higher than
that which we now behold; but we are always de-
ceived. Sublimer visions appear, and the former pale
and fade away. We are grateful when we are re-
minded by interior evidence, of the permanence of
universal laws ; for our faith is but faintly remem-
bered, indeed, is not a remembered assurance, but
a use and enjoyment of knowledge. It is when we
do not have to believe, but come into actual contact
294 ^ WEEK ON THE CONCORD RIVER.
with Truth, and are related to her in the most direct
and intimate way. Waves of serener life pass over
us from time to time, like flakes of sunlight over the
fields in cloudy weather. In some happier moment,
when more sap flows in the withered stalk of our
life,- Syria and India stretch away from our present
as they do in history. All the events which make
the annals of the nations are but the shadows of our
private experiences. Suddenly and silently the eras
which we call history awake and glimmer in us, and
there is room for Alexander and Hannibal to march
and conquer. In other words, the history which we
read is only a fainter memory of events which have
happened in our own experience. Tradition is a
more interrupted and feebler memory.
This world is but canvass to our imaginations. I
see men with infinite pains endeavoring to realize
to their bodies, what I, with at least equal pains,
would realize to my imagination, — its capacities ;
for certainly there is a life of the mind above the
wants of the body and independent of it. Often
the body is warmed, but the imagination is torpid ;
the body is fat, but the imagination is lean and
shrunk. But what avails all other wealth if this is
wanting ? " Imagination is the air of mind," in
which it lives and breathes. All things are as I am.
Where is the House of Change ? The past is only
so heroic as we see it. It is the canvass on which
our idea of heroism is painted, and so, in one sense,
the dim prospectus of our future field. Our circum-
stances answer to our expectations and the demand
of our natures. I have noticed that if a man thinks
that he needs a thousand dollars, and cannot be
convinced that he does not, he will commonly be
WEDNESDA Y. 295
found to have them^ if he lives and thinks a thou-
sand dollars will be forthcoming, though it be to
buy shoe strings with. A thousand mills will be
just as slow to come to one who finds it equally
hard to convince himself that he needs i/iem.
Men are by birth equal in this, that given
Themselves and their condition, they are even.
I am astonished at the singular pertinacity and
endurance of our lives. The miracle is, that what is
zs, when it is so difficult, if not impossible, for any-
thing else to be ; that we walk on in our particular
paths so far, before we fall on death and fate,
merely because we must walk in some path ; that
every man can get a living, and so few can do any
more. So much only can I accomplish ere health
and strength are gone, and yet this suffices. The
bird now sits just out of gunshot. I am never rich
in money, and I am never meanly poor. If debts
are incurred, why, debts are in the course of events
cancelled, as it were by the same law by which
they were incurred. I heard that an engagement
was entered into between a certain youth and a
maiden, and then I heard that it was broken off, but
I did not know the reason in either case. We are
hedged about, we think, by accident and circum-
stance, now we creep as in a dream, and now again
we run, as if there were a fate in it and all things
thwarted or assisted. I cannot change my clothes
but when I do, and yet I do change them, and soil
the new ones. It is wonderful that this gets done,
when some admirable deeds which I could men-
tion, do not get done. Our particular lives seem
of such fortune and confident strength and durability
296 A WEEK ON THE CONCORD RIVER.
as piers of solid rock thrown forward into the tide
of circumstance. When every other path would fail,
with singular and unerring confidence we advance
on our particular course. What risks we run ! famine
and fire and pestilence, and the thousand forms of
a cruel fate, — and yet every man lives till he —
dies. How did he manage that? Is there no im-
mediate danger ? We wonder superfluously when we
hear of a somnambulist walking a plank securely, —
we have walked a plank all our lives up to this par-
ticular string-piece where we are. My life will wait
for nobody, but is being matured still without delay,
while I go about the streets and chaffer with this
man and that to secure a living. It is as indifferent
and easy meanwhile as a poor man's dog, and making
acquaintance with its kind. It will cut its own
channel like a mountain stream, and by the longest
ridge is not kept from the sea at last. I have found
all things thus far, persons and inanimate matter,
elements and seasons, strangely adapted to my
resources. No matter what imprudent haste in my
career ; I am permitted to be rash. Gulfs are bridged
in a twinkling, as if some unseen baggage train
carried pontoons for my convenience, and while from
the heights I scan the tempting but unexplored
Pacific Ocean of Futurity, the ship is being carried
over the mountains piece-meal on the backs of
mules and llamas, whose keel shall plow its waves
and bear me to the Indies. Day would not dawn
if it were not for
THE INWARD MORNING.
Packed in my mind lie all the clothes
Which outward nature wears,
WEDNESDA Y. 297
And in its fashion's hourly change
It all things else repairs.
In vain I look for change abroad,
And can no difference find,
Till some new ray of peace uncalled
Illumes my inmost mind.
What is it gilds the trees and clouds,
And paints the heavens so gay,
But yonder fast abiding light
With its unchanging ray ?
Lo, when the sun streams through the wood,
Upon a winter's morn.
Where'er his silent beams intrude
The murky night is gone.
How could the patient pine have known
The morning breeze would come,
Or humble flowers anticipate
The insect's noonday hum, —
Till the new light with morning cheer
From far streamed through the aisles,
And nimbly told the forest trees
For many stretching miles ?
I 've heard within my inmost soul
Such cheerful morning news,
In the horizon of my mind
Have seen such orient hues,
As in the twilight of the dawn,
When the first birds awake,
Are heard within some silent wood,
Where they the small twigs break.
298 A WEEK ON THE CONCORD RIVER.
Or in the eastern skies are seen,
Before the sun appears,
The harbingers of summer heats
Which from afar he bears.
Whole weeks and months of my summer life slide
away in thin volumes like mist and smoke, till at
length, some warm morning, perchance, I see a
sheet of mist blown down the brook to the swamp,
and I float as high above the fields with it. I can
recall to mind the stillest summer hours, in which
the grasshopper sings over the mulleins, and there
is a valor in that time the bare memory of which
is armor that can laugh at any blow of fortune.
For our lifetime the strains of a harp are heard to
swell and die alternately, and death is but "the
pause when the blast is recollecting itself."
We lay awake a long while, listening to the mur-
murs of the brook, in the angle formed by whose
bank with the river our tent was pitched, and there
was a sort of human interest in its story, which ceases
not in freshet or in drought the livelong summer,
and the profounder lapse of the river was quite
drowned by its din. But the rill, whose
" Silver sands and pebbles sing
Eternal ditties with the spring,"
is silenced by the first frosts of winter, while mightier
streams, on whose bottom the sun never shines,
clogged with sunken rocks and the ruins of forests,
from whose surface comes up no murmur, are
strangers to the icy fetters which bind fast a thou-
sand contributary rills.
I dreamed this night of an event which had
WEDNESDA V. 299
occurred long before. It was a difference with a
Friend, which had not ceased to give me pain,
though I had no cause to blame myself. But in
my dream ideal justice was at length done me for
his suspicions, and I received that compensation
which I had never obtained in my waking hours.
I was unspeakably soothed and rejoiced, even after
I awoke, because in dreams we never deceive our-
selves, nor are deceived, and this seemed to have
the authority of a final judgment.
We bless and curse ourselves. Some dreams are
divine, as well as some waking thoughts. Donne
sings of one
" Who dreamt devoutlier than most use to pray."
Dreams are the touchstones of our characters. We
are scarcely less afflicted when we remember some
unworthiness in our conduct in a dream, than if it
had been actual, and the intensity of our grief, which
is our atonement, measures inversely the degree by
which this is separated from an actual unworthiness.
For in dreams we but act a part which must have
been learned and rehearsed in our waking hours,
and no doubt could discover some waking consent
thereto. If this meanness has not its foundation in
us, why are we grieved at it ? In dreams we see our-
selves naked and acting out our real characters, even
more clearly than we see others awake. But an un-
wavering and commanding virtue would compel even
its most fantastic and faintest dreams to respect its
ever wakeful authority ; as we are accustomed to say
carelessly, we should never have drea?ncd of such a
thing. Our truest life is when we are in dreams
awake.
300 A WEEK ON THE CONCORD RIVER.
"And, more to lull him in his slumber soft,
A trickling streame from high rock tumbling downe,
And ever-drizzling raine upon the loft,
Mixt with a murmuring winde, much like the sowne
Of swarming bees, did cast him in a swowne.
No other noyse, nor people's troublous cryes,
As still are wont t' annoy the walled towne.
Might there be heard ; but careless Quiet lyes
Wrapt in eternall silence farre from enemyes."
THURSDAY
" He trode the unplanted forest floor, whereon
The all-seeing sun for ages hath not shone,
Where feeds the moose, and walks the surly bear,
And up the tall mast runs the woodpecker.
*****
Where darkness found him he lay glad at night;
There the red morning touched him with its light.
*****
Go where he will, the wise man is at home,
His hearth the earth, — his hall the azure dome;
Where his clear spirit leads him, there's his road.
By God's own light illumined and foreshowed."
Emerson.
When we awoke this morning, we heard the faint
deliberate and ominous sound of rain drops on our
cotton roof. The rain had pattered all night, and
now the whole country wept, the drops falling in the
river, and on the alders, and in the pastures, and in-
stead of any bow in the heavens, there was the trill
of the tree-sparrow all the morning. The cheery faith
of this little bird atoned for the silence of the whole
woodland quire beside. When we first stepped abroad,
a flock of sheep, led by their rams, came rushing down
a ravine in our rear, with heedless haste and unre-
served frisking, as if unobserved by man, from some
higher pasture where they had spent the night, to
taste the herbage by the river-side ; but when their
leaders caught sight of our white tent through the
mist, struck with sudden astonishment, with their
30I
302 A WEEK ON THE CONCORD RIVER.
fore feet braced, they sustained the rushing torrent
in their rear, and the whole flock stood still, endeavor-
ing to solve the mystery in their sheepish brains. At
length, concluding that it boded no mischief to them,
they spread themselves out quietly over the field. We
learned afterward that we had pitched our tent on the
very spot which a few summers before had been occu-
pied by a party of Penobscots. We could see rising
before us through the mist a dark conical eminence
called Hooksett Pinnacle, a landmark to boatmen, and
also Uncannunuc Mountain, broad off on the west
side of the river.
This was the limit of our voyage, for a few hours
more in the rain would have taken us to the last of
the locks, and our boat was too heavy to be dragged
around the long and numerous rapids which would
occur. On foot, however, we continued up along the
bank, feeling our way with a stick through the show-
ery and foggy day, and climbing over the slippery
logs in our path with as much pleasure and buoyancy
as in brightest sunshine ; scenting the fragrance of
the pines and the wet clay under our feet, and cheered
by the tones of invisible waterfalls ; with visions of
toadstools, and wandering frogs, and festoons of moss
hanging from the spruce trees, and thrushes flitting
silent under the leaves ; our road still holding together
through that wettest of weather, like faith, while we
confidently followed its lead. We managed to keep
our thoughts dry, however, and only our clothes were
wet. It was altogether a cloudy and drizzling day,
with occasional brightenings in the mist, when the
trill of the tree-sparrow seemed to be ushering in
sunny hours.
" Nothing that naturally happens to man, can hurt
THURSDA Y. 303
him, earthquakes and thunder storms not excepted,"
said a man of genius, who at this time lived a few
miles further on our road. When compelled by a
shower to take shelter under a tree, we may improve
that opportunity for a more minute inspection of some
of Nature's works. I have stood under a tree in the
woods half a day at a time, during a heavy rain in the
summer, and yet employed myself happily and profit-
ably there prying with miscroscopic eye into the crev-
ices of the bark or the leaves or the fungi at my feet.
" Riches are the attendants of the miser : and the
heavens rain plenteously upon the mountains."" I can
fancy that it would be a luxury to stand up to one's chin
in some retired swamp a whole summer day, scenting
the wild honeysuckle and bilberry blows, and lulled
by the minstrelsy of gnats and mosquitoes ! A day
passed in the society of those Greek sages, such as
described in the Banquet of Xenophon, would not be
comparable with the dry wit of decayed cranberry
vines, and the fresh Attic salt of the moss-beds. Say
twelve hours of genial and familiar converse with the
leopard frog ; the sun to rise behind alder and dog-
wood, and climb buoyantly to his meridian of two
hands' breadth, and finally sink to rest behind some
bold western hummock. To hear the evening chant
of the mosquito from a thousand green chapels, and
the bittern begin to boom from some concealed fort
like a sunset gun ! — Surely one may as profitably
be soaked in the juices of a swamp for one day as
pick his way dry-shod over sand. Cold and damp,
— are they not as rich experience as warmth and
dryness ?
At present, the drops come trickling down the
stubble while we lie drenched on a bed of withered
304 A WEEK ON THE CONCORD RIVER.
wild oats, by the side of a bushy hill, and the gather-
ing in of the clouds, with the last rush and dying
breath of the wind, and then the regular dripping of
twigs and leaves the country over, enhance the sense
of inward comfort and sociableness. The birds draw
closer and are more familiar under the thick foliage,
seemingly composing new strains upon their roosts
against the sunshine. What were the amusements
of the drawing room and the library in comparison,
if we had them here? We should still sing as of
old,—
My books I 'd fain cast off, I cannot read,
'Twixt every page my thoughts go stray at large
Down in the meadow, where is richer feed,
And will not mind to hit their proper targe.
Plutarch was good, and so was Homer too,
Our Shakspeare's life was rich to live again,
What Plutarch read, that was not good nor true.
Nor Shakspeare's books, unless his books were men.
Here while I lie beneath this walnut bough.
What care I for the Greeks or for Troy town,
If juster battles are enacted now
Between the ants upon this hummock's crown?
Bid Homer wait till I the issue learn.
If red or black the gods will favor most,
Or yonder Ajax will the phalanx turn.
Struggling to heave some rock against the host.
Tell Shakspeare to attend some leisure hour.
For now I 've business with this drop of dew,
And see you not, the clouds prepare a shower, —
I '11 meet him shortly when the sky is blue.
This bed of herd's-grass and wild oats was spread
Last year with nicer skill than monarchs use,
A clover tuft is pillow for my head,
And violets quite overtop my shoes.
THURSDA y. 305
And now the cordial clouds have shut all in,
And gently swells the wind to say all 's well,
The scattered drops are falling fast and thin,
Some in the pool, some in the flower-bell.
I am well drenched upon my bed of oats ;
But see that globe come rolling down its stem,
Now like a lonely planet there it floats,
And now it sinks into my garment's hem.
Drip, drip the trees for all the country round,
And richness rare distils from every bough,
The wind alone it is makes every sound,
Shaking down crystals on the leaves below.
For shame the sun will never show himself.
Who could not with his beams e'er melt me so,
My dripping locks — they would become an elf,
Who in a beaded coat does gaily go.
The Pinnacle is a small wooded hill which rises
very abruptly to the height of about two hundred feet,
near the shore at Hooksett Falls. As Uncannunuc
Mountain is perhaps the best point from which to view
the valley of the Merrimack, so this hill affords the
best view of the river itself. I have sat upon its sum-
mit, a precipitous rock only a few rods long, in fairer
weather, when the sun was setting and filling the river
valley with a flood of light. You can see up and down
the Merrimack several miles each way. The broad and
straight river, full of light and life, with its sparkling
and foaming falls, the islet which divides the stream,
the village of Hooksett on the shore almost directly
under your feet, so near that you can converse with
its inhabitants or throw a stone into its yards, the
woodland lake at its western base, and the mountains
in the north and north-east, make a scene of rare
306 A WEEK ON THE CONCORD RIVER.
beauty and completeness, which the traveller should
take pains to behold.
We were hospitably entertained in Concord in New
Hampshire, which we persisted in calling Nezu Con-
cord, as we had been wont, to distinguish it from our
native town, from which we had been told that it was
named and in part originally settled. This would have
been the proper place to conclude our voyage, uniting
Concord with Concord by these meandering rivers,
but our boat was moored some miles below its port.
The richness of the intervals at Penacook, now
Concord in New Hampshire, had been observed by
explorers, and, according to the historian of Haver-
hill, in the " year 1726, considerable progress was
made in the settlement, and a road was cut through
the wilderness from Haverhill to Penacook. In the
fall of 1727, the first family, that of Capt. Ebenezer
Eastman, moved into the place. His team was driven
by Jacob Shute, who was by birth a Frenchman, and
he is said to have been the first person who drove
a team through the wilderness. Soon after, says tra-
dition, one Ayer, a lad of 18, drove a team consisting
of ten yoke of oxen to Penacook, swam the river, and
plowed a portion of the interval. He is supposed to
have been the first person who plowed land in that
place. After he had completed his work, he started
on his return at sunrise, drowned a yoke of oxen
while recrossing the river, and arrived at Haverhill
about midnight. The crank of the first saw-mill was
manufactured in Haverhill, and carried to Penacook
on a horse."
But we found that the frontiers were not this way
any longer. This generation has come into the world
fatally late for some enterprises. Go where we will
THURSDA Y. 30/
on the surface of things, men have been there before
us. We cannot now have the pleasure of erecting
the last house ; that was long ago set up in the suburbs
of Astoria city, and our boundaries have literally been
run to the South Sea, according to the old patents.
But the lives of men, though more extended laterally
in their range, are still as shallow as ever. Undoubt-
edly, as a western orator said, "men generally live
over about the same surface ; some live long and
narrow, and others live broad and short ; ^'' but it is all
superficial living. A worm is as good a traveller as a
grasshopper or a cricket, and a much wiser settler.
With all their activity these do not hop away from
drought nor forward to summer. We do not avoid
evil by fleeing before it, but by rising above or diving
below its plane ; as the worm escapes drought and
frost by boring a few inches deeper. The frontiers
are not east or west, north or south, but wherever a
Ti\2.x\ fronts a fact, though that fact be his neighbor,
there is an unsettled wilderness between him and
Canada, between him and the setting sun, or, further
still, between him and //. Let him build himself a
log-house with the bark on where he is, fronting
IT, and wage there an Old French war for seven
or seventy years, with Indians and Rangers, or what-
ever else may come between him and the reality, and
save his scalp if he can.
