University of Virginia Library

5. CHAPTER V.

I wish our people cared more for the beautiful!
I do wish that simple and inexpensive recreation
entered into their plan of life, if it were only in the
shape of pleasant, shaded walks, where young girls
and children whose feelings still have the natural
leaning towards harmless pleasure, might spend
some of the long hours of our short summer. If
the experiment were once made—if there were such
resources for the young, I cannot help thinking
that their elders, who have been willing scholars
to the creed that this is only a working world,
would learn in time a better philosophy, even that
the bow unbent when out of use is the one which
will be longest fit for service. These opinions are
heretical, I know. There is a sort of vague notion
that only the dissipated and the irreligious can possibly
covet amusement of any kind, and the practical
effect of this notion is in many cases absurd
beyond belief. But I began without the most remote

intention of scolding, and this tirade was
elicited only by a passing thought connected with
the subject which was in fact uppermost in my
mind.

Though our “public square” was intended to
become in time the glory of our village, it is still
in a state of nature,—unsubdued, as the agriculturist,
with an unconscious poeticalness, is wont to
describe that condition; and this is at once the
effect of the hard times before mentioned, and of
that indifference to ornament and amusement which
is a prominent characteristic of our people. If this
bare, open space had been neatly fenced, provided
with seats and planted with trees, four years ago,
—but it was not, and I dare say never will be.
The only alteration it has undergone was the work
of a passing flock of sheep, which sowed it thickly
with Canada thistles, with which their fleeces were
abundantly stored. These have yielded a crop
sufficient to supply all the country round, and an
unfortunate feature in the affair seems to be that
the authorities cannot agree as to whose business
it is to cut them down. The subject is annually
discussed until the seed begins to fly, and then
abandoned as being disposed of for the present.

A similar difficulty occurs with respect to the
planting of shade-trees on this debatable land.
We cannot approach unanimity in deciding what
kinds we shall select, in what order they shall be

placed, or in what manner protected, so that blackened
stumps are likely to continue the sole ornaments
of our Prado.

Would I could hope that the fine remnants of
the original forest that still remain to us, were to
be allowed foothold on this roomy earth. They
too must fall ere long before the “irresistible influence
of public opinion.” The Western settler
looks upon these earth-born columns and the verdant
roofs and towers which they support, as “heavy
timber,”—nothing more. He sees in them only
obstacles which must be removed, at whatever sacrifice,
to make way for mills, stores, blacksmiths'
shops,—perhaps churches,—certainly taverns.
“Clearing” is his daily thought and nightly dream;
and so literally does he act upon this guiding idea,
that not one tree, not so much as a bush, of natural
growth, must be suffered to cumber the ground, or
he fancies his work incomplete. The very notion
of advancement, of civilization, of prosperity, seems
inseparably connected with the total extirpation of
the forest.

“Le bucheron Américain,” said the keen-witted
Talleyrand, “le bucheron Américain ne s'intéresse
à rien; toute idée sensible est loin de lui. Ces
branches si élégamment jetées par la Nature—un
beau feuillage—une couleur vive qui anime une
partie du bois, un vert plus fort qui en assombroit
une autre,—tout cela n'est rien; il n'a de souvenir
à placer nulle part; c'est la quantité de coups de

hache qu'il faut qu'il donne pour abattre une arbre,
qui est son unique idée. Il n'a point planté; il n'en
sait point les plaisirs. L'arbre qu'il planteroit n'est
bon pour rien pour lui; car jamais il ne la verra
assez fort pour qu'il puisse l'abattre.”[1]

In preparing for a residence in the wilderness it
is really ludicrous to observe the warm opposition
made by every strong-armed agent of one's plans,
against leaving a scattered remnant of the forest
by way of shelter to the rude dwelling. Though
one might suppose the matter would be quite indifferent
where only the taste of another is concerned,
yet this is far from being the case. So inveterate
is the prejudice that an angry battle must be
fought for every tree. Pretended blunders—accidents—all
stratagems will be resorted to in order
to get rid of those marked for preservation; and
the few that one may succeed in retaining by dint
of watching and scolding, become the frequent
subject of wondering remark: “Well! I should
think there was oak-trees enough without keeping
'em in a body's door-yard! Jus' like the woods!”

