University of Virginia Library

10. LETTER X.

You may congratulate me on the safe getting in of
my harvest, dear Doctor; for I have escaped, as you
may say, in a parenthesis. Two of the most destrutive
hail-storms remembered in this part of the country
have prostrated the crops of my neighbors, above and
below — leaving not a blade of corn, nor an unbroken
window; yet there goes my last load of grain into the
barn, well-ripened, and cut standing and fair.

I confess I should have fretted at the loss of my
firstlings more than for a much greater disaster in another
shape. I have expended curiosity, watching, and
fresh interest, upon my uplands, besides plaster and my
own labor; and the getting back five hundred bushels
for five or ten, has been to me, through all its beautiful
changes from April till now, a wonder to be enjoyed
like a play. To have lost the denouement by a
hail-storm, would be like a play with the fifth act
omitted, or a novel with the last leaf torn out. Now, if
no stray spark set fire to my barn, I can pick you out the
whitest of a thousand sheaves, thrash them with the
first frost, and send you a barrel of Glenmary flour,
which shall be, not only very excellent bread, but
should have also a flavor of wonder, admiration — all
the feelings, in short, with which I have watched it,
from seed-time to harvest. Yet there is many a dull
dog will eat of it, and remark no taste of me! And so
there are men who will read a friend's book as if it
were a stranger's — but we are not of those. If we
love the man, whether we eat a potato of his raising,
or read a verse of his inditing, there is in it a sweetness
which has descended from his heart — by quill or
hoe-handle. I scorn impartiality. If it be a virtue,
Death and Posterity may monopolize it for me.

I was interrupted a moment since by a neighbor,
who, though innocent of reading and writing, has a
coinage of phraseology, which would have told in
authorship. A stray mare had broken into his peas,
and he came to me to write an advertisement for the
court-house door. After requesting the owner “to
pay charges and take her away,” in good round characters,
I recommended to my friend, who was a good
deal vexed at the trespass, to take a day's work out
of her.

“Why, I haint no job on the mounting,” said he,
folding up the paper very carefully. “It's a side-hill
critter! Two off legs so lame, she can't stand
even.”

It was certainly a new idea, that a horse with two
spavins on a side, might be used with advantage on a
hill-farm. While I was jotting it down for your benefit,
my neighbor had emerged from under the bridge,
and was climbing the railing over my head.

“What will you do if he won't pay damages?” I
cried out.

“Put the types on to him!” he answered; and,
jumping into the road, strided away to post up his advertisement.

I presume, that “to put the types on to” a man, is
to send the constable to him with a printed warrant;
but it is a good phrase.

The hot weather of the last week has nearly dried
up the brook, and, forgetting to water my young trees
in the hurry of harvesting, a few of them have hung
out the quarantine yellow at the top, and, I fear, will
scarce stand it till autumn. Not to have all my hopes
in one venture, and that a frail one, I have set about
converting a magnificent piece of wild jungle into an
academical grove — an occupation that makes one feel
more like a viceroy than a farmer. Let me interest
you in this metempsychosis; for, if we are to grow
old together, as I proposed to you in my last, this
grove will lend its shade to many a slippered noontide,
and echo, we will hope, the philosophy of an old age,
wise and cheerful. Aptly for my design, the shape of
the grove is that of the Greek — the river very nearly
encircling it; and here, if I live, will I pass the Omega
of my life; and, if you will come to the christening,
dear Doctor, so shall the grove be named, in solemn
ceremony — The Omega.

How this nobly-wooded and water-clasped little peninsula
has been suffered to run to waste, I know not.
It contains some half-score acres of rich interval; and,
to the neglect of previous occupants of the farm, I probably
owe its gigantic trees, as well as its weedy undergrowth,
and tangled vines. Time out of mind (five
years, in this country) it has been a harbor for woodcocks,
wood-ducks, minks, wild bees, humming birds,
and cranes — (two of the latter still keeping possession)
— and its labyrinth of tall weeds, interlaced with the
low branches of the trees, was seldom penetrated, except
once or twice a year by the sportsman, and as
often by the Owaga in its freshet. Scarce suspecting
the size of the trees within, whose trunks were entirely
concealed, I have looked upon its towering mass of
verdure but as a superb emerald wall, shutting the
meadows in on the east — and, though within a lanceshot
of my cottage, have neglected it, like my predecessors,
for more manageable ground.