We now no longer sailed or floated on the river,, but
trod the unyielding land like pilgrims. Sadi tells
who may travel ; among others, — "A common me-
chanic, who can earn a subsistence by the industry of
his hand, and shall not have to stake his reputation
for every morsel of bread, as philosophers have said."
308 A WEEK ON THE CONCORD RIVER.
— He may travel who can subsist on the wild fruits
and game of the most cultivated country. A man
may travel fast enough and earn his living on the
road. I have frequently been applied to to do work
when on a journey ; to do tinkering and repair clocks,
when I had a knapsack on my back. A man once
applied to me to go into a factory, stating conditions
and wages, observing that I succeeded in shutting the
window of a railroad car in which we were travelling,
when the other passengers had failed. ^' Hast thou
not heard of a Sufi, who was hammering some nails
into the sole of his sandal ; an officer of cavalry took
him by the sleeve, saying, come along and shoe my
horse." Farmers have asked me to assist them in
haying, when I was passing their fields. A man once
applied to me to mend his umbrella, taking me for an
umbrella mender, because, being on a journey, I car-
ried an umbrella in my hand while the sun shone.
Another wished to buy a tin cup of me, observing
that I had one strapped to my belt, and a sauce-pan
on my back. The cheapest way to travel, and the
way to travel the furthest in the shortest distance, is to
go afoot, carrying a dipper, a spoon, and a fish-line,
some Indian meal, some salt, and some sugar. When
you come to a brook or pond, you can catch fish and
cook them ; or you can boil a hasty-pudding ; or you
can buy a loaf of bread at a farmer's house for four-
pence, moisten it in the next brook that crosses the
road, and dip into it your sugar, — this alone will last
you a whole day; — or, if you are accustomed to
heartier living, you can buy a quart of milk for two
cents, crumb your bread or cold pudding into it, and
eat it with your own spoon out of your own dish. Any
one of these things I mean, not all together. I have
THURSDA V. 309
travelled thus some hundreds of miles without taking
any meal in a house, sleeping on the ground when
convenient, and found it cheaper, and in many re-
spects more profitable, than staying at home. So
that some have inquired why it would not be best to
travel always. But I never thought of travelling
simply as a means of getting a livelihood. A simple
woman down in Tyngsboro', at whose house I once
stopped to get a draught of water, when I said, recog-
nizing the bucket, that I had stopped there nine years
before for the same purpose, asked if I was not a
traveller, supposing that I had been travelling ever
since, and had now come round again, that travelling
was one of the professions, more or less productive,
which her husband did not follow. But continued
travelling is far from productive. It begins with
wearing away the soles of the shoes, and making the
feet sore, and ere long it will wear a man clean up,
after making his heart sore into the bargain. I have
observed that the after-life of those who have travelled
much is very pathetic. True and sincere travelling
is no pastime, but it is as serious as the grave, or any
other part of the human journey, and it requires a long
probation to be broken into it. I do not speak of
those that travel sitting, the sedentary travellers whose
legs hang dangling the while, mere idle symbols of the
fact, any more than when we speak of sitting hens
we mean those that sit standing, but I mean those to
whom travelling is life for the legs. The traveller
must be born again on the road, and earn a passport
from the elements, the principal powers that be for
him. He shall experience at last that old threat of
his mother fulfilled, that he shall be skinned alive.
His sores shall gradually deepen themselves that they
3IO ^ WEEK ON THE CONCORD RIVER.
may heal inwardly, while he gives no rest to the sole
of his foot, and at night weariness must be his pillow,
that so he may acquire experience against his rainy
days. — So was it with us.
Sometimes we lodged at an inn in the woods, where
trout-fishers from distant cities had arrived before us,
and where, to our astonishment, the settlers dropped
in at night-fall to have a chat and hear the news,
though there was but one road, and no other house
was visible, — as if they had come out of the earth.
There we sometimes read old newspapers, who never
before read new ones, and in the rustle of their leaves
heard the dashing of the surf along the Atlantic shore,
instead of the sough of the wind among the pines.
But then walking had given us an appetite even for
the least palatable and nutritious food.
Some hard and dry book in a dead language, which
you have found it impossible to read at home, but
for which you have still a lingering regard, is the
best to carry with you on a journey. At a country
inn, in the barren society of ostlers and travellers, I
could undertake the writers of the silver or the brazen
age with confidence. Almost the last regular service
which I performed in the cause of literature was to
read the works of
AULUS PERSIUS FLACCUS.
If you have imagined what a divine work is spread
out for the poet, and approach this author too, in the
hope of finding the field at length fairly entered on,
you will hardly dissent from the words of the prologue,
" Ipse semipaganus
Ad sacra Vatum carmen afFero nostrum."
THURSDA Y. 3 1 1
I half pagan
Bring my verses to the shrine of the poets.
Here is none of the interior dignity of Virgil, nor
the elegance and vivacity of Horace, nor will any
sybil be needed to remind you, that from those older
Greek poets there is a sad descent to Persius. You
can scarcely distinguish one harmonious sound amid
this unmusical bickering with the follies of men.
One sees that music has its place in thought, but
hardly as yet in language. When the Muse arrives,
we wait for her to remould language, and impart to it
her own rhythm. Hitherto the verse groans and
labors with its load, and goes not forward blithely,
singing by the way. The best ode may be parodied,
indeed is itself a parody, and has a poor and trivial
sound, like a man stepping on the rounds of a ladder.
Homer, and Shakspeare, and Milton, and Marvel, and
Wordsworth, are but the rustling of leaves and crac-
kling of twigs in the forest, and there is not yet the
sound of any bird. The Muse has never lifted up
her voice to sing. Most of all, satire will not be
sung. A Juvenal or Persius do not marry music to
their verse, but are measured fault-finders at best ;
stand but just outside the faults they condemn, and
so are concerned rather about the monster which
they have escaped, than the fair prospect before
them. Let them live on an age, and they will have
travelled out of his shadow and reach, and found other
objects to ponder.
As long as there is satire, the poet is, as it were,
particeps crimiiiis. One sees not but he had best let
bad take care of itself, and have to do only with what
is beyond suspicion. If 5'ou light on the least vestige
of truth, and it is the weight of the whole body still
312 A WEEK ON THE CONCORD RIVER.
which stamps the faintest trace, an eternity will not
suffice to extol it, while no evil is so huge, but you
grudge to bestow on it a moment of hate. Truth
never turns to rebuke falsehood ; her own straight-
forwardness is the severest correction. Horace would
not have written satire so well if he had not been in-
spired by it, as by a passion, and fondly cherished his
vein. In his odes, the love always exceeds the hate,
so that the severest satire still sings itself, and the
poet is satisfied, though the folly be not corrected.
A sort of necessary order in the development of
Genius is, first. Complaint ; second, Plaint ; third,
Love. Complaint, which is the condition of Persius,
lies not in the province of poetry. Ere long the en-
joyment of a superior good would have changed his
disgust into regret. We can never have much sym-
pathy with the complainer ; for after searching nature
through, we conclude that he must be both plaintiff
and defendant too, and so had best come to a settle-
ment without a hearing. He who receives an injury
is to some extent an accomplice of the wrong doer.
Perhaps it would be truer to say, that the highest
strain of the muse is essentially plaintive. The
saint's are still tears of joy. Who has ever heard
the Innocent sing?
But the divinest poem, or the life of a great man,
is the severest satire ; as impersonal as Nature her-
self, and like the sighs of her winds in the woods,
which convey ever a slight reproof to the hearer.
The greater the genius, the keener the edge of the
satire.
Hence we have to do only with the rare and frag-
mentary traits, which least belong to Persius, or shall
we say, are the properest utterances of his muse ;
THURSDA Y. 3 1 3
since that which he says best at any time is what he
can best say at all times. The Spectators and Ram-
blers have not failed to cull some quotable sentences
from this garden too, so pleasant is it to meet even
the most familiar truth in a new dress, when, if our
neighbor had said it, we should have passed it by as
hackneyed. Out of these six satires, you may perhaps
select some twenty lines, which fit so well as many
thoughts, that they will recur to the scholar almost
as readily as a natural image; though when trans-
lated into familiar language, they lose that insular
emphasis, which fitted them for quotation. Such
lines as the following, translation cannot render com-
mon-place. Contrasting the man of true religion with
those who, with jealous privacy, would fain carry on a
secret commerce with the gods, he says, —
" Haud cuivispromptum est, murmurque humilesque susurros,
Tollere de templis; et aperto vivere voto."
It is not easy for every one to take murmurs and low
Whispers out of the temples, and live with open vow.
To the virtuous man, the universe is the only sanc-
tu7n sanctorum, and the penetralia of the temple are
the broad noon of his existence. Why should he
betake himself to a subterranean crypt, as if it were
the only holy ground in all the world which he had
left unprofaned ? The obedient soul would only the
more discover and familiarize things, and escape
more and more into light and air, as having hence-
forth done with secrecy, so that the universe shall
not seem open enough for it. At length, it is neg-
lectful even of that silence which is consistent with
true modesty, but by its independence of all confi-
314 A WEEK ON THE CONCORD RIVER.
dence in its disclosures, makes that which it imparts
so private to the hearer, that it becomes the care of
the whole world that modesty be not infringed.
To the man who cherishes a secret in his breast,
there is a still greater secret unexplored. Our most
indifferent acts may be matter for secrecy, but what-
ever we do with the utmost truthfulness and integrity,
by virtue of its pureness, must be transparent as
light.
In the third satire, he asks,
" Est aliquid quo tendis, et in quod dirigis arcum?
An passim sequeris corvos, testave, lutove,
Securus quo pes ferat, atque ex tempore vivis? "
Is there anything to which thou tendest, and against which
thou directest thy bow?
Or dost thou pursue crows, at random, with pottery or clay,
Careless whither thy feet bear thee, and live ex tempore ?
The bad sense is always a secondary one. Lan-
guage does not appear to have justice done it, but is
obviously cramped and narrowed in its significance,
when any meanness is described. The truest con-
struction is not put upon it. What may readily be
fashioned into a rule of wisdom, is here thrown in
the teeth of the sluggard, and constitutes the front of
his offence. Universally, the innocent man will come
forth from the sharpest inquisition and lecturing,
the combined din of reproof and commendation,
with a faint sound of eulogy in his ears. Our vices
always lie in the direction of our virtues, and in
their best estate are but plausible imitations of the
latter. Falsehood never attains to the dignity of
entire falseness, but is only an inferior sort of truth ;
THURSDA Y. 3 I 5
if it were more thoroughly false, it would incur
danger of becoming true.
" Securus quo pes ferat, atque ex tempore vivit,"
is then the motto of a wise man. For first, as the
subtle discernment of the language would have taught
us, with all his negligence he is still secure ; but
the sluggard, notwithstanding his heedlessness, is
insecure.
The life of a wise man is most of all extemporane-
ous, for he lives out of an eternity which includes all
time. The cunning mind travels farther back than
Zoroaster each instant, and comes quite down to the
present with its revelation. The utmost thrift and
industry of thinking give no man any stock in life ;
his credit with the inner world is no better, his
capital no larger. He must try his fortune again to-
day as yesterday. All questions rely on the present
for their solution. Time measures nothing but itself.
The word that is written may be postponed, but not
that on the lip. If this is what the occasion says,
let the occasion say it. All the world is forward to
prompt him who gets up to live without his creed in
his pocket.
In the fifth satire, which is the best, I find, —
" Stat contra ratio, et secretam garrit in aurem,
Ne liceat facere id, quod quis vitiabit agendo."
Reason opposes, and whispers in the secret ear,
That it is not lawful to do that which one will spoil by doing.
Only they who do not see how anything might be better
done, are forward to try their hand on it. Even the
master workman must be encouraged by the reflection,
3l6 A WEEK ON THE CONCORD RIVER.
that his awkwardness will be incompetent to do that
thing harm, to which his skill may fail to do justice.
Here is no apology for neglecting to do many things
from a sense of our incapacity, — for what deed does
not fall maimed and imperfect from our hands ? — but
only a warning to bungle less.
The satires of Persius are the farthest possible
from inspired ; evidently a chosen, not imposed sub-
ject. Perhaps I have given him credit for more ear-
nestness than is apparent ; but it is certain, that that
which alone we can call Persius, which is forever in-
dependent and consistent, was in earnest, and so
sanctions the sober consideration of all. The artist
and his work are not to be separated. The most wil-
fully foolish man cannot stand aloof from his folly,
but the deed and the doer together make ever one
sober fact. There is but one stage for the peasant
and the actor. The buffoon cannot bribe you to
laugh always at his grimaces ; they shall sculpture
themselves in Egyptian granite, to stand heavy as the
pyramids on the ground of his character.
Suns rose and set and found us still on the dank
forest path which meanders up the Pemigewasset,
now more like an otter's or a marten's trail, or where
a beaver had dragged his trap, than where the wheels
of travel raise a dust ; where towns begin to serve as
gores, only to hold the earth together. The wild
pigeon sat secure above our heads, high on the dead
limbs of naval pines, reduced to a robin's size. The
very yards of our hostelries inclined upon the skirts
of mountains, and, as we passed, we looked up at a
steep angle at the stems of maples waving in the
clouds.
THURSDA Y. 3 1 7
Far up in the country, — for we would be faithful
to our experience, — in Thornton, perhaps, we met a
soldier lad in the woods, going to muster in full regi-
mentals, and holding the middle of the road ; deep in
the forest with shouldered musket and military step,
and thoughts of war and glory all to himself. It was
a sore trial to the youth, tougher than many a battle,
to get by us creditably and with soldierlike bearing.
Poor man ! He actually shivered like a reed in his
thin military pants, and by the time we had got up
with him, all the sternness that becomes the soldier
had forsaken his face, and he skulked past as if he
were driving his father's sheep under a sword-proof
helmet. It was too much for him to carry any extra
armor then, who could not easily dispose of his nat-
ural arms. And for his legs, they were like heavy
artillery in boggy places ; better to cut the traces and
forsake them. His greaves chafed and wrestled one
with another for want of other foes. But he did get
by and get off with all his munitions, and lived to
fight another day ; and I do not record this as cast-
ing any suspicion on his honor and real bravery in
the field.
Wandering on through notches which the streams
had made, by the side and over the brows of hoar
hills and mountains, across the stumpy, rocky, for-
ested and bepastured country, we at length crossed on
prostrate trees over the Amonoosuck, and breathed
the free air of Unappropriated Land. Thus, in fair
days as well as foul, we had traced up the river to
which our native stream is a tributary, until from
Merrimack it became the Pemigewasset that leaped
by our side, and when we had passed its fountain-
head, the Wild Amonoosuck, whose puny channel
3l8 A WEEK ON THE CONCORD RIVER.
was crossed at a stride, guiding us toward its distant
source among the mountains, and at length, without
its guidance, we were enabled to reach the summit of
Agiocochook.
" Sweet days, so cool, so calm, so bright,
The bridal of the earth and sky.
Sweet dews shall weep thy fall to-night,
For thou must die."
Herbert.
the melon man, in whose corn-barn we had hung our
tent and buffaloes and other things to dry, was al-
ready picking his hops, with many women and chil-
dren to help him. We bought one watermelon, the
largest in his patch, to carry with us for ballast. It
was Nathan's, which he might sell if he pleased, hav-
ing been conveyed to him in the green state, and
owned daily by his eyes. After due consultation
with "Father," the bargain was concluded, — we to
buy it at a venture on the vine, green or ripe, our
risk, and pay "what the gentlemen pleased." It
proved to be ripe ; for we had had honest experience
in selecting this fruit.
Finding our boat safe in its harbor, under Uncan-
nunuc Mountain, with a fair wind and the current in
our favor, we commenced our return voyage at noon,
sitting at our ease and conversing, or in silence watch-
ing for the last trace of each reach in the river as a
bend concealed it from our view. As the season was
THURSDAY. 319
further advanced, the wind now blew steadily from
the north, and with our sail set we could occasionally
lie on our oars without loss of time. The lumber-
men throwing down wood from the top of the high
bank, thirty or forty feet above the water, that it
might be sent down stream, paused in their work to
watch our retreating sail. By this time, indeed, we
were well known to the boatmen, and were hailed as
the Revenue Cutter of the stream. As we sailed
rapidly down the river, shut in between two mounds
of earth, the sound of this timber rolled down the
bank enhanced the silence and vastness of the noon,
and we fancied that only the primeval echoes were
awakened. The vision of a distant scow just heaving
in sight round a headland, also increased by contrast
the solitude.
Through the din and desultoriness of noon, even in
the most oriental city, is seen the fresh and primitive
and savage nature, in which Scythians, and Ethiopians,
and Indians dwell. What is echo, what are light and
shade, day and night, ocean and stars, earthquake and
eclipse, there? The works of man are every where
swallowed up in the immensity of Nature. The
.(4^gean Sea is but Lake Huron still to the Indian.
Also there is all the refinement of civilized life in the
woods under a sylvan garb. The wildest scenes have
an air of domesticity and homeliness even to the citi-
zen, and when the flicker's cackle is heard in the
clearing, he is reminded that civilization has wrought
but little change there. Science is welcome to the
deepest recesses of the forest, for there too nature
obeys the same old civil laws. The little red bug on
the stump of a pine, for it the wind shifts and the sun
breaks through the clouds. In the wildest nature,
320 A WEEK ON THE CONCORD RIVER.
there is not only the material of the most cultivated
life, and a sort of anticipation of the last result, but a
greater refinement already than is ever attained by
man. There is papyrus by the river-side, and rushes
for light, and the goose only flies overhead, ages be-
fore the studious are born or letters invented, and
that literature which the former suggest, and even
from the first have rudely served, it may be man does
not yet use them to express. Nature is prepared to
welcome into her scenery the finest work of human
art, for she is herself an art so cunning that the artist
never appears in his work.
Art is not tame, and Nature is not wild, in the or-
dinary sense. A perfect work of man's art would also
be wild or natural in a good sense. Man tames Na-
ture only that he may at last make her more free even
than he found her, though he may never yet have
succeeded.
With this propitious breeze, and the help of our
oars, we soon reached the Falls of Amoskeag, and
the mouth of the Piscataquoag, and recognized, as
we swept rapidly by, many a fair bank and islet on
which our eyes had rested in the upward passage.
