Part 36 (1/2)
April shone out at last. Away down in the wild meadows the cowslip pushed up its green head into the suns.h.i.+ne, and along the warm hill-sides the wind-flowers were strewn. How they came there, I cannot tell. The day before it was all bleak, and chilly, and flowerless there. They must have been scattered by the morning rays of light. A melting bank of snow frowned down upon them, close by. Soon the shade-tree sent out its blossoms of lilac, and the dog-wood burst into a pile of snow. The hard, gray, leafless trees stood up sternly around these first daughters of spring, arrayed in their garments of pomp, and looked, as well as inanimate things can look, jealous and uneasy. All over the aisles of the forest lay enormous trunks of trees, like columns about an unfinished temple, thickly coated with a heavy green moss; and there was a smell of bark, and swelling twigs, and struggling roots--such a smell as only the early spring days give out--as though the earth and the forest were just gaping and stretching with a decayed last year's breath, before rousing up to the duties of this.
Then the rivulets began to get into tune. The one that ran tumbling through the woods seemed to be in a very great hurry, and shot around its islands of moss and promontories of tree-roots with great zeal. It had unwound from its reel of light and moisture a green ribbon, that lay along its sh.o.r.es miles and miles away in the wilderness; and the birds slyly bathed themselves in its waters; and now and then a small fish came rus.h.i.+ng down with the speed of an arrow, just returning from his winter quarters to the river, probably to enter his name upon the great piscatorial roll preparatory to summer service.
In a basin, just below a little fall of this brook, two or three wood-ducks were ploughing round and round. These wood-ducks are hermits, and secrete themselves in ponds and watery thickets, where silence and shadows prevail.
On one of these mornings, ruminating on its banks, sat Venison Styles, his gun resting on the ground, apparently in a profound study. I looked at the old hunter a long time, and his figure was as fixed and immovable as if he were a part of the landscape, and had grown there like the trees about him.
What can the old man be dreaming about? thought I. Perhaps he already hears the approaching footsteps of dancing May, her head crowned with flowers, and the music of the thousand birds that supported her train. It was already spring--summer--in his soul. He was thinking of the sports of the coming year, and the light and pomp of the seasons pa.s.sed before his imagination like the gorgeous pictures of a panorama.
These April days were inspiring. Occasionally a bleak squall of rain or snow obscured the sky, and silenced the music of Nature; but the heavens looked bluer, and the birds sang more l.u.s.tily, after it pa.s.sed away. In the latter part of the month the ground became settled, and the frogs, towards evening, and sometimes during the moist, smoky afternoons, sent up their melancholy wailing from the wide wastes of marsh that stretched themselves through the woods and along the river banks. Some of these marshes were ten miles long, and two or three broad; and such a concert of voices as congregated there was never equalled by anything else. I had, and still have, notions of my own about these vocalists. I am sure that they sang under discipline and system--that they performed on different kinds of instruments. Some of them seemed to be blowing a flageolet; others drew their bows across their violins; some played the fife; while here and there might be heard grum tw.a.n.gs, like the tw.a.n.ging of ba.s.s-viol strings. He who listened long and closely might detect delicate vibrations of almost every tone in art or nature. Sometimes their voices sounded like the dying echoes of ten thousand bells, all of a different key, yet the tangled melody was an entanglement of chords and discords, and it rolled away, and expired in waves of pure harmony; again, it was like a choir of human voices performing an anthem. I thought I could hear syllables, too--the articulation of words--something like a psalm. Then the words and sounds appeared to change, and, by the aid of the imagination, one would have supposed that the whole community were shouting--delivering political harangues--or that its members had got on a ”bust,” and were rattling off all kinds of nonsense in a drunken frolic.
April brought with it, too, flying showers and warm suns.h.i.+ne. The gra.s.s began to wake up, and scent the air with its sweetness. Along the watercourses the willows unfolded their leaves; the buds swelled in the forests; and the tree-tops were touched with a light shade of brown, and then a shade of green, which grew deeper and deeper each day. Large flocks of pigeons darkened the air, all moving from south to north,--from whence, or to where, I could not tell. A company would sometimes ”hold up” for an hour or two, to ”feed and rest,” like a caravan at an oasis; but they soon took their wings again, and pursued their journey.
