 | Western clearings |  |
IDLE PEOPLE.
Those who never work—those who number among their most
precious privileges a complete exemption from not only the spur
of necessity, but the pressure of duty—must find it hard to believe
that there are people in the world whose destiny it seems to
be to work all the time. Yet no—these are the very beings who
think God has so ordered the lot of a portion of his children, in
contrast to the all-embracing beneficence of his providence in
other respects. These might be called the butterflies of the earth,
if the butterfly was not an established emblem of soul. Their
self-complacency is much soothed by the conviction that they are
of “the porcelain clay of human kind,” and they are thankful—
or rather, glad—that there is a coarser race, to whom hard work
and hard fare are well suited.
The fate of these two divisions of mankind is, after all, much
more justly balanced than either portion is apt to imagine. There
is a universal necessity for labour, and those who obstinately
close their understandings against this fact, whether rich or poor,
inevitably join the class of sufferers sooner or later. There is
nothing in which what we call fate is more impartial. The poor
are admonished by destitution, and the rich by ill health—the
mere idler by ennui, and the scheming sharper by disappointment
and disgrace. Yet this same universal necessity is not more evident
than is the undying effort to elude it. After centuries of
warning, the struggle still continues; its energy sustained sometimes
by pride, sometimes by a downright love of ease, so blind
that it looks no farther than the present moment. Thus much of
the outer and obvious world—a theatre whose actors, from being,
or supposing themselves to be, “th' observed of all observers,”
have fallen into many unnatural views and artificial habits of
distinction between themselves and the “common” and the “vulgar.”
In these western wilds, where nature, scarce redeemed from
primeval barbarism, seems to demand, with an especial earnestness,
the best aid of her denizens, and where she pays with gold
every drop that falls on her bosom from the brow of labour, there
may be danger sometimes, methinks, danger of falling into an
error of an opposite character. There is so much work to be
done, and so few people to do it, that the idea of labour is apt to
absorb the entire area of the mind, to the exclusion of some other
ideas not only useful but pleasant withal, and humanizing, and
softening, and calculated to cherish the higher attributes of our
nature. So far is this carried that idleness is emphatically the
vice for which public opinion reserves its severest frown, and in
whose behalf no voice ventures an apologetic word. If a man
drink, he may reform; even if he should steal, we permit him to
rebuild his character upon repentance; but if he be lazy, we
have neither hope nor charity.
Still, even among us, there are those to whose imagination the
dolce far niente is irresistible; and it must be confessed that they
form a class which is not likely to raise the reputation of the
followers of pleasure. They have one thing in common with
the fashionables of the earth—a determination to eschew every
conceivable form of labour; but, however dignified this trait
may appear when set off by an imposing hauteur and an elegant
costume, it makes but a sorry figure in the woods, where the prevailing
tone is far different. Yet these kindred souls are as incorrigible
as their betters; and, like them, will often perform as
much labour, and exert as much ingenuity in avoiding work, as
would, if differently directed, suffice to place them in an independent
and honourable position.
It must be owned that this land of hard work presents a thousand
temptations to idleness. Not to mention the sacrifice with
which we begin—the giving up of all that gave life a rosy or a
golden tint in the older world—there may be other excuses for a
longing after amusement, in minds of a certain class. There
is an aspect of severe effort—of closeness—of grinding care in
the fact that poverty, or at least narrow circumstances at home,
was the impetus that drove nine-tenths of the population westward;
and this aspect being in striking opposition to the free,
glowing, and abundant one which characterizes unworn nature
in this scarce-trodden region, suggests and connects with labour a
certain idea of slavery—of confinement; and creates a proportionate
desire for all the liberty that so narrow a fate will permit.
He who possesses abundant leisure for amusment, will perhaps
be heard to complain that it is hard to find; but he who is
every hour spurred on by necessity to the most toilsome employments,
cannot but snatch with delight every available form of
recreation; and will be apt to devote to the coveted indulgence
hours which must be dearly purchased by the sufferings of the
future. Let us judge him with a charity which we may hardly
be disposed to exercise towards his prototype in high places.