Our boat was like that which Chaucer describes in his
Dream, in which the knight took his departure from
the island,
" To journey for his marriage,
And return with such an host,
That wedded might be least and most. * *
Which barge was as a marfs thought,
After his pleasure to him brought.
The queene herself accustomed aye
In the same barge to play.
It needed neither mast ne rother,
THURSDAY. 32 1
I have not heard of such another,
No master for the governance,
Hie sayled by thought and pleasaunce
Without labor east and west,
All was one, calme or tempest."
So we sailed this afternoon, thinking of the saying of
Pythagoras, though we had no pecuhar right to re-
member it, — "It is beautiful when prosperity is
present with intellect, and when sailing as it were
with a prosperous wind, actions are performed look-
ing to virtue ; just as a pilot looks to the motions of
the stars." All the world reposes in beauty to him
who preserves equipoise in his life, and moves serenely
on his path without secret violence ; as he who sails
down a stream, he has only to steer, keeping his bark
in the middle, and carry it round the falls. The rip-
ples curled away in our wake, like ringlets from the
head of a child, while we steadily held on our course,
and under the bows we watched
" The swaying soft.
Made by the delicate wave parted in front,
As through the gentle element we move
Like shadows gliding through untroubled dreams."
The forms of beauty fall naturally around the path of
him who is in the performance of his proper work ; as
the curled shavings drop from the plane, and borings
cluster round the auger. Undulation is the gentlest
and most ideal of motions, produced by one fluid
falling on another. Rippling is a more graceful flight.
From a hill-top you may detect in it the wings of
birds endlessly repeated. The two ivaving lines
which represent the flight of birds appear to have
been copied from the ripple.
322 A WEEK ON THE CONCORD RIVER.
The trees made an admirable fence to the land-
scape, skirting the horizon on every side. The single
trees and the groves left standing on the interval, ap-
peared naturally disposed, though the farmer had con-
sulted only his convenience, for he too falls into the
scheme of Nature. Art can never match the luxury
and superfluity of Nature. In the former all is seen;
it cannot afford concealed wealth, and is niggardly in
comparison ; but Nature, even when she is scant and
thin outwardly, satisfies us still*by the assurance of a
certain generosity at the roots. In swamps, where
there is only here and there an evergreen tree amid
the quaking moss and cranberry beds, the bareness
does not suggest poverty. The double-spruce, which
I had hardly noticed in gardens, attracts me in such
places, and now first I understand why men try to
make them grow about their houses. But though
there may be very perfect specimens in front-yard
plots, their beauty is for the most part ineffectual
there, for there is no such assurance of kindred wealth
beneath and around them to make them show to
advantage. As we have said, Nature is a greater and
more perfect art, the art of God ; though, referred to
herself, she is genius, and there is a similarity between
her operations and man's art even in the details and
trifles. When the overhanging pine drops into the
water, by the sun and water, and the wind rubbing it
against the shore, its boughs are worn into fantastic
shapes, and white and smooth, as if turned in a
lathe, Man's art has wisely imitated those forms into
which all matter is most inclined to run, as foliage and
fruit. A hammock swung in a grove assumes the
exact form of a canoe, broader or narrower, and
higher or lower at the ends, as more or fewer persons
THURSDAY. 323
are in it, and it rolls in the air with the motion of the
body, like a canoe in the water. Our art leaves its
shavings and its dust about; her art exhibits itself
even in the shavings and the dust which we make.
She has perfected herself by an eternity of practice.
The world is well kept ; no rubbish accumulates ; the
morning air is clear even at this day, and no dust has
settled on the grass. Behold how the evening now
steals over the fields, the shadows of the trees creep-
ing further and further into the meadow, and ere long
the stars will come to bathe in these retired waters.
Her undertakings are secure and never fail. If I were
awakened from a deep sleep, I should know which
side of the meridian the sun might be by the aspect
of nature, and by the chirp of the crickets, and yet no
painter can paint this difference. The landscape con-
tains a thousand dials which indicate the natural
divisions of time, the shadows of a thousand styles
point to the hour. —
" Not only o'er the dial's face,
This silent phantom day by day,
With slow, unseen, unceasing pace
Steals moments, months, and years away;
From hoary rock and aged tree,
From proud Palmyra's mouldering walls,
From Teneriffe, towering o'er the sea.
From every blade of grass it falls."
It is almost the only game which the trees play at,
this tit-for-tat, now this side in the sun, now that, the
drama of the day. In deep ravines under the east-
ern sides of cliffs, Night forwardly plants her foot
even at noonday, and as Day retreats she steps
intb his trenches, skulking from tree to tree, from
fence to fence, until at last she sits in his citadel
324 ^ WEEK ON THE CONCORD RIVER.
and draws out her forces into the plahi. It may be
that the forenoon is brighter than the afternoon,
not only because of the greater transparency of its
atmosphere, but because we naturally look most into
the west, as forward into the day, and so in the fore-
noon see the sunny side of things, but in the after-
noon the shadow of every tree.
The afternoon is now far advanced, and a fresh and
leisurely wind is blowing over the river, making long
reaches of bright ripples. The river has done its
stint, and appears not to flow, but lie at its length re-
flecting the light, and the haze over the woods is like
the inaudible panting, or rather the gentle perspira-
tion of resting nature, rising from a myriad of pores
into the attenuated atmosphere.
On the thirty-first day of March, one hundred and
forty-two years before this, probably about this time
in the afternoon, there were hurriedly paddling down
this part of the river, between the pine woods which
then fringed these banks, two white women and a
boy, who had left an island at the mouth of the Con-
toocook before daybreak. They were slightly clad
for the season, in the English fashion, and handled
their paddles unskilfully, but with nervous energy and
determination, and at the bottom of their canoe lay
the still bleeding scalps of ten of the aborigines.
They were Hannah Dustan, and her nurse, Mary Neff,
both of Haverhill, eighteen miles from the mouth of
this river, and an English boy, named Samuel Len-
nardson, escaping from captivity among the Indians.
On the 15th of March previous, Hannah Dustan
had been compelled to rise from childbed, and half-
dressed, with one foot bare, accompanied by her
THURSDAY. 325
nurse, commence an uncertain march, in still inclem-
ent weather, through the snow and the wilderness.
She had seen her seven elder children flee with
their father, but knew not of their fate. She had
seen her infant's brains dashed out against an
apple tree, and had left her own and her neighbors'
dwellings in ashes. When she reached the wig-
wam of her captor, situated on an island in the
Merrimack, more than twenty miles above where
we now are, she had been told that she and her
nurse were soon to be taken to a distant Indian set-
tlement, and there made to run the gauntlet naked.
The family of this Indian consisted. of two men, three
women, and seven children, beside an English boy,
whom she found a prisoner among them. Having
determined to attempt her escape, she instructed the
boy to inquire of one of the men, how he should
despatch an enemy in the quickest manner, and take
his scalp. " Strike 'em there," said he, placing his
finger on his temple, and he also showed him how to
take off the scalp. On the morning of the 31st
she arose before daybreak, and awoke her nurse and
the boy, and taking the Indians' tomahawks, they
killed them all in their sleep, excepting one favorite
boy, and one squaw who fled wounded with him to the
woods. The English boy struck the Indian who had
given him the information on the temple, as he had
been directed. They then collected all the provision
they could find, and took their master's tomahawk
and gun, and scuttling all the canoes but one, com-
menced their flight to Haverhill, distant about sixty
miles by the river. But after having proceeded a
short distance, fearing that her story would not be
believed if she should escape to tell it, they returned
^26 A WEEK ON THE CONCORD RIVER.
to the silent wigwam, and taking off the scalps of the
dead, put them into a bag as proofs of what they had
done, and then retracing their steps to the shore in
the twilight, recommenced their voyage.
Early this morning this deed was performed, and
now, perchance, these tired women and this boy,
their clothes stained with blood, and their minds
racked with alternate resolution and fear, are mak-
ing a hasty meal of parched corn and moose meat,
while their canoe glides under these pine roots whose
stumps are still standing on the bank. They are
thinking of the dead whom they have left behind on
that solitary isle far up the stream, and of the relent-
less living warriors who are in pursuit. Every with-
ered leaf which the winter has left seems to know
their story, and in its rustling to repeat it and betray
them. An Indian lurks behind every rock and pine,
and their nerves cannot bear the tapping of a wood-
pecker. Or they forget their own dangers and their
deeds in conjecturing the fate of their kindred, and
whether, if they escape the Indians, they shall find
the former still alive. They do not stop to cook their
meals upon the bank, nor land, except to carry their
canoe about the falls. The stolen birch forgets its
master and does them good service, and the swollen
current bears them swiftly along with little need of the
paddle, except to steer and keep them warm by exer-
cise. For ice is floating in the river ; the spring is
opening ; the muskrat and the beaver are driven out
of their holes by the flood ; deer gaze at them from
the bank ; a few faint-singing forest birds, perchance,
fly across the river to the northernmost shore; the
fish-hawk sails and screams overhead, and geese fly
over with a startling clangor ; but they do not observe
THURSDA V. 327
these things, or they speedily forget them. They do
not smile or chat all day. Sometimes they pass an
Indian grave surrounded by its paling on the bank, or
the frame of a wigwam, with a few coals left behind,
or the withered stalks still rustling in the Indian's
solitary cornfield on the interval. The birch stripped
of its bark, or the charred stump where a tree has
been burned down to be made into a canoe, these are
the only traces of man, — a fabulous wild man to us.
On either side, the primeval forest stretches away
uninterrupted to Canada or to the " South Sea " ; to
the white man a drear and howling wilderness, but
to the Indian a home, adapted to his nature, and
cheerful as the smile of the Great Spirit.
While we loiter here this autumn evening, looking
for a spot retired enough, where we shall quietly rest
to-night, they thus, in that chilly March evening, one
hundred and forty-two years before us, with wind and
current favoring, have already glided out of sight, not
to camp, as we shall, at night, but while two sleep one
will manage the canoe, and the swift stream bear them
onward to the settlements, it may be, even to old John
Lovewell's house on Salmon Brook to-night.
According to the historian, they escaped as by a
miracle all roving bands of Indians, and reached their
homes in safety, with their trophies, for which the
General Court paid them fifty pounds. The family
of Hannah Dustan all assembled alive once more, ex-
cept the infant whose brains were dashed out against
the apple tree, and there have been many who in later
times have lived to say that they had eaten of the fruit
of that apple tree.
328 A WEEK ON THE CONCORD RIVER.
This seems a long while ago, and yet it happened
since Milton wrote his Paradise Lost. But its an-
tiquity is not the less great for that, for we do not
regulate our historical time by the English standard,
nor did the English by the Roman, nor the Roman
by the Greek. "We must look a long way back,"
says Raleigh, "to find the Romans giving laws to
nations, and their consuls brmging kings and princes
bound in chains to Rome in triumph ; to see men go
to Greece for wisdom, or Ophir for gold ; when now
nothing remains but a poor paper remembrance of
their former condition." — And yet, in one sense, not
so far back as to find the Penacooks and Pawtuckets
using bows and arrows and hatchets of stone, on the
banks of the Merrimack. From this September after-
noon, and from between these now cultivated shores,
those times seem more remote than the dark ages.
On beholding an old picture of Concord, as it appeared
but seventy-five years ago, with a fair, open prospect
and a light on trees and river, as if it were broad
noon, I find that I had not thought the sun shone in
those days, or that men lived in broad daylight then.
Still less do we imagine the sun shining on hill
and valley during Philip's war, on the warpath of
Church or Philip, or later of Lovewell or Paugus,
with serene summer weather, but they must have
lived and fought in a dim twilight or night.
The age of the world is great enough for our
imaginations, even according to the Mosaic account,
without borrowing any years from the geologist.
From Adam and Eve at one leap sheer down to the
deluge, and then through the ancient monarchies,
through Babylon and Thebes, Brahma and Abraham,
to Greece and the Argonauts ; whence we might start
THURSDAY. 329
again with Orpheus and the Trojan war, the Pyramids
and the Olymi^ic games, and Homer and Athens, for
our stages ; and after a breathing space at the build-
ing of Rome, continue our journey down through
Odin and Christ to — America. It is a wearisome
while. — And yet the lives of but sixty old women,
such as live under the hill, say of a century each,
strung together, are sufficient to reach over the whole
ground. Taking hold of hands they would span the
interval from Eve to my own mother. A respectable
tea-party merely, — whose gossip would be Universal
History. The fourth old woman from myself suckled
Columbus, — the ninth was nurse to the Norman
Conqueror, — the nineteenth was the Virgin Mary, —
the twenty-fourth the Cumaean Sibyl, — the thirtieth
was at the Trojan war and Helen her name, — the
thirty-eighth was Queen Semiramis, — the sixtieth was
Eve the mother of mankind. So much for the
— " old woman that lives under the hill,
And if she 's not gone she lives there still."
It will not take a very great grand-daughter of hers to
be in at the death of time.
We can never safely exceed the actual facts in our
narratives. Of pure invention, such as some suppose,
there is no instance. To write a true work of fiction
even, is only to take leisure and liberty to describe
some things more exactly as they are. A true account
of the actual is the rarest poetry, for common sense
always takes a hasty and superficial view. Though I
am not much acquainted with the works of Goethe,
I should say that it was one of his chief excellencies
as a writer, that he is satisfied with giving an exact
description of things as they appear to him, and their
330 ^ WEEK ON THE CONCORD RIVER.
effect upon him. Most travellers have not self-respect
enough to do this simply, and make objects and events
stand around them as the centre, but still imagine more
favorable positions and relations than the actual ones,
and so we get no valuable report from them at all.
In his ItaHan Travels Goethe jogs along at a snail's
pace, but always mindful that the earth is beneath
and the heavens are above him. His Italy is not
merely the fatherland of lazzaroni and virtuosi, and
scene of splendid ruins, but a solid turf-clad soil,
daily shined on by the sun, and nightly by the moon.
Even the few showers are faithfully recorded. He
speaks as an unconcerned spectator, whose object is
faithfully to describe what he sees, and that, for the
most part, in the order in which he sees it. Even
his reflections do not interfere with his descriptions.
In one place he speaks of himself as giving so glow-
ing and truthful a description of an old tower to the
peasants who had gathered around him, that they
who had been born and brought up in the neighbor-
hood must needs look over their shoulders, " that," to
use his own words, "they might behold with their
eyes, what I had praised to their ears " — " and I
added nothing, not even the ivy which for centuries
had decorated the walls." It would thus be possible
for inferior minds to produce invaluable books, if this
very moderation were not the evidence of superiority ;
for the wise are not so much wiser than others as
respecters of their own wisdom. Some, poor in
spirit, record plaintively only what has happened to
them ; but others how they have happened to the
universe, and the judgment which they have awarded
to circumstances. Above all, he possessed a hearty
good-will to all men, and never wrote a.cross or even
THURSDAY. 33 1
careless word. On one occasion the post-boy snivel-
ling " Signor perdonate, questa e la mia patria,'^ he
confesses that '■'■ to me poor northerner came some-
thing tear-like into the eyes."
Goethe's whole education and life were those of the
artist. He lacks the unconsciousness of the poet. In
his autobiography he describes accurately the life of
the author of Wilhelm Meister. For as there is
in that book, mingled with a rare and serene wis-
dom, a certain pettiness or exaggeration of trifles,
wisdom applied to produce a constrained and partial
and merely well-bred man, — a magnifying of the
theatre till life itself is turned into a stage, for which
it is our duty to study our parts well, and conduct
with propriety and precision, — so in the autobiog-
raphy, the fault of his education is, so to speak, its
artistic completeness. Nature is hindered, though
she prevails at last in making an unusually catholic
impression on the boy. It is the life of a city boy,
whose toys are pictures and works of art, whose
wonders are the theatre and kingly processions and
crownings. As the youth studied minutely the order
and the degrees in the imperial procession, and suf-
fered none of its effect to be lost on him ; so the man
aimed to secure a rank in society which would satisfy
his notion of fitness and respectability. He was de-
frauded of much which the savage boy enjoys. Indeed
he himself has occasion to say in this very autobiog-
raphy, when at last he escapes into the woods with-
out the gates, — " Thus much is certain, that only the
undefinable, wide-expanding feelings of youth and of
uncultivated nations are adapted to the sublime, which
whenever it may be excited in us through external
objects, since it is either formless, or else moulded
332 A WEEK ON THE CONCORD RIVER.
into forms which are incomprehensible, must surround
us with a grandeur which we find above our reach."
He further says of himself, — "I had lived among
painters from my childhood, and had accustomed
myself to look at objects as they did, with reference
to art." And this was his practice to the last. He
was even too well-bred to be thoroughly bred. He
says that he had had no intercourse with the lowest
class of his towns-boys. The child should have the
advantage of ignorance as well as of knowledge, and
is fortunate if he gets his share of neglect and
exposure. —
" The laws of Nature break the rules of Art."
The Man of Genius may at the same time be, indeed
is commonly, an Artist, but the two are not to be con-
founded. The Man of Genius, referred to mankind,
is an originator, an inspired or demonic man,- who
produces a perfect work in obedience to laws yet
unexplored. The Artist is he who detects and ap-
plies the law from observation of the works of
Genius, whether of man or nature. The Artisan is
he who merely applies the rules which others have
detected. There has been no man of pure Genius;
as there has been none wholly destitute of Genius.
Poetry is the mysticism of mankind.
The expressions of the poet cannot be analyzed ;
his sentence is one word, whose syllables are words.
There are indeed no words quite worthy to be set
to his music. But what matter if we do not hear the
words always, if we hear the music?
Much verse fails of being poetry because it was
not written exactly at the right crisis, though it
may have been inconceivably near to it. It is only
THURSDAY. 333
by a miracle that poetry is written at all. It is
not recoverable thought, but a hue caught from a
vaster receding thought.
A poem is one undivided unimpeded expression
fallen ripe into literature, and it is undividedly and
unimpededly received by those for whom it was
matured.
If you can speak what you will never hear, — if
you can write what you will never read, you have
done rare things.
The work we choose should be our own,
God lets alone.
The unconsciousness of man is the consciousness
of God.
Deep are the foundations of sincerity. Even stone
walls have their foundation below the frost.
