University of Virginia Library

2. LETTER II.

My Dear Doctor: I have just had a visit from
the assessor. As if a man should be taxed for a
house, who could be luxurious under a bridge! I
have felt a decided “call” to disclaim roof and threshold,
and write myself down a vagabond. Fancy the
variety of abodes open, rent-free, to a bridge-fancier.
It is said among the settlers, that where a stranger
finds a tree blown over (the roots forming, always, an
upright and well-matted wall), he has only his house
to finish. Cellar and chimney-back are ready done to
his hand. But, besides being roofed, walled, and watered,
and better situated, and more plenty than over-blown
trees—bridges are on no man's land. You are
no “squatter,” though you sit upon your hams. You
may shut up one end with pine boughs, and you have
a room a-la-mode—one large window open to the
floor. The view is of banks and running water—exquisite
of necessity. For the summer months I
could imagine this bridge-gipsying delicious. What
furniture might pack in a donkey-cart, would set forth
a better apartment than is averaged in hotels (so
yelept), and the saving to your soul (of sins committed,
sitting at a bell-rope, ringing in vain for water)
would be worthy a conscientious man's attention.

I will not deny that the bridge of Glenmary is a favorable
specimen. As its abutments touch my cottage-lawn,
I was under the necessity of presenting the
public with a new bridge, for which act of munificence
I have not yet received the freedom of the town. Perhaps
I am expected to walk through it when I please,
without asking. The hitherward railing coming into
the line of my fence, I have, in a measure, a private
entrance; and the whole structure is overshadowed by
a luxuriant tree. To be sure, the beggar may go
down the bank in the road, and, entering by the other
side, sit under it as well as I—but he is welcome. I
like society sans-géne—where you may come in or go
out without apology, or whistle, or take off your shoes.
And I would give notice here to the beggary of Tioga,
that in building a stone seat under the bridge, and
laying the banks with green-sward, I intend no sequestration
of their privileges. I was pleased that a swallow,
who had laid her mud-nest against a sleeper
overhead, took no offence at my improvements. Her
three nestlings made large eyes when I read out what
I have scribbled, but she drowses on without astonishment.
She is a swallow of last summer, and has seen
authors.

A foot-passenger has just gone over the bridge,
and, little dreaming there were four of us listening
(the swallows and I), he leaned over the railing, and
ventured upon a soliloquy. “Why don't he cut
down the trees so's he can see out?” said my unconscious
adviser. I caught the eye of the mother-swallow,
and fancied she was amused. Her swallowlings
looked petrified at the sacrilegious suggestion. By
the way, it is worthy of remark, that though her little
ones have been hatched a week, this estimable parent
still sits upon their heads. Might not this continued
incubation be tried with success upon backward children?
We are so apt to think babies are finished
when their bodies are brought into the world!

For some minutes, now, I have observed an occasional
cloud rising from the bottom of the brook, and,
peering among the stones, I discovered one of the
small lobsters with which the streams abound. (The
naturalists may class them differently, but as there is
but one, and he has all the armament of a lobster,
though on the scale of a shrimp, the swallows agree
with me in opinion that he should rank as a lobster.)
So we are five. “Cocksnouns!” to borrow Scott's
ejaculation, people should never be too sure that they
are unobserved. When I first came under the bridge,
I thought myself alone.

This lobster puts me in mind of Talleyrand. You
would say he is going backward, yet he gets on faster
that way than the other. After all, he is a great man
who can turn his reverses to account, and that I take
to be, oftentimes, one of the chief secrets of greatness.
If I were in politics, I would take the lobster
for my crest. It would be ominous, I fear, in poetry.

You should come to the country now, if you would
see the glory of the world. The trees have been coquetting
at their toilet, waiting for warmer weather;
but now I think they have put on their last flounce
and furbelow, spread their bustle, and stand to be admired.
They say “leafy June.” To-day is the first
of July, and though I give the trees my first morning
regard (out-of-doors) when my eyes are clearest, I
have not fairly thought till to-day, that the foliage was
full. If it were not for lovers and authors, who keep
vigil and count the hours, I should suspect there was
foul play between sun and moon—a legitimate day
made away with now and then. (The crime is not
unknown in the upper circles. Saturn devoured his
children.)

There is a glory in potatoes—well hoed. Corn—
the swaying and stately maize—has a visible glory.
To see the glory of turnips, you must own the crop,
and have cattle to fat—but they have a glory. Pease
need no pæan—they are appreciated. So are not cabbages,
which, though beautiful as a Pompeian wine-cup,
and honored above roses by the lingering of the
dew, are yet despised of all handicrafts—save one.
Apt emblem of ancient maidenhood, which is despised,
like cabbages, yet cherishes unsunned in its bosom the
very dew we mourn so inconsistently when rifled from
the rose.