However, we as yet enjoy the privilege which
belongs to nooks and corners whose insignificance
protects them in some degree from the influence of
“public opinion.” We are still lulled to sleep by
the plaintive iteration of the whippoorwill. We
can still occasionally catch the wild note of the
owl as he chides the moon from his nest in the
hollow tree; and we hear with ever-new delight the
welcome with which the thousand songsters of
morning hail the approach of the sun. There is still
leafy shelter enough for multitudes of pretty flutterers
of all hues and sizes; and even the bare girdled
oaks which still abound on the farm of our thriving
neighbor Ainsworth afford homes for the feathered
tribes. Not only are their gaunt branches occasionally
blackened by immense flocks of pigeons or
blackbirds, but their knotty outline is rendered
more grotesque by the frequent nest of the red-headed
woodpecker, which delights in such rough
“locations.” This busy creature—gaudy as an
Indian, but far more thrifty—though the most inoffensive
of bores, will yet sometimes contrive to
discompose one; for it is almost impossible to distinguish
the screwing of his bony auger from the
creaking of a gate left to swing in the summer
wind; and the idea of intrusive pigs and demolishing
cows is apt to break the reveries of country
people very unpleasantly.

Yet I, for one, shall regret even the girdled trees,
sad remembrancers of past shade and freshness; of

morning readings, and it may be of noon-tide
naps;—of evening rambles and next-day agues.
One would rather have girdled trees than none, and
it seems a long time to wait till our locusts and
horse-chestnuts grow.

One darling tree,—a giant oak which looked as
if half a dozen Calibans might have been pegged
in its knotty entrails—this one tree, the grandfather
of the forest, we thought we had saved.
It stood a little apart,—it shadowed no man's land,
—it shut the broiling sun from nobody's windows,
so we hoped it might be allowed to die a natural
death. But one unlucky day, a family fresh from
“the 'hio” removed into a house which stood at
no great distance from this relic of primeval grandeur.
These people were but little indebted to
fortune, and the size of their potato-patch did not
exactly correspond with the number of rosy cheeks
within doors. So the loan of a piece of ground
was a small thing to ask or to grant. Upon this
piece of lent land stood our favorite oak. The potatoes
were scarcely peeping green above the soil,
when we observed that the great boughs which we
looked at admiringly a dozen times a day, as they
towered far above the puny race around them,
remained distinct in their outline, instead of exhibiting
the heavy masses of foliage which had
usually clothed them before the summer heats began.
Upon nearer inspection it was found that
our neighbor had commenced his plantation by the

operation of girdling the tree, for which favor he
expected our thanks, observing pithily that “nothing
wouldn't never grow under sich a great mountain
as that!” It is well that “Goth” and “Vandal”
are not actionable.

Yet the felling of a great tree has something of
the sublime in it. When the axe first falls on the
trunk of a stately oak laden with the green wealth
of a century, or a pine whose aspiring peak might
look down on a moderate church steeple, the contrast
between the puny instrument and the gigantic
result to be accomplished approaches the ridiculous.
But as “the eagle towering in his pride of place,
was by a mousing owl hawked at and killed,” so
the leaf-crowned monarch of the wood has no
small reason to quiver at the sight of a long-armed
Yankee approaching his deep-rooted trunk with an
awkward axe. One blow seems to accomplish
nothing: not even a chip falls. But with another
stroke comes a broad slice of the bark, leaving an
ominous, gaping wound. Another pair of blows
extends the gash, and when twenty such have fallen,
behold a girdled tree. This would suffice to
kill, and a melancholy death it is; but to fell is
quite another thing. The coups de hache now fall
thicker and faster—only on opposite sides however,
—not all round the trunk, as before. Two deep
incisions are made, yet the towering crown sits firm
as ever. And now the destroyer pauses,—fetches
breath,—wipes his beaded brow,—takes a wary

view of the bearings of the tree,—and then with a
low and watchful care recommences his work. The
strokes fall doubtingly, and many a cautious glance
is cast upward, for the whole immense mass now
trembles, as if instinct with life, and conscious of
approaching ruin. Another blow! it waves—a
groaning sound is heard—something like that
which struck the ear of the gallant Tancred:
Yet another stroke is necessary. It is given with
desperate force, and the tall peak leaves its place
with an easy sailing motion accelerated every instant
till it crashes prone on the earth, sending far
and wide its scattered branches, and letting in the
sunlight upon the cool, damp, mossy earth, for the
first time perhaps in half a century.

If moralizing were in fashion, how quaintly one
might string wise saws on the vast results of persevering
effort!