What is produced by a free stroke charms us, like
the forms of lichens and leaves. There is a certain
perfection in accident which we never consciously
attain. Draw a blunt quill filled with ink over a
sheet of paper, and fold the paper before the ink is
dry, transversely to this line, and a delicately shaded
and regular figure will be produced, in some respects
more pleasing than an elaborate drawing.
The talent of composition is very dangerous, —
the striking out the heart of life at a blow, as the
Indian takes off a scalp. I feel as if my life had
grown more outward when I can express it.
On his journey from Brenner to Verona, Goethe
writes, " The Tees flows now more gently, and
makes in many places broad sands. On the land,
334 ^ ^EEK ON THE CONCORD RIVER.
near to the water, upon the hill-sides, everything is
so closely planted one to another, that you think
they must choke one another, — vineyards, maize,
mulberry trees, apples, pears, quinces, and nuts.
The dwarf elder throws itself vigorously over the
walls. Ivy grows with strong stems up the rocks,
and spreads itself wide over them, the lizard glides
through the intervals, and everything that wanders
to and fro reminds one of the loveliest pictures of
art. The women's tufts of hair bound up, the men's
bare breasts and light jackets, the excellent oxen
which they drive home from market, the little asses
with their loads, — everything forms a living, animated
Heinrich Roos. And now that it is evening, in the
mild air a few clouds rest upon the mountains, in the
heavens more stand still than move, and immediately
after sunset the chirping of crickets begins to grow
more loud ; then one feels for once at home in the
world, and not as concealed or in exile. I am con-
tented as though I had been born and brought up
here, and were now returning from a Greenland or
whaling voyage. Even the dust of my Fatherland,
which is often whirled about the wagon, and which
for so long a time I had not seen, is greeted. The
clock-and-bell jingling of the crickets is altogether
lovely, penetrating, and agreeable. It sounds bravely
when roguish boys whistle in emulation of a field of
such songstresses. One fancies that they really en-
hance one another. Also the evening is perfectly
mild as the day."
" If one who dwelt in the south and came hither
from the south should hear of my rapture hereupon,
he would deem me very childish. Alas ! what I here
express I have long known while I suffered under an
THURSDAY. 335
unpropitious heaven, and now may I joyful feel this
joy as an exception, which we should enjoy everforth
as an eternal necessity of our nature."
Thus we "sayled by thought and pleasaunce," as
Chaucer says, and all things seemed with us to flow ;
the shore itself, and the distant cliffs, were dissolved
by the undiluted air. The hardest material seemed
to obey the same law with the most fluid, and so
indeed in the long run it does. Trees were but rivers
of sap and woody fibre, flowing from the atmosphere,
and emptying into the earth by their trunks, as their
roots flowed upward to the surface. And in the
heavens there were rivers of stars, and milky ways,
already beginning to gleam and ripple over our
heads. There were rivers of rock on the surface of
the earth, and rivers of ore in its bowels, and our
thoughts flowed and circulated, and this portion of
time was but the current hour. Let us wander where
we will, the universe is built round about us, and we
are central still. If we look into the heavens they
are concave, and if we were to look into a gulf as
bottomless, it would be concave also. The sky is
curved downward to the earth in the horizon, because
we stand on the plain. I draw down its skirts. The
stars so low there seem loath to depart, but by a cir-
cuitous path to be remembering me, and returning on
their steps.
We had already passed by broad daylight the scene
of our encampment at Coos Falls, and at length we
pitched our camp on the west bank, in the northern
part of Merrimack, nearly opposite to the large island
on which we had spent the noon in our way up the
river.
336 ^ WEEK ON THE CONCORD RIVER.
There we went to bed that summer evening, on a
sloping shelf in the bank, a couple of rods from our
boat, which was drawn up on the sand, and just behind
a thin fringe of oaks which bordered the river ; with-
out having disturbed any inhabitants but the spiders
in the grass, which came out by the light of our lamp
and crawled over our buffaloes. When we looked
out from under the tent, the trees were seen dimly
through the mist, and a cool dew hung upon the
grass, which seemed to rejoice in the night, and with
the damp air we inhaled a solid fragrance. Having
eaten our supper of hot cocoa and bread and water-
melon, we soon grew weary of conversing and writing
in our journals, and putting out the lantern which
hung from the tent pole, fell asleep.
Unfortunately many things have been omitted
which should have been recorded in our journal, for
though we made it a rule to set down all our experi-
ences therein, yet such a resolution is very hard to
keep, for the important experience rarely allows us to
remember such obligations, and so indifferent things
get recorded, while that is frequently neglected. It
is not easy to write in a journal what interests us at
any time, because to write it is not what interests us.
Whenever we awoke in the night, still eking out
our dreams with half-awakened thoughts, it was not
till after an interval, when the wind breathed harder
than usual, flapping the curtains of the tent, and
causing its cords to vibrate, that we remembered that
we lay on the bank of the Merrimack, and not in
our chamber at home. With our heads so low in the
grass, we heard the river whirling and sucking, and
lapsing downward, kissing the shore as it went, some-
times ripphng louder than usual, and again its mighty
THURSDAY. 33/
current making only a slight limpid trickling sound,
as if our water-pail had sprung a leak, and the water
were flowing into the grass by our side. The wind,
rustling the oaks and hazels, impressed us like a
wakeful and inconsiderate person up at midnight,
moving about and putting things to rights, occasion-
ally stirring up whole drawers full of leaves at a puff.
There seemed to be a great haste and preparation
throughout Nature, as for a distinguished visitor;
all her aisles had to be swept in the night, by a
thousand hand-maidens, and a thousand pots to be
boiled for the next day's feasting ; — such a whisper-
ing bustle, as if ten thousand fairies made their
fingers fly, silently sewing at the new carpet with
which the earth was to be clothed, and the new dra-
pery which was to adorn the trees. And then the
wind would lull and die away and we like it fell
asleep again.
FRIDAY.
" The Boteman strayt
Held on his course with stayed stedfastnesse,
Ne ever shroncke, ne ever sought to bayt
His tryed armes for toylesome wearinesse ;
But with his oares did sweepe the watry wildernesse."
Spenser.
" Summer's robe grows
Dusky, and like an oft-dyed garment shows."
Donne.
As we lay awake long before daybreak, listening
to the rippling of the river and the rustling of the
leaves, in suspense whether the wind blew up or down
the stream, was favorable or unfavorable to our voy-
age, we already suspected that there was a change
in the weather, from a freshness as of autumn in these
sounds. The wind in the woods sounded like
an incessant waterfall dashing and roaring amid
rocks, and we even felt encouraged by the unusual
activity of the elements. He who hears the rippling
of rivers in these degenerate days will not utterly
despair. That night was the turning point in the
season. We had gone to bed in summer, and we
awoke in autumn ; for summer passes into autumn
in some unimaginable point of time, like the turning
of a leaf.
We found our boat in the dawn just as we had left
it, and as if waiting for us, there on the shore, in
autumn, all cool and dripping with dew, and our
338
FRiDA y. 339
tracks still fresh in the wet sand around it, the fairies
all gone or concealed. Before five o'clock we pushed
it into the fog, and leaping in, at one shove were out
of sight of the shores, and began to sweep downward
with the rushing river, keeping a sharp look out for
rocks. We could see only the yellow gurgUng water,
and a solid bank of fog on every side forming a small
yard around us. We soon passed the mouth of the
Souhegan and the village of Merrimack, and as the
mist gradually rolled away, and we were relieved from
the trouble of watching for rocks, we saw by the flit-
ting clouds, by the first russet tinge on the hills, by
the rushing river, the cottages on shore, and tjie shore
itself, so coolly fresh and shining with dew, and later
in the day, by the hue of the grape vine, the gold-
finch on the willow, the flickers flying in flocks,
and when we passed near enough to the shore, as
we fancied, by the faces of men, that the Fall had
commenced. The cottages looked more snug and
comfortable, and their inhabitants were seen only for
a moment, and then went quietly in and shut the
door, retreating inward to the haunts of summer.
"And now the cold autumnal dews are seen
To cobweb ev'ry green ;
And by the low-shorn rowens doth appear
The fast declining year."
We heard the sigh of the first autumnal wind, and
even the water had acquired a grayer hue. The
sumach, grape, and maple were already changed, and
the milkweed had turned to a deep rich yellow. In
all woods the leaves were fast ripening for their fall ;
for their full veins and lively gloss mark the ripe
leaf, and not the sered one of the poets ; and we knew
340 A WEEK ON THE CONCORD RIVER.
that the maples, stripped of their leaves among the
earliest, would soon stand like a wreath of smoke
along the edge of the meadow. Already the cattle
were heard to low wildly in the pastures and along
the highways, restlessly running to and fro, as if in
apprehension of the withering of the grass and of the
approach of winter. Our thoughts too began to
rustle.
As I pass along the streets of our village of Con-
cord on the day of our annual Cattle Show, when
it usually happens that the leaves of the elms
and buttonwoods begin first to strew the ground
under the breath of the October wind, the lively
spirits in their sap seem to mount as high as any
plow-boy's let loose that day; and they lead my
thoughts away to the rustling woods, where the
trees are preparing for their winter campaign. This
autumnal festival, when men are gathered in crowds
in the streets as regularly and by as natural a law
as the leaves cluster and rustle by the wayside, is
naturally associated in my mind with the fall of the
year. The low of cattle in the streets sounds like
a hoarse symphony or running base to the rusthng
of the leaves. The wind goes hurrying down the
country, gleaning every loose straw that is left in
the fields, while every farmer lad too appears to
scud before it, — having donned his best pea-jacket
and pepper-and-salt waistcoat, his unbent trousers,
outstanding rigging of duck, or kersymere, or cor-
duroy, and his furry hat withal, — to country fairs
and cattle-shows, to that Rome among the villages
where the treasures of the year are gathered. All
the land over they go leaping the fences with their
FRIDAY. 341
tough idle palms, which have never learned to hang
by their sides, amid the low of calves and the bleat-
ing of sheep, — Amos, Abner, Elnathan, Elbridge, —
" From steep pine-bearing mountains to the plain."
I love these sons of earth, every mother's son of
them, with their great hearty hearts rushing tumul-
tuously in herds from spectacle to spectacle, as if
fearful lest there should not be time between sun and
sun to see them all, and the sun does not wait more
than in haying time.
" Wise nature's darlings, they live in the world
Perplexing not themselves how it is hurled."
Running hither and thither with appetite for the
coarse pastimes of the day, now with boisterous speed
at the heels of the inspired negro from whose larynx
the melodies of all Congo and Guinea coast have
broke loose into our streets ; now to see the proces-
sion of a hundred yoke of oxen, all as august and
grave as Osiris, or the droves of neat cattle and milch
cows as unspotted as I sis or lo. Such as had no
love for Nature
" at all,
Came lovers home from this great festival."
They may bring their fattest cattle and richest fruits
to the fair, but they are all eclipsed by the show
of men. These are stirring autumn days, when men
sweep by in crowds, amid the rustle of leaves, like
migrating finches, this is the true harvest of the year,
when the air is but the breath of men, and the rus-
tling of leaves is as the trampling of the crowd. We
read now-a-days of the ancient festivals, games, and
processions of the Greeks and Etruscans, with a
342 A WEEK ON THE CONCORD RIVER.
little incredulity, or at least with little sympathy;
but how natural and irrepressible in every people
is some hearty and palpable greeting of Nature. The
Corybantes, the Bacchantes, the rude primitive trage-
dians with their procession and goat-song, and the
whole paraphernalia of the Panathenaea, which appear
so antiquated and peculiar, have their parallel now.
The husbandman is always a better Greek than the
scholar is prepared to appreciate, and the old custom
still survives, while antiquarians and scholars grow
gray in commemorating it. The farmers crowd to
the fair to-day in obedience to the same ancient law,
which Solon or Lycurgus did not enact, as naturally
as bees swarm and follow their queen.
It is worth the while to see the country's people,
how they pour into the town, the sober farmer folk,
now all agog, their very shirt and coat collars point-
ing forward, — collars so broad as if they had put
their shirts on wrong end upward, for the fashions
always tend to superfluity, — and with an unusual
springiness in their gait, jabbering earnestly to one
another. The more supple vagabond, too, is sure
to appear on the least rumor of such a gathering,
and the next day to disappear, and go into his hole
like the seventeen-year locust, in an ever shabby
coat, though finer than the farmer's best, yet never
dressed ; come to see the sport, and have a hand
in what is going, — to know "what's the row," if
there is any ; to be where some men are drunk, some
horses race, some cockerels fight ; anxious to be
shaking props under a table, and above all to see
the "striped pig." He especially is the creature of
the occasion. He empties both his pockets and his
character into the stream, and swims in such a day.
FRIDA Y. 343
He dearly loves the social slush. There is no reserve
of soberness in him.
I love to see the herd of men feeding heartily on
coarse and succulent pleasures, as cattle on the husks
and stalks of vegetables. Though there are many
crooked and crabbled specimens of humanity among
them, run all to thorn and rind, and crowded out
of shape by adverse circumstances, like the third
chestnut in the burr, so that you wonder to see some
heads wear a whole hat, yet fear not that the race
will fail or waver in them ; like the crabs which grow
in hedges, they furnish the stocks of sweet and thrifty
fruits still. Thus is nature recruited from age to age,
whDe the fair and palatable varieties die out and have
their period. This is that mankind. How cheap
must be the material of which so many are made.
The wind blew steadily down the stream, so that
we kept our sails set, and lost not a moment of
the forenoon by delays, but from early morning until
noon, were continually dropping downward. With
our hands on the steering paddle, which was thrust
deep into the river, or bending to the oar, which
indeed we rarely relinquished, we felt each palpitation
in the veins of our steed, and each impulse of the
wings which drew us above. The current of our
thoughts made as sudden bends as the river, which
was continually opening new prospects to the east
or south, but we are aware that rivers flow most
rapidly and shallowest at these points. The stead-
fast shores never once turned aside for us, but still
trended as they were made ; why then should we
always turn aside for them ?
A man cannot wheedle nor overawe his Genius. It
344 ^ WEEK ON THE CONCORD RIVER.
requires to be conciliated by nobler conduct than
the world demands or can appreciate. These winged
thoughts are like birds, and will not be handled;
even hens will not let you touch them like quad-
rupeds. Nothing was ever so unfamiliar and star-
tling to a man as his own thoughts.
To the rarest genius it is the most expensive to
succumb and conform to the ways of the world.
Genius is the worst of lumber, if the poet would float
upon the breeze of popularity. The bird of paradise
is obliged constantly to fly against the wind, lest
its gay trappings, pressing close to its body, may
impede its free movements.
He is the best sailor who can steer within the fewest
points of the wind, and exact a motive power out of
the greatest obstacles. Most begin to veer and tack
as soon as the wind changes from aft, and as within the
tropics it does not blow from all points of the compass,
there are some harbors which they can never reach.
The poet is no tender slip of fairy stock, who re-
quires peculiar institutions and edicts for his defence,
but the toughest son of earth and of Heaven, and by
his greater strength and endurance his fainting com-
panions will recognize the God in him. It is the
worshippers of beauty, after all, who have done the
real pioneer work of the world.
The poet will prevail to be popular in spite of his
faults, and in spite of his beauties too. He will hit
the nail on the head, and we shall not know the shape
of his hammer. He makes us free of his hearth and
heart, which is greater than to offer one the freedom
of a city.
Great men, unknown to their generation, have their
fame among the great who have preceded them, and
I
FRIDA Y. 345
all true worldly fame subsides from their high esti-
mate beyond the stars.
Orpheus does not hear the strains which issue from
his lyre, but only those which are breathed into it ;
for the original strain precedes the sound, by as much
as the echo follows after ; the rest is the perquisite of
the rocks and trees and beasts.
When I stand in a library where is all the recorded
wit of the world, but none of the recording, a mere
accumulated, and not truly cumulative treasure, where
immortal works stand side by side with antholo-
gies which did not survive their moth, and cobweb
and mildew have already spread from these to the
binding of those ; and happily I am reminded of what
poetry is, I perceive that Shakspeare and Milton did
not foresee into what company they were to fall.
Alas ! that so soon the work of a true poet should be
swept into such a dust-hole !
The poet will write for his peers alone. He will
remember only that he saw truth and beauty from his
position, and expect the time when a vision as broad
shall overlook the same field as freely.
We are often prompted to speak our thoughts to
our neighbors, or the single travellers whom we meet
on the road, but poetry is a communication from our
home and solitude addressed to all Intelligence. It
never whispers in a private ear. Knowing this, we
may understand those sonnets said to be addressed
to particular persons, or "to a Mistress' Eyebrow."
Let none feel flattered by them. For poetry write
love, and it will be equally true.
No doubt it is an important difference between
men of genius or poets, and men not of genius, that
the latter are unable to grasp and confront the thought
346 A WEEK ON THE CONCORD RIVER.
which visits them. But it is because it is too faint
for expression, or even conscious impression. What
merely quickens or retards the blood in their veins
and fills their afternoons with pleasure they know not
whence, conveys a distinct assurance to the finer
organization of the poet.
We talk of genius as if it were a mere knack, and
the poet could only express what other men con-
ceived. But in comparison with his task the poet is
the least talented of any; the writer of prose has
more skill. See what talent the smith has. His ma-
terial is pliant in his hands. When the poet is most
inspired, is stimulated by an aura which never even
colors the afternoons of common men, then his talent
is all gone, and he is no longer a poet. The gods do
not grant him any skill more than another. They
never put their gifts into his hands, but they encom-
pass and sustain him with their breath.
To say that God has given a man many and great
talents, frequently means, that he has brought his
heavens down within reach of his hands.
When the poetic frenzy seizes us, we run and
scratch with our pen, intent only on worms, calling our
mates around us, like the cock, and delighting in the
dust we make, but do not detect where the jewel lies,
which, perhaps, we have in the meantime cast to a
distance, or quite covered up again.
The poet's body even is not fed simply like other
men's, but he sometimes tastes the genuine nectar
and ambrosia of the gods, and lives a divine life. By
the healthful and invigorating thrills of inspiration his
life is preserved to a serene old age.
Some poems are for holidays only. They are pol-
ished and sweet, but it is the sweetness of sugar, and
FRIDA Y. 347
not such as toil gives to sour bread. The breath
with which the poet utters his verse must be that by
which he lives.