The tenants of the ground burst their tombs, and came up for duty. The gopher, and squirrel, and the ant went to work. I noticed a large community of ants who had commenced building a city. Their last year's metropolis was destroyed, and they were compelled to begin from the foundation; and such a stir and bustle was never exceeded. Hundreds of laborers were in the work up to their eyes. Here was one fellow with a grain of sand in his mouth--a rock to him, I suppose--climbing over twigs and dead gra.s.s, standing sometimes perpendicular with his load, and not unfrequently falling over backwards, yet struggling away, surmounting all obstacles, until he finally reached the place of deposit. Then there was a cla.s.s of miners who shot up from their holes, dropped their speck of dirt, wheeled, and shot back again. Trains of them were continually ascending and descending. There was still another cla.s.s--”blooded characters,” most likely--possibly overseers--who did not do any work, but ran around from point to point, as if inspecting the rest, and giving to them directions. Once in a while a couple of workmen would run a-foul of each other, and get into a quarrel--a clinch--a fight--and the ”tussle” lasted until they were parted. This colony, I will say, erected a large mound of earth in a very few weeks--gigantic to them as an Egyptian pyramid is to us--in which they lived and labored during the season.
Finally, the swallows, and brown-threshers, and blackbirds, and martins came--not all in a body, but straggling along. The blackbirds appeared first, and might be seen flying about from tree to tree, and fence to fence, near by the upturned furrows that the ploughman had left behind him.
Such a saucy troop of pirates as they were! Flocks of them sat about in the oaks, showering a host of epithets upon the said ploughman; then a dozen or more darted down, staggered over the ground, picked up a worm, and dashed away into the oaks again. They scolded, and fretted, and coaxed, and threatened, and nettled about like a belle of sixteen. Some of them were dressed in a suit of glossy black, with a neckcloth of s.h.i.+fting green; others wore red epaulets on their wings; and a flock of them, darting through the air, had the appearance of braided streams of fire, or interlaced rainbows. Towards evening they all went down among the alders and willows by the river, and had a long chat among themselves. They bowed, and twitched, and stretched down one wing, and then the other; lit upon the little twigs, and see-sawed as they sung, and did many other things. They were evidently erecting themselves into some kind of a government for the year--holding a caucus--perhaps an election--deposing an old monarch, or elevating a new; for it was easy to hear them say what they would do, and what they wouldn't--that is, easy for one who has studied the blackbird language--and sometimes an awful threat might be detected, mixed with a great many wheedling words and gracious postures.
The brown-threshers came next, and they were just as full of chatter and life as they were the year before. Birds never grow old, it seems to me, nor have I ever been able to determine when or where they die. The hunter kills but a very few, and those few of a certain kind. What becomes of the rest? They breed every spring in great numbers; but how, when, and where do they die? We do not find dead birds in the woods; at any rate, very few.
Yes, the brown threshers were as young as ever. They looked very shabby and mussed when I last saw them in the fall; but now their brown clothes shone as cleanly as a Quaker-girl's shawl. They took up Nature's music-book, and rattled off all the songs, and glees, and anthems in it--very often making a medley of it, mixing the notes of the birds that were chanting around all together--and they often closed the performance with an original strain of their own, composed on the spot.
When the swallows and the martins came, I knew that spring was fully established. They appeared suddenly during the night; for when the May sun arose, they were twittering and wheeling through the air, shooting up and plunging down in a kind of delicious rapture. Their music was set on the staff of blue skies, south-west winds, and flowers. There was not a note of winter in it. The woods, and streams, and fields seemed to have been waiting for their melody, for all Nature went to work, and was soon clad in beauty, and light, and song.
CHAPTER XXVII.
A Railroad through Puddleford.--Effect on Squire Longbow.--Bright Prospects of Puddleford.--Change.--”The Styleses.”--The New Justice.--Aunt Sonora's Opinions.--Ike Turtle grows too.--Venison disappears from among Men.--His Grave, and his Epitaph.
Reader, I have written for you the history of a year's residence at Puddleford. But the place is changed now--very much changed. It is not what it used to be--its people, its habits, are very different. This change was the result of a variety of causes. The first thing that happened to it--a startling event it was--a railroad was built plump through its heart. It was a road running a great distance, and it took Puddleford in its way merely because it happened to fall in its line. I shall never forget Squire Longbow's frenzied excitement the first time the locomotive came puffing and whistling in. He actually lost his dignity for the moment. He ran and wheezed after the steam-horse like a madman, lost his green eye-shade, and committed a very serious breach in the rear part of his pantaloons. He did not venture very near the machine at first, but sheltered himself behind a tree, where he could watch its panting and spitting without danger.