Apropos—the delicate tribute in the last sentence
shall serve for an expiation. In a journey I made
through Switzerland, I had for chance-travelling companions,
three Scotch ladies, of the class emulated by
this chaste vegetable. They were intelligent, refined,
and lady-like; yet in some Pencillings by the Way
(sketched, perhaps, upon an indigestion, of mountain
cheese, or an acidity of bad wine—such things affect
us) I was perverse enough to jot down a remark, more
invidious than just. We are reached with a long
whip for our transgressions, and, but yesterday, I received
a letter from the Isle of Man, of which thus
runs an extract: “In your description of a dangerous
pass in Switzerland, you mention travelling in the
same public conveyance with three Scotch spinsters,
and declare you would have been alarmed, had there
been any neck in the carriage you cared for, and assert,
that neither of your companions would have hesitated
to leap from a precipice, had there been a lover
at the bottom. Did either of us tell you so, sir? Or
what ground have you for this assertion? You could
not have judged of us by your own beautiful countrywomen,
for they are proverbial for delicacy of feeling.
You had not yet made the acquaintance of mine.
We, therefore, must appropriate entirely to ourselves

the very flattering idea of having inspired such an
opinion. Yet allow me to assure you, sir, that lovers
are by no means so scarce in my native country, as
you seem to imagine. No Scotchwoman need go
either to Switzerland, or Yankee-land, in search of
them. Permit me to say then, sir, that as the attack
was so public, an equally public amende honorable is
due to us.”

I make it here. I retract the opinion altogether. I
do not think you “would have leaped from the precipice,
had there been a lover at the bottom.” On the
contrary, dear Miss —, I think you would have
waited till he climbed up. The amende, I flatter myself,
could scarce be more complete. Yet I will make
it stronger if you wish.

As I look out from under the bridge, I see an oriel
sitting upon a dog-wood tree of my planting. His
song drew my eye from the paper. I find it difficult,
now, not to take to myself the whole glory of tree,
song, and plumage. By an easy delusion, I fancy he
would not have come but for the beauty of the tree,
and that his song says as much, in bird-recitative. I
go back to one rainy day of April, when, hunting for
maple saplings, I stopped under that graceful tree, in
a sort of island jungle, and wondered what grew so
fair that was so unfamiliar, yet with a bark like the
plumage of the pencilled pheasant. The limbs grew
curiously. A lance-like stem, and, at regular distances
a cluster of radiating branches, like a long cane
thrust through inverted parasols. I set to work with
spade and pick, took it home on my shoulder, and set
it out by Glenmary brook, and there is stands to-day,
in the full glory of its leaves, having just shed the
white blossoms with which it kept holyday in June.
Now the tree would have leaved and flowered, and the
oriel, in black and gold, might perchance have swung
and sung on the slender branch, which is still tilting
with his effort in that last cadenza. But the fair picture
it makes to my eye, and the delicious music in
my ear, seem to me no less of my own making and
awaking. Is it the same tree, flowering unseen in
the woods, or transplanted into a circle of human love
and care, making a part of a woman's home, and
thought of and admired whenever she comes out from
her cottage, with a blessing on the perfume and verdure?
Is it the same bird, wasting his song in the
thicket, or singing to me, with my whole mind afloat
on his music, and my eyes fastened to his glittering
breast? So it is the same block of marble, unmoved
in the caves of Pentelicus, or brought forth and
wrought under the sculptor's chisel. Yet the sculptor
is allowed to create. Sing on, my bright oriel!
Spread to the light and breeze your desiring finger,
my flowering tree! Like the player upon the organ,
I take your glory to myself; though, like the hallelujah
that burns under his fingers, your beauty and music
worship God.

There are men in the world whose misfortune it is
to think too little of themselves—rari nantes in gurgite
vasto: I would recommend to such to plant trees,
and live among them. This suggesting to nature—
working, as a master-mind, with all the fine mysteries
of root and sap, obedient to the call—is very king-like.
Then how elevating is the society of trees! The objection
I have to a city, is the necessity, at every other
step, of passing some acquaintance or other, with all
his merits or demerits entirely through my mind—
some man, perhaps, whose existence and vocation I
have not suggested (as I might have done were he a
tree)—whom I neither love, nor care to meet; and
yet he is thrust upon my eye, and must be noticed.
But to notice him with propriety, I must remember
what he is—what claims he has to my respect, my civility.
I must, in a minute balance the account between
my character and his, and if he speak to me,
remember his wife and children, his lst illness, his
mishap or fortune in trade, or whatever else it is necessary
to mention in condolence or felicitation. A
man with but a moderate acquaintance, living in a
city, will pass through his mind each day, at a fair
calculation, say two hundred men and women, with
their belongings. What tax on the memory! What
fatigue (and all profitless) to them and him! “Sweep
me out like a foul thoroughfare!” say I. “The town
has trudged through me!”

I like my mind to be a green lane, private to the
dwellers in my own demesne. I like to be bowed to
as the trees bow, and have no need to bow back or
smile. If I am sad, my trees forego my notice without
offence. If I am merry, or whimsical, they do not
suspect my good sense, or my sanity. We have a
constant itching (all men have, I think) to measure
ourselves by those about us. I would rather it should
be a tree than a fop, or a politician, or a 'prentice.
We grow to the nearest standard. We become Lilliputians
in Lilliput. Let me grow up like a tree.

But here comes Tom Groom with an axe, as if he
had looked over my shoulder, and started, apropos of
trees.

“Is it that big button-ball you'll have cut down,
sir?”

“Call it a sycamore, Tom, and I'll come and see.”
It is a fine old trunk, but it shuts out the village spire,
and must come down.

Adieu, dear Doctor; you may call this a letter if you
will, but it is more like an essay.