Great prose, of equal elevation, commands our
respect more than great verse, since it implies a more
permanent and level height, a life more pervaded
with the grandeur of the thought. The poet often
only makes an irruption, like a Parthian, and is
off again, shooting while he retreats ; but the prose
writer has conquered like a Roman, and settled col-
onies.
The true poem is not that which the public read.
There is always a poem not printed on paper, coinci-
dent with the production of this, stereotyped in the
poet's life. It is what he has become through his
work. Not how is the idea expressed in stone, or on
canvas or paper, is the question, but how far it has
obtained form and expression in the life of the artist.
His true work will not stand in any prince's gallery.
My life has been the poem I would have writ,
But I could not both live and utter it.
THE POET'S DELAY.
In vain I see the morning rise,
In vain observe the western blaze,
Who idly look to other skies,
Expecting life by other ways.
Amidst such boundless wealth without,
I only still am poor within,
The birds have sung their summer out.
But still my spring does not begin.
Shall I then wait the autumn wind,
Compelled to seek a milder day,
348 A WEEK ON THE CONCORD RIVER.
And leave no curious nest behind,
No woods still echoing to my lay?
This raw and gusty day, and the creaking of the
oaks and pines on shore, reminded us of more north-
ern dimes than Greece, and more wintry seas than
the ^gean.
The genuine remains of Ossian, or those ancient
poems which bear his name, though of less fame and
extent, are, in many respects, of the same stamp with
the IHad itself. He asserts the dignity of the bard no
less than Homer, and in his era we hear of no other
priest than he. It will not avail to call him a heathen,
because he personifies the sun and addresses it ; and
what if his heroes did " worship the ghosts of their
fathers," their thin, airy, and unsubstantial forms?
we but worship the ghosts of our fathers in more sub-
stantial forms. We cannot but respect the vigorous
faith of those heathen, who sternly believed some-
what, and we are incHned to say to the critics, who
are offended by their superstitious rites, — Don't in-
terrupt these men's prayers. As if we knew more
about human life and a God, than the heathen and
ancients. Does English theology contain the recent
discoveries?
Ossian reminds us of the most refined and rudest
eras, of Homer, Pindar, Isaiah, and the American
Indian. In his poetry, as in Homer's, only the sim-
plest and most enduring features of humanity are
seen, such essential parts of a man as Stonehenge ex-
hibits of a temple ; we see the circles of stone, and
the upright shaft alone. The phenomena of life ac-
quire almost an unreal and gigantic size seen through
his mists. Like all older and grander poetry, it is
FRIDA v. 349
distinguished by the few elements in the lives of its
heroes. They stand on the heath, between the stars
and the earth, shrunk to the bones and sinews. The
earth is a boundless plain for their deeds. They lead
such a simple, dry, and everlasting life, as hardly
needs depart with the flesh, but is transmitted en-
tire from age to age. There are but few objects to
distract their sight, and their life is as unincumbered
as the course of the stars they gaze at. —
" The wrathful kings, on cairns apart,
Look forward from behind their shields,
And mark the wandering stars,
That brilliant westward move."
It does not cost much for these heroes to live ; they
do not want much furniture. They are such forms
of men only as can be seen afar through the mist,
and have no costume nor dialect, but for language
there is the tongue itself, and for costume there are
always the skins of beasts and the bark of trees to
be had. They live out their years by the vigor of
their constitutions. They survive storms and the
spears of their foes, and perform a few heroic deeds,
and then,
" Mounds will answer questions of them,
For many future years."
Blind and infirm, they spend the remnant of their
days listening to the lays of the bards, and feeling
the weapons which laid their enemies low, and when
at length they die, by a convulsion of nature, the bard
allows us a short and misty glance into futurity, yet
as clear, perchance, as their lives had been. When
Mac-Roine was slain,
350 A WEEK ON THE CONCORD RIVER.
" His soul departed to his warlike sires,
To follow misty forms of boars,
In tempestuous islands bleak."
The hero's cairn is erected, and the bard sings a brief
significant strain, which will suffice for epitaph and
biography.
" The weak will find his bow in the dwelling,
The feeble will attempt to bend it."
Compared with this simple, fibrous life, our civil-
ized history appears the chronicle of debility, of fash-
ion, and the arts of luxury. But the civilized man
misses no real refinement in the poetry of the rudest
era. It reminds him that civilization does but dress
men. It makes shoes, but it does not toughen the
soles of the feet. It makes cloth of finer texture, but
it does not touch the skin. Inside the civilized man
stands the savage still in the place of honor. We
are those blue-eyed, yellow-haired Saxons, those slen-
der, dark-haired Normans.
The profession of the bard attracted more respect
in those days from the importance attached to fame.
It was his province to record the deeds of heroes.
When Ossian hears the traditions of inferior bards, he
exclaims, —
" I straightway seize the unfutile tales,
And send them down in faithful verse."
His philosophy of life is expressed in the opening of
the third Duan of Ca-Lodin.
" Whence have sprung the things that are ?
And whither roll the passing years ?
Where does Time conceal its two heads.
FRIDAY, 351
In dense impenetrable gloom,
Its surface marked with heroes' deeds alone ?
I view the generations gone ;
The past appears but dim ;
As objects by the moon's faint beams,
Reflected from a distant lake.
I see, indeed, the thunderbolts of war,
But there the unmighty joyless dwell,
All those who send not down their deeds
To far, succeeding times."
The ignoble warriors die and are forgotten ;
" Strangers come to build a tower.
And throw their ashes overhand ;
Some rusted swords appear in dust ;
One, bending forward, says,
' The arms belonged to heroes gone ;
We never heard their praise in song.' "
The grandeur of the similes is another feature which
characterizes great poetry. Ossian seems to speak a
gigantic and universal, language. The images and
pictures occupy even much space in the landscape, as
if they could be seen only from the sides of moun-
tains, and plains with a wide horizon, or across arms
of the sea. The machinery is so massive that it can-
not be less than natural. Oivana says to the spirit
of her father, " Grey-haired Torkil of Torne," seen
in the skies,
" Thou glidest away like receding ships."
So when the hosts of Fingal and Starne approach to
battle,
"With murmurs loud, like rivers far.
The race of Torne hither moved."
352 A WEEK ON THE CONCORD RIVER.
And when compelled to retire,
" dragging his spear behind,
Cudulin sank in the distant wood,
Like a fire upblazing ere it dies."
Nor did Fingal want a proper audience when he spoke ;
" A thousand orators incUned
To hear the lay of Fingal."
The threats too would have deterred a man. Ven-
geance and terror were real. Trenmore threatens the
young warrior whom he meets on a foreign strand,
"Thy mother shall find thee pale on the shore,
While lessening on the waves she spies
The sails of him who slew her son."
If Ossian^s heroes weep, it is from excess of strength,
and not from weakness, a sacrifice or libation of fer-
tile natures, like the perspiration of stone in summer's
heat. We hardly know that tears have been shed,
and it seems as if weeping were proper only for babes
and heroes. Their joy and their sorrow are made
of one stuff, like rain and snow, the rainbow and the
mist. When Fillan was worsted in fight, and ashamed
in the presence of Fingal,
" He strode away forthwith,
And bent in grief above a stream,
His cheeks bedewed with tears.
From time to time the thistles gray
He lopped with his inverted lance."
Crodar, blind and old, receives Ossian, son of Fingal,
who comes to aid him in war ; —
FRIDAY. 353
" ' My eyes have failed,' says he, ' Crodar is blind,
Is thy strength like that of thy fathers ?
Stretch, Ossian, thine arm to the hoary-haired.'
I gave my arm to the king.
The aged hero seized my hand;
He heaved a heavy sigh ;
Tears flowed incessant down his cheek.
' Strong art thou, son of the mighty.
Though not so dreadful as Morven's prince. * * *
Let my feast be spread in the hall.
Let every sweet-voiced minstrel sing ;
Great is he who is within my wall,
Sons of wave-echoing Croma.' "
Even Ossian himself, the hero-bard, pays tribute to
the superior strength of his father Fingal.
" How beauteous, mighty man, was thy mind.
Why succeeded Ossian without its strength ? "
While we sailed fleetly before the wind, with the
river gurgling under our stern, the thoughts of au-
tumn coursed as steadily through our minds, and we
observed less what was passing on the shore, than
the dateless associations and impressions which the
season awakened, anticipating in some measure the
progress of the year. —
I hearing get, who had but ears.
And sight, who had but eyes before,
I moments live, who lived but years.
And truth discern, who knew but learning's lore.
Sitting with our faces now up stream, we studied
the landscape by degrees, as one unrolls a map, — rock,
tree, house, hill, and meadow, assuming new and
varying positions as wind and water shifted the scene,
and there was variety enough for our entertainment
354 ^ WEEK ON THE CONCORD RIVER.
in the metamorphoses of the simplest objects. Viewed
from this side the scenery appeared new to us.
The most familiar sheet of water viewed from a
new hill-top, yields a novel and unexpected pleasure.
When we have travelled a few miles, we do not recog-
nize the profiles even of the hills which overlook our
native village, and perhaps no man is quite familiar
with the horizon as seen from the hill nearest to his
house, and can recall its outline distinctly when in the
valley. We do not commonly know, beyond a short
distance, which way the hills range which take in our
houses and farms in their sweep. As if our birth had
at first sundered things, and we had been thrust up
through into nature like a wedge, and not till the
wound heals and the scar disappears, do we begin to
discover where we are, and that nature is one and
continuous everywhere. It is an important epoch
when a man who has always lived on the east side of
a mountain and seen it in the west, travels round and
sees it in the east. Yet the universe is a sphere whose
center is wherever there is intelligence. The sun is
not so central as a man. Upon an isolated hill-top,
in an open country, we seem to ourselves to be stand-
ing on the boss of an immense shield, the immediate
landscape being apparently depressed below the more
remote, and rising gradually to the horizon, which is
the rim of the shield, villas, steeples, forests, moun-
tains, one above another, till they are swallowed up
in the heavens. The most distant mountains appear
to rise directly from the shore of that lake in the
woods by which we chance to be standing, while from
the mountain top, not only this, but a thousand nearer
and larger lakes, are equally unobserved.
Seen through this clear atmosphere, the works of
FRIDAY. 355
the farmer, his plowing and reaping, had a beauty to
our eyes which he never saw. How fortunate were
we who did not own an acre of these shores, who had
not renounced our title to the whole. One who knew
how to appropriate the true value of this world would
be the poorest man in it. The poor rich man! all he
has is what he has bought. What I see is mine. I
am a large owner in the Merrimack intervals. —
Men dig and dive but cannot my wealth spend,
Who yet no partial store appropriate,
Who no armed ship into the Indies send,
To rob me of my orient estate.
He is the rich man, and enjoys the fruits of riches,
who summer and winter forever can find delight in
his own thoughts. Buy a farm! What have I to pay
for a farm which a farmer will take ?
When I visit again some haunt of my youth, I am
glad to find that nature wears so well. The land-
scape is indeed something real, and solid, and sincere,
and I have not put my foot through it yet. There is
a pleasant tract on the bank of the Concord, called
Conantum, which I have in my mind ; — the old de-
serted farm-house, the desolate pasture with its bleak
cliff, the open wood, the river-reach, the green meadow
in the midst, and the moss-grown wild-apple orchard,
— places where one may have many thoughts and
not decide anything. It is a scene which I can
not only remember, as I might a vision, but when
I will can bodily revisit, and find it even so, un-
accountable, yet unpretending in its pleasant dreari-
ness. When my thoughts are sensible of change, I
love to see and sit on rocks which I have known, and
pry into their moss, and see unchangeableness so
356 A WEEK ON THE CONCORD RIVER.
established. I not yet gray on rocks forever gray,
I no longer green under the evergreens. There is
something even in the lapse of time by which time
recovers itself.
As we have said, it proved a cool as well as breezy
day, and by the time we reached Penichook Brook,
we were obliged to sit muffled in our cloaks, while the
wind and current carried us along. We bounded
swiftly over the rippling surface, far by many culti-
vated lands and the ends of fences which divided
innumerable farms, with hardly a thought for the
various lives which they separated ; now by long rows
of alders or groves of pines or oaks, and now by some
homestead where the women and children stood out-
side to gaze at us, till we had swept out of their sight,
and beyond the limit of their longest Saturday ram-
ble. We glided past the mouth of the Nashua, and
not long after, of Salmon Brook, without more pause
than the wind. —
Salmon Brook,
Penichook,
Ye sweet waters of my brain,
When shall I look,
Or cast the hook,
In your waves again ?
Silver eels,
Wooden creels.
These the baits that still allure,
And dragon-fly
That floated by, —
May they still endure ?
The shadows chased one another swiftly over wood
and meadow, and their alternation harmonized with
our mood. We could distinguish the clouds w^hich
FRIDAY. 357
cast each one, though never so high in the heavens.
When a shadow flits across the landscape of the soul,
where is the substance? Probably, if we were wise
enough, we should see to what virtue we are indebted
for any happier moment we enjoy. No doubt we
have earned it at some time ; for the gifts of Heaven
are never quite gratuitous. The constant abrasion
and decay of our lives makes the soil of our future
growth. The wood which we now mature, when it
becomes virgin mould, determines the character of
our second growth, whether that be oaks or pines.
Every man casts a shadow ; not his body only, but
his imperfectly mingled spirit; this is his grief; let
him turn which way he will, it falls opposite to the
sun ; short at noon, long at eve. Did you never see
it? — But, referred to the sun, it is widest at its base,
which is no greater than his own opacity. The
divine light is diffused almost entirely around us,
and by means of the reflection of light, or else by a
certain self-luminousness, or, as some will have it,
transparency, if we preserve ourselves untarnished,
we are able to enlighten our shaded side. At any
rate, our darkest grief has that bronze color of the
moon eclipsed. There is no ill which may not be
dissipated, like the dark, if you let in a stronger light
upon it. Shadows, referred to the source of light, are
pyramids whose bases are never greater than those of
the substances which cast them, but light is a spheri-
cal congeries of pyramids, whose very apexes are the
sun itself, and hence the system shines with uninter-
rupted light. But if the light we use is but a paltry
and narrow taper, most objects will cast a shadow
wider than themselves.
The places where we had stopped or spent the
358 A WEEK ON THE CONCORD RIVER.
night in our way up the river, had already acquired
a slight historical interest for us ; for many upward
days' voyaging were unravelled in this rapid down-
ward passage. When one landed to stretch his limbs
by walking, he soon found himself falling behind his
companion, and was obliged to take advantage of the
curves, and ford the brooks and ravines in haste, to
recover his ground. Already the banks and the
distant meadows wore a sober and deepened tinge,
for the September air had shorn them of their sum-
mer's pride. —
" And what 's a life? The flourishing array
Of the proud summer meadow, which to-day
Wears her green plush, and is to-morrow hay."
The air was really the " fine element " which the poets
describe. It had a finer and sharper grain, seen
against the russet pastures and meadows, than before,
as if cleansed of the summer's impurities.
Having passed the New Hampshire line and reached
the Horseshoe Interval in Tyngsboro', where there
is a high and regular second bank, we climbed up
this in haste to get a nearer sight of the autumnal
flowers, asters, golden-rod, and yarrow, and the tri-
chostema dichotoma^ humble road-side blossoms, and,
lingering still, the harebell and the 7-hexia Virgiiiica.
The last, growing in patches of lively pink flowers on
the edge of the meadows, had almost too gay an
appearance for the rest of the landscape, like a joink
ribbon on the bonnet of a Puritan woman. Asters
and golden-rods were the livery which nature wore at
present. The latter alone expressed all the ripeness
of the season, and shed their mellow lustre over the
fields, as if the now declining summer's sun had be-
FRIDAY. 359
queathed its hues to them. It is the floral solstice a
little after mid-summer, when the particles of golden
light, the sun-dust, have, as it were, fallen like seeds
on the earth, and produced these blossoms. On
every hill-side, and in every valley, stood countless
asters, coreopses, tansies, golden-rods, and the whole
race of yellow flowers, like Brahminical devotees,
turning steadily with their luminary from morning till
night.
" I see the golden-rod shine bright,
As sun-showers at the birth of day,
A golden plume of yellow light.
That robs the Day-god's splendid ray.
" The aster's violet rays divide
The bank with many stars for me,
And yarrow in blanch tints is dyed.
As moonlight floats across the sea.
" I see the emerald woods prepare
To shed their vestiture once more,
And distant elm-trees spot the air
With yellow pictures softly o'er. * *
" No more the water-lily's pride
In milk-white circles swims content,
No more the blue-weed's clusters ride
And mock the heaven's element. * *
" Autumn, thy wreath and mine are blent
With the same colors, for to me
A richer sky than all is lent,
While fades my dream-like company.
" Our skies glow purple, but the wind
Sobs chill through green trees and bright grass,
To-day shines fair, and lurk behind
The times that into winter pass.
36o A WEEK ON THE CONCORD RIVER.
" So fair we seem, so cold we are,
So fast we hasten to decay,
Yet through our night glows many a star.
That still shall claim its sunny day."
So sang a Concord poet once.
There is a peculiar interest belonging to the still
later flowers, which abide with us the approach of
winter. There is something witch-like in the appear-
ance of the witch-hazel, which blossoms late in Octo-
ber and in November, with its irregular and angular
spray and petals like furies' hair, or small ribbon
streamers. Its blossoming, too, at this irregular
period, when other shrubs have lost their leaves, as
well as blossoms, looks like witches' craft. Certainly
it blooms in no garden of man's. There is a whole
fairy-land on the hill-side where it grows.
Some have thought that the gales do not at present
waft to the voyager the natural and original fra-
grance of the land, such as the early navigators
described, and that the loss of many odoriferous
native plants, sweet-scented grasses and medicinal
herbs, which formerly sweetened the atmosphere, and
rendered it salubrious, by the grazing of cattle and
the rooting of swine, is the source of many diseases
which now prevail ; the earth, say they, having been
long subjected to extremely artificial and luxurious
modes of cultivation, to gratify the appetite, con-
verted into a stye and hot-bed, where men for profit
increase the ordinary decay of nature.