I have enjoyed very much the planting of young
wood, and the anticipation of its shade and splendor in
Heaven's slow, but good time. It was a pleasure of
Hope; and, to men of leisure and sylvan taste in England,
it has been — literature bears witness — a pursuit
full of dignity and happiness. But the redemption of
a venerable grove from the wilderness, is an enjoyment
of another measure. It is a kind of playing of King
Lear backward — discovering the old monarch in his
abandonment, and sweeping off his unnatural offspring,
to bring back the sunshine to his old age, and give him
room, with his knights, in his own domain. You
know how trees that grow wild near water, in this
country, put out foliage upon the trunk as well as the
branches, covering it, like ivy, to the roots. It is a
beautiful caprice of Nature; but the grandeur of the
dark and massive stem is entirely lost — and I have
been as much surprised at the giant bodies we have
developed, stripping off this unfitting drapery, as

Richard at the thewes and sinews of the uncowled
friar of Copmanhurst.

You can not fancy, if you have never exercised this
grave authority, how many difficulties of judgment
arise, and how often a jury is wanted to share the responsibility
of the irretrievable axe. I am slow to
condemn; and the death-blow to a living tree, however
necessary, makes my blood start, and my judgment
half repent. There are, to-day, several under
reprieve — one of them a beautiful linden, which I can
see from my seat under the bridge, nodding just now
to the wind, as careless of its doom as if it were sure
its bright foliage would flaunt out the summer. In
itself it is well worth the sparing and cherishing, for it
is full of life and youth — and, could I transplant it to
another spot, it would be invaluable. But, though
full grown and spreading, it stands among giants,
whose branches meet above it at twice its height; and,
while it contributes nothing to the shade, its smaller
trunk looks a Lilliputian in Brobdignag, out of keeping
and proportion. So I think it must come down —
and, with it, a dozen in the same category — condemned,
like many a wight who was well enough in his place,
for being found in too good company.

There is a superstition about the linden, by the
way, to which the peculiarity in its foliage may easily
have given rise. You may have remarked, of course,
that from the centre of the leaf starts a slender stem,
which bears the linden-flower. Our Savior is said,
by those who believe in the superstition, to have been
crucified upon this tree, which has ever since borne
the flowering type of the nails driven into it through
his palms.

Another, whose doom is suspended, is a ragged
sycamore, whose decayed branches are festooned to
the highest top by a wild grape-vine, of the most superb
fruitfulness and luxuriance. No wife ever pleaded
for a condemned husband with more eloquence than
these delicate tendrils to me, for the rude tree with
whose destiny they are united. I wish you were here,
dear Doctor, to say spare it, or cut it down. In itself,
like the linden, it is a splendid creature; but, alas! it
spoils a long avenue of stately trees opening toward my
cottage porch, and I fear policy must outweigh pity.
I shall let it stand over Sunday, and fortify myself
with an opinion.

Did you ever try your hand, dear Doctor, at this
forest-sculpture? It sounds easy enough to trim out
a wood, and so it is, if the object be merely to produce
butter-nuts, or shade-grazing cattle. But to thin, and
trim, and cut down, judiciously, changing a “wild and
warped slip of wilderness” into a chaste and studious
grove, is not done without much study of the spot, let
alone a taste for the sylvan. There are all the many
effects of the day's light to be observed, how morning
throws her shadows, and what protection there is from
noon, and where is flung open an aisle to let in the
welcome radiance of sunset. There is a view of
water to be let through, perhaps, at the expense of
trees otherwise ornamental, or an object to hide by
shrubbery which is in the way of an avenue. I have
lived here as long as this year's grasshoppers, and am
constantly finding out something which should have a
bearing on the disposition of grounds or the sculpture
(permit me the word) of my wood and forest. I am
sorry to finish “the Omega” without your counsel
and taste; but there is a wood on the hill which I will
keep, like a cold pie, till you come to us, and we will
shoulder our axes and carve it into likelihood together.

And now here comes my Yankee axe (not curtal)
which I sent to be ground when I sat down to scrawl
you this epistle. As you owe the letter purely to its
dulness (and mine), I must away to a half-felled tree,
which I deserted in its extremity. If there were truth
in Ovid, what a butcher I were! Yet there is a groan
when a tree falls, which sometimes seems to me more
than the sundering of splinters. Adieu, dear Doctor,
and believe that

if I can give it you by wishing.