I recollect how pompously the Squire talked on this occasion. He said ”all nater couldn't stop Puddleford having ten thousand inhabitants 'fore 'nother census--she'd be one of the _ex_-poriums (emporiums) of the West--it was nothing on airth that made Greece and Rome but these great etarnal improvements”--and as he was a kind of oracle among a large cla.s.s, he infused a spirit of consequence and importance into those around him that was quite ludicrous. Ike Turtle, Sile Bates, the Beagles, and Swipes, and many others, actually mounted their Sunday clothes, and wore them every day--but whether Ike himself was in fun or earnest, no person could tell.
The building of this road was the cause of a great change certainly; yet it changed not the population itself, but subst.i.tuted another in its stead. It brought in a cla.s.s of persons who had money, and money is omnipotent everywhere. It brought different habits, thoughts, and feelings. The ”Styles family” first purchased a large farm near the village. There was an air about them that fairly awed the Puddlefordians. They were petted, run after, imitated. One could hear nothing but ”Young Mr. Styles,” ”Old Mr.
Styles,” ”The elderly Mrs. Styles,” ”Miss Arabella Styles,” ”Miss Florinda Styles.” Miss Florinda and Arabella wore flaring under-clothes in those days, and this fas.h.i.+on fairly upset the heads of the Puddleford ladies; and in less than a month I could not identify half the women of the place.
Their shrunken forms, stuffed with skirts, were about the shape of little pyramids.
Purchases of farms and village property went on, year after year, until nearly every true Puddlefordian was ousted. The place has now, like the snake, cast its skin; and the old pioneers, they who hewed down the forest, and ”bore the heat and burden of the day,” are living around the outskirts of the village, with hardly a competence, or have emigrated to wilds still farther west.
Squire Longbow, however, still holds his own. He still lives on the old spot--is just as wise and happy as ever. Time has not affected his intellect, or impaired his self-consequence. He is no longer justice of the peace, but in his place we have a pert, dapper, little fellow, who wears a large ring on his little finger, and gives very scholastic opinions. The Squire professes to hold him in contempt, and says he ”runs agin the staterts and common law mor'n half the time”--that ”he don't know a _fiery factus_ from a common execution”--that ”he never looks inter the undying Story for 'thority, but goes on _squas.h.i.+ng_ papers, right straight agin the const.i.tution and the _etar_nal rights of man.”
Aunt Sonora was dissatisfied, too, with the revolution in society. She told me, the last time I saw her, that Puddleford was ”made up of a hull pa.s.sel of flip-er-ter-_gib_-its, and she couldn't see what in created natur' the place was a-comin' to--she never see'd such works in all her born days,”
that ”the men wore broadcloth, and the women silks, and flar'd and spread about like pea-c.o.c.ks. n.o.body does nuthin',” said she. ”The dear ma.s.sy! They are getting so hoity-toity! I _do_ wonder who pays!”
Ike Turtle is about the only person who has grown with the place. There was no such thing as keeping _him_ under. He is just as humorous as ever, but a little more polished. Ike says ”it won't do to let his natur' out as he used to, when the bushes were thick, and Squire Longbow was gov'ner”--that ”he feels himself almost a-bustin' with one of his speeches, sometimes; but the folks wouldn't understand him if he made it--and as for law, he'd gin it all up--it had got to be so nice and genteel an article, there warn't a grain of justis' in it--everything was 'peal'd up, and 'peal'd up, until both parties themselves were 'peal'd to death.” Ike has turned his attention to land and saw-mills, and is getting rich.
Poor Venison Styles! Dear old hunter! Venison is dead, and his children are scattered in the wilderness. He was found, one May morning, stretched out under a large maple, his dog and gun by his side, stiff and cold. The brown-threshers and bluebirds were singing merrily above him, and the squirrels were chattering their nonsense in the distance. His dog lay with his nose near his master's face, his fore paw upon his shoulder. How he died, no one could tell. He is buried on a bluff that overlooks the river; and I have fenced his grave, and erected a stone over his remains, with this inscription--”Nature loved him, if man did not.”
CHAPTER XXVIII.
CONCLUSION.