According to the record of an old inhabitant of
Tyngsboro', now dead, whose farm we were now glid-
ing past, one of the greatest freshets on this river
FRIDAY. 361
took place in October, 1785, and its height was
marked by a nail driven into an apple tree behind
his house. One of his descendants has shown this
to me, and I judged it to be at least seventeen or
eighteen feet above the level of the river at the
time. Before the Lowell and Nashua railroad was
built, the engineer made inquiries of the inhabitants
along the banks as to how high they had known the
river to rise. When he came to this house he was
conducted to the apple tree, and as the nail was not
then visible, the lady of the house placed her hand
on the trunk where she said that she remembered
the nail to have been from her childhood. In the
meanwhile the old man put his arm inside the tree,
which was hollow, and felt the point of the nail
sticking through, and it was exactly opposite to her
hand. The spot is now plainly marked by a notch
in the bark. But as no one else remembered the
river to have risen so high as this, the engineer disre-
garded this statement, and I learn that there has
since been a freshet which rose within nine inches
of the rails at Biscuit Brook, and such a freshet as
that of 1785 would have covered the railroad two
feet deep.
The revolutions of nature tell as fine tales, and
make as interesting revelations, on this river's banks,
as on the Euphrates or the Nile. This apple tree,
which stands within a few rods of the river, is called
" Elisha's apple tree," from a friendly Indian, who
was anciently in the service of Jonathan Tyng, and,
with one other man, was killed here by his own
race in one of the Indian wars, — the particulars of
which affair were told us on the spot. He was
buried close by, no one knew exactly where, but
362 A WEEK ON THE CONCORD RIVER.
in the flood of 1785, so great a weight of water
standing over the grave, caused the earth to settle
where it had once been disturbed, and when the
flood went down, a sunken spot, exactly of the form
and size of the grave, revealed its locality, but this
was now lost again, and no future flood can detect
it; yet, no doubt, Nature will know how to point it
out in due time, if it be necessary, by methods yet
more searching and unexpected. Thus there is not
only the crisis when the spirit ceases to inspire and
expand the body, marked by a fresh mound in the
church-yard, but there is also a crisis when the body
ceases to take up room as such in nature, marked by a
fainter depression in the earth.
We sat awhile to rest us here upon the brink of
the western bank, surrounded by the glossy leaves
of the red variety of the mountain laurel, just above
the head of Wicasuck Island, where we could observe
some scows which were loading with clay from the
opposite shore, and also overlook the grounds of
the farmer, of whom I have spoken, who once hos-
pitably entertained us for a night. He had on his
pleasant farm, besides an abundance of the beach -
plum, or pi-iiniis litto?'alis, w^hich grew wild, the
Canada plum under cultivation, fine Porter apples,
some peaches, and large patches of musk and water
melons, which he cultivated for the Lowell market.
Elisha's apple tree, too, bore a native fruit, which
was prized by the family. He raised the blood peach,
which, as he showed us with satisfaction, was more
like the oak in the color of its bark and in the setting
of its branches, and was less liable to break down
under the weight of the fmit, or the snow, than
other varieties. It was of slower growth, and its
FRIDA V. 363
branches strong and tough. There, also, was his
nursery of native apple trees, thickly set upon the
bank, which cost but little care, and which he sold
to the neighboring farmers when they were five or
six years old. To see a single peach upon its stem
makes an impression of paradisaical fertility and
luxury. This reminded us even of an old Roman
farm, as described by Varro : " Cssar Vopiscus
yEdilicius, when he pleaded before the Censors, said
that the grounds of Rosea were the garden {siuneii
the tid-bit) of Italy, in which a pole being left
would not be visible the day after, on account of
the growth of the herbage." This soil may not
have been remarkably fertile, yet at this distance
we thought that this anecdote might be told of the
Tyngsboro' farm.
When we passed Wicasuck Island, there was a
pleasure boat containing a youth and a maiden on the
island brook, which we were pleased to see, since it
proved that there were some hereabouts to whom our
excursions would not be wholly strange. Before this,
a canal-boatman, of whom we made some inquiries
respecting Wicasuck Island, and who told us that
it was disputed property, supposed that we had a
claim upon it, and though we assured him that all
this was news to us, and explained, as well as we
could, why we had come to see it, he believed not
a word of it, and seriously offered us one hundred
dollars for our title. The only other small boats
which we met with were used to pick up drift-
wood. Some of the poorer class along the stream
collect, in this way, all the fuel which they require.
While one of us landed not far from this island to
forage for provisions among the farm-houses whose
364 A WEEK ON THE CONCORD RIVER.
roofs we saw, for our supply was now exhausted, the
other, sitting in the boat, which was moored to the
shore, was left alone to his reflections.
If there is nothing new on the earth, still the trav-
eller always has a resource in the skies. They are
constantly turning a new page to view. The wind
sets the types on this blue ground, and the in-
quiring may always read a new truth there. There
are things there written with such fine and subtil
tinctures, paler than the juice of limes, that to the
diurnal eye they leave no trace, and only the chem-
istry of night reveals them. Every man's daylight
firmament answers in his mind to the brightness of
the vision in his starriest hour.
These continents and hemispheres are soon run
over, but an always unexplored and infinite region
makes off on every side from the mind, further than
to sunset, and we can make no highway or beaten
track into it, but the grass immediately springs up in
the path, for we travel there chiefly with our wings.
Sometimes we see objects as through a thin haze,
in their eternal relations, and they stand like Palen-
que and the Pyramids, and we wonder who set them
up, and for what purpose. If we see the reality in
things, of what moment is the superficial and ap-
parent longer? What are the earth and all its in-
terests beside the deep surmise which pierces and
scatters them? While I sit here listening to the
waves which ripple and break on this shore, I am
absolved from all obligation to the past, and the
council of nations may reconsider its votes. The
grating of a pebble annuls them. Still occasionally
in my dreams I remember that rippling water. —
FRIDA Y. 365
Oft, as I turn me on my pillow o'er,
I hear the lapse of waves upon the shore,
Distinct as if it were at broad noon-day,
And I were drifting down from Nashua.
With a bending sail we glided rapidly by Tyngs-
boro' and Chelmsford, each holding in one hand
half of a tart country apple-pie which we had pur-
chased to celebrate our return, and in the other a
fragment of the newspaper in which it was wrapped,
devouring these with divided relish, and learning the
news which had transpired since we sailed. The
river here opened into a broad and straight reach of
great length, which we bounded merrily over before
a smacking breeze, with a devil-may-care look in our
faces, and our boat a white bone in its mouth, and
a speed which greatly astonished some scow boatmen
whom we met. The wind in the horizon rolled
like a flood over valley and plain, and every tree bent
to the blast, and the mountains like school-boys
turned their cheeks to it. They were great and cur-
rent motions, the flowing sail, the running stream, the
waving tree, the roving wind. The north wind
stepped readily into the harness which we had pro-
vided, and pulled us along with good will. Some-
times we sailed as gently and steadily as the clouds
overhead, watching the receding shores and the
motions of our sail ; the play of its pulse so like our
own lives, so thin and yet so full of life, so noiseless
when it labored hardest, so noisy and impatient
when least effective ; now bending to some generous
impulse of the breeze, and then fluttering and flapping
with a kind of human suspense. It was the scale
on which the varying temperature of distant atmos-
pheres w^as graduated, and it was some attraction
366 ^ WEEK ON THE CONCORD RIVER.
for us that the breeze, it played with had been out
of doors so long. Thus we sailed, not being able to
fly, but as next best, making a long furrow in the
fields of the Merrimack toward our home, with our
wings spread, but never lifting our heel from the
watery trench ; gracefully plowing homeward with our
brisk and willing team, wind and stream, pulling
together, the former yet a wild steer, yoked to his
more sedate fellow. It was very near flying, as when
the duck rushes through the water with an impulse of
her wings, throwing the spray about her, before she
can rise. How we had stuck fast if drawn up but
a few feet on the shore!
When we reached the great bend just above Mid-
dlesex, where the river runs east thirty-five miles to
the sea, we at length lost the aid of this propitious
wind, though we contrived to make one long and
judicious tack carry us nearly to the locks of the
canal. We were here locked through at noon by our
old friend, the lover of the higher mathematics, who
seemed glad to see us safe back again through so
many locks ; but we did not stop to consider any
of his problems, though we could cheerfully have
spent a whole autumn in this way another time, and
never have asked what his religion was. It is so rare
to meet with a man out-doors who cherishes a worthy
thought in his mind, which is independent of the
labor of his hands. Behind every man's busy-ness
there should be a level of undisturbed serenity and
industry, as witliin the reef encircling a coral isle
there is always an expanse of still water, where the
depositions are going on which will finally raise it
above the surface.
FRIDAY. 367
The eye which can appreciate the naked and abso-
lute beauty of a scientific truth is far more rare than
that which is attracted by a moral one. Few detect
the morality in the former, or the science in the latter.
Aristotle defined art to be Aoyos tov epyov ai/ev vA>/s
the principle of the zuork without the wood; but most
men prefer to have some of the wood along with the
principle ; they demand that the truth be clothed in
flesh and blood and the warm colors of life. They
prefer the partial statement because it fits and meas-
ures them and their commodities best. But science
still exists everywhere as the sealer of weights and
measures at least.
We have heard much about the poetry of mathe-
matics, but very little of it has yet been sung. The
ancients had a juster notion of their poetic value than
we. Tlie most distinct and beautiful statement of
any truth must take at last the mathematical form.
We might so simplify the rules of moral philosophy,
as well as of arithmetic, that one formula would ex-
press them both. All the moral laws are readily
translated into natural philosophy, for often we have
only to restore the primitive meaning of the words by
which they are expressed, or to attend to their literal
instead of their metaphorical sense. They are already
siiper7iatiiral philosophy. The whole body of what
is now called moral or ethical truth existed in the
golden age as abstract science. Or, if we prefer, we
may say that the laws of Nature are the purest moral-
ity. The Tree of Knowledge is a Tree of Knowledge
of good and evil. He is not a true man of science
who does not bring some sympathy to his studies,
and expect to learn something by behavior as well as
by application. It is childish to rest in the discovery
368 A WEEK ON THE CONCORD RIVER.
of mere coincidences, or of partial and extraneous
laws. The study of geometry is a petty and idle
exercise of the mind, if it is applied to no larger sys-
tem than the starry one. Mathematics should be
mixed not only with physics but with ethics, that is
mixed m^ih^rmXics. The fact which interests us most
is the life of the naturalist. The purest science is
still biographical. Nothing will dignify and elevate
science while it is sundered so wholly from the moral
life of its devotee, and he professes another religion
than it teaches, and worships at a foreign shrine.
Anciently the faith of a philosopher was identical
with his system, or, in other words, his view of the
universe.
My friends mistake when they communicate facts
to me with so much pains. Their presence, even
their exaggerations and loose statements, are equally
good facts for me. I have no respect for facts even
except when I would use them, and for the most part
I am independent of those which I hear, and can
afford to be inaccurate, or, in other words, to sub-
stitute more present and pressing facts in their
place.
The poet uses the results of science and philosoph)',
and generalizes their widest deductions.
The process of discovery is very simple. An un-
wearied and systematic application of known laws to
nature, causes the unknown to reveal themselves.
Almost any mode of observation will be successful
at last, for what is most wanted is method. Only let
something be determined and fixed around which ob-
servation may rally. How many new relations a foot-
rule alone will reveal, and to how many things still
this has not been applied ! What wonderful discover-
FRIDA Y. 369
ies have been, and may still be, made, with a plumb-
line, a level, a surveyor's compass, a thermometer, or
a barometer! Where there is an observatory and a
telescope, we expect that any eyes will see new worlds
at once. I should say that the most prominent
scientific men of our country, and perhaps of this age,
are either serving the arts, and not pure science, or
are performing faithful but quite subordinate labors
in particular departments. They make no steady and
systematic approaches to the central fact. A dis-
covery is made, and at once the attention of all ob-
servers is distracted to that, and it draws many analo-
gous discoveries in its train ; as if their work \vere
not already laid out for them, but they had been lying
on their oars. There is wanting constant and accurate
observation with enough of theory to direct and disci-
pline it.
But above all, there is wanting genius. Our books
of science, as they improve in accuracy, are in danger
of losing the freshness and vigor and readiness to
appreciate the real laws of Nature, which is a marked
merit in the oft-times false theories of the ancients.
I am attracted by the slight pride and satisfaction,
the emphatic and even exaggerated style in which
some of the older naturalists speak of the opera-
tions of Nature, though they are better qualified to
appreciate than to discriminate the facts. Their
assertions are not without value when disproved. If
they are not facts, they are suggestions for Nature
herself to act upon. " The Greeks," says Gesner,
" had a common proverb (Aayos koB^v^ov) a sleeping
hare, for a dissembler or counterfeit ; because the
hare sees when she sleeps ; for this is an admirable
and rare work of Nature, that all the residue of her
370 ^ WEEK ON THE CONCORD RIVER.
bodily parts take their rest, but the eye standeth
continually sentinel."
Observation is so wide awake, and facts are being
so rapidly added to the sum of human experience,
that it appears as if the theorizer would always be
in arrears, and were doomed forever to arrive at im-
perfect conclusions ; but the power to perceive a law
is equally rare in all ages of the world, and depends
but little on the number of facts observed. The
senses of the savage will furnish him with facts
enough to set him up as a philosoplier. The an-
cients can still speak to us with authority even on the
themes of geology and chemistry, though these studies
are thought to have had their birth in modern times.
Much is said about the progress of science in these
centuries. I should say that the useful results of
science had accumulated, but that there had been no
accumulation of knowledge, strictly speaking, for
posterity ; for knowledge is to be acquired only by a
corresponding experience. How can we kjiow what
we are told merely ? Each man can interpret another's
experience only by his own. We read that Newton
discovered the law of gravitation, but how many who
have heard of his famous discovery have recognized
the same truth that he did ? It may be not one.
The revelation which was then made to him has not
been superseded by the revelation made to any suc-
cessor. —
We see \\\e planet fall,
And that is all.
In a review of Sir James Clark Ross' Antarctic Voy-
age of Discovery, there is a passage which shows how
far a body of men are commonly impressed by an
I
FRIDA Y. 371
object of sublimity, and which is also a good instance
of the step from the sublime to the ridiculous. After
describing the discovery of the Antarctic Continent,
at first seen a hundred miles distant over fields of
ice, — stupendous ranges of mountains from seven
and eight to twelve and fourteen thousand feet high,
covered with eternal snow and ice, in solitary and
inaccessible grandeur, at one time the weather being
beautifully clear, and the sun shining on the icy land-
scape ; a continent whose islands only are accessible,
and these exhibited " not the smallest trace of vegeta-
tion," only in a few places the rocks protruding through
their icy covering, to convince the beholder that land
formed the nucleus, and that it was not an iceberg ; —
the practical British reviewer proceeds thus, sticking
to his last, " On the 22d of January, afternoon, the
Expedition made the latitude of 74° 20', and by f"
P.M., having ground to believe that they were then
in a higher southern latitude than had been attained
by that enterprising seaman, the late Captain James
Weddel, and therefore higher than all their predeces-
sors, an extra allowance of grog was issued to the
crews as a reward for their perseverance."
Let not us sailors of late centuries take upon our-
selves any airs on account of our Newtons and our
Cuviers. We deserve an extra allowance of grog
only.
We endeavored in vain to persuade the wind to
blow through the long corridor of the canal, which
is here cut straight through the woods, and were
obliged to resort to our old expedient of drawing by
a cord. When we reached the Concord, we were
forced to row once more in good earnest, with neither
372 ^ WEEK ON THE CONCORD RIVER.
wind nor current in our favor, but by this time the
rawness of the day had disappeared, and we expe-
rienced the warmth of a summer afternoon. This
change in the weather was favorable to our con-
templative mood, and disposed us to dream yet
deeper at our oars, while we floated in imagination
further down the stream of time, as we had floated
down the stream of the Merrimack, to poets of a
milder period than had engaged us in the morning.
Chelmsford and Billerica appeared like old English
towns, compared with Merrimack and Nashua, and
many generations of civil poets might have lived and
sung here.
What a contrast between the stern and desolate
poetry of Ossian, and that of Chaucer, and even of
Shakspeare and Milton, much more of Dryden, and
Pope, and Gray. Our summer of English poetry, like
the Greek and Latin before it, seems well advanced
toward its fall, and laden with the fruit and foliage
of the season, with bright autumnal tints, but soon
the winter will scatter its myriad clustering and shad-
ing leaves, and leave only a few desolate and fibrous
boughs to sustain the snow and rime, and creak in
the blasts of ages. We cannot escape the impres-
sion that the Muse has stooped a little in her flight,
when we come to the literature of civilized eras. Now
first we hear of various ages and styles of poetry ; it
is pastoral, and lyric, and narrative, and didactic ; but
the poetry of runic monuments is of one style, and
for every age. The bard has in a great measure lost
the dignity and sacredness of his office. Formerly
he was called a seer, but now it is thought that one
man sees as much as another. He has no longer the
FRIDAY, 373
bardic rage, and only conceives the deed, which he
formerly stood ready to perform. Hosts of warriors
earnest for battle could not mistake nor dispense with
the ancient bard. His lays were heard in the pauses
of the fight. There was no danger of his being over-
looked by his contemporaries. But now the hero and
the bard are of different professions. When we come
to the pleasant English verse, the storms have all
cleared away, and it will never thunder and lighten
more. The poet has come within doors, and ex-
changed the forest and crag for the fireside, the
hut of the Gael, and Stonehenge with its circles of
stones, for the house of the Englishman. No hero
stands at the door prepared to break forth into song
or heroic action, but a homely Englishman, who culti-
vates the art of poetry. We see the comfortable fire-
side, and hear the crackling fagots in all the verse.