So unpopular, as we have said, so contrary to the prevailing
spirit, is this desire for amusement, that those among us who are
so unfortunate as to be born with something of a poetical temperament—which
delights in quiet musings, long rambles in the
woods, and other forms of idleness—generally disguise to themselves
and try to disguise to others the true nature of this propensity,
by contriving many new and ingenious ways of earning
money, all agreeing in one point—a determined avoidance of
every thing that is usually called work.
In the early spring time, while a thin covering of very fragile
ice still encrusts the marshes, there may be seen around their
borders a tangled fringe of seemingly bare bushes. On nearer
approach these bushes are found stripped indeed as to their upper
branches, but garnished at the water's edge with berries of the
brightest coral, each shrined separately in a little ring of crystal.
These are the most delicate and highly prized cranberries; mellowed,
not wilted, by the severest frosts, and now peeping through
their icy veil, and glowing in the first warm rays of approaching
spring.
These are an irresistible temptation to our fashionable of the
woods. Armed in boots, not seven-leagued, but thick as the seven-fold
shield of Ajax, he plunges into the crackling pool; and
snatching, perhaps, a shilling's worth of cranberries, and a six
months' rheumatism. No matter; this is not work.
You may see him next, if you are an early riser, setting off, at
peep of dawn, on a fishing expedition. He winds through the
dreary woods, yawning portentously, and stretching as if he were
emulous of the height of the hickory trees. Dexterously swaying
his long rod, he follows the little stream till it is lost in the
bosom of the woodland lake; if unsuccessful from the bank, he
seeks the frail skiff, which is the common property of laborious
idlers like himself, and, pushing off shore, sits dreaming under
the sun's wilting beams, until he has secured a supply for the
day. Home again—an irregular meal at any time of day—and
he goes to bed with the ague; but he murmurs not, for fishing is
not work.
Here is a strawberry field—well may it claim the name! It
is a wide fallow which has been ploughed late in the last autumn,
and is now lying in ridges to court the fertilizing sunbeams. It
is already clothed, though scantily, with a luxuriant growth of
fresh verdure, and among, and through, and over all, glows the
rich crimson of the field strawberry—the ruby-crowned queen of
all wild fruits. Here—and who can blame him?—will our exquisite,
with wife and children, if he be the fortunate proprietor
of so many fingers, spend the long June day; eating as many
berries as possible, and amassing in leafy baskets the rich remainder,
to be sold to the happy holders of splendid shillings, or
to dry in the burning sun for next winter's “tea-saase.” Ploughing
would be more profitable, certainly, but not half so pleasant,
for ploughing is work.
Then come the whortleberries; not the little, stunted, seedy
things that grow on dry uplands and sandy commons; but the
produce of towering bushes in the plashy meadow; generous,
pulpy berries, covered with a fine bloom; the “blae-berry” of
Scotland; a delicious fruit, though of humble reputation, and, it
must be confessed, somewhat enhanced in value by the scarcity
of the more refined productions of the garden. We scorn
thee not, oh! bloom-covered neighbour! but gladly buy whole
bushels of thy prolific family from the lounging Indian, or the
whortleberries, but it is a melancholy truth that they do not get
rich.
Wild plums follow closely in the wake of whortleberries, and
these are usually picked when they are so sour and bitter as to
be totally uneatable; because the rush for them is so great,
among the class alluded to, that each thinks nobody else will wait
for them to ripen; and whoever succeeds in stripping all the trees
in his neighbourhood, even though he can neither use nor sell a
particle of his treasure, deems himself the fortunate man. This
seems ridiculous, truly; but is it not exactly the spirit of the
miser? What matters whether the thing be gold or green plums,
if they are equally useless? This blind haste to secure any
thing bearing the form of fruit, is only an extreme exemplification
of the desire to snatch a precarious subsistence from the lap of
Nature, instead of paying the price which she ever demands for
a due and full enjoyment of her bounties.