Notwithstanding the broad humanity of Chaucer,
and the many social and domestic comforts which we
meet with in his verse, we have to narrow our vision
somewhat to consider him, as if he occupied less
space in the landscape, and did not stretch over hill
and valley as Ossian does. Yet, seen from the side
of posterity, as the father of English poetry, preceded
by a long silence or confusion in history, unenlivened
by any strain of pure melody, we easily come to rever-
ence him. Passing over the earlier continental poets,
since we are bound to the pleasant archipelago of
English poetry, Chaucer's is the first name after that
misty weather in which Ossian lived, which can detain
us long. Indeed, though he represents so different a
culture and society, he may be regarded as in many
respects the Homer of the English poets. Perhaps
he is the youthfuUest of them all. We return to him
374 ^ ^^EK ON THE CONCORD RIVER.
as to the purest well, the fountain furthest removed
from the highway of desultory life. He is so natural
and cheerful, compared with later jDoets, that we might
almost regard him as a personification of spring. To
the faithful reader his muse has even given an aspect
to his times, and when he is fresh from perusing him,
they seem related to the golden age. It is still the
poetry of youth and life, rather than of thought ; and
though the moral vein is obvious and constant, it has
not yet banished the sun and daylight from his verse.
The loftiest strains of the muse are, for the most part,
sublimely plaintive, and not a carol as free as nature's.
The content which the sun shines to celebrate from
morning to evening, is unsung. The muse solaces
herself, and is not ravished but consoled. There is
a catastrophe implied, and a tragic element in all our
verse, and less of the lark and morning devv's, than of
the nightingale and evening shades. But in Homer
and Chaucer there is more of the innocence and seren-
ity of youth, than in the more modern and moral poets.
The Iliad is not Sabbath but morning reading, and
men cling to this old song, because they still have
moments of unbaptized and uncommitted life, which
give them an appetite for more. To the innocent
there are neither cherubim nor angels. At rare in-
tervals we rise above the necessity of virtue into an
unchangeable morning light, in which we have only
to live right on and breathe the ambrosial air. The
Iliad represents no creed nor opinion, and we read it
with a rare sense of freedom and irresponsibility, as
if we trod on native ground, and were autochthones
of the soil.
Chaucer had eminently the habits of a literary man
and a scholar. There were never any times so stirring
FRIDAY, 375
that there were not to be found some sedentary still.
He was surrounded by the din of arms. The battles
of Halidon Hill and Neville's Cross, and the still
more memorable battles of Cressy and Poictiers, were
fought in his youth ; but these did not concern our
poet much, Wickliffe and his reform much more.
He regarded himself always as one privileged to sit
and converse with books. He helped to establish
the literary class. His character as one of the fathers
of the English language, would alone make his works
important, even those which have little poetical merit.
He was as simple as Wordsworth in preferring his
homely but vigorous Saxon tongue, when it was
neglected by the court, and had not yet attained to
the dignity of a literature, and rendered a similar ser-
vice to his country to that which Dante rendered to
Italy. If Greek sufificeth for Greek, and Arabic for
Arabian, and Hebrew for Jew, and Latin for Latin,
then English shall suffice for him, for any of these
will serve to teach truth " right as divers pathes leaden
divers folke the right waye to Rome." In the Testa-
ment of Love he writes, " Let then clerkes enditen in
Latin, for they have the propertie of science, and the
knowinge in that facultie, and lette Frenchmen in
their Frenche also enditen their queinte termes, for
it is kyndely to their mouthes, and let us shewe our
fantasies in soche wordes as we lerneden of our dames
tonge."
He will know how to appreciate Chaucer best, who
has come down to him the natural way, through the
meagre pastures of Saxon and ante-Chaucerian poe-
try ; and yet, so human and wise he appears after
such diet, that we are liable to misjudge him still. In
the Saxon poetry extant, in the earliest English, and
376 ^ WEEK ON THE CONCORD RIVER.
the contemporary Scottish poetry, there is less to
remind the reader of the rudeness and vigor of youth,
than of the feebleness of a declining age. It is for
the most part translation or imitation merely, with
only an occasional and slight tinge of poetry, often-
times the falsehood and exaggeration of fable, without
its imagination to redeem it, and we look in vain to
find antiquity restored, humanized, and made blithe
again by some natural sympathy between it and the
present. But Chaucer is fresh and modern still, and
no dust settles on his true passages. It lightens along
the line, and we are reminded that flowers have
bloomed, and birds sung, and hearts beaten, in
England. Before the earnest gaze of the reader, the
rust and moss of time gradually drop off, and the orig-
inal green life is revealed. He was a homely and do-
mestic man, and did breathe quite as modern men do.
There is no wisdom that can take place of human-
ity, and we find that in Chaucer. We can expand at
last in his breath, and we think that we could have
been that man's acquaintance. He was worthy to
be a citizen of England, while Petrarch and Boccaccio
lived in Italy, and Tell and Tamerlane in Switzer-
land and in Asia, and Bruce in Scotland, and Wick-
liffe, and Gower, and Edward the Tliird, and John of
Gaunt, and the Black Prince, were his own country-
men as well as contemporaries ; all stout and stirring
names. The fame of Roger Bacon came down from
the preceding century, and the name of Dante still
possessed the influence of a living presence. On the
whole, Chaucer impresses us as greater than his repu-
tation, and not a little like Homer and Shakspeare,
for he would have held up his head in their company.
Among early English poets he is the landlord and
FRIDA Y. 377
host, and has the authority of such. The affectionate
mention which succeeding early poets make of him,
coupling him with Homer and Virgil, is to be taken
into the account in estimating his character and influ-
ence. King James and Dunbar of Scotland speak of
him with more love and reverence than any modern
author of his predecessors of the last century. The
same childlike relation is without a parallel now. For
the most part we read him without criticism, for he
does not plead his own cause, but speaks for his
readers, and has that greatness of trust and reliance
which compels popularity. He confides in the reader,
and speaks privily with him, keeping nothing back.
And in return the reader has great confidence in him,
that he tells no lies, and reads his story with indul-
gence, as if it were the circumlocution of a child, but
often discovers afterwards that he has spoken with
more directness and economy of words than a sage.
He is never heartless,
" For first the thing is thought within the hart,
Er any word out from the mouth astart."
And so new was all his theme in those days, that he
did not have to invent, but only to tell.
We admire Chaucer for his sturdy English wit.
The easy height he speaks from in his Prologue to
the Canterbury Tales, as if he were equal to any of
the company there assembled, is as good as any par-
ticular excellence in it. But though it is full of good
sense and humanity, it is not transcendent poetry.
For picturesque descriptions of persons it is, perhaps,
without a parallel in English poetry ; yet it is essen-
tially humorous, as the loftiest genius never is. Hu-
mor, however broad and genial, takes a narrower view
3/8 ^ WEEK ON THE CONCORD RIVER.
than enthusiasm. To his own finer vein he added all
the common wit and wisdom of his time, and every-
where in his works his remarkable knowledge of the
world and nice perception of character, his rare com-
mon sense and proverbial wisdom, are apparent. His
genius does not soar like Milton's, but is genial and
familiar. It shows great tenderness and delicacy, but
not the heroic sentiment. It is only a greater portion
of humanity with all its weakness. He is not heroic,
as Raleigh, nor pious, as Herbert, nor philosophical,
as Shakspeare, but he is the child of the English
muse, that child which is the father of the man. The
charm of his poetry consists often only in an exceed-
ing naturalness, perfect sincerity, with the behavior
of a child rather than of a man.
Gentleness and delicacy of character are every-
where apparent in his verse. The simplest and
humblest words come readily to his lips. No one
can read the Prioress' tale, understanding the spirit
in which it was written, and in which the child sings
O alma j-edouptoris jnater, or the account of the de-
parture of Constance with her child upon the sea, in
the Man of Lawe's tale, without feeling the native
innocence and refinement of the author. Nor can we
be mistaken respecting the essential purity of his
character, disregarding the apology of the manners of
the age. A simple pathos and feminine gentleness,
which Wordsworth only occasionally approaches, but
does not equal, are peculiar to him. We are tempted
to say that his genius was feminine, not masculine.
It was such a feminineness, however, as is rarest to find
in woman, though not the appreciation of it ; perhaps
it is not to be found at all in woman, but is only the
feminine in man.
FRIDAY. 379
Such pure, and genuine, and childlike love of Na-
ture is hardly to be found in any poet.
Chaucer's remarkably trustful and affectionate char-
acter appears in his familiar, yet innocent and rever-
ent, manner of speaking of his God. He comes into
his thought v^ithout any false reverence, and with no
more parade than the zephyr to his ear. If Nature is
our mother, then God is our father. There is less
love and simple practical trust in Shakspeare and
Milton. How rarely in our English tongue do we
find expressed any affection for God. Certainly, there
is no sentiment so rare as the love of God. Herbert
almost alone expresses it, " Ah, my dear God ! " Our
poet uses similar words with propriety, and whenever
he sees a beautiful person, or other object, prides
himself on the " maistry " of his God. He even rec-
ommends Dido to be his bride, —
" if that God that heaven and yearth made,
Would have a love for beauty and goodnesse,
And womanhede, trouth, and semeliness."
But in justification of our praise, we must refer to
his works themselves ; to the Prologue to the Canter-
bury Tales, the account of Gentilesse, the Flower and
the Leaf, the stories of Griselda, Virginia, Ariadne,
and Blanche the Dutchesse, and much more of less dis-
tinguished merit. There are many poets of more taste
and better manners, who knew how to leave out their
dulness, but such negative genius cannot detain us
long ; we shall return to Chaucer still with love.
Some natures which are really rude and ill developed,
have yet a higher standard of perfection than others
which are refined and well balanced. Even the clown
has taste, whose dictates, though he disregards them,
380 ^ WEEK ON THE CONCORD RIVER.
are higher and purer than those which the artist
obeys. If we have to wander through many dull and
prosaic passages in Chaucer, we have at least the satis-
faction of knowing that it is not an artificial dulness,
but too easily matched by many passages in life. We
confess that we feel a disposition commonly to concen-
trate sweets, and accumulate pleasures, but the poet
may be presumed always to speak as a traveller, who
leads us through a varied scenery, from one eminence
to another, and it is, perhaps, more pleasing, after all,
to meet with a fine thought in its natural setting.
Surely fate has enshrined it in these circumstances for
some end. Nature strews her nuts and flowers broad-
cast, and never collects them into heaps. This was
the soil it grew in, and this the hour it bloomed in ;
if sun, wind, and rain came here to cherish and
expand the flower, shall not we come here to pluck
it?
A true poem is distinguished not so much by a
felicitous expression, or any thought it suggests, as
by the atmosphere which surrounds it. Most have
beauty of outline merely, and are striking as the form
and bearing of a stranger, but true verses come toward
us indistinctly, as the very breath of all friendliness,
and envelop us in their spirit and fragrance. Much
of our poetry has the very best manners, but no char-
acter. It is only an unusual precision and elasticity
of speech, as if its author had taken, not an intoxicat-
ing draught, but an electuary. It has the distinct
outHne of sculpture, and chronicles an early hour.
Under the influence of passion all men speak thus
distinctly, but wrath is not always divine.
There are two classes of men called poets. The one
cultivates life, the other art, — one seeks food for nu-
FRIDAY. 381
triment, the other for flavor ; one satisfies hunger, the
other gratifies the palate. There are two kinds of
writing, both great and rare ; one that of genius, or
the inspired, the other of intellect and taste, in the
intervals of inspiration. The former is above criti-
cism, always correct, giving the law to criticism. It
vibrates and pulsates with life forever. It is sacred,
and to be read with reverence, as the works of nature
are studied. There are few instances of a sustained
style of this kind ; perhaps every man has spoken
words, but the speaker is then careless of the record.
Such a style removes us out of personal relations with
its author, we do not take his words on our lips, but
his sense into our hearts. It is the stream of inspira-
tion, which bubbles out, now here, now there, now in
this man, now in that. It matters not through what
ice-crystals it is seen, now a fountain, now the ocean
stream nmning under ground. It is in Shakspeare,
Alpheus, in Burns, Arethuse ; but ever the same. —
The other is self-possessed and wise. It is reverent
of genius, and greedy of inspiration. It is conscious
in the highest and the least degree. It consists with
the most perfect command of the faculties. It dwells
in a repose as of the desert, and objects are as distinct
in it as oases or palms in the horizon of sand. The
train of thought moves with subdued and measured
step, like a caravan. But the pen is only an instru-
ment in its hand, and not instinct with life, like a
longer arm. It leaves a thin varnish or glaze over all
its work. The works of Goethe furnish remarkable
instances of the latter.
There is no just and serene criticism as yet. Noth-
ing is considered simply as it lies in the lap of eternal
beauty, but our thoughts, as well as our bodies, must
382 A WEEK ON THE CONCORD RIVER.
be dressed after the latest fashions. Our taste is too
delicate and particular. It says nay to the poet's
work, but never yea to his hope. It invites him to
adorn his deformities, and not to cast them off by ex-
pansion, as the tree its bark. We are a people who
live in a bright light, in houses of pearl and porcelain,
and drink only light wines, whose teeth are easily set
on edge by the least natural sour. If we had been
consulted, the backbone of the earth would have been
made, not of granite, but of Bristol spar. A modern
author would have died in infancy in a ruder age.
But the poet is something more than a scald, " a
smoother and polisher of language ; " he is a Cincin-
natus in literature, and occupies no west end of the
world. Like the sun, he will indifferently select his
rhymes, and with a liberal taste weave into his verse
the planet and the stubble.
In these old books the stucco has long since crum-
bled away, and we read what was sculptured in the
granite. They are rude and massive in their propor-
tions, rather than smooth and delicate in their finish.
The workers in stone polish only their chimney orna-
ments, but their pyramids are roughly done. There
is a soberness in a rough aspect, as of unhewn gran-
ite, which addresses a depth in us, but a polished sur-
face hits only the ball of the eye. The true finish is
the work of time and the use to which a thing is put.
The elements are still polishing the pyramids. Art
may varnish and gild, but it can do no more. A work
of genius is rough-hewn from the first, because it anti-
cipates the lapse of time, and has an ingrained polish,
which still appears when fragments are broken off, an
essential quality of its substance. Its beauty is at the
same time its strength, and it breaks with a lustre.
FRIDAY. 383
The great poem must have the stamp of greatness
as well as its essence. The reader easily goes within
the shallowest contemporary poetry, and informs it
with all the life and promise of the day, as the
pilgrim goes within the temple, and hears the faintest
strains of the worshippers ; but it will have to speak to
posterity, traversing these deserts, through the ruins
of its outmost walls, by the grandeur and beauty of
its proportions.
But here on the stream of the Concord, where we
have all the while been bodily, Nature, who is superior
to all styles and ages, is now, with pensive face, com-
posing her poem Autumn, with which no work of man
will bear to be compared.
In summer we live out of doors, and have only im-
pulses and feelings, which are all for action, and must
wait commonly for the stillness and longer nights of
autumn and wholly new life, which no man has lived ;
that even this earth was made for more mysterious
and nobler inhabitants than men and women. In the
hues of October sunsets, we see the portals to other
mansions than those which we occupy, not far off
geographically. —
" There is a place beyond that flaming hill,
From whence the stars their thin appearance shed,
A place beyond all place, where never ill.
Nor impure thought was ever harbored."
Sometimes a mortal feels in himself Nature, not his
Father but his Mother stirs within him, and he be-
comes immortal with her immortality. From time to
time she claims kindredship with us, and some globule
from her veins steals up into our own.
384 ^ WEEK ON THE CONCORD RIVER.
I am the autumnal sun,
With autumn gales my race is run ;
When will the hazel put forth its flowers,
Or the grape ripen under my bowers ?
When will the harvest or the hunter's moon,
Turn my midnight into mid-noon ?
I am all sere and yellow,
And to my core mellow.
The mast is dropping within my woods.
The winter is lurking within my moods,
And the rustling of the withered leaf
Is the constant music of my grief.
To an unskilful rhymer the Muse thus spoke in
prose : —
The moon no longer reflects the day, but rises to
her absolute rule, and the husbandman and hunter ac-
knowledge her for their mistress. Asters and golden-
rods reign along the way, and the life-ever-lasting
withers not. The fields are reaped and shorn of their
pride, but an inward verdure still crowns them. The
thistle scatters its down on the pool, and yellow leaves
clothe the vine, and naught disturbs the serious life
of men. But behind the sheaves, and under the
sod, there lurks a ripe fruit, which the reapers have
not gathered, the true harvest of the year, which it
bears for ever, annually watering and maturing it, and
man never severs the stalk which bears this palatable
fruit.
Men nowhere, east or west, live yet a natural life,
round which the vine clings, and which the elm will-
ingly shadows. Man would desecrate it by his touch,
and so the beauty of the world remains veiled to him.
He needs not only to be spiritualized, but naturalised,
on the soil of earth. Who shall conceive what kind
FRIDAY. 385
of roof the heavens might extend over him, what sea-
sons minister to him, and what employment dignify
his life! Only the convalescent raise the veil of
nature. An immortality in his life would confer
immortality on his abode. The winds should be his
breath, the seasons his moods, and he should impart
of his serenity to Nature herself. But such as we
know him he is ephemeral like the scenery that sur-
rounds him, and does not aspire to an enduring exist-
ence. When we come down into the distant village,
visible from the mountain top, the nobler inhabitants
with whom we peopled it have departed, and left only
vermin in its desolate streets. It is the imagination
of poets which puts those brave speeches into the
mouths of their heroes. They may feign that Cato's
last words were
"The earth, the air, and seas I know, and all
The joys and horrors of their peace and wars ;
And now will view the Gods' state and the stars,"
but such are not the thoughts nor the destiny of
common men. What is this heaven which they ex-
pect, if it is no better than they expect? Are they
prepared for a better than they can now imagine?
Here or nowhere is our heaven. —
" Although we see celestial bodies move
Above the earth, the earth we till and love."
We can conceive of nothing more fair than something
which we have experienced. " The remembrance of
youth is a sigh." We linger in manhood to tell the
dreams of our childhood, and they are half forgotten
ere we have learned the language. We have need to
be earth-born as well as heaven-born, yr^yej/ets, as was
386 ^ WEEK ON THE CONCORD RIVER.
said of the Titans of old, or in a better sense than
they. There have been heroes for whom this world
seemed expressly prepared, as if creation had at last
succeeded; whose daily life was the stuff of which
our dreams are made, and whose presence enhanced
the beauty and ampleness of Nature herself. Where
they walked,
" Largior hie campos aether at lumine vestit
Purpureo : Solemque suum, sua sidera norunt."
"Here a more copious air invests the fields, and
clothes with purple light ; and they know their own
sun and their own stars." We love to hear some men
speak, though we hear not what they say ; the very
air they breathe is rich and perfumed, and the sound
of their voices falls on the ear like the rustling of
leaves or the crackling of the fire. They stand many
deep. They have the heavens for their abettors, as
those who have never stood from under them, and
they look at the stars with an answering ray. Their
eyes are like glow-worms, and their motions graceful
and flowing, as if a place were already found for them,
like rivers flowing through valleys. The distinctions
of morality, of right and wrong, sense and nonsense,
are petty, and have lost their significance, beside
these pure primeval natures. When I consider the
clouds stretched in stupendous masses across the sky,
frowning with darkness, or glowing with downy light,
or gilded with the rays of the setting sun, like the
battlements of a city in the heavens, their grandeur
appears thrown away on the meanness of my employ-
ment ; the drapery is altogether too rich for such
poor acting. I am hardly worthy to be a suburban
dweller outside those walls.
FRIDAY. 387
"Unless above himself he can
Erect himself, how poor a thing is man ! "
With our music we would fain challenge transiently
another and finer sort of intercourse than our daily
toil permits. The strains come back to us amended
in the echo, as when a friend reads our verse. Why
have they so painted the fruits, and freighted them
with such fragrance as to satisfy a more than animal
appetite?
" I asked the schoolman, his advice was firee,
But scored me out too intricate a way."
These things imply, perchance, that we live on the
verge of another and purer realm, from which these
odors and sounds are wafted over to us. The borders
of our plot are set with flowers, whose seeds were
blown from more Elysian fields adjacent. They are
the pot-herbs of the gods. Some fairer fruits and
sweeter fragrances wafted over to us, betray another
realm's vicinity. There, too, does Echo dwell, and
there is the abutment of the rainbow's arch.
A finer race and finer fed
Feast and revel o'er our head,
And we titmen are only able
To catch the fragments from their table.
Theirs is the fragrance of the fruits.
While we consume the pulp and roots.
What are the moments that we stand
Astonished on the Olympian land !
We need pray for no higher heaven than the pure
senses can furnish, a purely sensuous life. Our pres-
ent senses are but the rudiments of what they are
destined to become. We are comparatively deaf and
dumb and blind, and without smell or taste or feeling.
Every generation makes the discovery, that its divine
388 A WEEK ON THE CONCORD RIVER.
vigor has been dissipated, and each sense and faculty
misapplied and debauched. The ears were made,
not for such trivial uses as men are wont to suppose,
but to hear celestial sounds. The eyes were not
made for such grovelling uses as they are now put to
and worn out by, but to behold beauty now invisible.
May we not see God? Are we to be put off and
amused in this life, as it were with a mere allegory?
Is not Nature, rightly read, that of which she is com-
monly taken to be the symbol merely? When the
common man looks into the sky, which he has not
so much profaned, he thinks it less gross than the
earth, and with reverence speaks of " the Heavens,"
but the seer will in the same sense speak of "the
Earths," and his Father who is in them. " Did not
he that made that which is within., make that which
is ivithoid also ? " What is it, then, to educate but to
develop these divine germs called the senses? for
individuals and states to deal magnanimously with
the rising generation, leading it not into temptation,
— not teach the eye to squint, nor attune the ear to
profanity? But where is the instructed teacher?
Where are the 7iormal schools?
A Hindoo sage said, " As a dancer having exhibited
herself to the spectator, desists from the dance, so
does Nature desist, having manifested herself to soul.
— Nothing, in my opinion, is more gentle than
Nature ; once aware of having been seen, she does
not again expose herself to the gaze of soul."
It is easier to discover another such a new world as
Columbus did, than to go within one fold of this which
we appear to know so well ; the land is lost sight of,
the compass varies, and mankind mutiny; and still
FRIDAY. 389
history accumulates like rubbish before the portals of
nature. But there is only necessary a moment's sanity
and sound senses, to teach us that there is a nature
behind the ordinary, in which we have only some
vague preemption right and western reserve as yet.
We live on the outskirts of that region. Carved wood,
and floating boughs, and sunset skies, are all that we
know of it. We are not to be imposed on by the
longest spell of weather. Let us not, my friends, be
wheedled and cheated into good behavior to earn the
salt of our eternal porridge, whoever they are that
attempt it. Let us wait a little, and not purchase any
clearing here, trusting that richer bottoms will soon
be put up. It is but thin soil where we stand ; I have
felt my roots in a richer ere this. I have seen a bunch
of violets in a glass vase, tied loosely with a straw,
which reminded me of myself. —
I am a parcel of vain strivings tied
By a chance bond together,
Dangling this way and that, their links
Were made so loose and wide,
Methinks,
For milder weather.
A bunch of violets without their roots,
And sorrel intermixed.
Encircled by a wisp of straw
Once coiled about their shoots,
The law
By which I'm fixed.
A nosegay which Time clutched from out
Those fair Elysian fields.
With weeds and broken stems, in haste,
Doth make the rabble rout
That waste
The day he yields.
390 A WEEK ON THE CONCORD RIVER,
And here I bloom for a short hour unseen,
Drinking my juices up,
With no root in the land
To keep my branches green,
But stand
In a bare cup.
Some tender buds were left upon my stem
In mimicry of life,
But ah ! the children will not know.
Till time has withered them,
The wo
With which they 're rife.
But now I see I was not plucked for naught,
And after in' life's vase
Of glass set while I might survive,
But by a kind hand brought
Alive
To a strange place.
That stock thus thinned will soon redeem its hours,
And by another year,
Such as God knows, with freer air,
More fruits and fairer flowers
Will bear.
While I droop here.
This world has many rings^ like Saturn, and we
live now on the outmost of them all. None can say
deliberately that he inhabits the same sphere, or is
contemporary with, the flower which his hands have
plucked, and though his feet may seem to crush it,
inconceivable spaces and ages separate them, and
perchance there is no danger that he will hurt it.
What after all do the botanists know? Our lives
should go between the lichen and the bark. The eye
may see for the hand, but not for the mind. We are
1
FRIDAY. 391
still being born, and have as yet but a dim vision of
sea and land, sun, moon and stars, and shall not see
clearly till after nine days at least. That is a pathetic
inquiry among travellers and geographers after the
site of ancient Troy. It is not near where they think
it is. When a thing is decayed and gone, how indis-
tinct must be the place it occupied !
The anecdotes of modern astronomy affect me in
the same way as do those faint revelations of the Real
which are vouchsafed to men from time to time, or
rather from eternity to eternity. When I remember
the history of that faint light in our firmament, which
we call Venus, which ancient men regarded, and which
most modern men still regard, as a bright spark at-
tached to a hollow sphere revolving about our earth,
but which we have discovered to be ajwther world in
itself, — how Copernicus, reasoning long and patiently
about the matter, predicted confidently concerning it,
before yet the telescope had been invented, that if
ever men came to see it more clearly than they did
then, they would discover that it had phases Hke our
moon, and that within a century after his death the
telescope was invented, and that prediction verified,
by Galileo, — I am not without hope that we may,
even here and now, obtain some accurate information
concerning that Other World which the instinct of
mankind has so long predicted. Indeed, all that we
call science, as well as all that we call poetry, is a par-
ticle of such information, accurate as far as it goes,
though it be but to the confines of the truth. If we
can reason so accurately, and with such wonderful
confirmation of our reasoning, respecting so-called
material objects and events infinitely removed beyond
the range of our natural vision, so that the mind hesi-
392 A WEEK ON THE CONCORD RIVER.
tates to trust its calculations even when they are con-
firmed by observation, why may not our speculations
penetrate as far into the immaterial starry system, of
which the former is but the outward and visible type?
Surely, we are provided with senses as well fitted to
penetrate the spaces of the real, the substantial, the
eternal, as these outward are to penetrate the material
universe. Veias, Menu, Zoroaster, Socrates, Christ,
Shakspeare, Swedenborg, — these are some of our as-
tronomers.
There are perturbations in our orbits produced by
the influence of outlying spheres, and no astronomer
has ever yet calculated the elements of that undis-
covered world which produces them. I perceive in
the common train of my thoughts a natural and un-
interrupted sequence, each implying the next, or, if
interruption occurs it is occasioned by a new object
being presented to my senses. But a steep, and sud-
den, and by these means unaccountable transition, is
that from a comparatively narrow and partial, what is
called common sense view of things, to an infinitely
expanded and liberating one, from seeing things as
men describe them, to seeing them as men cannot
describe them. This implies a sense which is not
common, but rare in the wisest man's experience ;
which is sensible or sentient of more than common.
In what inclosures does the astronomer loiter! His
skies are shoal ; and imagination, like a thirsty trav-
eller, pants to be through their desert. The roving
mind impatiently bursts the fetters of astronomical
orbits, like cobwebs in a corner of its universe, and
launches itself to where distance fails to follow, and
law, such as science has discovered, grows weak
and weary. The mind knows a distance and a space
FRIDA V. 393
of which all those sums combined do not make a unit
of measure, — the interval between that which appeaj's
and that which is. I know that there are many stars,
I know that they are far enough off, bright enough,
steady enough in their orbits, — but what are they all
worth? They are more waste land in the West, —
star territory, — to be made slave States, perchance,
if we colonize them. I have interest but for six feet
of star, and that interest is transient. Then farewell
to all ye bodies, such as I have known ye.
Every man, if he is wise, will stand on such bottom
as will sustain him, and if one gravitates downward
more strongly than another, he will not venture on
those meads where the latter walks securely, but rather
leave the cranberries which grow there unraked by
himself. Perchance, some spring a higher freshet
will float them within his reach, though they may be
watery and frost-bitten by that time. Such shrivelled
berries I have seen in many a poor man's garret, aye,
in many a church bin and state coffer, and with a
little water and heat they swell again to their original
size and fairness, and added sugar enough, stead man-
kind for sauce to this world's dish.
What is called common sense is excellent in its
department, and as invaluable as the virtue of con-
formity in the army and navy, — for there must be
subordination, — but uncommon sense, that sense
which is common only to the wisest, is as much
more excellent as it is more rare. Some aspire to
excellence in the subordinate department, and may
God speed them. What Fuller says of masters of
colleges is universally applicable, that " a little alloy
of dulness in a master of a college makes him fitter
to manage secular affairs."
394 ^ WEEK ON THE CONCORD RIVER.
" He that wants faith, and apprehends a grief
Because he wants it, hath a true behef ;
And he that grieves because his grief's so small,
Has a true grief, and the best Faith of all."
Or be encouraged by this other poet's strain.
" By them went Fido marshal of the field :
Weak was his mother when she gave him day ;
And he at first a sick and weakly child,
As e'er with tears welcomed the sunny ray ;
Yet when more years afford more growth and might,
A champion stout he was, and puissant knight,
As ever came in field, or shone in armor bright.
" Mountains he flings in seas with mighty hand ;
Stops and turns back the sun's impetuous course ;
Nature breaks Nature's laws at his command ;
No force of Hell or Heaven withstands his force ;
Events to come yet many ages hence,
He present makes, by wondrous prescience ;
Proving the senses blind by being blind to sense."
" Yesterday, at dawn," says Hafiz, " God delivered me
from all worldly affliction ; and amidst the gloom of
night presented me with the water of immortality."
In the life of Sadi by Dowlat Shah, occurs this sen-
tence. " The eagle of the immaterial soul of Shaikh
Sadi shook from his plumage the dust of his body."
Thus thoughtfully we were rowing homeward to
find some autumnal work to do, and help on the
revolution of the seasons. Perhaps Nature would
condescend to make use of us even without our
knowledge, as when we help to scatter her seeds in
our walks, and carry burrs and cockles on our clothes
from field to field.
I
FRIDA Y. 395
All things are current found
On earthly ground,
Spirits and elements
Have their descents.
Night and day, year on year,
High and low, far and near,
These are our wn aspects,
These are our own regrets.
Ye gods of the shore.
Who abide evermore,
I see your far headland.
Stretching on either hand ;
I hear the sweet evening sounds
From your undecaying grounds ;
Cheat me no more with time.
Take me to your clime.
As it grew later in the afternoon, and we rowed
leisurely up the gentle stream, shut in between fra-
grant and blooming banks, where we had first pitched
our tent, and drew nearer to the fields where our
lives had passed, we seemed to detect the hues of
our native sky in the south-west horizon. The sun
was just setting behind the edge of a wooded hill, so
rich a sunset as would never have ended but for
some reason unknown to men, and to be marked with
brighter colors than ordinary in the scroll of time.
Though the shadows of the hills were beginning to
steal over the stream, the whole river valley undulated
with mild light, purer and more memorable than the
noon. For so day bids farewell even to solitary vales
uninhabited by man. Two blue-herons, ardea he-
rodias, with their long and slender limbs relieved
396 A WEEK ON THE CONCORD RIVER.
against the sky, were seen travelling high over our
heads, — their lofty and silent flight, as they were
wending their way at evening, surely not to alight in
any marsh on the earth's surface, but, perchance, on
the other side of our atmosphere, a symbol for the
ages to study, whether impressed upon the sky, or
sculptured amid the hie roglyjD hies of Egypt. Bound
to some northern meadow, they held on their stately,
stationary flight, like the storks in the picture, and
disappeared at length behind the clouds. Dense
flocks of blackbirds were winging their way along
the river's course, as if on a short evening pilgrimage
to some shrine of theirs, or to celebrate so fair a
sunset.
" Therefore, as doth the pilgrim, whom the night
Hastes darkly to imprison on his way,
Think on thy home, my soul, and think aright
Of what 's yet left thee of life's wasting day :
Thy sun posts westward, passed is thy morn,
And twice it is not given thee to be born."
The sun-setting presumed all men at leisure and
in a contemplative mood ; but the farmer's boy
only whistled the more thoughtfully as he drove his
cows home from pasture, and the teamster refrained
from cracking his whip, and guided his teain with a
subdued voice. The last vestiges of daylight at length
disappeared, and as we rowed silently along with our
backs toward home through the darkness, only a
few stars being visible, we had little to say, but
sat absorbed in thought, or in silence listened to the
monotonous sound of our oars, a sort of rudimental
music, suitable for the ear of Night and the acoustics
of her dimly lighted halls ;
FRIDA V. 397
" Pulsse referunt ad sidera valles,"
and the valleys echoed the sound to the stars.
As we looked up in silence to those distant lights,
we were reminded that it was a rare imagination
which first taught that the stars are worlds, and
had conferred a great benefit on mankind. It is
recorded in the Chronicle of Bernaldez, that in Co-
lumbus^s first voyage the natives "pointed towards
the heavens, making signs that they believed that
there was all power and holiness." We have reason
to be grateful for celestial phenomena, for they chiefly
answer to the ideal in man. The stars are distant
and unobtrusive, but bright and enduring as our
fairest and most memorable experiences^ •■' Let the
immortal depth of your soul lead you, but earnestly
extend your eyes upwards."
As the truest society approaches always nearer to
solitude, so the most excellent speech finally falls
into Silence. Silence is audible to all men, at
all times, and in all places. She is when we hear
inwardly, sound when we hear outwardly. Creation
has not displaced her, but is her visible framework
and foil. All sounds are her servants and purveyors,
proclaiming not only that their mistress is, but is a
rare mistress, and earnestly to be sought after. They
are so far akin to Silence, that they are but bubbles
on her surface, which straightway burst, an evidence
of the strength and prolificness of the under-current ;
a faint utterance of silence, and then only agreeable
to our auditory nerves when they contrast themselves
with and relieve the former. In proportion as they
do this, and are heighteners and intensifiers of the
Silence, they are harmony and purest melody.
398 A WEEK ON THE CONCORD RIVER.
Silence is the universal refuge, the sequel to all
dull discourses and all foolish acts, a balm to our every
chagrin, as welcome after satiety as after disappoint-
ment; that background which the painter may not
daub, be he master or bungler, and which, how-
ever awkward a figure we may have made in the fore-
ground, remains ever our inviolable asylum, where no
indignity can assail, no personality disturb us.
The orator puts off his individuality, and is then
most eloquent when most silent. He listens while
he speaks, and is a hearer along with his audience.
Who has not hearkened to Her infinite din ? She
is Truth's speaking trumpet, the sole oracle, the
true Delphi and Dodona, w^hich kings and courtiers
would do well to consult, nor will they be balked by
an ambiguous answer. For through Her all reve-
lations have been made, and just in proportion as
men have consulted her oracle within, they have
obtained a clear insight, and their age has been marked
as an enlightened one. But as often as they have
gone gadding abroad to a strange Delphi and her
mad priestess, their age has been dark and leaden.
Such were garrulous and noisy eras, which no longer
yield any sound, but the Grecian or silent and melo-
dious era is ever sounding and resounding in the
ears of men.
A good book is the plectrum with which our else
silent lyres are struck. We not unfrequently refer
the interest which belongs to our own unwritten
sequel, to the written and comparatively lifeless body
of the work. Of all books this sequel is the most
indispensable part. It should be the author's aim
to say once and emphatically, "He said," " c<^>7/' £•
This is the most the book maker can attain to. If he
FRIDA V.
399
make his volume a mole whereon the waves of Silence
may break, it is well.
It were vain for me to endeavor to interpret the
Silence. She cannot be done into English. For
six thousand years men have translated her with what
fidelity belonged to each, and still she is little better
than a sealed book. A man may run on con-
fidently for a time, thinking he has her under his
thumb, and shall one day exhaust her, but he too
must at last be silent, and men remark only how
brave a beginning he made; for when he at length
dives into her, so vast is the disproportion of the told
to the untold, that the former will seem but the
bubble on the surface where he disappeared. Never-
theless, we will go on, like those Chinese cliff swal-
lows, feathering our nests with the froth which may
one day be bread of life to such as dwell by the
seashore.
We had made about fifty miles this day with sail
and oar, and now, far in the evening, our boat was
grating against the bulrushes of its native port, and
its keel recognized the Concord mud, where some
semblance of its outline was still preserved in the
flattened flags which had scarce yet erected them-
selves since our departure; and we leaped gladly
on shore, drawing it up, and fastening it to the wild
apple tree, whose stem still bore the mark which its
chain had worn in the chafing of the spring freshets.
ELECTROTYPED BY J. S. GUSHING & CO., NORWOOD, MASS.
JUL 28 1900