Baiting for wild bees beguiles the busy shunner of work into
many a wearisome tramp, many a night-watch, and many a lost
day. This is a most fascinating chase, and sometimes excites the
very spirit of gambling. The stake seems so small in comparison
with the possible prize—and gamblers and honey-seekers
think all possible things probable—that some, who are scarcely
ever tempted from regular business by any other disguise of idleness,
cannot withstand a bee-hunt. A man whose arms and axe
are all-sufficient to insure a comfortable livelihood for himself and
his family, is chopping, perhaps, in a thick wood, where the voices
of the locust, the cricket, the grasshopper, and the wild bee, with
their kindred, are the only sounds that reach his ear from sunrise
till sunset. He feels lonely and listless; and as noon draws on,
he ceases from his hot toil, and, seating himself on the tree which
has just fallen beneath his axe, he takes out his lunch of bread
and butter, and, musing as he eats, thinks how hard his life is,
and how much better it must be to have bread and butter without
working for it. His eye wanders through the thick forest, and
follows, with a feeling of envy, the winged inhabitants of the
trees and flowers, till at length he notes among the singing throng
some half dozen of bees.
The lunch is soon despatched; a honey tree must be near; and
the chopper spends the remainder of the daylight in endeavouring
to discover it. But the cunning insects scent the human robber,
and will not approach their home until nightfall. So our weary
wight plods homeward laying plans for their destruction.
The next morning's sun, as he peeps above the horizon, finds
the bee-hunter burning honey-comb and old honey near the scene
of yesterday's inkling. Stealthily does he watch his line of bait,
and cautiously does he wait until the first glutton that finds himself
sated with the luscious feast sets off in a “bee-line”—“like
arrow darting from the bow”—blind betrayer of his home, like
the human inebriate. This is enough. The spoiler asks no
more; and the first moonlight night sees the rich hoard transferred
to his cottage; where it sometimes serves, almost unaided, as
food for the whole family, until the last drop is consumed. One
hundred and fifty pounds of honey are sometimes found in a single
tree, and it must be owned the temptation is great; but the luxury
is generally dearly purchased, if the whole cost and consequences
be counted. To be content with what supplies the wants of the
body for the present moment, is, after all, the characteristic rather
of the brute than of the man; and a family accustomed to this
view of life will grow more and more idle and thriftless, until
poverty and filth and even beggary lose all their terrors. It is
almost proverbial among farmers that bee-hunters are always
behindhand.
Wild grapes must be left until after the hard frosts have mellowed
their pulp; and the gathering of them is not a work of
much cost of time or labour, since the whole vine is taken down
at once, and rifled in a few moments; its bounteous clusters being
reserved for the ignoble death of a protracted withering, as they
hang on strings from the smoky rafters of the log-house.
Hazel-nuts are not very abundant, and they must therefore—
so think our wiseacres—be pulled before they are fit for any thing,
lest somebody else should have the benefit of them. So we seldom
see a full ripe hazel-nut. I have had desperate thoughts of transplanting
a hazel-bush or two; but I am assured it would only be
buying Punchinello. Its powers are gone when it leaves its
proper place.
Hickory-nuts afford a most encouraging resource. They are
so plentiful in some seasons that one might almost live on them;
and then the gathering of them is such famous pastime! An occasional
risk of life and limb to be sure, but no work!
Hunting the deer, in forests which seem to have been planted
to shelter him, and in which he is seldom far to seek, is a sort of
middle term—a something between play and work—which is not
very severely censured even by our utilitarians. Venison is not
“meat,” to be sure, in our parlance; for we reserve that term
for pork, par excellence; but venison has some solid value, and
may be salted and smoked, which seems to place it among the
articles of household thrift. But our better farmers, though they
may see deer-tracks in every direction round the scene of their
daily rail-splitting, seldom hunt, unless in some degree debilitated
by sickness, or from some other cause incapacitated for their
usual daily course of downright, regular industry. “It is cheaper
to buy venison of the Indians,” say they; and now that the
Indians are all gone, there are white Indians enough—white skins
with Indian tastes and habits under them—to make hunting a
business of questionable respectability. Ere long it will be left
in the hands of such, with an occasional exception in favour of
city gentlemen who wander into the wilds with the hope of rebracing
enervated frames by some form of exercise which is not
work.
| Western clearings | |